ANÁLISIS CUALITATIVO

The people of Jarish live in the shadows of heroic titan- cities, and work amongst the ghosts of history. All around them, Autochthon’s factory-mitochondria and productive cells—his industrial organs—work miracles of production, proving that their god still endures. At every turn, the people of Jarish are confronted by the legacy of heroes and legends— in the soulgem-enhanced tools of legendary workers, and in the presence of Alchemicals past (in sculpted-anima displays in city squares) and present. Three extra shift breaks per day are dedicated to praying to Autocthon-by-Noi, causing the great light obelisk over Qune to flare, giving the nation light to work by. Thus the Jarishites see the power and proof of their faith. By night, they are presided over by the distant pinprick of a person-sized soulgem atop Jast’s National Tri- partite Assembly tower, in which the form of a woman is frozen forever in supplication.

Jarish is famous among the Octet for its greatest holiday, Sparkmoon, a three night affair in the month of Ascending

Air. Held mostly in Qune, Sparkmoon is an appreciation of a year of hard work and dedication, a time during which the Jarishites uncharacteristically reduce their shift operations to a bare minimum, slowing production and devoting serious time to only the most vital of operations, so that everyone has a chance to attend. On the three nights of Sparkmoon, there are great dances on Qune’s famous Promenade, a plat- form of moonsilver and steel at the beginning of a tramway that leads all the way to Nurad. During these dances, lovers are seduced, reproductive bonds are consecrated, and the people venerate the subgods and each other. The final night of Sparkmoon always sees the largest attendance, as people from across Autochthonia show up to dance, and to see the great light obelisk momentarily flare as it completes its yearly recalibration. This flaring causes motonic fireflies to fill the air, turning the Promenade into a sea of stars. During this time, Dulcinea turns down her lights, withdrawing her natural bioluminescence, and lets the people dance to the sound of pipe and drum and string while the fireflies orbit and gavotte around the dance floor.

While visitors from other nations find Sparkmoon to be breathtaking, even heartbreaking, the Jarishites pursue the rest of their year with the same zest that they revel in Sparkmoon. Jarishites are raised to believe that the op- portunity to work, sacrifice, and love are rewards equal to any holiday. Their interests lie, therefore, in the ability to go on loving and working—and making whatever sacrifices are necessary in the pursuit of that goal. It is a simplistic but powerful view.

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The suicide rate in Jarish is low, but the average eutha- nasia age is almost ten years younger than the Autochthonian average. This is partially because the Jarishites depend so much on the hardiness of youth in both love and work, but also because their lifestyles leave them with little fear of death. The Psychopomp Gears of the Transmodal Essence Recom- binator, they believe, are not the doorways to a possible final ending; rather, they see the chance of being consumed by the Great Maker as an opportunity to be reborn as something other than human. Jarishites believe that their souls—the ones that sometimes fail to make it into newborn babies— become the spark powering the gods of Autochthonia, the mechanical spirit-laborers who surround and permeate Jarish. The clerics of Jarish have learned, through long practice, to commune with these beings with a much higher rate of suc- cess and safety than that enjoyed by any other Octet nation. Their success in this matter only furthers their belief that they have an inherent, mimetic connection to the souls of the Great Maker.

One famous example of this connection can be seen in the Jarishite relationship with the vicious and highly lethal mylkwelder. These elementals live in colonies throughout the Reaches, where they crawl over nests of slag, arc welding them with torches built into their jaws. Mylkwelders aren’t

particularly aggressive—when they forage for metals, away from the nest, they will ignore the presence of humans. How- ever, a mortal who stumbles into the vicinity of a mylkwelder nest faces grave peril, as the mechanical arachnids will grasp and dismember a person, welding their limbs and torsos into the slag nests they tend.

Mylkwelders and their nests are generally exterminated when found anywhere near settlements of the other nations. When encountered in the Reaches, expeditions take care to mark the boundaries of the nests for future expeditions, if they don’t have the time or the manpower to eliminate the beasts. The Jarishites, however, live in close vicinity to the largest mylkwelder colonies in Autochthonia. Long ago, the Jarishites discovered that, despite the nonsense of their slag nests, the mylkwelders were genius welders. So the Jarishites devised a pulley system that would allow them to safely send any piece of material they needed a weld on into the nests of the mylkwelders. What they pulled out would be perfectly welded, unfailingly and every time. Though the Jarishites have made a number of thaumaturgical advances which allows their productivity to be incredibly high, one of the essential staples of Jarishite production has always been cooperation with, rather than combat against, the lesser autonomous functions of the Machine God, whom many Jarishites believe contain the souls of their fallen brothers and sisters.

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Jarishites enjoy an especially tight-knit culture, even by Octet standards; they are raised to regard their co-workers as family, to honor their ancestors, and to love ferociously.

It doesn’t work for everyone. Jarish has its share of introverts, oddities, and bitter hearts. Not everyone can meet the expectation of personal sacrifice and move on with grace and dignity, nor do all Jarishites wish to invite their nation into their heart. In Jarish, there are many who understand all too well that the warm center of a crowd can be the loneliest and coldest place in the world.

The nation has an unfortunate tendency to produce alienation in its outsiders just as powerful as the sense of community in the rest of its citizens. Being unhappy and unfulfilled is bad; feeling that way when everyone else seems to be joyous and fulfilled is so much worse. As a result, Jarish has the dubious distinction of having harbored as many Voidbringer sects in its history as Claslat and Gulak combined. They consider this a trial from Autochthon, and take pride in their consistent triumph over the forces of discord, without examining the reason those trials are so frequent.

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The Jarishite people are not inherently warlike, and due to the weakness of the nation, Jarish tries to keep out of conflict as much as possible. However, they do produce weaponry in order to prevent the alternative. One of the most profound strictures in the Tome of the Great Maker condemns those who would use the same tools which are used to service the body of Autochthon to commit murder. The cunning boltguns, staplers, and rivet-punchers Autocthonians use in their daily work would make excellent improvised weaponry, if put to military use. Jarish won’t allow it, and can likely be counted on to produce crossbows, bolts, and swords en masse simply to prevent that particular heresy. Jarish harbors only a single exception to their rule: after Blade of the Apostate ravaged the nation in 3566DA, it became acceptable for a factory worker to use such a tool to kill gremlins, or other servants of the Void. The stricture against knowingly car- rying such tools into battle, regardless of the opponent, still remains, but Jarishites workers are under no further spiritual obligation to let themselves be helplessly slaughtered because they do not carry weapons to work.

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The Octet considers Jarish to be blessed by Autochthon; the fact that it has moved fewer times, and over less distance than any other nation among the Eight is testament to this. The people of Jarish seem to exude a faith that lives and burns in the heart of everything they touch. “Faith like a Jarishite,” is a phrase used by Autochthonians to describe a person who puts himself at risk without thought of consequence, trusting his fate, good or ill, to the will of the Great Maker.

Because of Jarish’s material weakness coupled with its peerless faith and unmatched work ethic, the rest of Au- tochthonia cannot help but admire the smallest nation of the Octet. That Jarish is blessed is taken almost for granted. As such, the other seven nations discourage one another from making militant advances toward the tiny nation. Jarish is protected on all sides by its Autochthonian allies. When a threat rises to endanger the whole of Autochtho- nia, concerned eyes will be turned toward Jarish, so that the cataclysm wrought by Viator of Nullspace may not be repeated. They do this because Jarish is an example to the Eight Nations—of how fragile and tenuous their lives are, and how powerful faith is.

HOPE’S SHINING BRIDGE – THE