Giant Tree of Rapt Brooding

The “first scholar” Thalesus, in order to seek spiritual meaning within the faith of Mnestia, set out upon reaching adulthood from Mileutus, the seaside city-state that was his home, on a journey across the whole land of Amphoreus.

During his pilgrimage, unusual experiences and strange sights gave rise in him to entirely new thoughts about natural phenomena and the origin of the world. At the end of the journey he beheld the “Divergent Branch” and completed his methodology for understanding the world before the great tree. Afterward, Thalesus built a courtyard beneath the great tree and named it the “Grove of Epiphany”, so that people might awaken the mind, seek knowledge, and come to understand the way of things.

The thoughts of Cerces, the Titan of Reason, were recorded upon scrolls or quietly turned into a hundred kinds of plants... and the clamor of the Grove was born out of that. From these debates and exchanges of wisdom, schools holding different ideas came into being.

The directions of research among the schools differ, yet they interweave with one another... like the long branching limbs of the great tree, they can never avoid overlapping... In fierce debates, in the inheritance of theory and knowledge across the generations, the reflections left behind by the “first scholar” have been handed down to this day, and long ago grew into many currents of thought, headed by the Seven Sages and the seven principal schools.

“All knowledge in the world should become the leaves of the Grove, forming a shade that covers the sky and helping the great tree grow strong.” The city-states that seek wisdom from the Grove must all offer up knowledge of equal worth. In this way countless ideas become nutrients, and countless new shoots and green leaves are able to sprout.

Throughout hundreds of years of the Light Calendar, any caravan that passed the checkpoint of the Grove, any merchant ship that docked at the harbor of the Grove... any scripture found to contain knowledge, whatever its nation, whatever its language, would be brought into the treasury of the Grove. The scholars of the Grove, also called “the robbers”, by buying at high prices, by hiring copyists, and even by plunder, built the Grove into “the finest school of Amphoreus”. The scholars of the Grove take research as their sacrificial offering and thought as their piety, in order to worship the supreme reason of the world.

Beginning with the sowing of life, returning to the soul of the forest, the dew-gathering heart collects the drops of knowledge from the world. Cerces, the Titan of Reason, listens to the garden of learning grow ever more clamorous, and remains always in silent contemplation.

One current of thought of the Grove of Epiphany, one lateral branch upon the great tree. The veins draw along hundreds and thousands of arguments, spreading out like a tangled net of branches. Independent, yet growing crowded together, overlapping one another, and at last weaving into a lush canopy that makes the great tree still more luxuriant.

Among them, one branch turns its leaf stems back toward itself, twisting into complicated rings. The Ascetics of the “Lotus Seed School” are absorbed in the mystery of the very veins and patterns upon the leaves, believing that propagation, and indeed all things, are self-evident existences that can be touched. The asceticism they devote themselves to is a practical method for harmonizing all things in the world... In their view, ascetic practice is not a way of abandoning the self, but on the contrary, a shortcut to understanding oneself.

Another branch bears abundant fruit that weighs the limb down. The scholars of the “Mountain Goat School” are expert in studying, breeding, and preserving strange beasts... The lovely beauty of the Chimera in its thousand forms is their small practice in understanding the diversity of life.

Another branch curves into a perfect ratio, precise and elegant. The scholars of the Cord School declare that “all things are number”, that is to say... every entity can be mapped by number. As the earliest school of the Grove to take shape, they guard the threshold of the academy, demanding that “he who knows no geometry shall not enter”, and they revere mathematics all the more as the means by which Cerces, the Titan of Reason, governs the world.

Another branch grows thick, round, and endlessly supple. The Stone Sling School requires a scholar to swing the sling and throw round stones beyond a designated range before formally joining, in order to prove their intent of “pursuing perfection” in training, in thought, and in competition.

Another branch sometimes droops and sometimes stretches straight, conveying pure beauty to the senses. The Red Pottery School treats the discussion of art and sensibility as the origin of logical thought, firmly believing that information distilled directly from the senses is the most essential, and that the world it reaches is the more universal.

Upon the lush canopy, the reverent branch most suited to sacrifice is formed from the main trunk of the great tree. The “School of Reverence” is expert in the rites of the Titans and the use of Miracles, and is called “the cradle of the politicians of Amphoreus”. They not only preside over the religious ceremonies of the Grove, their achievements also reach deep into every aspect of Amphoreus. However, there is one sharp new shoot rising up to oppose it...

The School of the Seed of Wisdom inherits the doctrine of the soul from the “first scholar”, and devotes itself to theories of transformation and sublimation between life and matter. It was founded the latest, yet its arguments are the sharpest, and its guiding doctrine points toward the origin of all life and all objects.

The seven sages of the seven schools each hold their own field of research, and in principle there is no hierarchy among them. And the great tree of reason holds the foremost place among the seven sages, spreading knowledge and reason across the world like shading branches, amid endless debate.