The Immaculate Philosophy utilizes a fivefold internal division for its administrative machinery. These administrative divisions, called mouths, address the problems of the order in subject-wise fashion. This is in contrast to the order’s geographic missions, which address discreet tracts of the order’s influence. The staff of the Mouths provides planning, logistical support, and staff for special projects; while the missions provide regular services to their communities and ensure continuity of administration.
A Mouth’s floating staff is very large—they number in the tens of thousands on the Blessed Isle —and its ability to move them is well-developed. They can be (and often are) concentrated to provide disaster relief, but even when not, their hands are still at work improving the
countryside.
The Mouth of Sextes Jylis (Human Resources and Public Works) deals with human resources and the natural world. Sextes Jylis was a permaculture horticulturalist, and this is the philosophy under which the mouth operates.
This Mouth recruits for the order, sorts and trains recruits, assigns them to where it perceives they will serve themselves and the order best, and then monitors their personal development and general effectiveness across their career.
The Mouth also tends to the creation and maintenance of the natural wonders of the Realm. The Mouth has created endless food forests, coppice woodlots and resilient agricultural communities, and while general maintenance falls to the mission tracts, new projects and major renewals are part of the responsibility of the Mouth of Sextes Jylis.
These groundskeepers of the Realm are many in number and the Mouth of Sextes Jylis is the largest of the Mouths. The swarm of monks that appear after any disaster is generally drawn from the ranks of the order’s foresters, horticulturalists and road-builders.
The Immaculate Order is run for the spiritual development of the entire world, including the members of the order itself, and so this Mouth has a constant, sometimes intrusive presence in the life of each monk, seeking to better their spiritual situation. They really are watching, and they really do care, and sometimes monks discover that everything that happened to them has been carefully arranged to teach them a lesson. This isn’t always the most welcome feeling, particularly when the lesson-teaching goes wrong.
The Mouth of Pasiap (Manses and Facilities) tends to the order’s many manses and also to its other, inert structures. The dividing line between the Mouth of Sextes Jylis and the Mouth of Pasiap is the order’s fixed property line—the Mouth of Sextes Jylis tends to public works, while the Mouth of Pasiap tends to the things that belong strictly to the order.
The order controls many manses and other properties, and so this Mouth’s operation is
expansive. It consists of groundskeepers and other fixed personnel who perform maintenance at a given site, and also the travelling corps of architects and specialists who repair, refurbish, erect, and demolish structures for the order. With a real estate portfolio as diverse as the order’s, its construction crews are numerous and busy, and the Mouth often undertakes commercial projects to fund its operation and retain skill among its teams.
The Mouth of Mela (Combat Training and Military Planning) is responsible for defending the order and for teaching its monks to defend themselves. It organizes and maintains the Wyld Hunt. It directs the training of Immaculate monks—both Dragon-Blooded and mortal—in the martial arts. Inasmuch as the order fields military forces—and it guards a number of manses and individuals quite heavily—the Mouth of Mela marshals them and commands them to battle. As befits the largely pacifist and social engagement of the order, the Mouth of Mela is the smallest of the Mouths. The most terrifying of the Mouths’ fighters are the dreaded Legion of Silence, who guard the person of the Mouth of Peace and other critical core assets of the order (including, until her disappearance, the Scarlet Empress). These individuals are bought as child- slaves and enhanced via drugs, Essence, and special exercise routines until they far exceed the physical capacity of a normal human. The price of this superhuman capacity is a short lifespan— most members of the Legion of Silence die of old age by the time they reach 40.
The Mouth of Hesiesh (Special Projects) is dedicated to special projects. This means any emergent need the order has not already established a procedure for, or that exceeds the regular means of the order. The Mouth of Hesiesh is the order’s immediate response force, used to bulk out any effort that needs additional labor, and to stage instant intervention into new and
unexpected challenges. It is also the branch of the Order charged with making use of
“inauspicious assets,” such as God-Blooded and Exigents—products of heretical intercourse and interaction between mortals and the little gods of the world, which are too useful to simply discard despite their shameful origins.
On one hand, this consists of individuals who are too old, infirm, injured or eccentric for deployment anywhere, and serves as an invalid’s colony within the order. It also contains the fastest and most egalitarian command chain within the order, and possibly the Realm. These two organizational aspects are not discreet. In its collection of the old, the infirm and the odd-headed lies an immense reservoir of talent and unorthodox approaches that the Mouth does an excellent job harnessing.
To some extent, this is merely a function of having a large talent pool to draw from. The Mouth of Hesiesh is nearly the size of the Mouth of Pasiap and surpasses it when the Immaculate Order’s demography goes through a particularly severe aging cycle, or after the outbreak of pestilences of various sorts, when many members of the order may suffer from lifelong crippling injuries due to the lingering effects of illness.
The Mouth of Daana’d (Human Community Development) is the Mouth that deals with the human context in which the order exists. It provides a wide array of social services—hospitals,
orphanages, retirement homes, training programs, daycares and hostels. The order is entangled in every aspect of the day-to-day life of everyone in the Realm, from cradle to grave, and this Mouth directs the overall arc of that involvement. While individual facilities are administered and staffed by the mission tracts, it’s the Mouth of Daana’d that determines the standards and practices of the order’s many human outreach programs.
In disaster response, the Mouth of Daana’d provides medical and humanitarian aid. It is second in size to the Mouth of Sextes Jylis and keeps a significant excess capacity in reserve to meet crises. As a result, like the Mouth of Sextes Jylis, its presence is announced by the appearance of swarms of monks—dozens or hundreds.
The intelligences that direct the order and formulate its policies are considerable. Its social entanglement with the society of the Realm is largely beneficial to that society. Through the Mouth of Mela, the order guides and guards the society of the Realm. It may enable the despotic reign of the Dragon-Blooded but it’s not a one-sided bargain.