One thousand Immaculate temples gleam in the port city of Pneuma, their façades layered with arabesques. Bells ring; prayer wheels spin; the drone of sutras fills the air.
Crowds part to make way for lines of monks as they pace from station to monastery to shrine, in an endless cycle of devotions to the little gods of the North.
Pneuma’s greatest temple, the Nail of Truth, is a looming tower of blue-white marble that overshadows the rest of the city. Carved from a single monolithic mass of stone, legend says that Mela hurled it from the sky like a spear to crush an Anathema beneath it. The Nail is off-limits to mortal petitioners, for it’s there that Northern gods negotiate with Immaculate lamas over their place in the Order’s calendar.
It is known that the Wyld Hunt maintains a prison beneath the Nail where captured Anathema are held for transport to the Blessed Isle. It is said to be a place of inquisition and torture, where the sutras of the Immaculate Dragons burn in the cursed flesh of the reviled, marking them as unclean.
What is not known is that the Sidereals have long used the Nail of Truth for the processing and forceful recalibration of illegal Exigents.