Pilgrim's Camp Ghast
Pilgrim's Camp Ghast is the wayStation the cult maintains for pilgrims making the crossing to Hollow Daen proper, on the only landfall on the system's outermost world that the cult has been able to negotiate with the surrounding clans.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | outpost |
| Anchor System | The Burning |
| Controlling Faction | The Day One (camp elders under the Watchers); tolerated by three surrounding clans |
| Fold Bleed | medium |
| Population | 34000 |
| Role | satellite |
| Zone | Rim |
Notes
Dangers: Camp discipline is harsh (pilgrims who recant are not turned out, they are 'cleansed'); off-worlders who come to argue do not leave the camp unchanged; fold-bleed is medium and constant, and the camp's preachers use it in their sermons.
Hooks: A clan envoy has come to Pilgrim's Camp Ghast asking the camp elders to formally condemn a recent Day One arson on the clan world; the elders are considering it; the pilgrims are not., A Core-world defector (a former Argus Kadiss grid administrator) has arrived at the camp carrying three pallet-loads of Core records; the elders are sheltering them; Argus has not yet noticed., A Legion chaplain is at the camp, unarmed, asking to speak with the elders about 'the doctrinal question of burnable versus unburnable'; the camp is allowing it; the chaplain is being listened to.
Lore: Pilgrim's Camp Ghast is the waystation the cult maintains for pilgrims making the crossing to Hollow Daen proper, on the only landfall on the system's outermost world that the cult has been able to negotiate with the surrounding clans. It is, structurally, a tent-city on a salt flat, population thirty-four thousand at last count, with a permanent staff of camp elders, a rotating population of pilgrims (between four and nine thousand at any time), and an unrecorded number of defectors who have stopped here on the way to the Hollow and have not moved on. The camp's stated function is rest, confession, and the burning of Core-world records; its actual function, the clans around it will tell you, is the slow preparation of every pilgrim who passes through for the Whisper they will hear when they reach the Hollow. The clans tolerate the camp because the cult pays, in salt and in silence, and because the cult's whisperers are sometimes useful when there is a clan problem that needs to be made to go away. Fold-bleed here is medium; the camp's preachers call it preparation. The pilgrims who arrive here are, statistically, the ones who will not be coming back.
Notable: The Cleansing House (where recanting pilgrims are processed); the Ledger Pyre (where incoming Core records, if any, are burned in public); the Long Tents (pilgrim housing, twenty thousand stretched canvas-and-salvage).