Virtue is the result of self-control. Wild passions lead people to
destruction, deviancy, and disobedience. Therefore the civilized soul is
in a state of perpetual war against its own base impulses which must be
conquered for it to have any hope of virtue or achievement.

It is an unfortunate truth that some people are more heavily burdened
with these natural and dangerous passions than others. The loboshigaru
have suffered more than most in this regard, and each of them has had to
either master their own heart or else descend into absolute barbarity.
In the days before the Taint Wars many of the loboshigaru who were
successful in controlling their impulses found a home in Hallifax, which
benefitted greatly from the contributions of the vassal packs.

The loboshigaru of these packs occasionally attained such a degree of
excellence that they could be posthumously declared paragons of
Collectivism. It is my pleasure to elucidate the life of one such
paragon of the vassal packs, a sage by the name of Manana.

The details of her life have been assembled from the few records which
survive from old Hallifax. They are fragmentary accounts, some
contemporary to Manana's life and some which were written long after her
death. This account is as accurate as the availability of historical
information permits, but it is not and cannot be entirely infallible. It
is my hope that it is of interest to all those with a love of virtue, in
spite of the potential for error.

 

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Manana was born into pack Kanimi, which was amongst the first to swear
allegiance to Hallifax, and she was a member of the first generation of
her pack to be born into the Collective. She was the child of two
warriors, the names of whom have regrettably been lost to history.
Manana had no siblings, for her early childhood was sufficient to
convince her parents that further reproduction would be unwise.

In her youth, Manana was overwhelmed by her passions. She would fly into
a rage at the slightest misfortune, and the most insignificant quarrel
would reduce her to violence. Her instincts were so far in excess of the
norm that even the sages of her pack were at a loss to find a solution.
Ultimately they resolved to send her to the Toshan monks, in the hopes
that they could tame her wild nature. They also determined that it would
be both necessary and merciful to put Manana to death in the event of
the monk's failure, both for the good of the state and of Manana
herself.

The monks in turn thought it would be best for Manana to be sent into
temporary seculusion with one of their masters. Manana dwelt in the
mountains with that master for three years, and during those three years
she learned to suppress her instinctive savagery.

The monks' usual techniques were of little use to Manana. Meditation and
exercise both failed her, and each failure filled her with greater rage.
Her master did not despair at this, but instead resolved to attempt a
new technique. As he could find no way to help Manana, he decided to
force her to find a way to help herself. He constructed a large puzzle
box, filled with sharp spikes and with two holes for Manana's feet. He
placed her in this device, knowing that it would cause her pain, and
that the pain would bring her anger. This anger would cause her to flail
about as was her custom, which would in turn cause her to experience
further pain. She would be able to free herself only by breaking the
cycle of pain and anger so that she could solve the puzzle. The master
left her alone with the puzzle box and waited to see if his student
could find peace.

Long hours of anger passed before Manana exhausted herself. Eventually
she grew too tired to struggle, and her anger began to fade. Her mind
grew clearer, and she was able to free herself from the box.

Such was the first step on Manana's journey to self-control. She had
seen what she could accomplish with a calm mind, and so she finally saw
the need to free herself from her passions. In time, she attained a
state of serenity. Even so, she never forgot her years of unreasoning
anger and never ceased in her efforts to avoid falling back into such a
state. Every night for the rest of her life she would lock herself in
that box and every morning she would clear her mind and free herself
from it.

 

----

 

After Manana learned to control her instinctive fury, she returned to
Hallifax. Unlike the majority of the city's loboshigaru population, she
did not pursue the profession of arms. Manana feared that battle would
inflame the passions which she had gone to such lengths to suppress, and
instead turned her attention to the noble sciences. This was and is a
strange choice for a shard of Loboshi, for few of them possess minds
that are well suited to research.

Manana herself was no exception when she began her studies. She spent
years studying the sciences, forcing herself to excel beyond what she
thought herself to be capable of. When her memory proved insufficient
for her studies, she turned to meditation and endless exercises until
she surpassed all other students in her ability to recall information.
When her powers of observation failed her, she long hours learning to
notice every detail of everything that she saw, until she could observe
even the most insignificant features of an object at a glance. In time,
her exertions bore fruit and Manana proved herself worthy of being
called a scientist.

Having completed her studies, Manana chose to perform medical research.
Her race, which had been a burden to her throughout her youth and
studies, at last provided with unique advantages. The remarkable
regenerative abilities of the loboshigaru race allowed her to perform
experiments on herself which would have been immediately fatal had they
been performed upon a trill or lucidian. The degree of self-control
which she had attained during her previous studies allowed her to
disregard the pain of her experiments and produce impartial observations
of her being both a scientist and a test subject.

Her findings were revolutionary. Manana devised no treatments and cured
no diseases, but rather discovered the bodily mechanisms which allowed
known remedies to function. These discoveries were later put to use by
other scientists in the development of new medical procedures. Even to
this day, medical scientists owe a great debt to Manana for her work.

 

----

 

Manana's fame spread amongst the loboshigaru, both foreign and domestic.
She was acknowledged as a sage amongst the packs and a peer of the
Commwealth. As such, the Board of Directors thought it proper to put
Manana's reputation to use by sending her as an envoy to the independent
loboshigaru packs. It was their hope that she could persuade those
independent packs to swear allegiance to the Collective, to the benefit
of both Hallifax and the packs themselves. She found great success in
her early meetings with the packs who dwelt nearest to the city, who
readily pledged themselves to the Collective's service.

Her task grew more difficult as she travelled farther from Hallifax. She
was not well-known amongst the more isolated packs, and such packs knew
little of the benefits that memembership in the Collective could bring.
Many of those packs refused her, but she persisted in her task in the
hope of brining peace to more of her race.

This hope proved to be her undoing. She came upon a pack which exceeded
all of the others in its violence and its barbarity. This was plain to
Manana as she approached it, but recalling her own struggles against her
instincts and her eventual triumph she resolved to brave the danger and
make contact. She was received with threats, and when she made her offer
those threats turned to violence. Manana was torn limb from limb. Even
faced with the pain of her dismemberment, she refused to allow her last
moments to be filled with anger. She died in a state of serenity, with
her love for the Collective in her heart.

Such was the death of Manana Kanimi, a paragon of Hallifax.