Plateau (Reformed Stripping Path)
Plateau is a deity of the Reformed Stripping Path, representing the moon of the same name.
Plateau, the Lady Divine of Health and Medicine, is a compassionate deity born of the healing springs of Micras, embodying the restorative essence of the natural world. Emerging from the convergence of life-giving waters and fertile soil, she carries the divine power to rejuvenate the body, mind, and spirit. Her presence inspires mortals to honor the natural cycles of renewal and seek harmony with the earth.
Plateau in the Reformed Stripping Path
In the Reformed Stripping Path, Plateau is revered as the divine healer and the guardian of vitality. She represents the harmony between nature and the physical well-being of mortals. Worshipers honor her as the restorer of balance, seeking her guidance in rituals that emphasize health, renewal, and the interconnectedness of life. Her teachings encourage the cultivation of natural remedies and the mindful stewardship of the earth’s resources.
Plateau in the Bassaridian Zodiac
Although not directly represented in the Bassaridian Zodiac, Plateau’s influence aligns with the cycles of health and renewal, particularly during festivals celebrating the earth’s fertility and vitality. Her role as a nurturer is most evident during celestial alignments that emphasize restoration and the sustenance of life. She is celebrated in seasonal rituals and herbal ceremonies that highlight the healing power of nature.
Sanctum Vitalis
Sanctum Vitalis, located in the river valleys surrounding Saluria, is the principal order devoted to Plateau, Lady Divine of Health and Medicine. Its members—known as Vitalists—are herbalists, healers, water engineers, and apothecaries who treat the springs, streams, and floodplains of southern Bassaridia Vaeringheim as a single, living infirmary. Within the Reformed Stripping Path, Sanctum Vitalis serves as Plateau’s shrine-based healing arm, complementing the more clinical, epidemiological work of the Pharmacon Sect and the national Health Secretariat by rooting medical care in ritual, landscape, and community.
The central complex of Sanctum Vitalis lies on terraced hills above the Salurian lowlands. Canal-fed gardens, herb cloisters, and orchards of medicinal trees surround a cluster of spring-fed courtyards where pilgrims draw water under Plateau’s image. Interior spaces combine vaulted apothecary halls, tiled dispensaries, and lecture loggias open to the air, so that the scents of horehound, mugwort, and other herbs permeate instruction. Shrines are oriented around springs and confluences; each bears plaques recording cures, remissions, and successful treatments, reinforcing the idea that medicine is a covenant between Plateau, the healer, and the land itself. From this heartland, Sanctum Vitalis maintains satellite houses in shrine districts across the nation, particularly in cities across the nation.
Organizationally, the order operates as a disciplined but flexible medical guild. Novices, called Spring Attendants, begin with basic tasks: tending herb beds, cleaning springs, copying formularies, and assisting in simple wound care. After a full seasonal cycle of field and shrine work, they may be initiated as Vitalists, empowered to prescribe minor remedies, oversee village clinics, and lead cleansing rites at local wells. Senior officers, known as Hydrologoi, specialise in water purity, sanitation, and the logistics of moving medical teams along canals and caravan routes. At the top stands the High Vitalist of Saluria, who presides over the valley complex and sits on joint health councils with representatives of Temple Aprobelle, the Pharmacon Sect, and the Health Secretariat when nationwide policy or festival health planning is at stake.
The daily spiritual core of the order is the Chrysosphera Mystikon (Mystery of the Golden Sphere), a ritual in which Vitalists compound consecrated oils and tinctures—most famously from white horehound and other medicinal plants—under starlight or dawn’s first rays. The rite is rooted in the Homeric Hymn to Plateau, which recounts the healer Elenya’s discovery of a spring-born cure at the goddess’s prompting. Vitalists recite portions of the hymn while preparing remedies, deliberately pacing each step—washing, maceration, infusion, and decanting—so that the medicine is framed as an act of devotion rather than mere chemistry. Finished preparations are then used in clinical care, incorporated into anointing rites, and distributed to shrine clinics, symbolizing Plateau’s nurturing power flowing outward from Saluria.
In doctrine, Sanctum Vitalis emphasizes three linked obligations: to protect water, to steward plants, and to honour the body as a shared trust. Sermons stress that canals, wells, and springs are “arteries of Plateau,” and that contamination—whether through neglect, industrial runoff, or ritual abuse—is a spiritual crime as well as a public-health violation. Herb harvests follow strict rotation and replanting rules; Vitalists teach that overexploitation of a single plant, however effective, risks angering the goddess who provided it. Patients are encouraged to view treatment not as a commodity but as participation in a cycle: healing received today must be repaid through later labour, care for others, or work on the land.
A key regional expression of this ethic is Sanctum Vitalis’ deep connection to the Salurian Temple of Sacred Horehound in Saluria. The Salurian Temple—renowned as a source of horehound mead, syrups, and sweet herbal preparations—functions as both a culinary and medicinal shrine-complex. Sanctum Vitalis supplies the temple with technical guidance on dosage, purity, and water quality, ensuring that horehound-based products can be safely used as mild expectorants, tonics, and convalescent drinks. In turn, the temple’s votive meaderies and kitchens provide the order with a steady stream of prepared horehound concentrates for use in the Chrysosphera Mystikon and in field medicine. Joint festivals, in which horehound pancakes and mead from the temple are blessed alongside tinctures and lozenges from Sanctum Vitalis, dramatize the idea that Plateau’s gifts can nourish both body and spirit when handled with discipline.
Sanctum Vitalis also maintains a close partnership with the Pharmacon Sect, the canyonland-based medical cult whose operations are centred in Acheron. Where Sanctum Vitalis focuses on shrine-based primary care, herbal practice, and water rites, the Pharmacon Sect specializes in the extraction and refinement of powerful resins and minerals from the petrified root systems of ancient trees, producing potent medicines for complex conditions. National public-health frameworks treat the Pharmacon Sect as the clinical and missionary arm of the system—staffing shrine hospitals, district clinics, and port-health houses at the General Port of Lake Morovia—while Sanctum Vitalis provides Plateau’s doctrinal anchor in community-level practice. Vitalists regularly complete further training with Pharmacon physicians, and Pharmacon quartermasters in Acheron depend on Sanctum Vitalis formularies to incorporate canyon-derived compounds safely into wider therapeutic regimens. During festival seasons, joint teams from Sanctum Vitalis, Pharmacon, and Temple Aprobelle coordinate procession spacing, temporary clinics, and water-quality checks in shrine towns such as Pyralis and Diamandis.
In major campaigns, Sanctum Vitalis acts as Plateau’s front-line medical corps. During Operation Somniant, medical specialists from Sanctum Vitalis were among the eleven cult Kleisthenes deployed alongside War League forces. In the Odiferian Wetlands and around Somniumpolis, they issued concentrated Noctic-Rabrev extracts to frontline personnel and evacuees showing early signs of eidetic fracture, blending herbal protocols with carefully measured use of the dangerous but powerful flower. As the operation shifted into recovery, Vitalists continued distributing Noctic-Rabrev therapeutic concentrates, monitored water supplies for occult contamination, and staffed triage posts in processing centres while other cults focused on banishment, morale, and metaphysical surveillance.
In the Valley of Keltia Campaign, Sanctum Vitalis appeared in Temple Bank tables as the Plateau-aligned component of the Temple Bank Missionary Units, tasked with “medical aid & water purification” in Tonar, Bashkim, and Ourid. Vitalist teams established field infirmaries along canal banks and granary districts, chlorinated or filtered compromised water, and worked closely with the Mystery of the Verdant Embrace to integrate sanitation with irrigation restoration. Their presence helped frame Bassaridian control as a restoration of health rather than a purely military occupation: when canals ran clear and clinics reopened under Plateau’s sigil, local narratives shifted from “conquest” to “stabilization,” reinforcing the campaign’s “conquest through covenant” framing.
Domestically, Sanctum Vitalis regularly appears in War League operational records as a neutral triage and public-health partner. During unrest in the library quarter of Lunalis Sancta, a Sanctum Vitalis field detachment accompanied a Manipulus from the Odiferia Division, setting up aid stations that treated injuries from both Reverie Nebulous and Court of the Ironclad factions and integrating triage with MEDEVAC routing via Noctiluna-class transport helicopters. In environmental crises, such as red tide outbreaks on Lake Morovia or sabotage of irrigation gates in cities like Sylvapolis, Vitalists provide water-testing, decontamination advice, and prophylactic care for exposed populations, often working alongside Pharmacon engineers and local civil works.
Economically and logistically, Sanctum Vitalis is woven into the fabric of the General Port of Lake Morovia. In the Port’s ship-traffic tables, Sanctum Vitalis appears as an owner-operator of ritual, agricultural, and mining/manufacturing cargoes moving through berths linked to Keybir-Aviv, Jogi, and Ardclach. Ritual consignments often combine shrine-bound supplies—such as glass vials, spring-water amphorae, and herb bundles—with goods from partners like the Blood Vineyards of the Far North, Anterran Imports and Services, and Sea Elm Southern Meadery. Mining/manufacturing entries associated with Sanctum Vitalis reflect its role in procuring minerals, clays, and vessel glass needed for secure storage and transport of medicines. In the Port’s broader economic narrative, Sanctum Vitalis is categorized as both service and productive actor, reinforcing the idea that health work is itself a form of industrial labour with spiritual stakes.
Sanctum Vitalis is also central to Bassaridian involvement in Corum following the revelations of the Baratar Scandal of 52 PSSC. While the scandal exposed illicit arms exports routed through Baratar-adjacent channels, Sanctum Vitalis stood at the heart of the corrective humanitarian response. The missionary deployment tables in Module:MissionaryDeploymentCorum assign five Kleisthenes (SCV-K1 through SCV-K5) to the order, and the Corumian Missionary Deployment Reports document their work across Braxian, Nortonian, Sinclarian, and Alindan zones. There, Vitalist teams delivered fortified rations, conducted health screenings, ran basic health education classes, and issued supplements under strict White-Lane humanitarian corridor rules. Each entry notes observer presence from Nouvelle Alexandrie, the Imperial Federation, the Diaspora Advisory Council, or Straits Convention monitors, as well as kit verification confirming that no encrypted radios, UAVs, or dual-use sensors accompanied the medical teams. In this theatre, Sanctum Vitalis’ medicines and checklists became emblems of a rules-based, audited presence that stood in deliberate contrast to the clandestine arms flows that had triggered the scandal.
The order’s Corum experience deepened its collaboration with the Pharmacon Sect. Pharmacon quartermasters supplied vaccines, cold-chain biologics, and advanced canyon-derived compounds; Sanctum Vitalis provided the public-facing clinics, herbal adjunct therapies, and Plateau-framed health messaging that made clinical advice acceptable to diaspora communities wary of foreign scrutiny. In Braxian and Nortonian underground settlements, Vitalists worked alongside Pharmacon epidemiologists to design simple ventilation, hygiene, and nutrition routines that could be sustained long after the missionary Kleisthenes rotated out, ensuring that Plateau’s concern for long-term vitality outlasted any single crisis.
Within the wider theology of the Reformed Stripping Path, Sanctum Vitalis is regarded as the archetypal “healing cult” of Plateau: the order that demonstrates how springs, herbs, Noctic-Rabrev, canyon minerals, and complex public-health systems can be integrated into a single, coherent practice. Whether tending horehound beds and springs outside Saluria, staffing triage posts in the Odiferian Wetlands, purifying flood-contaminated canals in Ourid and Bashkim, or delivering audited medical relief in distant Corum, Vitalists present their work as continuous service to the Lady Divine of Health and Medicine. In their teaching, every bandage, tincture, and clean cup of water is a small reenactment of Elenya’s spring-side miracle—proof that, so long as Plateau’s covenant is honoured, the body of Bassaridia Vaeringheim can be kept whole.
Mythology: The Homeric Hymn to Plateau
The Homeric Hymn to Plateau, written by the celebrated playwright Eliyahu al-Bashir, recounts the tale of Elenya, a healer whose village was ravaged by illness. Praying at a sacred spring, Elenya offered her most treasured vessel in supplication to Plateau. Moved by her devotion, Plateau emerged, guiding Elenya to create a powerful remedy from the waters and herbs of the land.
Through Elenya’s renewed understanding of the natural world, she healed her village and inspired generations of healers to follow Plateau’s teachings. The hymn celebrates Plateau’s role as a divine nurturer, highlighting the balance between nature’s power and human compassion.
The hymn is central to Plateau’s worship, recited during the Chrysosphera Mystikon and other healing ceremonies, inspiring devotion to her wisdom and compassion.
Worship and Festivals in Bassaridia Vaeringheim
Chag Tvuah (Festival of Harvest)
Celebrated on the 6th day of Opsitheiel in Sylvapolis, this joyous festival indirectly honors Plateau’s nurturing influence over the earth’s bounty. Festivities include communal feasts, dances, and the sharing of herbal remedies. Participants express gratitude for the healing and sustenance provided by Plateau’s gifts.
Taşrakah (Reverence of the Stone)
Observed on the 61st day of Thalassiel in Luminaria, this festival involves stone-carving rituals and anointing with sacred oils which indirectly honor Plateau’s enduring role as a foundation of health and balance. Worshipers participate in quiet reflections, emphasizing the resilience and vitality of nature.
Epithets
Plateau is venerated through epithets that highlight her role as a healer and nurturer. She is known as the Great Healer, symbolizing her ability to restore health and harmony. As the Lady Vitalis, she embodies the essence of vitality and well-being. Her title, the Bearer of Life’s Waters, reflects her connection to the healing springs and rivers that sustain life.
Iconography and Depictions
Plateau is frequently depicted as a serene figure adorned with garlands of healing herbs and flowers, her form radiating the soft glow of restorative waters. She is often shown holding a vessel brimming with clear spring water, symbolizing her role as the source of renewal and balance.
Symbols associated with Plateau include the serpent, representing regeneration and transformation, and the caduceus, symbolizing healing and wellness. She is also linked to the Morovian Water Buffalo, an essential part of the ecosystems near Lake Morovia, reflecting her connection to the balance of nature. Artistic depictions emphasize her nurturing presence, inspiring worshipers to seek solace and renewal in her divine embrace.
