Baraka

Baraka

Baraka is the name given to a class of bodily alterations associated with the Sepulchre and its study of the Hum. Those who carry baraka are known as majdhūb, while the procedures used to impart it are collectively referred to within the Church as taṭʿīm.

Baraka is unusual because it sits somewhere between fleshcrafting and the occult sciences of the Sepulchre. Its effects take place through the body, sometimes in ways that resemble advanced Mythos work, but the Church does not understand or describe it as conventional splicing. A majdhūb may heal unusually quickly, change the structure of muscle or bone, harden tissue, alter the function of an organ, or produce other physical changes that would normally require extensive biological modification. The particular effects vary considerably between individuals.

A majdhūb is not a Listener. Receiving baraka does not grant the gift, and the recipient does not gain the ability to hear the Hum as Listeners do. Whatever occurs during taṭʿīm is much narrower than Listenerhood and remains closely bound to the recipient's own body.

The exact mechanism is not publicly known. The Sepulchre teaches that living tissue can retain or acquire a degree of responsiveness to the Hum under particular conditions, and that taṭʿīm allows this responsiveness to be preserved. Listeners are known to be involved in the practice, although the Church is deliberately vague about the nature of that involvement. The material used during taṭʿīm, the way it is prepared, and the reason different majdhūb develop different forms of baraka remain subjects of considerable rumor.

Origins

Baraka, of course, did not develop independently of Mythos. Mythos has practiced fleshcrafting for generations and already makes extensive use of Listeners within that field. Flesh is unusually responsive to the Hum, and a skilled Listener can influence healing, growth, tissue organization and other biological processes with a degree of precision that conventional medicine cannot always reproduce. Mythos incorporated this into its own medical and biological research long ago.

The important difference is how Mythos uses that ability. In conventional fleshcrafting, the Listener is the operator. The body is manipulated under controlled conditions, the desired alteration is made, and the biological system is then expected to maintain the resulting change on its own. Even with the involvement of a Listener, Mythos treats the procedure as medicine. Listener intervention is another instrument available to the physician or fleshcrafter.

Taṭʿīm began with many of the same techniques. Tissue cultivation, transplantation, management of rejection, surgical integration and the use of Listeners to work directly with living systems all have clear precedents in Mythos fleshcrafting. At some point, however, Sepulchre took those practices in a direction Mythos had not intended. Rather than using Listener phenomena only during the procedure, Sepulchral researchers began experimenting with ways of preserving that relationship to the Hum after the procedure was complete.

This became the basis of taṭʿīm. How Sepulchre first acquired the relevant Mythos techniques is disputed. Mythos maintains that substantial portions of the process were taken from its own research without permission and subsequently modified beyond recognition. Church accounts are less specific and generally describe taṭʿīm as an independent development built upon knowledge that was already circulating between the Guilds. This is yet another point of discontent and conflict between the two Guilds, contributing to the high-strung tension. Mythos' perspective

Mythos does not object to baraka simply because it involves the Hum. Mythos itself employs Listeners, including within fleshcrafting, and does not deny the reality of Listener phenomena. Mythos doctrine places a great deal of importance on order within living systems. Biology is complicated and often unpredictable, but the purpose of medicine is to understand that complexity well enough to control it. A procedure should have a known mechanism, predictable limits and a result that can be reproduced under the same conditions.

From this perspective, taṭʿīm is an inversion of good fleshcrafting practice and Mythos' overall goal to leash nature and allow mankind to control it once and for all, to beat the unpredictability of nature.

Sepulchre uses advanced biological techniques to establish something within the body whose behavior is not fully explained by conventional biology. The resulting graft may continue to change, react to its host, behave differently under stress or develop unexpected capabilities. To many Mythos members, this amounts to deliberately introducing an uncontrolled element into a system that medicine should be trying to stabilize.

The language used by Mythos critics can be severe. Baraka has been described as corrupted fleshcrafting, occult contamination and the implantation of chaos itself into living tissue. More conservative Mythos scholars argue that Sepulchre took a medical art concerned with imposing order upon the body and altered it until the body became a vessel for forces neither Guild completely understands, and that this will be the undoing of Deshret.

Sepulchre of course rejects this interpretation. The Church argues that Mythos draws an artificial boundary between biology and the Hum when living things participate in both. From the Sepulchral perspective, the inability to reduce baraka to genetics, anatomy or cellular behavior does not make it unnatural. It is merely because their understanding is incomplete. The disagreement is therefore partly scientific and partly philosophical. Mythos sees fleshcrafting as the controlled alteration of a biological system. Sepulchre considers the body to be one part of a larger pattern involving the Hum and the soul.

Taṭʿīm

Taṭʿīm is the Sepulchral term for the procedures used to impart baraka. It involves the implantation of specially prepared living material and its integration into the recipient's body.

The graft is not treated as a passive implant. Successful taṭʿīm creates an ongoing relationship between the graft and the host's living tissues. The recipient gradually learns to provoke or direct that relationship. This is one reason baraka can be difficult to control at first. A newly made majdhūb may understand what they want their body to do without yet understanding how to produce the state to achieve that result. It takes specialized training to understand the limits of the graft, and how to direct it.

Baraka remains primarily concerned with flesh. Changes to skin, muscle, bone, blood and organs are the most familiar manifestations. Some majdhūb display effects that seem considerably stranger, particularly in cases associated with unusual Listener phenomena, but detailed information about these cases is rarely available outside the Church.

**The majdhūb ** A person who has undergone successful taṭʿīm is known as a majdhūb. The term predates the modern practice and has older religious associations within Sepulchral literature. In its present use it refers to someone whose body has been drawn into an unusual relationship with the Hum without the person themselves becoming a Listener.

Majdhūb are uncommon and are most strongly associated with the Sepulchre, its specialist servants and individuals given access to Church rites that are not easily available through ordinary clinics. Baraka is not presently a normal consumer augmentation or a routine medical service. The presence of baraka can be obvious or subtle depending on the individual. Some effects only appear when deliberately invoked, while others produce permanent changes in the body. This has contributed to a considerable amount of folklore around majdhūb, particularly in Suburba and among people who have little direct contact with the Sepulchre. What your character would know

The existence of baraka is not a secret in Deshret. Most people with a reasonable education know that Sepulchre possesses a form of living grafting that can give a person unusual control over their own body. They may also know, through rumors, that the practice grew out of fleshcrafting and that Mythos considers its use controversial.

The connection to Listeners is also broadly known, but only in general terms. The Church does not deny that Listener phenomena are involved in taṭʿīm, although it rarely explains exactly how. Stories about majdhūb are correspondingly unreliable. Some of these stories are based on genuine complications of taṭʿīm, while others are ordinary superstition.

Terminology

**Baraka **is the broadest term. It refers to the potency associated with taṭʿīm and to the abilities produced by it. In ordinary speech someone may be said to "have baraka," "carry baraka" or have "received baraka."

**Taṭʿīm **refers to the Sepulchral discipline and procedure by which baraka is imparted. It is more common in Church, medical and scholarly language than in ordinary conversation.

**Majdhūb **refers to a person who has successfully undergone taṭʿīm and carries baraka.

**Ghūl **is a term associated with certain dependent organisms or servants connected to the broader history of taṭʿīm. Its precise use varies between periods and traditions, and the modern Sepulchral meaning is distinct from the much older folklore attached to the word.