he Cheonmugwan (Celestial Martial Court)
The order of scholar-sorcerers whose ritual caused the Fracturing. Its few survivors were washed over by pure Maggi (막기), made immortal and disfigured, and have since split into two factions plus the isolated hermit Nam-Gi.
The order and the Fracturing
The Cheonmugwan (천무관, Celestial Martial Court) were an order of scholar-sorcerers. They tried to tap the Celestial Pillars (Cheonseokju, 천석주) directly, intending to ascend to the level of the Five Celestial Spirits. Their ritual, the Cheonmyeong Uisik (천명 의식, Rite of Heaven’s Mandate), failed catastrophically. Three pillars shattered, two were badly cracked, the Gyunhyeong (균형, the Great Balance) collapsed, and the boundary between the spirit and mortal realms tore. This is the Cheonha Bunhae (천하 분해), the Fracturing of the Heavens.
What followed is the source of everything wrong in the world now: unfiltered Giun (기운) seeping out as Maggi (막기), the dead unable to pass on, the worst corruption pooling in deep places near the broken pillars. Whatever was ultimately created at the core of the Cheonmugwan ritual is treated as the true root of “evil” in the world, the penultimate result of Maggi. In the Age of Endurance the great courts fell, and the Cheonmugwan were destroyed or scattered and reviled.
Maggi itself is partly a meta-emotional force. It concentrates around grief and suffering, gathering in graveyards and on dangerous roads where people die. This is why killing a corrupted creature reads as a mercy rather than slaying something simply evil, and it places the moral weight of the world’s corruption back on the ritual’s outcome rather than on its victims.
The survivors
The survivors of the Cheonmugwan were at the very center of the Fracturing and were washed over by Maggi in its purest form. They suffer the agony of immortality. Their bodies are deeply disfigured, with only small vestiges of their prior selves visible. Many are missing senses: eyes ruined, ears burned over, mouths sealed shut. Their skin crawls with black lines of Maggi corruption.
They did not all draw the same lesson from what they caused. The survivors split.
The Sig Beob-won (The Eclipse Court)
The Sig Beob-won (식법원, the Eclipse Court) believe the original ritual did not fail. To them it was only the first step. They hold that Maggi is not corruption but the ultimate evolution of Giun. Before the Maggi they were powerful but mortal. Now they are immortal, and they believe the next step will make them more powerful still and transform the world into the form it was always meant to take.
Their figure is Grand Magister Do-Jin, the youngest of the original high scholars, a prodigy whose ambition outweighed his empathy. See The Eclipse Court (Sig Beob-won) and Grand Magister Do-Jin.
The Jae-Giloggwan (The Ashen Archivists)
The Jae-Giloggwan (재기록관, the Ashen Archivists) are the few survivors who recognized the hubris of their actions. They seek repentance by preserving and growing what they know, to one day hand it to the survivors of humanity. Many of them look for ways to end their own unending lives.
Their figure is Elder So-Hwa, the Blind Archivist, who threw herself over the archives during the Fracturing and absorbed enough Maggi to blind her and fuse the ancient scrolls to her flesh. She works only through intermediaries, because the archivists know they are hated even as they feel regret. See The Ashen Archivists (Jae-Giloggwan) and Elder So-Hwa (The Blind Archivist).
Nam-Gi, the Weeping Hermit
Nam-Gi belongs to neither faction. He lives in the deepest, most dangerous part of the wild, surrounded by intense wards. He keeps trying to plant a garden and live a quiet life, but his presence corrupts the soil and turns the animals around him into monsters. He feels shame for what the order did, but lacks the will to fix what they broke, so he seeks absolute isolation. See Nam-Gi (The Weeping Hermit).
Echoes in the present
The Cheonmugwan are not only history. Their method casts a shadow over the living. When players reach Transcendence and take a pillar shard into themselves to become an avatar of a spirit, they are doing something not too different from what the Cheonmugwan attempted, taking on the place of the fractured pillars, and not everyone sees this in a positive light. The Danja (접신단자) draw the same comparison from the other direction: the Cheonmugwan tried to take spiritual power by force and it destroyed them, while a bond built from genuine care endures. Gloth’s fall began the same way, reaching for a pillar fragment in the Crypts. Rumors of surviving Cheonmugwan surface as Maggi intensifies, and at the broken-pillar sites the survivors are divided between redemption and finishing the ritual.
See also
- The Fracturing (Cheonha Bunhae)
- The Creation
- The Age of Endurance
- Maggi
- Giun
- The Celestial Pillars and the Gyunhyeong
- The Five Celestial Spirits
- The Eclipse Court (Sig Beob-won)
- The Ashen Archivists (Jae-Giloggwan)
- Grand Magister Do-Jin
- Elder So-Hwa (The Blind Archivist)
- Nam-Gi (The Weeping Hermit)
- Transcendence (Beyond Level 99)
- Gloth (Han-Gyeol)
- Danja (Jeopsindanja)
Source: bible sections “Maggi,” “Transcendence (Beyond Level 99),” “Gloth,” “The Cheonmugwan Today” (Sig Beob-won, Jae-Giloggwan, Nam-Gi), and “Deep Lore: The Necromancer (Danja)”; foundation doc (Creation, the Fracturing, the Age of Endurance).