Pamnest
One who serves as an advisor to rulers, the wealthy, and corpora mercia, a pamnest has undergone rigorous training to develop his powers of memory, reason, and intuition while subscribing to a high ethical code of professional conduct. Often called Sungotinians, pamnests are inculcated with the principles of their profession from a young age and only a few applicants are accepted. Their training is done exclusively in the distant land of Sungo by the law-disciplined elves of the land. The wealthy and powerful of the human and dwarven races will sometimes select a child of their offspring to be sent to Sungo to apply with a gift. If the applicant is refused, he returns with his gift. If accepted, the gift is taken and he trains until adulthood and returns to his family to serve them. Aristocrats often choose non-hereditary sons, militarily unpromising sons, or daughters considered unsuitable for marriage. However, marriage is not forbidden to a pamnest, but frowned upon as a distraction from their profession. Retired pamnests often do marry. Pamnests are sometimes called by the nickname 'mindseer.'
A potential pamnest has not yet achieved the age of five and some have been known to be as young as two or three. Proposed pamnests older than five are rarely accepted. The full nature of the training regimen is kept secret and even a pamnest herself cannot disclose it. For this reason, only Sungo trains and sends forth Sungotinian Pamnests, or Sungotinians as they are called for short, although a never-ending stream of frauds are offered to the wealthy from dishonest and unscrupulous merchants who claim to have spent years abroad in far-off Sungo. A native Sungotinian pamnest is one born in Sungo. These are always of the human race, usually Tangshanian or an allied tribe. Elven pamnests are not known ever to leave Sungo and have never been known to serve westerners. In recent centuries, pamnests serving in the Pallathantic are chosen locally and there are very few native Sungotinian pamnests in service today in the west.
Scholars must study pamnests at arm's length for the mystics will not divulge their secrets. The best scholarship theorizes that pamnests ultimately rely on a connection to the World Soul for their uncanny insight and knowledge about the world. The nature of this connection and whether the Sungotinian is even consciously aware of this remain a matter of debate
Pamnests are well-known for a lack of originality. Their total and virtually congenital dedication to the Sungotinian Discipline leaves little room for creativity. A pamnest concerns herself only with what most likely will be in matters of futurity and what has or most likely was in matters of the past. While a pamnest can appreciate a fine work of art, it is a rare Sungotinian indeed who can create a work of art.
History of Sungotinians in the West
During the Yophenthean Empire, authors and travelers wrote about Sungotinian Pamnests and their amazing ability to perform incredible calculations without the aid of an abacus. Authors treated them with many fantastical components in their writings as few had any direct firsthand experience.
In the Golden Age of Sky (1400's), commerce between Sungo and the West reached a historic volume and some merchants were known for secretly employing a pamnest whom they usually presented as a visitor come to learn the ways of foreign countries. Native Sungotinian pamnests from this time began to be employed in precious few numbers by wealthy and connected merchants, primarily for commercial strategy and bookkeeping purposes. Rulers generally distrusted them and merchants were happy to keep their powers to themselves.
By the time of the Middle Ages of Chaos, commerce slackened and Sungotinian Pamnests with their law-tainted origins were not viewed with favor, but the interest in them improved after the Isbajutha. Merchants again employed native Sungotinians. During the 2600's, informal agreements between Sungotinian schools and western magnates were made whereby Pallathantic persons would be sent to the east for training to become Sungotinians to serve their families and masters back home. The Isbajutha which swiftly uprooted the worst chaos practitioners in the west created an atmosphere in which the Sungotinian Schools trusted the west and began to accept western applicants. Despite this openness, it is thought that pamnests are conditioned with a deep-seated inability to divulge the finer points and secrets of their training.
Although there were few Sungotinians active in the Pallathantic in the early twenty-seventh century (2600's), they played an important role in the retromechanics of titancraft.
Towards the late twenty-seventh century, Pamnests became implicated in loss of state secrets, particularly with regard to the Sewdhaine War. Rulers and corpora mercia questioned the fidelity of pamnests and the prevalence of their kind began to wane. Pamnests are still used by Guild Schools and other research institutions where strategic secrecy is not prized. Pamnests continue to be employed by many states, princes, and corpora mercia, but their roles have become reduced and they have less access to key figures in the power structures they serve.
Costume
Pamnests do not have a uniform manner of dress and a pamnest typically wears the apparel of his birth culture or the livery of the House he serves, unless he is a member of the family, in which case, he wears the costume of his native aristocracy. However, pamnests are not unknown to wear a brooch or other jewelry from far-off Sungo as a token of their rigorous training.
See Also
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