Children of Glass

The Children of Glass are the official healers, surgeons, and ship inspectors of the Khilaia, whose job is to handle hospital and quarantine staffing in the Sacred Isles. Quarantine protocols are the Children's primary purpose: to ensure that every ship entering the isles is not a potential plague ship about to send an epidemic wave through the entire selkie trade network. Many sailors resent the Children for this, as they have to wait weeks at times to step off their ships into the city of Halamahi. A 40-day quarantine is not irregular, particularly if ships are unwilling or unable to pay for advanced healing and health inspections. Nonetheless, it is this group that keeps the entire community, and perhaps the entire world, safe from disastrous global pandemics. 
The Children of Glass are mostly based in Halamahi, but also in the sister cities of Dahaka and Anetia, which serve as the primary funnel-ports for ships entering Halamahi.
The Chldren of Glass are highly ritualistic and are deeply infused with the traditional religious practices of Hamekun. They are very syncretic (as Hamekun is not an exclusive or universalizing religious tradition), but any member must be willing to devote significant ritual energy towards the ancestors and ancestral gods. The Children act as the Cult of Otala, the Ancestral God of Healing, Rain, Music, and Joy. The cult organizes the great festival of Otalyoa in April in the Khilaian Isles.

Structure

The Head of the Children of Glass is the Memuku or Chancellor of Sacred Medicine. They are chosen from among the officer ranks by the Selkie Circle of Elders, and set the general agenda and procedures for the organization. The Memuku's office handles which doctors and acolytes act as hospital leads, shift doctors, or ship/docks inspectors at what times. Underneath the Memuku Office, an elaborate system of sub-ranks differentiates doctors from acolytes from initiates.

History

The Children of Glass are the most recent order among the Hanahai, though the name and concept go back to ancient times. In selkie pre-contact religious traditions, glass was seen as having medicinal-spiritual qualities, with different kinds of glass being worn to help absorb different ailments and glassblowers often also being herbalists. Sharpened glass, particularly obsidian, served as the only acceptable tools for surgery. A 'Child Of Glass' in ancient days, would be a full-time surgeon-herbalist, often a literal child of a glassblower. The term had general healer connotations, and wasn't particularly regulated. After the erosion of selkie religion by Pratasam and other evangelical faiths, the term became more specific for the role of traditionalist healer/surgeon-herbalist. From 350 ME to 1680 ME, small groups of Children of Glass existed, often embedded or associated with other Hanahai groups of traditional ritualists. 
It was the Mageplague, specifically the derivative form known as the Crimson Death, that started the institution known as the Children of Glass. Quarantine protocols had pre-dated this epidemic, but the Crimson Death was malleable and contagious enough to test the limits of traditional quarantines. The selkies not only were able to protect themselves, but virtually halt the Crimson Death's global march of destruction - but they needed to recontextualize old medicine to do so. And they needed doctors with a large vision and the full authority of the selkie khilaia. The main, and most effective weapon of the Children of Glass was quarantine - any port that did not implement a full quarantine as mandated by the new Order would face total embargo by The Khilaia. Selkie ports began rigorous quarantine procedures, which remain in perpetuity to this day in the Sacred Isles. Through luck, persistence, intense investment, and close collaboration with the Lunar Pantheon, the Children of Glass were able to delay the global spread of the Crimson Death until it mutated into less destructive forms in the late 1680s. 
Ever since the creation of the Children of Glass, they have maintained strict control over quarantines entering the sacred isles, and have used additional moneys to construct hospitals and clinics there as well. The Children are no longer exclusively traditionalist (though that system does structure their teachings), but integrate foreign medicines as well on their own terms. They have slowly integrated a world of medicines into their practice, though they have become factionalized in the process: what works and what doesn't and why is deeply divisive among doctoral cliques. For example, a big ongoing debate is smallpox vaccines: some Children see cowpox and other potential vaccines as medically necessary, while others argue that it goes against traditional selkie practice. The one uniting principle is Quarantine, which brings all of them together.

Founding Date

1671

Type

Religious, Holy Order

Ruling Organization

Selkie Circle of Elders

Parent Organization

The Khilaia

Location

Khilaian Isles