Black Sutra of Shank

The Black Sutra of Shank is a portion of the Ancestral Codex dealing with the life and times of Shank Moswen, a Patron of guile, vigilance, and lethal justice. While Shank was an important figure in the formation of the Cobalt Protectorate alongside such luminaries as Aika Fenmount and Wurth Harkin, his Black Sutra remains controversial because it represents a challenge to the more temperate, orderly, virtue-focussed worldview of his contemporaries and, thus, to the project of nation-building itself.

Purpose

The Black Sutra is a collection of stories and philosophical musings attributed to the living Patron Shank Moswen after his return from exile under the slaver's boot of the Chitiquish Consortium. As Patronist devotion centers around calling upon the support of venerated ancestors, attempting to embody the best qualities of these patron spirits, and acting as though the Patrons are watching from the spiritual hereafter, the ultimate purpose of the Black Sutra is to inculcate in the reader the rudiments of Shank's dark philosophy.

Historical Details

Background

The authorship of the Black Sutra of Shank is uncertain. This text is not the only recounting of the life and times of Shank Moswen in the Ancestral Codex; it speaks of Shank in the third person, but also as though the writer was being dictated to by the living Patron himself as a sort of autobiography. What is known is that the text was written at some point after the return of the Evermornan exile but before the outset of the first excursion of the Harkinite Expedition.

Public Reaction

The Black Sutra is notably in tension with the surrounding texts in the sense that they tend to espouse virtue-based ethics. In contrast, the philosophy espoused by Shank might naively summed up as a branch of utilitarianism, unconcerned as it is with the instant legal or ethical considerations of a given action so long as the ultimate good is served. This outlook is appealing to men of action who see injustices in the world addressed all too slowly by the ponderous nature of civil authority. Sometimes, followers argue, it truly is better to ask forgiveness than permission, especially when lives are on the line. On the other hand, if taken too literally, Shank's philosophy also provides justification for morally abhorrent tactics against targets who might not deserve them and which might not ultimately serve the greater good at all on further reflection. The ends do not always justify the means, critics argue, and the targets of justice untethered from consideration or reason may turn out to be individuals simply caught up in the flow of events they had no intentional part in. Torture and unethical experimentation, for example, are two moral ills which might find justification under such a utilitarian ethos if the reader can justify in their own mind that the cause is righteous.
For these reasons, the Black Sutra has a complicated relationship with public opinion. Because it exists in tension with the virtue, reason, and law-based order upon which all of Protectorate society has been built, the work itself is regarded as subversive despite also being an important part of the Protectorate's living history. During times of turmoil, the popularity of the Black Sutra in the public consciousness rises with the desire of the public to see the enemies of society cast down in a single, decisive stroke. Meanwhile, cooler heads turn to the works of Izetsu in search of inner fortitude or even the addendums of Goh'ro for guidance on how to balance the need for action with moral consideration. The ongoing Armoa Conflict is a textbook case of this phenomenon; Shankish Patronists regularly call for the expansion of punitive actions against the Aniki Labs militants in the Armoa System and strikes within Cinnabar Hegemony territory to 'cut the head off the snake,' while more moderate Patronists (and, notably, many Cobalt Knights on the front lines) frame victory in terms of tribunals for the enemy leadership and the establishment of an Armoan government to oversee normalization efforts.

Type

Manuscript, Religious