The Exultant Way

The shadar-kai natively speak Common; but the uncommon Common word "exult" (and all its derivatives) happened to fall out of use amongst them some hundreds of years ago. As such, the monastic school which calls itself "the Exultant Way" has repurposed it slightly.

Their teachings are considered esoteric amongst the shadar-kai: they are ascetics, in that they are required to abstain from seeking sensual pleasure, but unlike many other ascetic groups they are also required to abstain from seeking pain. Thus they do not fast nor feast; they tend to live simply, but not in a state of privation. They are often recognizable by their lack of tattoos, piercings, and scarification.

While the Exultants do train warrior-monks in the school's style, Shinqfwuchyuan* — these are shadar-kai, after all — they are primarily a philosophical school rather than a martial one. The ultimate goal of the Exultant, their nirvāṇa or enlightenment, is the state they call Exultation, which may be rendered fairly well as what a human or halfling might mean by "happiness" or even "contentment"; it is at least slightly alien to the shadar-kai mindset, so they have chosen an at least slightly alien word to name it, to avoid the connotations of the more common words as they are used by the shadar-kai.

Exultants very carefully do not decry worship of the Raven Queen as harmful. It is publically the position of all major splinters of the Exultants that the Raven Queen is an enlightened being who has transcended pleasure and pain; it is often also, and more truthfully, their position that those would-be demagogues who decry the worship of the Raven Queen are clearly seekers of the pain of a violent death and therefore are not truly followers of the Exultant Way.

Exultationism is a reaction to the excesses of the shadar-kai, as many ascetic sects have been reactions to the excesses of their places and times.

The Exultants have a very close real-world analogue in the Stoics.

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* And doesn't that look like I just smashed the keyboard? I didn't, though; those fourteen characters took more time than the whole rest of this post.