Rules of Eave: Magic and the Church of Mankind

The Church of Mankind

[Sorry for the lateness of my post.  I have some serious family issues of which with I am dealing.]

The Church of Man is the magical might of the Empire of Tulath and their magical might consist of the great craftworks that they do.  From mightiest engine of war to the finest gossamer gowns made of silver and gold for a music box dancer.  They are responsible for the great public works, such as the carving the mountain of Narimath and the great gardens that surround the palace of the current Empress.  They have taught the Emperors and Empresses of Tulath, much to the frustration of Section Command. 

The Church of Man is a vast enterprise and the Tech-Priest are but one faction of the clergy.  Many years ago after they installed Tullson II the Emperor of the Tulath they was an argument about what they were to call themselves.  Unified Man it what they were called, but they needed something that will unify the people against the common enemy, the eladrin.  The Church of Mankind, or the Church of Man is somewhat of a misnomer.  They are not really a clergy and they do not worship a god, but they have grown to be the sword and gun, the armor and shield of The Empire.  They do not pray and the liturgies that they invoke are dwarven rites of power.

The Tech-Priests are the largest sect of the Church of Mankind.  They hold considerable power.  In game terms they use Craft as the ability to work their magic.

• Lay-Brothers (Craft +0) are simple laborers or the young who have the intelligence to serve as a Tech-Priest in the future.
• Tech-Priest Initiates (Craft +1) are the mass producers of the Church.  The simple enchantment that they know go into enchanting the raw materials that are used in the rest of the Church.
• Tech-Priest Adepts (Craft +2) fine tune what is made at the Initiate level.
• Tech-Priest Journeymen (Craft +3) are allowed to make the arms and armor for the nobility and military.
• Tech-Priest Craftsman (Craft +4) are the true Tech-Priests.  They are usually assigned to specific task or project.  It can be teaching the younger priests or being assigned to a mechanized unit
• Tech-Priest Master Craftsmen (Craft +5 or greater) are masters of their craft.  Currently there are over two-hundred Masters in the Empire.  One of the Master Craftsmen is chosen to represent all of the Tech-Priests.  Currently, that master in Hedric Croy.

All this being said, normal craftspeople can get their hands on enchanted goods, but they must be licensed in order to do so.  Many of the people are ex-Church members who then keep an eye out for those with a quick tongue and strong hands to be inducted into the Church.  With that there is a growing and thriving back market for the goods and materials.  It is these people that you should watch out for, for there is a rumor of smiths who have taken the dwarven magic to the next level.  Something about reading the runes carved into special icons to be able to cast spells on the fly.  A mighty feat indeed.

The Church of Mankind is ruled by an inner council made up of the same type of people that was in Unified Man.  They meet once every six months to determine policy that will shape and form society.

In game terms, a simple enchant would be adding a +1 to ancient arms and armor.  An uncommon enchant would be adding a +1 to modern arms and armor.  A rare enchant would be make or repair a mecha-suit or constructing a particle laser or other advanced weaponry.  Then you have got the big things like mecha that would require a lot of craftsmen.  The thing about it is that it takes time to construct and a lower level of craftsmen would be required to gather all the necessary components together.  As such, it would require a game that centers of the crafting to be of any use.

The Runecasters are a secret order of renegade casters that have learned to read the ancient dwarven runes to cast their spells.  Their special flavor of magic deals with heat, fire, thunder, earth and metals.  They should have spells that reflect those qualities.  They have the runes on them hidden in jewelry or other somewhat permanent manner that they must have in order to cast their spells.  A player that starts off may have one spell per level of Craft that they have.  There is a Runecaster whose body in covered in runes tattoos.  Unfortunately he has to keep himself covered lest he arouses suspicion.  Generally one does not use this method of casting the runes for they do heat up when cast.  The runes are therefore important to the caster as they focus the power within them to cast hence they are carved onto a totem.  The Runecasters operate in secret as if the Church of Mankind or the Empire should find out about them, there is no doubt about the fact that they would not see the light of day.  They would either be killed or put in a lab somewhere to be studied.

The Church of Man, Part III

Science is not a forgotten lore to the Empire if Tulath.  Magic is mainly just used to bolster the prevailing science.  Like the trains that use the superheated metal to create the steam required.  In fact, the factories were dirty affairs but have cleaned up significantly.  This was found out after the Church of Man discovered that magic failed to work when it got 143.62 kilometers above the surface of the planet.  Nothing could change the fact that everything stopped working when it got to that height.  If they wished to return to the stars, they would have to use science.

The Tech-Priests have done a lot of for the Empire of Tulath.  They have saved their society from barbarism and strengthened it to be a dominant force.  That is not all the Church of Man does however.  They have terrible weapons of mundane, magic and science-make within their vaults.  They are now searching the world for the portals that brought the eladrin here from a distant planet, thinking that if they could recreate the journey that eladrin took, they could find their way to Terra and eventually home.

The Church of Man, Part II

The Church then spent many a year on supporting the fledgling Empire.  One thing that they pondered long and hard on were the ancient dwarves that lived in the cities that they now occupied.  What they found was magic and it both freighted and fascinated them.  They collected as many of the ancient dwarven arms, armor and miscellaneous items that bore and enchantment that they could get their hands on.  They then began to study them and were baffled at what they had found.

Magic was locked away from the people of Tulath for over four hundred years.  It was not until a young smith by the name of Thom Nakamura paved the way.  It was Thom Nakamura that uncovered what was needed for the Tulathians to understand what was needed. He worked the forges for many a year making some fine weapons and armor because that is what the Chruch of Man told him to do.  He wanted more.  He wanted to make a weapon that could shatter a gate, blow away a stand of men or be hurled the length of a hundred paces and return to the hand that threw it.  Thom Nakamura found an eladrin that could speak the ancient and now dead language and forced it to teach him the language.  He figured, correctly, that the chants of ancient power were needed to forge the arms and armor.  He then forged a weapon using the forbidden words spoken in dwarvish.  The first weapon he ever made was a dagger that to this day, by the Emperors of Tulath.  It is said that the Dagger of Nakamura can cut though any metal put to the test.  It has never lost its keen edge and cannot be destroyed by any means.  It was then that the Tulathians has a renaissance of dwarven engineering.  They began to understand the myriad of ancient dwarven items that they had in their vaults.  The next part of their plan was to figure out a way to incorporate the ancient magic with their fading technology.

The Tech-Priests of the Church of Man soon became even more powerful and the only way to make the enchanted items was to learn dwarvish and the only way to learn dwarvish was to be initiated into the Church of Man.  The Tech-Priests have made great advancements in not just arms and armor but also public works, transportation and materials.  They have made the incredible trains that goes though there lands using their magic to continually heat a piece of metal to incredible temperatures to replace the use of coal.  They have made incredible public works such as open gates to an incredible source of water for drinking and sanitation.  They have made the Grand Imperial Palace nigh impregnable to attack my magic or science.

Stay tuned for Part III

The Church of Man, Part I

The Church of Man

The Church of Man started out as a club of various Captains, Admirals and the like within the United Terran Navy.  This club, Unified Man, came about choosing their members from the best and the brightest of the eugenically and genetically engineered human of the Navy and they espoused greatness of the human body and mind and as such housed many great minds of the time.  Admiral Nerimath was one such leader of Unified Man and the current Church of Man revere him and the defense of the UTN ship Tulath as a saint.

Unified Man has changed a lot in the thousand years since Tulath crashed onto Eave.  Disbanded after Admiral Tulath’s death because Antor Koromikos was afraid of them staging a coup, they still lived on in secret.  The people were disillusioned and breaking up into petty states in the years after they had fled Tulath for the mountians.  They needed a strong leader so Unified Man began to secretly take in orphaned youths to train them in the ways of combat, the pursuits of the mind and honor of leadership.  When they had a proper candidate who was trained in the right way they approached Antor Koromikos in his last year (he lived until he was ninety-six), a bitter and broken man trying to hold the remnants of his people together.  They proposed a deal, one that Antor could not refuse.

Three things happened.  Antor “found” the last remaining child in the line of Tullson Nerimath, never mind the fact that his wife was on the world of Terra, the capitol of United Terra.  Soon after Tullson II was proclaimed the leader of all those who had fled Tulath.  Finally the Church of Man was fromed.  Over half of the petty warlords flocked under Tullson II banner and those that didn’t where quickly conquered by Tullson II.  He reorganized those families that supported his claims as Dukes, Counts and Earls and those that he had to bully into submission he made into Barons.  He soon afterwards declared himself Emperor of Tulath and promised the people that he would lead them to victory and prosperity.  He did not disappoint.