SETTING

The Dark Ages

• During the Third Crusade.
• The hight of power for the Catholic church.
• Templars, priests, warriors, kings, and queens
• Specifically during the time of Richard the Lionharts capture and ransoming
  • also: William Marshall

Magic is Alive

• To those who have awakened to its presence

• harness the energy within you

• harness the energy from the natural world around you

• Awakening is generally due to:

  • a great amount of change, or complete lack thereof

  • an intense event

    • friends/family dying
    • fighting/fleeing for your life

  • great stillness/peace/emptyness

    • deep meditation
    • a person may see there family killed, and remain unawakened.
      • they leave, live as a shell, empty of thought, meditating on a mountain.
      • they become one with the world

• Awakening burns a 'commitment' into those awakened

  • this can be thought of as their main goal, passion, or purpose in life
  • it can drive a person to be a hero or a villan
    • or give them the ability to forcefully remain on the sides of civilization

  Not all those who are awakened are enlightened.

  A robber stealing to feed his family is righteous of purpose.

    A robber awakened when fleeing the guards could equally be burned with, 
    	a noble passion to help and protect the poor
    	or a burning wish for vengence against the town that has forsaken his family.
  
    Each man and his circumstances are unique.
    Partial products of the world around them.
  
    In a world with so much violence.
    We truly reap what we sew.
  

• The Church:

  • All magic is an invocation of sacred power
  • Only church trained are allowed to use it
    • Rumors of twisted initiation ceremonies and commitments to the estabilishment sound anything but 'holy'
  • Others will be hunted, with an awakened zeal

• Champions/Villans/Hermits:

  • Those initiated through great change/hardship
    • seeing your parents killed
    • fighting for your life
    • fleeing for your life
  • or through great stillness, peace, and openess
    • hermit meditating in a cave
    • prisoner accepting of his fate
  • upon awakening can be:
    • pushed into becoming Champions of the people
    • a Villan, against the people
    • a Hermit, vigorously desiring to stay outside of society, left alone