The Emerald Order
"As you will see, pup, our education is not like any of your sibling orders. They will never truly understand our ways, nor us them. But we unify under this conceptualizaton of the Magisterium to keep our sanctity and safety. Come now pup, why are you hesitating?"
"But master Ravenheart, we were all taught protocol, I am merely a newly assigned apprentice, not even educated enough to leave the care of the Order's collegiate. I cannot in good conscious or safety leave the premises, we must go to the Emerald Order's collegiate here, after all, there is one, on the south end of the premises."
"You will learn, pup, you will. And your first lesson is now. Come, follow, you will not be breaking any laws. Not for us of the Emerald the dusty tomes and halls, the desks and lectures, nor the confines of walls and roofs. No. Our building is uninhabited save for maintainence staff, and perhaps once a week or so we all visit and check in, out of necessity of maintaining the protective agreement and our place in the Magisterium and the Accords of the Arcane. But this is not where you will learn what it means to be of the Emerald Order. How could you, so restricted and removed from where our power lies? No little Rosethorn, our classrooms, our 'facilities' our school is beyond the walls of this institute and this city. Out there, in the wilds beyond. In the woods and plains, hills and marshlands, jungles and deserts. We are tied to all, yet honed to none. We are of Dulra, of Nature itself. So follow me now, and let us begin your education properly."
"Rosethorn....Master that is not my name. My name is Amelia Mi-"
"That is a name given to you by your parents, and I am sure it is a good one for those sorts of regular people. But we are of the world. Of the wylde. Of nature. And so nature will name us. It has whispered your name to me, on the same day you stood up to the bullies in your year, the two boys now on their way to the Barrack-College in Rydan to become Pyromancers. You are a pretty young lady, they were right about that, but you are fierce, and have sharp points. Like a most beautiful rose, you have thorns. Hence, Rosethorn. I think it is a fitting name, pup. Now come, and let your education begin."
Structure
The Emerald Order is a...jarring departure from the Magisterium as most would know it for how it is structured. On paper and legislatively of course, they follow the same blueprint, down to even having facilities on various Magisterium premises across all of Valerick. That paperwork and those facilities however, are one great big lie. A lie to comfort everyone, and a formality to keep a level of connectivity and commitment to the Magisterium as a whole. The truth of the Emerald Order, they are the most decentralized of all the orders. Apprentices of the Emerald Order are not assigned to a Magister, nor are they chosen. They are merely taken in by the first Magister to come into the Magisterium campus once they are ready to take that next step in their education. That next step is not well known, none of how they train, the methods or protocols, not for any reason like the Onyx Order, but simply because it seems....wild. As in a magister will take the apprentice and they will live in the wilds, only barely stopping in civilization, merely to visit briefly the appropriate Magisterium campuses for the Magister in question to fufill their minimal obligations and reporting when they have an apprentice. Like all the orders of the Magisterium, there is a ranking, a hieracrhy and structure, but it is decentralized and loose.
Culture
The Emerald Order are unique in their training and how they approach it, what skills and techniques beyond actually using their magickal talent they work with to help hone their ability. They'll learn to survive, to track, to hunt with bow and spear and sling, to fight with fist and body. They will learn natural medicine, how to care for many an animal, how to move freely through the natural world, and will master reading non verbal communication. They will learn to navigate using the natural world around them. All these many skills meant to enable surviving and thriving alone in the wilds. They will learn all these things in due course, practicing the patience of a hunter, the calmness and steady mind of a druid. For it is those traits, particularly patience and intuitiveness that Dulra seeks and bonds very well with.
To this end, the culture of the Emerald Order is a quite unique one amongst the various orders of the Magisterium. Few and far between are the tomes and scholarly options to study such arts. They are an oral and practical tradition. They value, more than the other orders by far, knowledge passed from magister to apprentice, as if generation to generation. They value how decentralized this makes their arts, seeing the other Orders as taking quite the risk. They value their old traditions, utilizing bits of mosses, flowers, animal blood and more in their spell-forms more as a matter of tradition than any actual need, for as we all know, the arcane merely requires the ability to tap into one of the eight types of manna current, and the internal discipline and will to draw upon and manipulate that power to your ends. Such small totems and little trinkets mean nothing, and have no beneficial effect upon efforts to weave spells. Yet the Emerald Order is staunch in their belief and desire to keep such old traditions alive, believing it helps, in some fashion, keep a magister grounded and properly connected to Dulra.
Which who knows, of course they may be right, they may have a point.
Magisters of the Emerald Order are generally naturalists, that is they seek to help keep a balance between an ever growing and advancing society, to make sure that nature stays strong and healthy, for they understand the delicate balance of the world they live in. The eight primordial forces must be kept in a relative balance, and allowed to flow into and out of the world, the endless cycle of life that keeps the world a living world. If that balance gets thrown to far out of whack, well many devastating things could happen. As such they despise anything that corrupts the natural order of the world. In this way they do share some similarity to their brothers and sisters in the Amethyst Order, though cover a very different angle of the same mission. They seek to protect nature in general from unnecessary and wanton destruction, which puts them at odds with all manner of being and society, including in some cases, those whom's laws they are governed by, and their right to exist is at the whim of the treaties they signed. As one might imagine, this means those of the Emerald have a...unique reputation, and are oft the most likely to be targeted, even if with all the proper paperwork, by those wishing to cause trouble, or corrupt templars whom use their office and rank to go 'mage-snipping'.
To this end, the culture of the Emerald Order is a quite unique one amongst the various orders of the Magisterium. Few and far between are the tomes and scholarly options to study such arts. They are an oral and practical tradition. They value, more than the other orders by far, knowledge passed from magister to apprentice, as if generation to generation. They value how decentralized this makes their arts, seeing the other Orders as taking quite the risk. They value their old traditions, utilizing bits of mosses, flowers, animal blood and more in their spell-forms more as a matter of tradition than any actual need, for as we all know, the arcane merely requires the ability to tap into one of the eight types of manna current, and the internal discipline and will to draw upon and manipulate that power to your ends. Such small totems and little trinkets mean nothing, and have no beneficial effect upon efforts to weave spells. Yet the Emerald Order is staunch in their belief and desire to keep such old traditions alive, believing it helps, in some fashion, keep a magister grounded and properly connected to Dulra.
Which who knows, of course they may be right, they may have a point.
Enforcers of Balance, Entrusted by Nature
Magisters of the Emerald Order are generally naturalists, that is they seek to help keep a balance between an ever growing and advancing society, to make sure that nature stays strong and healthy, for they understand the delicate balance of the world they live in. The eight primordial forces must be kept in a relative balance, and allowed to flow into and out of the world, the endless cycle of life that keeps the world a living world. If that balance gets thrown to far out of whack, well many devastating things could happen. As such they despise anything that corrupts the natural order of the world. In this way they do share some similarity to their brothers and sisters in the Amethyst Order, though cover a very different angle of the same mission. They seek to protect nature in general from unnecessary and wanton destruction, which puts them at odds with all manner of being and society, including in some cases, those whom's laws they are governed by, and their right to exist is at the whim of the treaties they signed. As one might imagine, this means those of the Emerald have a...unique reputation, and are oft the most likely to be targeted, even if with all the proper paperwork, by those wishing to cause trouble, or corrupt templars whom use their office and rank to go 'mage-snipping'.
Public Agenda
"We are those chosen by the natural world around us. We are meant to protect that balance. There is a code here, and we live by it every day. Take only what you need, waste nothing. We seek to educate, and where necessary, we take far more drastic action. Nature is all about balance. The natural world is a harsh, but balanced one. The old doe gets run down by the pack, yet her children remain. The sickly zebra gets picked off by the lions, but the rest survive and birth strong healthy foals. Such is the way of nature. The predator must eat, but the prey must live on. So balance must always be kept."
A discussion between many an Emerald Magister and their apprentice.
Part of why the Emerald Order has the uniquely prickly reputation that they do is because they are quite stubborn and bull-headed. They will stand in opposition to progress, and are stubborn and a pain to work with and around. As the societies of Valerick continue their forward progress, as the beginnings of the industrial revolution and revitalization really rev up, and as this new era comes to a head, the Emerald Order will likely be more and more of a thorny sticking point for many when it comes to the Arcane Accords and the Magisterium. Yet their necessity, as of now, is undeniable, for they are also great healers of the land. Their magicks are capable of cleansing blight from soil, disease from crops and plants, and some of their most powerful and mighty magicks can even cleanse the taint of the Void from a region, though such a thing takes a great deal of time to work, and can be quite dangerous for the magister attempting it.
Assets
Like the other Orders of the Magisterium, the Emerald Order is, in theory, quite wealthy, though they never seem to have the money. In truth, most have very little use for coin, and either turn far more than the 12% required in to the Magisterium, or in many cases, they utilize their earnings to basically help smooth over attitudes when they piss off important people, or to outright buy tracts of land, merely to insure they cannot be despoiled by further industrial expansion/settlement expansion. This naturally will at some point, in most nations, likely become a major problem and clashing point.
The Emerald Order is remarkably evenly spread out, besides Depenwood, which is an epicenter of sorts, which is unsurprising given their direct tie to the Depen itself and the nations government and...unique legislative policies. They can be found in every continent, in every nation, and most Magisterium campuses do in fact keep a building that at first glance seems abandoned, which is listed as a Druid School.
The Emerald Order is remarkably evenly spread out, besides Depenwood, which is an epicenter of sorts, which is unsurprising given their direct tie to the Depen itself and the nations government and...unique legislative policies. They can be found in every continent, in every nation, and most Magisterium campuses do in fact keep a building that at first glance seems abandoned, which is listed as a Druid School.
History
The history of the Emerald Order really varies wildly from magister to magister, as one may expect from oral traditions. They are a complex organizaton with a wide range of views all across society about them, and their history and its variety of portrayals really capture this.
Tied to all, honed to none.
by Keon Croucher
Friylin Everbloom, a Tantur woman who is a known Emerald Magister of some reknown whom lives and travels in Valewyr's many wooded valleys.
This image give an excellent example of how Emerald Magister dress and present themselves, favoring natural materials, obviously with many shades of greens and yellows, emphasising their connection to the Emerald Currents of Dulra. As can be seen here, this even presents in small physical changes, altering skin tone and hair color. This also shows and depicts a fundamental truth of Magisters of the Emerald Order, their innate connection to Dulra also creates a general desire of avoidance when it comes to metal garments, armaments, or even jewellery.
Founding Date
3-7-397 SuD
Alternative Names
The Druid's School
Demonym
Druids
Ruling Organization
Parent Organization
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