Selkie Loremasters

"I've never been so proud of any group, to see them embrace such an open-ended and pluralistic approach to scholarship and research." - Emesh, God of Knowledge, in an eminently marketable quote on the Loremasters.

The Selkie Loremasters are the research and education wing of the Khilaia. They run the Great Academies of the Sacred Isles and the March Kingdoms, as well as the magical support for the Selkie Circle of Elders. They train young Hanahai bureaucrats in the old protocols and ways of Hamekun, just as they teach them new truths about the world and open their eyes to new trades like rubber vulcanizer or stock broker. They are a truly an ascendant group, if a somewhat scattered one. Their leadership is not always the best at maintaining control over the lower levels, and the Loremasters sometimes end up more under the rule of other Hanahai Orders than under their own formal leadership.
This is a group associated with the ancient Cult of Runae, the Ghost Bird that helped create all land upon the world in selkie traditional religion. The Loremasters are not very explicitly religious in matters of belief, but they do expect all members to perform rituals and sacrifices in dedication of Runae. In cities of particular Loremaster influence, they tend to manage the celebrations of Runalaya, a festival of Runae in February, with their own magical flair.

Structure

The Archrector of the Loremasters is the head of the Order - chosen from the top of the leadership by the Selkie Circle of Elders. They are not always the most powerful mage and can even be a mundane scholar. The important thing is their management ability and political connection, as well as their alignment with the executive agenda. Traditionally, this position is held by a Mage, and it was once called the Archmage position. 
Beneath the Archrector are two main sub-offices: The University Chancellors, and the Research Council (also called the Khimuliham). 
The three University Chancellors each run their own college for the selkies, most notably the Grand Academy that trains the Hanahai in Halamahi. There are two other universities, though, in the two march kingdom capitals - the magical university in Korathem is impressive.
The Research Council, meanwhile, handles magic and knowledge most relevant to the Khilaia, from ancient medicinal practices to modern spellcasting services. There is a great deal of overlap between the Research Council hierarchy and the University hierarchies. 
Within both organization, numerous minor ranks and sub-groups abound.

History

Ancient History

The Selkie Loremasters began as a subsection of the Wardens of The Sacred Isles when they were founded back in the 900s ME by the Second Empire of Milen the Conqueror. The Wardens were to be the great druidic society of selkie-kind, detached from religion and representing selkie traditional Hamekun - and the Loremasters handled unusual arts, ideas, and magic to be synthesized into that tradition. Those ancient Loremasters were mostly monks, paladins, and Dhampires, though it was structured towards a growing contingent of Dragon sorcerers with power taken from Western Garadel (which Milen imagined to be a major part of future selkie magical power). Milen did not understand the full scope of what foreign magical arts existed, and what potential they had, but he had some inkling that druidism alone was not the future. Dragon sorcery did grow, but never took off on a scale like Milen had hoped; the Dragomanders and their Fire Termite food were always very dangerous for ship life. When bardism and wizarding magic arrived, though, the Loremasters went from peripheral to truly massive. This was magic with potential.
In the late 1400s and 1500s ME, the Wardens of The Sacred Isles were greatly expanded towards nature preserve management, ecosystem maintenance, and parks management - and the Loremasters were growing in the opposite direction, towards more magic and scholarship. The Loremasters became increasingly autonomous, but remained a division of the Wardens until the selkie government collapsed in 1580. After the chaos of the succession crisis period, the Loremasters were made their own unit in 1590 - and immediately set to work founding the Motosui Grand Academy as their new headquarters. These early Loremasters sought to be educators and archivists more than researchers. It took a century for the group to find its sea legs, but in 1688 the Loremasters began an active research and natural sciences division under the first (then-temporary) Research Council. The modern Loremasters were born.

Modern History

The Loremasters have steadily grown into the top magical organization in the Khilaia since 1700, even overshadowing the Wardens in the realm of druidic training. Part of this was the Loremasters expansion beyond the strict boundaries of the Khilaian Isles. This began with small training outposts, feeder schools in several ports. Then, in 1851, the Elders and several major Clans subsidized a massive expansion of the school-research complex. The initial goal was to transform Korathem, capital of the March Kingdom of Arashoka, into a full outgrowth of the magical and educational infrastructure of the great selkie city of Halamahi. Specifically, the goal was to make Korathem the place for infrastructure unsuitable for the Isles; there was a fear that teleportation circles (and potentially even reliable long-distance Sending services) may be invite foreign powers or non-selkies into the Sacred Isles if used there.  So, Korathem would be the hub of magical transportation and communication. The goal was not yet to create a massive global network, but specifically to create a reliable connection between the selkies and the rising star at the center of the world: Asalay. Eventually, in the 1900s, with the rise of the Darzan University and contact with Kiazerov strengthened, Korathem's teleportation-communication network grew to become more robust and global. Korathem also proved more suitable in that it had a larger food and supply base on the continent. 
Korathem may be the big city outside of the Isles for the Loremasters, but it isn't alone. The March Kingdom of Kakoru also got a university, which came to specialize in a totally different wing of Loremaster scholarship: natural science. While this was largely seen as less useful than magic for most of its tenure, this changed in 1975, when the local research team discovered rubber vulcanization: the hardening of rubber into a flexible-but-durable substance by exposing it to sulfur. Rubber vulcanization unlocked a whole new world of goods and commodities, and expanded the potential for all existing rubber goods. Of course, the full nature of rubber-sulfur polymers is not actually understood, so vulcanization is currently a skilled art rather than an industrial process - it is often done with raw sulfur rather than with sulfuric polymers like in our world, meaning that rubber can be riddled with "sulfur blooms" that weaken the material if it isn't treated with diligence and care. Even now, though, the Loremasters are searching for new methods of vulcanization - and it is perhaps only a matter of time before they stumble across disulfur dichloride, the chemical key to industrial vulcanization (created by exposing molten sulfur to chlorine gas). 
Mass industrialization of vulcanization has not been necessary to launch rubber as an industry, though - and the Loremasters have grown rich off this fact. Since 1975, a new turn towards rubber has been particularly embraced by Orchid of Blue and her servants, who have identified it as a potentially useful tool for new commodities and technologies. They have also worked to break rubber from being a purely Karbeetle rancher monopoly, into being a global tropics crop. Orchidians have started rubber tree plantations in Movoto and along the Northern equatorial Sonev-Larazel coastline; rubber as an industry has been picked up and imitated along Northern Larazel-Equatorial Samvara, with local elites in Tianar and the Federation of Zarazuko making rubber on their own terms. All of this is relevant because the Loremasters are educating a selkie artisan class with a near-monopoly on vulcanization; this entire industry fundamentally enriches the selkie educated craftsman class and has embedded selkie alchemists and craftsmen in powerful kingdoms and colonial movements. Of course, not all rubber refinement/production is selkie-driven; only the fancy stuff. But it is the fancy stuff that makes rubber a true luxury good, through which the non-vulcanized "knock off" rubber derives its fashionability and appeal. 
Globalization of magical elites, the rise of the rubber trade, and the flourishing of the march kingdoms have all made the Selkie Loremasters rich, relevant, and perhaps overstaffed in recent years. Whether they can continue this upwards ascent or whether it is a bubble that will one day pop is anyone's guess.

Founding Date

1590

Type

Religious, Holy Order

Ruling Organization

Selkie Circle of Elders

Official State Religion

Hamekun

Parent Organization

The Khilaia