The Sith are the best-developed group of beings that use the Force; they call it the Power, and command the widest variety of abilities. There are a number of small, secretive groups who have each developed particular ways to relate to what the Jedi will refer to as the Force.
These groups may possess powers beyond those listed among canonical Force powers.
A school of humanoid martial artists who practice an art similar to T’ai Chi Ch’uan, with philosophy that has a number of similarities to Taoism and Zen Buddhism. They refer to the mystic essence as Breath, a concept much the same as qi. They command internal-style force powers; they can leap through the air, punch through walls and armor, resist damage, exhibit inhuman strength, and ignore injuries like characters in wūxiá films. Their healing skills resemble acupuncture, and they are able to speed natural healing to an uncanny level. They have not developed telekinesis, chi blasts, or other external abilities, though their soft styles have been known to make throws work that should have failed based strictly on mass, and their powers of immobility can let them stay standing when sheer momentum should knock them off their feet.
The masters of the school usually camouflage themselves as normal martial arts instructors, who do brisk business with people expecting to participate in the struggles of Sith-dominated culture. Promising students who do well with the normal physical discipline are given special instruction, and those who develop some of the basic Breath abilities are introduced to the school.
Peacebringers emphasize chur in their teachings, and instruct their students in diplomatic resolution to conflict, treating violence as a last resort. They practice discipline through meditation and austere living. Occasional Peacebringers who retain or develop strength in skran become overly fond of the power that they wield; those with petty ambitions become arena fighters and bodyguards for criminal leaders; those with greater ambitions become gang leaders and sometimes even battle their way into the Sith hierarchy.
The school has a presence on numerous worlds throughout the galaxy, with a particular concentration on Palawa. (A Silat-like offshoot of their art will become Teräs Käsi, wielded by the Followers of Palawa, and some descendant of their teachings may eventually be incorporated into the Matukai.)
This is a good choice for players who are fans of martial arts films and/or knowledgeable about meditative traditions. I expect to be cribbing from Hong Kong Action Theater.
A tradition of scientists and technicians who have developed an intuitive understanding of the fundamental forces of nature and their expression in technology. They refer to the mystic essence as the Metaforce, a power that can alter the function of other forces, and they emphasize the importance of understanding how things work. They are able to affect the functioning of existing technology, and to modify it to exceed normal parameters by using what they refer to as Metaforce-patterned crystals. They are fairly helpless when stuck in the wilderness without any manufactured devices to work with, but are deadly in a city with access to power conduits or when facing people holding devices with power cells that can suddenly malfunction. They are limited to meddling with things they can visualize; an Academician can trigger the reset line on a computer, cause a transistor to suddenly shunt current to open a door (if they know where the appropriate component is physically located), but they cannot bypass encryption or program computers. They can sense the flow of energy, the presence of flaws in uniform structures, and strain on materials, and can bring out the flaws they find. The notion of hurling lightning bolts and chucking large objects around without a power cell or graviton beam to work with is alien to their mindset.
Academicians usually camouflage themselves as expert technicians or instructors in technical schools. Students who show both technical aptitude and intuition are watched carefully for signs of talent— a student whose percussive maintenance actually fixes problems is usually a good candidate.
Academicians are quite comfortable with chur, but also have a skran tradition where they nurture
the thirst for knowledge, the thrill of discovery, and pride in excellent
work. They caution those in the latter tradition about becoming overly
obsessed with changing the world through their technology. These can fall
into the mad scientist
archetype, building unique machines that do
incredible things. Such things cannot be mass produced, since they need
regular maintenance from their inventors, but even one large-scale device
that’s meant to change a world is usually enough to cause a great deal
of trouble. Discipline is maintained through peer review and scientific
rigor; writing down experimental protocols and carefully analyzing
technical papers is, for them, a concentration activity as potent as
the meditative techniques taught by the School of the Breath of Light.
Academicians can manufacture holocrons.
The Academy is distributed throughout the galaxy, though they have a particular concentration on Ossus, where they have access to the Metaforce-patterned crystals that they use in their technology.
This is a good choice for players who have a good understanding of science and technology and want to take the time to read up on the physics in use in the campaign. The name is based on the Invisible College.
The Tapestry of Song is a loose network of performers who use the mental states associated with performing music to create mystic effects; members are called Bards. They can use anything from song to synthesizers, finding it easy to influence emotions and performing activities resembling Jedi mind tricks. Their music can touch the heart, soothing souls or helping people achieve catharsis. They are occasionally subject to visions, and they sometimes work them into their songs.
The Bards have a strong skran tradition; they that it is vital to feel passion in order to give a good performance. (The few who have strong chur are superb method actors who can emote intensely and then let go.) Their cautionary ballads warn of past Bards who became overly fond of their ability to manipulate people and came to bad ends. Their discipline is to sublimate the passions that could lead them into trouble into their art.
Bards regularly compete in composing extemporaneous poetry, with and without musical accompaniment. This is their most effective means of prophecy.
Instruments: traz
(2)
aka slitherhorn
(2);
Chidinkaloo
Horn; Kloo
Horn; Dorenian
Beshniquel
(aka Fizzz
); Fanfar; Bandfill;
electric dulcimer (bowed, hammered, plucked); didgeridoo;
hang drum; eigenharp
The Chatos Academy on Ondos is a specialized group of warriors who adhere to a moral code of protecting the weak. While they have a great deal of training in lethal and nonlethal combat, they have a heavy emphasis on detective work: they need to determine injustice for themselves, and do not rely on the word of a person claiming they were wronged. If their investigation shows that a complainant is actually perpetrating injustice, the Paladin will take action against them.
They use the term resolve
to refer to balancing injustice. This can be
returning a stolen item, rescuing a kidnapee, stealing money from someone who
earned it unjustly, assassinating someone with a sniper rifle, or putting
together a team that wipes out the leadership of an entire gang or company.
On rare occasions, they have the pleasure of meting out poetic justice,
sometimes by negotiating marriage contracts and trade agreements.
The symbol of the Academy is a pair of scales surmounted by an open eye. All members own at least one bronzium badge with the symbol engraved on one side and a small holodisplay (with excellent anti-tampering countermeasures) embedded in transparisteel on the other; the display usually displays the face of the Paladin, but can be used to store messages. Paladins sometimes record messages on their badges and send them with a courier to guarantee the authenticity of the message. They usually display the badge openly, as the Academy has an excellent reputation, but have no other requirements for appearance. Paladins show up in anything from long coats with numerous pockets to heavy battle armor, and are often accompanied by multipurpose droids that can handle anything from forensic analysis to combat.
In this dismal era, anyone claiming to be operating in the public interest is usually running a scam, so the Paladins claim to be the variety of bounty hunter known as a justiciar, with an unusual fee structure: 1/1000 of your net wealth to resolve a theft or minor assault; 1/100 for a major assault, kidnapping, rape, or murder; 1/10 for heinous crimes like mass murder; all fees paid or placed in reliable escrow in advance, returned in full if the Paladin can’t resolve the problem. Tracking down Paladins who have betrayed their moral code, or anyone who impersonates a Paladin, is free.
In cases where people do not have easily divisible wealth, Paladins are required to exercise their judgment and intuition in discerning a reasonable fee, and they are required to demur on some offered fees at least twice before accepting. Some Paladins have wound up with apprentices or spouses as a result of taking a job where the client couldn’t pay any other way.
Their metaphysical discipline is a refinement of intuition, which they call
their Hunch, and most of it is taught through apprenticeship in the
field— though some thieves and swindlers have accepted teaching
positions at the academy in exchange for having their lives spared. Their
martial discipline is a collection of everything from military discipline to
dirty tricks, which they call Choyda Rundo (Huttese for whatever works
).
Paladins often follow skran, particularly when young, taking joy
in battling against injustice; when they get older, they often switch to
chur as they develop a seen it all
attitude.
This is a good choice for players who enjoy hardboiled detective
genre fiction.
The Healer’s Guild (2) is a loose organization of healers who are experts in natural treatments; they are very popular among the poorer segments of galactic society because they only charge enough to make a living and don’t seek wealth. They range from mystics who reject all technological medicine to pragmatists who happily embrace diagnostic tools and minimally invasive surgery. Inside the Guild itself is a group of Force sensitives called the Quiet Circle, whose core discipline is built around empathy and service to others.
Quiet Healers are easily able to sense the emotions of others and to project calm; they can soothe pain easily, and even send people forcibly to sleep. The apprentices can speed healing, bolster immune systems against disease, ease consternation, and can perform basic truthreading (though someone practiced enough to lie without consternation and without flurries of thought can slip past them); the masters can mend flesh, knit bone, repair any organ that is still basically intact, place a person into a deathlike trance that gives them time to get to more thorough medical assistance, read a person’s surface thoughts, and cure psychological disorders. They do not study martial disciplines; in combat, they cloak themselves in their Aura of Quiet, which causes organic beings to ignore them, and tend to avoid fire from droids because they present a low threat profile.
When Quiet Healers abandon empathy and become overly impressed with their own power, they can be quite dangerous. They can influence the weak-willed directly, bring out the deepest fears of people they wish to influence, inflict subtle but terrible damage through their knowledge of the workings of the body, and become very effective interrogators.
Quiet Healers know their own bodies best of all, and will tend to heal quickly even when completely unconscious, though they will be able to go much faster if they are brought around enough to enter a meditative trance.
The Jarvashqiine are a society of Force-sensitive shamans from a variety of cultures. They range from peaceful, ancestor-worshipping ??? to harsh Tusken Raiders. They are adept at interacting with beings living and dead, as individuals and amalgamations.
The shamans do not have highly organized metaphysics. Shamans are very likely to turn up as ghosts, as are people of strong will (particularly those with unfinished business), and sometimes even people slain in extreme circumstances, particularly if slain by use of what the Sith term the Power.
Other Force users are dubious of some of the perceptions of shamans: a shaman can perceive a disease as a spirit invading a body, and may compel it to leave with fumes and smokes (a chur tactic) or engage it in a metaphysical battle (a skran tactic). At the larger scale, they can perceive entire ecosystems as possessing an enigmatic spirit with which they can interact, though few have ever seen such things without sharing a shaman’s trance.
Shamans often have difficulty sharing their techniques with other Force users.
The Order of Dai Bendu are pacifists who practice a philosophy of nonconfrontation called Bendu. Their primary base is on the hidden world of Tython in the Deep Core, but it is a well-kept secret; they do their best to make their monastery on Ando Prime appear to be their sole haven.
The Baran Do Sages are a group of Kel Dor Force sensitives who started out as by predicting the weather and developed their abilities from there. Oxygen-breathers with strong Force talents have found their paths leading to the sages on Dorin and a teacher. The Baran Do speak of the Flow, a turbulent river of events that comprises past, present, and future.
Few of the Kel Dor sages leave Dorin, but enough of their non-Kel Dor apprentices have done so that there is a small Baran Do tradition outside. Their training gives a propensity for prophecy, psychometry, scrying, dowsing, intuitive navigation, and mythic timing: a Sage can move through a jam-packed crowd at almost walking speed by anticipating where the breaks will occur. They spend a great deal of time in meditation to develop their inner vision— the Sages are a strongly chur group— but often resort to scrying foci (bowls of inky water, dark mirrors, crystal balls). Even so, their visions are fragmentary, with just momentary impressions of a person in a particular place or situation; they need to do a fair amount of detective work to back up their visions. The most powerful of the Sages can even share their visions with others who are willing to receive them with a touch.
Kel Dor are judgmental and accustomed to black-and-white thinking, and this is usually passed on to their alien apprentices. They prefer to avoid violent confrontation when possible, but usually choose swift, effective, and often lethal force when combat is unavoidable. They are difficult to surprise in and out of combat.
The Baran Do strongly emphasize remaining aloof until they have
determined that the time is correct for decisive action. This seems
to work most of the time, but there have been times when a great many
deaths occurred before the time was right to act— and others in
which people took what the Sages termed rash action
that seemed
to have saved a great number of lives, even in the long run.
Their talent for intuitive navigation requires that they be the traveler; they cannot sit safely at the other end of a commlink and offer suggestions without taking risks to their own persons.
Sages who become overly obsessed with knowing and controlling the
future can move from chur to skran. This hampers their
ability to predict the general future, but gives them greater ability
to choose the actions that will further their cause, even while they
lack any knowledge of what they will confront. This is called
seizing the future
; renegade Baran Do who embrace this usually
wind up either wealthy and powerful or very dead.
Within the Listeners to the World-Spirits is a hidden Force tradition developed by Force-sensitive Ithorian shamans. Unlike the Jarvashqiine, they have little to do with ghosts; they are interested in the world of nature. They are able to speak with animals and enter telepathic links with them, control their own bodies to match animal capabilities, cause plants to grow at astonishing rates, and even commune with the ecosystem itself.
Among the Venerators of the Numina of the Great Spiral are a number of Force-sensitive priests who wield real power. They really do connect with Force spirits and invoke blessings upon people.
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