Atlas    Languages    The Multiverse    World Timeline Campaigns    Characters    Modules Creatures    Monstrous Index    Encounter Maker Religions Personalities Magic Items Lore & Stories Rule Additions    Feats    House Rules    Prestige Classes    Races Spells    Domains Links Ashes of Arend Cleansing Flame Interviews Mendenton Stories The Black Scourge Travels with Bolas Virtue Sin Love

Path of Yodha

Faithful of this niche religion believe that the powers of good and evil can take physical form. Some of these physical forms are like angels and devils, but most of the time they are far more primitive, barely ooze-like in essence. This essence, which they call "materia" is created from the same energy as souls and spiritual essence from which the heavens and hells are created. They believe that with special prayers and practices that materia can be drawn from the heavens and invested into specially prepared and blessed oils which can then be used in rituals to anoint righteous warriors and the tools of their trade (armor and weapons).

Yodha was an alchemist who was driven to become a warrior during a troubled time when an avatar of the evil god Thurdon appeared and brought tyranny to the Westering Kingdoms. Yodha was a deeply spiritual man who believed in a unity of the powers of good rather than in a single deity. During his lifetime he became something of a symbol among people, like a paladin, but without any one deity’s blessing. Holy warriors answered to the call to rise up against the avatar and side with Yodha, called the Great Host. His popularity culminated with the destruction of that fell avatar. It is said that this was where he first discovered the essence of materia, that when the avatar lay slain its body decayed into a strange wispy sludge.

Yodha still maintained the same curiosity from his days as a scholar, carefully took a sample of the strange substance and returned to his old laboratories to study it, hoping to learn the secrets of what evil demons and the like were created from and determine what best could in turn harm them. His studies took him down long theological and alchemical ways and the secrets he emerged with astounded his warrior peers. He claimed to have traveled other worlds in his dreams and returned with samples of heavenly essences which he called "materia". With these he created the first holy oils. He then taught much of what he had learned to the priests and warriors with whom he had banded together during his struggles to overthrow the avatar of Thurdon. From these beginnings grew this sect of holy, scholarly, alchemical warriors

<< BACK