Royal Osmic Order

You know better than anyone the gods are not always clear, never mind kind. The road from here is not always clear to me.

-Valkan Astera, Mendicant Oracle

This article (or section) contains potential spoilers for Entangling Vines.

It is not befitting a member of the Star-Counters to be over reliant on the stars. They don't lie per-se, but even the wisest may lie to herself.

-Fascine Roam, Eldest Star-Counter

This article (or section) contains potential spoilers for the Path of Entanglement Campaign. If you are a participant in that campaign, consider reading something else.

The Royal Osmic Order, often shortened to "Osmic Order", "Royal Wizards", or "Wise Lords", are an order of wizards in the Kingdom of Bastonia. Unlike the majority of formal wizardry circles operating legally in the kingdom, the Osmics are not known for operating an Arcane Seminary. Instead, they are a prestige order populated entirely by journeyman (or higher) wizards; upon joining the order, wizards are often asked to cease using the titles they obtained from other orders, and are reduced to the status of Journeyman. The Royal Osmic Order serves two major functions in the Bastonian state:

1. Court wizards trained specially for service to members of the House of Baston and other high-ranking officers and aristocrats, and;
2. Wizards Errant, receiving special training to better suit them to an adventurous or mendicant role, serving as a sort of royal troubleshooter.

The headquarters of the order is the Osmic Tower, a fortification constructed in like fashion to an Arcane Seminary. However, due to their atypically famous, affluent, and well-connected membership, a disproportionate number of their members maintain their own strongholds and dwellings throughout, and even outside of, the Kingdom.

History

"It is always possible the records are incomplete."

- Proverb of the Azurejays, Scholar-Knights of San Sylvester

This article is incomplete and will require additional work.

Founding and Early Patronage

The organization which eventually became the Royal Osmic Order predates the Kingdom of Bastonia, having begun as an informal association of mages of the city of Baghar around 40 Before the Walls around an archavist-magos named Osman Tahli. By this point in history, the rebellion of San Lukas against The Enemy had been waging for over half a century, and the city of Baghar was just now joining in on that rebellion, with the various archivist sects rebelling against the dreadful lords the Enemy had placed over their city. In this turmoil, Osman Tahli and his followers accurately predicted that the resulting power vaccuum would be a threat to the city that even their combined power could not assuage, which lead to them fleeing the city as the "Two-Score Mages". According to legend, they travelled with "fourty wagonloads of wealth" across what is now known as the Lordless Lands and through the cliffs that later gave rise to the Bastion Line. These legends suggest that the lion's share of this purported wealth were either copies or originals (or, most likely, both) of innumerable works from the grand archives of Baghar. The Osmic Sect and their command of arcane powers was welcome in the defense of Baghar, but the religious stubbornness of the sect (which, at the time, was made up of a mixture of agnostics, outright-irrelegious figures, and a scattering of followers of Anghara) meant that for the most part they play minor roles, if any, in the hagiographies of the Redemptive Saints. Indeed, San Sylvester, the saint most closely associated with the arcane, who later formulated the Ars Magica's most central tenants in concert with the elvish demigod Camus Inakus, completely eclipses Osman Tahli, in spite of the repository of arcane writings brought north by Tahli and his followers almost certainly being the basis of the saint's own understanding of magic.

It was only after Osman's death, usually attributed to the year 18 of the Age of Bastion, that the group ever formalized it's status as a group. The surviving members of the "Two-Score Mages" settled in the wild lands of the northwestern coast of Bastonia and became the Osmic Order, an unchartered and self-regulating group of magical study, and elected the youngest of their number, a personal protege of Osman, as their "Sage", which at the time was the only rank of office they bestowed.

Royal Warrant

For some time after the death of Osman, the Osmic Order was able to function essentially unchecked, ruling over an area in the northwest at the time known as the "Wizardmarch", but which is now part of the Duchy of Zeemarch and Duchy of the North. These parts of Bastonia were hard and inhospitable by the standards of the time, but often not for the lack of the mages' trying; the climate was just too harsh for humans to live well unaided. This lawless frontier era soon came to an end, however, as the Kingdom and it's subordinate Duchies began to formalize, structure themselves, and the age of "men ruling men" truly began in the north of Wisteria. This era brought with it the increasing distaste of the Church of Bastonia for heresy, which eventually came to include the practice of magic outside the strictures of Ars Magica or the performance of miracles, since the former was founded in part by San Sylvester, and therefore had a degree of doctrinal correctness that many magical theories did not seek to emulate.

As a defense against this, it eventually became the policy of the Osmic Order to only count as members those who had passed the training of masters of Ars Magica, which eventually would grow into their contemporary practice of only accepting graduates of the Arcane Seminaries into their order instead of training mages outright themselves. This policy was put in place in 301 Age of Bastion by the then-Grandmaster of the expanded order, Tyton Blackwell. Tyton was a direct scholastic descendant of Osman Tahli down through the line of other leaders of the order, and would also eventually promulgate the Six Pillars.

Because the order made these efforts, they slowly began to ingratiate themselves with the Arcane Seminary, who could point to heterodox ideas and say "this is Osmic Theory" when the Church came to call, and of course the order themselves benefited because they could point to their own writings on Ars Magica and simply say that their more heterodox ideas were "in line with San Sylvester's teaching on the continually-refined subtlety of theory" and similar platitudes. After all, they were now themselves all practitioners of Ars Magica, and the older ideas from Baghar were now taught as "advanced concepts" and extensions to that Theory, instead of complete magical theory on their own, skirting some religious laws in order to do "the Work".

This practice of recruiting only from graduated members of Arcane Seminaries eventually lead to a cadet princeling of the House of Bastion, a woman known mostly by her practicing cognomen Messania, to be included into the growing ranks of the questor members of the order, after she'd graduated from Sylvestri Point. This woman, royal by birthright but so far down the line of siblings as to be disinherted almost from birth, went on to become the leader of the order in her own time, inheriting the role directly from Tyton Blackwell. This appointment initially upset her father upon the throne, but upon the accession of her brother, King Lauren II, to the throne in 372 Age of Bastion, this seeming disparity in station was rectified when the entire Osmic Order was granted a Royal Warrent and became the Royal Osmic Order. Initially, this was done to place the Wizards-Errant of the order directly under royal control, and they were then used to break the Seige of Eruda and eliminate a usurper holdfast; the lands of Eruda then ultimately became part of the Deed of Grant which accompanied the Warrant, creating the land-grant of the Osmic Tower. It is these same documents that accord the head of the order a place in the aristocratic succession; in Messania's time, that of a Grand Prince, but for all other masters, if no rank of their own superceeds it, the precedent was downgraded to that of a major Barony. Specifically, at court, they were to be the "Principal of all who hold Baronies faithful in the name of the Crown", which is usually interpreted as giving them a position in precedence junior to all present counts but senior to all present barons. Fortunately, this clause does not have to be interpreted often, as it rapidly became the practice of the leaders of the order to remain in the tower the overwhelming majority of their time.

Interestingly, Messania accepting the royal charter and the accompanying charge to take the city of Eruda was unpopular among the members of the order at the time, and has only become more so over the years. Wizards Errant of the order now refuse such missions by exceedingly long tradition, and the episode is taught at the tower as a great example of a situation where even actions that otherwise seem justifiable may not be so when taking the Six Pillars into account. The Seige of Eruda was the only time such a mission was accepted by the wizards of the order en masse. This position is largely accepted by the crown as a political reality - in the contemporary age, the Osmic Order is too interwoven in too many parts of Bastonia to ever be properly trusted if they accepted such an order again.

Role in the 1570 War of Accession

The 1570 War of Accession was, as most of them were, fought between rival branches of the House of Bastion, principally between the forces loyal to Crown Prince Talon and the then-Duke of the North. By this time, the public image of the Royal Osmic Order was principally that of the Chapter Courtly: well-trained and politically-neutral court wizards in the service of the secular rulers of many important holdings both in the area of the war itself and throughout the broader Kingdom of Bastonia. Because of the importance of their perceived political neutrality, the main contribution of the court mages during the war were counsel against joining the war, and a few heroic moments of protecting various members of aristocratic houses as they attempted to flee the path of the main battles. No fewer than fourteen Chapter Courtly wizards in the service of the Duke's house and houses loyal to him resigned their positions in protest after the contemporary leader of the order, Spallen Ambine issued a treatise of arcane proofs of the Crown Prince's lineage. Rather famously, the Four Blue Wizards, being three members of Chapter Errant and a member of Chapter Proctoral, reinforced the Noble Order of the Gorget at Fort Mondale and rode out with them to meet the Duke's army on its southward march, fighting in the concluding battle of the war, principally by protecting the position occupied by the Crown Prince and his command group.

Role in the War of the Southern Expansion

While their actions in the various wars of accession make the order appear, if not pacifistic, at least dove-like on matters of war, the calculus changes somewhat when the enemy on the other side of the war is outside the kingdom; the need for apparent political neutrality spontaneously evaporates. Still, a majority of Osmics view the war unfavourably, to varying degrees, and arguments that a war fought entirely to push existing polities - the Orcish Nation, and to a less visible extent, the Confederacy of Sages - off of their historical lands on the argument of making those same lands safer for Bastonian habitation somehow doesn't violate the Six Pillars are hard to come by. Thus, the Royal Osmic Order is absent almost entirely from the war, and certainly aren't actively waging it. What few Wizards Errant wind up in the newly-minted Duchy of Sudmarch are usually there cataloguing some newly-found ruin or recently-emptied sacred sight, sometimes working with the Scholarly Order of the Azurjays, and sometimes not. Since so many of the aristocratic positions in the south are newly created, there are far fewer Osmics among the court wizards of such lords, as well. Rather famously, an argument between the Duke of Sudmarch's court wizard, an osmic named Belar Schreiber, and another member of the duke's court, the Count of Montefeltro, lead to such an incident that the Duke actually dismissed the osmic from his service.

Efforts in the Great Collapse

The Great Collapse and its consequences seem a far away problem for foreign heretics to most Bastonians, but few among their learned class agree with that assessment. Rarely do Ars Magica masters meet to discuss the problem when reports from the Osmics - in person or in writing - aren't discussed. Of particular note, the year 1580 (clarify), a Chapter Proctor inqusitor named Gallus Luchnos interrupted an investigation into the Seelie Tower on a royal charge to travel to the city of Baghar and conduct research into the collapse, an errand he was joined in by Sir Arthur Goodyne of the Scholarly Order of the Azurjays. At the time, Gallus was considered the favourite to succeed to the position of Curate, but accepted the mission in spite of its obvious perils both out of duty and in the knowledge of having the necessary expertise to understand the materials at the library if they actually managed to reach it.

Membership

As mentioned in the summary of the article, the Royal Osmic Order is not usually engaged in the recruitment and training of raw apprentices, preferring to leave the messy and often labor-intensive work of the initial education of wizards to the more approachable Arcane Seminaries. Instead, a secondary function of all members is identifying and evaluating candidates for membership among other wizards encountered throughout Bastonia and the world, who are then invited to apply for membership on their own. On joining, the Osmic Order usually expects inductees to renounce their past affiliations and titles with other arcane orders, or at the very least to cease to proclaim or be announced by them.

Recruitment and Promotion

The Osmic Order recruits preferentially among trained Ars Magica practitioners who studied at Bastonian Arcane Seminaries. Due to their mixed-political role, only Bastonian citizens are considered for recruitment; like the kingdom itself, this makes their membership disproportionately human, though of course belonging to the human race is not in and of itself a requirement.

Trusted members of the order - those granted Court Residency or the title of Questor or above - have been through enough of the initial training (and retraining) of the members to be familiar with the recruitment process. They can write Letters of Recommendation to the Proctor-General of the order, at which point the Chapter of Proctors involve themselves, evaluating the potential recruit before deciding whether or not to invite the candidate for examination.

There is a codified examination process which involves the submission of past bodies of work for peer review, contacting the candidate's past mentors and patrons, and, most famously, the Practical Examination, which involves running the candidate through a series of magical and physical challenges in the Trial Dungeon beneath the Osmic Tower.

Providing the Proctor-General and one other member of the Chapter of Proctors is satisfied, the new candidate is inducted into the order and assigned to the Chapter Academic. A candidate remains in this chapter until the Chapter of Proctors is satisfied that the necessary additional education in the procedures and codes of the order have been properly instilled, and the Deans of either the Chapter of Court Wizards or the Chapter Errant are satisfied that the student is a fit for their chapter, at which point they are moved into their new position.

Promotion within chapters is rare as their hierarchy is flat. While Osmics may still attain ranks of Mastery in the same way as at other Arcane Semenaries, internal promotion within the order tends to be generational, with the Chapter Deans, Proctor-General, and Curate of the Royal Osmic Order often personally grooming their own protegees into the position.

Ethics and Internal Oversight

Ethics (and ethical conduct) are a primary focus of the education of the Royal Osmic Order, which is both the reason for, and because of, their trusted positions in the courts of the Kingdom. Since their new inductees are often versed in Ars Magica, the study of ethics and related philosophical and theological subjects actually often consumes more time for students in the order than magical studies do. This education does not rely on the rote memorization of codified ethical constraints, but on the identification of "occasions" for ethical application, and the necessary logical foundations to make sound ethical decisions on a situation-by-situation basis. During this process, students are routinely drilled and monitored inside and outside of their formal educational periods, with their ethical performance evaluated and corrective instruction applied. These basic standards are known as the Six Pillars

This focus is due to cold reality - Osmics are often an order of magnitude more powerful than any other local spellcasters, but must remain trustworthy enough to be assigned royal errands or to guard royal or aristocratic lives. However, their founders were also wise enough to understand that a simple system of educating mages to these ethics and then releasing them would not be enough. For that reason, a division of the membership of the Chapter of Proctors is also responsible for the oversight of even "graduated" Osmics. These "Osmic Inquistors" are usually selected based on their consistently strong ethical performance as well as meeting the criteria needed for the role - essentially, they are both potent diviners as well as meeting most of the standards for the Chapter Errant. The Inquisitors form a sort of "internal police" within the group, and are dispatched on the rare occasions an Osmic oversteps their mark and needs to be brought back into line. Often, simply being visited by the Inquisitors is enough to reverse any sort of ethical backsliding that may be occurring, but the criteria and training of the Inquisitors usually gives them sufficient capability to detain (or destroy, at last resort), rogue Osmic Wizards. To the great consternation of the Bastonian Crown, the Osmic Order does not use their Inquisitors for any other purpose save this internal check on corruption.

The Six Pillars

The Six Pillars are codified as follows:

1. The path of least suffering is desirable.
2. Truth is a knowable value, and your actions should strive toward it.
3. Nuance is the law of all things, and your judgements should reflect it.
4. The crown is the heaviest burden possible; do not pick it up.
5. The Ars Magica is the most dangerous weapon imaginable; use it with the greatest restraint.
6. The larger the library, the greater the number of solutions possible.

Specific interpretation of these pillars is considered a question of judgement for each individual wizard in the Royal Osmic Order to make for themselves, and of their own accord - a position consistent with (and exemplary of) the Third Pillar. Most of the interpretations are largely consistent with each other, giving the Osmics a reputation for being upstanding, reliable, and magnanimous. Osmic mages are encouraged by these rules to think freely of any vassals or overlords they may be entangled with, but also to avoid seeking rulership for themselves; to gain power, but to use it with restraint and compassion.

Supplementary Training

Unsurprisingly given their specialized sociopolitical and adventuring roles, wizards of the Royal Osmic Order are given special training that may not have been available at their alma mater Arcane Seminary. In addition to the ethics education described at some length above, this special training includes:

• Advanced training in all nine of the Via Archmagica, especially the Via Tutela, Via Scientia, Via Lepos, and Via Mandatum, but certainly not excluding any of the other schools. In some circles, the Order is viewed as the best source of formal education on Via Lemurae available, due to having the fewest restrictions on its use (however, such training is only available for those who have already passed the ethical re-education of the lower levels).
• Prospects for (and members of) the Chapter Errant receive special training in the defeat of fine mechanisms (such as traps and locks), the use of various light weapons, advanced topics of the Via Artificia, cartography, orienteering, bushcraft, and other useful topics for the adventurer.
• Prospects for the Chapter of Court Wizards often receive specialist training in protocol, both of Bastonia and of the other nations with which Bastonia is aligned, as well as making extensive study of other systems of magic - something very rare among Bastonian Wizards. In particular, the study of Orcish Shamanism and the works of Gul Spell-Speaker are in vogue as of the War of the Southern Expansion, due to the need for new Court Wizards for the lords of the Frontier Counties. Court Wizards are also very well educated in herblore and alchemy, often better able to identify and rectify poisonings than their masters' court physician.

Of course, as is common for Arcane Seminaries, these lines are not rigid, especially after a student has graduated and actually become a member of the Chapter Errant or Chapter Courtly; at such a point, the resources of the institution are largely opened up to the wizard in question, and cross-training is common, especially among those of the Chapter Errant who are getting on in years, and who wish to retire to the Chapter Courtly or Chapter of Proctors. Such cross-trained individuals are candidates for becoming Osmic Inquisitors.

Ranks and Chapters

The Osmic Order is essentially organized into five administrative divisions, or "Chapters", that loosely clump together members by function:

• The Chapter Academic, populated entirely by accepted Journeyman Wizards who are to be retrained as members of the order. Members of the Chapter Academic are treated more or less the way other Arcane Seminaries treat novices; they are expected to remain on the grounds of the Osmic Tower and dedicate all their time to their studies in order to pass examination as quickly as possible.
• The Chapter Courtly or Chapter of Court Wizards, representing those who have passed examination by the Chapter of Proctors and are certified to be up to the standards needed by the courts of the Bastonian Nobility. In theory, any Chapter Courtly wizard is sufficiently trained and tempered to serve anyone from the most freshly-minted Baron up through to the Monarch of Bastonia. These Wizards must be more than magically talented; they need to be experts in memorization of arcane and mundane lore, able to recite at will, and shrewd, with noses for plot and intreague. Within their ethical bounds, they must even possess a certain level of flexibility to help plan such intrigues themselves - for some lords, this is still too restrictive. It should not be assumed that every court magician you meet is a Royal Osmic Court Wizard. While Court Wizards have the freedom of travel usually associated with Journeyman wizards, their responsibilities to a liege-lord mean they are more often than not permanently at their lord's holdings, or accompanying them on campaign.
• The Chapter Errant, whose members are essentially professional adventurers and explorers. Chapter Errant Wizards are often considered expert battlemages in the eyes of the common folk, but this isn't always accurate (and is a better description for the Scholarly Order of the Azurejay). Still, these wizards are highly capable adventures and more than sufficient to the tasks given them. Usually, their errantry involves questing for the order directly, investigating matters the order has taken an interest in, seeking out magical artifacts, or, on the rare occasions it is needed, reinforcing other Order wizards against attack or rescuing them from kidnap. Chapter Errant wizards are granted enormous latitude, and more than a few visit the tower less than once a year, reporting the findings of their personal expeditions and spending the rest of their time on the road or in their own haunts.
• The Chapter of Proctors, which includes a wide number of administrative staff: the faculty of all the various educational fields; the curators of the Osmic Tower's library, archives, congriem, and their staff; the examiners who grant initial entrance to the Order and certify fitness to join any of the other Chapters, and of course the Osmic Inquistors, who are specialists sent out to investigate reports of crimes or tyranny by members of the order.
• The Chapter Coronal which is a special office occupied by the Deans of the Four Lesser Chapters, the Curate of the Royal Osmic Order, and their staff.

In general, there are no "ranks" within the chapters themselves. You are simply a "Wizard of the Chapter Errant of the Royal Osmic Order". However, there are certain overall officers of each chapter and the school itself worthy of consideration:

• The Curate of the Royal Osmic Order is the holder of the most senior office in the school. The holder of this position is always the personal protege of the previous Curate, usually selected from among the Osmic Inquistors or the Chapter of Proctors for further education. With very few exceptions, the Curate of the Order is almost always an Archmage - a Master of all 9 "vias" of the Ars Magica. The position entrains the secular lordship of the lands of the Osmic Tower and is equivalent in precedence to a major barony. The Curate holds the absolute responsibility for the conduct of all members of the order and can remove members from the order - even other officers - essentially at will.
• The Proctor General is the head of the Chapter of the Proctors and is elected from the surviving members of the Chapter of Proctors, by their peers. Often, they were at one point a personal protege of their predecessor. Specific ranks of magical mastery are not required, but there has never been a Proctor General who wasn't, at a minimum, a Master Wizard in both the Via Lepos and Via Scientia. The Proctor General is the examiner in charge of granting "mastery" to members of the order, but may delegate that responsibility to any other Osmic who has the relevant Mastery, as appropriate.
• The Deans (of Students, Errantry, Proctors, or Court Wizards) are the pro-temporae senior members of each chapter by *tenure* (rather than calendrical age). These officers have special responsibilities in terms of organizing and administrating their chapters, including the approval of new members in conjunction with the Chapter of Proctors. They are subordinate to nobody save the Curate (with the exception of the Dean of Proctors, who is the direct subordinate of the Proctor General).

Additionally, sometimes the title "Questor" is applied to Wizards Errant who are on a specific campaign on behalf of the Curate, or who have become Master Wizard of at least one of the Nine Ways Walked by the Archmages.