Baifa Monü Zhuan
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a group of survivors from atrisia's devastation who have banded together
- Image Credit: Female Monk
- Role: NPC Organization
- Links:
- Group Name: The Tiantai
- Classification: Religious Organization
- Headquarters: Atrisia
- Loyalties: Atrisia
- Group Sigil: N/A
- Description: Isolationists and Fervent Extremists, the Tiantai are an enigmatic order whose roots sink deeper into Atrisia's history than any other organized group. They dedicate themselves to the forgotten Old Gods and the maintenance of a crucial Netherworld rift, seeing galactic progress and modernity as corrupting distractions.
- Hierarchy:
- Aesthetics and Dress: Members cultivate a deliberate androgyny and aesthetic unity. They universally adopt shaved heads and wear voluminous, simple robes of muted earth tones, specifically designed to obscure gender and age. This visual uniformity reinforces the Dogma that individual ego and material concerns are irrelevant to their ancient mission.
- Hierarchy: The Order is functionally decentralized and often described as leaderless. Each hidden temple or "Sanctum" is overseen by a single Head of the Order. This individual is chosen by their peers based purely on demonstrated wisdom, deep experience, and unwavering faith. Age is secondary; a novice raised within the Order can supersede an older initiate who joined later.
- Membership:
- Membership: As extreme isolationists, they rarely allow outsiders to join. Their most notorious method of recruitment involves arcane wordsmithing and binding contracts that petitioners describe as "maliciously precise" or "cruel bargains."
- The Price of Indoctrination: When offering esoteric services ancient knowledge, healing, or Force rituals they demand a specific, conditional price: a child to be inducted into the Order if the client family should have more than one offspring. These agreements are highly specific, binding in the murky ways of Atrisia, and seldom broken, ensuring a slow, controlled stream of new members raised exclusively within the Order's subterranean temples.
- Dogma/Doctrines:
- Weapons are Instruments of Ill Omen: This is their central philosophical tenet. The Order rejects all modern weaponry. While they are not strictly pacifistic, they will always seek the non-violent approach first, resorting to ancient defenses or localized Force techniques only when threatened.
- The Old Gods: They worship a pantheon of Thousand Faceless Gods and ancient, often dangerous, entities whose names and rites were lost to history. Their worship takes place in reclaimed temple ruins dedicated to these primordial powers, seeking to return to a time when these entities were revered.
- Curios: The most sacred possessions are the bones of their holy predecessors, interred in carved funerary urns and kept within secured temple vaults. These relics are revered as spiritual anchors to the ancient past.
- Goals: Their ultimate goal is the restoration of the ancient ways and days of Atrisia, specifically the era of the Dragon Lord's Empire, when the world was united and contained within the sacred walls of Sarnoi.
N/A
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Formed long ago, possibly from the children of Sarnoi the first city that appeared on the banks of the Celestial sea. At least from their tellings to those who may want to listen, to those who might find them. The Tinatai are still older then others and their ruins buried deep in the world.. once considered flourishing and grand glittering aurodium and kyber, carved from rich ebony and ivory kazue even solid pearls that came from the stars. The legends tell at least.. but these temples, these cities are gone.. overgrown and reclaimed by the world.
So much so that only the fused black roads that connected them, the ancient bones that marked the trails to their most important sites. Vast, opulent and beautiful, long abandoned by most worshipers, forgotten to time and fallen into ruins, overgrown by rock and earth until they are partially intact.. under the earth. In vast chambers, with deep tunnels and steps going down, deeper and deeper into the earth itself to lead to them. The Tiantai work to maintain them, maintain the alters of the many gods.
The Tiantai are different then most of the people of Atrisian, considered similar but still different. They eat the same food, worship some of the same gods, attend the same schools where they might be able to, Speak the same language... but their worship of the old gods is considered unique. A thousand faceless gods who have been lost to time, dangerous creatures and any number of things that might be found under the earth, found in the darker corners of the world. The Taintai do not judge those who come to them seeker their hearts desires.
However there is a price, they are isolationist, extreme in wanting to return to the ancient ways when the empire of the dragon lord existed. When it was a united world that stayed within the sacred walls of Sarnori on the Celestial sea. They will interact with others but never bringing them back to their temples, never bringing them back to the sacred cities or locations of the ancient world. Offering knowledge for a heavy price, they are notorious for their collecting a pound of flesh when the time comes.
Except to those who want to make a deal though they are indifferent, when visited. Neither wanting to share food, hospitality, trade goods, stories. They have no interest in foreign offworlders, their knowledge, their ships, their weapons, their people, their gods. They will not fight others but their use of the force is a mystery. They seem to practice it but they are not a force order. The skills are rudimentary at best enough so they don't lose control. Their only public temple is in the mountains above jar'kai and remained standing after the destruction.
THeir continued isolation in the wars, attacks has created a strangeness to others.. they are both valued and resented... their powers and skills when traveling is without compare. THey offer much but in some cases demand a great price for what could be considered by many disproportional trade offs. THey would move some to overtake and protect the netherworld rift itself. Maintaining it as well as with the recent attack and the teleporting of forces see a means to close many of the rifts that are created.
Last edited:
