History of the Aurum Blade
“Hej! Where have you been?”
-Common Greeting among the Aurum Blade
Age of Discovery
“After living six months among them, I still feel like I am barely scratching the surface. Maybe one day I will be able to convince them to respond with a straight answer. Perhaps they are better understood through the eyes of visitors.”
-Captain Monsai, Steward and Culture Specialist, L.E.A.P.
When the first Wayfarer scouts found their settlements, they assumed that the biggest hurdle to communication was the scandinavian pidgin the Aurum Blade spoke. On solving the language barrier, the scouts discovered that while the people of the Aurum Blade were more than willing to assist travelers, they were blunt and blatantly unresponsive to questions about their way of life. I have called them “cheerfully obstinate.”
The name “Aurum Blade” was given to this group by an early Wayfarer visitor after several hours of ineffective questioning. It’s basis in their personal heritage is limited to the fact that their leaders carried brightly colored metal blades; though the group represents itself with a lantern as it’s symbol. They have willingly taken on the names that we gave them, calling their ruling council Blades, and the citizens Lights.
“After significant trial and error, I have convinced one of the Blades to advise me of a series of laws which the Aurum Blade hold to themselves. For the sake of future representatives, I’ve detailed them in my demographic report below. I have more questions now than I had before.”
-Vitaly Wilson, Marketing Director, Transcendence Inc.
You may not claim to know a Light unless they confirm you know them.
A Light who leads a failed ritual will take full responsibility for their failure.
Pretending affection for another in order to steal from them for personal gain will be punished by the loss of a hand. The hand may not be healed until the victim grants permission.
Defacing the Maypole is a crime beyond all others, and will be punished with banishment.
Ignorance is no excuse and willful ignorance is worse than intentional crime.
“I’m becoming increasingly disoriented by what these people consider acceptable. I watched a man present a girl with a bracelet he had just stolen from her home and be rewarded with a kiss. However, I ask one of the friendlier Lights what she does for a living and she stormed off in tears.”
-Caratacus, Templar of the Exalted Codex
Currently, the Aurum Blade number between 400 and 500 citizens split between three townships. Lights tend to be highly specialized in their careers, and a majority of their people do not regularly utilize combat patterns. Regardless of career or skill, each Light within the Aurum Blade is expected to treat one another with equivalent respect. Bragging about one’s accomplishments is considered almost as rude as asking a stranger about their personal life.
Since the convergence, the Aurum Blade has slowly become more willing to allow outsiders to visit or even live among them. They remain slow to trust, and newcomers often find themselves intentionally excluded when ceremonies begin.
Although their culture seems entirely benign, their lack of an effective chain of command and apparent disregard for the omnipresent dangers of the Wild begs the question: how in the Codex’s Pages do these people survive out here? We should keep a close eye on them...for their own good.
Age of Strife
“It’s taken nearly a dozen pathfinding patterns, bartered with various Lights, to get enough of their pre-convergence history for a report to properly inform Trade Prince Catriona. I fear our accountant may have a heart attack when he sees the expenses I accrued inquiring about their rituals….”
-Toiréasa Dearbháil, Wayfarer Scout
While all people touched by the storm have experienced the dangerous beasts and monsters that roam the wilds, no group has seen them in number and volatility quite like the people who became the Aurum Blade. The forebears of the Blade were beset from all sides by creatures of size and aggression that defy description, and fought desperately to keep their small society alive. Though they banded together in outposts near two centuries ago, it took almost forty years for them to discover tactics that kept monsters at bay long enough to effectively fortify their towns.
Through cruel coincidence, the Aurum Blade have discovered a silver lining in corruption. A series of attacks on one outpost left their fighting force wounded and crestfallen. In the aftermath, one of their citizens fell to corruption and disappeared entirely. In the coming weeks, attacks against the Blade began to slow considerably, and then stopped. Scouting parties found signs of a large predator in the area, circling the town, that appeared to be devouring smaller beasts and even goading larger ones into fighting each other. Guards on the outpost perimeter discovered evidence over time that the beast was, in fact, their missing companion. It was no longer human, but still seemed to carry enough of a bond to their home and people that it did not want to truly leave.
Through tactics they have never detailed to us, the Aurum Blade began delving into magics and rituals that allowed them to bring their feral companion back home. Restoration, as I have called it, is a complex process known only to the highest ranking Blades. Assuming their rituals bear similarity to our rites, the process must be terribly precise and reliant on an intimate knowledge of Potentia that can only be gained through practice. Careless dabbling with rituals seems to be a great taboo in the Aurum Blade, perhaps illegal? I can’t tell.