Behold The Tower: Factions

Factions are an important part of the *Behold the Tower* experience. Belonging to a faction sometimes means having responsibilities, but it also carries with it support and rewards for service. If you ever switch factions or leave a faction, you lose all ranks and renown with the old faction, and must start at the lowest rank with zero renown with your new faction. You may also incur severe repercussions for abandoning the faction.

It is important to note that characters of certain races are required to have a faction from the onset of the campaign. These races are the following: First-folk, Lilithids, tritons, Maramer, Hyperions, Fair-folk, orcs, hobgoblins, goblins, bugbears, muezza, goliaths, beast-folk and kobolds. If you leave your faction, the character is no longer playable, unless of course they’re moving to another faction approved for that race. Additional information on specific factions can be researched in a character's Downtime.

***Why do these races need a faction?*** These races are very closely knit into their cultural inheritance, and to abandon this inheritance very much requires uptake into another dedicated community.

## Faction Advancement and Benefits

As a character with membership in one of the factions completes adventures, he or she earns renown for completing tasks that align with the faction’s goals. This is expressed as renown points rewarded at the end of any given adventure.

### Faction Advancement

As characters earn renown and complete secret missions, they progress in the ranks of their factions, granting them greater authority and additional benefits.

 2
 3
 4
 5

### Faction Benefits

#### Rank 1: Initiate

This is the rank a character receives when first joining a faction. It is available at character creation or any time the character wishes to join.

* ***Participate in Faction Activities***. You can participate in any activities that are considered specific to your faction.
* ***Earn Renown***. You earn renown points in your faction and advance in rank.
* ***Faction Assignments***. As an Initiate, you are eligible to take on faction assignments during adventures. These are minor side quests which can be further expounded and resolved in one-on-one sessions or small party adventures.
* ***Receive Your Faction’s Insignia***. You receive an insignia of your faction, fashioned into a wearable or held item.

##### Faction Insignias

 Jebellaires
 Venetian Calibre

#### Rank 2: Agent

Agents have shown that they’re aligned with the faction’s goals, and can take on more responsibility.

* ***Secret Missions***. During certain adventures, you may be given the opportunity to undergo a secret mission on behalf of your faction. Completion of these missions might earn you additional benefits or enable you to advance to higher ranks within your faction.
* ***Apprenticeship to an Elder***. Your character can serve as an apprentice to a higher-ranking member from within your faction. See the Apprentice-Mentor Benefits section below for more details.
* ***Faction Training***. Your character can take advantage of accelerated training programs for tool kits most often used by your faction. This training comes at a lesser cost than usual tool training, taking half as long (125 downtime days), but you must pay an additional 125 gp as a training expense for each proficiency.

##### Faction Training

 Jebellaires
 Venetian Calibre

#### Rank 3: Peer

Peers are reliable faction members, entrusted with many secrets and deserving of additional support during adventures.

* ***Faction Downtime Activity***. You gain access to a faction-specific downtime activity that gives you additional benefits when you use it. If your faction has any specific downtime activities, you can use Downtime to participate.
* ***Item Procurement***. With an expenditure of resources, you can acquire magic items from your faction. To procure the item, you must go on minor adventures for your faction (represented by downtime days) and perform bribes, charitable acts, and provide provisions (represented by the expenditure of gold) in service of your faction. Some items are only available to certain factions, as indicated in the Item Procurement Options table. A character may purchase any number of items so long as they pay the associated downtime day and gold costs for each item. The magic item you attempt to acquire must be of uncommon rarity, and is further distinguished into two types of uncommon items: widespread and hidden. Widespread items are wondrous items or generic variants of combat-relevant items, while hidden items offer direct bonuses to combat. You must be at least 5th level to acquire a hidden item.

##### Item procurement options

 Teutonic Order
 Jebellaires
 Venetian Calibre

#### Rank 4: Elder

Elders are trusted voices within their given faction, and often occupy the upper ranks. They are looked upon as champions of the faction’s beliefs, and as mentors by those of lower rank.

* ***Become an Elder***. You can designate Agents or Peers as your charge. See the Apprentice-Mentor Benefits section.
* ***Faction Philanthropist***. As an Elder of your faction, you may choose to completely and magically heal a member of your faction after an adventure is completed — even if you were not adventuring together. In doing so, assuming you aren’t casting the spell yourself, you must pay the full cost of the spellcasting service, plus 25 downtime days (for his or her recuperation).

#### Rank 5: Exemplar

Exemplars are deeply ensconced within the leadership of their faction and its history, and have a great degree of influence, guiding faction decisions.

* ***Become a Faction Exemplar***. When you play this character along with other members of your faction, you can choose one lower ranked member of your faction (Agent, at a minimum) to begin each day with Inspiration.
* ***Faction Appeals***. You made an indelible mark on the history of the faction and thereby earned prestige even outside your organization. If you are making a Charisma check and appeal to your status within the faction's history, you may roll a 1d8 and add it to your ability check roll. Confirm with your DM that this sort of appeal is appropriate before rolling or adding the bonus.

## Apprenticeship

Two characters in the same faction (played by different players), may choose to enter an Apprentice-Mentor relationship. The mentor must at least be an Elder and the apprentice must be of a lower rank, but at least an Agent.

An Elder may only have one apprentice at a given time. Similarly, an apprentice may only have one Mentor. This relationship persists until the apprentice or mentor permanently die, the apprentice achieves the same rank as the mentor, or they decide to part ways (this is generally reserved for players that become inactive or for whatever reason have lost contact with one another).

### Apprentice and Mentor Activities

Upon entering into the Apprentice-Mentor relationship, each are eligible to participate in specific activities.

* ***Fond of Adventure***. When an apprentice and mentor bond, they reveal the details of each other's magic items and faction Secret Missions that they have participated in to each other.
* ***Combat Partners***. By practicing fighting together before adventures, an apprentice and mentor can gain complimentary combat abilities. The apprentice and mentor gain these benefits if they spend at least 5 days of Downtime together, and lose these benefits if they are apart for more than one month:
	+ Any saving throw made by one participant to save against an effect created by the other is made with advantage.
	+ Once per short rest, a participant may use the Help action to assist the other as a bonus action.
	+ Neither participant acts as cover against ranged attacks made by the other.

#### Apprentice Activities

* ***Apprenticeship Renown***. The apprentice will always be associated with their mentor, and as such will gain twice the renown earned while on a faction mission together.
* ***Language and Tool Training***. The apprentice may learn any language or tool proficiency that their mentor possesses if they spend 125 days of Downtime together (no GP cost).
* ***Word of Advice***. Mentors can grant their apprentice advantage on one check, save, or attack roll. Once the mentor does so, he or she cannot do so again until they complete a long rest.

#### Mentor Activities

* ***Mentorship Renown***. When a mentor takes on a new apprentice they immediately gain the benefit of a successful Secret Mission for their faction. The mentor cannot receive this benefit more than once.
* ***Learn by Teaching***. The cost and time of learning a new language or skill proficiency is halved while with your apprentice. This effect stacks (for example, the time to learn a faction skill is one-quarter of what it would normally be.)
* ***Mentor’s Pride***. As your apprentice grows in power their deeds reflect positively on you. Each time your apprentice gains a level that would put them into a higher tier (levels 5, 11, or 17), you gain 1 renown.

## Established factions

When building your character, you have the option to join an existing faction listed below, one that exists in the world or an entirely new faction. Work with your DM to workshop the new faction you might belong to. When determining your faction, consider the goals of the group. Typically, you will want to align with the group in its religion, its core beliefs, its goals and fitting in well with its member traits. If you differ significantly in one or more of these areas, you may think of your character as a rogue or radical element in the faction. Consider how this might influence your character's behavior and decisions within the faction and beyond, especially in your interactions with the faction's members, Secret Missions and its benefits.

### Jebellaires

Jebellaires are a human clan that extend to prehistory. They are among the most feared warriors in the world, known for the mithral armor and weapons. Prideful, they hold combat as a cornerstone to their culture, their individual identity, and spirit.

#### Goals

1. Maintain the survival of the clan at all costs.
2. Adhere to the Binding Vine without fail.
3. Retain the knowledge of mithral and adamantine smithing.
4. Maintain the identity and face of the Jebellaires.

#### Ranks

Jebellaire structure is like a pyramid, with a ruler called a Scyol at the top and his bailiffs enforcing his rule. Below them were the political factions known as Sybatta, which were made up of family clans. Their most prized symbol of leadership is the Sybattoc Hand, an ancient gauntlet made of a hard, lightweight ebony-like metal only taken after single combat to the death. It signifies the Scyol of Scyols, or the Scyol-edi. It disappeared after the Last Call.

1. Waif
2. Sybatta fellow
3. Sybatta patriarch
4. Scyol
5. Scyol-edi

#### Reputation

Mithral and adamantine are the distinguished symbols of the Jebellaires, and within their oath called the Binding Vine is a stipulation for the retrieval and protection of these precious types of metal. Its creation is unknown to even Jebellaires, though its reforging is well-known to their clans. Mithral metal is a lightweight form of metal that is highly prized, and priceless if forged by authentic Jebellaires. Similarly, adamantine is an exceptionally hard material associated with the Jebellaires. While mithral can be reforged by master craftsmen on occasion, adamantine reforging is unique to Jebellaires. Both materials are of unknown origin, and make for distinctive and menacing arms and armor when made in Jebellaire style. The heads of the Sybatta are also the forge-masters, and a central part of their culture was the crafting of weapons and armor from these materials.

#### Beliefs

Jebellaires share a strong code of honor, the Binding Vine, of which was often invoked to settle disputes with one-on-one combat that would conclude with the death of one opponent. The Binding Vine requires seven tenets to be observed at all times, under penalty of death:

1. ***Call of the Sybbatoc***. Perfect obedience is required to whoever rightfully has the Sybbatoc Hand, or the closest Skyol.

2. ***Keep the Sybatta***. One must raise their children within the Sybatta, as a Jebellaire, and induct those who swear on the Binding Vine.

3. ***Hold onto Minerals of Heritage***. Procure adamantine and mithral whenever possible, it belongs to the Jebellaires by right of birth.

4. ***Divided Spoils***. Offer up one-quarter of all earnings to the clan.

5. ***Implore Readiness***. Always wear your armor, have your weapon and instruct your clan to do the same.

6. ***Remember your Tongue***. Maintain the unique language of the clan by speaking it with other Jebellaires.

7. ***Embarrass not your Clan***. A general rule that is often interpreted through vows of silence and abstaining from alcohol and meat.

#### Member traits

Jebellaires are almost always human, though one does not need to be human to become a Jebellaire. Jebellaires only require total devotion to the Binding Vine and make no other distinction by race or by ethnicity. They have a storied history as warriors, though they developed their distinctive fighting style sometime in antiquity after the Iron Age. Their blending of swordsmanship, archery and pugilism in creative, seamless ways made them akin to one-man engines of war. A phrase from their oath embodies this well, and is propagated far and wide regarding their strength: "One conflict, one man."

#### Common history

They were narrowly dispersed in the Near East for some time, forming enclaves within other nations. They provided well for their clans as mercenaries or bandits, which made them often unwelcome in their host countries. This ended after the Last Call. The final holder of the Sybattoc Hand, a Scyol near the Caspian Sea, repeatedly let out a call to arms against a tribe called the Rechabites who possessed what was assumed to be a valuable artifact. This tribe repeatedly defeated them in battle and finally the Sybattoc Hand was lost, though it did not come to the Rechabites' possession. By this time, the Jebellaires were so devastated that they never were able to recover, and widely dispersed throughout the world in increasingly dwindling clans. This event, called the Last Call, is a sensitive and rarely discussed topic among the Jebellaires themselves.

### Friends of the Poor (Povertines)

The Friends of the Poor, sometimes called the Povertines, are a militant order of laymen and clergy, usually nobility and local priests, who serve the needs of the community. They initially formed to help rural communities struggling to cope with the Black Death, though it persists now as a group that combats vampires, werewolves, witches and other terrible creatures who threaten a realm.

#### Goals

1. Help the poor always in constant provisions and service.
2. Protect the poor from oppressive powers.
3. Spread the good news of the faith by word and deed.
4. Uphold the firmest moral character, you represent all of us.

#### Ranks

The Povertines most often maintain a stratified hierarchy among its ordained and non-ordained members, being equal with one another in most respects and conferring no special privileges among even their most esteemed members, save for chapters assigning roles to judges at the behest of the lead cleric. However, time spent with the Povertines does allow for wider access to their loosely organized network of influential men.

1. Sworn
2. Advocate
3. Reputed
4. Justiciars
5. Superior General

#### Reputation

Povertines typically quarter at institutions called wait-houses in various cities, and try to secure funding independent of church tithe barns. They will often attract the coinage and resources of nobility by promoting themselves during festivals and holy days, advertising in gazettes of their coming exploits, which they call "de-witchings" or some other tabloid term. The position of a Povertine is quite desirable, in that members do not pay tithes to the Holy Church.

#### Beliefs

The oaths of the Povertines resemble less severe monastic oaths, which embodies their heritage and composition of mainly friars and pious gentry.

1. Maintain good standing with the Holy Church.
2. Swear no further oaths until your service is complete.
3. Maintain perfect temperance and sip no drink of intoxicating quality.
4. Wear plain clothes in protest of our sumptuary culture.
5. Engage in no political engagement, war or otherwise.
6. Seek out and help the needy, for helping them is helping Christ.

#### Member traits

Noblemen will sometimes take up the cause to avoid politically disadvantageous combat, as a sign of penitence required by the Church, an attempt to increase popularity among common people or as a way for nobility and clergy alike to despoil potentially wealthy black magic practitioners. While usually associated with pious men and glory, the life of a Povertine is much more difficult than at first glance. Povertines are notorious for falling victim to terrible magic and succumbing to the temptations presented by their targets. Their lack of formal training means that actual assaults on demon-worship and witchery often led to an untimely death or far worse.

#### Common history

They were founded in 1348 by Cardinal Bertrand D'Andillac to resist the Black Death and support the clergy in their fight against the disease and its subsequent undead. Its initial success led to its promulgation and widespread appeal, which later resulted in a swell of its ranks. However, after ten years of activity, it began to produce splinter sects and no less than four heretical enclaves were later broken up and put to death. The group received an official warning from the papacy in 1360, and since D'Andillac passed away, they no longer receive special privileges from the Church.

### Student Brothers of the Wiser Science

The Student Brothers of the Wiser Science, known widely as the Student Brothers, is an academic organization comprised of highly educated elite, flourishing in city centers and the echelons of high society. Though not so obscure as to be considered a secret society, their enigmatic dealings and association with occultism leads to public distrust and furthering their clandestine nature.

#### Goals

Individual chapters of the Student Brothers differ in their particular goals, though they share a common mission involving the seizure and regulation of magic items and the exclusivity of paths to magic.

1. Preserve the ancient traditions of philosophy, poetics, myth, music and science.
2. Secure items endowed with magic power for safekeeping.
3. Fiercely guard the gate that leads to attaining magic power.
4. Sustain your fellow Student Brothers and seek their advancement.
5. Transform our society in whatever ways you can to accept our ways.

#### Ranks

Despite being a mostly equal fraternal organization, the Student Brothers by necessity adhere to a closed hierarchy that only permits mobility between ranks by extenuating circumstance. As a result, the only way to gain position in the Student Brothers is in developing a chapter's numbers and influence. On occasion, a chancellor will be chosen among several chapters to lead an open coup d'etat against a hostile political actor.

1. Congregant
2. First degree
3. Second degree
4. Third degree
5. Chancellor

#### Reputation

Though small, the Student Brothers have been influential in the history of Europe, mostly as political activists and agitators. Public opinion can vary depending on the notoriety of a chapter, ranging from lukewarm to openly hostile. Accusations of being a Student Brother occasions an investigation by the Church or the wrath of the state. True members keep such a fact concealed, as the main fears of the organization come from their familiarity with magic and their possessing a depth of arcane knowledge.

#### Beliefs

Lower members rarely know the details of their chapter's oaths unless they advance in degree. To this end, their beliefs at the lowest level are simply to enjoy and appreciate antiquity, but the full motives of the Student Brothers far exceed this basic tenet.

1. Our current society has lost something nigh irrevocable since the fall of our once ancient society.
2. The break in our inheritance is due to Christianity and various powers that be.
3. Humanism and secular reason are inevitable, and the path forward is paved with subversion and violence.
4. Our achievement will be dictated most by our capacity to gather arcane treasures.

#### Member traits

Typical Student Brothers come from the highest nobility with the greatest responsibilities, with wealthy common folk finding their way into chapters with equal ease. Cultures that most admire magic or antiquity, especially the true elves, produce many Student Brothers. While its initial stages are populated with diligent but leisurely men and women, darker and more radical elements populate the highest rungs of its hierarchy.

#### Common history

After several centuries where ancient literature was increasingly lost, groups devoted to its preservation sprung up across southern France. As they translated and copied these works, new poetry and verse was created in the ancient style, leading to a wide popularity among socialites in the developing states of the Mediterranean. With this came interest in esotericism and the old ways. The first chapter of the Student Brothers was founded in Florence by the 10th century, and it quickly spread across a divided Europe. As members took to sharp political participation, their arcane study turned to research, development and finally employment of frightening might. An open hostility with the Holy Church led to a massacre in the Papal States of all Student Brothers, and thus they went underground relative to their proximity to the faithful population. They frequently crop up in periods of duress and uncertainty, often under unique names for their chapters, and today they are believed to be as numerous as ever.