Cleromancy

***NEEDS A LOT OF WORK, TRYING TO GET THE RIGHT WORD FOR THE CORE OF THIS MAGIC SYSTEM.***

***LEX = BRAND = RUNE = STAIN \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\****

The third and final form of magic. Unlike the other forms of magic which are based on the energies of light and color, cleromancy is based on the energies of life force of all organic living things, drawing energy from the ending a timeline or lifeline. This energy can be used for healing, divination, or enhancing the powers of those with a 'Lex'.

This life energy is connected to the web of timelines making up the cosmos, by consuming a part of the timeline by taking away from the chances of survival of another life form, a cleromancer gains tremendous power. This power manifest itself mostly in the forms of brandings, augury, scrying, and divination.

They are also the closest thing to "healers" in this world as they can use the low quality loam created by a lithomancer and turn it into organic living material. However cleromancers respect balance and in order for the loam to turn into healthy organic matter another equivalent sacrifice needs to be made. If a solder lost their arm, loam could be molded into a new arm and brought to life by the removal of another similar creatures arm or leg, this give-and-take system only allows cleromancer to heal and great costs and often they are forced to used prisoners or even themselves as sacrifice.

This use of life force, either their own or of others. Their ability to see the probability of the futures and the actuality of the past. Their ability to make organic life. All of these factors, and events throughout history, would give cleromancy an early and dark reputation. The easy to spot signs of cleromancy use often provided an easy scapegoat for early panics and misfortunes of the past, leading to the execution or sacrifice of the cleromancer.

## lexborn, an Autopsy

Depending on the 'Brand' an individual was born under, any individual has a chance of being born bearing a magical mark, or 'brand'.

The chances of a child being branded can vary and any brand can occur anywhere, above or below, the world. However, these odds can be increased significantly depending on date of birth, if the star associated with the brand is in the zenith of the sky, and the alignment of the Circles of Eight.

If a child is branded they can expect a tough existence, starting with birth, almost all cases of children born bearing a brand are accompanied by maternal fatality. Scholars speculate this is connected to the signature life absorbing abilities of brand-based magic, suggesting it to be an uncontrollable and tragic side-effect of birth for those born branded.

Because of these often isolated beginnings, branded children have a high rate of childhood mortality before they reach their eight birthday. Eventually these odds would only get worse when they would be hunted like witches, being viewed as carriers of omens and misfortune.

When a branded child turns eight they start going through their scrivening, another eight-year cycle when their powers begin to manifest, often uncontrollably. A scriveners eyes will become a pale shade matching the color of his brand, they also will lose the ability to use solomancy of their birthlight if it is not the same color as their manifesting brand.

Physically there is little difference between a branded child and other children of their race, until the afterlight that occurs during the balancings of the years and centuries. In the ultraviolet gloom of the afterlight a lexborn will glow with thin lines of light going across their body. If a branded has used their word enough to become stained then the stain, regardless of color, will be absolute black in the afterlight except for these lines of light. This gives stained lexborn a terrifying appearance during the balancing and often leads to their exposure.

Once the branded becomes a scrivener they will begin to be able to produce a magical ink-like substance, more commonly called paint, eventually able to inscribe their brand on to organic living things. Producing paint requires energy from light, color, and especially life force.

Most branded gain full control of their brand and ability to produce paint by the age of sixteen. By this age the staining of the branded hands are common, with the stain creeping up their arms through middle-age depending on word use.

During the afterlight of a balancing an elderly lexborn would likely be stained from head to toe, a figure of darkness glowing in weaving lines across their black reflective skin, while their eyes would be a solid pastel shade of their brand color.

## The Stained

A cleromancer, especially a good or experienced one, would be easy to spot. Often being called the stained, the painted, or weavers due to the pigment change that works it way up from their finger tips as they become more experienced in cleromancy. Even those touched by the effects of painted brands too often, or who regularly use painted animals, would become stained. With the stain spreading from wherever the lex word was most often used.

Once the branded has performed enough brandings eventually the stain will take over their entirety of their hand, at this a cleromancer can rub their hands together to create a silver substance like paint from between their stained hands, using this silver paint they are able to inscribe their brand onto organic life or lodestones.

Those who have been victim to the *Charmer* or *Task* for too long will begin to develop a blue birthmark-like stain, spreading across their head. Turning their skin and all their features into similar shades of blue, eventually enveloping the eyes rendering the victim blind. Soldiers using brands too often will also develop staining, their chests becoming overtaken after the use of too many *Shields*.

But mostly it was staining of the hands that was most feared and despised. Unless spreading from other effected parts of your body, the only way to get the stain on your hands was to be born with a brand, which depending on the age could get you and your entire family killed. Once their hands were fully enveloped in the stain they could generate a silver paint-like substance and inscribe their brand like a glyph upon any organic (or lodestone) material.

A painted hand was always a controversial and feared symbol.

## The Words of Cygnus

Though unknown to most, if not all, of the races of the Sol Cycle. Cleromancy far predates any of the other forms of magic, when the goddess Cygnus descended from the cosmos she not only planted the seeds of life, she also planted her hidden wisdom throughout the land. Slowly as the eons passed, these brands began to ignite, glowing from underneath the skin. If an individual was born at the right time and under the right birthlight they would be born bearing a glowing brand. A branded child is born with rings of a thin and colored light around their wrists, this light fades within hours and other abilities do not begin to form until after the child's eighth year.

Tragically, almost all reports of branded children are accompanied by maternal death. It is though that the uncontrolled lifeforce draining power of a lexborn child unknowingly kills this mother. Because of this it is rare for a branded child to make it to their eighth year, especially in the animal kingdom. Beyond that it has been documented countless times that animals and monsters, from across the world, not only avoid but will even kill lexborn within their own groups and families.

However, despite all of these impossibilities against the branded, they continue to appear in rare occurrences. As time would go on it would become known that these lexborn were connected to the power of Cygnus and the cosmic spectrum. It wouldn't be until the seventh age of the Sol Cycle that lexborn would feel safe among their people, mostly because everyone had far bigger problems.

## The Living lexs

The oldest discovered animal or monster to be lexborn was a fish fossil from roughly 300 mya, showing signs of teeth marks along its lex encrusted bones, the fish had just reached its eighth year when others must of turned on it. Born with the daze brand it could of caused confusion among the other fish, if the fish could use its lex at all.

Brands would appear among the living, and in the bones of their fossils, throughout the rest of the ages. Fire beetles in the volcanic rocks of the northwest were often born with the blast brands, while the great beasts of the eastern desert could change their color or create mirage images of themselves.

Eventually the first semi-sentient race to give birth to branded children, the nori, first appeared during the Age of Elementals. Branded members of all types were seen as living gods and only the branded could fight to be the leader and aspect of their element. The nori are thought to have endlessly created and destroyed manifestations of new nori seeking more branded children, with thousands of their remains indicating an endless cycle of creating and killing the non-branded.

Eventually a great prophecy was formed around the branded, and it was this prophecy that led to the downfall of the nori and the world's first great empire. The knowledge of brands would fade with them and wouldn't again be discovered by the mortal races until the rise of the chertu.

## The lex Wars

After their great empire had fallen and pure might, flame, and lust had failed them. The demonlike chertu looked elsewhere when they saw another opening at the world stage roughly -13,000 AB. In the exile of the defeat from their world empire over 300,000 years ago, endless generations of chertu obsessed over the secret powers behind their lexborn and the lex words found throughout the known world.

Unlocking the full powers behind these lexs, they allied with the primal spirits desperate to gain more knowledge on these powers. With this alliance they struck at the heart of the weakening empires of the oraxi, krahki, and especially the Stoneclaw giant and dragons. Being the first sentient beings to use the lex words of *Flame,* *Control, Bind,* and *Pox* as tools of war, they ravaged the other races.

Throughout these lex Wars, the chertu began to see the beginning of what would become known as the stain, at the tips of their fingers and thumb, their touch would become as though stained by ink and they would become able to mark and write their lex words on organic life or special stones called lodestones. Soon these lexborn spent their time applying their lexs to creatures like the rats and birds, who would be killed to gain a single use of the lex word they bore.

Not only did this create the ability to mass produce lexs and give them to those who normally would never have use to them. It also solidified the long suspected belief that killing a stained lexborn would pass the lex to the killer. Throughout time the chertu had protected their lexs and their lexborn. But now due to their ambition, the lexs fell into enemy hands through escape lexbearer animals and a target on the heads of the lexborn who painted them.

The war continued for thousands of years, eventually a great chieftain, and once-in-a-millennia lexborn, giant rose and led his people in the crafting of the Blackstone, the first recorded lode mixture of ruby, amethyst, and the lex painting of *Meteor*. A great burning ball of black glass crashed into the center of the continent and the chertu empire, it ripped the world apart, turning everything for thousands of miles around into black sharp glass. Eventually the world would crumbled in upon itself, like a great maw it would hide this broken dark world from the light and replace it with new ground. The great lex words, lexborn, and armies of both sides were obliterated and the few survivors would eventually retreat below to surface of the world. Forever cursing the light and those who live under it.

## Circles, Stars, and Bones

The lex words would largely disappear and go unnoticed for thousands of years. It wasn't until Deneb granted greater cognition to the burgeoning races that became the sol races, that creatures again began noticing patterns and oddities in the strange lexbearing creatures or fellow. However, the sol races seemed either ignorant, reluctant, or too busy with solomancy and lithomancy to bother.

When people among the ursadar, and other stargazing races, began to notice great cycles and patterns that they began to connect the strange symbols seen on ancient trees, animals, and themselves. The ways of these circular patterns would become known as the weave.

These weavers became the augurs and shaman of their time. Through these patterns they would learn of the eight cycles of the cosmos, how birthlight impacted solomancy and intuition, and how to read these patterns to predict the probability of significant events.

To divine the past, present, and future they came up with several rituals; Some effective and others just for show or even malicious in nature. One of the most effective and well-known arts of the soothsayers would be through the rolling of lex bones. Eight-sided dice representing different words and meanings made from the unique bones of the lexborn. They would roll these and measure them against the stars to determine a probability to the future.

Describing time like water, flowing in all directions, choosing to go in all directions, especially the easiest. It goes as far as it can but often it is drawn to a central source. The gravity of all things. These divination abilities become so well respected to most sol races that they are one of the few groups of cleromancers accepted in most societies.

Through their divination and advances in astromancy, cleromancers began to thanks to the early discoveries of the ursadar, unravel the patterns of the cosmos. They would discover the sixty-four constellations that represented the Cycles of Eight, these constellations would align with the increase in odds of their lexborn they saw throughout the years and centuries and they would use it to predict and make prophecy.

Now that the sol races knew of the eight cycles and of lex words no one had yet been born, they begin to Despite the near certain maternal death, the unknown effect of these lex words, and the weight they would put upon these unborn children. When the Seekers Prophecy proclaimed of the alignment of the circles and the stars, and the arrival of a new lexborn, the birthrate of the world would spike, and with it both the likelihood of the birth of the lexborn, and the disappointment of the millions of those who weren't. Animosity towards the lexborn surged alongside the birthrates.

## lexs of Eight

The lexs of the eight schools of magic: Sol (enchantment), Blast (evocation), Shield (conjuration), Mirage (illusion), Shift (transmutation), Charm (enchantment), Bone (divination), and Balance (necromancy)

When the cleromancers saw the common lex words represented throughout themselves and nature, they recognized how many of the grand lexs they saw in the night sky matched those found on the world around them. They would separate these grand lexs into eight different houses, developing great stories around the symbols they saw on ground and in the sky. Early in the developing world of the sol races the most common things depicted on parchment were these sixty-four lexs.

Each of these schools have a different trigger method if the lex word has been painted or applied to another creature:

Each school in turn has eight lex words, each with increasingly powerful effect and rarity among eligible population. Only certain species, either born under the star lexs or spawned from a gargolith or primal, all living things are capable of being born with one of these sixty-four lexs. Each level being eight-times more unique in populations.

*The 'Effect' listed in the table is mostly compatible and inspired by the D&D 5E spell of the same name.*

The more the early people of the Sol Cycle learn of the lexborn, seekers, and the impending disasters that awaited them, the more the common villager begins to fear and hate them. It would take a long time for the sol races and their lexborn to discover the abilities of the paint, as so few of their lexborn ever used their lexs or lived long past their staining, as any sign of painted hands became associated with fear and doom.

## lexhunters

A pivotal aspect of the lexborn was that of death, if a lexborn is killed during the hours of light then their lex word dies with them. However, if a lexborn is killed during hours of darkness, then the lex is passed to the person who killed the lexborn. Depending on the killer's history with cleromancy, the passed on lex can take up to eight years to manifest.

Because of this, lexborn are constantly being hunted at night by those hoping to become lexborn themselves. Even the great celebrated lexborn of their time, healers and innovators, worked only during the day hours and made their way homes long before the cover of darkness. lexborn were especially vulnerable due to the lines of light that formed on them after their eighth birthday, these lines would glow brightly in the darkness, making them extremely easy to see. Because of this, during the harsh survival conditions of a balancing, very few lexborn during those hundred years of darkness survived.

Because these lexs could be born upon living animals or monsters in the wild, game hunting in the name of seeking and acquiring lexs became popular for centuries. Wild animals hardly ever carried more than a lesser lex, however monsters were known to sometimes even carry grand lex words. The innovation of colored lenses opened up a whole new frontier in lex hunting for animals, monsters, and even people. With these lens you could not only see the lex word floating on the individual, you could easily see how much of their body was stained (which represents a good idea of their power level), and most importantly it showed the wearer a ghost-like trail that followed the target for up to two-hours during the balancing.

Because of the power they wielded, during a period in history being a lexborn practically guaranteed followers or servants, and many of them became kings or priests. During this time, the major myth that lexborn is a hereditary power started to take hold, mostly due to the intentional passing of lex words from father to son in ritualistic patricide. Fearing that the father could die in an accident or of old age, thus robbing the child of these powers, caused many fathers to be murdered early in their relative lives.

Killing multiple lexborn will yield multiple lex words, resulting in a multicolored stain and more power. However the most words by a single individual in recorded history is five, this is mostly due to the severe rarity of lexborn who survive past their eighth year, those who survive become vigilant and paranoid. There is also the fear of lexborn taking their own life if cornered or given the chance, all of this adding to the thrill of the hunt to ruthless lex hunters. If another does kill a lexbearer with multiple lex words, only one of those will randomly pass to the hunter.

## Return of the lexbearers

Following the rise of the human empire, the calamity of the Age of Thunder, and the fall of many forms of lithomancy in the Age of Discovery, did people begin to accept lexborn and lexbearers in certain parts of the world. Notably, in a time of flourishing religions like the Aves Belief, did certain sects begin to allow a lexborn to prosper enough to become stained.

For a great period of time these lexborn, having facing humbling adversity throughout their lives themselves, represented the lexborn with benevolence and grace. Becoming grand merchants, kings, and high priest within the church most of them used their words for the good of all which played a major role in the prosperity of the fifth age. Soon markets would be full of lexbearing animal carts, with animals bearing the lexs like *hand, servant, light, alarm, paint, charm, and tear* being common and available to the general population who for so long only had solshards for their use, unless dedicating their life to The Way or The Work.

For a long time stained lexborn became heroes and innovators, bringing sol activated teleportation circles to the cities of the world, the first domestication of monsters once thought impossible to tame, and revolution of eidolons which would be the final breakthrough needed to make the lodestar.

One of the most notable lexborn of the time was the great healer Clera, of the Wick; Who was the first to discover the healing and good that the life manipulating effects of certain lexs were capable of. She established the Candlewick, better known to soldiers as "The Wick", a connection of teleportation circles leading to a great hospital establishment. Using her new techniques she was able heal the wounded by crafting replacement limbs of the basic loam of lithomancy and bones from the casualties of war. She also could move the life from the doomed to die or volunteers to the wounded or in need. Though grizzly, she is credited with saving countless lives, possibly the most in history by an individual. Her name would go on to define the entire form of magic, cleromancy, and her followers would be known as "Clera's Wicks", eventually being shorten to the modern "cleric".

However, in the blink of an eye the became the most hated among their people, several disasters befell the sol races including the Pox Echo several ages after the clerics emerged. The Pox, was heavily believed to the fault of a roden lexborn, and the ever increasing association to the lith races of the Great Below and the dark lords they worshiped.

Anyone who was lexborn or stained was again hunted down and executed publicly, with several of the crusades of the time being focused on destroying the lexborn. Even the followers of Clera, and those they had healed who had become heavily stained enough, were exterminated. Anyone considered stained was considered infected and needing put to death for fear of procreation. All of this, despite a long history of connecting lexborn to simple odds and celestial cycles, the church continued to declare it to be hereditary.

Soon not only the lexborn were being killed, but their entire lineage.

## Cleromancy in the Great Below

The lith races of the Great Below used little in solomancy, they tended to make up for it with their crude abilities in lithomancy, however if there was form of magic they worshiped and were in awe of it was cleromancy and the lex words.

After the lex Wars and the Blackstone explosion *approx. -10,000 AB,* the primordial races of the world found themselves in a dark world of tunnels and lexs covering the strange places of the Great Below. Building many of their early settlements and establishments around these collections of lex words the soon discovered that they were not alone in this dark world. Several other races had long lived here and been following the words of lex, leading them to the towering towers of dark godlike figures, frozen in time of reflective ebony. As they worshiped these gods that became known as the *Gargoliths* or *The Fifteen,* they became dark and depraved of virtue and even sanity. On the surface they had gone between the balance of peaceful and aggressive, but this was different.

Though having entirely lost the concept of time in their dark existence, every seven hundred years the Balancing would occur and the consciousness of these Gargoliths would awaken, though still frozen physically they at last could speak to their followers. Upon their awakening the lex words across the world both surface and below sear with pain as they glow while the gargoliths are able to see through the lexborn, gathering information for their grand schemes.

In the name of the Fifteen, and endless cycle like that of the nori took root all throughout the Great Below, endless procreation for the sake of increased odds of the lexborn, however due to the great lack of general resources in the Great Below most offspring that didn't seem exceptionally healthy or strong were killed. Creating a society of cruelty and death. Those that were lexborn were exalted and venerated, become godkings and speakers of the Fifteen themselves. On their command, their people would war and sacrifice in their name, an endless timeline of chaos and conflict would consume the Great Below.

When these lexborn would die their lex painted bones became legendary artifacts, with each piece sometimes being split among tribe leaders creating claims and heirlooms to dark kingdoms. Many lith races made it a ritual to always be painted by a lexborn of their species, if they were lucky enough to live in an area or at a time that had one, they would make pilgrimages from all across the Great Below to become painted if they had used the lex since their last visit. An unpainted dweller of the Great Below was an easy target.

One of the most significant aspects of cleromancy that came out of the Great Below was not only the discover of what Clera the Wick wouldn't discover until a much later age, but the ability to do it for an entire being. When the sol races finally figured out the lex that allowed them to give consciousness to their lodestar creations, they did so hundreds if not thousands of years after the lith races were using similar techniques to make massive golem armies. Soon places called bone farms became common, where endless were born and slaughtered purely for their bones to fuel the golems of their dark armies. It was with these armies that the lith races attacked the sol races twice, almost winning both times on the ability to reuse their fallen comrades to create a recycled army.

The bone and cleromancy would not only be the defining tool and magic of the Great Below, it at times was the only thing that brought their different races together. Only when practicing cleromancy or working against the sol races did the lith races not kill each other. Even more interesting are the large numbers of lexborn and those connected to them that sought to escape to the surface world. Many of these would go on to be the founders of the surface lith races that you would see in civilized society from the fifth age forward.