Strider

## Striders of the Imperium

Sometimes called Giants, they are characterized by the long strides of their gait. Having a distinct advantage in battle to see over the conflict, they are often healers and battle strategists. Like humans, they are capable of mastering any art form. Though most are peaceful, the warriors among their origin are of course capable of wielding giant weapons with great proficiency.

## Great Strides in Evolution

Though your natural size gives you an advantage and quit a different perspective of the world below you, it is humbling for your kind to share in this world. Your kind had never learned of prejudices until they began dealing with the outside world, a world that most of your kind only deal with when they must.

Within your caverns, mountains, and in your forests, which you call home, you know only communion with the wild and the preservation of the spirit within all that lives. You hunt and you pray and you give thanks, each day a celebration of life in itself. This is what you learn and how you live until you reach the end of your second scale. Upon the celebration of your 17th milestone, you must make the decision of whether to begin your role within your tribe as a hunter and warrior, or to lead a spiritual life of healing others and strengthening your people's bond to the natural world.

These two roles within your society create a balance so that no one, at least in the Strider’s world, can flourish strictly by power or greed. They are major roles that each and every Strider must choose between and commit to in hopes that neither one will ever over-influence the other. The leading Hunters and Healers of each tribe were once, and in some clans still are, held by opposite sexes, allowing for unions between the strongest and most spiritually devout, as well as keeping any family pairing true to the same dynamic of the whole. This tradition inevitably led to the greater clans which survived the wars of the past and blended together to form the tribes and society you know today.

Each bloodline within the collection of tribes is known for their ancestral pacts with the spiritual world. Thus, each gains a reputation for the knowledge your specific lineage may be responsible for passing down to future generations, or your contributions to the world at large. However, in the light of a more peaceful world, it is all Striders' responsibility to reach out and create new unions within your own people as well as new promises and knowledge to take from your spiritual guides.

Your history, your pacts, your spirituality, it all amounts to one of the most important events in your Strider life, your day of union. Each milestone a mass ceremony is held known as the Union Ceremony and takes place for all suitable matches during the last two weeks of Respite. The purpose of this is to perform the union for as many Strider youths as possible from eldest to youngest between their second and third scale, each already proven in regard to the true role they’ll play in your society. The eldest chosen are the first to partake in this binding ceremony and perform their rite upon the second to last Newday of the cycle, the 33rd of Respite, with a mass homage to all the successful ceremonies on the following Nullday of each set. The remaining, or yet to be chosen, are reconsidered and if found a match, are bound upon the last Newday of the cycle, the 41st of Respite. Again, their unions are celebrated upon the final Nullday of the cycle.

During this time of celebration your families celebrate the strengthening of bonds with other families and the whole of the community. It is after these ceremonies where a young Strider will begin to become more tested by his people and the spirits guiding them in order to find out how best you may serve the balance of the spirit in all aspects of your people’s lives.

## The Tribes

Where your world was once divided by the two leading ideals of warriors and spiritualists, your people now rely on the strength of union to further those ideals. Shamans and warriors of different lineage have learned over time to unite and from that unity was born a mesh of ideals that guide your people further down the path of enlightenment and balance.

The highest positions within the collective of the Tribes are held by those who have seen the passing of fifteen scales or more. These surviving elders form a council that governs the collective, with each lineage having their eldest represent their Tribe's needs and ambitions. It is this council who delegate laws and the interactions with the other islanders of Imperium. The clans that exist in modern days are those lineages or tribes who descended from the union of spiritual leaders and the bravest of hunters who have survived the turbulent milestones of war and have found their niche with their individual family promises to the spirits of the natural world.

For example, the Bolesh Tribe deal in keeping track of celestial events and teach all who seek it the wisdom in the stars and earth. The Tribe of Doreade are the custodians of the population of wild animals and insects with their knowledge of herbalism and hunting and are primary caretakers to the natural resources that feed the collective tribes under the elder’s guidance. Many bloodlines share varying promises, all of which are tied to the spirit world and those elements that find them favor. Keep your Tribe’s promises close to your heart as you begin your journey, and through you your lineage will flourish as well as those who follow in your spiritual knowledge.

## Advantages and Disadvantages

**Advantages** - As with your descendants of the past every Strider among the tribes of Imperium have access to a fairly powerful and innate spiritual magic giving them natural access to two specific healing spells; Heal the Fallen & Direct Healing. Some of the Shamans of your kind, due to their connection to nature and the spiritual world, find it possible to perceive and interact with the natural Spirits that fill your world. Your long gait and attunement to the earth also makes you immune to Binding Magic. All Striders gain a bonus to their Arcane ability, and due to this innate mysticism, all of your people have some measure of mystical strength to tie into their commitment to the natural world.

**Disadvantages** - Fortunately, and unfortunately for the Striders, due to their strong tie to the spiritual world they find it difficult to relate to the other more materialistic islanders of Imperium. The Striders, even during their more turbulent past, have always maintained constant neutral allies with all of those who dwell on Imperium. You typically find it hard to be included in the world beyond your lands, or at the very least, it is difficult to build the trust of those who may wish to ask you for aid. This particular outlook is one that you should reflect on much as a Strider due to your often alien or distant perspectives of other islanders. Your constant conflict: whether to aid or lend healing to those in need, or simply watch as others take for granted the true world that surrounds you all.

## Common Knowledge

Though your kind is close to one another in belief and in communion, it seems you are more closely tied to the natural elements that dance and spring forth around you than anything else. The Strider's personal connection to the natural spirits of the world creates a dynamic in your society the likes of which no other islanders of Imperium have experienced. Though open to taking and giving back as much to the cycle as can be redeemed, your kind is not without their secrets and those coveted by the spirits are the greatest. You know that all knowledge is not easily gained nor is power. With the world of the spirits each individual being offers much to the Strider who will commune with it, but no spirit alone is great, and the bonds that fuel the magic of your people are not without their price. Each of the major holidays have their place within the Strider foundation, but all are also accompanied with many annual rites and even more minor ones practiced by the individual Tribes depending on their bonds to the natural world and their collective offerings and roles within your society. At a young milestone you are given your trials to find your path, and to find the bonds you yourself hold to the spiritual world which is so sacred to your people. It is three milestones after these trials that you will finally make the choice, approved by the council of course, but a first of many choices you’ll get to strengthen the tribes and the Strider's connection to the unseen world at large.

## Theology

Strider believe in a concept they call The Great Causation. There are journals and tombs which discuss the various ways and means by which everything exists. The basic premise is that all things which occur happen for a reason and all things which exist are for a purpose. Most scholars would get lost in a conversation on this subject, but the Strider is well versed in this rhetoric.

## Thoughts on the other origins of Imperium

Strider have long acted as the witnesses to the action of the other origins, preferring not to get involved in wars or take apparent sides. Their interactions with the other origins, even during both Wars of the Origins, was as impartial and non-confrontational as they could make it. Strider simply wish to enjoy their existence and share it with those who are willing, but they are not without objectivity or opinion.

Though a fairly young and naïve origin compared to most, the Humans have made the largest of strides in covering ground and controlling it. Just another element of their short lives that your people as a whole don’t seem to understand along with many other materialistic and petty things the youngest of Imperium dwellers are known for. It does not mean you won’t find yourself or others, especially depending on their clans’ promise to the natural world, helping many stragglers of various origins. You will find, compared to the rest, the ones who will need your strength and sagely guidance are those children of man who have made themselves Kings of your tiny island and from what you’ve seen keep far from the a affairs of the world you so proudly walk into.

Not the smallest, but definitely the eldest of the origins you’ve had contact with upon this fair island. The Dwarves you’ve come to know are a origin of earth burrowing people that, , even with their long lives and already notable resources, are farmers of metals and, much like the humans, one of the greediest creatures your people have and hopefully will ever know. Every Dwarf you've ever know has been more concerned with striking a deal than with making an effort to affect change in this world, or even to care at all for the world you have been blessed with. While you rarely entertain such guests, there are times when you find it worthwhile to barter for necessities and forgo the disdain you naturally feel for these greedy cohabitants of Imperium.

Most definitely the smallest of people with whom you share the island. The Quicken, as the Striders mostly refer to these tiny people, are a bundle of strange builders and farmers that live off the land east of the mountains you call home. On the clear nights above the valleys, in just the right spots along the ridges that make up your home, it is often you can find a means to view the Quickens lights that gleam above their streets. Their technology, as they call it, simple wires and metals. The entirety of their society seems, just like yours, to completely rely on what the world around them provides. This is one of the reasons your people have had for having very few conflicts with theirs over the milestones. Often you find it is the Quicken who come to your aid, and almost always in troupes that only the wind can ever seem to keep track of. Their union and content nature inspires hope in regard to saving the resources of Imperium for future generations of all people.

*Origin Story By: Nathaniel Baker*