Great Divination Wizards

The 'Great Divination Wizards' or often called 'the Diviners' for short, are the most powerful collective of mages in the known civilized world.

## History

Eons ago when magic first was organized for practice, every school of magic was equal, and were each taught to budding mages where they learned the strengths and weaknesses of each in order to become a balanced and wise magic user as they grew and practiced the magic arts. This continued for centuries, until a small group of mages discovered a way to more accurately determine the future outcomes of event using an unknown method - and thus their services were now in high demand. They preached they would only use this power with responsibility in order to maintain balance, but secretly they were gathering the fortune and untold favor among kings and nations across the globe. No one could have discovered their true intentions, the most powerful diviners sat within their organization and surely wouldn't work against themselves.

Once they decided to act on the unlimited opportunity that their divination magic offered, through various means such as foreseeing the future outcome of trade trends on the open market, offering aid to warring nations to determine outcomes of battles before they are fought, and foreseeing the discovery of new technologies or magical discoveries and beating the rightful inventors or discoverers to the punch, they started growing too quickly to control.

Even on the most basic level, fortune telling and identifying magic items for adventurers, their services were in high demand. They quickly rose above every other magic school, preaching responsible divination practices and ethical services to nations and nobles alike, it became hard to ignore they had grown to become the most powerful circle of mages in the world. More and more budding mages flocked to study at their schools, seeking this true and ultimate power.

The school got so large that it absorbed all other schools of magic, though they are kept separate when taught, and the curriculum is still the same - teaching balance and equality among magicks, but its clear which school holds the most power. Its grown so large that its structure now eclipses most nation's governments.

## Membership and Promotion

The Great Divination Wizards are now among the most prestigious and powerful mages in the world, having influence on politics, trade, and the direction and regulation of all magic and magic materials in the world. Almost every mage can only dream of being a Great Diviner, it equates to being a celebrity or a noble or a politician of the entire magic world.

Competition is fierce just to become an apprentice diviner, who are treated terribly, but promotions to a Diviner position or a great diviner position requires decades of service under them, and usually only when they die from old age does a promotion happen. Application to apprentice under a Diviner or Great Diviner is a long process that requires demonstration of extraordinary arcane aptitude, or bureaucratic aptitude, both are valued equally in practice.

Unfortunately with such competition for such powerful positions in the arcane world, comes the bureaucracy - The select few mages who gain apprenticeship into the Great Diviners circle finds themselves mired in it. This has led to a lot of bitter politics among the diviners, and mage's rivalries prove to be very dangerous.

All of this knowledge is also an impossible task to record and store in any library, but there are a multitude of archives available. Sometimes in order to find an answer that has previously been recorded, the archivists must divine its location within the archive itself, an irony in itself but it saves time and resources doing it this way rather than trying to divine the actual answer itself again. Many Diviners have their own metaplanes, filled with memories and visions, instead of archives, but these are just as hard to organize and keep neat even when one can reference and sort using their mind.

## Structure

At the top is a small group of Wizards, grown as the True Diviners who know the secrets of how divination magics work and can determine the outcomes of event through magic most accurately, their word is law and is carried out unquestioningly. It is once in maybe a thousand years that a seat opens up on this inner circle, and a successor is chosen to replace a True Diviner. Most mages would give everything in order to take this seat, and rarely does anyone get the chance without significant portion of their lives ensuring it as best they can.

Below the True Diviners are the various Great Diviners who form the large congress that discusses the outcomes of divinations from the True Diviners, bringing their own information and divinations to the table for consideration. Most mages who are promoted to this rank know little of Divination magic beyond the basics, but are taught by a True Diviner the secrets of unlocking the clarity buried within the divination school of magic.

Directly below the Great Diviners are their many Apprentice Diviners, not known to be treated well and rarely succeed in taking their mentor's seats on the congress, instead they are traded among Great Diviners as currency for favors and valuable information that each diviner keeps in their personal archives. These poor souls are usually just lost in the bureaucracy of the Diviners and are long-time hopefuls to find a coveted seat in any position of importance.

On the congress of Great diviners is always one chosen Great Archivist, who is responsible for overseeing the legion of Diviner Archivists who archive all the information obtained by the congress for reference and future use.

Directly below the Great Diviners' Great Archivist are the Diviner Archivists, who catalog and categorize the monumental amount of information that is obtained daily by the congress of Great Diviners. Since they are always looking for something - usually a way to gain a foothold toward gaining a seat within the True Diviners inner circle, a lot of information is found not immediately useful - and is sent for archival. The archives are organized by category, but there is a lot of blurring between the lines of some archives and others, and some crossover, so finding anything can be quite a challenge.

Below the congress of great divination wizards are the Diviner Mages, usually of elder age, who carry out the will of the Great Diviners Congress as best as they can, and perform most of the research and experimentation when needed. These members are the most grounded in the organization, mostly with an appropriate variety of schools of magic being studied and known, and are less mired in the politics of the upper echelon of the organization.

Below the Diviner Mages are more Apprentice Diviners, usually budding young mages who are eager to prove themselves even with decades of loyalty and service to a Diviner Mage who's only concern is finding a way to rise to the rank of Great Diviner. The Diviner Mages

## Goals

To ensure the continued prosperity of the civilized races, to responsibly teach and support all schools of magic. To be a resource of ultimate knowledge in order to protect their way of life and the lives of others. To continue the Great Divination Wizards traditions and practices and to support the organization itself so that it does not crumble, leaving civilization blind to itself once again.