Decades ago, a blind priest of Heironeous woke from a dream screaming of what he can see. Other priest came to his side and attempted to calm the old priest. Others listened. The priest had been blind from birth, and the images he described were far to detailed for someone who has never seen. The old priest rambled and shouted the events that unfolded, as if he were still dreaming them. By mornings light the old priest died. The temple high priest contributed to the stress of the night on an old heart. Several were skeptical of this excuse and began to write down what they could remember the old man saying. After man hours of transcribing their memories onto paper one collected the pages to read over what they had wrote. To his horror, the words on the pages faded out to nothing. Each attempt to document the old priest words met with the same fate

On that day and against the high cleric’s authority, an order was formed inside the Heironeous faith. Young people were found and trained to find signs of this prophesy and to do what they could to prevent it from happening. The old clerics words were then past between priests and passed down to successors. The high clerics of the temples in many vain attempts tried to disband the order. They punished priest that supported it or cast them out of the temples. These priests found support from other temples and other allies. Constructed their own order halls and continued their work.

Today the relations between the two are strained, though order members are allowed in the temple due to their devotion to duty and loyalty to their cause. Members are however the subject of constant ridicule and being referred to as “mindless dogs blindly following their paranoid masters”. Insults such as “Be a good dog and go fetch something” as well as other demeaning comments are nearly constant while in the temples.

The current training starts a member at 8 to 10 years of age. The member will remain in the training grounds until either fail out or complete the training. Members that fail out or are found to be unsuited are either removed from the grounds or fall into training as clerics, temple guards (fighters), monks or temple informants (thieves). Training consists of weapon use and tactics, divine spell casting, arcane spell conversion, stealth, lock manipulation, trap mechanics, disguise, and observation in habits of people. The training is ongoing and continues as members return from missions. At a point, the trainee becomes the trainer teaching new members, while at the same time learning from both senior and peer members.

Heironeous is the only religious faith of the order. Although the clergy of the faith disagree and most of the time degrade and insult the order members, order leaders remind their members, “We are followers of Heironeous, not of his clergy, and besides, intelligence is not a prime requisite to become a priest”. The relationship is strained; however the order will always come to the protection of the temples in their time of need. They will not participate in attacks on other temples, not even those of Hexor, unless it is to stop the prophesy. Once the temple is defended and deems to be safe, the order will return to their duties. On a few occasions, order members and temple clerics openly warred. These battles did not last long as the clerics spell abilities failed, and the temple was over-run. The fight ended with the high cleric being slain. Memory of events like this today keeps the assault on the order verbal, and not physical.

The order members are loyal to the cause without fault. They will take what ever action is needed to prevent the destructive prophesy from being fulfilled. The follow the strict rules of their order and follow instructions without question, so long as those instructions do not interfere or distract with stopping the prophesy. For this reason, order members are of the Lawful-Neutral alignment and cannot change. To do will cause them to faulter in their belief resulting in a loss of conviction and a loss of order abilities.

The races that make up of the order are mainly based on those in the area. Considering the area is made up of primarily human, most of the order is human. Though half-elves are the second most common, followed by half-orcs, then dwarves and finally halflings which are the rarest mostly because of their nature. Order informants and those that work for the order are of nearly any race.

Because of the nature of their training. Order members that strike out on their own and focus on a single aspect of their training or veer off to learn another profession are removed from the active order. These people can still participate in the orders agenda; however, they will do so from outside the halls. The special abilities and spells will be removed as well as all in temple support. Therefore, order members cannot multi-class or dual class without losing all the abilities of the order.

Order members will join adventure groups while in between jobs. This allows them to hone their skills and have an excuse to be in certain areas. While adventuring they will still seek to gather information and look for the signs of prophesy. Order members will join most any group, however they will never reveal their true nature and will conceal any logo or marking that someone can trace back to the order. In a party the order member can fill several roles, a low-level thief, mid-level fighter, healer or information gatherer.

Because of their training, order members start at level 5, this is to show the amount of training they recieved and have minimum ability stats. These minimum stats allow them to use all the abilities in the order. Any stat permanently falling below the minimum can have drastic effects on a member’s skills and abilities. The minimum ability score are:

Special Skills

Due to the intense training, order members learn skills that are not traditional for fighters or clerics. Order members however only learn the basics of each skill. For this reason, the character may spend normal points at first level but require double points after that to continue to advance the skill. So for at first level special skills are treated as class skills and after first level are non-class learned skills.

Feats

Class Basic Feats: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons, shield use.

BONUS FEAT: Weapon Focus, point blank shot
Feat progression is: 2 at first level and one every 3 levels with a bonus feat every 5th level.

Prophet Training Slots

The character has 5 trainable slots that is used for trained feats outside the characters class. These skills must be trained at the order halls. The effectiveness of feat or skill is reduced and is not as effective as the normal feat. The Game Master will determine feat by feat. The character must meet the requirements for the feat.

Class Feats

Emulate Class I

This feat will allow the character to emulate the first five levels of Warrior, Wizard, Sorcerer, bard, or Rouge. They will gain access to class feats and skills but will not gain feat or skill progression. Example, with Emulate Warrior I the character will gain access to weapon specialization feat but will not gain feats at level 2 or level 4. The character ability scores also must qualify them for the class.

On the sixth level the character resumes progression as a normal order member. Each item (BAB, Saves, etc.) will freeze until the number equals the base number of the order level progression. To continue emulating a class, the character must take the next feat in the progression Emulate Class II.

At 5th level the character can choose to emulate another class by taking this feat again. Stats will either freeze or progress based on which is higher and at level 11 the character resumes normal progression unless Emulate Class II is taken in the class.

Stopping progression in a class freezes that class, the character cannot take emulate fighter at 1st then emulate wizard at 10th then return to fighter at 15th. The emulation must be in succession.

Emulate Class II - III

At fifth level the character can choose to continue emulating the previous class. By taking this feat allows class emulation to continue until level 10 at which time Emulate Class III is taken which is the highest the emulation can go.

Prophet Focus

This feat allows the member to improve on their order skills and knowledge of the prophecy. By taking this feat the member gains the skill Prophecy Knowledge with 4 skill ranks and uses the following guidelines for new skill points per level, starting the level this feat is taken. If Intelligence is higher than wisdom (3 points + intelligence modifier + half of Wisdom modifier). If wisdom is higher than intelligence (3 points + wisdom modifier + half intelligence modifier) all numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Research Focus

This feat trains the character to properly organize research activity to maximize the effectiveness and reduce research time. The quality and quantity of the information found (if it is available) increases. This gives a 20% higher chance to find relative information, 10% chance to find unrelated by helpful information during research and a 10% chance to make obscure connections between current and all previous research attempts. This feat also grants a +2 on all knowledge checks.

Weapon on the Fly

This feat allows a character to use any weapon with half the penalty for non-proficiency. This includes makeshift weapons.

Weapons and Armor

This class is training to use most small to medium bladed weapons, maces, clubs, and quarterstaff. Some may also have concealed or spring-loaded weapons that would convert a walking staff into a duel bladed sword. This class is also trained in light and medium armor, although light to no armor is preferred. Order members prefer using spells and magic to replace armor allowing easier concealment.

5th Level

This ability allows the member to sacrifice a spell to magically create a temporary key to a lock. The accuracy of the key is dependent on the level of spell sacrificed and the DC of the lock. A first level spell will gain a max DC of 25 and a fourth level will gain a key with max DC of 28. A combination of spells can increase the max DC, so sacrificing a 2nd and 4th will gain a max DC of 30. For every 5 skill points in open lock one level of spell is removed. An accurate key will open the lock, but will not remove or bipass any traps.

7th Level

At 7th level the order member may sacrifice spells to conjure a carrier. The carrier appears with a carrier pouch attached. The size of the pouch is dependant on the carrier size. The carrier size depends on the number and power of spells sacificed by the order member.

9th Level

The member can sacrifice a 3rd level spell to become out of phase and passing through wooden and stone doors. The member can also phase through wooden or stone walls, so long as they are less than one foot thick. This ability lasts for only one round and can pass through only one object at a time. If there is an object (such as bookcase) on the other side, the member will be pushed back out of the wall.

Each order member leave training with some special item to assist them with their tasks. Each person received a crimson amulet, a holy weapon, a cloak of concealment, and a ring of healing (2/day) (10 points per use). And one of the following: Earring of tongues, Bracers of Magical vestment, or magic weapon (4x per day)