8.6.9 Shamans

Arising from the ashes of the Druidic guild within the Heartwood, the Shamans are the awakened seers of Dia'ruis that stride the ancient forests. Known amongst their people as augurs and spiritwalkers, the Shaman aim to protect the lands of Dia'ruis and enact the will of their masters: the Praadi an-Kiar and the spirits within that claim dominion over that fledgling plane. Situated beneath the whole of the Great Oak, the murmured song and rituals of the Shamans can be heard, reverberating throughout the ancient Heartwood.

Blooded in the ancient rites of Shamanism, Primality, and Naturalism, the Shamans stand as weavers of old oaths, bend nature to their will, and call upon the Rhythm itself in battle against all who would stand against them in their task. The Praadi stand as watchers of an old world and do not give quarter to those who move against them.

Invoking the spirits, Shamanism calls upon the harrowing bonds that the seers swear themselves to before the ancient guardians that watch over Dia'ruis. With murmured prayers, they bind dark spirits to their fetishes, delivering foul portents and omens in the flurry of battle. Elder, ethereal beasts move in the shadows alongside them; mere echoes of the great spirits that they are born from and bound to the Shaman in rites of blood.

With the art of Primality, the Shaman calls upon the primordial elements and the Rhythm that winds itself throughout Dia'ruis. The Shamans rise as masters of the natural world, wreathing lightning within their hands and scourging the very lifeforce from the flesh of those who stand against them. Finally, with the art of Naturalism, the Shaman wields mastery over the forests that carpet the world in their ancient embrace. Overgrowth springs to the call of a Shaman, roiling outwards in a sea of seething life that few can quench as it runs rampant over the earth. Those caught in this tide of life are bound to its whim and that of the Shaman who wields its great strength.

While the ways of the Shaman espouse a deep and unparalleled reverence for life, nature, as always, strives for a balance, an opposite, and it is through this duality that the Shaman's twin - the Runecarver - exists. Commanding Runecarving, Sporulation, and Malediction, these priests of death instill terrible curses and cultivate rapacious fungi, drawing on the dark heart of nature to espouse the ways of rot, decay, and the inevitable end of all that lives.