Mystic Orders in Alphatia
by Cab DavidsonDracon
Location: Draco, Alphatia
Style: Energy, Matter, Time, and Thought
Members: 1,250
Master: Mistress Eradne of the Four Elements (Mystic 30)
It’s hard to know exactly where the Dracon are located, except in that the name of the order is spoken of in hushed tones in all of the dark places of the city of Draco (perhaps the most populous city in Mystara, if not the most salubrious). In fact members of the order (believed to be the most numerous in the world, although spread across a vast area) will, if pushed, refer to the Dracon as an idea rather than a place. Drawing most of its members from the back streets of Draco, but also reaching out to the other great cities of the Alphatian empire to find the most talented individuals to join them, its members are found from Thothia to Esterhold, from Alpha to Spearpoint. Upholding the rights of the the common people of the Empire, and being willing to stand up to the potent enemies including even the most powerful wizards in doing so, the Dracon form the last, best and only hope of justice for the downtrodden peasantry of Mystara’s most powerful empire.
Eradne has led the order for the last 30 years and is among the wisest and most powerful mystics known. She is calm, playful even, in selecting new recruits for the order and sending members on missions to the furthest reaches of the world. But in her key missions of opposing organised crime in Draco (largely fronted by the Dopplegangster crime families) and holding back the tide of the Order of the Screaming Fist, she is resolute.
Screaming Fist
Location: Shraek, Alphatia
Style: Entropy
Members: 190
Master: Volodymyr the Dark (Vampire, Mystic 19)
Few choose to travel to or trade with Blackheart. Fewer still willingly visit the twisted City of Screams, the capital, Shraek. It is not a place where an underclass can thrive; indeed few even survive without the patronage or protection of a wizardly master. And the Order of the Screaming Fist, located in dank, cramped conditions in catacombs beneath the city, does not stand against this darkness. Indeed it is key to their philosophy that only those who have faced most despair can become members, and their abbot is a perfect example of this.
The mystics of the Screaming Fist seem to be working to no particular plan or ideal, and seek only to inflict pain and harm for their own entertainment. Indeed in the truest sense their philosophy can be described as nihilism, and it is fair to say that they consider their own lives to be only trivially less meaningless than those of those who they torture and kill for their own sadistic entertainment.
Screaming Fist mystics are to be found across Alphatia, joining groups of terrorists or evil adventurers out of a desire to further their own skills, rather than for any greater ethical purpose. They are hated by the Dracon order. That feeling is mutual.
Tondera
Location: Norwold, close to Regent Pass
Members: 150 (mostly humans, some metamorphs)
Style: Time and Energy
Master: Abbot Gustaf ap Gustaf (Mystic 18)
Styled as the Monastery of Fire and Water, the Tondera order is an ancient and respected institution that has weathered the storms of raiding dragons from the Wyrmsteeth mountains, frost giants from Frosthaven, and invading forces from both great empires. It welcomes those who come to seek enlightenment amongst the cold stones of its isolated mountain top location, but the trial of reaching the mountain top alone keeps most would-be members away. Members of its order are found in adventuring parties across Norwold and further afield, and their pledge to seek justice for the most vulnerable is respected among those who know them. While most of the order are human, this is the chosen location that the few metamorphs from the island of Metinsulae come to when they choose to become mystics.
The location of the monastery, close to the strategically vital Regent Pass that is the only safe over-land route to the capital city of Alpha, has meant that the kings of both Norwold and Oceansend know better than to mistreat the order’s brethren. Just because the order has never meddled in Norwold politics, that does not mean that it never could.