By John Peake (PeakeJ@genesisakl.genesis.co.nz)

The Followers of the Shattered One are an extremely secretive order who believe that the great Necromancer who shattered the world did not perish utterly in the cataclysm which followed the casting of his final spell, instead, the energy he poured into the incantation together with the combined spells of the good mages and clerics caused his life force to be torn assunder and have a fraction of his life force trapped in each Earthstone.

It is this trapped life force which has powered the Earthstones. The Followers of the Shattered One believe that this shattering of 'The Great One' (True name still unknown) is the only thing which prevented him from achieving true God status. Instead His divided nature allows Him only Semi God-like status (Thus clerics of the shattered one will only ever recieve spells of third level or less effectively limiting their advancement to fifth level maximum.

The Followers of the Shattered One believe that the rejoining of all the Earthstones in conjunction with the pronouncement of his true name will free their master from his imprisonment and allow him to finally reach God status. (This could be a possible cause for some of the fragments loosing power and crashing into each other....i.e members of the cult have located some of the stones and have managed....through various magic jar spells etc etc..... to release the life force in these stones into a special receptical which has taken the interveaning 2000 years to construct).

Members of the cult may only be Human (Possibly because no non human has ever been told of it's existence) with either Neutral, Lawfull/Neutral, or Lawfull/evil alignment chaotic follower are not permitted as the shattering of the Great One was considered Chaotic and he is a bit pissed about it.

The Followers of the Shattered One begin their careers as either straight clerics (with afforementioned level limitations) or multiclassed cleric/mage, "possibly" allowing Cleric/thief, Cleric/fighter however the last two combinations will be severely limited in level as the will never be allowed into 'inner circle' discussions and will be primarily used as body guards (being indoctrinated into the Brotherhood as infants and raised to be fanatical/ Loyal bodyguards of higher brotherhood members (Alignment limited to Lawful/Nuetral)). Multiclassed Cleric mages progress as per multiclassed Cleric mages until they reach their cleric level maximum (Possibly 5th to 9th depending on Wisdom i.e 15 wis=5th max, 16=6th, 17=7th, 18=8th, 19 wis=9th). Upon reaching their cleric maximum they continue to progress as a single class mage (Effectively as per a dual class character).

Clerical abilities can be reduced when not whithin the gravitational field of a fragment (cast as one level lower thus may loose access to higer level spells etc, saves can stay the same as can Hps etc.)

The casting of mage spells by a member of the Brotherhood can take two forms. Members can be specialist Necromancers (even when multiclass).....or....members who wish access to other spheres of spell have learnt to take their energy from the fragments effectively acting as a "Dark Sun" TM defiler with slight modification...the "circle of ash" caused by the destruction of plant life by defiling magic does not occur if there is a corpes nearby. Instead the bodies of dead creatures within a 50 yrd radius turn to ash (No chance of reserection...except posibly by a member of the Brotherhood....) starting with the lowest level hit dice creature/body and working up. The amount of destruction caused by the defiling magic is equivalent to ont Level or hit dice per level of spell cast. thus a third level spell would totaly destroy a single 3rd level/hit dice corpse, Three 1st levels, or one 1st level plus some plant life. Creatures above third level would act as though they had been drained of three levels....thus reserecting a 10th level corpse who had been affected by three spell levels of defiling magic could be reserected but only as a 7th level character. Thus a brotherhood mage is in deep shit if there are no corpse about and he is not within the gravitational field of a fragment..and there is no plant life indiginous to the fragments within 50 yards (or 10 yards/level which ever is greater).

'The Brotherhood' also known as The Followers of the Shattered One is a small order Their numbers will probably not exceed 200 spread throughout the fragments even so almost all members of the Brotherhood (Misnomer as Females are permitted if the show suitable characteristics) would only Know another 10 to 30 fellow members. Members can identify other members of the cult through a series of complex hand signals. The identification of cult members this way is an extremely subtle process with a series of around fifteen different hand signals given one at a time in a particular order one signal only at each meeting....Thus a minimum of fifteen independent and separate conversations are requred to confirm the identity of another cult member (Thus only knowing 10-30 others).

The head of the order is a man known only to a few individuals as the collector. It is his skill in magic (How about 18th mage/ 9th cleric LE) which has recently allowed the extraction of the Shattered Ones soul to commence. The Collector has discovered more details regarding the 'reconstitution' of the shattered one and believes that the individual fragments of the Shattered One's soul must be combined in a particular order to prevent the process from driving the Shattered One completely insane. Only he (The Collector) is sufficiently attuned to the Shattered One's will to be able to determine if a particular Earthstone is the next one required to be rejoined and even then he recieves only a yesss/nooo reply from his god (To Be) so for every Earthstone discovered the collector must travel to that location (through teleportation designed to home him onto a particular amulet or pattern let near the stone by other members(the Travellers ) of the cult and ask the Shattered One is this the next?

The Collector is old beyond normal man through the sacrifice of years willingly by other members of the cult.....He is researching a way to take the years from unwilling non-cult members.... and is slowly approaching the level of Lichdom (However, even he is not fully aware of this).Thus you can see that the process of discovering the souls in the correct order is going to be a long and slow process.

The members of the Brotherhood believe that once the final portion of soul is rejoined the Shattered One will become whole again and reward them (of course) with the making of a new whole world again.