Alignment: Any non-evil.
Symbol: Two figures watching a shooting star. Often, one is detailed or solid while the other is faded or an outline.
Disciplines: Sagitta Stellaris
Oath: It is said that the Echoes’ Grand Administrator keeps a secret list of names gathered from divinations: future members that have been foretold to accomplish great things for the organization’s cause. When an intern on that list shows interest in becoming a formal member, there is very little reason to deny them if they have shown a baseline level of capability - if too inexperienced, they are told to come back in a few years. However, as the Echoes are in the business of changing the future as much as predicting it, they are always on the lookout for rising talents, even ones that their prophecies never mention. As the modern workings of the organization still aren’t large-scale, this selection process is more informal, based on recommendations, peer assessment, and general trust. Whether a member is chosen due to their record of achievements, or the whims of the future, either way they are brought to a private meeting with at least two current members of the Echoes. These members oversee the formalities, teach the member the Timeless Message Ritual, and have them read and sign the contract of oath, which is then couriered to the archives of the Echoes’ main office.
“History is watching us. By choosing to become an agent of the Echoes of Prophecy, I agree to let them become part of my story, and I a fragment of theirs, in turn a fragment of the history of the Empire of Stars. I will represent the Echoes in ways the future can look back on nobly, and with the knowledge they share, I will keep searching to unravel secrets lost to time. I work on the goodwill of the Empire of Stars, and swear not to use this link to dark ends, lest I make enemies of them for all eternity.”
Allegiance Benefit: A member of the Echoes of Prophecy gains a +2 insight bonus on Knowledge (geography), Knowledge (history), and Perception checks. In addition, they learn Astrati, the dead language only used by the Empire of Stars. Finally, they gain the ability to perform the Timeless Message Ritual: Once per week they can spend ten minutes drawing a magic circle and activating it to send a message of up to twenty-five words back in time to the Empire of Stars, along with a set of coordinates. Digging or searching at those coordinates will then uncover a preserved cache or tablet with the Empire’s response.
- If the request is information about the future, treat the reply as is produced by the divination spell with caster level equal to the user’s character level. A failed percentage roll of this spell means that no reply is found, for reasons unknown.
- If the request is about information about the present or recent past, the empire communicates a summary of their relevant prophecies or omens on the topic, which the user can combine with their own knowledge to deduce an answer. Treat this as the akashic communion spell with caster level equal to the user’s character level. This cannot be used to gain knowledge of events more than a few years into the past, unless the events date back to the Empire’s time.
- At the GM’s discretion, the user may request a more open-ended favor of the Empire. See Available Services below.
Using 25 gp worth of gold dust in the ritual allows the member to ignore the one-week limitation, but the ritual can never be performed more than once a day by the same creature, and a ritual performed this way cannot be used for the third mode.
A former member of the Echoes loses the granted insight bonuses to skills, but does not forget Astrati or how to perform the Timeless Message Ritual. However, those who have lost standing with the organization and the empire will simply find that their messages to the past no longer get replies.
Description: The Echoes of Prophecy is a relatively new martial tradition, lacking in personnel and influence compared to most others - yet simultaneously, it is one that has been influencing history in small ways for centuries.
Barely thirty years ago, a small independent archaeology team, following the most desperate of rumors, ventured far into uncharted lands in search of a breakthrough. Their gamble was rewarded, and they unearthed a long-sealed underground temple. It was immediately obvious that this wasn’t any ordinary ruin: the writings, magic tools, and beautiful mosaics of the night sky within were evidence of an ancient civilization that had gone unmentioned in any modern record, untouched and forgotten. The discovery had treasures enough for them to retire in luxury, forgotten knowledge to make them renowned in academia, and-- in the final chamber, the greatest shock of all: an engraved message on the ceiling addressed to the archaeology team, calling each one of them by name. Their arrival had been expected.
In the message, the writers introduced themselves as the Empire of Stars, a thriving civilization that once had outposts all across the continent and technology specializing in divination and fortune-telling magic beyond what modern society could replicate. However, this was no warning or curse upon the predicted intruders: the message explained that the temple and its treasure cache had been created specifically for these archaeologists to find, because the Empire had a great request for them in turn.
Gazing into their own future, the Empire of Stars had found a worrying truth: a specific timespan was mysteriously impenetrable to their magic. No matter what the Empire attempted, their divinations were blocked from receiving any information about what might have happened during the stretch - starting five hundred years from the time of writing, lasting an entire one thousand years, and ending just a few years before the archaeologists would find the message. Then, being able to gain forecasts again about the modern era, the Empire could see that whatever occurred, once the shrouded millennium was over, its civilization had been destroyed. The capital city would completely vanish off the face of the continent. Its remaining cities now were crumbling ruins, there were no living descendants of its blood or culture to speak of, and its legacy missing from recorded history.
Their request to the archaeologists was straightforward in concept, but demanding in execution: use the treasures and resources from the tomb to found an organization dedicated to unravelling clues of the past and pinpointing what caused the Empire’s disappearance: where fortune telling couldn’t see into the future, modern archaeologists could research into the past. There would surely be clues - if the Empire didn’t instantly disappear at the start of the shrouded millennium, it would have left records to find. Other civilizations around at the time would keep their own personal archives. Remnants of their culture may turn up in unlikely places and could be traced back. It was a huge request to take on in the name of a dead civilization - but the Empire of Stars wasn’t going to insist the archaeologists did it without help.
One of the most interesting lost secrets within the temple was the instructions for the Timeless Message Ritual: a method of broadcasting a ‘temporally loud’ message into the record of history. By knowing what timespan to listen into, it was particularly easy for the Empire’s fortunetelling to clearly glean what was said, even from centuries in the past. Their diviners didn’t have any special magic to reply into the future, but they could always use the old-fashioned way: if coordinates were included in the message, one of the widespread outposts of the Empire could bury a time capsule at the specific location, to lay dormant until the broadcaster dug it up. Of course, this hugely limited the types of support that could be sent, but engraved stone tablets could preserve the most useful resource of all: prophecies and information.
Thus, the Echoes of Prophecy was formed to support this strange alliance across history. Both the Echoes and the Empire know that the future is not set in stone, and the people who are in the best position to change its course are the ones who know where it will currently lead. While their main goal is to aid the empire, the organization also hopes to use this partnership holistically, acting on prophecies of the future to subvert disaster or build their own prestige and resources. For many of these missions, recruiting members with strong combat prowess has been essential.
Detractors of the Echoes’ cause have many concerns - the Empire seems willing to help with altruistic goals, but communication with them was inherently one-sided, and they could easily be keeping their true motives hidden. Whatever shrouded a thousand years from the Empire’s magic had a risk of being a very powerful foe - or even divinity - that the Echoes were making an enemy of. Most of all, even if the Echoes did succeed, and help the Empire figure out how to avert its destruction… what would that mean for the modern day? There are safe answers, such as the idea that the Empire’s people would survive but go into hiding to not interfere with observed history. But there are also many, many worrying theories for what might occur if a forgotten nationwide power was allowed to rewrite the world’s past...
Common Tasks: The Echoes’ main goal is always to discover the truth of the Empire of Stars’ demise, and its members would be sent to investigate anything that could be a lead, especially in ancient dungeons or uncharted wilderness where clues to the past could lay undiscovered. On other occasions, the Empire sends a forewarning or prophecy about an event that might occur in the present day, typically bundled in with a reply to a timeless message ritual, and the Echoes must act to prevent disaster (after doing their best to interpret the cryptic vagueness that prophecies are invariably written in). The Echoes also take specific interest in bringing down any dark spellcasters who are using their own prophetic powers for malicious purposes - after all, others without the ability to see the future have a hard time catching those who can.
Available Services: As the modern branch of the Echoes of Eternity is still in its infancy, the support they can offer in remote locations is little more than what a moderate archaeology guild could.
However, by using the Timeless Message Ritual to ask for a favor from the past, a member can borrow the support of the Empire of Stars.
The Empire is generally cooperative to requests, but the intervening centuries heavily limit what they can meaningfully do. They can bury supplies at the stated coordinates, but anything spoilable will decay, and very valuable items are likely to be noticed by treasure hunters in the centuries between. Asking them to build a lasting stone shelter in the wilderness for a member to find often works, but natural disasters or other events might prematurely destroy them. They could be asked to plant fruit trees in a forest in hope the species thrives over the ages for a member of the Echoes to harvest the descendants of, but like all else it is a gamble on whether a legacy perseveres.
Crucially, as these favors ‘already happened’ in history, they cannot directly change the present for the person who requested them. They can never make something new appear in a place the ritual user or their party previously searched or heard reliable information about. Only by exploring the unknown can something that was hidden for a thousand years be found - but with a bit of luck, sometimes all it takes is digging through a desolate patch of land behind a house that had gone untouched since the local city’s founding.