A templar is a priest, a bureaucrat, and an enforcer — all in one. In the city-states of the Tyr Region, the templars are the right hand of the sorcerer-monarchs, executing their will, administering their domains, and ensuring that the machinery of civilisation continues to turn beneath the crimson sun.
To the common citizen of an Athasian city, a templar is many things. To the merchant, she is the official who approves trade routes and collects tariffs — or who can be bribed to look the other way when contraband passes through the gate. To the slave, he is the lash and the law, the figure in black whose whim can mean an extra ration of water or a slow death beneath the sun. To the noble, the templar is both rival and necessary evil — a power to be courted, feared, and occasionally eliminated. To the Veiled Alliance, the templar is the hunter, the interrogator, the one who must be evaded at all costs.
Templars perform three vital functions within any sorcerer-monarch’s domain. First, they serve as the city’s guard and military officers — low-level templars patrol the streets, mid-level templars command units of soldiers, and high-level templars serve as generals who lead armies into battle and raise legions of undead to swell the ranks. Second, they administer the city’s bureaucracy — collecting taxes, distributing grain, maintaining the water supply, overseeing construction, and managing the thousands of slaves whose labour keeps the city alive. Third, they maintain the illusion of the sorcerer-monarch’s divinity, enforcing worship and homage through their absolute power.
The templar’s power is not inherent. It is granted. Every spell a templar casts, every command a templar issues with the weight of the state behind it, derives ultimately from the sorcerer-monarch. This is the templar’s bargain: power in exchange for service. A templar who serves well rises in rank and influence. A templar who fails — or worse, a templar whose monarch falls — loses everything.
In the hierarchy of an Athasian city-state, the templars stand directly beneath the sorcerer-monarch. Above them is only the ruler. Below them are the nobility (who control the farms and water supplies), the merchants (who move goods between cities), the free citizens (who engage in trade and try to remain free), and the slaves (who provide the muscle for everything else).
Templars are recruited from the children of existing templars, from the free citizenry, and occasionally from the nobility — though most nobles consider it beneath their station to take on the duties of the templar class. Those who do join from noble families often bring considerable political resources with them, accelerating their rise through the ranks.
Along with the nobility, templars are among the very few permitted to read and write in Athasian society. This monopoly on literacy is a source of immense power. Knowledge is controlled, and those who control knowledge control the city. The penalty for a non-templar or non-noble caught reading or writing is death — a law the templars enforce with particular zeal, for they perceive knowledge as power and guard it jealously.
A templar’s alignment must fall within one step of the patron sorcerer-monarch on the moral (good/evil) axis only. The ethical axis — law versus chaos — is entirely unrestricted. This means that a templar serving a lawful evil monarch like Hamanu may be lawful evil, neutral evil, chaotic evil, lawful neutral, true neutral, or chaotic neutral. A templar serving the good-aligned monarch Oronis of Kurn may be lawful good, neutral good, chaotic good, lawful neutral, true neutral, or chaotic neutral.
A templar’s loyalty is to the sorcerer-monarch who grants her power. This loyalty cannot be transferred while the monarch still lives. A templar from Urik cannot simply decide to serve Nibenay. Should a templar’s monarch fall from power or be killed, however, the templar may petition another sorcerer-monarch for acceptance — though whether the new monarch extends an open hand or the taste of steel depends entirely on the monarch’s whim and the petitioner’s usefulness.
Athas is a world without gods. The sorcerer-kings are not true deities, whatever they claim. Priestly magic across the Tablelands comes from the elemental planes — elemental clerics and druids reach them directly; templars reach them through the conduit their monarch controls. Whether true gods ever existed on Athas is an open question. The ruins of ancient temples dot the wastes, and undead creatures still whisper prayers to gods long dead — but if those gods once lived, they have been silent for millennia.
Elemental clerics draw their power directly from the planes of earth, air, fire, or water, serving the elements themselves. Druids guard the spirits of the land and draw power through those ancient guardians. Templars draw their power through a different channel entirely — the sorcerer-monarch.
The sorcerer-monarchs are beings of immense magical and psionic power. In the distant past, through means now lost to history, they became connected to the elemental planes as living conduits. They cannot use priestly magic themselves — the power flows through them, not to them. But they can grant access to that flow to their most loyal servants: the templars.
The exact nature of this connection is not fully understood, even by the sorcerer-monarchs themselves. What matters is that each sorcerer-monarch controls a conduit to the elemental planes. Through a simple ritual, the monarch opens access to this conduit for a chosen servant. No ceremony, no spoken words, no audience. The candidate may not know the exact moment it happened. The sigil itself is granted separately, as a badge of office and divine focus, independent of the conduit opening. From that moment forward, the templar can call upon elemental magic at will.
The metaphor understood by most templars is one of a gate and a road. The sorcerer-monarch holds the key to the gate. Once the gate is opened, the templar walks the road — the monarch does not direct the templar’s every step, does not audit each spell, does not respond to individual prayers like a deity. The king controls the gate, not the traffic.
A templar can cast any spell she knows at any time, provided she has the spell slot to fuel it. She is a spontaneous caster, limited only by her personal reserves of energy and the breadth of her knowledge. The sorcerer-monarch is not consciously aware of which spells the templar is casting at any given moment, any more than the lord of a manor tracks every coin spent by every servant.
Every templar receives a sigil upon induction into the templarate. The form of the sigil is unique to each city-state but is always unmistakable for what it is — a badge of office, a symbol of authority, and a divine focus for spellcasting.
Common misconceptions about the sigil persist among those who see templar magic only from the outside. Many slaves believe the sigil is the source of a templar’s power — that if you could steal or destroy the sigil, you would render the templar powerless. Slave folklore is full of tales of clever escapees who snatched a templar’s sigil and fled successfully.
Free citizens often believe the sigil is a communication device — that the sorcerer-monarch can see through it, speak through it, and monitor the templar’s every move. The templars do nothing to discourage the belief. Fear keeps the population docile.
Even some junior templars misunderstand the sigil’s function, treating it with a superstitious reverence that borders on idolatry. They polish it obsessively, clutch it when nervous, and panic if it is temporarily misplaced. Senior templars notice the superstition and try to correct it when they can — the sigil is a tool of office, not an object of veneration.
The truth is simple. The sigil is a divine focus, nothing more and nothing less. Spells that require a divine focus component cannot be cast without the sigil in hand. Spells that do not require a divine focus can be cast freely, sigil or no sigil. A templar who loses her sigil is inconvenienced — certain spells become temporarily inaccessible — but she does not lose her connection to the conduit. She is simply without her divine focus until she obtains or crafts a replacement — the sigil is not magical in itself, merely an attuned object, and fashioning a new one is neither difficult nor expensive.
In some city-states, the sigil takes the form of a medallion worn about the neck. In others, it is a ring, a brooch, or an amulet. In Urik, templar sigils are wrought from obsidian. In Nibenay, they are carved from agafari wood. In Gulg, the sigil is incorporated into the templar’s necklace of rank. Whatever its form, a templar’s sigil represents her office, her authority, and her connection to the sorcerer-monarch she serves.
When a templar casts a spell with a verbal component, she speaks the divine syllables that shape raw power into a defined effect — much as a cleric does. But unlike other spellcasters, the templar finishes with a brief phrase in Common. The words are often vague — the listener may not know what is about to happen until it does, and by then it is too late.
Examples of the templar's vernacular trigger, spoken at the end of the magical incantation:
“In the name of King Kalak, a bolt from the heavens!”
“King Hamanu commands it — fall to your knees!”
“King Nibenay's gaze finds you — be revealed!”
“The Oba provides. Rise and serve.”
“King Tectuktitlay sees your treachery. Burn.”
“Lord Andropinis decrees your guilt. The sentence is final.”
“The Grand Vizier restores you — now stand.”
“King Daskinor knows your secrets. Speak them.”
“King Oronis wills it — be at peace.”
“The Dragon claims you — do not resist.”
“King Dregoth judges you. Submit.”
The connection between templar and monarch is absolute — and absolutely dependent on the monarch’s survival. If a sorcerer-monarch dies, every templar who served that monarch loses all spellcasting ability. The conduit closes, the power ceases to flow, and the templar becomes an ordinary mortal — stripped of spells, though retaining the mundane skills, combat training, and bureaucratic expertise accumulated over a lifetime of service.
The same fate befalls a templar who falls from favour with the monarch. If the sorcerer-monarch chooses to sever a templar’s access to the conduit — and most monarchs are capable of doing so — the templar loses all spellcasting instantly. This is the ultimate leash. A templar who displeases the monarch may find herself not merely demoted or imprisoned, but rendered powerless, her years of service erased in a moment.
When Kalak of Tyr fell to the heroes of the revolution, every templar in Tyr lost their spells overnight. Black-robed priests who had terrorised the populace for centuries suddenly found themselves as vulnerable as any common citizen. Many were killed by mobs seeking revenge. Others fled to different city-states, begging other sorcerer-monarchs for acceptance. Those who remained in Tyr were forced to adapt — trading on their bureaucratic skills, their political connections, and their psionic talents to retain any semblance of their former authority. Some succeeded. Most did not.
The sole exception to this rule is the Unbreakable Bond — a rare and legendary condition achieved only by templars of extraordinary power (20th level and above) whose connection to the conduit has become so deeply ingrained that even the monarch’s death or displeasure cannot sever it. Such templars are vanishingly rare, and most sorcerer-monarchs remain unaware that the possibility even exists. A templar who achieves this state continues to cast spells regardless of her patron's fate.
Rarer still are those who manifest the Unbreakable Bond before reaching the apex of their power. The templar Korvak, who served Kalak of Tyr, is the most notorious example. When Kalak fell and every other templar in Tyr lost their spells overnight, Korvak retained his. “Well, all the templars but me,” he remarked, “and perhaps a few others who have managed to keep their abilities secret.” How this happened is unknown — whether through some quirk of Korvak’s particular connection to the conduit, an exceptional act of will at the moment of Kalak’s death, or sheer inexplicable fortune. What is known is that Korvak was not 20th level. His survival as a spellcasting templar after his monarch’s death defies all conventional understanding of the templar bond. Such early manifestation is vanishingly rare — perhaps unique. If any other templars retained their templar magic after the fall of Kalak, they kept it to themselves.
The fall of Kalak represents the most dramatic example of what happens when a sorcerer-monarch dies. Tyr’s templars lost their spellcasting abilities instantly and permanently. Many were slaughtered in the streets by the very populace they had once terrorised. Others found protection under the new king, Tithian — himself a former High Templar — who recognised that without the templars’ administrative expertise, Tyr’s infrastructure would collapse within weeks.
Tithian’s templars now serve as pure bureaucrats, their spellcasting days behind them. They continue to manage the city’s water supply, oversee the iron mines, collect taxes, judge disputes, and maintain the great wheels of government. They have supplemented their lost magic with psionics — recruiting former slaves with wild talents into their ranks — and with carefully concealed alliances with defilers and preservers.
These consequences reflect what occurred in Tyr, where the templarate survived Kalak's fall as an institution under Tithian. In a scenario where the templarate collapsed or was abolished, the hierarchy would simply cease to exist, and the question of who retains authority within it would be moot.
Mechanical Consequences: Without the backing of a living sorcerer-monarch, templars lose the competence bonus to Secular Authority checks granted by their Secular Aptitude class feature. They also lose access to the High Templar and Grant Pardon class features. The hierarchy of the templarate is effectively flattened — templars become, in institutional terms, no more authoritative than specialist sub-templars who possess only the Secular Authority feat. The sole exceptions are templars of 20th level who have attained the Unbreakable Bond , and epic templars who possess the same. Through spellcasting and personal authority, they are able to maintain the political weight they held under the sorcerer-monarch. To re-enable lost class features, a templar must demonstrate to the public that she still commands templar magic — proof that the conduit, against all expectation, remains open.
Other templars from Tyr fled to different city-states. Most found the point of a sword awaiting them — established templars in Urik, Nibenay, and Gulg had no desire to welcome rivals into their hierarchies. Those who survived did so by offering something of value: knowledge of Tyr’s defences, secrets of its iron mines, or wealth enough to bribe their way into a new monarch’s favour.
A few former templars of Tyr abandoned their past entirely, shedding the black cassock and attempting to start new lives. These ex-templars face a difficult road. When recognised — and in the close-knit communities of Athas, recognition is almost inevitable — they are shunned, attacked, or killed. They find no welcome in slave tribes, where anything associated with templars is viewed with deep suspicion. They wander the wastes, keeping to themselves, eking out survival where they can.
The road to becoming a templar begins differently in every city-state, but all paths converge on the same destination: a figure wielding the authority of a sorcerer-monarch, feared and respected in equal measure.
Though every city-state recruits templars differently, common patterns repeat across the Tyr Region.
Recruitment Pools
In order of volume:
Free citizens form the bulk of the templarate. Anyone displaying aptitude, ambition, or simply noticed by a templar recruiter may be offered a place. In some city-states this is voluntary; in others — Urik and Draj most notably — military service is compulsory, and those who prove themselves in the ranks are selected for the templarate, an honour they are not permitted to refuse.
Templar families provide the hereditary stream. Smaller in number but trained from birth in literacy, law, and combat, children of templars are expected to become templars; refusal is not an option in most city-states. Templar-family recruits have a significant head start — they arrive already literate, already drilled, already fluent in the codes and customs of the templarate. But the templarate is a meritocracy. A templar-family child who cannot perform will be surpassed by hungrier recruits from the free citizenry or the orphanages. Blood provides opportunity, not protection.
Orphans and street urchins enter through the state pipeline. Every city-state maintains orphanages where parentless children are raised under severe pressure to perform. Those who meet expectations may be inducted into the templarate. Those who do not become slaves of a category suited to their abilities — labour, domestic service, gladiation, or sale to the merchant houses. This pipeline produces templars who have been fighting for survival since childhood: survivors who watched peers fail and get collared.
Nobles rarely become templars. When Tithian of Mericles joined the templarate after his father passed him over for leadership of the family, Agis of Asticles observed that his friend had "committed the ultimate class betrayal." The templarate is viewed as beneath noble station — service to the sorcerer-monarch, however powerful, is still service. When nobles do join, it is almost always involuntary: younger sons with no inheritance, disgraced daughters sent into service as exile, or families placing an agent inside the templarate for political advantage. But the templarate is a meritocracy, and a pampered noble is poorly prepared for its cutthroat realities. Noble-born recruits arrive accustomed to deference they will not receive and protections they will not have. Most do not last.
Common Training
All templar recruits, regardless of origin or city-state, undergo:
Literacy training (templars are among the very few permitted to read and write)
Instruction in the laws and codes of their city-state
Combat fundamentals (intensity varies by city; Urik trains hardest)
Search and seizure
The Granting of the Conduit
As described in Chapter 2, the sorcerer-monarch opens access to the conduit through a simple ritual requiring only that the monarch has viewed the candidate — in person, through scrying, or via psionic remote viewing. The act is private, unilateral, and silent. The candidate may not know the exact moment the conduit opens. There is no limit to how many conduits a monarch can maintain — opening one costs the monarch nothing beyond the act of perception. The sigil is handed over separately as a badge of office; a templar receiving her sigil may already have been capable of casting for days or weeks without realising it.
Service for Life
Once a templar, always a templar. A templar does not resign. She does not retire. She serves until she dies, flees, or is executed. Former templars face a difficult road — slave tribes will not accept them, free citizens fear and hate them, and a templar who abandons her post cannot simply return to civilian life. However, the doors are not sealed: a templar whose monarch dies may petition another sorcerer-monarch for acceptance (see Chapter 1), and ex-templars who offer something of value — knowledge, secrets, wealth — have been known to find refuge in new city-states (see Chapter 2). The doors are heavy, not locked.
Tyr (Under Kalak): The templars of Tyr were drawn primarily from the children of existing templar families. Service was hereditary in practice, though not in law. Free citizens of exceptional intelligence or aptitude were sometimes recruited — the templarate would teach them to read and write during training. The noble houses occasionally sent their younger sons and disgraced daughters into the templarate as a form of exile or punishment; Tithian of Mericles himself joined in a fit of rage after being passed over for leadership of his family.
Urik: Hamanu’s templars are warriors first, bureaucrats second. Recruitment favours physical prowess and military aptitude. The children of templars are trained from birth in the martial arts, spending four hours every day in weapons training. Free citizens who distinguish themselves in Hamanu’s endless wars may be offered a place in the templarate — an offer that cannot be refused. Hamanu’s templars are the most disciplined and martially capable in the Tyr Region.
Nibenay: All templars who serve within the Naggaramakam — the Shadow King's palace — are women, the wives of Nibenay. Recruitment begins in the state schools, where young nobles of both genders are educated from ages seven to fourteen. Templar instructors sift through the ranks, steering talented girls toward careers in the priesthood. At fourteen, qualified initiates enter the Chamber of Fire for military training. At sixteen, they undergo the marriage ritual and gain the ability to call upon the Shadow King's power. Outside the palace, the templarate includes men — Nibenay is known to have sired sons, some monstrous in appearance, who serve as templars, and male specialists inducted via the Secular Authority feat are common throughout the city's apparatus.
Gulg: Children selected for templar service are taken from their families at a young age and brought to a special dagada — a compound where they are divested of all outside allegiances and trained in the service of the Oba, Lalali-Puy. If a child receives a vision of a hegbo lizard during her Forest Walk — the rite of passage all Gulg youth undergo at age thirteen — she is considered destined for the templarate. Templars in Gulg can be male or female, and their ranks are displayed through the necklace system — tight collars of beads, bone, hair, and teeth that grow more elaborate with each advancement.
Draj: Tectuktitlay’s templars are called Moon Priests — men and women who serve the self-proclaimed Father of Life. Recruitment is a combination of hereditary service and the conscription of promising youths from the city’s warrior class. Moon Priests wear bluish robes embroidered with bright yellow moons, and their armour bears the same motif.
Raam: Abalach-Re, who rules under the title of Grand Vizier, is more concerned with her appetites than her city. The templarate largely runs itself, presenting her with a list of candidates for induction. She opens the conduit for each in turn, perfunctorily, and returns to her pleasures. Those inducted receive their sigil and piece together their training from whatever existing templars survived long enough to teach them. Many of those templars serve a secondary function: Abalach-Re has borne countless children by countless men, and as each child reaches adolescence she loses interest. Templars are pressed into service as tutors, caretakers, and disciplinarians for the ever-rotating population of royal offspring — a duty that keeps them inside the palace and alive.
Those called to serve Abalach-Re face their new responsibilities with a mix of apprehension and dread. The sorcerer-queen can be generous with her gifts, bestowing fabulous riches and power on favoured servants — but such blessing is often met with derision and hatred from the citizenry, who exact revenge by any means they can, even striking out against the templar’s family and friends. Most templars sever their former ties upon induction, relocating whatever family they wish to protect into the templar district — the walled fortress-compound at the heart of the city where retaliation cannot reach.
Balic: Andropinis’s templars were unique in being elected to ten-year terms by the free citizens — an illusion of democracy that Andropinis maintained to keep his population pacified. In practice, the elections were heavily manipulated, and reform-minded candidates who actually won office tended to die in mysterious “accidents.”
Eldaarich: Daskinor’s templars are recruited from the city’s clans, trained from youth in paranoia and surveillance. They serve as the sorcerer-king’s eyes and ears, watching for signs of treachery among the masses. Daskinor's madness sets the tone for the entire city. His templars live in a state of constant suspicion, never certain what their king will demand next or who, in his lunacy, he will name a traitor.
Kurn: Oronis’s templars are unique in the Tyr Region. They do not serve as administrators — elected officials handle governance in Kurn. Instead, Oronis’s templars are keepers and dispensers of knowledge, serving as teachers, advisers, and overseers of the restoration process. No defilers are permitted among their ranks.
Ur Draxa: Borys the Dragon’s templars are drawn from the city’s clans, who compete fiercely for the honour of enrolling their sons and daughters in the templarate. They administer the city alongside the viziers and the army, enforcing the Draxan Code of Laws and maintaining the martial spirit of the citizenry.
Dregoth’s Domain: The templars of Dregoth are drawn from the second generation of dray — the perfected draconic humanoids the Dread King created in his own image. Every templar of the Third Scale and above is considered a full templar, marked by a thick yellowish scale that grows from the spine with each advancement.
The standard templar — the model against which all alternative paths are measured — is the templar as the sorcerer-monarchs intended: a versatile agent of the state who wields spell, word, and blade in roughly equal measure.
Standard templars are generalists. Their training covers enough martial instruction to wear armour and wield weapons competently, enough bureaucratic education to administer a department or adjudicate a dispute, and enough magical development to channel the conduit’s power into a broad repertoire of divine spells. A standard templar can interrogate a prisoner in the morning, lead a patrol through the warrens at midday, draft a trade edict in the afternoon, and raise a skeleton to guard the gates at night. She is not the best at any one of these things — but she can do all of them, and it is this versatility that makes the standard templar the backbone of every templarate in the Tyr Region.
All templars train identically before induction. The earliest months — often years, for those recruited as children — are the same regardless of eventual specialisation: drill with simple weapons and armour, memorisation of the city’s legal codes, instruction in reading and writing. At induction, the sorcerer-monarch opens the conduit. The templar chooses her path — standard, warrior, scribe, or another — at 1st level, and that choice is permanent. A templar does not spend years as a standard templar and then "become" a rage templar; her path is set from the moment she first channels the conduit's power.
The career of a standard templar follows a well-established arc. Early in her service, she learns to wield the Secular Authority vested in her by the state — the legal power to command citizens, requisition property, and override the decisions of lesser officials. She also discovers, usually through trial and error, the limits of Mitigate Corruption : how large a bribe she can accept without legal consequence, how far she can stretch the letter of the law before the law stretches back. By her second year of service, she can channel the conduit’s power to Turn or Rebuke Undead — an ability most templars develop, though some alternative paths trade it away. The sorcerer-monarchs have always understood that the dead make useful soldiers; a templar who can seize control of an enemy's skeletons has a tactical advantage no amount of sword-drill can match. In practice, the vast majority of templars rebuke, commanding rather than destroying the undead.
As she advances, the standard templar benefits from Templarate Training — the ongoing education in the specialised arts of governance that sets templars apart from common soldiery. She learns to read people, to detect deception, to brew potions, to scribe scrolls, to lead troops in the field — feats drawn from the templarate’s own curriculum, reflecting the eclectic demands of the office. Simultaneously, she begins to exercise Advanced Learning : the personal magical research through which a templar expands her spell repertoire beyond the domain spells granted by her monarch. Each new spell is drawn from a different school of magic — abjuration, then conjuration, then divination, and so on — representing a deliberate broadening of the templar's divine education across all eight schools. A templar who reaches the apex of her career will have added five spells to her list, one from each of five different schools, alongside the domain spells she has known since her induction.
At the fourteenth rank, a standard templar achieves the status of High Templar — a watershed moment that transforms her relationship to the templarate. High Templars gain immunity from prosecution, investigation, or intrusion by any non-epic templar or city official, regardless of rank. No non-epic templar or city official can arrest a High Templar , search her quarters, or summon her before a magistrate.
This immunity is a double-edged blade. It shields the High Templar from the templarate's internal discipline — but it also ensures that anyone who wants her eliminated has no legal path to pursue. A rival High Templar can overrule her decisions through Secular Authority contests but cannot prosecute; only an epic templar can bring formal charges. For everyone else, the immunity leaves exactly one option: a bard — the colloquial word for an assassin. The term dates back to an infamous troupe of singers and musicians who toured the city-states for years, performing for nobles and templars alike, before they were unmasked as contract killers. By the time they were captured and executed, they had claimed dozens of victims across half the Tablelands. The scandal was so profound that "bard" permanently shifted meaning: no one in Athas hires a bard expecting a song. A bard is a master of infiltration: an assassin who can embed herself in any role — servant, baker, courtesan, singer, or a dozen other masks — and remain there for as long as it takes to earn trust before she strikes. High Templars are perpetually wary of the bard's threat, and many troubadours and singers have been falsely accused as a result.
At the seventeenth rank, a standard templar gains the power to Grant Pardon — a special use of Secular Authority that can overturn any judgment, even a death sentence, and that cannot be contested. Only the sorcerer-monarch can nullify a pardon once granted. The power can be invoked only once per calendar year, and every templar who holds it is besieged by petitioners — nobles offering fortunes to spare an heir, merchant houses bidding for commercial pardons, rivals dangling favours worth more than coin. A templar who possesses Grant Pardon need never raise her voice to be heard; the mere knowledge that she could, if she chose, undo any ruling in the city-state is power enough. The question is never whether she can — it is what she will charge.
At the twentieth rank, the standard templar achieves the Unbreakable Bond — a connection to the conduit so deeply ingrained that even the sorcerer-monarch’s death or displeasure cannot sever it. The templar herself remains unaware of the change, and her monarch cannot easily detect it unless they attempt to cut her off and fail. In practice, few templars reach this height, and fewer still ever discover they have done so — but those who do become, in a very real sense, independent of the system that created them.
The standard templar is, in summary, the default expression of the templar class: a Charisma-based spontaneous divine caster with a d8 Hit Die, proficiency in simple and martial weapons, light and medium armour with shields, two domains drawn from her sorcerer-monarch’s portfolio, and a spell list that blends divine magic with the bureaucratic and martial arts of governance. She is the yardstick. Every alternative path described below represents a deviation from this baseline — trading some of its versatility for specialisation, and some of its breadth for depth. And beyond all paths, for those few who survive long enough, lies the epic tier — the pinnacle of templar power, where the standard templar and the warlock templar each have their own full epic progression, and every alternative path continues to advance its signature abilities.
Not all templars follow the standard road. The templarate is a broad institution, and within it, individual templars develop along different lines — some by choice, others by circumstance. Where the standard templar remains a generalist, the following paths represent specialisations: templars who have traded portions of the standard templar’s versatility for focused power in a particular domain. Each path is measured against the standard templar described above; what is gained and what is lost are both understood in relation to that baseline.
The Rage Templar: Barbarian Recruits
On the fringes of the city-states, where the desert wastes meet the first outlying farms, live barbaric tribes that have never fully submitted to the rule of the sorcerer-monarchs. Occasionally, a monarch extends an offer to such a tribe: send your warriors to serve in my templarate, and your people will be granted protected status. Those who accept become rage templars — fighters who bring their cultural ability to enter a battle fury into the templar’s service.
Rage templars are feared and hated by the city-dwellers they are sworn to protect. They are outsiders, visibly different in manner and speech — foreign auxiliaries whose corruption and casual violence rightly earn them the hatred of the populace. Their battle fury makes them unpredictable allies and terrifying enemies. They lack the discipline of conventional templars — a rage templar cannot be lawful — but their ferocity in combat is unmatched.
The trade-off is severe. A rage templar sacrifices both of her sorcerer-monarch’s domains, losing not only the domain spells that expand her repertoire but the domain granted powers that other templars rely upon. She loses the ability to Turn or Rebuke Undead — the conduit’s power flows into rage, not into commanding the dead. Her training abandons medium armour in favour of the mobility her fighting style demands. In exchange, she gains the barbarian's rage, a d10 Hit Die, full base attack bonus, and the Kleptocrat feat. Rage templars are notoriously corrupt, even by the templarate's relaxed standards — natural kleptocrats who exploit the weak city-dwellers they hold in contempt, looking out only for their own. The combination makes for a terrifying combatant but a poor bureaucrat. A rage templar cannot be combined with the warrior, enforcer, or scribe paths; her fury is incompatible with their disciplines.
Urik draws its rage templars from the tribes of the Black Crown Mountains; Gulg recruits from the forest-dwellers beyond the Crescent Forest; Draj accepts barbaric tribes that embrace Tectuktitlay as a true god; and Raam replenishes its depleted templarate with mass intakes from the wastes.
The Warrior Templar: Urik’s Model
Some templars think of themselves as warriors first and bureaucrats second — or not at all. These warrior templars trade their domain training for martial prowess. They lose access to the domain spells and granted powers that other templars enjoy — the conduit’s power is channelled entirely into combat ability rather than the broader magical repertoire of the standard templar. In exchange they become full-base-attack-bonus combatants with a d10 Hit Die , and they gain proficiency with their monarch’s favoured weapon. The trade is straightforward: magical breadth for martial depth.
Warrior templars are the standard in Urik, where every templar trains for war constantly and the ability to fight trumps all other concerns. Hamanu’s warrior templars form the backbone of his army, leading units of half-giants into battle and raising undead reinforcements on the march. They fight with a ferocity born of knowing the price of failure.
Warrior templars can often be combined with the enforcer path, producing a templar who fights with martial skill and channels divine fury against the monarch’s enemies. The combination is known as the Champion Templar — the closest thing Athas has to a paladin.
The Enforcer Templar: Draj’s Moon Priests
Some templars are more religious than others. Where most templars view their sorcerer-monarch as a secular ruler who happens to grant magical power, the enforcer templar worships the monarch as an actual deity. These are the templars who force citizens to build temples, who demand prostration in the streets, who see heresy in every whispered complaint.
Enforcer templars channel their fanaticism into Smite Enemy . Their judgment alone determines who is an enemy of the state — no divine sanction is required, no trial, no evidence. How an enforcer templar uses this ability exemplifies her outlook. The suspicious and uncompromising enforcer sees enemies everywhere and strikes them down without hesitation. The more measured enforcer reserves her smiting for genuine threats.
Draj’s Moon Priests are the archetypal enforcer templars. Tectuktitlay’s templars maintain order through religious fervour and ritual bloodshed, tearing the hearts from captives in ceremonies that honour their god-king. The enforcer path is also common among the templars of Hamanu (whose Code demands absolute loyalty) and the zealots of Daskinor in Eldaarich.
Enforcer templars lose the Advanced Learning ability — their fanaticism leaves no room for independent magical experimentation, for the enforcer does not study magic; she receives it. In exchange, she gains Smite Enemy and adds divine power to her spell list as a known spell (cast at a lower level if already possessed through a domain). Unlike the warrior or rage paths, the enforcer sacrifices nothing else — her domains, her turning, her armour, and her generalist's breadth all remain intact.
The Champion Templar: Elite Orders
A champion templar is simply a templar who combines the warrior and enforcer paths — a martial true believer who serves a role similar to a paladin in other settings. Champion templars are usually members of selective martial orders affiliated with their city-state.
These orders go by different names in different cities. In Urik, the Lions of Hamanu are an elite company of champion templars who serve as the sorcerer-king’s personal guard and are never committed to battle except under Hamanu’s direct command. In Gulg, the champions are the warrior-arm of the templarate, wearing heavy armour and fighting openly with righteous conviction — in contrast to the judaga, who fight as forest skirmishers. In Draj, the Supreme Moon Priests select their champions from the most fanatical of Tectuktitlay’s servants.
A champion templar gains proficiency with her monarch’s favoured weapon and Weapon Focus with it. She fights with the full base attack bonus of a warrior (d10 Hit Die ) and retains the enforcer's Smite Enemy . But she pays both prices: she loses all domain access — spells and granted powers alike — from the warrior path, and she loses Advanced Learning from the enforcer path. The champion is the most combat-focused templar in existence, but she has sacrificed nearly all of the standard templar’s magical versatility to get there. She is a blade, not a toolbox.
The Scribe Templar: Masters of Bureaucracy
Not all templars enforce laws with a sword or channel raw divine fury. Some wield power through knowledge, records, and the careful manipulation of bureaucracy. The scribe templar delves into archives, drafts edicts, researches legal precedent, and controls the flow of information within the city-state.
Scribe templars are found in the libraries and scriptoriums of every major templarate. They are the ones who know which noble owes which debt, which merchant’s licence is about to expire, which law can be interpreted to justify almost any action. Their power lies not in spells or steel but in secrets — and in the ability to bury an enemy in paperwork or expose a rival with a single well-placed document. The archetypal scribe templar is Tithian of Mericles, who clawed his way from a noble's disinherited son to High Templar of the Games, and ultimately to king — standing over the dead body of Kalak himself.
The scribe path trades combat prowess for intellectual authority. A scribe templar uses a d6 Hit Die instead of a d8, retains only poor base attack bonus, and loses the two bonus martial weapon proficiencies that standard templars receive — her training prioritises the stylus over the sword. In exchange, she gains a suite of scholarly abilities: Scribal Training (free ranks in Decipher Script), Bureaucratic Lore (encyclopaedic knowledge of the city-state’s history and procedures), bonus feats including Academic Templar, Scribe Scroll, Silent Spell, and Still Spell, and eventually the ability to apply metamagic to scrolls. She sacrifices physical resilience and martial competence for the power that comes from knowing things others do not.
Scribe templars must be non-chaotic — their power depends on working within systems, not against them. They cannot be combined with the rage, warrior, or enforcer paths.
The Warlock Templar
Some templars channel the conduit’s power differently. Rather than shaping it into discrete spells — measured spell slots, specific words, precise gestures — they release it as raw eldritch energy, a crackling ray of focused divine force. These are the warlock templars.
The conduit is the same. The power flows from the same source. But where a standard templar learns to structure that power into the familiar forms of templar magic, the warlock templar develops invocations — spell-like abilities that can be used at will. Her eldritch blast strikes as a ranged touch, growing more powerful with experience. Her invocations grant supernatural protections and abilities that never run dry. And through the Studied Invocation ability, she can eventually learn to emulate templar spells, casting them once per day by presenting her sigil as a divine focus.
The warlock templar does not cast spells. Where the standard templar structures the conduit's power into discrete spells, the warlock templar channels it as raw invocations — spell-like abilities she can use at will. She has no spell slots, no domain access, and no use for the graduated magical progression that defines the standard templar's career. She wears lighter armour because her fighting style demands mobility. Her sigil serves as a divine focus for the three abilities that require one: Studied Invocation , Imbue Templar Item , and Imbue Cleric Item . Her eldritch blast and invocations require no focus. She has traded the templar's entire spellcasting architecture for a single, bottomless well of power.
In most city-states, warlock templars appear unpredictably — perhaps one in forty or fifty initiates, with no discernible pattern. The sorcerer-monarchs have never been able to produce them deliberately, and most do not fully understand the mechanism. The warlock’s sigil serves as a divine focus only for the Studied Invocation , Imbue Templar Item , and Imbue Cleric Item abilities; her eldritch blast and invocations require no focus at all.
Eldaarich is the exception. In Daskinor’s city-state, warlock templars make up roughly one quarter of the templarate — a proportion unheard of anywhere else in the Tyr Region. No one outside Eldaarich knows why. It may be that Daskinor has discovered how to identify candidates with a natural predisposition for the warlock expression — some quirk of lineage, temperament, or birth that reveals itself only to those who know what to look for. Or it may be that he has developed a method to induce the expression during initiation, deliberately shaping a templar’s connection to the conduit in a way other sorcerer-monarchs cannot replicate. Perhaps both are true. Daskinor shares nothing, and the other monarchs can only speculate. What is undeniable is the result: squads of warlock templars patrol Eldaarich’s walls, their at-will blasts providing a constant, inexhaustible deterrent.
Warlock templars in Eldaarich are fully integrated into the templar hierarchy. Their at-will abilities are recognised for what they are — a tremendous practical asset. A templar who can fire eldritch energy all day without exhausting spell slots is ideal for guard duty, perimeter patrol, and suppressing civil unrest. Far from being regarded with suspicion, Eldaarich’s warlock templars are prized for their reliability. In the other city-states, where warlock templars appear only sporadically, they are valued for the same reasons — a templar whose power never runs dry is a templar who can keep fighting long after her spellcasting comrades have exhausted their allotments.
Beyond the twentieth rank lies a territory few templars ever reach and fewer still survive to enjoy. The epic templar is a creature of a different order from her lesser counterparts — a different class of being entirely. She has crossed a threshold that places her above the very hierarchy she once served within.
The defining reality of the epic templar is this: she can no longer be touched by the templarate’s ordinary machinery of control. A High Templar enjoys immunity from prosecution by lesser templars. The epic templar's authority extends past that immunity. She can intrude upon a High Templar ’s quarters, accuse a High Templar of crimes, and pass judgment upon a High Templar — powers that no non-epic official in the city-state possesses. No one can bring proceedings against an epic templar — not a lesser templar, not a High Templar, not even another epic templar. Only the sorcerer-monarch can intrude upon, accuse, or judge an epic templar.
The epic templar can also do what no templar below the epic tier can: Declare Hostilities against the enemies of the city-state. Not every epic templar takes this road — the mantle of Templarate Faction Leader is a choice, not an obligation — but those who do attract a personal army through the force of their reputation. She judges for herself what constitutes a threat and what response it warrants. If she decides a slave tribe must be crushed or a village brought to heel, she raises her banner and the army follows. The sorcerer-monarch can veto her campaigns, though most do not unless the campaign threatens a core interest — war against a city-state with an active sorcerer-monarch foremost among them. An epic templar who crossed that line on her own authority would not live to see the next sunrise. Another epic templar faction leader might contest the declaration to prevent a needless conflict — resolved by opposed Secular Authority checks, with the outcome final unless the sorcerer-monarch intervenes. Or she might simply issue her own declaration and join the campaign, whether to share in the glory or to steal it.
A city-state whose monarch has fallen is fair game. Tyr, after Kalak's death, drew the Lion of Urik's armies within the year. Hamanu issued a Letter of Reprisal to Maetan of House Lubar, a Urikite noble, authorising him to wage war on Tyr, deliver its people as slaves to Urik, and install himself as governor of a rump Tyrian settlement — with the iron mines' tribute flowing to King Hamanu's coffers. Explicit royal approval for what an epic templar wielding Declare Hostilities can initiate on her own authority.
An epic templar who has reached this pinnacle has done nothing to offend her monarch — she would not have survived otherwise. By the time a templar attains epic power, she has proven herself indispensable: she has the monarch's ear, the monarch's trust, and the institutional immunity that comes with both. She is answerable to one authority only — and she has spent a lifetime ensuring that authority has no reason to doubt her.
Beyond even this, at the furthest apex of the epic tier, lies a reward that few templars have ever earned and fewer still have ever received: the Favored of the Sorcerer Monarch. A templar so honoured is granted immortality — not the withered undeath of a lich or the parasitical eternity of a thrax, but true agelessness. She ceases to age, cannot be forced to sleep, and becomes immune to the creeping infirmities of time. To be made Favored is the ultimate acknowledgment that the monarch trusts the templar absolutely — a trust so rare that most sorcerer-kings have extended it to only a handful of servants across the entirety of their reigns.
The warlock templar follows her own road into epic territory. Where the standard epic templar continues to expand her spellcasting and secular authority, the epic warlock templar’s eldritch blast grows ever more devastating, her invocations deepen, and through Studied Invocation she learns to emulate spells she could never cast in her earlier career — including the domain spells of her own sorcerer-monarch, spells the warlock's invocations could not reach before the epic tier.
The alternative paths do not possess epic progressions separate from the standard, but each continues to intensify along the lines laid down at induction. The rage templar’s fury deepens — she can enter her battle-trance more often, pushing past limits that would break lesser warriors. The enforcer templar’s smiting grows more frequent, her judgment falling upon the monarch’s enemies with escalating certainty. The champion templar, combining the warrior’s martial prowess with the enforcer’s righteous fury, becomes the most dangerous single combatant in the templarate. The warrior and scribe paths, whose identities are defined by what they sacrificed rather than by discrete signature powers, simply continue to grow along their chosen trajectories — one ever more martial, the other ever more learned. In every case, the epic tier is not a new direction but an intensification of the path chosen at induction, decades earlier, when the conduit first opened.
How many epic templars exist in the Tyr Region? No one knows for certain. Most city-states have fewer epic templars than can be counted on one hand. They are, by any measure, among the most dangerous individuals on Athas — not merely for the spells they can cast, but for the legal, political, and military power they can bring to bear with a word. They can arrest High Templars . They can raise armies. No one — not a lesser templar, not a High Templar, not even another epic templar — can bring proceedings against them. Only the sorcerer-monarch can intrude upon, accuse, or judge an epic templar.
Kalak of Tyr provides the clearest illustration of a sorcerer-monarch acting against his own epic templars. In the years before the revolution, Kalak purged his two epic templars — Rosanne the Wise and Turban, the Warlord of Tyr. They had committed the unforgivable error of opposing the sorcerer-king's plan to become a full dragon, and they did so to his face. Kalak did not kill them. He encased them in psionic quintessence and sealed them in a chamber beneath the Golden Tower, the pathways to which were subsequently filled in and erased from all records. There they remain, suspended between moments. If ever unearthed, Rosanne and Turban would still possess their full templar powers — a frozen threat from a dead king's reign.
The ultimate exemplar of what an epic templar can become — though almost no one outside New Giustenal knows he exists — is Mon Adderath, High Templar of Dregoth. Human where his master’s other servants are dray, Mon Adderath has served the Dread King for millennia, making him one of the oldest living beings on Athas. It was Dregoth himself who made Mon Adderath immortal, spending considerable personal power to confer the Favored of the Sorcerer Monarch upon him — the ultimate expression of trust. And the trust is genuine. Mon Adderath is the only person in New Giustenal who is not afraid to contradict Dregoth, and Dregoth, for his part, appears to value this above all his other servants’ qualities. Their relationship — genuine friendship between a sorcerer-king and his templar — is unprecedented among the despotic rulers of Athas, and it has lasted longer than most civilisations.
Each city-state’s templarate is a reflection of the sorcerer-monarch who rules it. Though all templars serve the same fundamental function — channelling elemental magic through the conduit of their monarch — the organisation, culture, and methods of each templarate vary dramatically.
Under Kalak
For a thousand years, the templars of Tyr served Kalak the Tyrant with the same mixture of fear and ambition that the sorcerer-king inspired in all his subjects. Tyr’s templarate was organised under six High Templars , each responsible for a sphere of the city’s governance. Among the most powerful were the High Templar of the King’s Works (responsible for the construction of the great ziggurat), the High Templar of Games (overseeing the gladiatorial arena), and the High Templar of Security (managing intelligence operations).
Tyr’s templars wore black cassocks that marked them unmistakably. They lived in the Templars’ Quarter — a walled district adjacent to the Golden Tower, isolated from the rest of the city by high walls capped with jagged obsidian shards. Within this quarter stood the marble palaces of the High Templars , the elegant mansions of trusted assistants, and the lavish chamberhouses of subordinate priests. Hundreds of guards patrolled the streets day and night.
The low-ranking templars of Tyr handled the mundane machinery of government: removing waste, moving grain, maintaining roads and gardens, controlling disease. Mid-level templars collected taxes, managed slave work details, distributed rations, and monitored the city gates. High-ranking templars oversaw the city’s departments — Fields, Finance, Public Works, Water, Trade, Mines, Arena, Gardens, State, Security, and Administration.
Tyr under Kalak was a city of fear. Templars could accuse and imprison almost anyone for almost any reason. They judged crimes, passed sentences, and granted pardons at their whim. The sorcerer-king was an unseen terror — few templars ever saw him in person, receiving all instructions through the hierarchy. Those who displeased him simply disappeared.
After Kalak’s Fall
The death of King Kalak changed everything. The templars of Tyr lost their spells in an instant. Mobs of newly freed slaves roamed the streets, seeking revenge against the black-robed priests who had terrorised them for generations. Many templars were killed in the first weeks after the revolution. Those who survived did so by fleeing, hiding, or finding a patron.
Tithian, formerly High Templar of Games and the King’s Works, seized the throne in the chaos following Kalak’s assassination. Proclaiming himself king, he freed Tyr’s slaves and established a Council of Advisers drawn from all ranks of society. Crucially, Tithian protected the surviving templars — not out of loyalty, but out of necessity. Only the templars knew how to run the city.
Under Tithian, Tyr’s templars continue to fill their administrative roles without the benefit of spells. They manage the water supply, oversee the iron mines, regulate trade, and operate the departments of government. The templar bureaucracy has been reformed but not dismantled. Senior Templar Timor serves as Minister of Tyr, overseeing the Senior Templars who run departments like Fields, Finance, Public Works, Water, and Trade.
Without their spells, Tyr’s templars have adapted. They have promoted those with useful psionic abilities within their ranks. They have hired psionicists to supplement their lost magic. Some have made quiet arrangements with defilers and preservers, trading protection for magical services. The loss of spells has also proven to be a great equaliser: formerly low-level templars now find themselves nearly as powerful as their former superiors, breeding dangerous new ambitions.
Not all of Tyr's templars accepted the new regime. Some fled to other city-states, offering their knowledge and skills to new sorcerer-monarchs — though most found only slavery or death awaiting them. A few went into hiding within Tyr itself, secretly working to restore the old order. Ex-templars who abandoned their past entirely found life outside the templarate harsh and unforgiving. When recognised, they were attacked or killed. No slave tribe would accept them.
The templars of Urik serve Hamanu — the Lion of Urik, King of the World, the most warlike and arguably the most powerful of the surviving sorcerer-monarchs. His templars reflect his nature: disciplined, martial, and utterly without mercy.
Hamanu’s Code governs every aspect of life in Urik. The laws are strict and innumerable, covering conduct, commerce, speech, and even thought. Templars enforce this code with fanatical devotion. The penalty for most infractions is enslavement in the obsidian quarries — a fate that enriches Hamanu’s treasury while removing troublemakers from the streets.
Every templar of Urik trains for war constantly. Four hours of weapons drill each day is mandatory for all ranks. The veteran weapons masters who conduct this training are harsh — templars who let their guard down, even for a moment, learn brutal lessons that leave permanent reminders. Hamanu personally oversees the training of his troops, and his expectations are absolute.
Urik’s templars dress in leather armour laced with bone or chitin, bearing arms of obsidian from the Black Crown Mountains. Higher-ranking templars may wear metal breastplates and helms — a mark of immense status in a metal-poor world — and carry metal-bladed weapons. White cloaks are the universal badge of office in Urik; only templars may wear cloaks, and only Hamanu may wear a cloak with a fringe.
The templar hierarchy in Urik is rigid and unforgiving. Rising stars like Thovadarak make names for themselves within this system, but advancement is slow and deadly — rivalries between templars are fierce, and those who fall from favour rarely survive the experience.
In war, Hamanu's templars summon formations of undead soldiers and lead them into battle alongside mortal troops. When Hamanu himself takes the field, he assumes the form of a great man-lion — a towering creature of golden fur and sinuous muscle, twice the height of a half-giant, with a long golden mane, clawed hands, and a fang-filled muzzle. The army of Urik has never known defeat when Hamanu himself has led it, and his generals prosecute war with a fanaticism born of knowing the price of failure.
Notable among Urik’s templars are Captain Severin, who commands the Palace Guards within Destiny’s Kingdom; the scheming Malestic, who entraps visitors into breaking Hamanu’s laws; the dedicated Thovadarak, who leads expeditions into the wastes; and Tirian, a former slave of Raam who joined the templars to ensure she would never wear shackles again.
The templars of Nibenay are unique in the Tyr Region: they are all women, and they are all, in a sense, the wives of the Shadow King. This custom — whether born of Nibenay’s insatiable appetites or calculated to ensure loyalty through intimate bonds — has persisted for centuries and defines the character of the Nibenese templarate.
The government of Nibenay is organised into five Chambers, each representing one of the elemental forces and each headed by a High Templar who reports directly to the Shadow King. The Chamber of Earth administers the city’s infrastructure — the reservoir, grain supply, public works, and tax collection. The Chamber of Fire is the military organisation, where a thousand half-giants drill constantly and young templars receive their initial combat training. The Chamber of Water manages trade — city gates, tariffs, business licences, and relations with the merchant houses. The Chamber of Air is the university, overseeing magical and psionic research, the training of defilers, and the state schools. The Chamber of Order is the most feared — responsible for law enforcement, justice, and the maintenance of citizen rolls. Its High Templar directs the other four.
Nibenay’s templars display their rank through their dress, in a system that is both practical and deeply embedded in the culture of the Naggaramakam, the walled sub-city at Nibenay’s heart. The highest-ranking templars — those closest to the king — wear no clothing at all. Mid-level priestesses wear only skirts and sandals. The lowest-ranking functionaries wear full robes. Military personnel and city guards wear protective gear over their rank-indicating dress.
The Naggaramakam itself is a magnificent and terrifying place. Its walls rise over fifty feet, and within them lies a honeycomb of dark mazes filled with thick incense fog and the hypnotic chanting of templars at their devotions. The palace is sculpted in the form of a stylised head of the Shadow King, with thousands of carved dancing women forming columns that resemble locks of hair — each one carved to resemble one of his templar wives.
The most remarkable figure in Nibenay’s templarate is Siemhouk, the Child Priest. At only fourteen years of age, she stands as the highest-ranking templar in Nibenay’s court — a prodigy of both psionics and templar magic who was raised from birth by the Shadow King himself. Her psionic abilities are unprecedented, and it is whispered that she may possess the power to calm the rages that seize dragons as they advance toward maturity — a talent of incalculable value to a sorcerer-monarch.
The templars of Nibenay are feared throughout the Tyr Region for their ruthlessness and respected for their efficiency. They dress in black, wield barbed spears of agafari wood, and wear armour formed from the black carapaces of giant insects. Their rivalry with the templars of Gulg is ancient and bitter, and the war between the two city-states over the Crescent Forest has lasted for centuries.
The templars of Gulg serve Lalali-Puy, the Oba — a title that means "forest goddess" in the language of her people. Unlike the titles of other sorcerer-monarchs, this one was not invented. The citizens of Gulg gave it to her, and they mean it. Lalali-Puy is perhaps the only sorcerer-monarch who enjoys the genuine support of her subjects, though even this support is not without fear; as the Oba's subjects know, she is as terrible as she is beloved.
Children selected for templar service are taken from their families at a young age and raised in special dagadas, where they are divested of any allegiances outside the priesthood. They renounce their claim to any kinship group and devote themselves solely to the Oba. The education is structured and rigorous: capability testing at every level, specialisation after two years in disciplines ranging from military engineering to the research of defiling magic, and a steady stream of students who fail to advance and remain in subordinate ranks attending to menial tasks. The high-ranking templars and hunter nobles are also instructed in High Gulg — the archaic dialect of the queen’s court as it was spoken thousands of years ago. By the time a Gulgan templar takes her first necklace, she has known no other loyalty.
Gulg’s templarate is organised into two distinct orders. The champions are heavily armoured warriors who fight openly, defying their enemies with righteous conviction. The judaga are forest skirmishers — light-armoured rangers who move silently through the Crescent Forest, ambushing Nibenay’s forces and protecting Gulg’s borders. Both orders are fanatically loyal to the Oba.Rank in Gulg is displayed through the necklace system — tight collars of beads, human bone, hair, and teeth, worn snugly against the neck. A first-level templar wears a single strand. As the templar advances, more necklaces are added, eventually forming a band four inches thick on the necks of the highest-ranking templars. The Oba’s chief advisor is said to wear at least ten.
The necklace hierarchy is one of the few formalised institutions in Gulg’s government. The Oba herself is arbitrary and capricious, often demanding information from low-ranking templars as readily as from their superiors. Her constant interference increases inefficiency but keeps the informal hierarchy of power decentralised — no templar can become too secure in her position.
The true centre of power in Gulg is the Paper Nest — a secret society of the Oba’s most trusted advisers, comprised of the highest-ranking templars, a few favoured nobles, and one or two elders from the Seer’s Dagada. Its members gather in a hidden chamber in the trunk of the great obata tree to make paper — and, during this process, to speak freely with the queen without fear of reprisal.
Mogadisho, the Warlord of Gulg, commands the Oba’s armies with brutal efficiency. He is a warrior who disdains the politics of the court, preferring the company of soldiers. Hoopidjo the Gatherer administers the internal affairs of the city — the slave labour force, the fields, the trading house. Both are members of the Paper Nest, and both enjoy the Oba’s trust.
The templars of Draj are the Moon Priests — servants of Tectuktitlay, the self-proclaimed Father of Life and Master of the Twin Moons. Draj’s templars dress in bluish robes with bright yellow moons embroidered front and back, their armour decorated in the same motif.
Tectuktitlay’s rule is one of blood and spectacle. The Moon Priests preside over lavish rituals, the most notorious of which involves the king personally tearing the hearts from living captives. Their cruelty is a reflection of their monarch’s nature — but it is also a survival mechanism. Tectuktitlay watches his Moon Priests with relentless zeal. A templar who shows weakness does not survive long enough to regret it; the sorcerer-king would spot a spy or a traitor within a week, and those he catches do not receive second chances.
The Moon Priests are more than priests. They serve as political officers, embedded in every corner of Draji life to ensure that the king’s interests are protected and that no treason goes undetected. A moon-priest accompanies every military expedition, every korinth crew, every work gang — not to lead, but to watch. In Draj, literacy is a templar monopoly; only a handful of non-templars are legally permitted to read, and even they are closely monitored. The Draji themselves only call Tectuktitlay their hero when they see a moon-priest within earshot.
The Moon Priests’ authority is absolute. The invocation of the sorcerer-king’s name by one of his own priests is not taken lightly — if a moon-priest declares an action correct, there can be no further argument. At the great arena, nobles and templars enter through their own doors and take the best seats, above the masses who pack the tiers. Rivalries between Moon Priests are common and vicious; competition for the king’s favour breeds treachery, and a rival’s disgrace is as valuable as a personal promotion.
The templars of Raam are a frightened few — their numbers a fraction of what a city this size should support. Abalach-Re, who rules under the title of Grand Vizier, has neglected the city for generations. Her attention, when it comes at all, is capricious and brief. The boldness of the noble houses has bled the templarate white. But the templars of Raam have not surrendered the streets. They have adapted.
Every Raamin templar wears a mask — but never the same one twice. The templar district maintains a vast armoury of masks: hundreds of ceramic faces, wrapped linen shrouds, and polished bone visors, all produced by craftsmen within the compound. When a templar draws duty, she draws a mask from the pool. When she returns, the mask goes back. Tomorrow she will wear a different face. The higher ranks are an exception: a High Templar possesses a personal mask for formal occasions — ceremonies, public judgments, official pronouncements — where a recognisable face is an asset rather than a liability. On patrol, however, even they draw from the pool. Anonymity is universal on the streets.
The uniform is unmistakable: white robes bearing the emblem of the Grand Vizier, the cut and style as recognisable as any templar’s cassock in Urik or Tyr. A citizen stopped for questioning knows exactly who is doing the stopping: a templar of Raam. But which templar? That is the question the mask system is designed to make unanswerable. You cannot track a templar by her mask because her mask changes every day. You cannot identify the templar who arrested your brother, because by the time you describe the hawk-faced ceramic visor to your contacts, that mask is back in the pool and someone else is wearing it. The nobility cannot build dossiers. The assassins cannot plan ambushes by patrol route. The mask is the face of the office, but the office has a hundred faces and none of them stay still.
The mask serves a single purpose. Raam’s templars have families. Noble houses have demonstrated, repeatedly and with enthusiasm, that they will torture and kill a templar’s kin to send a message. But you cannot target a templar's wife if you do not know which templar arrested you. You cannot threaten a templar's children if you cannot say which templar patrols the east gate on any given morning. The nobles know that somewhere beneath that ceramic visor is a person with a name and a home — but they can never be certain which name, which home, which face.
The templar district of Raam is a fortress. High walls capped with jagged obsidian enclose a walled compound of barracks, armouries, administrative halls, and residential quarters. Within these walls, the masks come off. Templar families live here, protected by overlapping layers of magical wards, psionic sentries, and a garrison that has spent centuries fortifying every approach. The district’s gates are few and heavy, and they open only for those who belong. No noble raid has ever breached the inner compound. A templar who reaches the district gates is safe — from assassination, from reprisal, from the endless low-grade warfare that consumes the rest of the city.
On duty, Raam’s templars patrol in force. They learned long ago that lone templars die. Patrols move in squads of six or more, masked and robed, their magic ready. They collect taxes at the gates. They inspect cargo. They enforce the Grand Vizier’s laws — selectively, pragmatically, with an eye to which noble house they are antagonising and whether they have the strength to survive the consequences. The templars know they cannot rule Raam by fear alone; there are not enough of them, and the nobles command private armies. What they can do is maintain a presence — a reminder that Abalach-Re still reigns, that the old order has not entirely collapsed, that the masked figures in white are still the law, however tenuously.
Between patrols, the templars gather intelligence. The rotating masks make this possible. A templar can walk the markets or visit a wineshop in civilian clothes, and even if someone saw her masked on patrol yesterday, they have no way to connect the masked figure to the unmasked face. The mask she wore yesterday is on someone else today. No pattern ever forms. The templars know more about the city’s feuds than any noble house suspects.
Attrition is constant. In other city-states, the templarate draws its recruits from ambitious freemen who see the badge as a path to power. In Raam, the freemen have done the arithmetic: templars die. The casualty rate is common knowledge, and few consider the risk worth the reward. Every two or three decades, the Grand Vizier conducts a mass intake of barbarian tribesmen from the wastes, swelling the templarate's ranks with rage templars whose discipline is as foreign as their origins — a practice that replenishes numbers but only adds to the chaos of the city. Those who do serve find themselves caught between a monarch who barely knows they exist and a populace that would gladly see them dead. Yet they persist. The mask protects. The walls hold. And the spells still flow — Abalach-Re lives, and her conduit remains open. A cornered Raamin templar with nothing left to lose is a dangerous opponent, and the nobles who hunt them know it. The templars rule — on Abalach-Re's behalf — but they are reluctant to move against the nobility; they fear reprisal. They fear the Grand Vizier more. A bribe is welcomed, but even a bribe cannot erase a charge of genuine treason, and when that line is crossed, the templarate acts.
Balic is ruled by the Dictator Andropinis, a sorcerer-king who was elected to his post over seven hundred years ago. The term “dictator” once referred to the power of writing laws. Andropinis has turned it into something more sinister, and he takes great delight in reminding the citizens of Balic that their ancestors chose him for life — a choice made by men and women who did not realise how long a sorcerer-king might live.
The templars of Balic are unique in the Tyr Region: the free citizens elect them to ten-year terms. Andropinis is generally tolerant of these elections. He sometimes lets the electorate know which candidate he prefers, and when they oblige him, he rewards them with grain from his private stock. When the wrong candidate wins, Andropinis simply has him executed and calls another vote. Reform-minded templars who slip through the process invariably suffer fatal “accidents” or lose their reforming zeal after a visit to the dictator’s palace of white marble and green columns. The templar Rampholon learned this lesson absolutely: after winning a sweeping victory and repealing several hated edicts, his son found his body buried beneath a pile of salt. Andropinis reinstated every edict the same day.
The templars mirror the Dictator’s personality: legalistic, manipulative, and fond of mental gymnastics. They delight in forcing legal loopholes and manipulating logic to their own ends. A templar of Balic would not simply confiscate a valuable item — she would construct an elaborate legal justification, entrapping the owner in a web of contradictory regulations before claiming the prize as a lawful seizure. Corruption is ubiquitous but filtered through the forms of legality; every bribe has a receipt in some ledger, every extortion a footnote in some dusty volume of precedent.
Their imitation of Andropinis is career strategy. The Dictator enjoys being challenged, and has shown favour to the few who have provided him with fresh, entertaining dilemmas. When he grows weary of the game, that favour buys them a quick death rather than a slow one. The nobility of Balic, called patricians, hold their lands from generation to generation, making their living from olive orchards and grain farms. The merchant houses operate from the agora, nestled against the base of Andropinis’s rocky fortress. Balic is approachable only from the west, a defensible position — but its proximity to the giants of Ledo Island means the city lives under constant threat, and every citizen is a trained soldier.
Daskinor the Mad rules Eldaarich through fear, and his templars are the instruments of that fear. They serve as administrators and as the sorcerer-king’s eyes and ears in all corners of the domain, charged with watching for signs of treachery — and dealing with such treachery before it gets out of hand.
Daskinor's madness sets the tone for the entire city. His templars live in a state of constant suspicion, never certain what their king will demand next or who, in his lunacy, he will name a traitor. They command the military, oversee all records and the distribution of goods, and hold the power of life and death over the citizenry. No one trusts anyone else in Eldaarich. Templars and nobles regularly kill each other — to prevent the same from happening to them, to gain power or position, or simply because the constant tension of living behind heavy locks eventually drives even the most peaceful to violence.
Daskinor’s paranoia sometimes intensifies to the point where he ceases to function entirely. During these episodes, which may last months at a time, the senior templars care for their incapacitated monarch while the machinery of oppression continues to grind.
Oronis the Avangion rules Kurn — a city-state unique in the Tyr Region. Oronis is a sorcerer-monarch who has rejected the path of the dragon, choosing instead to pursue the avangion transformation. His templars reflect his philosophy.
Kurn’s templars do not serve as administrators. Elected officials — nobles and citizens — hold public office, with regular elections and term limits. Instead, Oronis’s templars are the keepers and dispensers of knowledge. They serve as teachers and advisers to local officials and businesses, oversee the restoration of the land, and work to promote Oronis’s plans for eventual reclamation of all Athas.
No defilers are permitted within the ranks of Kurn’s templars. The practice of defiling magic is strictly against the laws of Kurn, and the templars monitor the surrounding forest daily to ensure the delicate balance is maintained. In Kurn, templars are not given as wide a berth as their counterparts in Urik or Nibenay — they are respected rather than feared.
In Ur Draxa, the City of the Dragon, the templars serve Borys — the Dragon of Tyr, the most powerful of the sorcerer-monarchs, feared even by the other sorcerer-monarchs themselves, though all the sorcerer-monarchs standing together could likely defeat him. The templar hierarchy of Ur Draxa is unlike any other in the Tyr Region, for it is headed not by a living human but by a kaisharga — an undead creature of immense power known as the Lord Templar.
The kaisharga — sometimes called the Dead Lords, sometimes the spirit lords — are the Dragon’s inner cabinet, a council of twenty-five undead creatures whose offices have been fixed since the early years of Borys’s reign. Eight are named: the Lord Warrior, the Lord Vizier, the Lord Templar, the Chamberlain, the Herald, the Lord Scribe, the Lord Guardian, and the Lord Assassin. The remaining seventeen are lesser lords whose identities shift as the Dragon rewards his most capable servants with undeath. Some of the kaisharga nurse pathetic fantasies of unseating the Dragon and taking its place — a delusion, since a kaisharga could never be a sorcerer-monarch, and no Dead Lord could hold Ur Draxa together on his own. The fantasies are the product of undeath’s derangement, the long centuries of service, and the resentment of servants who cannot refuse a single one of the Dragon’s commands.
Beneath the Lord Templar, a human Grand Templar administers the city through his circle of High Templars and their sprawling bureaucracy. The Hall of Administration in the Chuur Sector serves as the centre of templar power, housing schools, record halls, quarters, training grounds, and ceremonial chambers. Nearly a thousand templars work within its walls, attended by at least as many slaves.
Clans compete fiercely for the honour of enrolling their children in the templarate. A posting to the templars is considered the highest honour for a Draxan citizen. The templars function as administrators and supervisors, directing the distribution of goods, managing the Dragon’s properties, and maintaining law and order. They are schooled in doctrine and martial philosophy, ensuring that citizens maintain the shai — the Draxan martial spirit.
Many templars are cross-attached to clan or city companies as shaidan — war champions who serve as political officers within military units. Others find their way into the ranks of the kaisharga themselves, rewarded for exceptional cruelty and efficiency with the gift of undeath. A templar kaisharga retains all spellcasting ability and serves the Dragon for eternity.
The templars of Dregoth, the undead dragon-king, are drawn from the second generation of dray — the perfected draconic humanoids created in Dregoth’s own image. They serve a god who walks among them, for Dregoth has proclaimed himself the first true god of Athas, and his templars enforce this worship with zeal.
Dregoth maintains a standing force of 338 templars for a population of only 3,000 dray — an extraordinarily high ratio that reflects the militarised nature of dray society. The templars are ranked by the Scale system: a Templar of the First Scale is third level; of the Second Scale, fourth level; and so on, with each advancement marked by a thick yellowish scale that grows from the spine. Mon Adderath, the High Templar, is an epic templar — the only Templar of the Highest Scale. Absalom the High Priest is a Templar of the Fifteenth Scale.
The templars of Dregoth maintain an arrangement unique among the city-states. Corpses from New Giustenal are transported by barge up the subterranean river to a cave east of the city, where the ambient energy of the Negative Energy Plane suffuses the rock. The dead placed within rise as zombies, which the templars rebuke and command into service. The process is industrial, silent, and constant. Dregoth’s undead army does not dwindle; it accumulates. Every dray who dies in service, every intruder discovered in the tunnels, every surface-dweller unfortunate enough to learn of New Giustenal’s location — all are fed into the cave and emerge as soldiers in the Dread King’s growing host.
Dregoth’s intensive training academy rushes templars past the early stages quickly. Every templar of third level or higher is considered a full templar. Patrols consist of four Templars of the Third Scale and one of the Fourth. These patrols maintain order in New Giustenal and hunt for intruders in the tunnels of the under-region.
The most elite of Dregoth’s forces are the kalin riders — 100 mid-level templars mounted on ferocious predatory insects. Organised into four squadrons of 25 riders each, the kalin riders patrol the ceilings of New Giustenal and will lead the assault on the surface world when the Day of Light arrives. Riders are fifth-level templars armed with magical weapons and enchanted kalin-hide armour.
Mon Adderath, the High Templar , is unique among Dregoth’s servants. He is human — the only non-dray living in New Giustenal. He has served Dregoth for millennia, was made immortal at the cost of considerable personal power to Dregoth, and survived the destruction of Giustenal. He and Dregoth share a relationship unique among the despotic rulers of Athas: they are truly friends. Mon Adderath is the only person in New Giustenal who is not afraid to contradict the Dread King.
The power of a templar is not merely magical — it is legal, political, and social. Within the walls of her city-state, a templar wields authority that would be unthinkable in any other society. This authority is formalised in the Secular Authority that every templar possesses — a recognition that the templar speaks with the voice of the monarch.
A templar’s Secular Authority is measured by her accumulated experience and reputation. Each day, a templar can exercise her authority a limited number of times, and the scope of what she can do expands as she grows in power.
At the lowest levels, a templar can commandeer any slave she encounters and pass judgment upon slaves at will — imprisonment, torture, or death, regardless of who owns the slave. She can search the person or possessions of any slave. She can requisition a small unit of city-state troops.
As she advances, a templar gains the power to intrude upon freemen — entering and searching their homes without consent, under penalty of imprisonment for those who refuse. She can accuse freemen of crimes, imprisoning them indefinitely regardless of evidence. She can judge freemen, passing sentences that range from fines to enslavement to execution. She can requisition appropriate gear from the city armouries.
At higher levels, a templar’s authority extends to the nobility. She can intrude upon noble estates, accuse nobles and imprison them, and eventually pass judgment upon them. She can requisition the temporary services of spellcasters and manifesters from the city’s employ. She can requisition property — commandeering buildings, vehicles, or land for official use.
Upon becoming a High Templar, a templar gains the Leadership feat, attracting a cohort and followers from the ranks of the templarate and the citizenry.
When two templars clash over the use of Secular Authority — one attempting an action, another contesting it — the matter is resolved by force of personality and institutional weight. The templar with the stronger presence and deeper experience prevails. Any templar who is the direct target of another’s Secular Authority action can always force such a contest, regardless of relative rank. The consequences of defying a templar’s authority are severe: slaves who disobey face immediate execution, freemen who refuse entry to their homes can be imprisoned, and nobles who resist an accusation may find themselves on trial for treason.
The full scope of Secular Authority , by Effective Templar Level :
How these contests play out in practice is best illustrated by example. Some decades before Kalak’s fall, a young Tithian of Mericles — then a junior templar, ambitious and already developing the political instincts that would one day make him king — had cultivated a lucrative arrangement with a narcotics smuggler operating out of the Caravan Quarter. The smuggler, a freeman named Osric, dealt in seska, a powdered root that induced euphoria and was quietly popular among the minor nobility. Tithian, in exchange for a monthly stipend, ensured that Osric’s caravans passed through the gates without inspection. It was a tidy arrangement: Osric prospered, Tithian’s income swelled, and the nobles got their seska.
A rival templar named Dorjan — a sharp-featured half-elf with a talent for recognising other people’s revenue streams and a burning desire to claim them for herself — learned of the arrangement. Dorjan was slightly junior to Tithian in rank, but she was relentless and well-connected. She approached Osric directly and informed him that his arrangement with Tithian was void, that she now controlled the Caravan Quarter gate rotation, and that his future shipments would require her blessing — at a higher rate. Osric, sensibly terrified of all templars, stammered that he would need to consult with Tithian first.
Dorjan did not wait long. The next morning, she located Osric in the market and, before a crowd of witnesses, exercised her authority to imprison a freeman — declaring Osric a dealer in illicit substances and ordering him thrown into the dungeons. She was of sufficient rank to do this: imprisoning a freeman was among the earliest powers granted to a templar, available long before the authority to judge or to move against nobles. It was a crude tool, but effective. Osric was in chains before Tithian even learned what had happened.
Tithian arrived at the detention cells within the hour. He carried the same authority Dorjan did — the power to imprison a freeman — and that power cut both ways. What one templar could do, another of equal or greater standing could undo, if his will to power proved the stronger. Tithian asserted his authority over Osric and proved the stronger. Osric was released before the day was out.
Dorjan did not accept defeat. She went immediately to her patron, a High Templar named Larkyn — one of the High Templars who stood at the apex of Tyr’s templarate, the same Larkyn who would, years later, die in Tithian’s gallery during Kalak’s assassination. A High Templar ’s authority dwarfed that of any lesser templar; Larkyn could imprison nobles, commandeer property, and overrule the decisions of his subordinates with a word. He issued a countermand: Osric was to be re-imprisoned under Dorjan’s authority, and Tithian’s interference was formally noted.
Larkyn's countermand could not be ignored. Tithian went to his own patron — an aging bureaucrat named Pezan, High Templar of the Ministry of Trade, who had never liked Larkyn. Pezan contested the imprisonment order directly. A concluded Secular Authority contest between High Templars was final within the ranks — only an epic templar could overturn it, and no epic templar would interest himself in a seska smuggler. Pezan won. Osric was released once more. Larkyn had lost.
Osric returned to his business. His payments to Tithian resumed. Tithian passed a portion upward to High Templar Pezan — the price of his patron's intervention. Pezan passed a portion to the epic templar Turban, the Warlord of Tyr. Every High Templar in Tyr was legally vulnerable to an epic templar's authority; Rosanne the Wise did not accept money, but the Warlord did. Turban, in turn, gave tribute to King Kalak. The ill-gotten gains of a seska smuggler in the Caravan Quarter, traced upward through the ranks of the templarate, touched the throne — the ziggurat of extraction, complete at every level. Tithian considered this an acceptable outcome. Dorjan did not — and the rivalry that began over a seska smuggler festered for years, culminating in the events on the ziggurat where Kalak incinerated Dorjan from the inside out while Tithian watched. He did not mourn her.
The templarate is corrupt. It has been corrupt for a thousand years, and no sorcerer-monarch has ever shown any genuine interest in changing this. As long as terror is maintained among the subject population and the machinery of the city continues to function, the monarchs are content to turn a blind eye.
Bribery is universal. A merchant who wants his caravan to pass through the city gates without inspection pays a templar. A noble who wants a rival’s water supply disrupted pays a templar. A freeman who wants to avoid conscription into the king’s works pays a templar. The sums involved vary by rank — a low-level templar might accept a few ceramic pieces; a high templar’s favour can cost hundreds of silver.
Templars are permitted to supplement their official incomes through bribery and extortion. The Mitigate Corruption class feature formalises this: a templar can appropriate a certain amount of wealth per day without facing legal consequences, and more powerful templars can appropriate more. This is not considered theft — it is the unofficial compensation for the risks and indignities of templar service.
But corruption is only the beginning. The real currency of the templarate is information — secrets hoarded, scandals manufactured, rivalries prosecuted through rumour and implication. A templar's career can be ended by a well-placed accusation of corruption just beyond the legal limit, or by the quiet circulation of a secret she would kill to keep buried. Outright assassination is rare — it draws the wrong kind of attention. The blade is a last resort; the whisper is the weapon of choice.
The Kleptocrat feat represents those templars who have elevated corruption to an art form. A kleptocrat can appropriate twice the normal amount of illicit wealth, forges documents with expert skill, and is harder to pin down when another templar tries to intrude upon, accuse, or judge her.
Every city-state mints its own coinage from fired clay. The material is common — clay is cheap and plentiful — but the value of the ceramic coinage is by fiat, enforced by the sorcerer-monarch's taxes that require payment in ceramic coins.
Each city's coins have their own names, shapes, and denominations. In Tyr, the standard coins are the penny (a round disc with a centre hole for stringing, equal in value to a copper piece), the ten-penny (a hexagonal coin worth ten pennies, equivalent to a silver piece), and the senate (an octagonal coin worth one hundred pennies, equivalent to a gold piece). The crown is a flat ceramic rectangle bearing Kalak's image; worth a platinum piece, it is used only by the state to settle accounts with the merchant houses and never appears in ordinary commerce.
The mints are templar institutions, housed within the templar quarter and staffed by templar-appointed artisans. The templars also serve as the city's bankers — holding deposits, extending credit, and maintaining the ledgers that keep the city-state's finances moving. Extending credit is one of the sorcerer-monarch's most reliable sources of revenue. Only the monarch can create money; he lends it out and is repaid more than he created to lend. Some noble houses are deeply in debt to the throne as a result — a dependency the sorcerer-monarch keeps a closely guarded secret, so that none may know which houses are beholden to him by debt. The coins are theoretically convertible to their metal equivalents, but this is a privilege reserved for the treasury and the great merchant houses. No ordinary citizen can demand silver for his ten-pennies.
The treasury is one of the few places where the sorcerer-monarch pays close attention, and the banking templars who staff it face temptations in proportion to the sums under their care. The Mitigate Corruption remit is tested here more than anywhere else in the templarate.
Each coin leaving the mint is psionically treated, perhaps by the sorcerer-monarch himself. A treated coin reveals its denomination and city of origin to anyone who handles it, or studies it with any attention. The knowing is visceral, arriving without thought or effort. A worn disc with its stamp long since rubbed away reveals itself as clearly as one fresh from the kiln. Children play games with pennies, closing their eyes and trying to "listen" to the coin.
Counterfeiting is so pointless it does not occur. A forged disc can be moulded and stamped to look identical, but it gives off nothing at all — dead clay, empty in the hand, and the absence of the feeling is as unmistakable as the feeling itself.
In the chaos of Kalak's fall, the banking templars looted the treasury and fled. Tithian found it empty when he became king, and the psionic process that allows a ceramic coin to announce its city of issue and denomination has not been replicated. Without the treatment, no new ceramic coinage can be minted — any newly issued coin would be indistinguishable from a counterfeit and would be rejected by merchants and citizens accustomed to the assuring feeling of psionically treated coinage. With no new coins to lend, the banking arm of the templarate has withered. What remains of it is reduced to attempting to reclaim the debts owed to Kalak — debts the nobles dispute in every particular, now that the king to whom they were owed is dead. A small number of metal coins — copper, silver, and a few gold — were struck to mark the new king's reign, but he lacks the metal wealth to mint more. The old ceramic coins still carry the dead king's treatment and circulate without issue. For trade within Tyr, the dead sorcerer-king's money is still the coin of the realm.
In the city-states of Athas, only templars and nobles are permitted to read and write. This is not merely custom — it is law, enforced with deadly seriousness. Non-templars and non-nobles caught possessing the ability to read or write face execution.
The purpose of this restriction is straightforward: knowledge is power. The templars have no desire to share it. If free citizens could read, they might discover seditious ideas. If slaves could read, they might organise rebellion. If merchants could read, they might draft contracts without templar approval — though the merchant houses already skirt this prohibition, maintaining ledgers and tally-books under the legal fiction that accounting is not reading. The templars tolerate the fiction because trade must flow, but the line is absolute: a merchant caught with a written contract lacking a templar seal forfeits the goods in question and loses her trading license. The monopoly on literacy serves a practical purpose: an uneducated population is less able to organise, less inclined to question authority, and less capable of mounting an effective challenge to a corrupt regime. The one exception is the licensed slave scribe — slaves trained to read and write for the express purpose of serving their masters' bureaucratic needs, strictly monitored and subject to savage punishment for any unsanctioned use of their skills.
Templars are educated from the moment they enter the templarate. Those who show aptitude for scholarship are steered toward the scribe path, where they master not merely reading and writing but the entire apparatus of bureaucratic control — legal precedents, tax codes, genealogical records, property deeds. The libraries of the templars are unavailable to outsiders but are the most extensive in the cities, and their use allows templars to research new spells and create magical items.
The gladiatorial arenas of the city-states are central to Athasian life, and the templars are central to the arenas. The sorcerer-king or his chief templar presides over every match. Templars manage the arenas, train the gladiators, fix the fights, and run the gambling operations.
The position of Arena Manager is a prestigious templar posting. Ambitious templars work hard to find enough time to tend to the arena and still continue all their other interests. The Manager controls which gladiators fight, against which opponents, and under what conditions. A well-placed bribe to the Arena Manager can secure a favourable matchup — or a fatal one.
Gambling on the games is legal only if the templars get a cut of the profits. Licensed bookmakers called pelfre coordinate betting through the templarate, with 50% of profits going to the winning bettors, 30% to the arena and the king’s coffers, and the remaining sum as the pelf’s fee. Templars routinely manipulate the odds, ordering pelfre to lie about gladiators’ abilities, injuries, or fighting styles.
A particularly ruthless form of betting called cention involves rival templars placing “phantom bids” on gladiators at the start of each match day. All money goes into a single purse, and the templars who bid on the winning gladiators collect shares. Unscrupulous templars may bribe opponents to take a dive — then double-cross the bribed gladiator by informing his opponent, who kills him in the ring, saving the bribe money.
The templarate is a strict hierarchy. A templar of higher level carries greater institutional weight, and her word overrides that of her subordinates in all matters of governance. Power is concentrated at the top, and every templar knows that the only way to secure real safety — from rivals, from the nobility, from the monarch's whims — is to climb. The result is a culture of relentless ambition, and the weapons of choice are not blades but whispers: bribes change hands, secrets are hoarded and deployed at the right moment, rivals find themselves implicated in corruption scandals just beyond the legal limit, reputations are destroyed by carefully planted rumour. Outright assassination is rare — it invites scrutiny, and a templar who makes a habit of killing her rivals soon finds herself the target of collective retaliation. The preferred weapon is character assassination.
The High Templars sit at the apex of this pyramid of ambition, each responsible for a sphere of the city’s governance and each guarding her position jealously. High Templars who lose the monarch’s favour rarely survive the experience. Kalak’s disposal of his High Templar of the King's Works, Dorjan — incinerating her from the inside out — was a reminder to all High Templars of the price of failure.
Templars who reach 14th level achieve the status of High Templar , gaining immunity from prosecution, investigation, or intrusion by any non-epic templars or city officials. Only epic templars or the sorcerer-monarch can initiate actions against a High Templar . This immunity is both a shield and a target — it protects the High Templar from rivals, but it also marks her as someone important enough to be worth killing.
Above the High Templars, rarer still, are the epic templars — those who have surpassed 20th level and entered a realm where even High Templars are subordinates. At this tier the hierarchy becomes absolute: only another epic templar can challenge an epic templar. These Highest Templars double the social bonuses of High Templars and can intrude upon, accuse, and judge High Templars who are not themselves epic. They are the most powerful figures in the city-state after the sorcerer-monarch, and no one else is close.
Not every member of the templarate channels the conduit. The institution includes many individuals inducted via the Secular Authority feat alone — people who wear the badge, wield legal authority, and serve the monarch, but cannot cast templar spells. These are the Sub-Templars.
Who They Are
Sub-Templars are specialists the monarch needs within the templarate who are not — and may never become — full conduit-bound templars. They wear a lesser sigil, wield genuine secular authority, and answer to the templar hierarchy. They cannot cast templar spells.
Common Sub-Templar roles include psions (interrogators, mind-readers, telepathic surveillance), fighters (patrol captains, gate commanders, military trainers), rogues (infiltrators, informants, undercover agents), elemental clerics (most often water clerics), and wizards and sorcerers known as arcanamachs (serving the monarch directly, valued for arcane firepower that templars cannot replicate). Any skill the monarch needs can be found, bought, or conscripted into Sub-Templar service.
They are specialists who followed a different path — whether by aptitude, by circumstance, or by choice — and serve the templarate through the Secular Authority feat rather than through the conduit.
The Glass Ceiling
Sub-Templars wield real authority. They can command slaves, requisition troops, enter freemen's houses, and exercise the same secular powers as any templar of equivalent Effective Templar Level. But they can never become High Templars. They can never Grant Pardon. And when they clash with true templars over the use of that authority, the institutional weight of the templarate favours the templar every time. They are permanent second-tier members, respected for their skills but barred from the ultimate ranks.
Some templars bear levels in other classes — a templar-psion who trained in the Way before induction, a templar-fighter who rose through the ranks. Multiclassing offers versatility, but it carries a cost: every level spent outside the Templar class is a level of spellcasting and secular authority left on the table. A Templar 3 / Fighter 3 commands less magic and less institutional weight than a single-classed Templar 6. The templarate respects specialists, but the hierarchy is measured in templar levels, and those who divide their attention fall behind.
A templar who loses her sorcerer-monarch is an ex-templar — stripped of spells, stripped of position, often stripped of life by those she once oppressed. The fate of ex-templars is one of the great unspoken realities of Athasian society.
When Kalak fell, Tyr’s templars became targets. Mobs hunted them through the streets. Former slaves who had suffered under the lash for decades took their revenge. Those templars who survived did so by finding powerful protectors — like Tithian — or by fleeing the city entirely.
Ex-templars who flee to other city-states rarely find welcome. Established templars in Urik, Nibenay, and Gulg have no desire to admit rivals into their hierarchies. Foreign templars who arrive at the gates of a new city are typically enslaved, killed, or — at best — turned away. Only those who can offer something of genuine value to the new monarch — military intelligence, hidden wealth, rare skills — have any chance of acceptance.
Some ex-templars abandon their past entirely, shedding the cassock and attempting to start new lives. These individuals face a brutal existence. When recognised — and recognition is almost inevitable — they are attacked, tortured, or killed. Slave tribes, the natural refuge of the dispossessed, have no place for ex-templars. To the slaves, every templar is a reminder of life in servitude, and ex-templars — even those who were themselves enslaved — are never given positions of leadership. They are tolerated at best, killed at worst.
The story of Caletta of Nibenay illustrates the ex-templar’s path. Once a powerful templar in the Shadow King’s service, Caletta was stripped of her powers and station for a minor failure — a slave work detail under her command returned with too few agafari trees — and was herself cast into slavery. She spent two years as a field slave in the Crescent Forest before a thri-kreen hunting pack attacked her work detail, giving her the chance to flee. In the wilderness, she survived on the combat training she had received as a young templar, and eventually encountered Sortar’s Army — the largest and most militant of the slave tribes, led by the charismatic warlord Sortar, himself a former slave who had been trained in warfare by a templar named Gebiz. Sortar’s Army wages open war on the city-states, raiding caravans, freeing slaves, and slaughtering templars and nobles wherever they find them. Caletta became Sortar’s lover and trusted military advisor, proving that ex-templars can find new purpose — but only among those who hate everything they once were.
The templars hold no formal doctrine regarding elemental clerics, but they are wary of religious fanatics among the elemental temples. Beyond that, the relationship is practical and varies by element.
Earth Clerics: Earth clerics who live in cities advise the farmers of the outlying areas and wander the streets teaching that death is a natural part of life and not the end — every living thing returns to the earth and sustains what comes after. The templars consider them harmless and tolerate them because of their usefulness to the nobles' crops. But the message they carry gives the farmers who hear it the courage to face a hard land and a harder life, knowing that in death they rejoin the soil that fed them.
Air Clerics: Air clerics are reluctant to spend time in the cities. The constant surveillance of the templars chains their unfettered spirits. When air clerics are found in cities, it is sometimes in connection with efforts to smuggle escaped slaves to freedom. Air clerics feel bound to help those who yearn for freedom — not out of a doctrine against slavery, but because a spirit that longs to be unshackled commands their aid. They offer no guarantee of safety; the desert claims more escaped slaves than it spares, and the air cleric does not pretend otherwise.
Fire Clerics: Fire is in the blood of these clerics. A fire cleric does not bow to templars, does not genuflect, does not back down — and in the cities, where the templarate demands submission from every soul, that unbending spine is read as defiance. Once the confrontation escalates, the templars need no additional pretext to arrest and execute her. Most fire clerics avoid the cities for this reason. Those few who do enter urban precincts and manage to keep their heads down pass beneath the templarate's notice — but few can stomach the daily concessions that city life demands. In the villages and slave communities beyond the templarate's reach, fire clerics are fierce protectors, the first to stand against a monster attack, a raiding party, or anything that threatens the settlement.
Water Clerics: Water clerics have the most cooperative relationship with templars of any elemental priesthood. They provide water for the poor and desperate and are frequently called upon for healing — services the templarate is content to let someone else supply. Some water clerics enter the templarate through the Secular Authority feat, serving as sub-templars.
The Veiled Alliance exists to protect preservers from physical, mental, and magical attacks by all enemies — and chief among those enemies are the templars. The Alliance and the templarate are locked in a secret war that has continued for generations.
Templars hunt the Alliance through every means at their disposal. Sorcerer-king agents and powerful defilers constantly search for Alliance members, hoping to track them to their chapter headquarters. Psionic interrogations extract names and locations from captured preservers. Infiltrators — the Myrmeleons — have penetrated Alliance chapters in multiple cities, feeding information back to their templar masters.
“My father is a templar”
“My mother is a gardener”
“You come of good stock”
The Alliance’s methods of resistance include sabotage (collapsing templar headquarters through “faulty construction,” spoiling food consignments, breaking weapons), propaganda (circulating news of slave uprisings and betrayed templars), magical eavesdropping (placing devices in templars’ quarters), and disguise (keeping sets of templar robes in safe houses for infiltration).
The founder of the Veiled Alliance, according to Alliance legend, was himself a templar. Daclamitus was a cruel and ambitious templar of Tyr who, through a magical transformation brought about by an ancient helm, came to understand the value of preserver magic. He secretly protected the first preserver wizard, Averil, hiding her in a grotto in Kalak’s own gardens while a junior templar named Antrifos watched, suspecting treason. From this single act of covert protection, the Veiled Alliance was born.
The Alliance-templar dynamic varies by city. In Tyr, the fall of Kalak has complicated the relationship — templars without spells are less threatening, but still dangerous through their political power. In Urik, Hamanu has hunted the Alliance mercilessly, fragmenting it into rival factions. In Draj, the Alliance headquarters is hidden beneath Tectuktitlay’s own Temple of Two Moons — a location made possible by templar corruption centuries ago. In Raam, the Alliance has actually cultivated contacts within the templar hierarchy, bribing officials and installing members in key positions.
Elves can become templars, though they are uncommon. The templarate watches elven merchants with ingrained suspicion; templars are trained to expect elves to be guilty of something and will use any excuse to expel them from the cities. Individual templars, however, have no compunction about doing business with elven traders when it suits them. Elven markets like the permanent one inside Tyr's walls offer nearly any commodity, and a templar looking for something outside official channels knows where to find it.
The larger elven merchant tribes operate in the templarate's shadow. The Clearwaters move from city to city, never staying long enough for a case to be built. The Swiftwings are locked in open war with House Stel of Urik, attacking Stel caravans so aggressively that templars have begun accompanying merchant trains. The Night Runners and the Shadows specialise in intrigue, espionage, and assassination — services in demand by merchant houses, nobles, and individual templars willing to pay their exorbitant prices.
The dynastic merchant houses exist in an uneasy equilibrium with the templarate. The houses need the templars — without templar approval, caravans cannot enter cities, goods cannot be sold, and trade cannot function. The templars need the houses — without the flow of goods the merchant dynasties provide, the cities would starve.
This mutual dependence creates a landscape of bribes, favours, and careful negotiation. A merchant house that stays in the templars’ good graces can operate freely, its caravans passing through gates with minimal inspection, its goods exempt from the worst tariffs. A merchant house that falls from favour finds its caravans subjected to endless “customs inspections,” its warehouses raided, its agents arrested on trumped-up charges.
Each city-state handles the templar-merchant relationship differently. In Urik, Hamanu’s templars enforce strict controls — only the most loyal members of House Stel may enter and leave the city, all cargo is checked repeatedly, and trade routes must be approved in advance. In Nibenay, the templars of the Chamber of Water manage trade with practised efficiency, viewing small bribes as gratuities rather than offenses. In Gulg, a templar is assigned to each merchant house emporium to barter on behalf of the people.
Some merchant houses are more entangled with the templarate than others. House M’ke of Raam is rumoured to have been founded by dissident templars fleeing their sorcerer-king’s wrath. House Stel of Urik enjoys such close relations with Hamanu that the sorcerer-king occasionally lends his templars to guard Stel caravans.
The slave tribes — those communities of escaped slaves who eke out survival in the wastes beyond the city walls — view templars as the ultimate symbol of oppression. Anything that reminds the ex-slaves of the templars is quickly eliminated from tribal life. Tribal leaders are careful about the titles they apply to themselves, for anything that sounds like the rank structure of the templarate is anathema.
Templars who fall into slavery and escape to join the tribes face a difficult existence. They are permitted to join — barely — but they are never given positions of leadership. The slave tribes’ suspicion of templars runs too deep. Even Caletta, the ex-templar of Nibenay who became Sortar’s lover and advisor, is regarded with wariness by many in the tribe. Her past as a templar is a stain that can never be fully washed clean.
Some tribes refuse to accept templars at all. Tenpug’s Band, an artist and artisan community, wants nothing to do with preservers, defilers, or templars. The Free, led by Bartras, accepts ex-templars but keeps them firmly at the bottom of the social order.
Sortar’s Army, the most powerful and militant of the slave tribes, has declared war on everything associated with the city-states. Its members slaughter templars and nobles on sight, attack caravans carrying the goods of the ruling class, and dream of the day when they will march on the cities themselves and tear down the templarate brick by brick.
Druids are the guardians of Athas’s remaining natural places — spirits of the land bound to particular geographical features, from a pooled oasis to an entire mountain range. Their relationship with the templarate is not one of blanket hostility but of individual circumstance. A druid who preaches rebellion against the sorcerer-monarchs will find templar assassins at her door. A druid who simply tends her guarded lands and keeps to herself may pass years without templar interference.
The sorcerer-kings have placed bounties on the heads of druids who actively oppose them, and templars who deliver such heads are well rewarded. But the druids who protect the springs of Nibenay are treated with wary respect by nobles and templars alike — their services are too valuable to lose, and the Shadow King has better uses for his templars than antagonising a water source. In Gulg, the Oba’s templars work alongside druids in the restoration of the Crescent Forest, however uneasily; the shared goal of reforestation creates an awkward alliance that neither side fully trusts but both sides need. Elsewhere, druids who keep a low profile are largely ignored — the templarate has more pressing enemies than a hermit who talks to trees.
The relationship is always conditional. A druid who crosses the line from preservation to active resistance becomes a target. A templar who encroaches on a druid’s guarded lands becomes a threat to be eliminated. But neither side wages war by default. The land is large, the templars are busy, and most druids would rather nurture what remains than die fighting for what is already lost.
Psionicists occupy a unique position in Athasian society. Unlike wizards, they are not hunted and killed on sight. Unlike elemental clerics, they owe no loyalty to any external power. The templars employ psionicists extensively — as interrogators, as bodyguards, as spies, and as battlefield auxiliaries.
Every templar patrol of any size includes at least one psionicist capable of reading thoughts and detecting deception. The templar interrogators of Urik’s Bureau of Security are trained psionicists who can extract information from the most resistant subjects.
Some templars are also psionicists — individuals who have trained in both the divine magic of the templarate and the disciplines of the Way. Puram of Urik is a templar-psionicist who served as Hamanu’s spy, infiltrating the Blueshadow elves and manipulating villagers into attacking their camp. Turen Taekad, Special Aide to the High Templar of Security in Urik, monitors all psionic activity in the city. These templar mindbenders are among the most dangerous servants of the sorcerer-monarchs, for they can attack on multiple fronts, combining spells with psionic assaults.
Templars who lose their spells sometimes turn to the Way. Psionic academies exist in most city-states, and former templars with the discipline to master the mental arts can train there — starting over from nothing.
Across Athasian city-states, the study of psionics has always been encouraged — except for one forbidden practice. Thrallherding, the art of bending minds into permanent servitude, is punishable by summary execution. The crime is not one that permits a trial. Any templar, soldier, or citizen may carry out the sentence upon verification — no further authority is required.
A thrallherd does not recruit. She does not persuade, entice, or convert. She sends out a psychic resonance — unconscious, continual, and utterly involuntary — that touches certain minds seemingly at random. Those touched feel a desire to serve. They may not like her. They may not respect her. They may despise everything about her. The desire to serve remains all the same.
The city-states have learned through blood what happens when this resonance is left unchecked. A single thrallherd can wreak havoc — thrallherd-led cults have toppled governors, emptied villages, and turned templar garrisons against their own commanders. The nightmare every templarate dreads is a thrallherd who acquires a templar as a thrall — a templar who feels, with absolute certainty, that she must follow the thrallherd's commands — and through her, access to every locked chamber, sealed archive, and privileged corridor the sigil opens. No city-state will imprison a captured thrallherd; the risk of the thrallherd seizing the minds of her captors is too great. The sentence is death, carried out immediately, and the only certain way to free a thrall is to kill the thrallherd.
Most thrallherds flee civilisation entirely, vanishing into the wastes where no templar patrol will follow. There they set themselves up as gurus or prophets over small communities of the enthralled — a close thrall, a flock of believers, an eclectic mix of whatever races wander the vicinity, from escaped slaves to gith, nikaal, and tari. A thrall may perceive the desire to serve for what it is, but knowing does not help; she cannot walk away. There are more thrallherds out in the wastes than most informed people believe, each one a false prophet, guru, deity, or other august figure.
Wyan and Sacha, the two floating heads that were Kalak's closest advisors before he was killed and now counsel Tithian, claim that Lalali-Puy, the Oba of Gulg, is herself a thrallherd. The Oba's famous popularity among her subjects, the instinctive devotion she commands from templars and commoners alike, is not organic — it is the same psychic resonance that draws believers to a desert guru, broadcast silently and invisibly for centuries beneath every public ceremony and benevolent smile. They further believe that the Oba enslaves nature spirits as readily as mortals, and that at least one of her thralls is a spirit of the land itself — a guardian of the Crescent Forest bound to her service.
A corpse belongs to the state, whether slave, freeman or noble. A resource the sorcerer-monarchs have exploited for thousands of years.
Every city-state’s army raises undead replacements on the march. Soldiers who fall in the morning are on their feet by afternoon, silent and obedient, closing the gaps in the line. The skeletons of executed criminals patrol the city walls. Zombie labourers haul stone, dig trenches, and move earth — simple, repetitive tasks that require no judgment. Skeletons are preferred for work near food or in public view; zombies are too foul for either, their rotting flesh drawing flies and spreading disease. Zombies and skeletons need constant supervision. They can follow a single command — haul this block, dig this ditch — but anything requiring decision or adaptation is beyond them. A skeleton ordered to carry a load from one end of the worksite to the other will do exactly that, endlessly, until told to stop, regardless of whether the pile at the destination has become an obstruction. For any labour requiring more than a single step, living slaves remain the cheaper and more practical option.
Higher forms of undead are not used for labour at all, despite being intelligent enough for it. The morg, the fael, the wight, and the thinking zombie all hate the living profoundly. Set to labour, they find ways to harm their overseers — a dropped block that crushes a slave, a trench wall that collapses at the right moment, a tool that goes missing and reappears in someone’s back. The templarate learned centuries ago that the only safe use for the intelligent dead is on the battlefield, where their malice can be directed at an enemy.
The Templar Animator is the specialist assigned to this work. In every army of the Tyr Region, one animator accompanies each undead unit — a templar capable of casting animate dead whose spells are devoted almost entirely to the creation and control of the dead. Where the overseer commands the army and the centurion commands the living, the animator commands the fallen. It is an unglamorous posting, but every commander knows that an army without an animator is an army that shrinks with every engagement, while an army with one grows stronger.
The templars of Nibenay employ large numbers of undead units as a matter of course, integrating them into the Shadow King’s war machine alongside the thousand half-giants who form the army’s core. In Urik, Hamanu’s templars raise formations of undead soldiers and lead them into battle alongside mortal troops, replacing losses from the enemy dead as they advance. Even the templars of Gulg, whose forest warfare is ill-suited to shambling formations, raise the bones of fallen enemies to guard the outer dagadas. No city-state forgoes the practice. A sorcerer-monarch who declined to raise the dead would be throwing away troops his rivals collect for free.
The raw material is never in short supply. Executions, battlefield casualties, slaves worked to death — all feed the templarate’s demand for bodies. The state owns every corpse within its jurisdiction; the templarate exercises its right of reclamation without ceremony. The corpses are not necessarily animated immediately. Each city has great storehouses of dead bodies, both humanoid and animal, for later animation. The one exception is a paid exemption: for a fee scaled by social class — cheapest for a slave, higher for a freeman, higher still for a noble — a citizen or a noble house can secure a guarantee that a specific body will not be animated. Some nobles pay the tax for favoured slaves, and some slaves work hard in the hope of earning that protection. Sub-templars, who possess the Secular Authority feat but not the conduit, pay at the freeman’s rate like any other citizen. Those who cannot pay, or who die without arrangements, serve the state in death as they did in life.
Only full templars are guaranteed rest. The right is one of the few privileges that separates the conduit-bound from the sub-templar — the sorcerer-monarch’s own servants are not fed into the state’s machinery the way everyone else is. But even this guarantee is conditional. A sorcerer-monarch may choose to raise a fallen templar as undead. When it happens, the templar is never raised as a common skeleton or zombie but as an intelligent undead that retains its skills and spellcasting. The raising may be a reward for exceptional service, a punishment for unforgivable failure, or simply the monarch’s refusal to lose a capable servant to something as trivial as death. It is always a deliberate, individual act of the sorcerer-monarch, never the routine reclamation that awaits the corpses of slaves, freemen, and nobles.
Most templars rebuke and command rather than turn and destroy undead. An uncontrolled or free-willed undead discovered in the field is an asset to be seized as much as a fat coin pouch belonging to a smuggler.
Tithian of Mericles (17th-level Human Scribe Templar, Neutral Evil): The former High Templar of Games and the King’s Works who seized the throne of Tyr after Kalak’s assassination. Tithian is gaunt and sharp-featured, with auburn hair in a braided tail and beady eyes the colour of liver. He is the ultimate political survivor — a man who betrayed his class to join the templars, betrayed his king to join the revolution, and would betray anyone to advance his own interests. Yet he is also the man who freed Tyr’s slaves, established the Council of Advisers, and held the city together through the chaos following Kalak’s death. He wears the black templar cassock still, even as king.
Timor (Defiler 12 / Templar 5, Lawful Evil): The Senior Templar of Tyr under Tithian. Timor is a short, frail man with pointed features and pale, mud-coloured eyes — yet he speaks and acts with an air of absolute authority. He represents three generations of servitude to the templarate, having inherited his father’s network of contacts and informants. Timor has secretly studied defiling magic to further his quest for power, and his arcane abilities have long since eclipsed the minor templar magic he retains from his early service. He is pragmatic, efficient, and wholly emotionless in his actions.
Banther (9th-level Human Warrior Templar, Lawful Neutral): The Arena Manager of Tyr under Tithian. Banther is broad-shouldered and dark-skinned, with closely cropped hair and a twice-broken nose. He looks more like a gladiator than a templar — and indeed, he secretly makes anonymous appearances in the arena, masked to avoid identification. Banther is one of the few templars who walks freely about the city without an escort.
Roven (Minor Templar of Kalak): A portly, middle-aged templar with silver hair and impeccably styled features. Roven served as a templar of Kalak during the ziggurat’s construction, running gambling operations and extorting nobles. He was killed during the chaos of the revolution, struck down by a slave wielding his own money-bag as a weapon.
Pegen (8th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): A portly, pale-haired templar of mid-rank who supervised the city gates of Tyr. Pegen presented an imperious, arrogant facade but beneath it was a lonely, bitter man driven by covetous desires and a deep fear of his superiors. He enforced Tyr’s cruel laws not out of conviction but because it served his position within the hierarchy he clung to. His arrogance made him susceptible to flattery and manipulation; his fear made him ultimately obedient. Pegen was murdered by the half-elf sorceress Sadira in the weeks before Kalak’s fall — she slit his throat in a dark alley of the Elven Market after charming her way past his gate inspection.
Dorjan (16th-level Human Enforcer Templar, Lawful Evil): A slender and striking woman with an ivory complexion and long, silky black hair. Dorjan served Kalak as High Templar of the King’s Works, overseeing the monumental ziggurat project with decisive and often brutal authority. Her stern personality and cruel temper gave her features a sharp, unapproachable edge. She was Tithian’s greatest rival within the templarate — a rivalry that began decades earlier over a seska smuggler and festered into mutual loathing. Dorjan’s downfall came when the Veiled Alliance hid magical amulets within the ziggurat to disrupt its construction, and she failed to detect the sabotage. Kalak, in a display of his displeasure, incinerated Dorjan from the inside out on the ziggurat’s sixth terrace while Tithian watched. As an enforcer templar, she was a zealot who worshipped Kalak as a deity and channelled that fanaticism into the ability to smite his enemies.
Gathalimay (Rogue 1 / Templar 3, Lawful Evil): A half-elven templar assistant serving under Tithian. Gathalimay learned roguish skills in his youth before joining the templarate, and he carried those talents into his service — a deft hand with locks and a certain nimbleness that made him useful for assignments requiring more than brute authority. He was one of the two subordinates who accompanied Tithian into the hidden chamber beneath Kalak’s Golden Tower, where the sorcerer-king discovered the intrusion and snapped Gathalimay’s neck with a single motion. His body was fed to Sacha, the undead head of Tithian’s own ancestor.
Styan (11th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): A weary templar commander of middling years who served under Kalak and survived the revolution. Styan wields the sorcerer-king’s magic as a tool of enforcement and subtle control, favouring spells of deception and information management. He commanded troops within the templarate hierarchy under Kalak and, after the revolution, was appointed by Tithian as one of three commanders of the Army of Tyr alongside Rikus the gladiator and Jaseela the noble — a posting that required him to navigate the impossible politics of former enemies forced to fight together against Hamanu of Urik.
Eordornik Hasaval (6th-level Human Templar, Neutral Evil): A short, furtive man the other templars called “Hasaval the Varl” — after a small, disgusting scaled slug. Hasaval spent his youth tormenting those weaker than himself while manipulating stronger people into doing his work. The black robes gave him authority, but he never learned to wield it effectively, conniving even against his fellow templars until they ostracised him. He survived Kalak’s fall because no one considered him important enough to kill. In the chaos following the revolution, Hasaval found his calling as a broker of favours, playing every faction against each other — templars, nobles, gladiators, merchants — skimming profit from every transaction. He is universally despised but persistently useful, and he knows every rumour in Tyr before it reaches the Council.
Girias (7th-level Human Templar, Lawful Neutral): An aging templar from a family that had served Kalak for centuries, Girias was passed over for promotion more times than anyone could count. He is vain, militarily incompetent, and easily manipulated — which made him the perfect puppet for Hasaval, who convinced Girias that the templars of Tyr were clamouring for him to be appointed a commander of the new army. Girias believed every word. He spent the march to war admiring his own reflection in polished shields and issuing ludicrous orders that his subordinates quietly ignored. He survived the campaign against Urik through sheer irrelevance.
Scaurus (Former Templar of Kalak): A refugee templar from Tyr who fled when Kalak was assassinated. Fearing a purge, Scaurus left before Tithian consolidated power and now lives at Outpost Zero in the Forest Ridge with Delia, a defiler who fled with him. He knows fragments of templar lore from his service — including rumours of a secretive order of psionicists who once hunted rogue mindbenders with the king’s tacit approval. Scaurus is neither powerful nor particularly brave, but he is a survivor, and he has learned to keep his head down and his past unmentioned.
Thovadarak (11th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): An ambitious templar who leads Urikite expeditions into the wastes. Thovadarak is motivated by pure self-interest but understands that cooperation is sometimes unavoidable. He carries a bone bastard sword and commands a mixed force of gladiators, defilers, and other templars.
Tirian (10th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): A former slave of Raam who escaped and joined Urik’s templars to ensure she would never wear chains again. Tirian is ruthless and calculating, preferring to observe and assess before acting. She fights with self-enhancing spells and wades into melee, but will abandon a hopeless cause before her life is endangered.
Malestic (11th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): A cruel and calculating templar who entraps visitors into breaking Urik’s laws. Malestic disguises himself as a beggar or a merchant, then reveals his true identity when his victims commit some infraction. He led the pursuit of Korgunard the preserver and repeatedly clashed with the Veiled Alliance.
Severin (15th-level Human Warrior Templar, Lawful Evil): Captain of the Palace Guards in Destiny’s Kingdom. Severin commands the half-giant guards and rushes to Hamanu’s side when alarms sound. He wears splint mail enchanted to appear as a normal templar cloak and carries a metal long sword.
Vasealia Plucrates (High Templar of Hamanu’s Commissary, Warrior Templar): The mother of Gelmin. Vasealia is a scarred veteran who led front-line units in her youth and fought several duels before Hamanu named her High Templar . She is one of the few templars who can argue with Hamanu and win.
Radis Plucrates (High Templar of Hamanu’s Private Library, Scribe Templar): The father of Gelmin. Radis is a white-bearded scholar who researches the catacombs beneath Urik and has compiled extensive knowledge about the avangion legend. He represents the scholarly side of Urik’s templarate.
Gelmin Plucrates (Templar of the Fifth Rank, Agifari-Bearer): The son of Vasealia and Radis, and the protagonist of the Black Flames story. Gelmin graduated from the templar academy, received the agifari blossom from Hamanu himself, and was sent to destroy an avangion — only to betray his oath, swear service to the avangion instead, and return to Urik to work for Athas’s restoration from within the templar bureaucracy.
Wardo Keshan (Defiler 10 / Templar 3, Neutral Evil): A tall, thin man with midnight-black skin and piercing eyes, Wardo dresses in a black knee-length shirt and loose trousers with the white cape of a Urikite templar. Beneath his clothes, his entire body is covered in flowing white tattoos — his defiler spellbook, written upside-down so he can read it himself, impossible to steal short of flaying him alive. Wardo focused his defiler studies on spells of manipulation and control before joining the templarate for political protection, and he remains fond of reversing his remove fear spell against those who displease him. The sensory signature of his defiler magic is a tiny puff of dark smoke and the distant cawing of crows.
Puram (Templar 3 / Psion 3 / Psychic Theurge 4, Lawful Evil): A half-elf templar-psionicist who serves as Hamanu’s spy. Puram infiltrated the Blueshadow elves, manipulated villagers into attacking them, and destroyed their brooches of obsidian shattering. He is confident and bold, relying on his psionic powers as much as his templar magic.
Turen Taekad (Psion 5 / Templar 3 / Psychic Theurge 6, Neutral Evil): Special Aide to the High Templar of Security. Turen monitors all psionic activity in Urik and leads investigations of psionic crimes. He is young, ambitious, and has made many enemies both inside and outside the templar priesthood.
Rhac (7th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): A Urikite templar and spy who operated inside Tyr during the crisis with Hamanu’s approaching army. Rhac gathered intelligence for his master, High Templar Unamas of Urik, feeding information about Tyr’s defences and troop movements back to the Lion’s war council. He carried a steel sword and moved with supernatural speed through magical boots. When the Tyrian counter-intelligence efforts closed in, he vanished — presumably returning to Urik with enough information to justify his mission.
Salovar (8th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): An Urikite army commander who led forces against Tyr during Hamanu’s campaign. Salovar is a capable field officer who favours spells of command and battlefield control — command , hold person , animate dead . He serves Hamanu’s war machine without question, raising undead reinforcements on the march and driving his troops forward with brutal discipline.
Fresiva (8th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): A diligent and opportunistic templar who patrols the streets of Urik looking for lawbreakers — or for anyone who can be made to look like one. Fresiva has a talent for identifying obscure infractions in Hamanu’s vast and contradictory legal code, and she is not above inventing new interpretations when the slave pits run low. She is patient, observant, and utterly without mercy. She typically moves with a squad of six city guards.
Siemhouk (Templar 5 / Psion 5 / Psychic Theurge 7, Lawful Evil): The Child Priest — a fourteen-year-old girl who stands as the highest-ranking templar in Nibenay’s court. Siemhouk was raised by the Shadow King himself and has shown greater command of templar magic than any of Nibenay’s wives. She possesses an unprecedented psionic wild talent to allay bestial rages — a power that may be able to calm the states that seize dragons as they advance toward maturity.
Leaza (5th-level Human Templar, Neutral Evil): A templar-wife of Nibenay who leads operations against the Veiled Alliance. Leaza is an athletic, ruggedly attractive woman who is fanatically dedicated to the destruction of the Alliance.
Marika (12th-level Human Templar, Neutral Evil): One of Nibenay’s most trusted templars. Marika leads expeditions into the Crescent Forest to intercept fugitives and retrieve stolen items. She is businesslike and efficient, answering questions with monosyllables.
Arru (10th-level Human Templar, Neutral Evil): High Courtesan of the House — the templar who heads the Chamber of Earth, responsible for the city’s reservoir, grain supply, public works, and tax collection. Arru manages the vast slave labour force within the Naggaramakam, ensuring that the Shadow King’s domestic apparatus functions without interruption.
Kahaylah (10th-level Human Templar, True Neutral): High Courtesan of Trade — the templar who heads the Chamber of Water, overseeing city gates, tariffs, business licences, and relations with the dynastic merchant houses. Kahaylah takes a pragmatic, almost dispassionate approach to her duties, treating the flow of commerce as a problem of engineering rather than politics.
Rejan (12th-level Human Templar, Neutral Evil): High Courtesan of the Army — the templar who heads the Chamber of Fire, commanding Nibenay’s military forces. Rejan trains the thousand half-giants who form the core of Nibenay’s army and drills the young templars who pass through the Chamber of Fire before being assigned to other careers. She favours open-field tactics, forcing opponents into pitched battle where Nibenay’s larger units and war machines can crush all but the mightiest enemies.
Djen (12th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): High Courtesan of the King’s Law — the templar who heads the Chamber of Order, the most feared of Nibenay’s five chambers. Djen polices the community, resolves disputes, manages the prisons, and runs the Myrmeleon program that infiltrates the Veiled Alliance. She has the authority to commandeer resources and subordinates from any other chamber. Criminals who enter her custody rarely emerge unchanged.
Vakskra (Templar-Wife of Nibenay, Lawful Evil): A young templar-wife who commanded a Nibenay expedition into the wilderness during the gith crisis. Vakskra’s force was devastated by gith skirmishers, reducing her command to a fraction of its original strength. Too ashamed to return to Nibenay and report her failure, she was willing to negotiate with anyone — even surface-dwelling adventurers — if it meant salvaging something from the disaster. Her story illustrates the immense pressure Nibenay’s templars operate under: failure is not an option that leaves survivors.
Mogadisho (15th-level Human Warrior Templar, Neutral Evil): The Warlord of Gulg. Mogadisho is a brutal warrior who disdains the politics of the court, preferring the company of soldiers. He is fanatically loyal to the Oba and commands her armies with terrible efficiency. He is a member of the Paper Nest.
Hoopidjo (High-level Human Scribe Templar, Lawful Evil): The Gatherer of Gulg. Hoopidjo manages the internal affairs of the city — the slave labour force, the fields, the trading house. A tireless worker, she is one of the few people whom the Oba respects and takes regularly into her confidence. She is a member of the Paper Nest.
Akili (Templar Psionicist, Lawful Evil): An elderly woman and one of the most powerful templar psionicists in Gulg. Akili’s telepathic abilities are formidable; she is said to be able to read the thoughts of a dozen people simultaneously and detect deception with unerring accuracy. The Oba uses her as a living lie-detector, stationing her at court during audiences with foreign emissaries and suspected conspirators alike.
Akalla (Moon-Priest of Draj): A templar assigned to the korinth commanded by Overmaster Illix. Akalla is slender but not gaunt, with a hawklike face and an air of shrewdness. He was once a high-ranking Moon Priest before a failed experiment led to his disgrace and demotion. He serves loyally on the surface while secretly pursuing his own agenda.
Maxtlixoco (15th-level Moon Priest, Lawful Evil): The highest-ranking templar of Draj under Tectuktitlay, overseeing the Moon Priests’ ritual observances and the administration of the city’s religious law.
Grogh-En (10th-level Human Templar, Lawful Neutral): A senior templar of Raam who is sympathetic to the Veiled Alliance — an unusual position for a templar, and one that places him in constant danger from both his fellow templars and the Alliance members who do not trust him.
Shaziva (Templar of Raam, Lawful Evil): One of the few Raamin templars bold enough to travel beyond the city’s walls. Shaziva occasionally hires mercenaries to escort her between Urik and Raam, transporting goods and messages in a battered mekillot wagon. She offers miserable pay and vague promises of future favours — and secretly plans to have her escorts killed if they cause trouble once inside Raam’s gates. Like all Raamin templars, she wears a mask drawn from the district pool and never reveals her face to outsiders.
Asthira (12th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): The First Templar of Balic — a high-ranking templar who serves Andropinis with the same legalistic cunning that characterises the Balican templarate. Asthira is a master of the Dictator’s elaborate bureaucracy and a formidable political operator within the elected templar hierarchy.
Evirdel Ironhand (6th-level Human Templar, Thinking Zombie): A templar of Andropinis who was falsely accused of treason, tortured into a false confession, and transformed into a thinking zombie. Evirdel must hunt down five templars who actually betrayed the Dictator. She has completed one killing so far, and her victims lose their spells upon death while she continues to receive hers until her task is complete.
Kerrilis (14th-level Human Templar, Lawful Evil): The High Templar of Eldaarich who has authorised trade with House Azeth of Kurn through the village of Silt Side. Kerrilis is as paranoid as Daskinor himself, and she administers the city’s oppressive machinery with ruthless efficiency.
Mon Adderath (Epic Human Templar, Lawful Evil): The High Templar of Dregoth. Mon Adderath is the only non-dray living in New Giustenal. He has served Dregoth for millennia, was made immortal at the cost of considerable personal power to Dregoth, and led the survivors of Giustenal into the under-region. He and Dregoth share a friendship unique among the despotic rulers of Athas.
Absalom (15th-level Dray Templar/Undead, Lawful Evil): Dregoth’s High Priest — a templar who was killed and transformed into an undead creature to serve as the Dread King’s spiritual right hand. Absalom visits Kragmorta to teach and preach to the first generation dray, and he maintains an identity as Akrag the bathhouse attendant in New Giustenal to gauge public sentiment.
Xamres of Urik: A templar of tremendous wisdom who served Hamanu centuries ago. Xamres established the code of justice that still governs Urikite templars. His most famous judgment involved the noble youth Rotlees, who was caught poaching in Hamanu’s gardens. Rather than execute the boy, Xamres sentenced him to continue hunting — for the rest of his natural life, turning a crime into a duty and satisfying all parties.
Kiarnah of Tyr: A High Templar of Kalak who, twenty years before the revolution, embarked on a campaign of assassination and terror against his fellow templars — driven insane by the whisperings of a magical artifact called the Red Crystal. The Crystal disappeared during the revolution and is thought to have been taken to Urik by a fleeing ex-templar.
Sielba’s Bodyguards: The elite templar bodyguards of Sielba, sorcerer-queen of Yaramuke, who were slaughtered in their beds when Hamanu destroyed the city. Fourteen skeletons — one commander and thirteen elite templars — still lie in the ruins of their barracks.
Teva (Former Templar of Kalak): Once a templar in Kalak’s service, Teva fled Tyr after the revolution and eventually found her way to Tenpug’s Band — a tribe of ex-slave artists and artisans. She does not speak of her time as a templar. It was, by her own account, a dark period she does not wish to remember. She was enslaved after crossing the wrong person in the chaos following Kalak’s death, escaped, and now lives quietly among the tribe as a strong, friendly presence whose door is always open to anyone with a problem. She has seen enough fighting as a templar to last several lifetimes and has no wish to do any more.
Templar (Tpr)
Hit Die
d8.
Requirements
To qualify to become a templar, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Alignment
Within one step of patron sorcerer king on moral (good/evil) axis. The ethical (law/chaos) axis is unrestricted.
Class Skills
Appraise, Bluff, Craft, Concentration, Decipher Script, Diplomacy, Forgery, Gather Information, Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge (all skills, taken individually), Listen, Profession (any), Sense Motive, Spellcraft, Search, Spot, Use Magic Device.
Skill Points at Each Level
4 + Int modifier.
Class Features
Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Templars are proficient in all simple weapons and with their sorcerer-monarch's favoured weapon. Since templar training involves some education in warfare, templars receive one additional martial weapon proficiency of their choice. Templars are proficient in light and medium armor and shields (except tower shields).
Spellcasting
You cast divine spells, which are drawn from the templar spell list on page 138 of Athas.org’s “Dark Sun 3”. When you gain access to a new level of spells, you automatically know all the spells for that level on the templar’s spell list. You can cast any spell you know without preparing it ahead of time. Essentially, your spell list is the same as your spells known list. See table T2.
To cast a templar spell, you must have a Charisma score of 10 + the spell’s level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a templar’s spell is 10 + the spell’s level + the templar’s Cha modifier. Like other spellcasters, a templar can cast only a certain number of spells of each level per day. The base daily allotment is given the Table. In addition, you receive bonus spells for a high Charisma score (PH 8).
You use your sorcerer king’s sigil as divine focus.
Sorcerer Monarch Domains : A templar chooses two domains from among those belonging to his Sorcerer Monarch. This works just like the cleric domains, except that templars do not get a bonus spell slot for domain spells, but rather add the domain spells to their templar class list. Like clerics, templars receive the domain power. Where domain powers make reference to Wisdom, you use Charisma instead.
Effects granting additional domains (such as the Epic Feat Bonus Domain, prestige class features, or magic items) do grant the associated domain power to the Templar, but they do not add any spells to the Templar’s spell list.
| Sorcerer-Monarch | Favoured Weapon | Domains |
|---|---|---|
| Abalach-Re | Flail | War, Chaos, Charm, Evil |
| Andropinis | Short sword | War, Law, Nobility, Travel |
| Borys | Short sword | War, Destruction, Protection, Evil |
| Daskinor | Morningstar | War, Chaos, Madness, Trickery |
| Dregoth | Battleaxe | War, Death, Destruction, Knowledge |
| Hamanu | Longsword | War, Strength, Law, Protection |
| Kalak | Shortspear | War, Magic, Trickery, Hatred |
| Lalali-Puy | Trident | War, Animal, Plant, Healing |
| Nibenay | Longspear | War, Magic, Mind, Trickery |
| Oronis | Longsword | War, Knowledge, Protection, Community |
| Tectuktitlay | Longsword (Macahuitl) | War, Glory, Strength, Destruction |
| Irikos | Greatsword | War, Passion, Evil, Suffering |
| Myron | Longsword | War, Evil, Pride, Protection |
| Pennarin | Longsword | War, Strength, Glory, Nobility |
| Sacha | Battleaxe | War, Trickery, Nobility, Evil |
| Wyan | Halberd | War, Nobility, Tyranny, Evil |
| Kalid-Ma | Longsword | War, Knowledge, Luck, Law |
| Sielba | Longsword | War, Charm, Protection, Pride |
Sigil : Every templar receives a sigil that is the sign of their rank and station as a templar within their city’s templarate. The form of the sigil is unique to each city state but is always unmistakable for what it is. The sigil serves as your divine focus.
Advanced Learning (Ex): At 4 th , 8 th , 12 th , 16 th , and 20 th level, you can add a new spell to your spell list, representing the result of personal study and experimentation with various schools of magic. When selecting a spell through this ability, it must be from the cleric spell list, of a level no higher than that of the highest-level spell you already know, and from one of the eight schools of magic (abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy, or transmutation); each successive spell must be from a different school. Once selected, the spell is forever added to your spell list and can be cast just like any other spell on your list.
Secular Aptitude (Ex): At 1 st level, you gain Secular Authority as a bonus feat. In addition, you receive a competence bonus to Secular Authority checks equal to half your Templar class level. The competence bonus to Secular Authority checks never exceeds +10.
Mitigate Corruption (Ex): You can mitigate the legal consequences of being caught bribed or otherwise being financially corrupt by clever dissimulation. At 1st level, you may take bribes or corruptly appropriate up to 1 Cp per day without legal consequences (you must still accept the bribes or illegally appropriate funds – the money does not come automatically). For every character level you have beyond first level, this legal immunity to financial corruption increases by 1 Cp per day. When you gain the High Templar class feature, you may take bribes or corruptly appropriate up to 1 Sp per templar level, instead of 1 Cp. This does not protect the templar from the consequences of other kinds of official corruption, like treason.
Turn or Rebuke Undead (Su): Any templar, starting at 2 nd level and regardless of alignment, has the power to affect undead creatures by channeling the power of his sorcerer king through his sigil (PH 33).
A good templar (or a neutral templar who worships a good sorcerer king) can turn or destroy undead creatures. An evil templar (or a neutral templar who worships an evil sorcerer king) instead rebukes or commands such creatures. A neutral templar of a neutral sorcerer king must choose whether his turning ability functions as that of a good templar or an evil templar. Once this choice is made, it cannot be reversed.
You may attempt to turn or rebuke undead a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier. A templar with 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (religion) gets a +2 bonus on turning checks against undead.
Templarate Training : At 3rd-level, a templar receives a bonus feat reflecting his privileged position and the training that comes along with it. These bonus feats must be drawn from the following: Alertness, Brew Potion, Deceitful, Deft Hands, Diligent, Dissimulate, Extra Turning, Improved Turning, Investigator, Leadership, Linguist, Kleptocrat, Magical Aptitude, Persuasive, Favorite, Faithful Follower, Field Officer, Academic Templar, Sagacious Templar, Scribe Scroll, or Skill Focus. A templar must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat. The templar gains another bonus feat at 7th level, 11th level, 15th level, and 19th level.
High Templar (Ex): At 14th level, you gain a +2 competence bonus on Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Gather Information, and Sense Motive checks against all citizens, nobles, commoners, and templars of any rank within your city-state’s jurisdiction, except other High Templars , Epic Templars, or your Sorcerer Monarch. You gain Leadership as a bonus feat (or a Templarate Training feat if already possessed).
In addition, you gain High Templar Immunity from prosecution, investigation, or intrusion by any non-epic templars or city officials, regardless of their rank or authority; only Epic templars or your Sorcerer Monarch can initiate such actions against you.
Grant Pardon : At 17th level as a special use of secular authority, you can grant a pardon to any condemned individual (slave, freeman, noble, or Templar), overturning a previous judgment. This pardon may not be contested. Only the Sorcerer-King can nullify a pardon granted by a Templar with this ability. You may use this ability once per year.
Unbreakable Bond (Ex): At 20th level, your link to the divine source of your spells becomes unbreakable. Your Sorcerer Monarch can no longer cut you off from your spellcasting, no matter their actions. Even the Monarch’s death does not prevent you from receiving your divine spells. You remain unaware of this change, and your Sorcerer Monarch cannot easily detect it unless they attempt to deny you spells and realize you still wield their granted magic unabated.
| Level | Base Attack Bonus | Fort Save | Ref Save | Will Save | Special | Spells per Day | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | |||||||
| 1st | +0 | +2 | +0 | +2 | Secular aptitude, Sorcerer Monarch domains, Sigil, Mitigate Corruption | 5 | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 2nd | +1 | +3 | +0 | +3 | Turn/Rebuke undead | 6 | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 3rd | +2 | +3 | +1 | +3 | Templarate Training | 6 | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 4th | +3 | +4 | +1 | +4 | Advanced Learning | 6 | 6 | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 5th | +3 | +4 | +1 | +4 | 6 | 6 | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 6th | +4 | +5 | +2 | +5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 7th | +5 | +5 | +2 | +5 | Templarate Training | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 8th | +6/+1 | +6 | +2 | +6 | Advanced Learning | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 9th | +6/+1 | +6 | +3 | +6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| 10th | +7/+2 | +7 | +3 | +7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | — | — | — | — | ||
| 11th | +8/+3 | +7 | +3 | +7 | Templarate Training | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | — | — | — | — | |
| 12th | +9/+4 | +8 | +4 | +8 | Advanced Learning | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | — | — | — | |
| 13th | +9/+4 | +8 | +4 | +8 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | — | — | — | ||
| 14th | +10/+5 | +9 | +4 | +9 | High Templar | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | — | — | |
| 15th | +11/+6/+1 | +9 | +5 | +9 | Templarate Training | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | — | — | |
| 16th | +12/+7/+2 | +10 | +5 | +10 | Advanced Learning | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | — | |
| 17th | +12/+7/+2 | +10 | +5 | +10 | Grant Pardon | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | — | |
| 18th | +13/+8/+3 | +11 | +6 | +11 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | ||
| 19th | +14/+9/+4 | +11 | +6 | +11 | Templarate Training | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | |
| 20th | +15/+10/+5 | +12 | +6 | +12 | Advanced Learning Unbreakable Bond | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | |
The standard rules grant the Unbreakable Bond class feature only upon a Templar or Warlock Templar reaching Level 20, signifying their ultimate connection to their power source, independent even of their Sorcerer-Monarch’s survival. However, lore examples, most notably Korvak from the novel Death Mark, suggest rare instances where Templars retained power even after their monarch’s demise. Following the death of Sorcerer-King Kalak, most of Tyr’s templars lost their magic, but Korvak explicitly states, “Well, all the templars but me and perhaps a few others who have managed to keep their abilities secret.” This establishes the possibility of rare exceptions to the rule of monarch-dependent power.
For groups wishing to incorporate this possibility inspired by Korvak’s unique situation, consider the following optional rule for the Templar and Warlock Templar classes:
The Rule:
Per-Level Chance: Each time a character gains a level in the Templar or Warlock Templar class, from Level 1 up to Level 19, they have a small chance to manifest the Unbreakable Bond feature early, representing one of these rare exceptions.
The Roll : Upon gaining the level, the player rolls d100.
If the result is 01, they immediately make a second d100 roll.
If this second d100 roll is 01-25, the character immediately gains the benefits of the Unbreakable Bond class feature.
Cumulative Effect : This represents a 0.25% chance per level (1% chance of rolling 01, followed by a 25% chance on the second roll). The cumulative probability of achieving Unbreakable Bond through this method by the time a character reaches Level 19 is approximately 4.65%.
Level 20 Guarantee: If a character reaches Level 20 in Templar or Warlock Templar without having gained Unbreakable Bond through the early chance roll, they gain the feature automatically at Level 20 as per the standard class progression.
Impact:
This rule allows for the rare, lore-consistent possibility of a Templar solidifying their power connection before reaching the absolute peak of their pre-epic career, mirroring the situation of Korvak and the “few others” he mentions. It makes such characters mechanically plausible as rare exceptions without altering the guarantee that all truly veteran Templars (Level 20+) eventually achieve this state. It reinforces that while most Templars are dependent on their living Sorcerer-Monarch, a very small percentage might forge an independent link sooner through exceptional circumstances or inherent potential.
GM Note: This rule is optional and primarily intended to align mechanics more closely with specific narrative examples like Korvak in Death Mark. It should be implemented only if the group agrees it enhances the desired campaign feel.
0-Level Templar Spells (Orisons)
Arcane Mark : Inscribes a personal rune on an object or surface.
Cure Minor Wounds : Cures 1 point of damage.
Defiler Scent : Smells presence or absence of defilers. *
Detect Magic : Detects spells and magical items within 60 ft.
Detect Poison : Detects poison in one creature or small object.
Guidance : +1 on one attack roll, saving throw, or skill check.
Inflict Minor Wounds : Touch attack, 1 point of damage.
Light : Object shines like a torch.
Mending : Makes minor repairs on an object.
Purify Food and Drink : Makes spoiled food and water safe and palatable.
Read Magic : Read scrolls and spellbooks
Resistance : Subject gains +1 on saving throws.
Slave Scent : Divines target’s social class. *
Virtue : Subject gains 1 temporary hp.
1st-Level Templar Spells
Black Cairn : Locates a corpse nearby. *
Cause Fear : One creature of 5 HD or less flees for 1d4 rounds.
Command : One subject obeys selected command for 1 round.
Comprehend Languages : Understand all spoken and written languages.
Cure Light Wounds : Cures 1d8+1/level damage (max +5).
Deathwatch : Sees how wounded subjects within 30 ft. are.
Detect Undead : Reveals undead within 60 ft.
Divine Favor : You gain attack, damage bonus, +1/three levels.
Endure Elements : Exist comfortably in hot or cold environments.
Hand of the Sorcerer-king : Protects caster from spells. *
Hide From Undead : Undead can’t perceive one subject/level.
Protection from Evil/Good : +2 to AC and saves, counter mind control, hedge out elementals and outsiders.
Remove Fear : +4 on saves against fear for one subject +1/four levels.
Shield of Faith : Aura grants +2 or higher deflection bonus.
2nd-Level Templar Spells
Battlefield Healing : Stabilizes one creature/level. *
Bear's Endurance : Subject gains +4 Con for 1 min./level.
Cure Moderate Wounds : Cures 2d8+1/level damage (max +10).
Delay Poison : Stops poison from harming subject for 1 hour/level.
Enthrall : Captivates all within 100 ft. + 10 ft./level.
Footsteps of the Quarry : Track a specific creature or person. *
Hold Person : Holds one person helpless; 1 round/level.
Remove Paralysis : Frees one or more creatures from paralysis, hold, or slow.
Resist Energy : Ignores 10 (or more) points of damage/attack from specified energy type.
Restoration, Lesser : Dispels magic ability penalty or repairs 1d4 ability damage.
Return to the Earth : Turns dead and undead bodies into dust. *
Silence : Negates sound in 15–ft. radius.
Undetectable Alignment : Conceals alignment for 24 hours.
Zone of Truth : Subjects within range cannot lie.
3rd-Level Templar Spells
Animate Dead : Creates undead skeletons and zombies.
Cure Serious Wounds : Cures 3d8+1/level damage (max +15).
Dedication : Allows target to avoid sleep, consume half food and water, and +1 to attack, damage, saves, ability, and skill checks while pursuing a specified task. *
Discern Lies : Reveals deliberate falsehoods.
Dispel Magic : Cancels magical spells and effects.
Glyph of Warding : Inscription harms those who pass it.
Image of the Sorcerer-King : Touched creatures must save or become affected by fear. *
Lightning Bolt : Electricity deals 1d6/level damage.
Locate Object : Senses direction toward object (specific or type).
Magic Circle against Evil/Good : As protection spells, but 10-ft. radius and 10 min./level.
Protection from Energy : Absorb 12 points/level of damage from one kind of energy.
Remove Disease : Cures all diseases affecting subject.
Sand Pit : Excavates sand in a 30 ft. wide and 50 ft. deep cone. *
Speak with Dead : Corpse answers one question/two levels.
Surface Walk : Subject treads on unstable surfaces as if solid. *
Wind Wall : Deflects arrows, smaller creatures, and gases.
Worm's Breath : Subjects can breathe underwater, in silt, or in earth.
4th-Level Templar Spells
Air Walk : Subject treads on air as if solid (climb at 45–degree angle).
Cure Critical Wounds : Cures 4d8+1/level damage (max +20).
Dimensional Anchor : Bars extradimensional movement.
Fool's Feast : Enhances food for one creature/level and blesses. *
Freedom of Movement : Subject moves normally despite impediments.
Geas, Lesser : Commands subject of 7 HD or less.
Mage Seeker : Locate nearby wizard. *
Magic Weapon, Greater : +1 bonus/four levels (max +5).
Neutralize Poison : Detoxifies venom in or on subject.
Sending : Delivers a short message anywhere, instantly.
Status : Monitors condition, position of allies.
Tongues : Speak any language.
Wrath of the Sorcerer-king : Know if a creature has broken the law, and punish them. *
5th-Level Templar Spells
Air Lens : Directs intensified sunlight at foes within range.
Break Enchantment : Frees subjects from enchantments, alterations, curses, and petrifaction.
Command, Greater : As command, but affects one subject/level.
Elemental Strike : Smites foes with 1d6/level of divine and elemental energy (max 15d6). *
Fire Track : Fiery spark follows tracks. *
Mark of Justice : Designates action that will trigger curse on subject.
Scrying : Spies on subject from a distance.
True Seeing : See all things as they really are.
6th-Level Templar Spells
Control Tides : Raises, lowers, or parts bodies of water or silt. *
Create Undead : Create creeping claws, ioramhs, salt zombies, and ashens.
Dispel Magic, Greater : As dispel magic, but up to +20 on check.
Forbiddance : Denies area to creatures of another alignment.
Glyph of Warding, Greater : As glyph of warding, but up to 10d8 damage or 6th level spell.
Heal : Cures 10 points/level of damage, all diseases and mental conditions
Revivify, Templar : Touch revive. -1 hp, no penalties. 200 XP cost.
Wisdom of the Sorcerer-king : Apply metamagic to one spell of up to 4th level. *
Word of Recall : Teleports you back to designated place.
7th-Level Templar Spells
Confessor's Flame : Uses threat of flame to extract confession. *
Crusade : Allies receive +4 bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws, 2d8 hit points, and immunity to magical fear. *
Refuge : Alters item to transport its possessor to you.
Regenerate : Subject’s severed limbs grow back.
Restoration, Greater : As restoration, plus restores all levels and ability scores.
Scrying, Greater : As scrying, but faster and longer.
8th-Level Templar Spells
Antipathy : Object or location affected by spell repels certain creatures.
Create Greater Undead : Create Gray zombies, shadows, Athasian wraiths, and tormented with special abilities.
Dimensional Lock : Teleportation and interplanar travel blocked for one day/level.
Discern Location : Exact location of creature or object.
Finger of Death : Kills one subject.
Poisoned Gale : Poisonous cloud (10 ft. wide, 10ft. high) emanates out from you to the extreme of the range.
9th-Level Templar Spells
Energy Drain : Subject gains 2d4 negative levels.
Gray Rift : A hovering rift to the Gray bolsters undead. *
Hold Monster, Mass : As hold monster, but all within 30 ft.
Key:
The following pages contain the full descriptions of all templar spells referenced in the spell lists above.
0-Level Templar Spells (Orisons)
Defiler Scent (Divination)
Level: Drd 0, Tmp 0
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 20 ft.
Area: 20-ft.-radius burst
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Full Description: You can smell the presence of defilers within the spell’s area of effect. This spell does not reveal the number of defilers, their locations, or their strength; just their presence or absence. If there are defilers in the spell’s area of effect, you smell the very strong odor of smoldering meat.
Slave Scent
Divination
Level: Wiz 0
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: You smell the air, searching for the unnaturally musky scent of sweat with which slaves are tainted by their very existence. This spell reveals whether or not the target is a slave, runaway slave, freeman, or noble. If the target is from a classless society (such as an elf tribe or a small village), the spell reveals them as a freeman.
1st-Level Templar Spells
Black Cairn (Divination)
Level: Drd 1, Tmp 1
Components: V, S, F, DF
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Long (400 ft., + 40 ft./level)
Area: Circle, centered on you, with a radius of 400 ft. + 40 ft./level.
Target: One corpse within range
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Full Description: A cold breeze carrying the scent of rotting flesh raises the hairs on your neck. Its direction reveals the direction of the corpse you seek. This spell allows you to determine the direction of one specific corpse (animal or otherwise) within the spell’s radius. If the corpse is within range, you sense the direction to the corpse. Focus: An item which belonged to or has been in contact with the corpse.
Hand of the Sorcerer-king (Abjuration)
Level: Tmp 1
Components: V, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 min./level
Full Description: You call upon your sorcerer-king’s protection to shield you from malignant spells. You receive a +2 sacred or profane bonus to all saving throws against spells and spell-like abilities, depending on the alignment of your sorcerer-monarch.
2nd-Level Templar Spells
Battlefield Healing (Conjuration (Healing))
Level: Tmp 2
Components: V, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None (harmless)
Spell Resistance: No (harmless)
Full Description: You call upon the power of your king to save those who have fallen on the battlefield, but have yet to succumb to the Gray. Their bloody and battered bodies continue to breathe for a little while longer. You stabilize each selected, dying creature within range. A dying creature has between -1 and -9 current hit points. Upon stabilization, they lose no further hit points. The spell has no effect on undead creatures.
Footsteps of the Quarry (Divination)
Level: Rgr 2, Tmp 2, Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Full Description: If your quarry has passed through here during the last 24 hours, its path shall be revealed to you in the form of ghostly footprints. This spell allows you to follow the tracks of a specific creature or person named at the time of casting. The individual so named must have traveled through the area within the last 24 hours. The spell creates a line of footprints that lead in the direction taken by the creature being tracked. The footprints fade into invisibility once you have passed. You are treated as having the Track feat and receive a +20 bonus on Survival checks to follow tracks of your quarry. If the quarry travels in a manner other than on land, the trail ceases. Only after the quarry has resumed traveling by land does the trail continue. This spell works against trackless step and other forms of concealing tracks. Material Component: A piece of straw and a bone needle.
Return to the Earth (Necromancy)
Level: Clr 2, Drd 3, Decaying Touch 1, Tmp 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: Corpses or corpse–like creatures
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: Throwing dust at the body and uttering a prayer of destruction, you make the creature wither and decompose at an unnatural rate. It quickly dries to a lifeless husk before it decomposes into dust. You can decompose a body just by casting dust or earth at it. You need to spend 4 rounds to decompose a Medium corpse. (Double the time required for each size category larger than Medium; halve the time for each size category less than Medium, to a minimum of 1 round). Corpses decomposed by this spell can still be restored to life, but cannot be turned into undead. You may throw earth or dust as a ranged touch attack (maximum range 10 ft., no range increment); the earth deals 1d12 points of damage to corporeal undead and constructs that are composed of dead flesh or bones.
3rd-Level Templar Spells
Dedication (Enchantment (Compulsion))
Level: Wiz 3, Tmp 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Target: One creature
Duration: 24 hours
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Full Description: Clenching the cloth into the target’s hand and uttering a groan, you complete the spell. The smell of a sweaty mul worker fills your nostrils. This potent spell provides benefits to a single creature that is engaged in an ongoing activity, which must be named at the time the spell is cast. Any activity that requires focus or exertion can be named, such as digging a large trench, repairing a wall, or reading a lengthy tome. While engaged in this activity, the target needs no sleep for the duration of the spell, needs only one-half of the food and water it normally would, and cannot become exhausted or fatigued. The target also receives a +1 morale bonus on all attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, ability checks, and skill checks, provided that it relates directly to the aforementioned task. At the end of the spell’s duration, the creature must rest for eight hours or become exhausted and suffer 1d4 points of temporary Constitution damage. This spell can only be cast on a creature once every 72 hours. If dedication is cast on a creature more than once in a single 72-hour period, they suffer 1d4 points of temporary Constitution damage, and the spell has no other effect. Material Component: A small piece of baked clay wrapped in cloth.
Image of the Sorcerer-King (Necromancy [Fear, Mind-Affecting])
Level: Tmp 3
Components: V, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature or creatures touched (up to one/level)
Duration: 10 minutes; see text
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: Upon touching your enemy with your sigil, they receive a frightening vision of your sorcerer-king. This spell protects a sorcerer-monarch’s agents from aggressors. You may make a melee touch attack with your sigil up to one time per caster level. A touched creature must succeed on a Will save or become frightened. On a successful save the target is shaken for one round. Creatures with more than 10 Hit Dice are unaffected by the spell.
Sand Pit
Transmutation [Earth]
Level: Wiz 3, Clr 3, Broken Sands 1, Tmp 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Area: Cylinder (30 ft. radius, 50 ft. high)
Duration: Concentration (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Full Description: As you cast this spell, sand and dust within a circle is randomly dispersed, and an indentation appears in the sand. This spell only works in silt, sand, or loose gravel; it has no effect on rock, rich soil, or tightly packed earth. A cylinder–shaped pit appears in the sand. Any objects other than dust and sand that were in the excavated area become visible, lying at the bottom of the pit. This spell lasts as long as you concentrate; when concentration ceases, silt immediately collapses into the empty area, while sand takes 1d6 minutes to do so. This spell is particularly useful in excavating ruins that have fallen beneath silt or sand, or for retrieving companions that have been buried by sand storms or have fallen into the silt.
Surface Walk (Transmutation)
Level: Clr 3, Drd 3, Rgr 3, Tmp 3
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: 1 touched creature/level
Duration: 10 minutes/level
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Full Description: As the spell is completed, the recipients feel lighter, as if they are floating on air. They hover slightly above the ground, allowing them to walk on any surface. The affected creatures can tread on an unstable surface as if it were firm ground. Mud, oil, silt, snow, quicksand, running water, ice, and even lava can be traversed easily; since the subjects’ feet hover an inch or two above the surface (creatures crossing molten lava still take damage from the heat). The creatures can walk, run, charge, or otherwise move across the surface as if it were normal ground. If the spell is cast underwater or under silt (or while the subjects are partially or wholly submerged in whatever liquid they are in), the subjects are borne toward the surface at 60 feet per round until they can stand on it. Note: This spell replaces the water walking spell from the Player's Handbook.
Worm’s Breath
Transmutation
Level: Clr 3, Drd 3, Rgr 3, Tmp 3, Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M/DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Living creatures touched
Duration: 2 hours/level (see text)
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Full Description: The skin crawls and sharp pain stings your chest, as your body ceases to breathe with its lungs, instead absorbing oxygen directly into the capillaries under the skin’s surface. The transmuted creatures can breathe freely regardless of being submerged in water, silt, or earth. Divide the duration evenly among all the creatures you touch. The subjects can breathe normally in silt–filled air (commonly known as the gray death), but otherwise get no benefits against inhaled poisons or gaseous contact poisons of any sort. This spell does not make creatures unable to breathe air. Arcane Material Component: A worm. Note: This spell replaces the water breathing spell in the Player's Handbook.
4th-Level Templar Spells
Fool’s Feast
Transmutation
Level: Tmp 4
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Medium (100 ft. +10 ft./level)
Target: Feast for one creature/level
Duration: 1 hour plus 12 hours; see text
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Full Description: Let the fools feast, lulling themselves into perceived safety. Little do they know that each bite makes them all the more susceptible to your ploys. You turn an ordinary banquet into a nourishing feast with the same 12–hour blessing effect as the food and drink provided by the heroes' feast spell. In addition, you receive a +4 circumstance bonus to interaction checks (such as Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Sense Motive) when dealing with those who have consumed the feast. This spell can only be cast on a sufficient supply of clean, non-poisoned, edible food and wine. This spell enhances the food’s appearance, flavor, and texture to resemble the ambrosia and the sumptuous food available through heroes’ feast.
Mage Seeker
Divination
Level: Wiz 4, Tmp 4
Components: V, S, F
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Touch.
Target: One object used as focus
Area: 20 ft. + 20 ft./level radius circle centered on you
Duration: 1 day
Saving Throw: No
Spell Resistance: No
Full Description: The pointer swirls until it comes to a rest, pointing out the direction of the most potent wizard to be here in the last day and night. When mage seeker is cast, the selected object (see below) glows slightly and pivots to point in the direction of the most potent wizard (not you) who has been in the area of effect within the last 24 hours. The item becomes a sort of compass that continually readjusts to point the direction of the wizard it first located. If a name or description of a wizard is stated at the time the spell is cast, the seeker will home in on that particular wizard if they have been within the area of effect within the last 24 hours. If the particular wizard is not detected, the seeker stays immobile to indicate failure and can be used normally 1 round afterwards to seek out the most potent wizard who has been in the area of effect. Focus: The object that is to be used as the seeker (an arrow, dart, or piece of bone or wood that is shaped like a pointer) and a few grains of sand.
Wrath of the Sorcerer-king (Divination)
Level: Tmp 4
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Area: 20-ft.–radius burst
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None; Will negates (see text)
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: Clenching your sigil, you call upon the omniscience of your king to reveal transgressions of the law, and to allow you to swiftly exact justice. With this spell, you know whether creatures in the spell’s area have broken the laws of your city-state, and you can exact punishment on them if they have. You instantly know what crimes the creatures committed, when, and under what circumstances. There is no save to avoid the divination. If you have one of the following spells available, you may immediately cast it at a creature within the area. Casting the spell is a free action, like casting a quickened spell, and it counts toward the normal limit of one quickened spell per round. You may choose from: cause fear, command, dispel magic, and hold person. The target can make a Will save to avoid the effect (except for dispel magic), and the spell functions normally otherwise.
5th-Level Templar Spells
Air Lens (Transmutation [Air])
Level: Tmp 5, Sun Flare 5
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Effect : Magical lens
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 round/level (D)
Saving Throw: No
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: A lens flare appears in the sky as you raise your divine focus to harness the power of the sun, accompanied by the smell of burnt hide. You shape the air into a magical lens that you can use to direct intensified sunrays. If sunlight becomes unavailable, the spell prematurely ends. You can make ranged touch attacks with the air lens. It uses your base attack bonus (possibly allowing multiple attacks per round). The lens inflicts 2d6 points of fire damage +1 per caster level. Creatures that are especially vulnerable to sunlight (such as some undead) take double damage. You can use an air lens attack to ignite unattended combustible materials such as dry sticks, straw, parchment, and cloth.
Elemental Strike (Evocation [see text])
Level: Clr 5, Drd 4, Fiery Wrath 5, Tmp 5
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Area: Cylinder (10-ft. radius, 40 ft. high)
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Reflex half
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: A column of divine and elemental energy shoots downward from the point you designate, striking those caught beneath it with the fury of your element. An elemental strike produces a vertical column. The spell deals 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 15d6). Half the damage is energy damage, but the other half results directly from divine power and is therefore not subject to being reduced by resistance to energy-based attacks. The type of energy damage, as well as the energy descriptor of the spell, is chosen at the time of casting. Clerics must choose the energy type that corresponds to their patron element. Air: Sonic; Earth: Acid; Fire: Fire; Magma: Fire; Rain: Electricity; Silt: Acid; Sun: Fire; Water: Cold. This spell’s subtype is the same as the type of energy you cast. Note: This spell replaces the flame strike spell from the Player's Handbook.
Fire Track
Divination [Fire]
Level: Burning Eyes 4
Components: V, S, M, DF
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target: One creature
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: A fiery spark appears that follows the path of a creature as doggedly as a desert hound follows a scent. The caster identifies a target when casting the spell, either by name or by physical description. A spark of flame appears harmlessly at the caster’s fingertip. If the target has not been within range during the last 24 hours, then the flame leaps off the caster’s finger, lands on the ground nearby, and extinguishes itself. If the target has been within range, the flame leaps off the caster’s fingertip and flies toward the target’s trail, striking the ground as soon as it “picks up the scent.” The fire track is like a brilliant flame traveling along a fuse. In its wake is a faint line of scorched earth and dust, marking the path of its prey. The flame moves from 0 to 240 feet per round, at a speed chosen by the caster, which can be changed as a free action once per round. The fire track burns with the strength and brightness of a torch. It inflicts 1d6 points of damage upon those in its path and sets combustible materials aflame. The fire track can be foiled in a number of ways. It cannot cross water and is extinguished by doing so, but it can cross silt. It can be snuffed out while in motion by strong breezes, blowing sand, and heavy rain. If the pursued individual takes to the air or teleports, the fire track circles in place until its time expires. Mere climbing, leaping, or jumping (even across a chasm), however, cannot foil the fire track, which always pursues in the correct direction. Material Component: A fragment of antennae from a cilops, wrapped in wax. The wax is melted to cast the spell.
6th-Level Templar Spells
Control Tides (Transmutation [Water or Earth])
Level: Clr 4, Drd 4, Wiz 6, Tmp 6
Components: V, S, M/DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area: Water or silt in a volume of 10 ft./level x 10 ft./level x 2 ft./level (S)
Duration: 10 minutes/level (D)
Saving Throw: None: see text
Spell Resistance: No
Full Description: Stretching your hands towards the sky and shouting incantations that echo off into the distance, you witness the instant changing of the tide. Depending on the version you choose, the control tides spell raises or lowers the level of water or silt.
Lower Tide : This causes silt (or water or a similar fluid) to sink away. The depth can be lowered by up to 2 feet per caster level, to a minimum depth of 1 inch. The surface is lowered within a squarish depression whose sides are up to 10 feet long per caster level. In extremely large and deep bodies of silt, such as deep in the Sea of Silt, the spell creates a whirlpool that sweeps ships and similar craft downward, putting them at risk and rendering them unable to leave by normal movement for the duration of the spell. When cast on water or silt elementals and other water or silt-based creatures, this spell acts as a slow spell (Will negates). The spell has no effect on other creatures.
Raise Tide : This causes silt (or water or a similar fluid) to rise in height, just as the lower tide version causes it to lower. Silt skimmers raised in this manner slide down the sides of the hump that the spell creates. If the area affected by the spell includes riverbanks, a beach, other land near the raised water or silt, the water or silt can spill over onto dry land. With either version, you may reduce one horizontal dimension by half and double the other horizontal dimension. Arcane Material Component: A pinch of dust. Note: This spell replaces the control water spell in the Player's Handbook.
Revivify, Templar (Conjuration (Healing))
Level: Templar 6
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Dead creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
XP Cost: 200 XP
Full Description: As the psionic power Psionic Revivify, except as follows: Revivify, Templar lets a Templar reconnect a corpse's life force with its body, restoring life to a recently deceased creature. This spell must be cast within a number of rounds equal to the Templar’s Caster Level of the victim’s death. Before the life force of the deceased has completely left the body, this spell halts its journey while repairing somewhat the damage to the body. This spell functions like the raise dead spell, except that the affected creature receives no level loss, no Constitution loss, and no loss of spells. The creature has -1 hit points (but is stable) after being restored to life. Casting this spell costs 200 XP.
Wisdom of the Sorcerer-king (Transmutation)
Level: Tmp 6
Components: DF
Casting Time: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round
Full Description: The omnipotence of your liege is manifested as your sigil attains an ominous yellow sheen, allowing you to unleash a spell with maximum potential. This spell grants spellcasting power directly from your sorcerer-king. You may apply one of the following metamagic feats to a spell of 4th level or lower you cast this turn: Empower Spell, Enlarge Spell, Extend Spell, Maximize Spell, Silent Spell, or Still Spell.
7th-Level Templar Spells
Confessor’s Flame (Evocation [Fire])
Level: Burning Eyes 8, Tmp 7
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 level)
Target: 1 creature/round
Duration: 1 minute
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: With pupils like glowing embers, you turn towards the victims of your interrogation, knowing that your truth is the only thing that matters. They will confess or die resisting. This spell allows you to demand questions of any creature within range. If the creature does not reply with what you consider to be the correct answer to the question, within one round, part of the creature’s body bursts into flame. While some claim that this spell detects falsehoods, in fact the answer is pre-determined by the caster. Subjects can avoid damage by telling you exactly what you want to hear. Ignorance or silence is no defense. Targets can escape by leaving the spell’s range or by silencing or killing you, preventing you from asking more questions. The spell is limited to 10 questions – one per round. You can pose all the questions to one creature, or shift your questioning to another creature within range, as suits your whim. The first time that a question is answered “incorrectly” (or not answered) a target takes 1d12 fire damage, the second time, 2d12 damage, the third time, 3d12 damage, and so on. A target must answer your question (correctly) within one round or take damage.
Crusade (Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting])
Level: Tmp 7
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: 20 ft.
Area: The caster and all allies within a 20-ft. burst, centered on you
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Full Description: Through rallying words and broad gestures you summon the power of your king to inspire your troops to a crusade against the infidels that would dare stand against you. When you cast this spell, you fire your allies with a divine fury. Your allies gain a +4 morale bonus on attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws, and they are immune to fear effects. They also receive 2d8 temporary hit points for the duration of the spell.
8th-Level Templar Spells
Poisoned Gale
Conjuration (Creation) [Air]
Level: Ill Winds 7, Tmp 8
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 30 ft.
Effect : Line–shaped gust of poisoned wind emanating out from you to the extreme of the range
Duration: 1 round
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes
Full Description: A gust of toxic green fumes flows from your mouth in a straight line, a debilitating poison to those who inhale it. This spell resembles gust of wind, except that the range is shorter and the wind is filled with inhaled poison. You choose the ability score you would like the poison to damage. Poison gale creates a poison that deals 2d8 points of temporary ability damage as primary and secondary damage. The exception is Constitution, which is damaged 1d8 points. The ability score damaged does not have to be the same for the primary and secondary damage. For example, you could create a poisoned gale that deals 2d8 points of primary Wisdom damage and 1d8 points of secondary Constitution damage. Each instance of ability damage can be negated by a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 your caster level + your Wis or Cha modifier). Material Component: The stinger or fang of a poisonous creature.
9th-Level Templar Spells
Gray Rift
Conjuration (Creation) [Evil]
Level: Dead Heart 7, Tmp 9, Wiz 9
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Medium (100 ft. +10 ft./level)
Effect : Diamond–shaped rift 30 ft. high and 15 ft. wide in the middle
Duration: Concentration + 1d6 rounds
Saving Throw: None; see text
Spell Resistance: No
Full Description: Calling upon the negative energy of the Gray to bolster the unliving, you conjure a two–dimensional diamond–shaped rift. An overwhelming stench of decay assaults your nose, confirming the connection to the plane of the dead. This spell tears and holds open a rift between Athas and the Gray. The rift itself is a two–dimensional, diamond–shaped plane 30 feet high and 15 feet wide in the middle. Any creature that touches the rift is affected as if you had cast harm on it. A character that attempts to dispel the rift and fails is also subjected to harm. Once per round as a move action, you can move the rift 30 feet in any direction within range. If you cease concentration or are slain, the rift lingers for 1d6 rounds without moving and then dissipates. All undead creatures within range gain a +4 profane bonus to Strength, 3 bonus hit points per hit die, and fast healing 1.
Rage Templar
On occasion, the templarate recruits from barbaric tribes of the desert wastes that are friendly to their Sorcerer Monarch. These recruits often have the cultural ability to rage in combat, an ability that they bring with them into the templarate. The ability to rage strikes fear in both the city dwellers and the city state’s external enemies. These foreign auxiliaries of the Sorcerer Monarch are often feared and hated by the people of the city-state, and are notoriously corrupt.
Alignment: A rage templar cannot be lawful.
Class Features
All of the following are features of the rage templar class.
Hit Dice: d10
Weapon and Armor Proficiency : A rage templar is proficient with all simple weapons, her sorcerer-monarch's favoured weapon, light armor, and shields (except tower shields). Since templar training involves some education in warfare, rage templars receive one additional martial weapon proficiency of their choice.
Gains: A rage templar rages as a barbarian of equal level and gains the greater rage, indomitable will, tireless rage, and mighty rage class features as he progresses. Rage templar and barbarian levels stack for the purposes of determining the number of times per day a character can enter a rage and the type of rage variant available. A Rage Templar has a Base Attack Bonus equal to their class level (as a barbarian). A Rage Templar gains Kleptocrat as a bonus feat at 1st level.
Loses: A rage templar loses his ability to turn or rebuke undead and both domains. A rage templar loses medium armor proficiency.
Special: Rage templar cannot be combined with warrior templar or enforcer templar.
Epic Progression: An Epic Rage Templar gains one additional use of rage per day every four levels above 20th (24th, 28th, 32nd, etc.).
Warrior Templar
Some templars think of themselves more as warriors than bureaucrats. For these templars, the ability to fight trumps all other concerns. Taking the above ability requires a templar to give up both of her domains, including her domain powers.
Templar Warrior (Ex): A templar with this ability is proficient with her sorcerer-monarch's favoured weapon and gains Weapon Focus with that weapon as a bonus feat. In addition, her base attack bonus as a templar equals her templar level, and her templar Hit Die becomes a d10.
Loses: Domains granted at first level.
Special: Warrior templar can be combined with enforcer templar. In that case it gains and loses all the abilities noted in the description of each.
Enforcer Templar
Some templars are more religious than others, worshipping their Sorcerer King or Queen as an actual deity rather than a secular leader. These are the type of templars that try to force citizens to build temples to the Sorcerer Monarch. Enforcer templars have a special hatred for the enemies of their Sorcerer Monarch and have developed the ability to smite the Sorcerer Monarch’s enemies.
Alignment: An enforcer templar must be lawful.
Gains:
Smite Enemy (Su): The enforcer templar's sacred duty is to strike down opposition to the city state, enemies of the Sorcerer Monarch that emerge from dark alleyways and subversive thoughts. Beginning at 2nd level, the enforcer templar may attempt to smite a creature that he judges to be an enemy of the state with one normal melee attack. He adds his Charisma bonus (if any) to his attack roll and deals an additional 1 point of damage per templar level.
Unlike with a paladin’s smite evil ability, an enforcer templar relies only on his own judgment when determining what creatures to use this ability against. How an enforcer templar uses this ability exemplifies his outlook on the work. The more suspicious and uncompromising an enforcer templar is, the more likely he is to feel that a creature should be struck down.
At 5 th level, and at every five levels thereafter, the enforcer templar may smite enemies one additional time per day, to a maximum of five times per day at 20 th level.
In addition, the enforcer templar adds divine power to his list of known spells. If the enforcer templar has Divine Power as a 4th-level spell from any domain (for example, the Competition, Fury, Orc, Pride, or War domains), he may instead cast it as a 3rd-level spell.
Loses: Advanced Learning .
Epic Progression: An Epic Enforcer Templar gains one additional use of Smite Enemy per day every five levels above 20th (25th, 30th, 35th, etc.).
Champion Templar
By Royal Sceptre, My Oath I Swear,
To Serve the King, Beyond Compare.
His Word is Law, His Foes Will Fall,
My Life, My Duty, I Give My All.
No Slander Spoken, Shall Stand Unpaid,
The King's True Servant, Unafraid. – A typical oath given by a champion templar
Gains: Free Martial Weapon Proficiency with Sorcerer Monarch's favored weapon (already proficient due to base class) and Weapon Focus with the Sorcerer Monarch's favored weapon.
A champion templar is simply a templar with both the enforcer templar ACF and the Warrior Templar ACF. As martial true believers, these templars serve a role similar to a paladin of other settings. Champion templars are usually members of a selective martial order affiliated with their city state.
Scribe Templar
Not all Templars enforce laws with a sword or channel raw divine fury. Some wield power through knowledge, records, and the careful manipulation of bureaucracy. The Scribe Templar delves into archives, drafts edicts, researches legal precedent (or conveniently ignores it), and ensures the smooth (or deliberately obstructed) flow of information within the city-state. Their power lies in knowing secrets and controlling the narrative. They are often found in libraries, scriptoriums, and administrative offices rather than on patrol, relying on their intellect and position rather than physical prowess.
Alignment: A scribe templar must be non-chaotic.
Class Features
All of the following are features of the scribe templar class.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency : A scribe templar is proficient with all simple weapons, light armor, medium armor, and shields (except tower shields).
Gains:
A scribe templar gains Academic Templar as a bonus feat at 1st level.
Scribal Training (Ex): For each level you possess in the Scribe Templar class, you gain 1 rank in Decipher Script, up to the maximum allowed for your character level. You do not spend skill points for these ranks.
Bureaucratic Lore (Ex): A Scribe Templar accumulates extensive knowledge concerning the workings of their city-state and its history through access to records and institutional memory. They may make a special Bureaucratic Lore check with a bonus equal to their Templar level + their Intelligence modifier to see whether they know some relevant information about local notable people (especially noble families), historical events pertinent to the city-state, city laws and edicts, Templarate procedures and history, geographical details within the city-state’s direct sphere of influence, or significant political rumors. If the Scribe Templar has 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (local), they gain a +2 bonus on this check.
This ability does not grant knowledge about matters significantly outside the historical or jurisdictional concerns of the Templar’s specific city-state.
DC Table (Examples):
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While the Mitigate Corruption class feature allows Templars to acquire funds illicitly without facing legal repercussions up to a certain limit, this ill-gotten gain does not circumvent the standard Wealth By Level (WBL) guidelines used for balancing character power (see Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 54).
Think of the daily Cp/Sp limit from Mitigate Corruption as representing the “operational budget” of a corrupt official. Funds acquired through this feature up to the character’s expected WBL can represent actual gear, savings, or standard expenses. However, any wealth gained via Mitigate Corruption that would push the character significantly beyond their expected WBL for their level should be considered spent and consumed, not accumulated as permanent wealth or game-breaking equipment.
This excess represents the fleeting perks of the position: ‘living high on the hog’ with lavish (but temporary) meals and drinks, maintaining expensive appearances, paying off minor informants or guards, greasing palms for small favors, indulging in fleeting entertainments, or other expenditures that enhance lifestyle but don’t translate into lasting mechanical advantages like powerful magic items. It reflects the transient benefits and necessary expenditures of a corrupt lifestyle within the Templarate, preventing the feature from unbalancing the game’s core economy while retaining its flavor.
A successful Bureaucratic Lore check will not reveal the powers of a magic item but may give a hint as to its general function.
A scribe templar gains Scribe Scroll as a bonus feat at 3rd level.
A scribe templar gains Silent Spell as a bonus feat at 5th level.
A scribe templar gains Still Spell as a bonus feat at 10th level.
Scroll Mastery (Ex): When a scribe templar uses Use Magic Device to activate a scroll, they may use their Intelligence modifier instead of their Charisma modifier on the check.
Metamagic Scroll Application (Ex): At 15th level, 3 times per day, a scribe templar may apply any one metamagic feat that they possess to a spell cast from a scroll. The spell effect incorporates the metamagic feat’s modifications, but the activation process (Use Magic Device check, activation time) remains that of the scroll itself. If the Heighten Spell feat is applied using this ability, the spell’s effective level is increased by exactly +4 levels.
Loses:
A scribe templar loses the standard templar Base Attack Bonus progression (retaining only Poor BAB).
A scribe templar uses a d6 Hit Die instead of a d8.
A scribe templar loses the bonus martial weapon proficiency granted to standard templars. She retains proficiency with her sorcerer-monarch's favoured weapon.
Special: Scribe Templar cannot be combined with the Rage Templar, Warrior Templar, or Enforcer Templar ACFs.
TEMPLAR FEATS
Kleptocrat [General]
You are unusually corrupt, even by the standards of the templarate. Your ability to act with impunity grows, and you excel in the production of forged documents.
Prerequisites: Mitigate Corruption class feature.
Benefit: Mitigate Corruption: Your ability to corruptly appropriate money without consequences via your Mitigate Corruption class feature doubles in Cp value.
Forged Documents: You gain a +3 circumstance bonus on Forgery checks made to create or alter official documents within your city-state’s templarate. This includes, but is not limited to, requisitions, permits, warrants, official reports, and records of transactions. This bonus does not apply to forgeries unrelated to templarate business.
Bureaucratic Resilience: Gain a +1 bonus on opposed Secular Authority checks made to contest an Intrusion, Accusation, or Judgment Secular Authority action targeting you. This bonus stacks with other modifiers.
Academic Templar [General]
You take a more scholarly approach to your spellcasting than other templars.
Prerequisites: Intelligence 13+
Benefit: You may use either your Charisma modifier or your Intelligence modifier, whichever is higher, to determine your bonus Templar spells per day and the maximum level of Templar spell you can cast.
Your spell save DCs are always determined by your Charisma modifier.
You may also use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for your domain granted powers if it is higher.
Sagacious Templar [General]
You take a more percipient approach to your spellcasting than other templars.
Prerequisites: Wisdom 13+
Benefit: You may use either your Charisma modifier or your Wisdom modifier, whichever is higher, to determine your bonus Templar spells per day and the maximum level of Templar spell you can cast.
Your spell save DCs are always determined by your Charisma modifier.
You may also use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for your domain granted powers if it is higher.
Same Source Turning [General]
You are a spellcasting and invoking templar both. You draw on your sorcerer monarch’s power to turn undead with both classes.
Prerequisites: Ability to cast 2nd level templar spells. Least invocations. Turn or Rebuke Undead .
Benefit: Your templar warlock levels stack with your templar levels for the purpose of turning or rebuking undead.
Additional Templarate Training Feats
Dark Sun 3.5e Core Rulebook
Dissimulate
Prerequisites: Int 13, Cha 13, Bluff 5 ranks.
Benefit: In addition to your Charisma modifier, you can add your Intelligence modifier to your Bluff checks.
Faithful Follower
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You receive a +5 morale bonus on saving throws against fear effects whenever you are within 20 feet of an ally with the Leadership feat.
Favorite
Prerequisites: Secular Authority , Diplomacy 10 ranks.
Benefit: You can use your secular authority ability four more times per day than normal. Furthermore, whenever you contest or are contested in the use of secular authority, you receive a +2 bonus on your opposed Diplomacy check.
Field Officer
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Diplomacy checks and Knowledge (warcraft) checks.
Linguist
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: Speak Language is a class skill to you. You can also speak 2 additional languages.
Special: This feat must be selected at 1st level.
3.5e System Reference Document (SRD)
Alertness
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Listen checks and Spot checks.
Brew Potion
Prerequisites: Caster level 3rd.
Benefit: You can create a potion of any 3rd-level or lower spell that you know and that targets one or more creatures. Brewing a potion takes one day.
Deceitful
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Disguise checks and Forgery checks.
Deft Hands
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on Sleight of Hand and Use Rope checks.
Diligent
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Appraise checks and Decipher Script checks.
Extra Turning
Prerequisites: Ability to turn or rebuke creatures.
Benefit: Each time you take this feat, you can use your ability to turn or rebuke creatures four more times per day than normal.
Improved Turning
Prerequisites: Ability to turn or rebuke creatures.
Benefit: You turn or rebuke creatures as if you were one level higher than you are in the class that grants the ability.
Investigator
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Gather Information checks and Search checks.
Leadership
Prerequisites: Character level 6th.
Benefit: You can attract a loyal cohort and devoted followers. The quality and number of these followers depend on your Leadership score.
Magical Aptitude
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Spellcraft checks and Use Magic Device checks.
Persuasive
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Bluff checks and Intimidate checks.
Scribe Scroll
Prerequisites: Caster level 1st.
Benefit: You can create a scroll of any spell that you know. Scribing a scroll takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in its base price.
Skill Focus
Prerequisites: None.
Benefit: You get a +3 bonus on all checks involving the chosen skill.
You can use your authority within your city-state to order slaves to do your bidding, requisition troops, enter the homes of freemen and nobles, and have them arrested and judged.
Prerequisites: Charisma 10, accepted into a city-state’s templarate.
Benefit: This feat grants access to several abilities allowing you to leverage your Templarate authority, enabling you to perform specific Secular Authority actions. The scope of actions available to you (such as Requisitioning, Intruding, Accusing, or Judging) is determined by your Effective Templar Level see below). None of these functions can be used during combat.
For full details on Secular Authority actions, Effective Templar Level, the complete action table, contested checks, and advanced mechanics, see the Secular Authority chapter.
Warlock Templar (Wtp)
Hit Die
D8.
Requirements
To qualify to become a warlock templar, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Alignment
Within one step of patron sorcerer king on moral (good/evil) axis. The ethical (law/chaos) axis is unrestricted.
Class Skills
Appraise, Bluff, Craft, Concentration, Decipher Script, Diplomacy, Forgery, Gather Information, Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge (any), Listen, Profession (any), Sense Motive, Spellcraft, Search, Spot, Use Magic Device.
Skill Points at Each Level
4 + Int modifier.
Class Features
Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Warlock templar are proficient in all simple weapons and with their sorcerer-monarch's favoured weapon. Since templar training involves some education in warfare, warlock templars receive one additional martial weapon proficiency of their choice. Warlock templars are proficient in light armor but not with shields
Sigil : Every warlock templar receives a sigil that is the sign of their rank and station as a templar within their city’s templarate. The form of the sigil is unique to each city state but is always unmistakable for what it is. The sigil serves as a divine focus for the Studied Invocation , Imbue Templar Item , and Imbue Cleric Item class features. No other ability of the warlock templar is reliant on the sigil.
Eldritch Blast (Sp): The first and most fundamental ability a Warlock Templar learns is the eldritch blast. A Warlock Templar attacks his foes with focused divine power granted by his Sorcerer Monarch, using raw magical energy to deal damage and sometimes impart other debilitating effects.
An eldritch blast is a ray with a range of 60 feet. It is a ranged touch attack that affects a single target, allowing no saving throw. An eldritch blast deals 1d6 points of damage at 1st level and increases in power as the Warlock Templar rises in level, as shown on Table: The Warlock Templar. An eldritch blast is the equivalent of a 1st-level spell. If you apply a blast shape or eldritch essence invocation to your eldritch blast, your eldritch blast uses the level equivalent of the shape or essence invocation.
An eldritch blast is subject to spell resistance, although the Spell Penetration feat and other effects that improve caster level checks to overcome spell resistance also apply to eldritch blast. An eldritch blast deals half damage to objects. Metamagic feats cannot improve a Warlock Templar’s eldritch blast (because it is a spell-like ability, not a spell). However, the feat Ability Focus (eldritch blast) increases the DC for all saving throws (if any) associated with a Warlock Templar’s eldritch blast by 2.
A Warlock Templar can use eldritch blast at will.
Invocations: A warlock templar does not cast spells as regular templars do. Instead, he possesses a repertoire of attacks, defenses, and abilities known as invocations that require him to focus the energy that emanates from his Sorcerer Monarch. A warlock templar may use invocations at will with the following qualifications:
A warlock templar’s invocations are spell-like abilities; using an invocation is therefore a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity. An invocation can be disrupted, just as a spell can be ruined during casting. A warlock templar is entitled to a Concentration check to successfully use an invocation if he is hit by an attack while invoking, just as a spellcaster would be. A warlock templar can choose to use an invocation defensively, by making a successful Concentration check, to avoid provoking attacks of opportunity. A warlock templar’s invocations are subject to spell resistance unless an invocation’s description specifically states otherwise. A warlock templar’s caster level with his invocations is equal to his warlock templar level.
The save DC for an invocation (if it allows a save) is 10 + equivalent spell level + the warlock templar’s Charisma modifier. Since spell-like abilities are not actually spells, a warlock templar cannot benefit from the Spell Focus feat. He can, however, benefit from the Ability Focus feat, as well as from feats that emulate metamagic effects for spell-like abilities, such as Quicken Spell-Like Ability and Empower Spell-Like Ability.
A warlock templar can select any invocation available to warlocks (including the standard invocations from 3.5e and the new invocations for the Dark Sun campaign setting described below). Unlike a standard warlock, a warlock templar’s invocations are divine magic.
The four grades of invocations, in order of their relative power, are least, lesser, greater, and dark. A warlock templar begins with knowledge of one invocation, which must be of the lowest grade (least). As a warlock templar gains levels, he learns new invocations, as summarized on Table: The Warlock Templar .
At any level when a Warlock Templar learns a new invocation, he can also replace an invocation he already knows with another invocation of the same or a lower grade for which he meets the prerequisites.
At 6th level, a Warlock Templar can replace a least invocation he knows with a different least invocation (in addition to learning a new invocation, which could be either least or lesser).
At 11th level, a Warlock Templar can replace a least or lesser invocation he knows with another invocation of the same or a lower grade (in addition to learning a new invocation, which could be least, lesser, or greater).
At 16th level, a Warlock Templar can replace a least, lesser, or greater invocation he knows with another invocation of the same or a lower grade (in addition to learning a new invocation, which could be least, lesser, greater, or dark).
Secular Aptitude (Ex): At 1 st level, you gain Secular Authority as a bonus feat. In addition, you receive a competence bonus to Secular Authority checks equal to half your Warlock Templar class level.
Mitigate Corruption (Ex): You can mitigate the legal consequences of being caught being bribed or otherwise being financially corrupt by clever dissimulation. At 1st level you may take bribes or corruptly appropriate up to 1 Cp per day without legal consequences (you must still accept the bribes or illegally appropriate funds – the money does not come automatically). For every character level you have beyond first level, this legal immunity to financial corruption increases by 1 Cp per day. When you gain the High Templar class feature, you may take bribes or corruptly appropriate up to 1 Sp per templar level, instead of 1 Cp. This does not protect the warlock templar from the consequences of other kinds of official corruption, like treason.
Politically adept : Your class levels in Warlock Templar stack with your class levels in Templar for determining your eligibility for the High Templar and Grant Pardon class features. If your combined levels in these classes are equal to 14 or 17, you gain the High Templar and Grant Pardon class features, respectively.
In addition, your class levels in warlock templar stack with competence bonuses to Secular Authority checks from your Templar class levels, to a maximum combined competence bonus of +10.
Imbue Templar Item (Su): A warlock templar of 3rd level can use his supernatural power to craft magical items if he has the corresponding item crafting feat. He can substitute a Use Magic Device check (DC 15 + spell level) in place of a required templar spell he doesn’t know or can’t cast. Spells to be emulated must be drawn from the templar spell list staring on page 138 of the Dark Sun Core Rules and includes the spells of any domains granted by his Sorcerer Monarch. You may not emulate spells that exceed half your caster level (for example, a warlock with a caster level of 5 may not emulate a 3rd level spell. He must have 6 caster levels to do that).
If the check succeeds, the warlock templar can create magical item as if he had cast the required spell. If it fails, he cannot complete the item. He does not expend the XP or Cp costs for making the item; his progress is simply arrested. He cannot retry this Use Magic Device check for that spell until he gains a new level (in any class).
The warlock templar is considered to know the spells on the templar spell list and the spells on all the domains granted by his Sorcerer Monarch for the purpose of activating spell trigger items.
Magical items created by a warlock templar are considered divine.
Templarate Training : At 3rd-level, a warlock templar receives a bonus feat reflecting his privileged position and the training that comes along with it. These bonus feats must be drawn from the following: Alertness, Brew Potion, Deceitful, Deft Hands, Diligent, Dissimulate, Investigator, Leadership, Linguist, Kleptocrat, Magical Aptitude, Persuasive, Favorite, Faithful Follower, Field Officer, Same Source Turning, Scribe Scroll, or Skill Focus. A warlock templar must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat. The warlock templar gains another bonus feat at 7th level, 11th level, 15th level, and 19th level.
Studied Invocation (Ex)
At 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th Warlock Templar level, you learn one Studied Invocation . Select one spell from the base Templar spell list (page 138, excluding domain spells). The selected spell must have a casting time of 1 standard action or less. The spell’s level cannot exceed the maximum spell level a spellcasting Templar of your class level could cast (max 2nd at L4, 4th at L8, 6th at L12, 8th at L16, 9th at L20).
Additionally, at each level you gain a new Studied Invocation (8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th), you may choose to replace one Studied Invocation you already know with a different Studied Invocation . The spell chosen must still adhere to the casting time restriction (1 standard action or less). The spell level cannot exceed the maximum spell level allowed when you first gained the slot being replaced. You may only swap one Studied Invocation at any given level where you gain a new one.
Each Studied Invocation learned can be used once per day. These do not count against your normal maximum number of Invocations Known. Using a Studied Invocation requires you to present your Divine Focus, but bypasses all other component types (V, S, M, F). Any XP cost must still be paid. Besides usage limit, casting time restriction, and Divine Focus requirement, Studied Invocations otherwise function as your normal invocations (determining action type required to use the invocation, Caster Level, Save DC, etc.).
Imbue Cleric Item (Su): At 10th level your ability to imbue items grows. You can now imbue items using spells from the cleric spell list in the same way you imbue templar items.
High Templar (Ex): At 14th level, you gain a +2 competence bonus on Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Gather Information, and Sense Motive checks against all citizens, nobles, commoners, and templars of any rank within your city-state’s jurisdiction, except other High Templars , Epic Templars, or your Sorcerer Monarch. You gain Leadership as a bonus feat (or a Templarate Training feat if already possessed).
In addition, you gain High Templar Immunity from prosecution, investigation, or intrusion by any non-epic templars or city officials, regardless of their rank or authority; only Epic templars or your Sorcerer Monarch can initiate such actions against you.
Grant Pardon : At 17th level as a special use of secular authority, you can grant a pardon to any condemned individual (slave, freeman, noble, or Templar), overturning a previous judgment. Only the Sorcerer-King can nullify a pardon granted by a Templar with this ability. You may use this ability once per year.
Unbreakable Bond (Ex): At 20th level, your connection to the source of your divine invocations becomes absolute. Even if your Sorcerer Monarch attempts to sever your magical power, you remain unaffected. Not even the death of your patron disrupts your ability to use your invocations—you continue to channel your power as before. You are unaware of this strengthened bond, and your Sorcerer Monarch has no special way of recognizing it unless they actively try to cut you off from your invocations and discover that you remain empowered regardless.
| Level | Base Attack Bonus | Fort Save | Ref Save | Will Save | Special | Invocations Known |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | +0 | +2 | +0 | +2 | Secular aptitude, eldritch blast 1d6, invocation (least), mitigate corruption | 1 |
| 2nd | +1 | +3 | +0 | +3 | 2 | |
| 3rd | +2 | +3 | +1 | +3 | eldritch blast 2d6, imbue templar item, templarate training | 2 |
| 4th | +3 | +4 | +1 | +4 | Studied Invocation | 3 |
| 5th | +3 | +4 | +1 | +4 | Eldritch blast 3d6 | 3 |
| 6th | +4 | +5 | +2 | +5 | New invocation (least or lesser) | 4 |
| 7th | +5 | +5 | +2 | +5 | eldritch blast 4d6, templarate training | 4 |
| 8th | +6/+1 | +6 | +2 | +6 | Studied Invocation | 5 |
| 9th | +6/+1 | +6 | +3 | +6 | Eldritch blast 5d6 | 5 |
| 10th | +7/+2 | +7 | +3 | +7 | Imbue cleric item | 6 |
| 11th | +8/+3 | +7 | +3 | +7 | Eldritch blast 6d6, new invocation (least, lesser, or greater), templarate training | 7 |
| 12th | +9/+4 | +8 | +4 | +8 | Studied Invocation | 7 |
| 13th | +9/+4 | +8 | +4 | +8 | 8 | |
| 14th | +10/+5 | +9 | +4 | +9 |
Eldritch blast 7d6,
High templar |
8 |
| 15th | +11/+6/+1 | +9 | +5 | +9 | Templarate training | 9 |
| 16th | +12/+7/+2 | +10 | +5 | +10 | New invocation (least, lesser, greater, or dark), Studied Invocation | 10 |
| 17th | +12/+7/+2 | +10 | +5 | +10 | Eldritch blast 8d6, Grant Pardon | 10 |
| 18th | +13/+8/+3 | +11 | +6 | +11 | 11 | |
| 19th | +14/+9/+4 | +11 | +6 | +11 | Templarate training | 11 |
| 20th | +15/+10/+5 | +12 | +6 | +12 | Eldritch blast 9d6, unbreakable bond, Studied Invocation | 12 |
Aura Audit
Least; 1st
You know things about the citizens and slaves of your city. You can invoke the effects of the aura reading psionic power (Dark Sun Core Rules 3.5, page 178).
Avatar of the Sorcerer King
Dark; 6th
You become an avatar of your sorcerer monarch. You can invoke the effects of the transformation spell. If you have spellcasting ability, that ability is lost as detailed in the transformation spell description, nor may you use spell trigger or spell completion magic items, but your invocations are unhindered. Once you have discharged this invocation or the duration has elapsed, you must wait 5 rounds before you are able to use it again.
Cool Oasis
Least; 2nd
You bring forth your sorcerer monarch’s succor. You get the benefits of the cooling canopy spell (Dark Sun Core Rules 3.5, page 148) and the sustenance psionic power. Cool Oasis lasts for 24 hours or until discharged.
Echoes of the Fallen
Greater; 5 th
You call upon the spirits of the fallen to aid you in combat. You can invoke the effects of the summon undead V spell (Spell Compendium, page 217), summoning one or more undead creatures to serve you for up to 1 round per caster level. You can only have one instance of this invocation active at a time. Once you have discharged this invocation or the duration has elapsed, you must wait 5 rounds before you are able to use it again.
Shunt to Void
Lesser; 3rd
You attempt to shunt one creature within 30 feet into the void between Athas and the Gray. The target must succeed on a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 your caster level + your Charisma modifier) to negate the effect. On a failed save, the creature is banished for 1 round, effectively losing its next action. Each time you target the same creature with this invocation after the first within a 24-hour period, the target gains a cumulative +2 bonus on its saving throw against this specific use of your Shunt to Void. You can use this invocation at will. Effects such as Dimensional Anchor prevent this invocation from functioning.
Slave Breaker
Least; 1st
You can bring slaves (or any enemy) down without damaging its market value. As a standard action, you invoke an occult assault targeting one or more creatures with a sickly green ray via a ranged touch attack (range: Close 25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels).
Initially, you may target one creature, dealing 1d6 points of nonlethal damage if struck and the target fails a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 your caster level + your Charisma modifier).
Starting at 6th Warlock Templar level, you may target one additional creature (total 2), and the nonlethal damage increases to 2d6.
Starting at 11th Warlock Templar level, you may target another additional creature (total 3), and the nonlethal damage increases to 3d6.
Starting at 16th Warlock Templar level, you may target a final additional creature (total 4), and the nonlethal damage increases to 4d6.
All targets must be within the invocation’s range. You must make a separate ranged touch attack for each target, and each target makes its own saving throw against the nonlethal damage.
Sorcerer King’s Arsenal
Least; 1st
You call echoes of weaponry used by the soldiery of your sorcerer monarch into your hands. You can invoke the effects of the Call Weaponry psionic power. The summoned weapon is always treated as a magic weapon for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
Starting at 7th Warlock Templar level, this weapon also gains a +1 enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls.
Starting at 14th Warlock Templar level, this enhancement bonus increases to +2.
This invocation lasts for 1 minute per caster level.
Sorcerer King’s Elite Guard
Least; 2nd
You call on your sorcerer monarch to imbue you with intimidating size and strength, granting you the benefits of a Bless spell (self only) and causing you to grow one size category larger.
While enlarged, you gain a +2 size bonus to Strength, a -2 size penalty to Dexterity (minimum 1), and a -1 size penalty to AC. Your space and natural reach increase accordingly (typically 10 ft./10 ft. for a Medium creature). Your melee weapons deal damage appropriate for your new size. You also gain a +1 morale bonus on saves against fear. The size penalty to attacks is negated by the morale bonus from Bless, resulting in no net change to your attack bonus from this invocation.
Equipment you carry enlarges with you but returns to normal size if it leaves your possession. Size increases do not stack. This invocation lasts for 1 minute per caster level.
Sorcerer King’s Strength
Lesser; 3rd
When you use this invocation, your Sorcerer Monarch infuses you with potent might. You gain a +2 morale bonus to your Strength score, which applies normally to attacks, damage, skills, and other standard uses of Strength. Additionally, you gain the benefits of the psionic Lighten Load power (Dark Sun Core Rules 3.5, page 184). For the purpose of determining your carrying capacity only, this invocation grants an effective Strength score 10 points higher than your normal Strength score; the +2 morale bonus does not modify this specific calculation for carrying capacity. Sorcerer King’s Strength lasts for 2 hours per caster level.
Thousand Eyes of the Sorcerer King
Lesser; 3 rd
Your sorcerer monarch grants you the power to truly see. You gain the benefits of the Ubiquitous Vision psionic power, allowing you to see in a 360-degree sphere and rendering you immune to flanking. Additionally, this heightened awareness grants you a +2 competence bonus on Sense Motive checks. Thousand Eyes of the Sorcerer King lasts for 24 hours.
Whispers of the Sorcerer King
Least; 2nd
You hear whispers in your ears, revealing secrets of Athas. Select three knowledge skills. You gain a +6 bonus on those three Knowledge skill checks for 24 hours. Once the 24 hours has elapsed, a different three knowledge skills may be selected.
• Lesser Templar: A creature with levels in Templar or Warlock Templar who does not possess the High Templar class feature.
• High Templar: A creature that has gained the High Templar class feature.
• Epic Templar: A creature of character level 21+ with levels in Templar or Warlock Templar (uses the class's epic progression).
• Jurisdiction: The political territory and lawful reach of a single sorcerer‑monarch, including its city‑state, dependent forts, patrol radius, and any recognized protectorates (GM adjudicates edge cases).
"When I speak, it is with the queen's voice. The city stopped hearing the difference long ago." — Letana of Raam
To become an epic templar is to have climbed every rung of the templarate's treacherous ladder and kept climbing after the ladder ended. She has outmaneuvered rivals, survived purges, and proven herself indispensable to a being who answers to no one. She can imprison, judge, and execute High Templars. No Secular Authority action — intrusion, accusation, arrest, judgment, or requisition — can be performed upon an epic templar or her property. Not by a lesser templar, not by a High Templar, not even by another epic templar. Another epic templar can contest her use of Secular Authority, but cannot touch her person. Only the sorcerer-monarch can intrude upon, accuse, or judge an epic templar.
Prerequisites: Templar level 20
Hit Die : d8
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier
| Level | Special |
|---|---|
| 21st | Mitigate Corruption , Overcome High Templar Immunity , Highest Templar , Spellcasting |
| 22nd | Templarate Mastery |
| 23rd | — |
| 24th | Templarate Mastery |
| 25th | — |
| 26th | Templarate Mastery |
| 27th | — |
| 28th | Templarate Mastery |
| 29th | — |
| 30th | Templarate Mastery |
| … | … |
Class Features
Mitigate Corruption: Continues to progress. The maximum amount of corruption the Templar can mitigate is doubled. If the Templar has the Kleptocrat feat, this bonus stacks, resulting in quadruple the normal corruption allowance.
Advanced Learning : Does not progress normally. See “Templarate Mastery” below for options to gain new spells.
Secular Authority: The effectiveness of Secular Authority checks increases at epic levels due to the use of Effective Templar Level in the check calculation. However, no new Secular Authority actions (e.g., Requisition Slave, Intrude, etc.) are gained, and the number of times per day Secular Authority can be used does not increase. The competence bonus to Secular Authority checks granted by the Secular Aptitude class feature does not increase beyond 20th level.
Templarate Training : Does not progress normally. See “Templarate Mastery” below for options to gain new feats.
Highest Templar: The bonuses granted by the High Templar class feature are doubled to +4 on Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, Gather Information, and Sense Motive checks. These doubled bonuses now apply to all interactions within the city-state’s jurisdiction, including slaves, freemen, nobles, members of the templarate, and even other high templars (except those who also have this class feature).
Overcome High Templar Immunity: You can use the Intrude on Lesser Templar, Accuse Lesser Templar, and Judge Lesser Templars abilities of Secular Authority against High Templars that do not have this class feature. This also grants the ability to initiate Epic Templar appeals of High Templar actions.
Spellcasting: Caster Level CL) increases by +1 per Epic Templar level. Does not grant additional spell slots or spells known.
Templarate Mastery (Epic Class Feature)
At 22nd level, and every second level thereafter (24th, 26th, 28th, 30th, etc.), the Epic Templar gains a bonus ability, chosen from the following options. These options represent the Templar’s continued mastery of their order and their growing influence.
Turn or Rebuke Undead : Add your Epic Templar levels to your Templar class levels for the purpose of determining turning/rebuking effectiveness (check, damage, etc.). Prerequisite: Ability to turn or rebuke undead.
Templarate Faction Leader: Gain the benefits of the Epic Leadership feat, even if you do not meet the Charisma score prerequisite. If you already have Epic Leadership or gain it later), you gain a +2 bonus to your Leadership score. As a templarate faction leader, you have the ability to Declare Hostilities Ex) as a special use of secular authority.
Declare Hostilities (Ex)
As a special use of Secular Authority , you can declare a state of hostilities, but not within your own city-state or its immediate environs, against a specific group or faction that poses a significant threat to your city-state. This declaration must be publicly announced and justified within the laws and customs of your city-state. Valid targets include, but are not limited to:
• Slave tribes
• Recalcitrant villages or settlements (within the city-state’s area of concern)
• Raiding groups (e.g., gith, bandits)
• Hostile organizations operating within the city-state’s sphere of influence
Restrictions:
• Cannot be used to declare war on another city-state ruled by a sorcerer-monarch (this is the prerogative of the Sorcerer-Monarch).
• Cannot be used against individuals, only groups.
Effects of the Declaration:
• Legitimizes Military Action: The declaration formally authorizes the use of military force against the targeted group. This removes legal obstacles and allows the Templar to requisition troops and resources without needing to justify each individual action.
• Mobilization: A declaration of mobilization initiates a military buildup lasting up to four weeks. The Templar raises an army composed of their existing followers, supplemented by troops mobilized from the city-state if the follower count is insufficient. The army’s maximum size is dictated by the Templar’s Leadership score. The army expands by up to 25% of its maximum size every week, continuing until it reaches full strength or the four-week period concludes. The fewer followers the Templar has at the start, the longer the mobilization will likely take, up to the full four weeks.
• Demobilization: After the end of hostilities, the mobilised troops that were not already your followers leave and return to their normal lives.
Duration: The state of hostilities lasts until one of the following occurs:
• The Templar formally rescinds the declaration (using Secular Authority again).
• The targeted group is defeated or ceases to be a threat (GM’s discretion).
• The Sorcerer-Monarch overrules the declaration.
• The army reaches its maximum size and then two weeks pass without the Templar taking the field or otherwise actively engaging with the enemy with the new army.
• Defeated or Routed: The army suffers losses (killed, permanently incapacitated, or deserted) equal to 60% of its maximum size (as determined at the time of the declaration), or a significant portion of the army (at least 30% of its current strength) openly refuses to follow orders or actively flees the field of battle in a disorganized manner.
• Contesting the Declaration: The Declaration of Hostilities can be contested. Other characters with the Secular Authority feat and the ability to Declare Hostilities can attempt to block or overturn the declaration with an opposed secular authority check, as per the normal rules for contesting Secular Authority .
Disgraced (Status Condition)
If a Templar’s declared state of hostilities ends due to the “Defeated or routed” condition, they become Disgraced.
Triggering Condition: The Templar’s army suffers losses (killed, permanently incapacitated, or deserted) equal to 60% of its maximum size (as determined at the time of the declaration), or a significant portion of the army (at least 30% of its current strength) openly refuses to follow orders or actively flees the field of battle in a disorganized manner.
Effects of Disgraced:
• Cannot Contest Secular Authority: For a duration of 4d6 months, the Disgraced Templar cannot contest any Secular Authority actions initiated by other Templars.
• Penalty to Secular Authority Checks: The Disgraced Templar suffers a -4 penalty on all secular authority checks.
• Cannot Declare Hostilities Again: The disgraced Templar cannot use the Declare Hostilities ability again until the disgraced condition is removed.
Removal of Disgraced:
• Time: The primary way to remove the Disgraced status is to wait out the 4d6 month duration.
• Redemption: At the GM’s discretion, the Templar may be able to remove the Disgraced status early by performing a significant act of service to the Sorcerer-Monarch or the city-state, successfully completing a difficult mission, or otherwise proving their loyalty and competence. This should be a challenging and narratively significant undertaking and should relate to fixing the problems caused by their military failure.
Eclectic Feat: Choose any feat for which you meet the prerequisites. Restriction: You may not select an eclectic feat twice in a row.
Templarate Ability: Choose a feat from the Templarate Training feat list for which you meet the prerequisites.
Extra Advanced Learning: A new spell from the cleric list becomes one of your known spells, as per the Advanced Learning class feature. Restriction: You may not select this option twice in a row. Prerequisite: Advanced Learning class feature.
Assume Domain: Choose to swap one of your Sorcerer Monarch domains for another domain offered by your Sorcerer Monarch. When you swap, you lose the benefits (spells and granted power) of the old domain and gain the benefits of the new domain. This change lasts until you choose to swap domains again. You can use this ability once per day at dawn. Prerequisite: Sorcerer Monarch Domains class feature.
Favored of the Sorcerer Monarch: Your Sorcerer Monarch has bestowed immortality upon you. You gain a +2 insight bonus on all Wisdom-based skill checks. You no longer accrue bonuses or penalties due to aging. You gain immunity to sleep effects, both magical and mundane, and cannot be forced to sleep against your will. Special: The Sorcerer Monarch must like you enough for this. This means never having offended or failed the Sorcerer Monarch in the past.
Hit Die : d8
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier
| Level | Special | Eldritch Blast |
|---|---|---|
| 21st | Mitigate Corruption , Overcome High Templar Immunity , Highest Templar | 9d6 |
| 22nd | Templarate Mastery | 10d6 |
| 23rd | — | 10d6 |
| 24th | Templarate Mastery | 11d6 |
| 25th | — | 11d6 |
| 26th | Templarate Mastery | 12d6 |
| 27th | — | 12d6 |
| 28th | Templarate Mastery | 13d6 |
| 29th | — | 13d6 |
| 30th | Templarate Mastery | 14d6 |
| … | … | … |
Class Features
Invocations: The epic warlock templar’s caster level is equal to his class level. He does not learn additional invocations through level progression. New invocations can only be gained through the Epic Extra Invocation feat.
Eldritch Blast: An epic warlock templar’s eldritch blast damage increases by 1d6 at every even-numbered level above 20th (10d6 at 22nd, 11d6 at 24th, and so on).
Secular Authority: The effectiveness of Secular Authority checks increases at epic levels due to the use of Effective Templar Level in the check calculation. However, no new Secular Authority actions are gained, and the number of times per day Secular Authority can be used does not increase. The competence bonus to Secular Authority checks granted by the Secular Aptitude class feature does not increase beyond 20th level.
Mitigate Corruption: Continues to progress. The maximum amount of corruption the Templar can mitigate is doubled. If the Templar has the Kleptocrat feat, this bonus stacks, resulting in quadruple the normal corruption allowance.
Highest Templar: The bonuses granted by the High Templar class feature are doubled to +4 on Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, Gather Information, and Sense Motive checks. These doubled bonuses now apply to all interactions within the city-state’s jurisdiction, including slaves, freemen, nobles, members of the templarate, and even other high templars (except those who also have this class feature).
Overcome High Templar Immunity: You can use the Intrude on Lesser Templar, Accuse Lesser Templar, and Judge Lesser Templars abilities of Secular Authority against High Templars that do not have this class feature.
Extra Studied Invocation: You gain a studied invocation, and this includes any of the domain spells offered by your sorcerer monarch. Unlike the studied invocations of the non-epic class, these extra studied invocations may not be changed once selected. Restriction: You may not select this option twice in a row.
Templarate Mastery
At 22nd level, and every two levels thereafter (24th, 26th, 28th, etc.), the Epic Warlock Templar gains a bonus ability, chosen from the following options:
Turn or Rebuke Undead : Add your Epic Templar levels to your Templar class levels for the purpose of determining turning/rebuking effectiveness (check, damage, etc.). Prerequisite: Ability to turn or rebuke undead.
Templarate Faction Leader: Gain the benefits of the Epic Leadership feat, even if you do not meet the Charisma score prerequisite. If you already have Epic Leadership or gain it later), you gain a +2 bonus to your Leadership score. As a templarate faction leader, you have the ability to Declare Hostilities Ex) as a special use of secular authority.
Declare Hostilities (Ex)
As a special use of Secular Authority , you can declare a state of hostilities, but not within your own city-state or its immediate environs, against a specific group or faction that poses a significant threat to your city-state. This declaration must be publicly announced and justified within the laws and customs of your city-state. Valid targets include, but are not limited to:
• Slave tribes
• Recalcitrant villages or settlements (within the city-state’s area of concern)
• Raiding groups (e.g., gith, bandits)
• Hostile organizations operating within the city-state’s sphere of influence
Restrictions:
• Cannot be used to declare war on another city-state ruled by a sorcerer-monarch (this is the prerogative of the Sorcerer-Monarch).
• Cannot be used against individuals, only groups.
Effects of the Declaration:
• Legitimizes Military Action: The declaration formally authorizes the use of military force against the targeted group. This removes legal obstacles and allows the Templar to requisition troops and resources without needing to justify each individual action.
• Mobilization: A declaration of mobilization initiates a military buildup lasting up to four weeks. The Templar raises an army composed of their existing followers, supplemented by troops mobilized from the city-state if the follower count is insufficient. The army’s maximum size is dictated by the Templar’s Leadership score. The army expands by up to 25% of its maximum size every week, continuing until it reaches full strength or the four-week period concludes. The fewer followers the Templar has at the start, the longer the mobilization will likely take, up to the full four weeks.
• Demobilization: After the end of hostilities, the mobilised troops that were not already your followers leave and return to their normal lives.
Duration: The state of hostilities lasts until one of the following occurs:
• The Templar formally rescinds the declaration (using Secular Authority again).
• The targeted group is defeated or ceases to be a threat (GM’s discretion).
• The Sorcerer-Monarch overrules the declaration.
• The army reaches its maximum size and then two weeks pass without the Templar taking the field or otherwise actively engaging with the enemy with the new army.
• Defeated or Routed: The army suffers losses (killed, permanently incapacitated, or deserted) equal to 60% of its maximum size (as determined at the time of the declaration), or a significant portion of the army (at least 30% of its current strength) openly refuses to follow orders or actively flees the field of battle in a disorganized manner.
• Contesting the Declaration: The Declaration of Hostilities can be contested. Other characters with the Secular Authority feat and the ability to Declare Hostilities can attempt to block or overturn the declaration with an opposed secular authority check, as per the normal rules for contesting Secular Authority .
Disgraced (Status Condition)
If a Templar’s declared state of hostilities ends due to the “Defeated or routed” condition, they become Disgraced.
Triggering Condition: The Templar’s army suffers losses (killed, permanently incapacitated, or deserted) equal to 60% of its maximum size (as determined at the time of the declaration), or a significant portion of the army (at least 30% of its current strength) openly refuses to follow orders or actively flees the field of battle in a disorganized manner.
Effects of Disgraced:
• Cannot Contest Secular Authority: For a duration of 4d6 months, the Disgraced Templar cannot contest any Secular Authority actions initiated by other Templars.
• Penalty to Secular Authority Checks: The Disgraced Templar suffers a -4 penalty on all secular authority checks.
• Cannot Declare Hostilities Again: The disgraced Templar cannot use the Declare Hostilities ability again until the disgraced condition is removed.
Removal of Disgraced:
• Time: The primary way to remove the Disgraced status is to wait out the 4d6 month duration.
• Redemption: At the GM’s discretion, the Templar may be able to remove the Disgraced status early by performing a significant act of service to the Sorcerer-Monarch or the city-state, successfully completing a difficult mission, or otherwise proving their loyalty and competence. This should be a challenging and narratively significant undertaking and should relate to fixing the problems caused by their military failure.
Eclectic Feat: Choose any feat for which you meet the prerequisites. This includes any Warlock-related epic feat. Restriction: You may not select an eclectic feat twice in a row.
Templarate Ability: Choose a feat from the Templarate Training feat list for which you meet the prerequisites.
Imbue Arcane Item (Su): The warlock gains the ability to create magic items using the wizard/sorcerer spell list, even if he does not know the spells required to make an item (although he must possess the appropriate item creation feat). He can substitute a Use Magic Device check (DC 25 + spell level for arcane spells instead of the DC 15 + spell level the warlock templar uses for divine spells) in place of a required spell he doesn’t know or can’t cast. If the check succeeds, the warlock can create the item as if he had cast the required spell. If it fails, he cannot complete the item. He does not expend the XP or gold piece costs for making the item; his progress is simply arrested. He cannot retry this Use Magic Device check for that spell until he gains a new level.
Favored of the Sorcerer Monarch: Your Sorcerer Monarch has bestowed immortality upon you. You gain a +2 insight bonus on all Wisdom-based skill checks. You no longer accrue bonuses or penalties due to aging. You gain immunity to sleep effects, both magical and mundane, and cannot be forced to sleep against your will. Special: The Sorcerer Monarch must like you enough for this. This means never having offended or failed the Sorcerer Monarch in the past.
This chapter covers the full mechanics of Secular Authority: available actions by Effective Templar Level, contested checks, and advanced rules. For the feat description and prerequisites, see the Feats chapter.
Your Effective Templar Level (ETL) for determining available actions and uses per day is equal to your total character level .You can use Secular Authority actions a total number of times per day equal to your Effective Templar Level . A character with the secular authority feat is considered a templar for the ETL required to take secular authority actions against them.
Special: A character with the Templar class automatically gains the Secular Authority feat as a bonus feat (they do not need to select it or meet prerequisites). Templars gain the Mitigate Corruption ability as a class feature (which does meet the prerequisite for the Kleptocrat feat). Characters with Templar class levels also receive a competence bonus to their Secular Authority checks equal to half their Templar level (rounded down, max +10).
Effective Templar Level:
A character’s
Effective Templar Level
(ETL), which determines the scope
of actions they can attempt and their uses per day, is equal to
their
total character level
(the sum of levels in all
classes).
Uses Per Day:
You can use
Secular Authority
a number of times per day equal to your
Effective Templar Level
.
Secular Authority Abilities (by Effective Templar
Level):
The specific actions you can attempt with
Secular Authority
depend on
your
Effective Templar Level
, as shown below.
| Effective Templar Level | Ability Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Requisition Slave Commandeer any slave. |
| 1 | Intrude on Slave Search the home, person, or possessions of a slave. |
| 1 | Accuse Slave Imprison a slave indefinitely. |
| 2 | Requisition Troops Requisition a small unit of city-state troops. |
| 3 | Intrude on Freeman Search the home, person, or possessions of a freeman. |
| 4 | Judge Slave Pass judgment on a slave. |
| 5 | Accuse Freeman Imprison a freeman indefinitely. |
| 6 | Requisition Gear Requisition appropriate gear. |
| 7 | Intrude on Noble Search the home, person, or possessions of a noble. |
| 8 | Judge Freeman Pass judgment on slaves and freemen. |
| 9 | Accuse Noble Imprison a noble indefinitely. |
| 10 | Requisition spellcaster/manifester Request the temporary services of a spellcaster or manifester. |
| 11 | Intrude on Lesser Templar Search the home, person, or possessions of another Templar (but not High Templars). |
| 12 | Judge Noble Pass judgment on nobles. |
| 13 | Accuse Lesser Templar Imprison a Templar indefinitely (but not High Templars). |
| 14 | Requisition Property Temporarily requisition property. |
| 15 | Judge Lesser Templars Pass judgment on other Templars (but not High Templars). |
Contesting Secular Authority (High Templar/Epic Templar Appeals):
Secular Authority Check: A Secular Authority check is a special skill check. Roll 1d20 and add your Effective Templar Level, plus your Charisma modifier, plus any other bonuses that specifically apply to Secular Authority checks . Only permanent Charisma bonuses from magic items in the character’s long-term possession apply to this check; temporary bonuses from spells, potions, or other effects do not.
Templarate Member's Privilege: Any character possessing the Secular Authority feat who is the direct target of another character's Secular Authority action can always contest that action, regardless of their own Effective Templar Level (ETL). This is purely a defensive right allowing the target to force a contest based on their own check result versus the initiator's; it does not grant the ability to initiate contests they wouldn't normally qualify for, nor is it a means to challenge actions directed against others. A defending character using templarate member’s privilege never loses automatically to high templars. They may still seek a high templar or epic templar advocate if they wish.
While the Secular Authority feat allows characters of various classes (such as state-sanctioned wizards, psions, fighter captains, or specialist rogues) to be formally inducted into the Templarate structure and wield official authority based on their total character level (Effective Templar Level - ETL), it's crucial to understand their position relative to those with Templar or Warlock Templar class levels .
The Templarate jealously guards its internal hierarchy and status. While specialists are valuable assets, their authority within the organization is deliberately limited compared to career Templars. This is reflected mechanically in several key ways:
Contested Actions & The Competence Bonus: When a Secular Authority action is contested by another Templarate member (anyone else with the SA feat), an opposed check is required. Characters with Templar or Warlock Templar levels add a competence bonus equal to half their class level (max +10) to this check, granted by the Secular Aptitude class feature. Characters who only possess the feat do not gain this bonus . This puts them at a significant disadvantage in any internal power struggle or dispute, making their authority brittle when challenged by a 'true' Templar, even one of potentially lower character level.
Class-Locked Advancement: Powerful features representing significant rank and influence, such as High Templar (granting immunity and enhanced social capabilities), Grant Pardon , and Epic Templar abilities, are explicitly tied to attaining specific levels in the Templar or Warlock Templar classes. They cannot be achieved simply by reaching a high character level/ETL. Specialists inducted via the feat face a hard ceiling in the Templarate hierarchy, forever remaining subordinate to High and Epic Templars .
Synergistic Benefits: Features like Mitigate Corruption are granted as a class feature to Templars/Warlock Templars, which qualifies them for the Kleptocrat feat and sees the benefit increase significantly upon reaching High Templar status. The lesser version granted by the feat does not benefit from these synergies.
In essence, specialists with the Secular Authority feat are effective functionaries capable of wielding power over the general populace and performing vital tasks for the state. However, within the internal machinery of the Templarate, their authority is less secure, easily challenged by career Templars, and capped at a lower level of ultimate influence and privilege.
Secular Authority contests:
Core Principles:
Hierarchy: Secular Authority follows a clear power structure: Lesser Templar < High Templar < Epic Templar < Sorcerer-Monarch.
Advocacy: A High Templar advocate represents another Templar, using their own ETL for the contest, not the ETL of the Templar they represent. The outcome affects the original party, not the advocate (unless the advocate was the original party).
Contests go to appeal unless the initial contest was resolved and involved a High Templar , or a High Templar won an uncontested victory.
Key Definitions:
Reversal of Action: When a Secular Authority action is reversed, the immediate effects of the action are undone (e.g., a requisitioned slave is returned, an imprisoned individual is released). The initiating Templar may face social or political consequences for a failed action, at the GM’s discretion.
Initiating a Secular Authority Action:
A character with the Secular Authority feat can initiate actions appropriate to their ETL (as listed in the Secular Authority abilities table).
The action must be directed at a valid target (e.g., a slave, freeman, noble, or Templar, depending on the action and the initiator’s ETL).
High Templars are immune to Intrude, Accuse, and Judge actions from non- Epic Templars .
Epic Templars with the Overcome High Templar Immunity class feature can use Intrude, Accuse, and Judge actions on High Templars .
Contesting a Secular Authority Action (Initial Contest):
General Rule: Only a character who could normally perform the same Secular Authority action (i.e., has the required ETL to perform that action, as listed in the Secular Authority abilities table) can contest it.
Exception: Templar’s Privilege: If the target of the action is a Templar, that Templar can always contest, regardless of their ETL.
Contest Procedure:
The initiator and the challenger (or their advocate, see below) both make a Secular Authority check.
Outcome:
If the challenger’s check result is higher than the initiator’s check result, the challenger wins, and the action is reversed.
If the initiator’s check result is higher than, or equal to, the challenger’s check result, the initiator wins, and the action stands (subject to possible appeals).
High Templar Involvement (Initial Contest):
High Templar as Initiator, Non-Templar Target:
A non high Templar cannot directly contest.
The only way to contest is to find a High Templar advocate with sufficient ETL to perform the action.
If an advocate is found, the contest is between the initiating High Templar and the advocate High Templar .
If no advocate is found, the initiating High Templar automatically wins.
High Templar as Initiator, Templar Target:
The target Templar can always contest (Templar’s Privilege).
Scenario A: Templar Finds a High Templar Advocate:
The advocate High Templar makes the Secular Authority check against the initiating High Templar . The target Templar is represented by the advocate.
This contest is final within the High Templar ranks (no High Templar appeal).
Scenario B: Templar Cannot Find a High Templar Advocate:
The target Templar makes the Secular Authority check directly against the initiating High Templar .
This contest is final within the High Templar ranks (no High Templar appeal).
High Templar as Challenger (Non- High Templar Initiator):
If a non- High Templar initiates an action, and a High Templar contests it, the High Templar automatically wins the initial contest unless the initiator has a High Templar Advocate.
If the initiator has a High Templar advocate (with sufficient ETL), the contest is between the challenging High Templar and the advocate High Templar . This contest is final within the High Templar ranks.
High Templar vs. High Templar (Initial Contest):
Both High Templars make Secular Authority checks.
The result is final within the High Templar ranks (no High Templar appeal).
High Templar Appeals (Only if the Core Principles do not apply):
High Templar appeal can only occur if all of the following are true:
The winner of the initial contest was not a High Templar .
The loser of the initial contest was not a High Templar .
The High Templar appealing is not appealing the victory or loss of another High Templar .
The appealing High Templar has sufficient ETL (defined above) to perform the Secular Authority action being contested.
Appeal Procedure:
Step 1: Automatic Win (Unless Advocate Found): The appealing High Templar automatically wins, reversing the original action, unless the winner of the initial contest finds a High Templar advocate (with sufficient ETL).
Step 2 (If Advocate Found): Opposed Check: If an advocate is found, an opposed Secular Authority check occurs between the appealing High Templar and the advocate High Templar .
Step 3: Outcome: The winner of the opposed check (or the appealing High Templar , if no advocate is found) determines the outcome. This is final within the High Templar ranks.
Epic Templar Appeals:
An Epic Templar can appeal any previous Secular Authority contest or High Templar appeal.
The Epic Templar makes a Secular Authority check against the winner of the previous stage (initiator, challenger, appealing High Templar , or advocate High Templar ).
If the Epic Templar wins the contest, the outcome is final (unless overridden by the Sorcerer-Monarch).
Sorcerer-Monarch Override:
The Sorcerer-Monarch can override any decision at any stage.
Restrictions:
A character who has participated in a previous contest (as initiator, challenger, or advocate) cannot participate in subsequent appeals regarding the same specific Secular Authority action and target.
A defending character who loses a contest may not use Secular Authority to repeat the exact same action against the same target .
Practical Limits on Appeals: While the rules allow for appeals, Templars generally consider a contested case closed unless there is a compelling reason (e.g., new evidence, significant political pressure, or a substantial bribe) to reopen it.
Special: A Templar automatically gains the Secular Authority feat as a bonus feat. A Templar may use Secular Authority a number of times per day equal to their Effective Templar Level . In addition, characters with Templar class levels receive a competence bonus to Secular Authority checks equal to half their Templar level (rounded down).
Secular Authority checks represent a Templar’s sustained influence and power within the Templarate, not fleeting moments of charm or intimidation. Therefore, only permanent Charisma bonuses from magic items in the character’s long-term possession (such as a Cloak of Charisma or Headband of Charisma ) contribute to these checks. These items represent a lasting increase in the Templar’s presence and authority. Temporary boosts from spells (like Eagle’s Splendor ), potions, or other short-term effects do not reflect this deep-seated power and are therefore not included. “Long-term possession” is generally defined as possessing the item for at least three months ; the GM is the final arbiter in ambiguous cases.
While Secular Authority grants Templars significant power, its successful application often relies on at least a veneer of justification within the complex bureaucratic and political landscape of the city-states. Actions initiated without proper cause, strong evidence, or adherence to procedure can be more easily challenged.
During a contested Secular Authority action (where an opposed check is made between the initiator and the defender or their advocate), the Game Master should consider the strength of the initiator's justification. If the GM determines that the action being taken (such as an Intrusion, Accusation, or Judgment) is based on flimsy pretext, weak or uncorroborated evidence, significant procedural errors, or appears primarily motivated by personal vendetta or political maneuvering lacking factual substance, the defending character (or their advocate) gains a +2 circumstance bonus on their opposed Secular Authority check.
This bonus represents the increased difficulty an initiator faces when trying to enforce their authority without a solid foundation, reflecting the ability of even a corrupt bureaucracy to occasionally resist baseless actions through inertia or procedural challenges