The Orbane Synod

An Extra Faction from Oerth Journal #31!

by Dan Anderson, from BugbearBrothers

Cover art by Shabazik

From the Editor:
Normally … well, lately ( i.e. the most recent 4 issues), Greyhawk Online has published “extras” from the Oerth Journal as supplementary downloads. This time, however, we wanted to offer a very special article from the OJ as a page of it’s own! Download your FREE copy of Oerth Journal #31 now!

Dan Anderson is a new author with GreyhyawkOnline, having come to us through Instagram. Social Media is one of the things we’ve recently talked a good deal about in the “Letter from the Editor” in the last two issues of the Oerth Journal (Autumn and Winter 2019). Social Media allows us to connect with many more fans than Editors of the OJ ever have been able to before!

We’re really pleased with this Special Supplement to Oerth Journal #31. It offers a look at a faction (two of them, truth be told) which take a normal trope for wizards, and turn it on its head!
Read on, Greyhawkers, and find out all about the Orbane Synod and the Blood Council!

In the city of Dyvers, there is an ongoing feud between two competing schools of wizardry, the Orbane Synod, and the Blood Council. The Orbane Synod are known for their oral tradition and their peculiar practice of never recording spells on parchment but instead hiding it away in familiars and homunculi throughout Greyhawk. Before wizards are granted the title of alumni of the school, they are sent on a vision quest to capture their personal familiar and begin shaping the world under the guiding principles of the Synod.

Familiars generally are one of the following creatures: homunculi, imps, woodlums, quasits, golems, rooks, or mandrakes—although other odd creatures have sometimes been conscripted by the Orbane wizards. Once the familiar has been found or created, the caster begins a linguistic partnership with the familiar, having the familiar store various spells in their memory, or tattoo the spell’s instructions on their flesh in the case of golems. The familiar is soul-tethered to the Wizard so that in the case that the wizard dies, their spells are destroyed with them.

The Blood Council, a far more ancient order, believe that learnt magic is a crude art. This nefarious faction believes that magic chooses its caster, and not the other way around. Deep in the underbelly of Dyvers, the Blood Council are rumoured to take ‘hopefuls’ for magic testing, exposing their bodies to physical extremes in order to catalyze sorcerous mutation. The Blood Council aims to abolish ‘bastardized magic’ practiced by studied mages and familiar-laden warlocks and replace it with the ‘pure bloods’.

Both of these schools are generally opposed by the classic wizardry schools found throughout Greyhawk. Many of these classically-trained practitioners refuse to even recognize members of these schools as wizards. However, rumours have surfaced that there are magics within the Orbane’s oral tradition that have no home in traditional spell grimoires and tomes, and for this reason many seek to imprison the wizards of these schools and torture them until they reveal these arcane secrets that have been lost to time.

Post your thoughts in the Comments section and let us know how you use the Orbane Synod and the Blood Council in your game!

‘Til the Starbreak!