Place of Origin:  Harkania, the Great Plains

    Category:  Archaic

Entry from The Encyclopedia Arcanum

    In the days long before the fall of the Sylvan Court, perhaps even before the Law bringers and the Fallen took to the heavens, the continent of Harkened was dotted with tiny fissures through which Thrum found its way to the surface.  In human lands the fissures have been plugged by step pyramids of various sizes.
    As to the plugs themselves no one now remembers who first decided to make them, or how they did it (similar attempts in Vickie [Dark ridge] have universally failed), though the architecture - especially of the larger ones - suggests Aileen, and thus Law bringer, influence.  Once the fissures were plugged it seems that most of mankind forgot about their existence.  Only the nomadic people of the Great Planes have retained the knowledge of how to use them.  It is from these fissures that their Shamans gain their strange and wondrous abilities.
    On the Great Planes the fissures – and their caps – are grouped into what the natives call “Ways”.  Each Way gives physical and magical abilities to those who travel it.  To gain those abilities a Shaman must perform the proscribed ritual at a number of plugs in a certain order.  Each ritual is said to sacrifice a piece of the shaman to the god associated with the Way.  As the Shaman progresses through their journey they become more and more incapacitated.  The plains are far from safe and these journey’s must be done alone – the longer the Way the greater the Shaman’s incapacitation, the greater the likelihood that a Shaman will die or be killed before completing the Way.  But with great risk comes great reward.  The most dangerous of the ways give the greatest power.
    Upon completion of the Way the shaman’s abilities that were taken from them are – usually – returned; some of them greatly altered.  The alterations that occur while walking a Way are not just magical but physical as well.  Several of these alterations are even noticeable by average people

The Ways

Shaman Prestige Classes 

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