Oh! We go with the Raven Queen origin, but in this she finds a means to become a god and doesn’t share the knowledge with her twin sister.
She is so enraged by this, she seeks to steal the power away. Interacting with it causes her to absorb some of it leaving its mark on her body.
But in the end, her sister took it for herself and she vowed revenge for the slight.
What if the name Thamacara is the name of the fallen sister? (edited)
Maybe she spent the rest of her life in search for powerful magics that would allow her to either overtake her sister or simply bring her back down from the pedestal she’d gone to.
Her journey led to finding several wizards that she trained, but not better than herself. This was the first order. They learned how to gain power through deed and through magic, gaining hidden knowledge through infiltration.
During the early religious war in Fyr’s Shadow, they used that as a chance to wipe her sister’s name from history, even if it didn’t remove her power.
Raven Queen has been trapped for a long while. She was put in the cage by a knight of her own order is what I’d told Kell. I insinuated that Umbrial was one of her last remaining knights that could no longer be idle.
That idea that trying to strike balance isn’t always the best idea so he trapped her away so that he could shift the alignment of the balance but it ended with his corruption from the realm she resided in. He wasn’t strong enough.
I could see leading from that early war, while her sister’s name was lost to history, her influence wasn’t. Could be what kept them vigilant for so long. They had to continue to move from region to region weeding out rumors of warlocks and others that were obtaining powers from an unknown patron.
It could have a very Supernatural vibe where the order was originally just a group of hunters.
What caused them to settle within a particular region? A gate to her realm, maybe? A particular concentration of her energy? Maybe that’s what the school’s original purpose was.
It could have been to hide what they found and they buried it deep in the depths of the school and only those given marks on their skin are allowed to know of its existence. This could have caused a difference in how the Order needed to be run. Some believed they should continue scouring the world to search out any rise in power connected to the GOO while others believed that, this being the most powerful essence they’ve come across to date, this place needed to be sealed up and protected.
Something cause them to either loose this by sealing it away or something. But I like the idea of sacrifices. Maybe they had to do sacrifices to either keep it sealed/unsealed and they stopped doing that due to a bleeding heart Thaumacaran?
Could be here that the order shifted from Great Old Protectors to the more modern version of a political order.
There is an intertwining bit of history with Fyr’s Shadow here. They too started getting a bit more hedonistic not long ago. I think about 500 ish years back.
Maybe the reason was it was spawning from their order and one of the Atokas that brought those ideas to Fyr’s Shadow was a Thamacaran Archmage.
Or maybe it was a literal mouth!
Eldritch horror style!
What possible historical events could have happened from the region itself?
Magnus Tenebriar has recently risen to the level of Thaumaturge. He’s taking the political tactics he learned as an Archmage further than any other by trying to pull Thaumacara into the world stage. He does this by aligning with a high nobel from Quiverbane whose daughter he marries.
Her name is Celeste. She doesn’t like how cold it is in Quiverbane and happily goes along with the arranged marriage at first. When she gets to Thaumacara she finds that Magnus’s personality is colder than any night she’s lived through in Quiverbane.
She finds that Magnus is a cruel person and hides his true nature when striking deals as a politician. However, she does use the union to secretly learn the ways of Thaumacara. She is adept at learning but has to do it in secret as she isn’t a part of the order, she’s only there as a political pawn.
Not long into the marriage, the seasons of ice hit. These are the ones that bring the uprising of the peasants and others around the region. She’s had to be incredibly careful up until this point. Magnus’s gaze has never been too far from her, but now the uprising is taking his attention. And from this she sees just how cruel he really is.
Here I’ll outline the uprising and paint Magnus as a Vlad the Impaler figure with how he handles everything.
She convinces a handful of the unmarked of the order and even a couple marked to turn away from the cruelty and help her escape. She and those she has convinced run. She never liked the cold so instead of heading home, she moves to the South. Here she sets up the Tenebriar school of magic.
As she is leaving, she sends messages out to her father and other important political figures of the cruelty she’s witnessed in Thaumacara. This ruins Thaumacara’s chances of joining the world stage of politics. While they run in the correct circles, none will allow them any true seat of power in the name of their city. This was a double edged sword, though. While it ruined their chances, it also solidified their reputation.
From here on out in history Thaumacara has a reputation of cruelty that they’ve used to their advantage because they are adaptive. However, at this point in history, Magnus is viewed as a hero to those in the order for how he saved Thaumacara, he’s viewed as a villain by those of Tenebriar, and he’s viewed as a devil by those around the land who tell their children warnings of acting good to keep him from returning and inacting revenge against them being bad.
I’m thinking there may have been a strong freeze that lasted a couple years pushing the people in the surrounding areas into a starving revolt against the Thaumacarans.
This could have spawned the first tribes who sought to turn Thaumacara’s power against itself.
Maybe the only ones that lived were the ones that stole the tattoos.
And that’s why the order is so intent on weasling them out and putting them to the blade for fear they may bring another revolt to the doors of the school.
And the soul of Thamacara may have imparted a bit of herself onto Yllisatra when she found it eons later.
Magelings – Have been chosen but haven’t been sorted into a specific school of study yet
Apprentices – Chosen a school but are not proficient as of yet.
Senior Mages – Teachers of Magelings who are occasionally taken as apprentices to Master Mages
Master Mage – I would say they probably decide policy, worry about day-to-day operations, handle any disputes within the town (or send trusted Senior Mages to). I don’t see anyone below Senior Mage level as being allowed to leave the school at all, and anyone below Archmage would only be able to go as far as Thaumacara’s direct influence goes. I see the Master Mages as the principals of the school, and the Archmages as the superintendents. Does that make sense as an analogy?
Arch Mage – Politicians. They travel the world gaining power and knowledge. They then use this power to push subvertly work against other Arch Mages and Master Mages. They’ve long since forgotten their main purpose and instead revel in the lavish items this world has to offer and the backstabbery that comes with political and magical power.
Thaumaturge – He’s the figurehead of the Order, brought out on special occasions for people to tremble at. I actually see this Thaumaturge as out of touch with reality. I see him as extraordinarily old, extraordinarily powerful, but no longer all there. I like the idea of him being a divination wizard that has unlocked the ability to see the future, and it’s slowly destroyed his mind.
Maybe he brought Thaumacara to the force that is today. Maybe he is that old. But then maybe he saw that his actions would ultimately be both his and Thaumacara’s downfall, and couldn’t deal, which began fracturing his mind.
He’s withdrawn into the highest rooms in the Towers of Thaumarcara, and only the Archmages have seen him for the last few decades.