The Sage Program

I spoke about this in the last chapter. But I'll lay it out in more straight forward terms.

The Sage program was established in the year 96 of the reign of Kevand IV, emperor of the Nielda (year 2437 Nieldic standardized, 1563 BC Gregorian). Inital colonization attempts had met with harsh enviroments and the drive behind colonization was faltering. Of the inital ten colonies, eight had encountered climates, flora, and fauna opposed to the settlers on more than 70% of the planet.

As the supreme magical arm of the government, research teams from the Imperial Guard were dispatched to all ten colonies to ascertain possible causes for the problem. On the worlds Media and Kanto it was found by census that the population of practicing members of the witches guild (or coven as they prefered to be called) was dispersed across a greater percentage of the world than on the other eight. Inquiry to the guildmaster discovered that what the government had completly overlooked was the presence of natural sprites and their shrines.

The guildmaster, Hiera Venasfeld, and the head of the guard's natural magics department, Fen Nonismuld, managed to formulate a solution to prevent the problem from occuring on future colonies. That solution was presented to the Emperor Kevand as 'The Sage Program'.

The program was easily implemented, but required a great deal of personal responsibility. On every exploration ship their would be a special guardsmen. That guard would have recieved, in addition to the standard combat training, a master's equivalent in what the witches called 'shrine-ology and sprite-tention'. That training would enable them and a team of dedicated soldiers to attend the shrines and sprites of newly discovered worlds while inital colonisation began. By properly attending the shrines nature would be more passive and colonisation could be conducted more safely.

The downside was that if a guard and his team failed then the colony would become harsh and colonisation would become considerably more difficult. Worse, a corrupt guard could actually turn the world to his own ends and make not only colonisation, but even purification nigh-impossible. The Emperor managed to set up a solution to substantially decrease this threat. The simultaneous establishment of regular miliary facilities and substantial forces on those worlds would provide a clear level of accountability for the Sages. A beneficial side effect was distracting early settlers from the program itself, keeping the program out of the public eye.

Becoming a sage was a life time commitment. It was assumed that the relief force from the coven would not be strong enough to replace the sage within his or her lifetime. Sages were expected to either train their own succesor or place enchantments and conjurations that could complete the task until they could be replaced. Several particularly clever and dedicated sages managed to either convince the sprites themselves to complete the tasks for each other or to aquire for themselves a level of longevity (in three cases full on immortality) to continue the task.

Those three cases occured on; Gasca(Nond, who used a clever set of natural magics and necromancy to preserve himself within a golem), Arden(Jemet; who managed to obtain the power and knowledge of the local dryads and in time became one himself), and Appeni(Ceanne, who managed to obtain a true immortality while seeking an elusive Naiad).

The Sage Program was closed in the year 18 of the rule of Emperor Javen II (2993 Nieldic) following the heavily publicized rebellion of Sage Mangen on Ukran after the resulting inquiry into the program. During the Secloran establishment a simmilar program was established. The basic theories of shrines and sprites remain an element of Imperial Guard training to date, and classes are available at most places of magical learning.