Primal

The Primals live by a single maxim: power told is power lost. They believe they have uncovered a fundamental secret of existence, and in contrast to most planar philosophies theirs is not for sharing. Nearly everyone knows only that the group exists. That silence makes people assume the worst, though the sect bears no resemblance to the faction of revolutionaries, whose aims are no mystery. What the Primals actually want remains unknown.

Educated guesses still circulate. A sect based on the Inner Planes that calls itself Primal is probably obsessed with the raw components from which everything is made. Members presumably believe that whoever understands the elemental forces understands all. They regard every Inner Plane as equally important and never travel to any other plane at all.

There are three tiers. New members start as initiates. Those who study hard and begin to grasp the sect's secrets become lorewardens. The highest rank, loremaster, is held by very few, and no outsider even knows what it takes to earn it. Legend makes the loremasters incredibly ancient, and probably command the greatest magical lore; no one living outside the sect claims to have seen one or to know where they live.

Members never advertise. They wear no symbols an outsider would recognize, though they almost certainly share secret signs, passwords and marks, and perhaps a private language.

Their powers seem to flow from limited control over the matter of their own bodies and of objects, and over natural and supernatural energies, and they build up with rank. An initiate can toughen its body to a natural AC 8 and, once a day, repair a broken object. A lorewarden also gains a once-daily power similar to fabricate. A loremaster adds animate object once a week and can heal its own body as cure serious wounds once every other day. Rumor holds that some loremasters can also disintegrate objects, reshape matter as polymorph any object and change their own forms as polymorph self, at unknown frequency.

Primals are clever and suspicious, always ready with backup plans. They tend to carry concealed magic or at least weapons and stay near other members disguised in the crowd, so in any inner-planar town, anyone nearby might be a Primal ready to help a comrade in trouble. The typical member is a 6th-level wizard, which the listed statistics represent.

One theory says they keep to secret retreats scattered across the Elemental Planes, studying primal matter. Another claims they have planted spies in the few towns of the Inner Planes and may secretly steer local rulers. Probably both are partly true. They are too withdrawn to have allies, trusting no one enough to depend on them, which also means they have made no real enemies, though few people trust them.

In principle any class may join, provided the candidate will follow the path of elemental knowledge and keep the sect's secrets. Applicants endure a long screening and probation, and not even the candidates learn what standard they are judged by. Members may never set foot beyond the Inner Planes and may have only the briefest dealings with outsiders, so player characters are barred from joining, or at least strongly discouraged.

They are ordinary people who claim a hidden truth, with no special effect on their environment. Advancement is thought to take years, decades or even centuries, and climbing the ranks is a lifelong commitment, perhaps longer, that should not, or cannot, be undertaken lightly.