Training: none
Innate Abilities: Building, Repairing, Training, Gathering Resources.

About: The peasants of the Lotus Clan are truly a strange race. Thin, wiry and pale, they perform their labors with religious fervor. Their zeal is unsurprising; they witness more dark and unholy miracles during infancy than the zealots of many other faiths glimpse in ten lifetimes.

Training: Aviary
Innate Ability: Healing: The Channeler uses ravens, instead of stamina, in granting health to allies.

About: The channeler is an anomaly among the Lotus. By the laws of the Forbidden Path, Channelers are only women allowed to rise beyond the ranks of the peasantry. Their studies are not the Path at all, but an even more ancient and secretive religion passed down from mother to daughter. Only those who devote themselves irrevocably to this religion ever learn its true nature, and the elder practitioners of the Forbidden Path - even the awful Lord Zymeth - know better than to prey into its riddles, which are far older than the Lotus Clan itself.

Of all Lotus adepts, only the Channeler is able to truly mend the wounds of another. She is bonded to three raven familiars, but must snap the brittle neck of one of them in order to fuel her dark spells of regeneration. A sibling from the aviary eventually replaces the sacrificed raven, but there is invariable a period of mourning before this happens. Despite this, a Channeler's ravens will fight for her if she must stand to battle.
 

Training: Forge
Innate Ability: Blade Sharpening: He will sometimes sharpen his swords and have increased damage to his next attack.
 

About: Novices of the Forbidden Path who react to their agonizing Rites of Initiation with anger and struggle are marked as the children of Lythis, dark bladesmen of the Three. During their apprenticeship at Lythis' forge, Bladed Acolytes meditate upon their natural affinity for violence. This rage is focused outwardly, upon the enemies of the Lotus, and inwardly, upon their physical inadequacies. Frustration slowly and painfully reshapes them, until their elongated limbs and steely skin cause them to resemble the wicked, curved scimitars they carry. When not engaged in meditation, Acolytes may be seen sharpening, polishing, and occasionally speaking to these swords.

The Forbidden Path does not lend robust health to its practitioners, and the Blade Acolyte is less study than a mundane swordsman. However, his inhuman agility and deep understanding of violent death grants him terrifying skills in combat.
 

BATTLEGEAR Inner Strength: When empowered by Lythis' Shade, the Blade Acolyte learns to contain and repair damage to his decaying body, even as he parries and thrusts at his baffled opponents.

Training: Blade Garden
Innate Ability: Melee Counterstrike: When hit in melee combat, the Leaf Disciple's opponent takes a small amount of damage in return (from the whirling leaves).

About: Initiation with cold calculation and vengeful thoughts is recognized as a spiritual brother of Sehk, the Crafty One. Along the strange, disorienting paths of his Blade Garden, Leaf Disciples learn to twist and distort their minds and surroundings through sheer force of will. Such distortion is not easy, and Disciples must expend an inordinate amount of effort in study before they can even manipulate the razor-thin, paper-light leaves of the Tree of Corruption.

On the field of battle, these leaves spin and whirl about a Disciple's head like a flock of angry sparrows. With an indolent flick of his finger, he can send them whistling towards and enemy's head or cause them to slice and slash at nearby foes. Enough small cuts can bleed the strongest enemy to death, and no Disciple ever seems to run out of leaves.
 

BATTLEGEAR Scrye Leaves: With Sehk's help, a disciple may bind his sight to his spinning leaves, viewing his surroundings in mad, kaleidoscopic glimpses. By flinging these leaves aloft, he can briefly see vast landscapes in their metallic reflections.

Training: Training Yard
Innate Ability: Whirling Staff: Does area effect damage when engaging multiple units in melee combat. (As of 2/22/02, this innate is not working in the game. Should be fixed in BP3).

About: Those novices who pass through the Rites of Initiation with quiet, stoic hopelessness demonstrate their kinship with Tausil, the Forsaken One. These initiates endure endless, repetitive drills at the Training Grounds, repeat interminable chants of droning monotones, and maintain ceaseless and solitary vigils over the Tree of Corruption. From existence, they gradually learn to accept emptiness as the sole truth among the distractions of life.

In combat, the Staff Adept moves quietly, with little apparent interest in his surroundings. Yet the emptiness of his soul gives him a painful awareness of - and loathing for - those who disturb his inner silence. He is utterly fearless, and is more than able to engage multiple opponents with the emotionless, technically perfect spins and flourishes of his staff. For such a frail-seeming opponent, the Staff Adept finds pain surprisingly irrelevant.
 

BATTLEGEAR Dark Canopy: Granted Tausil's insights into nothingness, a Staff Adept may spin his weapon overhead with such flawless precision that it deflects missiles from all nearby allies.