Landworker

A landworker is a person who is allowed by Vlastach to tap its own power, in exchange for their agreement to use this power in service to the land. This ability to utilize Vlastach's power is known as landworking, and is effected through specific rituals. A landworker must be highly favored by the land in order to effectively use the powers it grants; in general, the more favor a landworker has in Vlastach's eyes, the greater his power. Landworkers in Grower communities are often highly respected personages who are frequently consulted for their advice and asked for their aid; in Crafter communities they usually have lower profiles. Not all landworkers get along with civilized communities at all, however; there are some landworkers who confine themselves to the wilderness make themselves into enemies of civilization.

There are rare cases of landworkers existing on other worlds getting their power from sources other than Vlastach.

Rituals

Landworkers work all their magic through rituals that they perform to call upon the power of the land. There are a large number of rituals that they can employ to produce many different effects, as well as the ritual of petition which can give results possible with no other ritual known to the landworker, and through which all other rituals are believed to have been created. Though each ritual has some constants that must be incorporated into its performance, there is also room for some customization by individual landworkers. Indeed, such customization seems to be not only permissible, but essential; each landworker develops something of his own style or take on the rituals, only through which he can get the results he wants.

Although a landworking ritual takes considerable time to complete, there are ways of expediting matters if the landworker needs the effects to take place more rapidly. Through the ritual of promise, a landworker may perform a much abbreviated version of a ritual and still get the benefit of its full effects, with the understanding that he will perform the complete ritual later. If a landworker knows in advance what rituals he expects to make use of later, he can perform them before they are needed, through the ritual of anticipation, after which he can invoke the ritual's effects very quickly through the ritual of actuation.

Some landworkers specialize in which rituals they perform, and develop the ability to enact those rituals very rapidly and efficiently, but don't bother with rituals outside their purview. The earthmaster, for instance, performs most or all of his magic by dealing with earth servants. Skilled earthmasters may be able to summon earth servants very quickly, and get them to perform many different services, but may not be capable of any other landworking magics on their own.

Becoming a landworker

Becoming a landworker involves little more than learning how to perform the landworking rituals. Generally, a new landworker learns the rituals from a more experienced landworker, but there have been cases of some highly favored by the land asking Vlastach itself to teach them rituals through the ritual of petition, and having their request granted. Generally, once a landworker learns one or a handful of rituals, learning more rituals is much easier; by this time they have already forged something of a bond with the land, and it will help them to learn further rituals to better serve it.

Naturally, the prospective landworker should already be highly favored by Vlastach in order for the land to grant him its power. Someone who has often gone against the interests of the land in the past may have to run quite a gauntlet to prove himself before the land will allow his rituals to function. If someone the land already greatly favors vouches for the ill-favored petitioner, Vlastach may grant him landworking powers, though of course if he later misuses these powers it will reflect badly on the man who vouched for him. In any case, once someone becomes a landworker, merely continuing to use his landworking powers and serve as an example to others counts as service to the land, and as long as he does nothing to oppose the land's purposes, a landworker will gradually increase in favor with Vlastach over time. Of course, if a landworker does act in ways that are harmful to Vlastach and its desires, he will decrease in favor and eventually find himself unable to call upon the land's powers.

Landworkers and Society

When the average Vlastei thinks of a landworker, he's likely to think of one of two archetypal images: the community pillar who lives among the people and serves their needs as a liaison with the land, and the solitary anchorite who stays in the wilderness, serving the land directly and eschewing contact with any civilized people. Not all landworkers fall into these two molds, however. Some crusading landworkers hunt down landreavers and their works to eradicate their blight from the world, and itinerant landworkers travel the world at Vlastach's command to deal with whatever problems come up, perhaps even journeying to distant worlds to work Vlastach's will there. There are even some landworkers who seek to bring down civilization, thinking they serve Vlastach best by returning the land to nature; some such landworkers go so far as to freely kill or destroy anyone and anything in their way.

Those landworkers hostile to society, of course, are welcome in no nation, but the reception of other landworkers depends to a great degree on the nature of the local society. Though landworkers may want to interact with their societies in different ways, the part they play is somewhat constrained by how their community feels about landworkers in general. There are, of course, many exceptions and intermediate cases, but in general the possibilities can be roughly divided as follows.

Grower Communities

In a Grower community, a landworker is likely to be looked at with a good deal of reverence. Sometimes, landworkers may be the leaders of the communities. The nation of Quago is an extreme example—there the nominal leader of the nation is Vlastach itself, but in practice the leader of the nation is an official called the Arch-Vicar, who is the most powerful landworker in the country. Even when landworkers aren't the official authorities, they often exercise considerable power and are the rulers in all but name.

Landworkers who are not in positions of leadership are still highly respected in their communities. The people of Grower communities are quick to seek the counsel of nearby landworkers in any affairs related to farming, weather, or anything else concerning the land, and even in many affairs that aren't. Landworkers often preside at civic functions and festivals, and their blessing may be sought before any major undertaking.

Crafter Communities

Landworkers in Crafter communities are not necessarily dreaded or despised, but are not particularly respected either. They are seen as just another kind of mage or craftsman, and for the most part allowed to go about their business; a few people who feel close to the land may afford them some measure of honor, but not the general populace. Sometimes, in communities where landworking is especially uncommon and unknown, landworkers may be objects of curiosity, and even perhaps of some measure of fear, but more cosmopolitan communities tolerate them but do little more than that. Landworkers may have shops where they sell landworked talismans of various sorts, but that's usually the extent of the involvement of landworking in the community.

Blathe

The one place where the attitude toward landworkers is exceptional enough to warrant separate discussion is Blathe, the birthplace of landreaving. Here landworkers are officially considered enemies of the state, and are hunted down and, if found, are exiled, imprisoned, or worse. This isn't to say that no landworkers exist in Blathe, but those who do live there practice their art in secrecy, their nature known to no one else except perhaps a few highly trusted sympathizers.

Livelihood

Like anyone else, landworkers need to make a living. Some landworkers, those who live far from civilization especially, rely entirely on the land for their food, shelter, and other needs, either supplying them through landworking rituals or more straightforwardly through hunting and foraging—with which activities, of course, their landworking abilities can also help them. Even in barren terrains where it may seem impossible to find enough food and water to subsist on, skilled landworkers can easily survive. Other landworkers, however, do get by through interactions with communities. Even those who rely entirely on the land for their basic needs may still want money to purchase effects such as clothing—some few eremitic landworkers are content to go without, and some have the skills to fashion clothing out of hides or out of plant fibers, or to create it through magics such as the ritual of gossamer, but most landworkers do rely on trade to supply their clothing, as well as similar goods and luxuries not as easily available directly from the land.

In Grower communities, donations to the landworkers from townspeople grateful for their aid or as a part of a ritual of petition, or even official stipends set up to support them, may suffice for the landworker's wants, and even to allow popular landworkers a fairly lavish living—especially since the landworker may be respected enough to not even need to pay for the goods he needs, shopkeepers perhaps giving him anything he asks (within reason) for free, or at least at a heavy discount or in barter for services. In Crafter communities, landworkers may make their living through conventional trades, serving the land when they're not working as a cobbler, a blacksmith, or what have you.

In both Grower and Crafter communities, landworkers often use their landworking as their trade, making a living by selling objects they create through landworking. These objects are not necessarily magical; some landworkers use their power to draw vendable things from the land—jewels, precious metals, rare herbs and spices—without necessarily letting their customers know their provenance. Landworkers are unlikely to get rich that way, since too much exploitation of the land can draw Vlastach's ire, but as long as they keep their utilization within reason, Vlastach will permit it. Other landworkers may work as farmers or, especially, as herdsmen, using their landworking power to augment their success at these ventures and ensure that they have plenty of crops or meat to sell. Or they may use their landworking powers to provide other services; some few landworkers make a living, or at least supplement it, through landshaping, being paid to create new structures, and enhance and modify old ones, through the powers Vlastach grants them.

Even those landworkers who do sell the fruits of their powers are not limited, however, to selling the same types of goods that other people could supply, albeit with a little more difficulty. Many landworkers sell talismans they create through landworking. There are some landworking talismans, such as beastcloaks and badges of passage, no devoted landworker would be willing to sell, and should any dare to do so they would lose much of Vlastach's favor. However, healing pads, fertility amulets, and sometimes infused mushrooms, among other objects, can be and are sold by landworkers without Vlastach's objection. Some landworkers even make their living by creating money directly; the coinstones that are the common currency of Vlastach are all created by landworkers, through the ritual of coins. Again, a landworker who gets greedy and tries to get wealthy this way will excite Vlastach's disfavor; in general, the more highly favored a landworker is with Vlastach, the more coinage it will allow him to create.