The Kindred
Graphic: Give me a week or two and a working computer.
Motto: "Light up the night."
Leader: Eldest One Yoshun Mah
The Kindred are led by a series of Elders, running up through Elder, Senior Elder, High Elder, Grand High Elder and Eldest One. Each rank up is in charge of an increasingly larger area of of Kindred
Yoshun Mah is an old Kinborn Human and a lifelong Kindred. Born on Home and with a distinguished service record, he is a well liked and respected leader.
Description: The Kindred have been around for a long time. Longer than all but the eldest of nations currently inhabiting the stars. Yet even so they lack the vast swaths of territory one would normally expect of such an ancient group. No, instead they claim few if any stars and a bare handful of planets scattered throughout the galaxy. Many of them in territory long since fallen within the borders of proper star nations.
In fact, the Kin have more in common with a humanitarian organization or religious order than they do with a nation state. Rather than try to expand their borders or acrue power and resources the Kindred have a single overarching goal.
Make the universe a better place.
How that is done is left mostly up to the individual. They could be a school teacher on a normal metropolitan planet or a paladin fighting monsters from the depths of Hell. As long as someone has that goal in mind they will be accepted as Kindred.
Not unexpectedly for such an organization, the Kin can be found just about anywhere. Their extensive aid experience and status as a non-state actor ensures that they are welcomed at least at the local level. Where they come as an organization rather than individuals they run hospitals, soup kitchens and schools. Or safe havens and crime free zones in the less friendly areas of the galaxy.
Goals: To make the universe a better place. Kids shouldn't have to go hungry at night, everybody should have a roof over their head and nobody should have to worry when something goes bump in the night.
Unique Abilities:
The Soul Bond
A mystical link that binds all Kin together. It's a large part of why they have stayed on the side of light for so long. When a person agrees to become Kindred their soul is permanently linked to Yahnweh's Hearth.
A brand new Kin can detect other Kindred and has a basic level of empathy with nearby members of the group. More experienced members can share thoughts or energy with other Kindred.
The Soul Bond holds many secrets and abilities for those that wish to explore its depths. It is not without flaw though. While the bond can never be severed, distance can cercaintly blunt its effectiveness. Most Kindred are limited to communicating on a planetary scale or lower. In addition, it is purely a link between Kin. None of the Soul Bond's abilities are capable of directly effecting those outside the link.
Magitech
The Kindred have seen and learned a lot in their long stay among the stars and have long since figured out how to merge magic and technology. They may not be the only ones to do so but they are undeniably masters of the art. You want a gun that never runs out of bullets? Maybe a healing field powered by an antimatter reactor? The possibilities are near limitless.Unfortunately for the more impulsive and starry eyed Kin there is no such thing as a free lunch. Magitech isn't easy and the places with sufficient infrastructure and talent are often few and far between.
Each request for the mystical technology is looked over by Kindred Elders who decide if the time and resources needed aren't better spent elsewhere. The galaxy is a big place after all and everybody needs something. Most production capacity is directed towards big ticket items like ships and heavy equipment. Which means that individual Kin are usually limited to a single personal item to help them in their tasks.
Territories: The Kindred have innumerable missions, compounds and bases throughout the galaxy. Most of them have been bought or leased from the local government in much the same way a company or nonprofit organization would.
You can't operate on a galactic scale for very long without proper infrastructure though. So scattered across the stars are planets that the Kindred settle and claim as their own.
Bastion Worlds.
Planets with hundreds or thousands of years of history behind them. These are where equipment and infrastructure too large or sensitive to be placed in a local mission are kept. Both a rest stop for weary Kin and a tasty target for greedy neighbors they are as heavily defended as one can make them without turning the entire system into a fortress.
Critical Point: Yahnweh's Hearth
A large white crystalline sphere that glows with a soft golden light. Said to be divine in origin it is the single most important item the Kindred hold. It is the loadstone of the Soul Bond. To lose it would be to lose the Bond, with predictable results.
Critical Point: Home
A Dyson Sphere hidden somewhere along the upper edge of the galactic disk. In eons past this was where the Kin were founded. A god or divine spirit of light swept up a fleet of refugees and deposited them in the system, giving them both the Hearth and what is now the group's core tenet.
Over the ages the celestial objects in both that system and several of those surrounding were converted into the shell that now encloses Home's yellow G class star. Home is now the single largest concentration of Kindred in the galaxy by orders of magnitude. Trillions of beings of different species inhabit it, the light of their souls acting as a beacon to their Kin in the rest of the galaxy. Reminding them that no matter what happens they will always have a Home.
Needless to say, most of the Kindred's infrastructure and truly powerful artefacts are here. An extremely tough nut to crack, but if it was the loss of most of their senior leadership and construction capacity would cripple such a widespread organization, if not splinter it outright.
Critical Point: Azaeil
The Bastion world closest to the United Federation of Planets. It is the main staging area for support efforts into the powerhouse. If Azaeil were to fall it would severely hamper Kindred operations in an extremely important area of the galaxy.
Allies: To be worked out.
Enemies: To be worked out.
Members:
@Silvan Haven's Characters: Fionn Harken
@Lyla's Characters: Elise and Harrell Scarlet
@coyotelovely's Characters: Nakreyya the Valheelinen Bloodivy
@Ashevelendar's Characters: William The Troll
@Arawak's Characters: Nendu Inagu Amas
@t2wave's Character: Harriet Matthias
Lore
Kinborn: The Kindred have been around for a long time. Untold generations with divine magic woven through the very core of their being. It is not hard to imagine that such prolonged and intimate contact with such a powerful magic might have some side effects.
Relatively early in their history Kindred scholars noticed a difference in children born of bloodlines with extensive numbers of Kin. The rates of children born with a natural talent for magic were abnormally high. From one in a million to one in a couple hundred thousand.
As time wore on and the higher the number of Kindred generations a bloodline passed through that ratio continued to change. More and more children were born with magical abilities. Often times with certain traits in a particular family line becoming emphasized and leading to that line becoming tied to a certain element or school of magic.
Other changes began to appear as well. Kinborn, as they began to be known, aged slower than baseline members of their species. They healed faster, what might takes months to naturally heal and leave behind painful reminders and aches all but vanished in a matter of weeks.
By the time the current era had rolled around all of the oldest bloodlines could be certain of children with magical talent being born. And it is theorized that naturally long lived races with Kinborn bloodlines may be incapable of dying of natural causes. Of course the only way to test that is to wait and see and some races like Elves can produce naturally immortal individuals. So at this point it's mostly conjecture and theory.
