Ovate

“The hand that destroys needs only hatred. The hand of the Ovate carries tolerance, empathy, and the terrible mercy of life returned.”

— Eolon of Oemon, Loremaster

Among the SinBadian heroes, the Ovates are held in greatest esteem. They are ancient protectors of life, said to descend from the first guardians who stood in Aspelos when SinBa was founded. Through the Spires they have grown beyond petty mortal desires for wealth, power, or glory and this transcendence renders them even more powerful. Some believe they may have risen even beyond angelic grace since no record exists of one of them falling to Entropy. Their path is one of healing, patience, and sacred restraint. Yet no wise enemy should mistake their gentleness for weakness, for the Ovates carry within them a lifeforce so immense that even corruption recoils before it.

The Living Discipline

The power of an Ovate is innate, though discipline, meditation, and breath rites can refine it into something almost divine. They believe the body and spirit are not separate vessels, but two expressions of the same sacred truth. For this reason, they train the body with the same devotion by which priests train the soul. Their armor is vigor, their shield is compassion, and their blade is a stream of Harmony moving through flesh. When forced into battle, they do not answer with physical harm. Instead, they release creation against decay.

Their armor is vigor, their shield is compassion.

The Terrible Mercy

The greatest Ovates are said to channel divine life so purely that they can alter a being toward its final and truest form. Against the corrupted, this can be terrifying. A demon’s claw may become harmless bark, a murderer’s hand may harden into root, and a creature swollen with Entropy may collapse into a mound of soil crowned with grass. Some enemies are transformed into harmless beasts, others into trees heavy with blossoms, others into moss-covered stone. These acts are deemed absolution by the Ovates, life reclaiming what corruption had stolen.

The Oldest Law

Yet they are not naïve. They know that peace must sometimes be defended, and that mercy without resolve becomes an invitation to disaster. They avoid physical battle when possible, but they train to survive it with open-handed forms, staff work, breath control, root stances, and movements that turn violence aside rather than meet it head-on. They measure their responses proportionately to the attacker, striving to teach a lesson even in combat. When an Ovate finally unleashes full power, the battlefield changes around him. Wounds close, poisoned ground revives, roots break stone, dead grass turns green, and those who came to ruin learn the oldest law of Harmony: to create is more powerful than to destroy.