The Spellwarriors

The subjects of the most fame in all of Resta are those who have graduated from an elite school near the center of the capitol known as Hem Academy. Those who survive the rigors of this prestigious institution go on to join a knightly order of the same name. Known for their mastery of both martial and magical combat skills, these knights of the Hem Order are more commonly referred to as spellwarriors. In times of peace, they are peacekeepers, charged with protecting the peoples' justice. In times of war, they are Resta's living artillery and soldiers charged with scaling the most treacherous terrain to gain an advantage on their enemies. Whatever a spellwarrior's charge is, the legacies they leave behind have inspired Resta's greatest songs. They are recognized far and wide by the people as Resta's heroes, much to the ire to the templars of the Blackstone Order, with whom they share a mutual dislike.

The Hem Order is named for one of the first heroes of modern Resta, a warrior of Coronos named Hem Maloran. It was through his accidental discovery of the laws of magic that he found the power and hope to liberate his people from their Pyrisian oppressors. After declaring Coronos an independent country once more, Hem took the new throne with the people's blessing and bid them to build a school in which he could give back to those who pushed him up to his throne by developing and sharing his understanding of magic. Over time, thousands of warriors have come to Hem Academy's ageless campus with the hope of joining this proud tradition. Despite this, fewer than ten percent of those who attempt the school's rigorous curriculum ever complete it and become a fully accredited spellwarrior.

This school has classes in various skills, including marksmanship, swordplay, tracking, beast mastery, elemental magic, and medical mysticism. Students are encouraged to specialize in as many skills as possible during the mandatory ten-year training period, but most will only ever focus on perfecting a minimum number of skills they are most comfortable with. This gives the Hem Order the most versatility of any army in the world: they offer innumerable skills as a collective, but each spellwarrior is trained differently and utilized in different ways upon graduation.

Rarely, among the students of Hem Academy, people are found with the additional potential to perform the Hem Academy's unique magic: transforming into the aspects of magic. These abilities seem to occur randomly in one of three forms, which are almost never revealed outside of Hem Academy's secret methods. Some take the form of the silverfist, a now-extinct species of ape credited with teaching humanity to use magic. Others can inhabit the body of a phoenix, who can both destroy and heal with its mysterious flames. Finally, some tend to discover the ability to transform into a foothill mammoth, a large, furry pachyderm found in northern Resta and known for being the sturdiest beasts in the world. Whether a spellwarrior discovers any such abilities rarely has an impact on their future legend, as even the Champion of Chaos became legendary without them.

When the people cry for help and the templars judge their problems to be beneath the gods' intervention, the spellwarriors are there, offering their diligently honed expertise to them for the solution of any problem.