Lotus Clan

The Lotus Clan is one of the four major clans of Battle Realms.

Description
Lotus clansmen are Yin followers with corruption as their symbol. They follow the Forbidden Path, which focuses on death and decay. Their religion centralizes around three ancient brothers, now long gone, who tended the Tree of Corruption.

The people of the Lotus are thin and pale in apperance, with generally little muscle or size to speak of. Bleached-white hair is universal; the Lotus clansmen bleach their hair as to frighten the more superstitious members of the Wolf Clan, as the barbaric Wolf clansmen associate pure white as a colour of divinity or great power, best represented in their reverence of their most valued artifact, the White Wolf's Skull.

The length of a soldier's hair indicates his rank - the longer the better. Their armor is shiny and metallic, dark and silver in color, but flimsy and actually less effective than the Dragon clan's samurai armor or the Wolf clan's shale plates. Weapons are equally thin and flimsy, but often magically touched and able to strike multiple opponents at once.

The Lotus clan's society has built its foundations on an odd religion that revovles around a nigthmarish tree tended by three brothers. Each brother speaks for a diffferent aspect of the tree - one brother the leaves, one the trunk, and one the blade that tends the tree's roots.

The clan suffers from a universal problem. They are being consumed from within by their own corrupting magics. The corruption attaches itself to human life, but can be temporarily contained in other vessels (such as the staves of the Unclean). Even the master warlocks can only contain their corruption for so long. Indeed, the very attacks of the Lotus clan's second-tier units are attempts to expel the corruption temporarily, maintaining just enough balance to keep the units alive until they can attempt to contain the corruption with stronger magics.

Physically weak but magically strong, alternately sycophantic and vengeful, the Lotus clan bows to the strong and rules the weak. Their ability to manipulate the superstitious Wolf clan has served them well. By raping the Wolf Clan's lands of all its best metals and minerals, the Lotus clan has become rich on the blood, sweat and tears of others.

History
Like the Serpent, the Lotus Clan was formed from the remnants of an older clan devastated by the Horde. Long, long ago, there lived a peaceful tribe of wizards and foresters who worshiped the gods of balance and nature as symbolized by a great towering tree. They seldom knew trouble, or dissent, save when a group of overzealous scholars delved too deeply into certain dark magics of rot and corruption, together called the Forbidden Path.

When the Horde came, all of that tribe died except for those few renegade wizards, whose knowledge of the Yin gave them a chance to flee as their brothers died. The wizards eventually reached the island of Battle Realms, and settled in the High Plateau, long known to be a place of strange energies. By that time they had formed themselves into a new clan, named for that intoxicating, perfumed blossom, the Lotus.

Free of all restriction, the twisted members of the Lotus Clan pursue the Forbidden Path in earnest, seeking to master death and corruption by immersing themselves in it. Their beliefs are a rotten parody of those of their forefathers- their tree is an unnatural nightmare, tended by undead, undying brothers. Their contempt for the nature-worshiping Wolf Clan may well have deep roots in their own history.

The leaders of this clan are ageless warlocks engaged in their own research, pursuing power-hungry machinations in their councils and shadowy alliances. Ethics are a mere joke to them; power and knowledge are their ideals, and the conquest of the other clans merely a means to that end. Decades spent manipulating and subjugating the Wolf and Serpent clans have left deep bad blood and tensions in the land.