Students of The Smith

Once the knowledge about the The Guardians of The Tree became more common, many people started to treat them as deities.
According to legends, while The Tree created all of the life that comes from The Pit, each of the Guardians created some wonders, but also some dangers of The Pit.
It is said that when The Smith, one of the daughters of The Tree created weapons for her siblings, sparks flew from her anvil. Wherever they landed, they created lesser anomalies, places that defy the laws of the world.
Those who actively profess their faith in The Smith tend to spend their time on searching for her Forge, the weapons she created or understanding the anomalies. It's the third group that became the origin of the Students of The Smith.

After his first encounter with the anomaly two years ago, Philip knew he had to learn more about them, as much as he could. And while he didn't really worship The Smith, joining the order dedicated to her and her creations was the best way he could gather more knowledge. The road before him was long. He decided to visit the Blue Order first.

Orders

Currently, there are four different orders of the Students of The Smith. Each one of them perceives anomalies and what to do with them in a different way. Members of each one of them adorn their clothes with ribbons and markings of their order. In contrast, those who don't belong to any of the four orders yet tend to wear markings of all four colors at once.

White - hermits

The members of the White Order believe that to really learn about the anomalies, one has to experience them. To do so, they tend to move out to live next to them, most of them picking The Layer of Anomalies as their new home.

Red - breakers

Seeing anomalies as imperfections of the craft of The Smith, the Red Order searches for ways to destroy them. It's easy to see that the other branches of the order tend not to like the "breakers".

Blue - tamers

The Blue Order perceives the sparks created by The Smith as something they should use themselves, her gifts to the world, more accessible than the The Magic of the Song given by The Tree only to the chosen. As such, they research the ways to harness the power of anomalies so anyone, no matter if selected by The Tree or not, will have the access to supernatural abilities.

Green - scholars

The Green Order tries to gather as much knowledge about anomalies as they can, both by conducting various experiments on them and by searching through texts of the previous inhabitants of The Pit. They use that knowledge to create technologies that let people traverse the anomalies safely, either by showing or affecting their safe spots or by "turning them off" temporarily.
Their HQ is in the City of Middlepoint

Founding Date

10th Year of Awakening

Alternative Names

Holy Order of The Smith, Children of The Smith

Demonym

Spark scholars, Anomaly scholars, Sparks
Blues, Reds, Greens, Whites (cause of the markings they wear on their clothes)

Deities

• The Smith

Location

The Pit

Related Traditions

• Chaos lizard's feast - Pilgrimage's End

Controlled Territories

• White Storm village

Related Items

• Smith's Hammer

Pilgrimage

It was Philip's last day as a student of the Green Order. He packed all of the few belongings he had and said goodbye to everyone already. There was only one order left for him to visit. The White order, up on the Layer of Anomalies. This was the hardest part of the journey, but with all the knowledge he had, he couldn't be more ready.

While the Students of The Smith are often called a Holy Order, the organization doesn't really have any religious rituals, instead focusing on gathering knowledge and experimentation. The only thing that could be called a ritual (asides from some more mysterious workings of the White Order) is a Pilgrimage each beginning scholar of the organization has to go through before becoming a full-fledged member.
During a Pilgrimage, a scholar has to visit all four orders and learn about their ways personally. Once they reach and learn from the last of the four orders (almost always the White Order), a small ceremony follows, where they are given some Chaos lizard's meat that has been processed by using various anomalies on it. The ceremony ends with them taking off the colors of the three orders they haven't chosen to follow.