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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 9573488" data-attributes="member: 11">RangerWilderness warrior, monster hunter, civilization defender, nature guardian, bounty-hunter, animal friend, and ecology preserver. Rangers can be any, some, or all of these things. And, regardless of whichever of these paths they happen to be following, they feel most at home in the rough and untamed places in the world, stalking animals or living among them, avoiding people or guiding them along ancient paths, keeping hunters away from the territory of a beast or monster, or leading the hunt to destroy it.Rangers learn to track their quarry as a predator does, moving stealthily through the wilds and hiding themselves in brush and rubble. Rangers focus their combat training on techniques that focus on the weaknesses of those they battle. Their time in the wilderness leads them to develop nearly preternatural skills to move through and across the land, though they favor a particular kind of terrain they are most familiar with, a ranger can survive in any region of untamed wilderness better than most.Some rangers never set foot in a city or town, while others see no issue with availing themselves of the services and goods acquired there and not as easily attainable in the wild. Regardless, rangers tend to be fiercely independent and would never rely too regularly or readily on the comforts of civilization. This makes them well suited to adventuring, since they are accustomed to life far from a dry bed and a hot bath.Ranger AlignmentWhile many, if not most rangers, take a side in the eternal conflict of Law and Chaos, it would be impossible to say which is the one individual rangers are more likely to support. Some rangers see themselves as Agents of Law, battling monsters and other chaotic forces at the edges of civilization in order to keep it safe and orderly, keeping disruptive and destructive forces from getting a toehold in settled areas. Other rangers are Chaos Agents, who resist the all-incorporating force of Law that wants to leave no room for the wild and unpredictable. For these rangers, civilization is not where creativity comes from, but the force that wants to quash all individual creativity and understanding of the world outside an all-encompassing skein. In terms of ethos, most rangers see their calling as a benevolent one that nevertheless requires familiarity with violence, and seek to help others who they deem worthy of aid. That said, for some rangers, especially solitary types, the instinct for self-preservation leans towards precluding compassionate action for others, and for some go as far as to embrace the darker side of nature, adopting a predator’s mindset, or what most folk would call “evil.”Rangers in the Inchoate EmpiresMost rangers left in the Empires serve one either officially or through a parallel philosophy of destroying the chaotic threats from the rapidly narrowing areas of pure wilderness left in the part of the world. They are Agents of Law, typically Wardens, who take command over an area of land to access its resources and curb its dangers. Of course, some rangers still resist the near all-encompassing power of the Empires. A ranger leaving the Empires behind may have come to find the fight futile, better to travel to where they might still influence the conflict between civilization and wilderness. On the other hand, they might also see Makrinos and the East as lands that remain to be exploited, whether that be with the measured strides of someone who embraces the need for healthy wild ecologies along side the need to extract resources, or with the rapacious appetite of a colonizer.Rangers in the Republic of MakrinosRangers became mythic figures in the history of Makrinos during the time of the Celestrune Empire, when they helped those persecuted by the Empire by hiding whole villages of people deep in the wilderness or provided aid to the impoverished who had to hand over the vast majority of their yield to the local Baron in the form of food and other resources, but also by fighting guerilla wars all over the island. The actual truth of the extent of these stories is hard to establish so many centuries later, but to this day rangers are seen both as an important buffer between the State and the threats that emerge from wild places, but also a check on its power to (whether inadvertently or with intention) destroy wild places and ruin the environment for other Peoples and for the people of Makrinos itself. The current First Minster is a ranger.</blockquote>

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