Hand Mages

Hand Mages
Details
Also known as	Hand Brotherhood Mages
Symbols	the hand the elements
Leader	The Inner Circle
Allies	unknown
Enemies	Thieves necromancers (possibly)
Behind the Scenes
First introduced	Thief Gold

The Hand Mages are a foreign sect of mages that are practitioners of elemental magic, and oppose necromancy. Their main sources of magic are the four elemental schools: Water, Air, Earth and Fire. They live isolated beyond The City in their towers and are quite distant to the city folk or other factions. The mages possess both a wealth of knowledge and of gold, but they are also adept in offensive magic and are formidable foes. The origin of the Hand is unknown, but they are said to come from somewhere to the east of The City.

After the Catastrophe and during the time of The Dark Project they held and guarded the Talisman of Earth (in Thief Gold) in the top of their central tower until it was stolen.

Hierarchy

The Hand is led by a mage council named "The Inner Circle". All the mages who are not part of The Inner Circle must answer to its members. While it can't be confirmed, it appears the Inner circle consists of the Archmages of each element, with the Mages under them, and the Adepts as the lowest level of their ranks.

Mage Towers

The mages rarely leave the tower compound and the towers themselves are mainly used for their experiments. Apart from the mages there are some other people residing in the compound as well. The Hand has hired personal guards to take care of any security mishaps and a number of servants for utility services. None of these are allowed access to the elemental towers except for the guards who may enter the Tower's Foyer while on business but are forbidden to go upward.

Doctrines and Rules

The mages have a tradition called the Doctrine of Trust to keep them unified where in each Tower keeps the key to another Tower: the Fire Tower keeps the key to the Water Tower, the Water Tower keeps the key to the Earth Tower, the Earth Tower keeps the key to the Air Tower and the Air Tower keeps the key to the Fire Tower.

Water Tower key (unused)

Earth Tower key

Air Tower key

Fire Tower key

Note: During the time of The Dark Project a disastrous experiment caused the Water Tower to become flooded and the key to it was lost in controlling the accident. As a result the Fire Tower was given the key to the chamber in the Central Tower and the Water Tower kept the key to the Earth Tower because it was thought that only the water mages could survive the flooded areas.

The Hand has strict rules on what can not be studied as Azaran was banished from the Hand due to his study into necromancy and the Inner Circle could forbid certain experiments.

The Elemental Mages

Each mage seems to belong to a group of their chosen element namely Water, Earth, Air and Fire. Each one studies and specializes into their own element and is able to cast spells of their own element as well as being immune to attacks of their own element. For example the fire mages can cast fireballs and are immune to fire bases attacks and the air mages can summon Air Elementals and are immune to gas based attacks.

De four kinds of mages are:

Water Mage

Earth Mage

Air Mage

Fire Mage

Members

Known members of the Hand are:

• Archmage Corino
• Archmage Garod
• Archmage Ibn Al Haroud
• Archmage Jabu Ibn Lani
• Archmage Kahmin Ramin
• Archmage Kreos
• Archmage Tatyana Yokobik (possibly)
• Mage Verlin
• Adept Al-Hayr
• Adept Aroun
• Adept Haseki Beyzar
• Azaran the Cruel (former)

Expeditions

After the Talisman of Earth had been stolen the Hand had located the Lost city of Karath-Din and had send a party of mages from different elements to find the Talisman of Fire, probably due to The Trickster's return.

Gallery

Easter Eggs

• Certain mages will say "Resistance is futile" to intruders; this is a reference to the Borg from Star Trek.
• Certain mages will mention "There is no spoon", which is a reference to a scene in The Matrix.

Behind the Scenes

There was originally a mission planned that featured a group of Necromancers that were an offshoot organization of the Hand but after the demise of Looking Glass Studios it never got past the planning stage.