Ardent Mage

The Ardent Mages are a human society of quasi-sorcerers from Auriga.

Society
The Ardent Mages are a human society that have mastered the use of Dust, augmenting their minds and abilities. The primary power these sorcerers derive from is their anger.

The outward appearance other races see them as, a race of stoics. Though this stoicism serves and reflects their society. In order to manipulate the Dust abilities to their fullest, an Ardent Mage must dissociate their mind from their body. Thus elaborate pain rituals have been developed to test themselves and to withstand the their physical discomfort. The more pain they can endure, the deeper their relationship with Dust becomes. To them pain is a fundamental element of their society, to the point where children are taught from a young age to withstand it.

The calendar of the Ardent Mages seems to have been measured in cyclical penitences.

History
The Ardent Mages are a distant relative of the Roving Clan civilization, focusing on the high-technological potential of Dust instead of its commercial value. In ancient history they were on the verge of extinction at the hands of a failing Aurigan ecosystem (the world's temporary death, as she would describe it). These circumstances forced them to develop pain rituals in pursuit of survival, their religious traditions hold that the powers of borne of them are signs of divine approval. However, as the planet recovered, it became less necessary to seek power in pain, to "appease the gods", and the adepts of their arts grew contemptuous of the majority. They saw the multitude as pursuing comfort over power, something sure to provoke their eradication. One of them was Verda Abaz, a secluded mage pursuing the ultimate conclusion of their arts, which was the permanent transference of the mind itself into Dust, like the Endless had achieved in centuries before. As he was on the verge of completing his research, he was murdered out of either fear or greed by the Clan merchant that was supplying him with Dust. His sister, Zor Abaz, took the blame from the rest of society, and retreated with other reactionaries to found a breakaway sect in pursuit of completing his work, even though none of them were aware of its scope, and to discover the true culprit. They scoured the surface of Auriga for traces of Verda, eventually rediscovering the site of his secret laboratory, which provoked a failed invasion from his old trading partners. Verda's completed works were used to construct the Altar of Transcendence; site of an arduous trial that ends in the transformation of its participants into new Virtuals, or death. The transhuman mental prowess of the victors, Zor among them, became the source of further developments in Ardent magic.

The ultimate fate of the Ardent Mages is unknown, some of them may have assimilated into the escaping Vaulter civilization, and the rest may have disappeared with all other civilizations of Auriga.