The Creation/Meaning of the Pale Lodge's Seal

Good morning folks! Been a bit of a crazy week, but your next story is arriving very soon, with another scheduled to arrive this coming week

Good morning folks! Been a bit of a crazy week, but your next story is arriving very soon, with another scheduled to arrive this coming weekend to make up for the lack of a story last week. In the meantime, however, I wanted to shed a little light on the Pale Lodge, their seal, and what it means. The story of the Lodge is still being developed and the lore contained within this post will be revealed over the course of several stories, so if you don't want (minor) spoilers about who these guys are, what their seal means, and what they're all about, stop reading now!

The Lodge is one of the first interuniversal organizations that I came up with when I started expanding on the wider lore of the Archive universe. They are a loose conglomerate of extremely effective adventurers, mercenaries, treasure hunters, and freelance bounty hunters that work out of an ancient, enormous white stone citadel that once belonged to a now-vanished deity and its followers and is capable of jumping between universes. This structure is referred to as "The Pale Lodge" and gives the organization its name. The founder of the Lodge discovered it on assignment for a malevolent false god that had taken control of his homeworld, and rather than deliver the lodge to his master he used it to escape servitude and wander the Great Structure (the Archive multiverse).

The founder of the Lodge was the one to design the seal and did so with a heavy hand for symbolism. The bird and scythe carry significance within the founder's life, and each rune carries meaning in the culture of his old world, a culture that has been oppressed by the malevolent being that rules it. These four symbols and their meanings form the basis of the Pale Lodge's code. 

Starting at the top and moving clockwise: The first icon translates best to "mortality". No immortals are allowed to join the lodge or step foot within it. The founder believes that to truly be a productive member of the Lodge, one must be mortal and therefore understand the strength and fragility of a finite life. This is not to say that its members cannot be extremely long-lived - the founder is well over 5000 years old - but active members cannot be beings of innately endless lifespans.

The next is "Freedom/Travel". To be a member of the lodge is to know and embody this principle. Lodge members take no permanent home while active members, choosing instead to travel and roam with the lodge, going wherever their contracts or whims take them.

The next is "Target/objective". The placement of this symbol within the curve of the golden scythe is no coincidence. As a lodge member, you must always be focused on the target and objective of your hunt, and then on the objective of your mortal life. Though members of the lodge are free, they are not aimless. All members seek a higher purpose, one that they get closer to with every contract they complete and target they hit.

The last is "Perpetuity". So as the Lodge is, so shall it always be. Each member must commit a portion of the time, effort, energy, and contract payment to the lodge to ensure its ongoing survival. The lodge has earned many enemies over the eons of its existence but has also produced many powerful and influential figures over the years, all in debt to the lodge for furnishing them with the opportunities that would lead them to their current heights. Though one may not always be an active member of the lodge, one is always expected to return that which they gleaned from the lodge, regardless of whether or not they still hunt within it.

As far as the bird goes, according to the founder, he was led to the entrance of the lodge by a 4 winged white bird that vanished the moment he stepped inside. The golden scythe is and was his weapon of choice, one of the last tokens of his home that he still keeps with him.

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This seal was a ton of fun to make, and the Pale Lodge is a faction within the Archive multiverse that I'm really excited to play around with. In my mind, they serve as a bit of a foil or weird half-sibling to the Archive. Where the Archive is an interuniversal organization open to everyone who can find it, dedicated to learning, research, and storytelling, the Lodge is a faction open only to the best of the best, dedicated to hunting, finding, and winning at all costs. Both are powerful organizations that exemplify freedom but do so in very different ways. I'm excited to play around with the dynamic between the Archive and the Lodge, and explore all the conflict and collaboration that will naturally arise between the two.