Although public support for the return of the defenders is tepid, Qi’an is currently the only region within the realm of Samhan willing to turn a blind eye to the realms collective longstanding policy of isolationism. There are currently no formal means for defenders or visitors to reach Samhan via official channels. The value of reclaiming the wild outside their city walls via the defenders might is a worthy investment versus the influx of newcomers to its borders. The rulers’ inability to restore balance themselves forces the elements into deeper disarray. The heirlooms of the founding defenders of Samhan radiate their call for help like beacons directing its blood back home.
It is through these heirlooms where every defenders story begins. The call to return to their ancestral homeland does not arrive in the form of a letter but in their dreams, like whispers with no voices, a persisting instinct to reclaim their birthright. A defenders call to return home radiates from the necklace they carry with them on their risky voyage to a home as familiar as it is foreign.
All equipment of high protective value, like every defender’s necklace, is composed of quintessence, the primary and universally common building block of all base elements and their children*.* these visibly equippable relics represent the element they were forged from by its color as well as a rich representation of an ancient culture brought back to life.
quintessence can be extracted from various plants and minerals and crafted into effective defenses against the monsters that roam the realm of Samhan. Equipment fortified with quintessence continues to be the only naturally occurring protection against all the elements and their children. It does not exist on its own and must be extracted along with the primary element its composed of. In the hands of a master craftsman any elemental object can be divested or reforged into a new elemental object.
Samhan has always been a hermit society even when defenders freely travelled beyond its borders. Any written record of it’s preeminence is scattered within personal libraries across the globe. The history, culture and traditions are preserved intergenerationally, usually oral legacies like family legends. Much of its past only exists in the memories of stories told by their ancestors, and expressed through the form and function of the combat equipment they wore. The meaning behind the designs of these original heirlooms will be interpreted and chronicled by the defenders who study and research their unique characteristics.
The following heirlooms will only be available for the founding years after Samhan opens its borders to the outside world. They have stood the weathering of time in the bellies of monsters, or unearthed under the defenders feet after a successful slaying of a dangerous foe. The original returning defenders will encounter a plethora of heirlooms at first of varying quality. Many generations of defenders before them have fallen in combat by the hands of monsters and their finely crafted equipment lays where it first fell, waiting ages to be reclaimed and put to use again.
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