Factions
During the character creation process, you may choose to attempt to join a faction. Joining a faction has many benefits including training in different Skill Fields related to your work, specialized training that increases your Derivatives and Stats, as well as the opportunity to move up the ranks and earn a wide range of different bonuses.
When you decide to exit character creation and go adventuring, you may have the option to take unpaid leave from your faction, allowing you to retain your contacts and rank, while you pursue your dreams. These professional connections can provide many opportunties for adventure, or lead to interesting challenges, dilemmas, or conflicts of interest that can make your life as an adventurer even more exciting.
Faction Templates
The Mythmaster Core Rules include eighteen 'template' factions; generic factions for each of the 18 different faction types that do not include names, charters, missions, or other specific faction details. The World Guide includes many specific factions that build upon these templates, and situate the factions in the context of the Tear game universe. You are, of course, encouraged to come up with your own factions or even your own entire universe.
Scaling Factions
The provided template factions are all of the largest faction size, but obviously, not all factions are Size 7 factions with a global scale. The director should decide the size and scale of any faction a character belongs to, and similarly scale the ranks, titles and awards for progression in the faction. Perhaps a Size 5 regional Ranger Order that patrols the commons and wilds across a small region has 500 members, but the head of the Order still holds the title Laird Protector, and the awards ranks and progression are scaled accordingly, perhaps omitting the Tracker and Verderer ranks.
Joining A Faction
As with Skill Fields, factions also have pre-requisities to enter, If you meet all of the pre-requisites specified on the table for a faction, you may roll a 21 Challenge using the specified Attribute to undertake the test, exam, or other challenge required to be accepted into the faction.
It takes a great deal of time and effort to prepare for entrance to a faction, and you may only make one attempt to enter a faction each Life Cycle during character creation. If you fail, you will need to wait and try again the next Life Cycle.
Note that the outcome of certain Life Events may grant bonuses to your 21 Challenge to gain admission.
Promotion
During character creation, you can continue to gain rank within your faction. This is an efficient way to earn Skills, increase your Derivatives and Stats, raise your Social Status and earn other rewards and benefits.
As with prerequisites for admission, there are prerequisites for promotion to each new rank. These include a number of Life Cycles spent at the previous rank, requirements to have reached certain levels of mastery in specified Skill Fields, and a successful 21 Challenge to win promotion - which must then be paid for with earned experience points.
Note that the outcome of certain Life Events may reduce the experience point cost and/or grant bonuses to your 21 Challenge to gain promotion.
Outside of the character creation process, during the course of regular play, you complete quests to gain promotion instead of rolling Challenges, but the experience points must still be spent to gain the promotion after the quest is completed. It will be up to the Director to define specific quests needed for promotion when the time comes.
Awards
Every time you earn a new rank in an Organizaton, you gain awards. These are specified on the progression tables for each faction, but include increases to Derivatives and Stats, additional training in relevant Skill Fields, increased Social Status, weapons, armour, cash, land and holdings and many other possible benefits.
Responsibilities
Once you are a member of a faction, you have a full time job, and all the responsibilities that come with it. A Rank 1 member of a Civil Militia faction is literally a town guard - just like the town guards you will encounter patrolling the streets, manning the walls, or guarding the gates of the cities and towns you will visit while you are adventuring. A Rank 7 member of a Religious Order is the singular, world-wide head of an entire religion; such an individual has too many responsibilities to go trudging through abandoned basilisk-ridden mines looking for treasure.
Freelancing
Provided you have reached at least Rank 2 within a faction, when you begin adventuring you are granted an indefinite unpaid leave to become a freelancer. This leave absolves you of all your daily responsibilities - but also means you don't get paid. Of course, if you leave on good terms, you still maintain your rank and are given an honorary title.
As a freelancer, you may also be offered contracts for your faction - special quests or missions that might benefit both your faction and also satiate your thirst for adventure. The extent to which you maintain connections and relations with your faction once you become an adventurer is up to you and the Director to determine.