“Silver fire is my weapon, the Silver Flame my power.”
—Kievan ir’Talar, Adept of the Third Circle
Casting fire spells tinged with the holy power of the Silver Flame, the silver pyromancer is an arcane champion of the Church, taking his place alongside clerics, paladins, and exorcists in the Church’s cause. As a silver pyromancer, you wield fire spells with proficiency exceeding your level, and imbue those spells with holiness in imitation of the purifying fires of the Silver Flame.
Playing a Silver Pyromancer
Most spellcasters who share your fascination with fire spells would be viewed as crazed pyromaniacs. Not you. Fire is not an end in itself, but a useful means to purify the world around you. Your fire spells are just a reflection of the zeal that burns in your heart, the purifying flame that has purged evil from your soul. That zeal defines who you are: It consumes your every thought and defines every word you speak. Purging evil from the world is your sole purpose.
As a silver pyromancer, you are part of the Order of the Pure—an organization with a somewhat checkered history of relationship with the Church of the Silver Flame as a whole. The Order of the Pure includes hundreds of clerics, dozens of paladins, and legions of more ordinary believers. Silver pyromancers are a tiny—they might say elite—minority within the larger Order, with no well-defined place in its hierarchical structure. Thus, you have a significant degree of freedom and autonomy with respect to the organization you belong to.
Combat: Fire spells are your signature tactic. When you’re carrying enough fire spells, any evil opponent starts to look like a dry haystack just waiting to go up in flames. Once you reach 2nd level, fire spells even retain some utility against fire-immune opponents, so the need to prepare alternatives diminishes drastically. Little has changed about your fundamental approach to combat situations: You are still vulnerable to attacks (especially attacks of opportunity while casting), so your best approach is to remain out of the thick of melee and blast opponents from a safe distance.
Against undead opponents, your ability to purge undead is an extremely effective weapon—not driving undead away, but damaging them just as you would with a spell. The addition of paladin spells to your spell list gives you access to a few more low-level spells that can protect you and your allies from harm rather than dealing damage directly.
Advancement: To become a silver pyromancer, you need to seek out the Order of the Pure and apply for membership. Most commonly, you’ll do this with the sponsorship of another pyromancer who supports your application and promises to train you if you are accepted. Joining the order can be a grueling process, particularly for those whose morality and motives are not absolutely spotless. You will certainly be subjected to a battery of divinations to determine your alignment and assess your purposes. If you are accepted into the order, you can begin your pyromancer training.
In your initial training, you gain insight into fire spells and learn to channel holy power to damage undead. As you progress, you bring those two elements together. Working one on one with your sponsor/ mentor, you learn to infuse your fire spells with holy power, carefully measuring the energy that makes up each spell. Your mentor gives you plenty of room to adventure, viewing that freedom as a good opportunity for you to practice what you are learning.
The path of advancement as a silver pyromancer is a short one and doesn’t offer you a lot of choices. As you gain feats, consider those that enhance your spellcasting, if you don’t already have them, such as Spell Focus (evocation), Spell Penetration (and the greater versions of both feats), Combat Casting, and metamagic feats. Empower Spell works particularly well in combination with a smiting spell, and Maximize Spell is even more effective. Extra Turning works to improve your purge undead ability as well.
Resources: The Order of the Pure generally leaves silver pyromancers to pursue their own goals without providing significant assistance. The order does occasionally put the weight of its sponsorship behind a crusade it believes to be particularly important, however. If you can convince leaders of the order that your work is essential to the purity of the Church (not just important for ridding the world of some evil monster), the order might loan you a holy magic item (a holy or disrupting weapon, a strand of prayer beads, or a minor relic). If you have the skills and talents of leadership (represented by the Leadership feat), the order can provide a cadre of fanatically loyal followers to support your mission.
Silver Pyromancers in the World
“I’d no sooner ride into battle without a silver pyromancer behind
me than I would without my steed.”
—Alestair ir’Davin, Silver Flame Paladin
Paladins are not the only champions of law and good in the world. Characters with much less of a martial bent are still called to holy service, particularly in a nation that upholds the paladin as a cultural ideal. The silver pyromancer is no less combat-oriented than the paladin and shares the paladin’s drive to battle evil with force, but his weapons are spells—particularly fire spells—rather than sword and lance.
Organization: The Order of the Pure is much larger than its silver pyromancer membership, and it pays little attention to these fanatical wizards within its ranks. Within the order, the tiny college of pyromancers has a loose structure, relying on individual relationships of mentorship and collegiality to maintain its traditions and identity.
The titular head of this informal college is currently Gennara ir’Damilek (LG female half-elf wizard 5/cleric 1/silver pyromancer 3), a younger member of a family that is quite prominent in many levels of society, government, and the church. Her vision for the college is to forge it into a finely honed weapon in the Church’s service. In fact, she admires the Puritans who launched the crusade against lycanthropes a century ago, and would like to see the Church take up a similar crusade now that the Last War is over and the Church has unprecedented political power. She has not settled on an appropriate target, though necromancers, undead, and doppelgangers are all high on her list.
Despite its small size, the pyromancers’ college enjoys assigning ranks to its members. These elaborate rankings sometimes seem absurd, as there are more ranks than members to fill them, but every member knows what other members she outranks and who outranks her. New members of the college receive the rank of Initiate of the Seventh Circle, and progress fairly quickly (based almost purely on seniority) through lower-numbered circles to Initiate of the First Circle. Beyond the Initiate ranks, demonstrated ability and service to the college begin to play a part in determining rank. An Initiate of the First Circle who performs well is promoted to Adept of the Seventh Circle, and then once again progresses through successive circles, assuming continued good performance. An Adept of the First Circle who completes a significant quest or important service to the broader Church might be promoted to Hierophant of the Seventh Circle. Currently, Gennara ir’Damilek holds the title of Hierophant of the First Circle, and there are no other hierophants except three in the Seventh Circle.
NPC Reactions
The college of pyromancers is struggling to achieve the same degree of recognition and respect accorded to paladins and other established servants of the Church of the Silver Flame in Thrane, but it is an uphill struggle. Most Thranes remain ignorant of the college’s existence. Nevertheless, most Thranes show respect to anyone decked out in regalia of the Church, so silver pyromancers can expect friendly reactions assuming that they wear a holy symbol and incorporate other insignia of the Silver Flame into their clothing. Beyond Thrane, however, they receive mixed reactions—more friendly from supporters of the Church, and less so from shifters and other groups traditionally hostile to the Church.
The members of the Whispering Flame are hostile to silver pyromancers. They believe them selves to be the true arcane servants of the Silver Flame, and view the pyromancers as attempting to usurp that role. For their part, silver pyromancers are necessarily hostile to the evil deeds of the Whispering Flame, though most are unaware of its existence as an organization.
Silver Pyromancers in the Game
Incorporating silver pyromancers into your campaign should be effortless. The Order of the Pure makes a natural ally for characters who share its goals of fighting supernatural evil in the world—and a natural enemy for characters who might be perceived as a threat to the stability of Thrane society or the Church’s rule. Like any other organization in Eberron, it might act as an enemy in one adventure and an ally in the next, and silver pyromancers might play any role in the course of that interaction.
A player character silver pyromancer is much like a paladin. She should have ample opportunity to seek out evil threats, whether they lurk in the ruins of Xen’drik or in the hierarchy of her own church. Like paladins, silver pyromancers are most easily integrated into an adventuring group that shares at least some of their ideals—a strongly chaotic or evil-leaning group of adventurers is not the best place for a silver pyromancer, who risks losing class features as a consequence of even associating with such characters.