[center][h1]Shooting Stars I[/h1][hr][/center]
Despite the Falling Star clan being known for some of their more esoteric practices, the sect's elders did not forget the Goddess's core teachings. Thus, after leaving Haven and establishing a foothold on the area surrounding their stronghold, the most wise and powerful members of the sect had gathered to form the Elder Council. A brainchild of the previous sect head, the council's sole purpose had been to gather, record, and consolidate all the differing esoteric arts available within the clan.

On the outside, it had been framed as a means to exchange ideas between clan members, to ponder on the wisdom fellow members had to offer that may help with one's advancement. In reality, the few true powers within the clan knew that, by virtue of losing Haven, they would have to now be responsible for the protection of their homes and lives. The potential battles that were to come could not be fought by a haphazard force of martial artists; controlling the battlefield and knowing the force and capabilities of your troops would be of utmost importance.

Unquestionably, outsiders would find their way to the sect at some point. Beings that had not been graced with the teachings of the Goddess would arrive and seek shelter; the sect could not, and would not, deny them entry. After all, who would say no to a pair of extra hands?

Thus, the plan to form a standardized system of training for said new recruits, along with the invention of the sect's very own core technique to pair along with it, had been put into action. A set hierarchy was created, mainly around the idea that those who had received direct tutelage from the Goddess would form the Inner Sect, leaving everyone else to become Outer Sect members. Of course, it helped that the former tended to be stronger than the latter, although there were some exceptions as well.

Existing clan members were still allowed to practice their own personal techniques, however new members would have to first complete their apprenticeship – which meant going through basic training, education, and learning the clan's core technique. Promotions – and demotions for that matter – would be given according to one's merit within the sect; from anything as simple as completing an errant or quest, to as grand as winning a martial or literary tournament, would be used to calculate said merit, and members could then use it to exchange for rewards with the clan to further their advancement. 

And so, Dolsoe had grown up within the clan; with his parents both being Outer Members since the inception of the system, their standard of living could be considered mediocre, neither better nor worse than their peers. Children born within the clan fell in the same category as outsiders, and as such were forced to go through apprenticeship from the age of 10 to 18. 

By the age of 17, a whole seven years, Dolsoe spent his life away from his family – apprentices were forbidden from contacting other sect members, as the clan had deemed it detrimental to their development as a functioning clan member. The only exception to this rule had, of course, been their fellow apprentices, as well as their teachers. Well, there was also one other exception: apprentices could exchange letters with their loved ones once a month. During all those grueling, tiring, painful and stressful years, Dolsoe cherished those letters the most; returning from training to find one in front of his door made all that accumulated fatigue disappear in a flash.

He loved reading about his parents' daily lives. His mother had a proclivity to go on and on about all the different gossip she'd talk about with her friends, something that helped him keep in touch with the sect's affairs as a whole pretty well, even isolated as he was. His father, on the other hand, wrote a ton about advancement, any quests that he might have completed – along with all the juicy details around them. He also updated him on the various martial tournaments that would take place, for he knew that, prior to his apprenticeship, Dolsoe had loved attending them as a viewer.

However, as fate would have it, around five years into his apprenticeship, those letters would suddenly stop. For a while – around five months' time - Dolsoe would receive no correspondence from his family. As each month passed, he would grow more and more worried about what happened back home, and the increasing stress upon his psyche slowed down his progress considerably. Alas, quitting the apprenticeship was something unheard of – even the clan head's own direct descendants had to go through with it, there were no exceptions.

Then one day, a new letter would arrive. One could only guess how elated Dolsoe had been to find it, and as such he had swiftly wrenched it open, his eyes devouring its contents. Unfortunately, just as quickly as he read the letter, his face transformed from that one full of excitement to one full of dread and hopelessness. Both his parents had died.

The letter would go on to explain how it had happened; a particular beast native to the Darkwoods had been terrorizing a village near the outskirts of the clan's territory. Several previous Outer members had tried to hunt it down, however they had all never returned. Well, his father had been recruited by an Inner Sect member into a group that would tackle this specific problem; the member in question had been known for the power of his fist techniques and was quite influential within the Inner Circles. He had proclaimed that, under his leadership, they would return triumphant, that they would bring the beast's head for all to witness along with them.

A month past after their departure, and news came back from the outskirts. After the second month, the Elder's Council had organized a second expedition, this time a rescue mission the leader of which had been one of the Elders himself. "They" would return after another month; just the elder would stagger onto the front gates of the sect one day, missing an arm and an eye but holding on to a huge, sharp, curved tooth beneath his armpit. Apparently the beast – a pitch black leopard of enormous proportions – had been slain, but everyone else except the elder had died along with it. A few days later, however, the elder had also succumbed to his injuries and had passed away.

Dolsoe's mother, unable to bear the sheer weight of grief at the loss of her husband, had decided to take her life after just one month of hearing the news. Understandably, Dolsoe had also been devastated by the news; news that, had the letter system not been in place, would have never found their way to him. Only way later would he find out that the sect had to do away with the letter system, as the fallout from several apprentices finding out about their loved ones' deaths had also drove them to suicide.

Dolsoe, too, had contemplated the act numerous times. Then, after a few weeks of bad thoughts stewing in his mind, he'd decided to go through with it. His plan had been simple; numerous martial artists, in their attempt to attain further progress in their martial arts, would go into what had been termed "closed-door" training. During this time, they would isolate themselves in order to attain enlightenment through meditation. This could go on for a long time, years in some cases, depending on the power that said martial artist already possessed.

Sometimes, however, in their fervor to obtain this type of reward, a martial artist would make a mistake during the process, causing the energies coursing within their body to clash, the so called "essence deviation". This most often would result in the death of the practitioner – some deaths being more gruesome than others – but there were also exceptions.

Dolsoe did not plan to be one of those exceptions. He would shut himself inside his room and forcefully induced the essences to clash, leading him to literally explode from within. And he would have gone ahead with it, had it not been for one unexpected variable: the same day that he had chosen to be his last, he had found a new letter waiting for him on his doorstep.

At first he had refused to even pick it up, letting it stay there in front of his door for several hours. Yet the sheer knowledge of the letter's existence slowly eroded the tall walls that fortified his mind, completely shattering his fragile determination. In the evening of that day, he finally decided to read it, his curiosity unable to withstand it.

[hider=Summary]
Background information/exposition post about Dolsoe and the Falling Star sect. Flavor post.
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