Placid Lake

Concept
A discipline about mastery of motion in stillness, where every tiny motion you make reduces the potential motion of your opponent and eventually force the world around you to slow it's motion on the most fundamental of levels, soaking up heat and movement until your foe is rendered totally impotent.

Unlike other schools, a number of the maneuvers of the way of the Placid Lake can be performed even without being able to move; these are marked with the 'Stillness' descriptor

History
The way of the Placid lake was founded some two centuries after the fall of the Temple of the Nine Swords by Aramil Nioze, an Elven Swordsage who until then had specialised in the Stone Dragon & Diamond Mind schools. It is said that Aramil, who had spent much of his life defending the moors of his homeland from rampaging orcs, goblins & undead, found peace after a long adventuring career in a valley known as 'The Eye of All Winds', where he retured and found himself inspired by the landscape. Based on the movements of the world around him, Aramil formed the basis of what was to become the Way of the Placid lake - the notion that each motion should be minimised to the point where your opponent should never see what you have done.

Of course, any master of the Sublime Way who lives long enough to retire will attract interest from those who wish to be schooled in their arts, and Aramil was no exception. For many years, he refused to teach any who came to him, remarking that they were 'city children' who could not understand the 'wild and untamed form of his art'; eventually, one pupil arrived who did interest him enough not only to teach him the secrets of the Sublime Way, but also the secrets of his own art, a human called Horatio. Unlike those who had come before, this was no callow youth, eager to learn the skills of battle without much thought of what to do with them; Horatio was a powerful Druid who sought the understanding of the Sublime Way necessary to defeat the 'Burning Lords of Sin', a group of Desert Wind-wielding Blighters who were rapidly encroaching on the forests under his protection. Aramil was understanding of Horatio's plight, and agreed both to help him defeat those who would ravage Horatio's home and to tech him the secrets of the Way of the Placid Lake. Horatio thanked him greatly in turn and in gratitude agreed to teach him the Druidic arts.

The two were able to quickly rout their foes, and then set about forming the basis of what was to become the Order of the Frozen Grotto, the guardians of the secrets of a Druidic grove situated in the Eye of All Winds that has long-standing relations with the Fae courts. In days since, whatever it is that the Order guards, the Druidic network has seen fit to provide them with a large number of talented recruits, so many in fact that their numbers now far exceed their requirements. As such, once they have completed their training, a great many recruits return to the Druidic orders that first sent them there, meaning that there are few Druidic orders in the north that do not have at least a single Guardian of the Frozen Grotto among their number.

Recently, there has been an upsurge in young, adventuring Druids trained in the ways of the Placid Lake, travelling out into the world to protect areas of natural wilderness and to hunt down and destroy unnatural blights upon the world (such as powerful aberrations or undead). Adepts of the Placid Lake school frequently draw upon the Diamond Mind or Tiger Claw schools, finding the combinations of Stillness & Motion and Passion & Seperation quite effective.