"Welcome, all of you." Athena gives a brief, but real, smile. "For any who connect late, you will be witnessing a recorded version of what has transpired here already. When you catch up to the current time, please state your code name and that you are indeed connected and feel free to participate." Athena runs her fingertip along the spine of her book and the projector kicks on, humming and powering up but showing nothing on screen as of yet.
"You may ask me anything about any topic we discuss here today, even if that topic has passed. I will answer it to the best of my ability, which is to say, quite profound. Remember: the only stupid question is the one that is not asked."
"Now... let us delay no further. Once again, I welcome you to The Arbiter Headquaters and College. And to my introductory class of Weavework 101. Here you will learn about the world of the Arbiters, what you will be fighting for, if you have what it takes to survive here... and ultimately I will pick 7 of you to enroll in my full class and work together as a new team of Arbiter Graduates."
"I am sure your first question will be, 'What is an Arbiter?' ...well to answer that, you need to first know some very basic things..."
"This." Athena raises and slowly lowers her arms, the lights of the room dimming down to near total darkness except for the gaseous white ball of light that forms between her palms as her hands comes together. "Is a Mortal Soul." The ball seems to flow upwards, like a thick and tangible smoke. The smoke has holes in it, but it never seems to fully break off of the main body... it keeps flowing upwards, getting thinner as it forms a flickering spike of sorts where the smoke ends. It seems to exist in a form of constant motion. "This is what is inside of all people, all things, that live and exist. It is what fuels us, what guides us, what collects our experiences and knowledge and what leaves our body when we die."
"As an Arbiter, you will be set to protect, shepard, and maintain the balance of not only a single soul... but the souls of all Mortals that exist on any given world, at any given time. And seeing as how there are hundreds of millions of worlds that are registered under our protection, and even more that have yet to been created or discovered... it is not a duty to take lightly."
"An Arbiter acts as a bringer of balance, for the Universe cannot exist without balance. At any given time, on any given world, there can be billions of souls that are in a living Mortal body, and 20 times that amount waiting for another chance at life in the heavens. Mind you that is on an average single solitary planet. Consider the numbers I just gave you... and you will understand why we will never have enough Arbiters to maintain balance."
"Balance, for the most part, is something that can sustain itself. However sometimes something will happen on a world, or a certain individual will change the tides, or even a natural disaster will tip the balance in a world too far and we will send in an Arbiter, or a team of Arbiters, to repair the balance. If a world falls out of balance... it will die." A wave of her hands and the soul seems to transform into a very familiar symbol... no matter what world you may be from, it appears everywhere there is life.
"To understand balance, one may simply look at this symbol... it is the symbol of the Arbiters, the Yin-Yang. There are three forces of balance that exist in the Universe... the forces of light, the forces of darkness, and those gray bits within them both that mixes the two. If any one of these three forces becomes too large, or too small, the other parts of the forces will spill over and naught but death and corruption can follow in its wake."
"But Athena!" She speaks in an extra falsetto voice, "There can't be such as thing as too much light can there? No such thing as too much good in a world!" In her normal voice she answers, "Oh ho! But you would be wrong. Too much of anything, even something good, can be harmful. Let me give you some examples of what happens when each force goes wilds..."
She clicks her fingers, the projector blasts an image onto the screen behind her. It is of a lush, green world where every creature seems to be bound in huge white armor, wielding amazingly large hammers and swords. "This world... was flooded by light. These beings, who called themselves Paladin Lighthammers, decided that they would dispense their sense of right and wrong to the entire world. There zealous nature forced them to destroy anything they felt was evil, or wrong... they were left to run free. By the time the Arbiters arrived? They had killed off everything on the planet that wasnt a Male Paladin Lighthammer for sinning... the species died out because they lost the ability to reproduce."
Clicking her fingers again, she changes the image to a world of black skies, rotten lands littered with corpses, no sign of life anywhere. "One man... just one man on this world made something he thought would cure all diseases, something with good intentions but benign in nature... nano-technology that would target injured flesh, sickness, and defects and repair them from the inside out. The gray nano-technology ran amok and decided somehow that life itself was a disease... the results you see here when the gray forces go haywire."
Another click, another screen, this one of a tyrannical and gigantic figure sitting on a throne of black obsidian, dressed in an armor made of metal and bone. "Darkness... this man fancied himself as powerful as the Gods and slew all those who opposed him because it was fun. He tore through the populace faster than they could run, faster than we could move, and when it was all said and done he died alone on his throne, nothing left in the world to slay."
"And that..." One last click and the projector goes off, leaving the floating glowing yin-yang as the only source of light, "was just when MORTAL souls disrupt the balance of worlds. Do not get me started on when a God goes Demon and starts things like this. This is why we exist, to stop life from becoming unbalanced and destroying itself. Because if a world if left unbalanced, that influence tends to spread... then it hits another world and that world goes unbalanced, then another and more... the next thing you know you've got an entire solar system dying off, and that's small scale. Without us, life could not exist. Without balance, life would not survive."
She observes the classroom coolly, "I will stop here and answer any questions. Please, speak up. Then we will move on."