Cults, Sects and Divine Conflict
Serathorne is a land dedicated to its God. Extremist groups have arisen over the generations. Creating their own forms of worship and belief. Some in fatal and extreme rituals.
The Pale Ascendants
The Pale Ascendants worship youth who have been inflicted with Seeping Sickness. They have refer to them as “The Veilpierced” There are two distinct sects within their cult. The Sable Flame and The Crimson Holding.
the Veilpierced
They honor the families of those who have lost children to the seeping sickness, and worship the children who survive. Through offerings and prayers the youth who survive are worshipped and given offerings until they come of age.
The Crimson Holding
They worship only the survivors of Seeping Sickness. Claiming their youthful innocence has allowed them to overcome the calling of Nhar’Zul himself. The youth are typically kidnapped and worshipped in secret temples. To protect them from the torment of Nhar’Zul, the youth is sacrificed just before his coming of age.
The difference in the robes of the two sects. Adorned with silver, The Sable Flame are based on mercy and bloodless offerings.
A Seeping Sickness survivor held in a secret temple by the Crimson Holding.
The Ashen Vigil
Every soul screams in the dark. We simply learn the song early.
Core Belief
The Ashen Vigil teaches that all souls are tormented after death—no matter their virtue or vice. While most of Serathorne believes souls meet their creator and then pass to Kharelion for judgment, the Ashen Vigil claims Nhar’zul holds every soul in cruel captivity first.
To prepare for the inevitable, they inflict pain upon themselves in life to lessen the torment that awaits them in death.
The Verdant Reclaimers
Divine Affiliation:Aerenwyld, Goddess of Agriculture and the Living Land
The land is not a resource — it is a living, sacred body. Cities, roads, and clear-cutting are not signs of civilization, but wounds inflicted on the world-flesh.
The Verdant Reclaimers seek to halt human expansion and restore natural balance, by growth if possible, and by fire if necessary. Where the axe falls, they respond — sometimes with seeds, sometimes with flame.
The cult is split into two loose factions:
- The Rootbinders: Advocates for regrowth, sabotage, and peaceful reclamation.
- The Ashborn: Extremists who believe fire is purer than industry — that a burned forest can heal, but a paved one cannot.
The Faun Slave trade
Lunirae’s Human Mask
Lunirae, the goddess of satyrs and faun, is said to have walked among her creations in the earliest days — not in their image, but in the soft, radiant face of a human woman.
To many, this was symbolic. But a small sect of faun took it as divine revelation: that humans were closer to Lunirae than they were. To serve humans, then, was to serve the goddess herself.
This sect — known as the Greydew Accord — began offering themselves to human nobility and clergy, calling it “ritual devotion.”
From Devotion to Demand
What began as willing servitude spiraled into exploitation.
Human lords, especially in Velmara, Indrestes, and Cindralen, saw the value of gentle, obedient faun in their halls, homes, and harvests. But the Greydew Accord could not meet the hunger of the wealthy.
Slave markets formed to “supply the faithful.” Captured faun were branded, renamed, and sold as divine-born attendants.
Over time, many humans stopped seeing faun as people at all — instead, they became a lower race of sacred origin, born to serve, tame, and possess.
The Skittering Veil
The world is filled with order, but Xirgolesh exists to unravel it — not in hatred, but in delight.
To the Skittering Veil, life is a maze, and Xirgolesh is the whispering force that changes its walls. He speaks in rustles, wings, mandibles, and bite-marks. He teaches by discomfort, rewards by confusion, and punishes with precision.
No truth is constant. No form is final.
Conflict & Perception:
- Viewed with fear and fascination — seen as madmen, illusionists, and plague-wardens.
- Druids and healers sometimes bargain with the Veil for pestilence control or swarm-divination.
- Others believe they spread plague intentionally to “clear the maze for new game.”
