5.4 KiB
5.4 KiB
Type:
Explorers & Adventurer Coalition / Relic Merchant Consortium
Core Focus:
The Ashen Court are explorers, scavengers, and traders who specialize in recovering artifacts, relics, and magitech from Baltun’ia’s countless ruins, battlefields, collapsed Deep Roads, and forgotten necropolises. Unlike the Vaultsingers Overview, who preserve relics, or the Arcane Concord, who study them, the Ashen Court’s goal is acquisition and profit.
They sell recovered artifacts to nobles, warlords, scholars, and collectors. They also act as middlemen between ruins and black markets like the Serpents Coil Overview. Their neutrality in politics makes them trusted by all (and loyal to none), but in truth, they carefully stoke demand by controlling the flow of relics into the world.
Regions & Cities of Influence:
- Dragabri – Ironswill: Major operations run out of the trade halls and under‑markets, closest to ancient forges and collapsed imperial vaults.
- Jessergate – Voxiu: Cosmopolitan hub for auctions and artifact trade, catering to collectors, nobles, and guild leaders.
- The Arids – Muzga & Snakhur: Expeditions mount frequent digs across buried ancients’ ruins under shifting sands.
- Verdant Isle – Sirastir: Maritime staging ground for aquatic and jungle expeditions, including ruins swallowed by plant‑life.
- The Weald & Mimfjell: Adventuring parties sent deep into ley‑twisted ruins of Elves cities and Dwarves strongholds.
Structure & Membership:
- The Ember Guild (High Council): Senior merchant‑explorers who own relic trading houses; they commission expeditions and set prices.
- Ash Seekers: Veteran explorers, ruin‑crawlers, relic thieves, and magitech prospectors. “Professional adventurers” under guild banners.
- Scriveners: Catalog artifacts, assess their provenance and magical instability, and record maps of half‑charted ruins.
- Ashen Factors: Merchant‑brokers who sell relics to buyers or discreetly funnel dangerous ones into auctions or private hands.
- Hirelings & Mercenaries: Conscript muscle, guides, smugglers, and monster‑hunters.
Membership is pragmatic, not dogmatic: opportunists, mercenaries, academics who turned rogue, and nobles hungry for power.
Philosophy and Goals:
- “Everything Worthwhile Emerges from Ashes”: The past is a resource to be scoured, not worshiped.
- Profit through Scarcity: By controlling supply and information, they inflate relic prices and widen influence.
- Pragmatic Neutrality: They avoid overt politics, selling to Vexen Overview, Belter Overview, Shadowforged, or Crown agents equally, so long as coin flows.
- Shaping the Present with the Past: They see themselves as the future’s power brokers, determining who gets the tools of the Ancients.
Political, Social, and Economic Influence:
- Political: Publicly they refuse partisanship; privately, they play both sides. Supplying Vexen elites with automaton cores while slipping the Belters relic‑weapons to fight automation.
- Social: Viewed as adventurers and opportunity‑makers by common folk, but distrusted by scholars and factions like the Vaultsingers.
- Economic: Wealthy collectors, rulers, and guilds depend on the Court for artifacts. Their auctions rival banking in Haffol for profit.
Culture and Customs:
- Ash Marks: Each expedition member marks themselves with soot‑glyph “brands” from the first ruin they survive together.
- Auction Masquerades: Lavish, masked events where relics are sold anonymously to protect patrons.
- Salvager’s Oath: An internal rule: “First claim belongs to the hand that finds it, second claim to the Court itself.”
- Relic Reforging: Dangerous artifacts are sometimes dismantled and repurposed into “safe” trinkets. Other times, volatility is disguised to fetch a higher price.
Potential Plot Hooks & Conflicts:
- A priceless relic dug up by Ashen Court salvagers is up for auction in Voxiu — PCs could bid, steal, or escort it.
- Rival expedition races — PCs compete or ally with Ashen Seekers in The Arids or Verdant Isle ruins.
- The Court accidentally unleashes something sealed away — and then tries to cover it up to avoid scandal.
- A powerful relic stolen from Vaultsingers turns up in an Ashen Court traveling caravan.
- PCs are sought as guides/mercenaries by Ashen Seekers headed into Mimfjell’s ruins — but must choose whether to let rare relics fall into their hands.
Notable NPCs:
- Guildmaster Caldus Marr, “The Emberhand” (Humans): Ruthless high‑merchant, known for burning down entire villages to cover up botched excavations.
- Tira Anvel (Elf Reclaimer): Daring explorer who sells her finds in high Voxiu auctions; pragmatic, wry, and always one step ahead of danger.
- Brakk Coalvein (Dwarf Factor): Obese merchant‑broker from Ironswill, specializes in black market automaton parts.
- Sarith Dunestrider (Feykin): Desert salvager and guide; notorious for walking out of ruins with intact relics when entire expeditions failed.
- Unit 12 “Smelt”: Awakened automaton salvager, claims to remember fragments of the Ancients’ workshops. Keeps them silent—except when drunk.