Powers That Pull the Strings
Power moves through noble houses, criminal networks, secret orders, cults, guilds, and quiet circles that prefer their influence unnamed. Some rule with banners and armies. Others trade in debt, rumor, forbidden magic, and favors no one admits to owing. Every faction wants something, and every alliance carries a cost. An emblem may promise protection, but it may also mark obedience, obligation, or a knife waiting behind velvet. Choose carefully; power always remembers who helped it rise.
- Rebel Raiders
- Pride Over Order
- Blood Before Peace
They call restraint weakness and rebellion survival.
They are a breakaway force of hardline warriors who believe patience has become cowardice and restraint has cost their people too much. To them, raids are not crimes but proof of strength, and every warning from leadership sounds like surrender dressed in wiser words. Loyalists see them as reckless blades turned inward, while frightened outsiders see only another reason to fear the hills. They stand for survival through force, even if their defiance risks burning the very tribe they claim to protect.
- Silken Leverage
- Elegant Ruin
- Quiet Control
They slip between breaths, and by the time you gasp’they're gone.
The Velvet Threat leaves no whisper behind. They are the dagger in the ballroom, the missing heirloom, the breath caught in your throat before the poison takes hold. While nobles sip wine and feign civility, the Velvet Threat moves among them, masked in elegance, masked in blood.
Their ranks include master infiltrators, illusionists, and silent killers’though their true power lies in information. Assassination is a last resort. Blackmail is preferred. A noble’s reputation ruined, a ledger vanished, a daughter disappeared without a trace’their fingerprints are never found, but their presence is always felt.
No one commissions the Velvet Threat directly. They come to you, and only when it suits them. A favor owed, a debt recalled, a deal never forgotten. Some say the organization is led by a cabal of veiled figures known only as “The Tailors,” each one weaving fate from the silk of sin and secrets. Others believe the Velvet Threat is an illusion itself, a mask worn by many for their own ends.
What is certain is this: when the candles dim and the silence lingers, the Velvet Threat has already passed through.
Their ranks include master infiltrators, illusionists, and silent killers’though their true power lies in information. Assassination is a last resort. Blackmail is preferred. A noble’s reputation ruined, a ledger vanished, a daughter disappeared without a trace’their fingerprints are never found, but their presence is always felt.
No one commissions the Velvet Threat directly. They come to you, and only when it suits them. A favor owed, a debt recalled, a deal never forgotten. Some say the organization is led by a cabal of veiled figures known only as “The Tailors,” each one weaving fate from the silk of sin and secrets. Others believe the Velvet Threat is an illusion itself, a mask worn by many for their own ends.
What is certain is this: when the candles dim and the silence lingers, the Velvet Threat has already passed through.
Everything has a price. Even silence.
The Ashen Accord is a sprawling criminal syndicate operating across the realm through hidden trade routes, secret networks, bribery, smuggling, extortion, and organized underground commerce. Unlike chaotic street gangs or localized crime families, the Accord functions as a highly coordinated shadow economy connecting thieves, corrupt officials, assassins, fences, black market traders, mercenaries, and illegal magical practitioners beneath the surface of civilized society.
The organization thrives in instability, conflict, corruption, and desperation, embedding itself within cities, ports, border towns, noble courts, and trade caravans alike. Their influence extends far beyond simple contraband dealing, encompassing illegal magical artifacts, forbidden substances, information brokering, slave trafficking, political blackmail, underground fighting rings, and covert assassination contracts.
Though feared throughout the realm, the Ashen Accord maintains a surprisingly structured internal system governed by profit, leverage, secrecy, and negotiated balance rather than outright chaos. Betrayal within the organization is punished brutally, while competence and usefulness are rewarded regardless of origin, species, or social standing.
The Accord rarely seeks open control over territory, preferring instead to quietly infiltrate existing systems until entire economies, officials, or criminal operations become dependent upon them. Many rulers publicly denounce the Ashen Accord while privately relying on its networks for information, deniable operations, or illicit trade.
To most citizens, the Accord exists somewhere between rumor and nightmare — unseen until someone suddenly owes them something.
The organization thrives in instability, conflict, corruption, and desperation, embedding itself within cities, ports, border towns, noble courts, and trade caravans alike. Their influence extends far beyond simple contraband dealing, encompassing illegal magical artifacts, forbidden substances, information brokering, slave trafficking, political blackmail, underground fighting rings, and covert assassination contracts.
Though feared throughout the realm, the Ashen Accord maintains a surprisingly structured internal system governed by profit, leverage, secrecy, and negotiated balance rather than outright chaos. Betrayal within the organization is punished brutally, while competence and usefulness are rewarded regardless of origin, species, or social standing.
The Accord rarely seeks open control over territory, preferring instead to quietly infiltrate existing systems until entire economies, officials, or criminal operations become dependent upon them. Many rulers publicly denounce the Ashen Accord while privately relying on its networks for information, deniable operations, or illicit trade.
To most citizens, the Accord exists somewhere between rumor and nightmare — unseen until someone suddenly owes them something.
- Rising Crime Syndicate
- Dockside Operators
- Waterway Network
The city forgets us. The rivers do not.
The Blackwake Union — known throughout Three Rivers simply as Blackwake — is a rising criminal syndicate controlling much of the city’s hidden water-based trade and smuggling activity. While larger organizations like the Ashen Accord dominate overland routes and established black markets, Blackwake built its power through mastery of the rivers themselves: hidden canals, flooded tunnels, forgotten docks, marsh inlets, sewer outlets, and nighttime river traffic invisible to ordinary authorities.
Born from rivermen, smugglers, dock laborers, ferrymen, and abandoned undercity districts, Blackwake developed into a fiercely territorial organization deeply tied to the waterways surrounding Three Rivers. The rivers are not merely trade routes to them — they are identity, livelihood, protection, and power. Their members navigate currents, tides, flood channels, and hidden passages with unmatched skill, allowing them to move contraband, people, information, and stolen goods through routes larger syndicates struggle to control.
Unlike the polished professionalism of the Ashen Accord, Blackwake maintains a rougher, more localized culture built around loyalty, survival, and shared hardship. Many poorer river districts quietly tolerate or even support the syndicate due to the protection, coin, and opportunity it provides where the city government has failed.
Blackwake’s influence remains mostly regional for now, but tensions with the Ashen Accord continue to escalate as the Union tightens its grip on the waterways feeding Three Rivers. Increasingly, the Accord controls the roads? while Blackwake controls what flows beneath them.
Born from rivermen, smugglers, dock laborers, ferrymen, and abandoned undercity districts, Blackwake developed into a fiercely territorial organization deeply tied to the waterways surrounding Three Rivers. The rivers are not merely trade routes to them — they are identity, livelihood, protection, and power. Their members navigate currents, tides, flood channels, and hidden passages with unmatched skill, allowing them to move contraband, people, information, and stolen goods through routes larger syndicates struggle to control.
Unlike the polished professionalism of the Ashen Accord, Blackwake maintains a rougher, more localized culture built around loyalty, survival, and shared hardship. Many poorer river districts quietly tolerate or even support the syndicate due to the protection, coin, and opportunity it provides where the city government has failed.
Blackwake’s influence remains mostly regional for now, but tensions with the Ashen Accord continue to escalate as the Union tightens its grip on the waterways feeding Three Rivers. Increasingly, the Accord controls the roads? while Blackwake controls what flows beneath them.