Sects & Factions

A sprawling network of beggars, laborers, and displaced commoners whose members are ranked by the number of cloth pouches on their belts and whose operatives are embedded in every city, slum, and labor camp in the Empire. They provide mutual aid, settle disputes among the poor, and run the most extensive intelligence network in the Aurium Empire.

A guild of hunter-cooks who track and kill dangerous, exotic monsters and creatures of all types, then turn their kills into elaborate feasts, experimenting with different flavors and cooking techniques to create novel meals. They guard their recipes jealously and refuse to create the same dish twice.

A militant order dedicated to the total eradication of blood sorcery in all its forms, including the "harmless" village sacrifices and battlefield mercy-oaths many people consider acceptable. Their purges have saved countless lives from genuine dark practitioners, but their absolutism often puts them at odds with rural communities and others who take a more permissive approach.

Traditionalists who believe that foreign technology corrodes the spirit. They refuse firearms, trains, motor vehicles, explosives, and foreign-produced textiles. This self-imposed austerity makes their lives harder, yet it earns members considerable respect; most people regard them as particularly moral and incorruptible. Their headquarters, the Inner Workshop, is hidden behind the Jīndǐng Forge in the port city of Zhūwān, reached through the slag-room at the back of the forge.

A network of storytellers, historians, and traveling performers who see stories as an almost holy thing, carrying their own spiritual essence and helping to shape the world's meaning. They are often thrill-seekers who chase adventure and notable experiences while gathering and preserving histories, weaving them into plays, tales, and other stories. Popular among the common people throughout the Empire, they are less well-liked by the ruling class for their tendency to stir up trouble.

A chivalric order dedicated to the cultivation of romantic devotion as both spiritual practice and martial discipline, whose members strive to give themselves as completely as possible to the cause of love through extravagant demonstrations of affection and a willingness to throw themselves into danger on behalf of their sworn beloved. Their infatuations, however, tend to be quite fleeting, and warnings abound about falling for their charms.

A secretive organization dedicated to cataloguing, verifying, and protecting the bloodlines of the noble houses in the Empire. Their records can prevent succession disputes, but their fervor often leads to the ruin of families or even the assassination of those they consider a threat to noble purity.

A loose confederacy of nobles, regional loyalists, and disaffected officials who believe the Emperor to be a tyrant wrongly imposed on the five kingdoms through an unholy spirit union and that each kingdom should govern itself as it did before unification. Their members range from sincere constitutionalists who want a federation of equals to vengeful royalists who simply want their own house on top.

An exclusive society of aesthete-criminals who steal only from the powerful, never through violence, and almost always leave a calling card at the scene. They range from redistributors of wealth, to thrill-seekers who set out to carry off the most difficult crimes, to those who want their exploits to become the stuff of legends. Many give away their proceeds, yet most also keep hidden vaults full of ill-gotten gains.

A covert group that operates outside the formal Imperial hierarchy to investigate and deal with threats to the Empire and Imperial rule. Members carry a distinctive token granting them significant extralegal authority, but their mandate and the exact extent of their powers remain deliberately vague. Those the Wardens deem a threat are more likely to wash up drowned on a riverbank than to stand before a magistrate.

Individuals who serve spirits by allowing less-powerful ones lacking corporeal form to possess their bodies. They empty themselves through meditative practice and then invite a local spirit to experience corporeality for a time. Reasons for doing so vary: some see it as a religious mission, others enjoy the sensation of being half outside their own bodies, and some incorporate it into their martial arts, bonding with spirits to empower their abilities.

A sprawling criminal empire of opium, gambling, smuggling, and protection rackets made up of countless individual fiefdoms and gangs that coordinate loosely throughout the Empire. A shared set of rules and agreements holds the compact together, providing for the settlement of inter-gang disputes and enforcing a code that treats betraying fellow guild members to the authorities as the ultimate dishonor. The guild is most organized in cities and urban centers, but most criminal groups maintain some connection to it.

A cult of blood sorcerers who value their own arcane power and knowledge above any moral concern. Though often antagonistic toward one another, they close ranks when protecting each other from the agents of the Empire and other would-be do-gooders. They often build safe havens in secluded areas where they can conduct sacrifices and experiments far from prying eyes, yet many also lead double lives as reputable, even noble members of society, using that privilege to lure those with particularly valuable cultivator blood into their dark clutches.

A network of merchants, reformers, and disillusioned officials who believe the Empire should join the Aldermark Commonwealth. Some members are genuine idealists convinced that modernity offers a better future for the people of the Empire; others are bought and paid for by Aldermark itself; and many fall somewhere between the two. Their membership is generally secret, although many express Aldermark-friendly views in public all the same.

Individuals who have discovered a method of consuming spirits whole, devouring their essence to absorb their power, memories, and influence over natural forces. Depending on the type and strength of spirits they consume, practitioners often manifest incredible supernatural abilities, and many grow individually stronger than an advanced cultivator. Yet the power carries a steep cost: the natural world decays and dies once local spirits are consumed and often takes decades to recover, and the practitioners' own strength wanes over the course of a few months, compelling them to consume again and cause further devastation to maintain it.

A monastic order for cultivators who renounce noble life entirely. For as long as there have been cultivators, there have been those who broke away from their noble families to strike out on their own; for most of imperial history they were declared traitors. In the early 700s a push was made to formalize a path for these individuals, drawing on the scattered itinerant traditions of the Grand Master, and the Starlight Order was born. Its name names them as the counterpart to the noble families who walk in the golden sun of the empire: the Order walks by the cooler, scattered light of the stars.

On joining the Order an initiate surrenders all claims to land, title, and family, undergoes a ritual that leaves them unable to have children, and pledges the remainder of their life to causes of Justice and Spiritual Enlightenment. Day-to-day life inside the Order is enormously varied. Some members live as priests, studying the spirits and the secrets of cultivation in monasteries; others wander the empire as itinerant seekers, picking up local injustices and quietly making themselves the people who solve them.

Joining the Order is also the only legal way to escape an arranged marriage or the other dynastic obligations placed on the nobility. Officially every initiate is heeding a higher calling; in practice, a large share of the membership simply needed out: those refusing a marriage, and those whose lives and loves did not fit the dynastic script their houses required of them. The cost is real and is not paid back. Initiates give up great wealth, comfort, and the ability to have biological children, and the choice cannot be undone once it has been made.