The Kharad Vey

The Kharad Vey developed quietly from a small circle of mourners into a cross-border network of funeral workers and disaffected veterans. For generations, they concentrated on preserving names and securing secret burials, practices that made them useful during wars and epidemics. The Ashen Regiment changed their scale and character. Its founding gave the sect the means to take territory, protect sanctuaries, and threaten officials who resisted. The Red Vigil was their decisive watershed: the mass taking of souls proved the rite could work at scale and brought the Hollow Sovereign fully awake, but it also exposed the cult to serious retaliation. A coalition of temple investigators and city militias destroyed the Ordel Pass sanctuary the following year. The cult survived because its civilian cells had already spread across borders and because the coalition's leaders turned on one another over the captured prisoners and relics. Since then, the Kharad Vey have favored redundancy over empire. They cultivate multiple small sanctuaries, maintain separate regional ledgers, and avoid holding cities for long. Their modern campaign has two linked parts: gathering souls through concealed local operations and sending the greater regiment across the continent to locate the Cinder Crown. The two efforts are increasingly at odds. Soul-taking cells want time and secrecy; the regiment's commanders believe the Crown will make secrecy unnecessary.

Faction · Neutral Evil

The Kharad Vey

To ordinary people, the Kharad Vey are a somber but dependable network of mourners who appear when institutions fail.

Type: A continent-spanning death…
Size: 7,500 members
Reach: Continental
Base: Near the abandoned customs settlement of Veyra's Ford, on the border between three rival states.

Overview

How it began

The cult claims that its first members gathered during the winter of the Seven Bells, when a siege left the frontier city of Halvek without food, firewood, or room in its graveyards. A battlefield surgeon named Oru Vask began hearing the voices of the unburied dead through a cracked bronze funerary bell. He persuaded a band of deserters and bereaved families that the dead were not gone, only trapped beyond reach. They dug a chamber beneath the bell tower and performed a rite assembled from scraps of old funerary scripture. Something answered. The first voice promised that no faithful soul need be lost to oblivion. Oru disappeared before dawn, leaving behind a lantern that burned without oil and the first names of the dead written on its glass. The survivors called themselves the Kharad Vey, a name borrowed from the old homeland dialect of the deserters, though none can now agree on its original meaning. They spread as mourners, gravediggers, and penitents, taking small offerings from the living and quietly collecting the names of the recently dead. Three decades ago, they crossed from hidden sect to armed movement when a disgraced captain, Teren Vosk, organized their converts into the Ashen Regiment. Its knights seized the fortified monastery of Ordel Pass and used its crypts to hold a mass rite. The event, later remembered inside the cult as the Red Vigil, took hundreds of souls in one night. It also awakened the presence they now call the Hollow Sovereign. The Sovereign's first command was not to conquer, but to find the Cinder Crown. Since the Red Vigil, the Kharad Vey have survived inquisitions, civil wars, and the destruction of two major sanctuaries. Each setback drove them toward more ordinary institutions: military companies, funeral charities, debt offices, and noble household chapels. Their present strength lies less in hidden temples than in the records, roads, and people that make death administratively invisible.

How to know them

MottoNo name is lost while a bell remembers.

EmblemA black iron lantern with a red flame inside, surrounded by seven small ivory nails. In formal banners, the flame is painted upside down, a sign that its light is meant for the dead below.

Colours

Lampblack, Dried-blood red, Bone ivory

Signs

A black iron lantern, representing the light kept for the dead
Seven ivory nails, representing the seven witnesses said to have survived the Red Vigil
A strip of red cloth tied around the wrist during funerals attended by a Keeper
An inverted flame, used by senior members as a discreet sign that a message concerns the Hollow Sovereign

DressThe Ashen Regiment wears dark iron or boiled leather over charcoal cloth, with bone-colored cords marking rank and duty. Knights cover their faces during rites, but not in ordinary dealings. Officers carry small black lantern badges rather than elaborate heraldry. Civilian Keepers dress according to local custom and usually wear only a narrow strip of red cloth inside a sleeve or around a funeral ledger.

Standing

AlignmentNeutral Evil

AgeThirty-one years since its public founding; its spiritual roots reach back at least two centuries.

WealthHigh by the standards of a secret society, though its resources are distributed across charities, private accounts, caches, and military supply lines. The Ashen Regiment is well equipped for a clandestine force but cannot sustain a prolonged conventional war.

What they say they want

Provide dignified burial for the poor, the forgotten, and the unclaimed.

Preserve the names and stories of the dead against war, plague, and political erasure.

Prevent grave robbing and protect family tombs.

Offer practical aid to veterans and bereaved households.

What they are doing now

Increase the number of soul-taking sites concealed beneath cemeteries, battlefields, and roadside shrines.

Identify a powerful relic called the Cinder Crown, believed to be buried somewhere in the ruins of the ancient empire of Mereth.

Keep the newly awakened evil from consuming its own followers before the Crown is found.

Recruit military veterans, undertakers, disgraced clergy, and people with unresolved grief.

Discredit investigators by planting evidence that frames rival faiths and political dissidents.

Where it leads

The Kharad Vey publicly envision a world in which no soul is abandoned, no burial is denied, and every dead person is remembered. Their deeper leadership imagines a continent bound into a single funerary order under the Hollow Sovereign, with the Cinder Crown granting the power to claim souls regardless of distance or death. Whether this would be a peaceful communion or an empire of the dead is the central question the faction refuses to answer.

How others see them

To ordinary people, the Kharad Vey are a somber but dependable network of mourners who appear when institutions fail. In regions with weak burial services, their hospice workers are sincerely valued. Clergy and officials often consider them secretive and unsettling, but hard evidence of their crimes is scarce. Veterans may praise the Ashen Regiment's discipline, while survivors of its operations describe them as patient, courteous, and merciless.

People

5 ranks

The Listening Vessel

Mother Edris

Gentle in conversation, relentless in negotiation, and capable of accepting terrible losses if she can describe them as temporary. She rarely raises her voice and remembers every broken promise.

The Listening Vessel1 member
The senior interpreter of the Hollow Sovereign's utterances. Claims no personal authority, yet determines which voices count as commands. The role is currently held by Mother Edris.
The Bell Synod7 members
Regional leaders who oversee doctrine, finance, recruitment, and intelligence. They make policy by recorded vote, but the Listening Vessel may declare a command beyond debate.
The Ashen Regiment420 members
Knights, scouts, quartermasters, and attached specialists. The regiment is the cult's visible armed arm and is divided into companies operating across several nations.
Keepers of the Last Names1,100 members
Cell leaders, undertakers, couriers, healers, record clerks, and local recruiters. Many are true believers; others think they serve a secretive funerary charity.
The Unlit6,000 members
Uninitiated sympathizers and temporary allies. They provide lodging, rumors, transport, donations, and access to cemeteries, often without knowing the faction's full purpose.

Other key members

Seln Arvo Prior-General of the Ashen Regiment and commander of the artifact expedition.
Pell Keeper of records at the Sump of Bells and potential whistleblower.
Krzat Vey of the Salt March Knight-Captain of the Third Company, rival claimant to Seln's command.
Haru Nao Confessor and custodian of the ritual fragments used in the soul-taking ceremonies.

How they are organised

How it is runReligious conspiracy with a military regiment and federated local cells

Who comes nextThe Listening Vessel is selected by a vote of the Bell Synod after the previous Vessel dies, disappears, or is formally declared unable to interpret the Sovereign. Candidates must undergo a night alone with the black iron bell. The Synod claims that the bell's response is decisive, but Mother Edris's rise established that political support matters as much as revelation. The Prior-General is appointed by the Synod, yet the regiment's officers expect to confirm any appointment through a council of company captains. If Edris dies before the Cinder Crown is found, Seln may attempt to split the regiment from the civilian cult, while Haru Nao could claim that the Sovereign has selected him directly.

How they recruitRecruitment begins with useful, often sincere service. A prospective member may be asked to carry medicine, repair a grave marker, or help locate a missing body. After several tasks, a Keeper offers a place in the organization and explains its rules of secrecy. Deeper initiation is gradual: members are taught fragments of the cult's beliefs and asked to surrender a personal keepsake to the bell sanctuary. Only senior members learn that the rites can take souls. Knights are recruited separately, usually from veterans or failed political retainers, and must swear to protect the cell before learning its full doctrine.

To join

Applicants must provide a true name for someone the world has forgotten, or explain why they have no such name.
New members must complete a period of service in a hospice, funeral house, or supply company.
Initiates swear not to sell, surrender, or falsify a fellow member's burial record without authorization.
Knights must survive a night watch beside an unclaimed grave without leaving their post. This is a cultural test, not a supernatural guarantee.
The cult accepts people of any ancestry or prior allegiance, but requires obedience to the cell's secrecy rules.

Operations

What they do

Recruiting mourners, veterans, funeral workers, and the socially abandoned

Maintaining hospices and burial services as fronts and genuine community institutions

Stealing souls through concealed rites

Searching ruins and archives for the Cinder Crown

Training and deploying the Ashen Regiment

Forging records and manipulating the public account of death

How they do it

Recruit through grief support, funeral assistance, veteran relief, and the recovery of missing bodies.

Steal souls during disguised funerary rites using custom occult procedures; the exact effects vary by region and are not standard D&D 5E spells.

Use the Ashen Regiment to guard ritual sites, raid archives, escort relic hunters, and punish informants.

Record deaths under false names or mark victims as transported, buried elsewhere, or lost to disease.

Exploit local disputes, paying one side to create an apparently ordinary stream of casualties.

Offer blackmail, debt relief, or protection to officials rather than relying solely on threats.

Services for hire

Last RitesA donation of coin, supplies, or a favor owed to a local Keeper.
Funerary aid, grave repair, a memorial record, or discreet recovery of remains. This service is often sincere and open to nonmembers.
Quiet PassageA significant fee or a promise of silence.
Forged travel papers, altered death records, or the relocation of a body. The service carries a risk of blackmail if the client later becomes inconvenient.
Names Beneath the DustA personal secret, a recovered relic, or a future service.
Information about old battle sites, unmarked graves, or the movements of regional military forces.
Lantern EscortCustomary payment plus a sworn obligation to the local cell.
Armed escort by a small group of Ashen Regiment veterans. They are disciplined guards, but may report the client's route and companions to their superiors.

What they can do

The faction can quietly identify recent deaths and missing bodies through its network of funeral workers and record keepers.

Its knights can move across borders using legitimate supply routes, charitable missions, and forged identities.

Its senior ritualists perform custom soul-taking rites. These are homebrew setting effects, not standard D&D 5E spells, and their limits should be defined by the campaign.

The cult can create strong local trust through genuine practical assistance, making early signs of its presence difficult to distinguish from ordinary charity.

The black iron bell can carry the Hollow Sovereign's voice through a ritual chamber, but it does not grant a general ability to communicate over arbitrary distances.

What they have

The Ashen Regiment, a trained force with scouts, mounted couriers, engineers, and officers experienced in border warfare.

A network of funeral houses, hospices, crypt keepers, and record clerks that provides information and discreet movement.

The black iron bell at the Sump of Bells, a relic that amplifies the Hollow Sovereign's voice during custom rites.

Forged travel papers and access to the shipping and caravan routes of the Quiet Ledger.

Lists of recent deaths, missing persons, and unclaimed bodies in several major regions.

Hidden caches of weapons, burial supplies, and coin maintained in abandoned shrines.

Where they are weak

The faction depends on secrecy and becomes vulnerable when multiple governments share verified evidence.

Its network is broad but decentralized; local cells may ignore central orders or conceal resources from the Synod.

The regiment's artifact hunt creates predictable supply trails and divides its attention from protecting local operations.

The Hollow Sovereign's commands are incomplete and sometimes contradictory, leaving leaders to interpret them for their own purposes.

Many members joined to care for the living and may defect when they learn the truth about soul theft.

The cult has few means of recovering stolen souls if a rite is disrupted; its assurances that the dead can be restored are unproven.

Territory

Headquarters

Near the abandoned customs settlement of Veyra's Ford, on the border between three rival states.

KindConcealed catacomb sanctuary and regional command post

The faction has no single headquarters. Its central sanctuary, the Sump of Bells, occupies flooded catacombs beneath a ruined customs house near the old imperial road. The upper floors appear to be a storehouse for funeral goods. Below, a maze of dry chambers holds stolen death registers, relics, training rooms, and a black iron bell that is rung only when the Hollow Sovereign speaks. The site is protected by mundane locks, paid watchmen, false walls, and custom warding rites. It is not an official D&D location or spell effect.

Lands they hold

Hidden cells across nine nations, concentrated along old imperial roads and major river routes

Funeral houses, hospices, and burial grounds in several cities

A concealed central sanctuary near Veyra's Ford

Temporary military camps maintained by the Ashen Regiment during its search for the Cinder Crown

The ruined territories of Mereth, where the cult believes its ultimate relic lies

Outposts

The Sump of BellsA disused toll station on the old imperial road, a day's ride from Veyra's Ford.Central sanctuary, ritual chamber, and archive for stolen death records.
Saint Orva's HouseA walled hospice in the river city of Cadrin.Publicly provides shelter and burial aid; covertly recruits mourners and tracks unclaimed bodies.
The Bent MileA deserted watch fort above the salt flats of the western marches.Staging post and training ground for the Third Company.
The Quiet Ledger RoomA cellar beneath a legitimate tombstone workshop in the capital of Mereth.Stores forged documents, bribes, and copies of royal burial registers.

Secrets

The big secret · GM only

The Hollow Sovereign is not the benevolent keeper of the dead described in the cult's sermons. It is a formerly mortal ruler whose soul was fractured and imprisoned in the Cinder Crown during the fall of Mereth. The Red Vigil restored enough of its mind to reach beyond the Crown, but it has been shaping the cult's theology to make the stolen souls a source of power. If the Crown is recovered, the Sovereign may gain a body or a durable foothold in the world. Mother Edris has seen evidence of this in the bell's newest visions and has concealed it from the Synod.

What they really want · GM only

Recover the Cinder Crown and use it to make the Hollow Sovereign permanent in the living world.

Gather enough souls to sustain the Sovereign through the Crown's awakening, even if the required number exceeds the cult's current plans.

Replace independent local governments with a continent-wide authority that controls burial, memory, and the disposition of the dead.

Secure a future in which senior leaders can choose which souls are claimed, rather than surrendering every initiate to the same fate.

Hidden plans · GM only

The Hollow Sovereign intends to use the Cinder Crown to anchor itself in the living world. Its promise to preserve the faithful may mean preserving them as bound souls, not living people.

Prior-General Seln is secretly considering a controlled betrayal: deliver the Crown to a rival power in exchange for a recognized military territory and autonomy from the cult's prophet.

The cult's confessors keep a private list of soul-takers who have begun to doubt the cause. They intend to use those members as test subjects for a rite that may separate a soul from its body without killing the victim.

Smaller secrets · GM only

A handful of Keepers have secretly returned stolen souls to grieving families, but the returned souls sometimes remember the place they were held.

The black iron bell was cast from melted funeral coins donated by people who believed they were funding a public hospice.

Seln's artifact maps include one route that leads to an empty tomb. He uses it to identify which of his officers are sharing intelligence.

Several Unlit supporters believe the faction is merely an austere burial charity and would be horrified to learn what happens to the dead in its care.

Krzat has hidden a small group of living captives in an abandoned waystation, claiming she is protecting them from a failed rite.

What insiders say · GM only

Trouble inside · GM only

The central dispute is whether the Kharad Vey serve the dead, the Hollow Sovereign, or the living followers who built the movement. The Listening Vessel insists that the Sovereign's commands are sacred. The Ashen Regiment's officers see the cult as a military power and want the Cinder Crown to secure independence. Local Keepers often joined to protect mourners from neglect and are horrified by mass soul-taking. The Bell Synod contains both cautious administrators and zealots who believe hesitation is a betrayal. There is also a sharp class divide: commanders and senior confessors receive protected burials and private spiritual counsel, while ordinary initiates are told that surrendering their souls is their highest honor.

Crimes · GM only

Plot hooks

6 hooks

1
The Letter After Burial
Personal; suitable for a single character or a short investigation.Reward: A family truth, a rescued soul, or a dangerous ally among the Keepers.
A character receives a letter from a dead relative, written in the relative's hand after the funeral. It contains a plea for help and a warning about a local Keeper who has been kind to the character's family.
2
Names Scraped Clean
Local; investigation, social choices, and a possible confrontation with a small cult cell.Reward: Evidence, local gratitude, and the chance to turn a Keeper against the cult.
A village's cemetery records have been altered, and several families insist their dead are missing from the graves. The local hospice is genuinely helping the poor, but its cellar contains a concealed ritual chamber.
3
A Captain's Quiet Mutiny
Regional; infiltration or negotiation with an armed outpost.Reward: A map fragment, a potential faction defector, and a choice about exposing Krzat's actions.
Krzat asks the party to extract captives from the Bent Mile before Seln's officers discover she has hidden them. The captives include a wounded cult knight and a foreign cartographer who has seen part of the route to the Cinder Crown.
4
The Ledger That Must Not Burn
Regional; competing factions, protection, and difficult decisions about disclosure.Reward: Political leverage, the Last Vigil's trust, or a chance to broker a temporary truce.
The Last Vigil has acquired a ledger proving that the Kharad Vey have operated in several nations. Publishing it may unite rulers against the cult, but the ledger also names innocent families whom the cult uses as informants. The Vigil asks the party to secure it before both sides arrive.
5
The Crown Beneath Mereth
Campaign-scale; exploration, faction strategy, and a consequential choice about the relic.Reward: Access to the Crown, a continent-wide alliance, or knowledge of the Hollow Sovereign's true nature.
Seln's greater regiment has found a sealed route into Mereth's ruins, but an allied expedition has vanished there. The party can race the regiment to the Cinder Crown, join its search under false pretenses, or persuade Edris to delay the operation.
6
Seven Bells in the Dark
Campaign-scale; supernatural crisis, moral dilemma, and a possible schism within the faction.Reward: A chance to free the stolen souls, alter the faction's leadership, or give the Sovereign a stronger foothold.
The black iron bell begins ringing without hands, and every soul the cult has stolen speaks through it at once. The voices disagree: some demand release, some warn that destroying the bell will kill them, and one voice claims to be Oru Vask, the founder.

Work they offer

1Recover the remains of an unclaimed soldier from a battlefield before scavengers or rival powers reach them.

2Escort hospice supplies through a contested border district.

3Find a missing Keeper who carried a death register needed to correct a family's records.

4Retrieve a funerary relic from an imperial ruin without alerting the Crown's agents.

5Silence a blackmailer who threatens to reveal the identity of a local cell.

What gets in the way

The awakening presence can communicate only through the dead whose souls it has already taken, and sometimes gives contradictory orders.

The knights need living communities intact to keep producing souls, while the cult's most zealous members want immediate mass sacrifice.

Some stolen souls are returned altered, carrying memories that reveal the cult's methods to survivors.

The greater regiment's artifact hunt is led by officers who may have no intention of sharing the prize with the awakened evil.

Rumours

1True: The cult maintains a list of people who died without a recorded burial, and its members can often find a missing body faster than the authorities.

2True: The Ashen Regiment has been searching for an ancient relic in the ruins of Mereth.

3True: Some victims of the cult's rites are alive but no longer seem to recognize their own families.

4False: The Kharad Vey poison wells to create the dead they harvest. Most of their operations rely on existing deaths or isolated killings, and this rumor was spread by a rival seeking to incite a purge.

5False: Every hospice worker in their colors is a cultist. Some are merely paid staff, volunteers, or people who believe in the public mission.

6Uncertain: The founder Oru Vask still speaks from inside the bell. The voice has been heard, but no one knows whether it is truly Oru, the Sovereign, or a stolen memory.

The Kharad Vey

The Kharad Vey

Overview

How it began

How to know them

Standing

What they say they want

What they are doing now

Where it leads

How others see them

People

The Listening Vessel

Other key members

How they are organised

Relations

Operations

What they do

How they do it

Services for hire

What they can do

What they have

Where they are weak

Territory

Headquarters

Lands they hold

Outposts

Secrets

Plot hooks

Work they offer

What gets in the way

Rumours

Media

Turn The Kharad Vey into a sheet