The Restless Dead
Reminders of the sins of a nascent Empire, preserved by hatred and peat, now shambling from the mire.
The Forsaken King
Though his name is long forgotten, the terrible ramifications of his hubris shall echo through the ages.
Engines of Rotten Flesh
As the revolution grew more desperate, the peaceful Cyclops were driven out of their isolated homesteads and pressed into service.
5E-Ready Supplements
5E-Faction Book
This Book contains 5E-Ready statblocks for all the miniatures from this forlorn faction, alongside a full account of the terrible legacy left by the Forsaken King and his failed rebellion.
Dreadlights - 5E Adventure
Escort the Engineer Lunden through the foetid swamps in this one-shot adventure, which offers an extremely atmospheric and terrifying introduction to the Deadmire. Will your party survive, or fall prey to the Dreadlights?
Deadmire was once a richly fertile vassal state within the bounds of the Western Empire, nestled within a great river basin to the Southeast, the rich, flowing waters, and balmy ocean winds swept much of the Cataclysm's radiating corruption elsewhere, leaving the land surprisingly untouched, in spite of its proximity to the Ashen Wastes themselves. The state was a true bread-basket, providing food for much of the rest of the Azerai Empire through the deprivations of those early days where new order was rebuilt from the madness of the Old Capital’s destruction.
This was until the Lord of this vassal state, which would become the Deadmire, grew dissatisfied with his lot. That an upstart faith and symbol of the failed old order might impose such tithe and demands upon his lands sat ill with him and his court. While the inevitable intrigues and politiking are lost to history, we know that the Lord proclaimed himself a King in his own right, and proclaimed independence from the nascent Azerai Empire.
Like an inexorable boulder, the zealous ranks of the Penitent Crusade rolled into the revolting kingdom. With steel blade, iron-shod boot and roiling flame they purged all in their path, indiscriminately slaying both soldier and common folk alike. Keeps, villages and even lonely hovels were burnt and shattered, their owners slain and their corpses trodden into the deep earth. So total was the annihilation, that near-none were left alive in the Crusade’s wake.
In the silence that followed, the countless corpses and dark emotions of that war seeped into the land itself, poisoning and corrupting the once fertile valley. The crops withered in the fields, with no one to harvest them, the sweet rot mingled with the abundance of new corpse matter. Algal blooms clogged the clear streams, and the Deadmire was born.
To the common folk, the lost truth of what happened in the Deadmire has morphed into a cautionary parable, likely helped along the way by the Church itself - in the common belief, Deadmire is a grave tale of the horror that awaits any hubristic enough to spurn the safety offered by the Azerai Empire.
Such parables-turned sermons as these are a critical part of Azerai’s control over the Empire. In a land so beset by horrors from without and within, the Penitent Crusade is spread thin and hard pressed to defend the realm from all threats. Indeed, a full half of their ranks are near permanently posted along the borders of the Ashen Wastes, locked in an endless war of attrition with the Eternal Legions.
If the folk of the realm knew how desperate things truly are, then there would be little to stop the Empire from collapsing under the weight of fear and violence…
