The Elder Kin
The Family Elders, the journey to adulthood in the rodentine warrens filling them with strange wisdom.
5E-Ready Faction Book
The Kin of the Rat Faction Book contains a wealth of information about these misbegotten and downtrodden folk, and their place within an uncaring Empire.
The Kin of the Rat make an ideal faction to encounter when your party ventures into the teeming depths of an Azerai city. Exploring themes of social inequity, twisted family bonds, and unrelenting horror, the Kin offer countless opportunities for morally complex and unsettling tales. Through them, the party can glimpse the darker corners of the Azerai Empire and its neglected underbelly.
This PDF Booklet contains Lore, Adventure Prompts and 5E-Ready Statblocks for the full Kin of the Rat Collection, alongside a raft of inspiration to integrate this strange foe into your own campaign!
Life in the Azerai Empire is one of ceaseless hardship, particularly in the shadow of its great cities. The poor, the hungry, the homeless, and the forsaken occupy every corner, their suffering a discordant note against the Azerai Empire’s grandeur. Here, hunger claws at the soul, shelter is a fleeting luxury, and poverty is a lifelong curse. Orphans, lost children, are the Empire’s most invisible citizens, their names forgotten before they can even take root in this cruel world. They wander the streets like ghosts, taken in by the dark corners of society or devoured by its unseen terrors.
Yet, in the deepest reaches of despair, strange bargains are struck. Dark entities, from beyond the mortal veil, wait in silence for the desperate to approach. They offer promises of power, protection, or purpose to those with nothing left to lose, ripe pickings indeed in such places as these.
The greatest cities of the Azerai Empire stand atop, and often within, the ruined remnants of the Old Empire that once spanned Doaden. The architectural marvels of that lost age have left their mark, sprawling subterranean systems, including sewers, complexes, and inscrutable chambers, twisting deep beneath the urban surface. These forgotten passages are labyrinthine, their true depths and purposes lost to time.
In the immediate aftermath of the Cataclysm, the few survivors sought refuge within these ancient burrows, scavenging what little they could to survive. The horrors and deprivation of those desperate days have faded from the written record, but the dark recesses below hold an indelible memory of terror, staining the soiled walls and forgotten corners of this subterranean kingdom.
Today, these tunnels are eschewed by most ‘decent’ folk, yet they have become a refuge for those seeking sanctuary from the ever-watchful eyes of the Azerai Church, and more terrible things besides…
