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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 2152718" data-attributes="member: 13966">Interesting.  And I've been waiting all day to post my contribution to the Aleasani underworld. {:^D  I'll keep my next several contributions short and succinct after this one...  Now, my contribution:While Aleasana is rife with political maneuvering, and warfare to claim the throne for a unified kingdom, the land has its share of cults, arms merchants, anarchists, rebels, and revolutionaries who all seek to prevent reunification, and would rather see Aleasana further divided.The Bleak Ascension is one of the smaller of these groups, a semi-secret network of individuals working together to try and find divine ascension through necromantic means.  Their desire for personal ascension is a factor in their utter refusal to associate with, let alone by influenced or ruled by, the Odraani Imperium.  Bleakists of the Ascension seek to dominate others and rule over the living as undead overlords, but they always plan for the long-term and seek means of self-preservation first and foremost, as they can't very well lord over anything if they're dead in a few mere decades or centuries.  They use the undead as tools to secure their own personal ascension and acquire their own domains.  Bleakists are lead by the Bleak Archons, a very small but (they hope) gradually-growing council of liches, vampire lords, spectres, and wights, but as of yet the Bleakists have not found any consistent, reliable means of transformation into powerful undead retaining their original minds and souls.  None wish to be dominated by their fellows, but are willing to serve in a limited fashion until they have their own domains and subjects.  The Bleak Archons still seek ascension to higher, grander, more deific forms of undeath, but have at least their immortality for now, allowing them to plan without worrying that their time will run out.Another small group opposed to Aleasana is the Revolutionist Concordat, a large band of anarchs, rebels, and revolutionaries who control a small group of towns and villages near eastern Aleasana.  The Concordat desires nothing but the collapse of Aleasana's government systems, with most of the members desiring free cities ruled by the people, and other members simply wishing for anarchy or revenge against the Aleasani rulers.  The Revolutionists are active in many small cells across the country, but many focus on "liberating" more territories around the Concordat proper.One of the larger organizations trying to bring down Aleasana is the Black Orrery, a widespread and highly-secretive cult that works mostly through individuals and tiny cells.  Members of the Black Orrery become pieces of an infernal machine, a vast network of inhuman monstrosities disturbingly similar to their once-humanoid identities.  They integrate ghastly and reprehensible grafts of necrotic, fiendish, and chaositech into their bodies, leaving them barely recognizable and irredeemably diabolical.  The Black Orrery seeks nothing less sinister than to align the outer planes, through annual rituals and vile deeds that often require precise placement of cultists in specific locations and positions, for the ultimate goal of cutting off the celestial realms and leaving wide-open a path for their lords, the inscrutable machine-fiends, who will overrun the world and tear everything down, setting up hell in the mortal world.Another, equally sinister and even larger, less secretive foe is the Nihilus Solution, a scattered cult that seeks the utter destruction and annihilation of the world, for the purpose of everything being re-created in a more perfect form, preferably by Nihilus cultists ascended to divinity by the act of destroying and absorbing the essence of the world.  Many in Nihilus are devotees of destroyer gods and spirits, and as a whole the cult just wants everything eliminated, with the faithful believing that their deities will recreate the world, not cultists of the Solution.The other major faction in the underworld of Aleasana's fractured kingdom is the Nightshade Cabal, extremely secretive (as in, "speak of us openly and find a poisoned dagger sprouting from your back before the day is through, because we'll know") but somewhat less sinister than the others, merely working to maintain the divided, warring state of Aleasana much as it is today, and as it was in the War of Deadly Voices.  The Nightshade Cabal is chiefly composed of death merchants, who sell weaponry, siege equipment, ammunition, armor, foodstuffs, and other military supplies to the factions of Aleasana.  A few other members of Nightshade, the elite of the organization, are assassins who seek to perpetuate the wars in Aleasana, knowing well the dearth of profits that can be earned in wartime assassination, arms dealing, logistics control, and political manipulation.  The Cabal also contains a sizeable number of infiltrators, spies, and thieves who observe Aleasani politicking and back-room deals and the like, and to steal or copy important documents or other items, which includes blackmail and bribery material on occasion.  A few cabalists are thugs, enforcers, mages, or priests, with cabalist mages often focusing on divination, abjuration, and illusion, and cabalist priests often dedicated to deities of death, warfare, strife, or greed.  The Nightshade Cabal also maintains some formidable mercenary companies, soldiers of fortune who are either oblivious to the Cabal's other activities (knowing their employers by some false moniker or a merchant cartel "front"), or held on a short leash in the case of those initiated into the Cabal's true face.  These mercenaries are often used by Aleasana's factions to balance the power in battles, generally with a Cabal factor or faceman coordinating the contract (and manipulating the desired faction into purchasing the contract, based on what will better promote and maintain continual, profitable Nightshade business).  Strangely enough, to ensure the security of their livelyhood and indeed their own lives, the Nightshade Cabal works simultaneously to prevent invasions or wars with the non-human groups outside Aleasana proper, because they can't have non-humans overrunning the shattered kingdom and incidentally wiping out the Cabal or its lucrative business with the Aleasani factions.</blockquote>

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