Factionplot: Rotten Teeth
After 300 years of lockdown, the Ivory order survives only as a broken inheritance. Its banners, ranks, and oaths remain, but its unity is gone. In The bowls, the Order has decayed into raiders, gangs, and protection rackets. In The grove, it has become a frontier force split between settlers, patrols, and zealots. In the inner city, it still resembles a disciplined institution, holding the line between the Court of gems and The Gold administration. When the magical storm returns, the old question of who has the right to enforce order becomes urgent again. Some members search for the original history of the Order to restore legitimacy. Others turn toward harsher doctrines of fear, hierarchy, sacrifice, and extermination. Tiamat’s influence does not create the fracture, but exploits it, first through specific subbranches and then through entire branches.
Plot points/Scenes
The Ivory order once served as zyrokhil’s shield and sword: a Dragonborn-led military order that acted as police, riot-breakers, executioners, and defenders of the city, while The Gold administration handled much of the civil and administrative side of justice. Its jurisdiction was strongest in violent crime, public safety, and existential threats. During the Closed Gates Period, that unified order shattered. Cut off from barracks and command, each district legion adapted to local conditions. In The bowls, the Order became corrupt and vigilante, leaning into local justice and protection rackets. In The grove, it became a settler force hostile to the Herd of Oriria and shaped by frontier pressure. On The hill of seats, it became a border guard, mediating the tense divide between the Court of gems and the Gold Administration. The old symbols remain, as do the harsh discipline, sacrificial creed, and memory of the old Order’s authority. But by the start of the campaign, there is no single Ivory Order left, only rival claimants to its legacy. Then the magical storm breaks over Zyrokhil, reactivating old dangers, old relics, and old ambitions.
Act I. Divided Loyalties
General description:
The storm reveals the full fragmentation of the Ivory Order and forces each main branch to respond according to its own district logic.
- Bowls branch: the whole branch fractures into scavenging violence, criminal power, and decaying veteran holdouts.
- Old guard: least active, old soldiers hiding out in old forts. They are not good, they still do some raiding and see it as their due. But only to survive.
- Vrakseth gang: the most organised, most corrupt gang. A big powerblock in the Bowls allied to the Bowlscrapers.
- Loose gangs: representing power vacuums and each loose group of soldiers going out for themselves. Low level NPCs.
- Grove branch: the whole branch is split between settlers, patrols, and ideological hardliners.
- Settlers: do not want to be embroiled in war. They want to rebuild the city, claim a space in the Grove, see the return of trade routes, and embed again into the wider city.
- Ranger patrol: under Vorrak Vexun, also slightly old. Mostly looking out for the settlers and not wanting too much hassle. But they will step up if asked.
- Tharian caesin’s crew: already embroiled with Tiamat from the start of the campaign, and the center out of which the belief spreads. Most authoritarian, starting with the campaign of magic extermination and druid genocide.
- Hill of Seats branch: the whole branch still acts like a functioning institution guarding both elite powers from each other.
- Main camp: most militant and organised, well disciplined. Looking for the history of the Ivory Order and to gain legitimacy if this history is found.
- Court of Gems guards: a group of the inner city Ivory Order guards the Court of Gems Elves. They do not belong to the Court of Gems. They are only guards and are treated as both captors and protectors by the Court. These soldiers are lazy and look down on the others because they have been guarding the Court. They hold animosity toward the Gold Administration guards, who have let the Gold Administration attack multiple times.
- Gold Administration guards: way too few guards for the size of the Gold Administration population. They are overwhelmed and look down on the lazy Court of Gems guards.
Act II. Scales of Justice
General description:
Each main branch starts enforcing order in its own way. The main branches retain their overall identity, but the harshest shifts happen first inside specific subbranches.
- Bowls branch: the whole branch turns enforcement into extortion, intimidation, and ownership of territory.
- Old guard: claim that survival entitles them to take what they need.
- Vrakseth gang: weaponizes the language of order to legitimize criminal rule.
- Loose gangs: imitate Ivory symbols while hollowing out Ivory law.
- Grove branch: the whole branch begins tying justice to land, belonging, and security.
- Settlers: begin treating land claims as moral claims and local rebuilding as justification for exclusion.
- Ranger patrol: tries to preserve a narrower code of duty and proportional force.
- Tharian’s crew: frames extermination as necessary security and spreads the doctrine further through the branch.
- Hill of Seats branch: the whole branch still presents itself as the most functional executor of order.
- Main camp: presents itself as the only subbranch still capable of impartial discipline.
- Court of Gems guards: treat protection like custodianship over a decaying prisoner-court.
- Gold Administration guards: begin seeing emergency repression as the only workable policy.
- Tiamat’s influence: at this stage it primarily affects specific subbranches rather than entire branches.
- Vrakseth gang: eventually becomes mixed with Tiamat.
- Loose gangs: quickly become mixed with Tiamat.
- Tharian’s crew: is embroiled with Tiamat from the start.
- Gold Administration guards: are one of the inner city subbranches most likely to become embroiled in Tiamat if encountered.
- Settlers: can become influenced by Tiamat, but not likely.
- Ranger patrol: is the least likely to be influenced by Tiamat.
- Main camp: is very unlikely to fall to Tiamat.
Act III. Ancient Oaths
General description:
The rediscovery of Ivory history and sacred oaths creates an identity crisis across all three main branches. The branch-wide crisis is shared, but each subbranch interprets the old Order through its own needs.
- All three main branches: are forced to confront that the old Order was meant to protect the city, not own it.
- Bowls branch: reads the old oath through hunger, force, and entitlement.
- Old guard: treat old service as proof that they are still owed survival.
- Vrakseth gang: reworks sacrifice into the right to dominate.
- Loose gangs: reduce the oath to scraps of symbolism, rank display, and opportunistic violence.
- Grove branch: reads the old oath through settlement, defense, and purification.
- Settlers: read duty as the right to hold land and rebuild on their own terms.
- Ranger patrol: reads duty as guardianship without unnecessary escalation.
- Tharian’s crew: reads duty as purity, extermination, and holy coercion.
- Hill of Seats branch: reads the old oath through continuity, legitimacy, and executive command.
- Main camp: searches for the lost history of the Ivory Order to prove legitimate succession.
- Court of Gems guards: use tradition to justify stagnation, privilege, and their isolated role.
- Gold Administration guards: use tradition to justify emergency concentration of power.
- Reformists: emerge in every branch who argue that the Order must be reunited under principle rather than hunger, fear, or doctrine.
- Tiamat’s corruption: keeps spreading by telling individual subbranches that theirs is the only rightful interpretation.
Act IV. Guardians at War
General description:
Competing claims to legitimacy turn subbranch rivalry into branch-wide conflict. At this stage, actions by individual subbranches begin dragging their whole main branches into open war.
- Hill of Seats branch: the whole branch moves first toward recentralization and triggers open resistance.
- Main camp: attempts to impose a chain of command over all Ivory remnants.
- Court of Gems guards: undermine inner-city unity through resentment, complacency, and passivity.
- Gold Administration guards: become one of the inner city’s main entry points for harsher authoritarian logic.
- Bowls branch: the whole branch rejects central authority unless it serves profit, protection, or survival.
- Vrakseth gang: allies with the Bowlscrapers and expands through organized violence.
- Loose gangs: become the easiest channel through which Tiamat enters the streets.
- Old guard: are forced to choose between fading out or joining larger powers.
- Grove branch: the whole branch is pulled from internal tension into open ideological war.
- Settlers: resist being dragged into a larger war but are drawn in by pressure from all sides.
- Ranger patrol: is pulled between frontier pragmatism and branch loyalty.
- Tharian’s crew: escalates the conflict through anti-magic purges and druid genocide.
- All branches: clash over prisoners, relics, archives, district borders, and who has the right to speak in the name of the Ivory Order.
Act V. Dragon’s Inheritance
General description:
The war becomes a struggle over the future meaning of law, protection, and authority in Zyrokhil. The main branches now act as competing political visions, but each branch is still shaped by whichever subbranch dominates it internally.
- Hill of Seats branch: seeks reunification through legitimacy, discipline, and command.
- Main camp: pushes historical continuity and formal central authority.
- Court of Gems guards: drift toward custodial stagnation and passive domination.
- Gold Administration guards: drift toward emergency authoritarianism backed by administrative necessity.
- Bowls branch: seeks a market of force where protection belongs to whoever pays or conquers.
- Old guard: push survivalist entitlement and harsh veteran privilege.
- Vrakseth gang: pushes the branch toward organized extraction and criminal governance.
- Loose gangs: keep the branch unstable, fragmented, and easy for darker influence to use.
- Grove branch: seeks secured space, frontier order, and control over who belongs.
- Settlers: push local autonomy, rebuilding, and claim-making.
- Ranger patrol: seeks a narrower restoration of duty without total ideological capture.
- Tharian’s crew: seeks a purified Order built around extermination, obedience, and sacralized control.
- Reformists: try to build a fourth path through reunification under the original oath.
- Tiamat’s greatest success: is that Bowls predation and Grove purity begin to converge into the same authoritarian logic, while parts of the inner city begin justifying it as necessity.
- Final struggle: no longer centers only on who leads the Ivory Order, but on whether law remains a public duty or becomes a dragon’s claim over the city.
End state if nothing is done
If nothing is done, the most likely outcome is not a clean victory by one existing subbranch, but a corrupted reunification of the Ivory Order under a hardline synthesis. The main camp provides the structure, archives, and military legitimacy. The Gold Administration guards provide the appetite for emergency repression. Tharian Caesin’s crew provides the purity doctrine, anti-magic crusade, and moral fanaticism. The Bowls factions, especially the Vrakseth network, provide methods of extraction, intimidation, and territorial rule. The result is a restored Ivory Order in form, but a Tiamat-shaped one in substance: a citywide military-police regime that speaks in the language of sacrifice and protection while practicing selective justice, political terror, magical purges, and coercive domination. It would present itself as the long-awaited restoration of law. In reality, it would merge the Bowls’ predation and the Grove’s exterminatory zeal into a single authoritarian order.
Themes
- executive force without moral restraint
- the difference between protection and domination
- institutional decay under long isolation
- old oaths versus local survival logic
- whether a broken order can be reformed before it reunifies as tyranny
