Cult of the Leviathan

"I have been Beyond and seen what beings are there."

— The Little Dragon

The Cult of the Leviathan was a religious organization founded and led by the Little Dragon during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Their mission was to bring their god, an outsider entity they called Leviathan into this world. In pursuit of this, they attempted to conquer as much of the world as they could in a series of conflicts known as the Dragon Wars.

The Birth of the Dragon

During the Church Wars, the Kingdom of Carovingia was torn apart. The royal family of Carovingia claimed direct descent from the Prophet of the West, and was particularly tied to The Church as a result. When the towns of northern Carovingia embraced the reformation movements in 1542, the reaction from the crown was swift and brutal. Hundreds of people were burned in the name of The Church and God in Heaven, and hundreds more fled the country or hid their beliefs from the soldiers of the crown.

For a generation, nobody dared challenge The Church in Carovingia. But in 1566 the flag of rebellion was raised again, and this time they were prepared for war. Over the next two centuries, the country was wracked by civil wars. It was divided and reformed over and over, and hardly an acre of land was not a battlefield at some point. Finally, the warring sides agreed to a compromise that promised freedom of religion, a restored nation, and the return of the monarchy under the charismatic and progressive Prince Antoine the Fair.

The coronation of Antoine was set for 1783, and the country held its breath. Many believed that something would happen to destroy the fragile agreement and plunge Carovingia back into war. And they were right to fear this, for in the final days of 1782 Antoine the Fair was slain by the poisoned knife of an assassin.

The murderer did not outlive his victim for long, and the attendants of Prince Antoine managed to keep his death a secret from all except a select few. Despite the risks it posed, they chose to flout law and sense and brought their prince's body to the notorious Grüber Clinic, where they performed the highly illegal Rites of Resurrection. When the Rites succeeded, Antoine seemed unchanged by his brief death, and they released a modified story wherein he had merely been badly hurt, and the clinic had restored him. This is still the story the Grüber Clinic maintains to be true, although few believe them.

Prince Antoine was crowned King Antoine the Fair, third of his name, in 1783. He proved to be everything Carovingia hoped for. He skillfully balanced the many factions of the nation, healing many of the ancient wounds and uniting a people long fractured. But in private, he was making preparations of his own. He selected and groomed those who would later be key to the operations of the Cult of the Leviathan, and began systematically converting the governmental apparatus of Carovingia to the Cult's needs. And those who he recruited knew him as The Little Dragon.

The Dragon Wars

For twenty years, the Cult grew in secret. With the support of the King, they were able to infiltrate every position of power in Carovingia, transforming the nation into an extension of the Cult itself. Meanwhile, they used subtle propaganda to prepare the populace for the eventual war to come. In 1803, Carovingia's forces began their march across Elbid with a surprise attack on the neighboring country of Osin to the north. The move startled the nations of Elbid, who then scrambled to defend themselves against the Carovingian aggression. But the Cult brought many strange and eldritch magics to the battlefield, and over the next decade much of western Elbid fell to their forces. Those who remained independent were in dire straits, and while the Empire of Albion had entered the fray in 1805, they were only able to stall the forces of Carovingia, not push them back.

Kemet and the Mu Confederation

In 1813, the Cult of the Leviathan conducted the most powerful arcane ritual in modern history when it attacked the Pharaoh Undying of Kemet. Kemet had long been the most powerful and influential nation in the world, and the Pharaoh was the oldest and most skilled of the Living Gods. The Cult's ritual attacked the Pharaoh's connection with his worshippers, and triggered the Calamity in Kemet, when nearly the entire population of the nation died in a single stroke. The Pharaoh himself was destroyed by the ritual, and the massive loss of life served to feed the magical powers of the Cult.

Until this point, the Living Gods of Lemuria had observed the Dragon Wars from afar, but had not involved themselves personally. However, the destruction of the Pharaoh Undying proved to be too much of a threat for them to ignore. For the first time in history, the nations of Lemuria all joined together into the alliance known as the Mu Confederation, and entered the war against the Cult of the Leviathan.

With the might of the Living Gods arrayed against them, the Cult began to lose ground. In 1815, the allied forces of Elbid, the Empire of Albion, and The Mu Confederation converged on Tolousa, the capital of Carovingia. When it became clear that an invasion of the city would cost countless lives, the Living Gods enacted the only cooperative ritual in their history and pulled a great stone from the sky to smite Tolousa. The city, and all within it or nearby were killed instantly. While no bodies were ever recovered from the ruins of the Palace, it is widely believed that the Little Dragon died that day, and he has not been seen in the fifteen years since.

Scattered and Gone

While historians mark the destruction of Tolousa as the end of the Dragon Wars, it was not the end of the Cult. Prominent Cultists scattered throughout the world, hiding their former identities and their magical skills. Many of these were later brought to Albion as a part of Operation Bankpin, an effort by the Albion Ministry of Correspondence to ensure ongoing magical supremacy. Others were hunted down and tried for their crimes during the wars, with almost all trials ending in executions. Today, the hunt for remaining cultists has been taken up by the Orphans of Kemet, a group of people who survived the Calamity in Kemet due to their extreme youth, and who have grown up as orphans in the care of theEmpire of Albion as a consequence. The Orphans are implacable in hunting down and eliminating the remaining members of the Cult, and claim that far more of them survived than is widely believed.

Type

Religious, Cult

Leader

The Little Dragon

Related Historical Events

• 1813 ID
  The Calamity in Kemet

Why Resurrection is Illegal

Throughout the world, the Rites of Resurrection are forbidden by law and common sense. A soul that has left its body is exceptionally vulnerable to outside forces, and can be claimed, warped, or even replaced by those entities. Believers in God in Heaven claim that their patron will protect them from such beings after they die, as long as they have branded their spirit as claimed through a lifetime of devout worship. But for those whose lives or fates have been insufficient to mark their soul, anything can happen.

Normally, this is distressing, but not an immediate concern. However, when a soul that has been altered by the entities of the Beyond is called back by the Rites of Resurrection, what happened to them out there is incredibly important. Many times, the Rites fail entirely, hopefully because the spirit is now with God in Heaven. Other times, the Rites were performed quickly enough that the spirit returns untouched, with only a sense of the vastness of the Beyond. And sometimes, an Entity from the Beyond releases a spirit back into the world altered, and ready to do its bidding.

Operation Bankpin

When the Living Gods of the Mu Confederation joined their powers together to destroy Tolousa, the government of Albion was stunned by their collective power. Before this, it was believed that the Living Gods could not combine their powers in this way, due to their use of Idiosyncratic rather than Universal Magic. When they revealed what they could do if they united, Albion suddenly had to reassess their ability to threaten the Empire. This led to an attempt to drastically increase the magical prowess of the Empire after the war. One way they pursued this goal was to acquire former Cultists and bring them to Albion as magical consultants. This was carried out by the Ministry of Correspondence, and the program was known internally as "Operation Bankpin".

Ironically, when the Council of Living Gods learned of Operation Bankpin through their own spies, it led to them choosing to continue the Confederation, rather than disbanding after the war. Today, both the Empire and the Confederation continue to watch each other for signs of aggression, and each is attempting to achieve magical supremacy over the other.

The Name of the Beast

The actions of the Cult left a lasting impression on the world, such that some things have lasting magical effects. To this day, writing out the name of Leviathan in reference to the entity itself results in odd deformation of the text, and is generally discouraged. Other strange effects also linger, and nobody truly knows how far they might reach.

This world is intended as a setting for tabletop roleplaying games, and there are many secrets embedded in the world that players should not know beforehand. If you would like to have access to all of these secrets, you can join the Lorekeepers group here.

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