The Faceless Dead

A thousand years ago, the Ivory Empire, an empire of undead, covered almost a quarter of the world of Jhembaz. Today, it is much smaller than it was at its peak, but it still exists, and aspires to expand, and still is seen as a significant threat by other nations. Fortunately for those other nations, however, not all the Ivory Empire's enemies are external. The inhabitants of the Empire are not a monolith, and it also has enemies within, citizens of the Empire who oppose its goal and its rulers—though largely in secret to avoid reprisals. And perhaps the most notorious such enemies are an organization that calls itself the Faceless Dead.

The Faceless Dead can and do work with the living who share their goal of stymying the Ivory Empire. They do not, however, allow the living to actually join their organization, and are quick to issue denials if living people claim to be members. While they may sympathize with the living who oppose the empire, the Faceless Dead is an organization of undead, and are apparently intent on remaining so.

The Faceless Dead are not of course literally faceless. They are, in fact, like any other citizens of the Ivory Empire—which is to say, they are undead, mostly withered animated corpses. They get their name from the fact that—with the exceptions of a few known individuals who, somewhat ironically, have become the face of the Faceless—they keep their identities a secret, working against the Empire either disguised or under the cover of darkness or solitude. They engage in a variety of activities to interfere with the activities of the imperial government. Disrupting official ceremonies and announcements is a particularly favorite tactic (the deerfruit stampede the Faceless Dead engineered during the speech of the high general of the Imperial army remains notorious), but they also engage in sabotage of imperial equipment and magic items, leaking of confidential information about the empire to other nations, and, in extreme cases, assassination of imperial figures (or reassassination, given that the figures in question were already undead). While the individual members of the Faceless Dead are careful to conceal their identities, the organization as a whole ''wants'' to be known and ''wants'' to take credit for its deeds, and where the Faceless Dead have struck they always leave their symbol, either painted on a nearby surface or displayed in some more creative way—the stylized figure of a skeleton with a featureless oval for a head.

As they do not reveal their identities, the exact number of individuals belonging to the Faceless Dead remains unknown. Imperial officials claim the organization has no more than a hundred members, but this is almost certainly an intentional severe undercount meant to minimize the Dead's reach. It is likewise unclear just how organized they actually are—while there are frequent claims of someone being identified as the overall leader of the Faceless Dead, they are invariably soon debunked, and it seems very likely that the Faceless Dead is much less a formal, hierarchical institution than it is a decentralized movement of individuals who share a common goal and occasionally compare notes and plans. There are currently four individuals who are openly known to be members of the organization and who occasionally speak for the organization, though they don't seem to actually be its leaders, and it's uncertain how well they know each other or whether in fact they might work for entirely different groups that self-identify under the banner of the Faceless Dead. These "faces" of the Faceless Dead are:

• Asquadi Arkh - A skeletal figure who often reports on the organization's deeds, and occasionally composes songs about them—some of which have come into widespread use as symbols of resistance against the empire.
• Henethene - A well-preserved animated corpse, Henethene would appear alive were it not for the hole passing through her head from forehead to occiput—which she intentionally gave herself to make it clear she was undead. She likes to taunt imperial agencies and officers, sometimes as a distraction and sometimes, apparently, just for fun.
• Lanthan Vier - A charismatic mummy, Lanthan Vier mostly appears to urge more people to support and join the Faceless Dead. He is also known to have been present at many of their operations where they distributed goods stolen from the empire to common people (and common undead).
• Nessinia — An educated and articulate mummy, Lanthan Vier is known for laying out the philosophical groundings of the organization's activities—and expounding in detail on exactly what is wrong with what the empire is doing. She has written a book that is forbidden within the empire but popular among its enemies.