The Weight
Tier: III, Strong Hold
The Weight is a spiritual institution that emerged from the soot-choked factories and brine-washed ruins of Awarth’s industrial sprawl. It teaches that hardship is not a curse but a sacred continuity—each person is born beneath the Weight, and to carry it with dignity is the highest devotion. There are no saints, only survivors.
The Weight operates through shrines, rites, and the quiet authority of its clergy—called Bearers—who officiate at funerals, anoint the scarred, and lead communal rituals of grief and endurance. Though it claims no throne or army, its moral presence is formidable. The House of Shoulders in Smokestone serves as its spiritual and administrative heart, but its influence ripples through ash-streaked wards and salvage districts where no one else comes.
Turf
The House of Shoulders in Smokestone, along with shrines and burden halls through the Holds and Quarters of Awarth.
Notable Assets
- The House of Shoulders: A temple and communal hall in Smokestone, housing ritual archives, shared mourning spaces, and the Grithwall—a slab of stone etched with the names and burdens of the dead.
- Burden Shrines: Makeshift altars throughout Awarth—tucked in foundries, under bridges, in flood-warped alleys—where offerings of tools, cloth, bone, or ash are left in silence.
Quirks
- No Icons, Only Implements: The Weight reveres no deities; its holy symbols are worn tools, splintered beams, and calloused hands.
- Hands Are the Only Relic: No part of the body is more sacred than the hands. Followers of the Weight anoint their palms with soot, brine, or oil before significant acts, and some preserve casts of the hands of revered dead instead of statues or portraits.
- Load-Bearing Memory: The dead are buried where their burden was greatest—beneath beams they held up, stone they cut, or oil they spilled. Memory lives in the strain, not the soil.
Allies
The Undertow, The Brackenbridge Collective, Brethren of the Hearth
Enemies
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