The Ashen Covenant
The Ashen Covernant are led by Elder Arantham, and consist of a movement growing throughout the cults of Orcus, dedicated to the goal of aiding the ascension of Orcus to the throne of the Raven Queen, and to help him become sovereign over all dead souls. They seek to make undeath a natural part of the cycle of life, so that everyone who dies will rise as an undead.
The Ashen Covenant is one of the largest movements among Orcus's worshippers, though it still lacks suffucient cohesionto break off into its own sect because the various factions within the movement cannot agree on how to accomplish their goals.
The Ashen Covenant created the creature known as the ashgaunt, which they use as soldiers and assassins. The ashgaunt is a type of wight which not only hungers to drain life, but is also able to raise destroyed undead.
Structure
The Ashen Covenant doesn’t have an internal ranking structure, since it has yet to claim its own identity as an independent entity. Rather, its members wield whatever authority their ranks and positions in their own cults provide them. Several members, however, wield great power, and are held in great esteem, by all who follow the Grave-Speakers’ teachings.
Public Agenda
The Covenant seeks to elevate Orcus to the Raven Queen’s throne by changing the natural order of the world itself. In Elder Arantham’s vision, undeath is the natural end to life. All creatures that die would rise again—not due to necromantic rituals, or planar conjunction with the Shadowfell, but naturally.
It’s a lofty goal, if a demented one, and not easy to achieve. In fact, the Ashen Covenant is split into numerous subsects along philosophical lines, as its members argue over what method might best accomplish this objective. Elder Arantham has yet to choose one particular means as the Covenant’s focus, instead allowing each faction to try to prove that their philosophy is most likely to succeed. Each philosophy is, perforce, based heavily on theology, speculation, and guesswork—though their adherents are only too happy to conduct whatever experiments are necessary to prove their point.
Religion
Followers of the Covenant—also called Grave-Speakers, Ash-Bearers, and Disciples of the Hollowed Grave—are driven by a single goal: to aid the ascension of their prince to the throne of the Raven Queen, and to help him gain sovereignty over all dead souls. Through ancient magic and theologies, the Ashen Covenant seeks to fundamentally change the cycle of life. Undeath will no longer be an abomination, requiring the working of terrible necromancies, but the natural consequence of life. Everyone who dies will rise once more into a shambling undead existence. Orcus will supplant the Raven Queen because undeath will have supplanted death. Having received inspiration from Orcus in dreams that came to him in the dark of night—despite the fact that undead do not sleep—Elder Arantham redoubled his focus on aiding the demon’s ascent to the Raven Queen’s domain. He preached long and eloquently about every worshiper’s duty to aid in that goal, and he claimed that this should become the defining effort of all Orcus’s cults. Naturally, when word reached them, the leaders of other cults disagreed. But many of their followers were convinced, enough for Arantham’s ideals to become the basis of a movement that would spread throughout the cults of Orcus. This was the birth of the Ashen Covenant a compact, Arantham claimed, between Orcus and his followers that would change the natural order of the world.
Tenets of Faith
- We will restore order to the universe by making undeath the inevitable conclusion to life!
- There is no reason to worship undead, but treat them with the respect they deserve.
- Follow the tennants of Orcus.
Type
Religious, Sect
Leader
Deities
Notable Members
Comments