The Faith of the Doomguard

The core of all Sinker belief is simple: that things begin with light and end with darkness. It's an essentially linear view of time: they acknowledge that the multiverse has cycles, but insist that those cycles must ultimately come to an end. In the Beginning, says the Doomguard, there was light. Nothing preceded light; light is the beginning by definition, as darkness is the end. This fine point is lost on some of the less scholarly or pedantic devotees of Entropy, who may occasionally speak of the end of the multiverse as a "return to Darkness," but it isn't a subject of serious debate anywhere in the faction's extended family.

Even more essential to the Doomguard's philosophy than the doctrine of darkness' ultimate triumph is simply the concept of beginning and ending, and it is this notion, more than anything else, that they fight to preserve. Without endings, they argue, stories have no meaning. Factions speak of bringing meaning to peoples' lives, but how can anything have meaning without an end? The end of a saga is its whole rationale for existence. Without endings, the endless future waters down the past into insignificance.

We agree on that much, says the Bleak Cabal, and that small shred of common ground provides the whole basis for their fragile alliance.

With the validity of everything and everwas hanging in the balance, another thing all Entropy Rats agree on is the importance of a good ending, a proper ending that sums up everything that comes before it and resolves all of its themes. As with Godsman theories of ascension, this provides some of the faction's strongest common ground, and some of its most vicious conflicts.

The first and most basic disagreement among those who await Entropy's reward is the question of fire and ice. Will the multiverse end in suden disaster, or will it slowly peter out like a dying flame? What answer each Doomguard gives depends a lot on individual temperment and where they live. Much, even most, of the faction naturally thinks that a dramatic climax is far preferable to a long meandering decline. After all, they reason, how would you rather die? Quickly and with a minimum of pain, or of a tedious, agonizing consumption that leaves its victim a pale shadow of how they were in their prime? It's for this reason that members of the slow camp are often derisively called whimperers or even sufferers and sado-masochists.

The members of the slow camp counter that such arguments are fatuous and driven by sentiment; they're normally community-oriented, self-sacrificing types who believe that the greater good is better served by drawing out the end of all as long as possible. "If I could be of use for someone in the end of my days, I would stick around for them," they maintain. "I'm sure the multiverse would want nothing less. Think of all the marvels that appear in a year, in a century? By existing just a little longer, the planes can be made so much richer."

"Hey," say others, "If this is going to be reality's last hurrah, might as well make it a big one, eh?"

"No," answers the fast camp -- the Doombringers, the Bangers. "The end of the multiverse can be like the crashing earthbergs of Ysgard, full of wild glory, or, if it waits until all its resources run out before going, it can be the slow chill of the plane of Vacuum. If the end is to be impressive, it has to be quick."

"Ever been to Citadel Exhalus? There's a beauty there as great as any violent destruction."

"It's beauty, maybe. But it's the beauty of agony, instead of mere pain."

Others say that both groups are too simplistic in their thinking. The multiverse will end neither in one enormous disaster nor in a slow wasting disease, but probably in a combination of both, or a number of minor, smaller catastrophes. Surely not all the planes would end at once: probably the Ethereal would be the first to go, or perhaps the evershifting Outer Planes, and the Astral or plane of Negative Energy last of all. Many of these argue that both rushing the end and delaying it artificially results in a false and unrewarding conclusion to the multiverse's long journey; a natural, untouched conclusion that flows organically instead of being scripted would be far more appropriate. Everyone should get their greasy paws off the multiverse's pulse and let it be as it must.

"Impossible," say the other two camps. "It's not just the Doomguard; everyone has a stake in how long the worlds stay up, and everyone's interfering. The multiverse needs someone like us who cares about the artistry of things to help compensate for all those clumsy berks who would interfere with Entropy without even appreciating it."

Factioneers from violent, tumultuous Ysgard are almost unanimous in believing the creed of the fast camp. Many of them work with, or are, the giants of that plane, believing that when the end comes it'll be with Ragnarok. There's a minority, however, who care as much or more for the purity of Ragnarok as they do its expediency. They actively work to prevent outsiders from interfering with the event, and making sure that all goes according to prophesy. As a result, they ally themselves with the slow camp as often as they do the fast.

"Entropy flows like water across the planes. If it's exceptionally fast in one realm, that means it's disapointingly slow somewhere else. If it slows to a crawl in one region, that means it's dissolving everything on some other plane fast as wildfire.

"We're the Doomguard. It's our job to regulate the flow. Call us terrorists, call us saviors, call us cosmic plumbers, but do give us a a call."

--Ashen Cowl, Doombringer.

The Doomguard is a militant order dedicated to stabilizing the flow of entropy across the planes and spheres. Formally based in Sigil, the infinite gate-array in the center of Neutrality, they now report to four towers on the very edge of oblivion, where the flow of Entropy is the strongest.

They maintain a presence throughout the multiverse in many shapes and forms. From the minions of Truncheon, the plaguebringer god on the world of Arcos, to the Knights of the Silver Cross on ice-haunted Helion, to the Nothing in Phantasia to the Demonic Knights of Doom in Noerth, the Doomguard works to destroy centers of unending stillness and boiling pits of dissolution alike.

The Tower of Ash: Devland, lord of the Crumbling Citadel, is in charge of the Doomsaviors, those Sinkers in charge of eliminating great entropy drains.

The Citadel of Sealt: The lord Roth, on the other hand, creates them with the aid of his fiendish allies, doing his best to destroy that which resists destruction and bring heat death to the entropic highlands that would avoid it.

Harbringers of the Void: Nagaul, the Doomlord of Citadel Exhalus, advocates vigilance and coordinates research and exploration for the faction. Nagaul tries to fight extremism in the fast and slow parties.

The Dusty Keep: Pereid, mistress of the Citadel Alluvius, coordinates the activities of the other three Doomguard fractions, ensuring that the fast camp and the slow camp don't work at odds, or at odds with Nagaul's medium camp.

Allied gods:

The god most associated with the Doomguard is Siva the Destroyer, the end of all things and the beginning of other things. Many Doom Guardians are initiates of Siva, though that god doesn't seem to care much or to favor the faction unduly.

Other Sinkers favor darker gods, like Vecna or Tharizdun.

The entity known as the Elder Elemental God broods within its prison of planar forces, its wayward children playing out their game without it. The Doomguard is split about its proper war in the cosmic scheme. Some labor to keep it in check, while others strive to make it free.

Truncheon and St. Maelos are actually members of that faction, the fast camp and slow camp respectively. St. Maelos is a preserver and a foe of those who would destroy her world, while Truncheon is a destructive force of plague, earthquakes and eternal winter.

Knightly Orders:

Paladins

Paladins dedicated to Entropy are rare; they forsake their healing abilities in order to preserve worlds that might otherwise go before their time.

Blackguards

Blackguards are closer to what people commonly think of when they picture the Doomguard; the names, of course, are similar, but it's also often true that fear is more memorable than gratitude. Still, when dark forces allies with the Sinkers enlist dark warriors and fallen paladins to their cause, the fact that their destruction is serving a greater good marks them as different from others of their kind, for all the scant consolation it is for their victims.

The Tacharim

The Tacharim are thugs and opportunists native to the Outlands and the Lower Planes. Supposedly, they were founded by John Lake, the exiled Xaositect boss, whose warriors followed him as much because of the booty that turned up wherever he went as his strangely prophetic words.

In truth, there's more than eerie Xaositect synchronicity afoot in the the swift and organized gathering of Tacharim troops. The Tacharim are a front organization for Factol Pentar of the Doomguard. Constrained from acting out her full destructive impulses by the slow and medium camps of her faction, she has created the Tacharim to wreck havoc where she cannot, and when she can arrange for her absence from her duties as factol to be explained she rides with them herself, black helm concealing her features. The most important task she wishes for them to accomplish is the destruction of the Great Modron March, a dream that Sinker factols have long nourished, but currently out of favor since a centuries-long study by the Doomguard itself concluded that, for all its regularity, the March serves entropy at least as much as it squelches it, if not more so.

A cowled figure beckoned to the fleeing man. "Psst, berk," it said. "Looking for a bolt-hole to hide in? I've got just the place for you."

The man followed the figure into the dark allyway, his reddish, innocent face alive with curiosity and confidence. "What are you here to tell me?" he asked excitedly.

The batlike creature gave the figure a look of arrogant disdain. "I need help in nothing," she told it.

* * *

"The call!" he cried, his voice modulating in pitch like a frenzied jazz trumpetist. "I hear it! It rings in the heavens! It shakes and blisters the land! It raises the very sea from its bed to dance on its toes and hair! It tells us what we must do!" -- John Lake, prophet of the Tacharim.

John Lake is a visionary on an epic scale. He hears voices and sees sights that a Sensate would give his ears and eyes to experience even briefly, but he isn't a Sensate. His multiverse is a place of constant roaring conflict and imperious orders springing from both the setting and the action itself. To Lake, the Blood War is a song and the Great Modron March is poetry. And John Lake knows that all calls will be answered, one way or another.

Lake was born over forty years ago, although the exact location and plane is unclear even to him. From childhood he was psychically more sensitive than most children, wincing at the loud tearing sounds shadows make when they're pierced by rays of light, and blushing at the vulgar innuendo of tree branches swaying in the breeze. By young adulthood he was so engulfed in his own strange sensations that he had almost no contact with other humans at all, and he followed them beyond the boundaries of his plane, his perceptons so removed that he eventually faded into another world entirely.

That world was Limbo, a plane where he was convinced that all his sensations originated, a place where constant cacophany is the norm and nothing is unexpected. There he discovered tribes of Chaosmen who were able to finally give him an explanation of sorts for his experiences. "Sense no the world does not," they assured him, and variously: "font of creativity unpredictability chaos overwhelming orgasm pity anguish joy within without withwhom behind the curtain is there they call order, what is a lie!" From the Xaositects he learned about the arbitrary nature of society's standards. There are no freaks, no misfits, no mutants. There is only chaos, in all of its "million and all" colors and flavors. His experiences were no less valid than anyone else's, and abberations were to be celebrated as part of Chaos' delightful twists. Everything is part of, or can become, the same everchanging cosmic soup behind everything else. It was rules and definitions and cause and effect that were abberations, brief spurts of synchronicity that those who sensed things on a more primitive level interpreted as causes and constants. Lake felt freed, and for the first time he truly let himself go, and opened his senses fully to the chaos of the multiverse.

It spoke to him, and he understood.

Life was good for John Lake from then on. Wherever he went, he discovered a message that only he understood. Other Chaosmen, hungry for diversion, began to follow him around, excited by the unpredictability of his actions and the strange consequences that resulted. Once Lake set off down a road and marched for three days without stopping until he came to a castle no one had seen before. Inside the castle was a hyperintelligent wizard creature seemingly made out of feet who begged him to play chess with it. Because it had no hands, Lake would have to move both sides. Lake agreed, and proceded to play a game completely at odds with the moves the creature had requested. Even though it won, it was so angry that it vowed to take vengence on Lake by destroying his homeland, which it interpreted as the xsaositect settlements in Limbo. It rose from its tower in a ball of flame and shot straight towards the city of Xosa. Once there, the feet that made up the creature seemed to have an argument, and it unexpectedly detatched, becoming several dozen separate feet hopping around in the city warrens. The feet still hop around in Xaos, Limbo, and Sigil's Hive Ward to this day, seemingly mating with one another and succeeding to reproduce themselves in the thousands. The feet still love chess, but they always move the pieces themselves. With their toes.

This sort of activity made John Lake quite a celebrity, and he was quickly accepted as a mighty Boss for almost a decade, until an incident caused him to part ways.

For reasons only he and his voices know, Lake marched into Sigil's barracks and informed the Harmonium of a long list of crimes that another popular Boss had allegedly committed. While many of these accusations, including impersonating a guildhall and devouring a movanic deva, seemed improbable to say the least, enough were convincing that the boss was arrested, tried, and sentenced to hard labor in Acheron. This act of betrayal, though undeniably chaotic, so shocked many Xaositects that a mob of them decided to banish him to the Outlands. Although he was forgiven a week later, and the boss managed to free himself a few months after that -- by causing an entire cube in Acheron to shift into Bytopia -- by then he was riding with the Tacharim, driving what was nothing more than an organized band of bandits into performing acts they had never dreamed possible. They've infiltrated the Saxon armies in an outer planar version of Camelot, they've acquired ferrous dragon mounts to launch raids on githyanki fortresses, they've created human-modron hybrids, and they've stolen a constellation from a sky on the material plane. They've made staggering amounts of jink, but they've squirreled away even more and spent a lot of it on puzzling things like rakes, rope, and tattoos. None of them really know what their prophet is up to, but they're all eager to see what will happen next.

John Lake: Pr/Male Human/Cmm 4, Brd 16/Xaositects/CN

Caleb Arun: Pr/Female Balingor Death Knight/NE

Unlike many more famous death knights, Caleb Arun was never a champion for the forces of good. Instead, she was a Revered One for a tribe of balingor, batlike humanoids of the Underdark. As a balingor ages, it goes through a series of transformations in which it grows significantly bigger and stronger; ultimately, if it survives long enough, it becomes an immortal, undead creature known as a Revered One. All balingors follow the orders of the Revered Ones without question. Normally, this is the last tradition a balingor makes. Some few, however, seek more. Caleb Arun was one of these; she made a pact with the demon prince Obox-ob to be transformed into a death knight.

This particular tribe was part of a quite civilized nation that dominated the system of caverns in which it made its home, collecting tribute from their kuo-toa, cloakers, and aboleth neighbors.

Enra, the paladin inverted over the Abyss of Hallucinations: Pl/Female Human/Ftr 10,Blg 4/CE

A knight late of the City of Silver Blossoms in Arcadia, Enra joined the Planes-Militant in attempt to lend strength to rivals of the hated Harmonium. She climbed rapidly through the ranks, defeating great evil and earning the confidence of the influential Vaimish Crusad, only to be disappointed and disillusioned when Sir Vaimish wouldn't ok an assault on the Hardheads threatening her homeland. In revenge, Enra freed the glabrezu Ytwaxan from the Planes-Militant prison in which she had captured it after a celebrated Abyssal raid, and offered it aid in getting back in exchange for training her as a blackguard. Ytwaxan gladly accepted, and Enra became a mighty foe to her former order. When Pentar approached her to join the nacent Tacharim, she eagerly did so. The floral theme of the Tacharims' citadels are her idea, though John Lake whole-heartedly approves.

Sethetis: Pl/Male Human/Clr 10[Sebek]/Dustmen/NE

The Petals of Imperial Might is the third of the Tacharim's three bases, this one located in Pandemonium.

Camelot F trades with Camelots G and H. The Saxons of Camelot F have been infiltrated by the Tacharim, an Outlandish organization who seek to sieze the land for their own prophet and the profit of their group (their prophet is John Lake, a Xaositect thrown out of his faction for selling out a Big Boss to the Mercykillers. He was reinstated the next week, but by then he was riding with the Tacharim, uttering phrases from his inner well of chaos, all of which the Tacharim have caused to come true).

The Arthur of this realm, a half-bariaur creature looking like a white-wooled satyr, has forged an alliance with the dwarfs of Camelot G and is currently working out a deal with Queen Mordred of Camelot H, the daughter of the Arthur of that real. Queen Mordred insists that Sir Bedwyr be given to her as a hostage, something Arthur is reluctant to do.

Camelot L

The Holy Grail has been found; all the knights have ascended to Heaven. It seems the agathinia are greatly excited by the prospect of a Camelot to inspire them, and now they have one.

The knights of Camelot L are equivalent to einheriar, exalted souls who work directly with the warriors of Heaven to combat evil and injustice. The heavenly Camelot is a much-expanded facility with great golden walls and room for celestials and einheriar alike. The ruler of this Camelot is Mikhail, a deva who has declared himself Pendragon. The knights answer to Galahad (Arthur, burdened by his sins, was left behind), but Galahad faithfully serves the celestials' will. Right now, their will is to fight the Saxon gods of Ysgard, whose Wotan has been making trouble for mortals under the agathinia's charge.

One band of celestials agains a half dozen gods isn't good odds, but the Saxon deities are annoyed enough that they're strongly considering getting a Camelot of their own to deal with the problem for them. To this end, Wotan has been feeding prophesies to John Lake in Camelot F, hoping he will put the Saxons in charge there. Afterwards, there will be a grand quest for a golden ring that Wotan has placed in some nearby mountains, guarded by a dragon, a giant, a valkyrie and a wall of fire. Capturing the ring should activate a curse that kills everyone, after which their souls should make excellent einheriar warriors for the Saxon gods.

Lost Planes: The Doomguard isn't always successful in its missions. Sometimes worlds are lost, either artificially removed from the cycle of life and death and beyond their reach or overrun by the servants of hunger before its time. Black marks on their cherished record, every Sinker memorizes the names of these places in anticipation of the time that Entropy's plan will be

The Seven Steps: One world about which the Sinker bards sing is the Seven Steps, sundered into many parts by the contending good and evil factions of its pantheon. The bottom-most Steps are awash with negative energy and undead, while the topmost are grossly overpopulated, stricken with plagues, sprawling, filth-encrusted cities, and neverending childbirth. In between are anomalies: a land ruled by neveraging children, a land whose inhabitants are born in their graves and die after crawling into their mothers wombs, a land where even the elves are born, spawn, and die in but a day. Thus far, the artifacts and guardians preserving this unnatural state of affairs have proven resistant to discovery.

The Wandering Lands: Also known as the Islands of the Undying and the Land of the Ever-Young, these are demiplanes populated by a race of vampires, always moving through the ether towards one material world or another in order to sustain its unnatural existence. An ordinary world, once in contact with the Wandering Lands, quickly becomes a wasteland.

The Summer Country: This world is, quite simply, Paradise. Strife, age, and hunger have been banished from its confines while knowledge, wisdom, diversion, and love fill it near to bursting. The majority of the planet's negative energy is channeled to the edges of civilization, where special plants absorb it and convert it back into positive, nourishing the life within its boundaries and protecting it from intruders. Although the world hasn't been proven to cause any cosmic inbalance, it offends the Doomguard's sensibilities and they fear for the purity of the multiverse's end.

The Gatekeepers: Doomguard Gatekeepers are in charge of guarding major known portals between worlds of substantially different entropic levels and keeping them sealed until needed. It was a Gatekeeper who opened the major portal between Acos and the Gray Waste, making way for the coming of Truncheon. It is a Gatekeeper who guards the land known as the Bastion from the Gate of Lost Souls, which would flood most of the world with negative energies.
The lorekeepers and witchmasters are other offices of the Doomguard, responsible for gathering and researching knowledge of the entropic flow and communing with various entities aligned with the faction, respectively.

Subject Territories: The most famous of the Doomguards' territories are, of course, their innerplanar towers, but the faction rules whole worlds either directly or through allied powers. Keeping the multiverse's pipes clean requires influence, after all.

Es-Annon:

Among those who know of it, Es-Annon is a powerful symbol of idealism crushed and turned to dust and fading memory. Es-Annon was a city on the material plane, built on the confluence of three rivers on a world where winter turned the waters into great organic forests, as vast as those of Arborea, made entirely of ice. Winter was followed by a strange season when the waters would burn like the wood they resembled, engulfing much of the planet in flame until the ice finally melted. Then the weather would turn and the ice would slowly build again like living crystal, hollow chambers underneath storing the sunlight that powered the solid water's growth. The inhabitants of this world were a shy, withdrawn people resistant to both heat and cold, resembling the humans they probably were descended from. They dwelled in temporary villages in the branches of the solid rivers, hunting the wild cattle who fed on the ice itself.

Into this mix came a new people who called themselves the Conservators: they wore crowns of living ice and solid things were so familiar to them that they were as nothing; stories were the only sensation they sought. The Conservators rallied the natives to build a city which would last the deprevations of the long year and survive the fires into the next one. So began Es-Annon, which using the magics of the Conservators was built atop some of the tallest and strongest water trees of ice forged with flame into a golden-hued alloy that could not be burnt. During the fire season Es-Annon slowly lost height until it floated atop the floods. When the year turned back towards winter the ice would grow beneath it, pushing it back into the sky. Beautiful transluscent domes and spires were erected containing halls of learning and industry, and portals were opened into the worlds beyond. Commerce flooded in as tourists, scholars, and merchants came to Es-Annon from places as far away as Sigil and Everway, attracted by the unique environment and the strange wisdom of its citizens. The Conservators encouraged the populace and visitors alike to tell them all of their stories, legends, proverbs, and skill, which they turned into oral songs and poetry, and trained a caste of professional storytellers, the Seers, to supplement this work. After a century or two, the Conservators had so blended with the locals that they were indistinguishable; the city came to be ruled by a council of master storytellers elected by their peers; the council met in a hall with acoustics so cleverly designed that all words spoken in the world could be replayed at any time by any who uttered an appropriate key phrase.

The Golden Age of Es-Annon lasted for centuries until the council was dissolved by a party of council members who called themselves the Flame of Forgetting, lead by an outsider whose name had never been spoken in the world. The Flame of Forgetting dissolved the old republic and began a new policy of hoarding stories, insisting that the bards of Es-Annon not repeat what they learn without their leave. With its mounting store of secrets, Es-Annon began amassing wealth and power by blackmailing people throughout the planes. With its new resources many of its buildings of pure forged ice were replaced with precious metals, and it began to acquire a list of enemies as tall as the ice trees which were its foundation. Outsiders stopped coming in, so the Flame of Forgetting sent its bards out to gather information in the worlds beyond, returning every year during winter's height to report on what they had learned.

This situation could not last, and ultimately Es-Annon was destroyed by an alliance of several realms. The unburnable ice was shattered with mallets of alien stone, its dust hauled out in sacks and scattered across the planes. The foundation trees were burnt before their time, in the height of winter just before the bards were to report. As their lives dissolved around them, the vengeful populace hunted down the members of the Forgetting and the bards who were loyal to them and slaughtered them. Then they sorrowfully looked at the landscape, empty of the memories needed to rebuild, and wondered if any part of Es-Annon could survive the year. A few handfuls of journeyman bards who had lived in the city all their lives volunteered to enter the last remaining gate and reverse the policy of silence, crying the city's story to all who would listen across the planes. The grateful refugees thanked them. Some went with them, and some returned to the nomadic life of old. The Cryers of Es-Annon continued with their burden across many generations, and still exist today. Many have burned out, often joining the Doomguard. Some cry on.

Prisoners of War: In order to carry out its duties, the Doomguard has had to imprison a number of liches, heroes, and demigods in order to keep them out of the way. Many of them lie preserved in the dungeons beneath the Doomguards' towers, while others have been placed in specially built prisons throughout the negative quasielemental planes. On occasion, some escape or are freed, and the faction must send or hire procurers to get them back. These procurers, sometimes doomguard knights, sometimes Mercykillers with proper warrants and sometimes Sodkillers without them, are often found wandering the planes either armed with arcane paraphernalia or in search of allies who can aid them in their age-old task.


^
rip van wormer

"Buffalo nuns, won't you come out tonight?"