Connects to: 29.14, 33.00, 33.01 and 34.01.
Overview
Somewhere along the Welt Road, beneath the Lands of the Night Cattle, there is a secret lair where a strange society of revolutionaries lurks. This organization was founded by a slave from Titan’s Rest (33.01) named Ancient Meg. Having lived to the age of 119, Ancient Meg had accumulated a truly incredible amount of silver in her body (see 34.01). All the profits from her death were bound up in a complex will, to be executed by a barrister named Arian Alders from the City of Shuttered Windows. The will stipulated that the money would be used to form an underground organization dedicated to overthrowing the dwarves of the Titan’s Skull (33.00) and free the slaves there.
Alders believed he was onto a good thing, being able to pay himself a wage as ‘Grandmaster of the Order’ without doing much else except dwelling in the Lands of the Night Cattle. However, he was not expecting the initial payment to be followed by several more from the wills of other slaves. In order to retain his wage, Alders was forced to begin actually doing the work that Ancient Meg had set out for him. He began hiring warriors and other agents and considering plans for raids upon Titan’s Rest. When the dwarves got word of this they were furious, and threatened to cut off their supply of luminescent cave mushrooms to the Night Men. Thus, the Night Men drove Alders and his band of mercenaries off their land, which led to the establishment of the secret base they inhabit today.
Today, the Order of the Broken Chain consists of over sixty members, twenty-two of whom are volunteers and the rest being mercenaries. Bolstered by regular payments from the wills of argyric slaves, they have made two successful raids on Titan’s Rest and freed almost a hundred slaves, some of whom have subsequently become volunteer members of the Order themselves. The mastermind behind all this is still Arian Alders, who is making good money out of it but whose colleagues in the Shuttered City now look upon him with distaste.
Hooks
- How did Ancient Meg live to be so old in the terrible working conditions of the mines?
- Why didn’t Alders just take the money and run? Does the will hold some special power?
- Why do the Night Men need luminescent cave mushrooms so much?
- What was in this cave before the Order arrived? Anything of interest?
- Any notable characters amongst the Order’s members?
- What does Arian Alders think of all this? Has he been converted to the cause or is he still only in it for the money?
