Castle Mordengard Factions
This is a WIP summary of the factions in my OD&D campaign. I have yet to implement a formal faction system, but wanted to at least map out faction relationships to flesh out the sandbox somewhat.
Political Parties
All five major political parties in The Concavity practice (euphemistically renamed) banditry to raise funds & consolidate supporters. Visitors are often surprised to learn that despite this background of petty crime & occasional murder, all parties abide by the results of the polity's triannual democratic elections.
Concavitan Coalition for Progress
Leadership: She of The Celestial Firmament, Necromancer
HQ: 23.23
Size & resources: ~300 bandits, 8 Gargoyles
Goals & quests: Acquire a majority in the Concavitan Congressional Council
A center-left party based in the Concavity's central steppe region. Bandits wear sweater-vests & lanyards and typically carry spears.
The Centrist platform is located in the party HQ, an elevated wooden scaffold where party apparatchiks frantically mail out surveys (via carrier pigeon) and perform complex matrix algebra transformations on survey results to identify the precise centroid of Concavitan political opinions. Opinions were originally plotted along 85 value- and policy- derived dimensions, but advances in principal components analysis under 3Jane II allowed the party to condense this to a parsimonious opinion space of just 33 principle axes.
Concavitan Communist Party
Leadership: Chairman Hannibal Aufhebung, Necromancer
HQ: 27.29
Size & resources: ~300 bandits, 4 Mantichores
Goals & quests: Acquire a majority in the Concavitan Congressional Council
The Concavitan Communist Party is a democratic-centralist vanguardist party practicing critical support for the Sternenhoech dynasty as bearers of socialism with Concavitan characteristics.
Communist bandits are clad in coveralls and wield hammers & sickles in combat. Each carries 1d12 hours of labor vouchers. Their base is a brutalist compound in the southeastern woods between Upper Slark & Morgellon. A guillotine sized for Proboscidean Princes rests atop the party platform.
Concavitan Conservative Party
Leadership: Nigel the Inexorable, Evil High Priest
HQ: 21.15
Size & resources: ~300 bandits, 20 White Apes, 4 Bishops
Goals & quests: Acquire a majority in the Concavitan Congressional Council
The conservatives adjust their policy with nearly the same frequency as the centrists, but they do so as staunch defenders of the ever-shifting status quo. Conservitave bandits carry axes & wear bowties over their leather armor.
Concavitan Communal Plenary
Leadership: The Air Master, Wizard (de-facto spokesperson)
HQ: 16.21
Size & resources: ~300 bandits, 4 Abyssal Archons
Goals & quests: Acquire a majority in the Concavitan Congressional Council
An anarchist-inclined cadre assembled from a bewildering array of tendencies purged from the Concavitan Communist Party. Currently squatting in an abandoned & fortified manor house. Anarchist bandits carry clubs & molotov cocktails and wear ratty denim vests, spiky hair, etc.
The Plenary's Party platform is a raised dance floor upon which a variety of parties & impromptu theatrical occurrences are staged, often supported by the musical offerings of Lesalur & Albadyr in Dorifti Tor.
Conclave for Concavitan Purity
Leadership: Wilhelmina Rhizome, Archimandrite
HQ: 14.14
Size & resources: ~300 bandits, 8 Heroes riding Hippogriffs
Goals & quests: Acquire a majority in the Concavitan Congressional Council
The farthest-right party in Concavitan politics seeks to (re?-)introduce True Religion as the guiding principle of government. Theocratic bandits wear roughspun robes & ornate CCP-blazoned crosses, beating foes to death with heavy maces.
Government
The Regency Council
The de-facto executive branch following the disappearance of Archibald The Grim. Exclusively wealthy Proboscidean patricians:
- The Hypostasis of the Omniscient Mask, Superhero
- The Effulgence of the Crepuscular Nebula, Necromancer
- The Most Azure One, Wizard
- The General of Enlightenment, Lama
- The Eximious Sovereign of the Joy, Lord
- The Coruscating Ravishment of Candles, Archimandrite
- The Most Liminal One, Wizard
- He of Peerless Fires, Lord
The Concavitan Congressional Council
The Concavity's legislative body, incorporating both humans & proboscideans.
- Dustweir: 25 representatives
- Lower Slark: 2 representatives
- Smovaq: 4 representatives
- Mitochondrion: 2 representatives
- Upper Slark: 8 representatives
- The Empire of Poets: 5 representatives
- Morgellon: 3 representatives
- Macaulay's Motte: 4 representatives
Hrönir Rectification Bureau
Leadership: The Autarch upon the Omniscient Throne
HQ: Dustweir (14.7)
Size & resources: 17 Hrönir rectifiers, huge sums of money, obscure magics
This arm of the Concavitan government is charged with maintaining ontological stability, particularly along the southwestern border. The bureau has considerable leeway to confiscate erroneously duplicated property, detain persons of uncertain identity, & amend conflicting historical records. There are those who believe that the Bureau felt threatened by Archibald The Grim's impending completion of the system of transcendental idealism & arranged for his disappearance.
The Concavitan Revolutionary Guard Corps
Leadership: Field marshal Osric Marmeladov, Champion
HQ: Upper Slark
Size & resources: 118 Heavy Foot, 75 Velociraptor-riders, 4 Heavy Catapults
Goals & quests: Defend the Concavity from foreign intervention, defend the claim of House Sternenhoech
One of the few governmental organs under human leadership, the CRGC flies the trilobite banner of House Sternenhoech's elite vanguard. They are the only formal standing military in the concavity (in the days of the monarchy, they were to be supplemented with a mass conscription program that has since been scrapped). After the disappearance of Archibald The Grim, the CRGC has been gradually marginalized by the proboscidean-dominated regency council.
The CRGC officer corps has substantial overlap with Concavitan Communist Party membership.
The Concavitan Courier Service
HQ: Mitochondrion
Size & resources: A few dozen couriers, carrier pigeon stations, the Bodendrücker Corps
A notable office of the couriers is the Bodendrücker Corps, a team of proboscideans with magically-widened feet who maintain the region's roads & byways as organic steamrollers. For unknown reasons, black-clad assassins occasionally ambush Concavitan postal workers.
Civil Society
The Necro Union
Leadership: The Polychromatic Duke of Riddles, Necromancer
HQ: Dustweir (14.7)
Size & resources: Several thousand skeletons, substantial funds, the law services of Krunkus, Zitzak, & Snedge, esq.
The labor inputs of Dustweir's dark satanic canneries are provisioned by a sizeable proletarian army dispossessed even of bare life & confined to the sad, quiet streets of the Bone Ghetto. Their baleful animating force is channeled by a guild of proboscidean necromancers. Were the Necromancers ever to withhold the labor of their undead thralls, the Concavitan economy would grind to a halt & the left political factions (representing living workers) would be greatly empowered.
Concavitan National Bank
Leadership: The Implacable Slayer, Lord
HQ: Dustweir (14.7)
Size & resources: Complex of vaults containing many hundreds of thousands of g.p., 64 Veteran Guards, 12 Robot Guards, 1 Abyssal Archon
Goals & quests: Establish relationships with ultra-wealthy foreigners, invest in profitable ventures.
Though rural bumpkins may deposit their pitiful savings with a variety of small-time moneylenders, the only bank of note in the concavity is the CNB. Certain proboscidean princes, blessed as they are by longevity & wisdom, are orchestrating a quiet pivot from an extractive, cash-crop economy toward one based on boutique financial services (tax evasion).
Savings accounts at the CNB currently offer an interest rate of 7%.
United Mollusc Meat Merchants (The Escargot Cartel)
Leadership: The Presence of the Puissant Palace, Bishop, & The Speaker of the Favored Fountain, Superhero
HQ: Dustweir (14.7)
Size & resources: 9 whelk canneries & transport infrastructure valued at several hundred thousand g.p.
UMMM represents the Concavity's business class, primarily concerned with the production of canned xanthic whelks. They are reliant on the Necro Union for cheap labor and on the Concavitan National Bank for liquidity.
The Orbital Ecclesia (Broadcast Brotherhoods)
Leadership: Father Nigel, Lama
HQ: Our Lady of The Perihelion (27.15)
Size & resources: 38 Broadcast Brothers
Goals & quests: Acquire glass beads from the Sternenhoech collection.
The Broadcast Brotherhood is the Concavity's only monastic order. In addition to recording & interpreting the aetheric utterances of the orbital angels, they are avid players of the Glass Bead Game & will pay handsome sums for recovered beads.
O Angel on High,
By your form geometric,
Orbit immaculate,
Locution subliminal,
We pray.
The nightly vesper hymns at OLoTP sound approximately like this:1
Bingabandari Diplomatic & Social Mission
Leadership: Ambassador Garfield Fortinbras-Rosenkreuz
HQ: Bingabandari Consulate in Dustweir (14.7)
Size & resources: The subtle but omnipresent pressure of a neighboring hegemon, substantial wealth.
Goals & quests: Legalize the import of jazz cigarettes, keep whelk meat prices low, limit the reach of the Concavitan Revolutionary Guard Corps
Bingabandari is a global maritime power with a paternalistic attitude toward its parochial & unstable southern neighbor. It is primarily concerned with preserving the economic status quo -- were this to devolve, the consulate would first attempt to use clandestine means to restabilize the situation, but were that to fail it is likely that a small but well-equipped intervention force would be sent upriver to Dustweir.
The Erudite Curators of Prudent Thought & Speech
Leadership: ???
HQ: Dustweir (14.7)
Size & resources: ???
Goals & quests: ???
These guys are devoted students of 3Jane II, who left behind a variety of scholarly discourses. Honestly not that interesting (yet) but they show up from time to time & were victims of PC bullying in a recent session. They share an interest in the Glass Bead game with the Frog Orkestra & Broadcast Brothers.
Clandestine/Dungeon
Most of these aren't fully developed yet (the PCs have only explored the first level of Castle Mordengard).
Lounge Lizards
Leadership: Anthony Clifton
HQ: The Key of L-flat Major Jazz Lounge in Castle Mordengard level 4.
Size & resources: 30-50 lounge lizards
Goals & quests: Play jazz, acquire jazz cigarettes.
The Frog Orkestra
Leadership: J.S. Frosh, conductor
HQ: Castle Mordengard, room TBD
Size & resources: 2 flautists, 2 oboists, 2 bassoonists, 4 trumpeters, 1 percussionist, 1 harpsichordist, 12 violinists, 8 violists, 8 violoncellists, 1 double bass.
Goals & quests: Cement the musical supremacy of Batrachian Baroque music, develop new Glass Beads corresponding to ever more intricate contrapuntal techniques.
The Quadratic Brotherhood
Leadership: ???
HQ: Castle Mordengard, room TBD.
Size & resources: ???
Goals & quests: Replace the hexagonal canton system with a grid of uniform squares.
The Quadratic Brotherhood is an insurgent movement seeking to overthrow the use of hexagonal land units -- they believe that when right angles were abandoned, so too was moral rectitude & uprightness. Quadratic cultists wear cube-like helmets, square shields, & flat-tipped shortswords.
Morlocks
Leadership: Master Morlock (as Goblin King)
HQ: TBD
Size & resources: 353 Morlocks, 97 Trilobite Riders
Goals & quests: Increase the value of the Morlock market.
Among the more common underworld denizens, Morlocks are obsessed with escaping the rat race via convoluted day trading & gambling schemes. They are often found scavenging Castle Mordengard for antiquities to invest in.
Scrungly Hobs
Leadership: ??
HQ: ??
Size & resources: ??
Goals & quests: ??
Slovenly goblins who paint stylized & exaggerated faces on their shields.
Trystero
Leadership: ???
HQ: Somewhere in the deepest levels of the Wunderkammer
Size & resources: ???
Goals & quests: ???
???
With apologies to Molly Nilsson.↩