Eternal Order

At a glance

A religious organization with a chapel in Rivalis, where its attendants use the Book of Names to maintain knowledge of the living and dead.

Known facts

• Operates the church in Rivalis.
• Attendants wear red-and-white robes and conical hats.
• Uses an octagram as its symbol.
• A stronger sect is said to exist on Darkon’s east coast.
• An attendant credited Azalin and his “quest over the undead” with knowing all names through life and death.
• Operated the grand Shrine of the Spirits in Neblus under High Sentinel Ablander until his death.
• Neblus’s sect follows Darcalus Rex as a promised savior, holds private midnight services invoking him as “Rex,” sacrifices a goat, and pours its blood over the city’s paving graves.
• Darcalus Rex and Azalin Rex are distinct figures. The Neblus sect regards Azalin as a ruler of the past; whether its members condemn him, dismiss him as gone, or retain some reverence for his legacy remains unclear.
• Teaches that the dead will rise on a future day of reckoning and that keeping them underfoot prevents an earlier return.
• Many among the refugees gathered in Rivalis openly wore the Order’s seven-pointed star.
• Rivalis’s surviving congregation understands “Rex” to mean Azalin and views undeath as the proper end of Darkon’s failing world.
• The party now regards the Rivalis and Neblus congregations as a schism: one remains centered upon Azalin, while the other awaits Darcalus Rex.
• Allaric Van Stradleheim claimed the Eternal Order is collapsing and proposed that the Kargatane destroy it and seize power.

Important members

• Sister Elda: Summoned the Book of Names, directed the party to their relatives’ graves, and explained who can see gravelights.
• High Sentinel Ablander: Led the Shrine of the Spirits in Neblus until the party killed him.
• Duskren Kalvar: Traveling scholar and former Dark Delver who preaches Darcalus Rex’s return.

Connections

• Book of Names: Magical record accessed at the Rivalis chapel.
• Azalin Rex: Named by the Rivalis attendant as the power behind the Book of Names and presented in Erasmus’s vision as part of the Order’s history.
• Darcalus Rex: The distinct promised savior followed by Duskren and the Neblus sect.

History with the party

• Session 1: Helped the party locate deceased relatives without first asking their names.
• Session 2: Sister Elda described gravelights as visible only to true believers in comfort, freedom, and a life well lived.
• Session 6: The party attended Neblus’s midnight mass, witnessed its blood rite, and infiltrated a scholarly meeting while carrying an assassination contract against Ablander.
• Session 7: Duskren described the Neblus sect’s faith in Darcalus Rex; the party later killed Ablander and two acolytes in the Shrine.
• Session 12: Many refugees in the surviving portion of Rivalis wore the Eternal Order’s symbol. Red-robed figures were also reported entering Castle Avernus, but their allegiance was not established.
• Session 13: Sister Elda described Rivalis’s Azalin-centered doctrine, exposed her uncertain memory of time, and named the Silver Lady of Nevuchar Springs as her patron.
• Session 14: Allaric presented the Order’s apparent collapse as an opportunity for Kargatane conquest.

Current relationship

Hostile in Neblus after the party murdered the Shrine’s leader and two acolytes. Sister Elda’s Rivalis congregation is doctrinally distinct and became hostile to Rage after seeing his trophy chain.

Rumors, theories, and uncertainties

• Open question: What does “Azalin’s quest over the undead” mean?
• Open question: Does the Book of Names record all Darkonians, all visitors, or every living and dead person?
• Open question: How formal, old, and widespread is the schism between the Azalin-centered and Darcalus-centered congregations?