The Brothers in Exile are a group of “monsters” which seek to live peacefully. The brothers include lycanthropes, intelligent undead, intelligent beasts, and others whose mere appearance is enough to get “normal” people up in arms.

They were founded by a minotaur named Zortago. Zortago actually had a home, once. He’d been secretly sleeping in a barn to wait out a terrible storm, when he heard people shouting for a lost child. Zortago snuck out to search for the boy, and found him at the same time as the townspeople; the boy was pinned under a tree in a small depression which was rapidly filling with water. He lifted the tree, allowing the boy to slip free just in time to avoid drowning, and he was allowed to stay in the town ever since.

Things were okay for a while, but peoples’ memories can be short, and soon some of them grew to distrust him. Eventually, the family which had put him up found themselves at odds with the other townspeople, and though the boy and his parents implored Zortago to stay, he left so that they could find peace.

Through his travels, Zortago eventually met a wereboar named Lysander, who’d been thrown out of his village after contracting his condition, and a ghoul called Jhourgmand who took pains to only eat the carrion left behind by the kills of other creatures.

Today, the Brothers in Exile operate three monasteries. Zortago and Lysander each head one, and the third is headed by a vampire named Kelstas. Zortago’s monastery is located in a valley and provides aid to several nearby villages. Lysander’s is located near the summit of a mountain, far from any civilization. Kelstas’s is located in a forest replete with wildlife and caters to those with special dietary requirements, like Jhourgmand and Kelstas himself.

Encounters with The Brothers in Exile

The PCs’ benefactor tells them of a haven of evil not far, where horrendous creatures congregate and terrorize the hillside, lead by a ferocious minotaur.

A PC’s loved one is dying of a disease which can only be cured by a mummy, and he learns there may be one at Lysander’s monastery.

The Moneylenders is headed by Lord de Blays, and as the name implies it is a guild of bankers. The guild’s reach is far and as a result its coffers deep, for it is actually quite active all throughout the country and neighboring states as well. A moneylender agent can be found in every large city and many smaller ones as well, and offer travelers a safe and convenient way to store and transfer funds. They also make many investments, including backing both business ventures and exploration. Of the three vampire lords, de Blays schemes the least and seems more or less content to run an honest trade.

The Shadow Guild, headed by Lord Marchant, is well known to be involved in many highly-illegal activities, but it continues to exist because it would be incredibly difficult to oppose. Marchant has spies everywhere, it seems, and if he cannot bribe you he’ll kill you. The Shadow Guild facilitates everything from gambling to protection rackets to slave trading.

Lady Puchot of the Crafters’ Guild originally hailed from Shentreau. Her background is less a mystery than the other two vampires; it’s known that she was one of the first great artists to emerge from the city. Her art gained her the attention of another vampire, and thus gained her her immortality. The Crafters’ Guild reaches out to artisans of all types and has established trade schools in some of the larger cities. Lady Puchot herself seems nice, and is quite lovely, but she gives off an intensely ominous vibe. No one can quite put their finger on it, but any who meet her immediately get the feeling that she has some great scheme working.

Each of the guilds is quite wide-spread, and so many find it odd that the three would all be based in an otherwise-unassuming city such as Rastonia. This leads many to believe that there is some connection among the vampires, but if there is it is unclear.

Encounters with The Vampire City

Lady Puchot, having heard about a wonderful new talent in Shentreau, could hire the PCs to bring her the artist known as “M.”

The PCs find a gang of thugs harassing an old woman who runs a pottery stand. After sending them off, the thugs warn them that they’ve incurred the wrath of The Shadow Guild. Sure enough, they soon find themselves being targeted by thieves, leg-breakers, assassins and worse.

Lord Marchant hears about a particularly daring and skillful bit of thievery performed by one of the PCs, and invites the character to Rastonia. Marchant wants to recruit him, and will not take no as an answer.

Despite relatively sophisticated magical techniques, someone is forging counterfeit letters of credit and defrauding The Moneylenders of large sums of gold. Lord de Blays hires the PCs to find out who’s doing it, how, and to put a stop to it by any means necessary.

The Chronastic Assembly is a secret society comprising some of the most powerful individuals in the world. They possess an artifact, a book from the end of time itself, which details how the world ends, and what lead up to it.

Armed with this knowledge, the Chronastic Assembly has worked to shape world events to avoid the fate written of. In fact, they’ve even met with some limited success.

The book was discovered ninety-seven years ago by the founder of the Assembly, Lord Daerak Blaiken, on an expedition to the jungle. At the time, it appeared that the end would come a mere thirty years later. Through his extensive network of contacts and with his great personal wealth, Lord Blaiken was able to avert the disaster detailed in the tome.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story; the tome changed. Now, instead of a magical plague, it would be a rogue summoner’s hellgate which unleashed the demons of hell, a mere seventeen years later.

And so the pattern has continued; for nearly a century the members of the assembly have worked diligently to put off the current disaster. Usually they’ve gotten a decade or two, sometimes just a few years. In recent times, it’s gotten even worse; after the most recent prophecy was averted (zombie mosquitoes), they only bought themselves a scant eight months.

Needless to say, this is a desperate time for the Chronastic Assembly. No longer can they sit back in their courts and subtly guide the course of the world through elaborate plans. There is a growing faction within the Assembly calling for them to go public, but there are still many traditionalists who fear that would be unwise. In particular, the current leader of the Assembly, and keeper of the tome, is dead-set against going public.

In the end, many are choosing a middle ground: widening the conspiracy, letting in new people who lack the influence usually required but make up for it with experience and skill sets needed in these dire times.

Twists: One twist you might consider is that the tome is not actually an artifact sent through time; perhaps, instead, it is a hoax. Maybe a powerful lich has planted it and is using it to guide the course of history– maybe the Chronastic Assembly isn’t even the first group to use it!

Alternatively, there could be a faction within the assembly secretly working against the organization to bring about the very events the book warns about. Demons and worshipers of chaos who desire the end of all life, working like a cancer to stymie the efforts of the conspiracy. That would certainly explain why they’ve been gaining less and less time!