Continuing with the prompts from d4 Caltrops’s d100 Table of Topics to Blog About, today’s is, 03 – Are there Secret Societies or Factions hiding in your World? Tell me about one! I’m going to be splitting these sort of world building responses into two categories. One will reflect my Sunday 5e home game, and the other will be from the setting project I’m starting to work on, tentatively titled the Iron Fist of the Hobgoblin King.

Secret Societies in Ptolus. Oh brother, are there ever! Ptolus is rife with chaos cults, all of which work towards bringing about the Night of Dissolution, during which the magical wards that bind the Galchutt will be broken and they will be free to visit their wrath upon the city.

One of our first adventures involved busting the temple of the Ebon Hand, as detailed in the back of the Ptolus big book. The Ebon Hand revels in mutation, and they have a habit of popping back up like cockroaches after being smashed. My group ran them out of the temple and moved in themselves, establishing a new society of their own known as Owl Cult. They’ve received word that the Ebon Hand is in resurgence, but they’ve had a lot to do lately and haven’t pursued that lead at the time of this writing.

Ptolus is packed with factions, and I imagine that many won’t even come up in the course of the campaign. Despite my other criticisms of the setting, I like that part of it. It’s a big place, and the players can latch onto whatever they like and let their adventures follow naturally from there.

The Iron Fist of the Hobgoblin King. There are many factions across the land. The church of the southern empire is one, and it proselytizes the One True Way even though many in the northern lands are still beholden to the demigods of the land. They send their paladins and priests on crusades into the north, wielding sword and flame as they seek to purge the past and bring forth the dawn of the emperor’s light.

On the other side of the western mountains lie the lands of the hobgoblin king, a tyrant who lures monsters to join his war machine, intending to bring ruin and conquest to the lands below the peaks. But he does not rule over a monolithic people. There are resistance cells that would overthrow him and see freedom restored. Similarly, he has his spies and secret police who root our resisters and make public spectacles of their executions. But even among his spies, there are double agents, as sand runs between the fingers of his clenched fist.

The greatest barrier between the hobgoblin king and the lands to the east are the mountains, riven as they are with dwarven fortresses. Their gates have been closed of late to prevent the spread of chaos into their halls of stone, but they still permit some trade. And with this trade comes the spread of ideas, and the hobgoblin king’s temptations have found willing ears. A foulness festers in the dwarven society, and those who have sworn themselves to the hobgoblin king or to chaos weaken it, unseen, from inside.