Acolytes of Ahk'Rei-Ahan

Acolytes of Ahk'Rei-Ahan
Player Organisation, Cult, Bandit Army
RPG	BZPRPG III
Type	Player Organisation, Cult, Bandit Army
Alignment	Evil
Leader	Ankrahl the Summoner
Headquarters	Varros-Ek-Akros (The Barrowfort)
Status	Active
Creator	NorikSigma

The Acolytes of Ahk'Rei-Ahan is a player-controlled faction with an official fort on Zakaz in Arc 3. They share a similar ideology, worldview, and religion as the Brotherhood of Ak'rei'an (BZPIII) with substantial differences. They worship Ahk'Rei-Ahan, the Archon of the dead and redeemer of the mortal world.

Overview

The Acolytes of Ahk'Rei-Ahan are a secretive religious organisation occupying the Varros-Ek-Akros, simply known as the Barrowfort, nestled in the heart of the northern Crown mountains. It is dedicated to the worship of "the Archon", named and titled Ahk'Rei-Ahan, who they claim is a divine being from beyond the mortal world aiming to rid the world of death and suffering. Opposing him are the "Slave-Spawn" that are the Skakdi Ancestors and the "Tongue-Forked Liars" of the Lesterin pantheon. Key to their worship are the Books of Salvation, a collection of divine revelations offered to the earliest Masters of the old Order. Among their objects of veneration are Purple Lightstones, a rare form of lightstone as the Acolytes believe that these Lightstones contain the essence and power of the Lord of Many Voices. Over the centuries the Acolytes have managed to recruit from the vengeful and outcast of the north, slowly growing their order.The Acolytes have become masters at torture and persuasion, a process called "Revelation", which as yet has proven to be almost completely perfect at turning anyone into loyal Acolytes.

History

Records of the origins Acolytes are scarce, with knowledge of the group shrouded from wider Zakazian society, while the Acolytes' own records are muddled with mystery and myth. A well-known Skakdi tale recounts the most recent unification of the Nakihl as a political force over four centuries ago, led by a Lesterin named called Ahk'rei:Nii who "played with corpses of the dead like puppets and led many of his followers willingly into Kino-Ur", the Skakdi afterlife. The legend tells of the Lesterin's death at the hands of Ga’Rokk:Dii the Gunslinger, who burnt his body and scattered it to the winds to prevent his return. This story finds common use in the present day in the story of the Dead Men of the north who snatch away the careless on foggy nights.

According to the Acolytes, the Archon is a divine being that came to the mortal realm, and was once the servant of one of the Lesterin gods. Aiming to end their rule over the mortal realm and freeing its inhabitants from mortality, he granted them the power of Necromancy and gathered a large following of mortals. They claim that the Archon still lives, and that the Skakdi warlords secretly consorted with the false gods of the Lesterin to delay the Archon's plans. They maintain that the current Order is a continuation of the army the Archon formed within the Nakihl centuries ago. Since then, they have maintained their isolation, only letting the world know of their existence through indirect displays of power that leave no trail back to them.

Throughout the centuries, the Acolytes have quietly grown in strength in the Barrowfort, only maintaining contact with individual Nakihl and indirectly with the Lesterin villages scattered throughout the crown. The Acolytes have found it useful to spread rumours of their existence, as well as continue their self-declared war against the Skakdi warlords of Zakaz. As a result, there is almost always a trickle of willing recruits from Lesterin villages in the north who wander into the mountains, seeking to learn at the feet of the ghosts that the Skathi fear so much. Skakdi rejected by their society have also found it easy to pack up and disappear into the north. Overly ambitious warlords forced into the mountains have also found themselves mysteriously killed or disappeared, to become slaves of the Acolytes.

Rank Structure

The Order consists of three rough populations: full Acolytes, Novitiates that have not received Revelation and Servants, usually captured slaves waiting to be worked to death or turned into zombies.

The Order as a whole is led by the Lords and Ladies of the Order, a small body of members that each lead a department or subgroup in the Order. Every lord has meant many long decades in service to the Order and while they are each twisted or self-serving in their own way, their loyalty to the cause as a whole is never in doubt. As the Archon still lives according to the Order, the first among the Lords is the First Speaker who leads the Order as a whole, setting policy direction, maintaining careful control over the Revelation proecss and interpreting theological disputes. Among the Lords, the most notable are the Loremaster and Polemarch who maintain the archives and military discipline within the Acolytes respectively. Below these are the Knights who act as specialists or lower-level commanders of the Acolytes. These Knights have had many years of experience and are trusted with tasks that are beneath the Lords but too sensitive for 'basic' acolytes. Finally, there lies the general population of Acolytes that do the bidding of the Order. As fully-ranked Acolytes their loyalty has been assured by Revelation, but they are still subject to monastic discipline and a chain of command to ensure unity of purpose. As a group, all full members are termed "Acolytes". As the ranks progress upwards, Acolytes are given more leeway and trust to conduct their orders as they see fit, and take specialized training to hone their skills and powers.

Novitiates comprise the non-servant non-Acolytes. These are either probationary members of the Order that are undergoing evaluation and trusted with little more than menial tasks that are meant to judge their loyalty and ability to follow instructions. Novitiates are usually recruited from among the worthy or compliant prisoner-Servants of the Order or the rare volunteer from the outside, though these usually also spend some time as a Servant to discern their true motives. Servants are the functionally enslaved prisoners of the Order. They conduct the most dangerous menial tasks and are housed in the lower dungeons. Unlike their Mata Nuian counterparts, the Acolytes do not immediately subject prisoners to either death or Conversion. Instead, Servants are worked until some show signs of possible conversion. The Acolytes never conduct Revelation on those who are not yet Novitiates, and Novitiates are only recruited from those who ask to join. The remainder are worked on low rations for the worst tasks until they die.

Apart from living members, the Acolytes also make use of the Undead.

Necromancy

The Acolytes have learnt, from knowledge passed down from the Dread War (as they call the conflict between The Guide of the Fallen and the warlords led by Garokk), the ability to bind an undead zombie to their will in full through the sacrifice of some innate power. The requirements to bind a zombie and its abilities similar to the zombies of the Mata Nuian Brotherhood: tough, with little sense of pain, and obey their masters without question, even retaining some of their intelligence before their death. However, due to their depleted state, they have much weaker control over the innate powers they had in life. It is also rumored that the old disciples of the Slayer of Serpents could control legions of the dead, raise monsters of bone and bark, and move to Kino-Ur (called Kainu by the Acolytes) and back at will. The Loremaster maintains research on these lost arts, called "Lore", in the Book of Salvation. Little progress has been made in this department.

Theology

The Zakazian Canon of the Acolytes is similar in some ways to the Nuian Canon. Instead of the Book of Life, which only exists as supplementary fragments to the Acolytes, the Archangel is instead named the Archon, and depicted in the Book of Salvation (the main scripture of the Acolytes) as the saviour that wishes to end the tyranny of the false gods of the realm by freeing its inhabitants from mortality and granting them the power of Necromancy. In the case of the Acolytes, however, their ire is mainly directed at Irnakk and the Ancestors, called Spawners, of the Skakdi, with Mata Nui, or Matan Uley, only rarely mentioned in the Zakazian Canon, usually in recognition as the one-time master or false teacher of the Divine Liberator.

The Spawners are painted as the main antagonists to the Archon, who wished death upon mortals in order to trap them in Kino-Ur (called Kainu in the Book of Salvation. This name is obliquely referenced twice in the Book of Life in inconsistent terms; once as one of the celestial realms and another time as the name of the mortal afterlife). It is depicted as a prison, an eternal frozen torment from which the Spawners can harvest armies for their endless wars over the celestial realms for eternity. The Archon is depicted as a warrior under one of the Celestial lords, Matan Uley, and wished to share this knowledge with mortals in order to disrupt the plans.

But Matan Uley, like the other Lesterin deities, was said to delight in the toiling and suffering of mortals too, and refused Ahk'Rei-Ahan from assisting the mortals. The Divine Liberator broke with the command, and brought his celestial gifts to Zakaz, quickly forming a large and powerful army of wise men and warriors. Entire warbands stepped willingly into Kainu-named-Abyss in order to free the souls of the dead. The Book of Salvation is unclear on whether all of these souls are reborn, obliviated, or in another less torturous afterlife. Nonetheless, the wise-men of the story, which likely referred to the allied Nakihl of history, were able to conduct magicks in order to bring back fragments of souls into their bodies, reanimated through Necromancy. This was done both to fallen enemies and allies, though due to unspecified constraints, the process was said to damage the soul irreparably, so usually only enemies or particularly insistent allies were reanimated. And the ever-growing Army had no shortage of enemies.

The legends of the Last Nakihl War in Skakdi history is recorded in the Zakazian Canon as well, with the defeat of the Archon painted as the result of treachery from "Uley's Swords" in combination with the 'hate-filth' power of the Warlords. Politically, the depiction of the Archon as taking a mortal Lesterin form and anti-Nakihl sentiment among the Skakdi has allowed the Acolytes to play into the angle of "vengeful Lesterin spirits of legend." To this end, the Acolytes maintain an indirect presence amongst the Lesterin villages of the north. Mysterious ambushes destroying Skakdi raiders or supplies appearing in the middle of the night if Purple Lightstones are left in the open as offerings.

Members

Under construction