This kill pile salvage is from a PDF line that was going to be about villain groups for 4E, but sadly fell apart before the first one saw print. First section is background, second will be stat blocks, and third will be other weirdness.
The Red Brotherhood
Introduction
For three
centuries the Red Brotherhood has existed in the nooks and crannies of the
civilized world, something of an urban legend among nobles and the elite. Few believe the stories of blood-drinking bandits
who prey only on those of noble birth, or at least few admit to believing them
publicly. Behind closed doors, many a
country lord has told tales of friends of relatives or nobles of distant lands
waylaid and slain in the most horrific manner by the Red Brotherhood. Such storytellers may laugh at these stories
of banditry and murder when they are shared around the dinner table, but even
a rumor of the Red Brotherhood operating
in the vicinity quickly results in an expansion of every noble's personal
guard.
While the
Red Brotherhood could revel in such infamy, they instead try to avoid hunting
in any region in which their stories have grown too prevalent. Under the leadership of Orseus, a vampire of
extreme age and greater goals than simple thievery, the Red Brotherhood thrives
not on force or brutality, but cunning and planning. They listen to the rumor mill, bribe local
officials, and try to avoid all the hard work that goes into normal banditry. With centuries to perfect his skills, Orseus
has forged a highly efficient, trained, and widely feared bandit gang that has
few equals; all the while keeping his dark plans for power a secret.
The Red
Brotherhood is a group of villains suitable for Heroic-tier play, specifically
for characters between 6th and 10th level. This product details the history, members,
and tactics of the Red Brotherhood, along with information about how to
incorporate them into your campaign.
They can be used as anything from a one-off encounter to a reoccurring
group of villains that could be a major threat to the players.
History
Orseus Qrang was born the child of peasants,
and early in his life found his natural talent for swordplay to be a path to a
better life; a path the led to blood money, cheap taverns, and few friends. He
lived most of his life as a mercenary of little note, serving whatever petty
lord or bandit captain could afford his services. His life finally changed when he entered the
service of the wizard Rothjur the Foul, a thoroughly unpleasant fellow bent on
extending his life far beyond the bounds of mortal existence through the
necromantic arts. Orseus was little
concerned with this, caring only the large piles of gold he was paid by Rothjur
to guard his tower and workshops. Nor did he mind the occasional kidnapping and
murder assignments, as Rothjur’s need for more “resources” for his experiments
with undeath grew and grew.
In time,
Rothjur attained his goal of lichdom and immediately set about transforming his
minions into undead as well, so his loyal servants could serve him
forever. Told he would become a vampire
lord of vast power, Orseus was rather put out when he was instead transformed
into a vampire spawn by Lord Vostrag, the vampire lord lieutenant of Rothjur
the Foul and master of his military forces.
Orseus put up with this unfortunate state of affairs for several years,
living at the beck and call of Lord Vostrag and Rothjur the Foul until
Rothjur's tower was assaulted by an army of heroes, adventurers, and other various
do-gooders in the hopes of ending the lich’s unnatural reign of terror. Not interested in being so thoroughly
controlled with no payment for his service, Orseus betrayed Lord Vostrag and
Rothjur the Foul, lowering the defenses of the tower at a key moment in the
siege. The resulting battle destroyed
both Rothjur the Foul and Lord Vostrag, consigning them to history as minor
undead tyrants, while Orseus escaped in the confusion along with a small
portion of Rothjur's treasure.
Unfortunately,
Orseus, being a vampire spawn, found his new life to be little better if not
worse than his time in service to Rothjur.
He had no ready source of blood or anyone to protect him during daylight
hours. He hid as best he could and fed
on wanderers no one would miss, doing all he could to avoid attracting the
attention of the heroes who so handily dispatched his master. This deplorable state lasted for several
months, until, through some good fortune, Orseus caught a noble lord, Lord
Marcus Sarthing, alone on a night's ride.
Attacking from the shadows, Orseus slew Lord Sarthing and drank his
blood in short order.
Then something unexpected
happened.
One of Lord Sarthing's ancestors
had more than a dabbling interest in the necromantic arts that has ultimately
resulted in a terrible curse on his entire family line. The curse stipulated
that should Sarthing blood be consumed by an undead creature it would increase
the power of the imbibing undead ten-fold.
Orseus went from being a vampire spawn to something more; and while not
made the equal of a vampire lord, Orseus immediately decided he wanted more of
this power. He spent the next five years
hunting down Lord Sarthing's immediate family, killing them all and feasting on
their blood, each victim making him stronger.
While Orseus was never what one would call a genius, he was cunning and
greedy, and these two traits allowed him to overcome his other shortcomings in
his pursuit of yet more power. He
quickly learned all he could about the family tree of the Sarthing family,
hunting down every distant cousin, forgotten uncle, and bastard child he could.
This took many, many years, but every Sarthing scion made him more powerful,
and so he continued on.
After a
century of chasing the Sarthings, at which point the family line was all but
wiped out and forced into hiding, Orseus found a record of Hulbaer Sarthing,
the warlock who had introduced the taint to the family generations ago. Orseus learned that Hulbaer Sarthing had been
part of a group of warlocks, the Bone Cabal, which had made numerous deals with
a group of necrotic primordials called the Carrion Lords. The Carrion Lords were trapped in a
prehistoric divinely constructed prison, as is the case with most primordials,
but could escape their prison if they gained enough power in the mortal
world. Thus, they made deals with mortal
agents with the goal of spreading their tainted power through the blood of
their agents, power that could later be collected and returned to the Carrion
Lords after it had time to fester and grow in the hearts of mortals. While the
Bone Cabal received power for their sacrifices, they became infected by the
power of the Carrion Lords, an infection they passed on to their children and
which would empower any undead that feasted upon their flesh or blood. Orseus learned the basics of this story,
paying little attention to the role of the Carrion Lords and instead
concentrating on the fact that there were other families with blood similar to
the Sarthing family. Orseus came to
believe that if he consumed all the blood of the descendants of the Bone Cabal,
he would obtain all their power and become sort of undead god, possibly
replacing the Carrion Lords. While the records he found did indicate collecting
all the extant blood of the Bone Cabal would bring some sort of power, what
exactly that power is remained unknown to Orseus. He knew the Carrion Lords
existed and were tied to the Bone Cabal, but knew nothing else of their true
aims.
Now Orseus
had a dozen families to track down instead of one, and many of these families
had parlayed the arcane power of their ancestors into worldly power, becoming
noble houses or families of great economic power over time. Others married into noble houses, spreading their
blood taint. While Orseus could hunt
down a lesser house like Sarthing on his own, some of the greater houses on his
list would prove more difficult, thus he came to the conclusion he needed
followers. He needed scholars,
charlatans, and warriors to see his cause through, and he knew better than most
that all sorts of men can be bought if you look long enough and carry a
large-enough coin purse.
Thus began
the Red Brotherhood, a group of mercenary scholars, thugs, and other criminals
working for Orseus Qrang toward his goal of consuming the blood of all the
descendants of the Bone Cabal – while making a tidy profit in the process. Drawn from the lowest of the low, Orseus is
served by the sort of desperate scum who would willingly work for a vampire,
albeit, one that has little interest in feeding on them. Recruited from gutters, seedy taverns, and
bandit gangs, these unseemly few are loyal little beyond the money Orseus helps
them steal and the fear he instills in them.
Orseus has
kept the Red Brotherhood running in one fashion or another for almost three
hundred years, with most of his followers only lasting a few years before
meeting an untimely end. Orseus makes
enough money and is successful enough that he can usually find more recruits
with little difficulty, but is forced to travel around continually to avoid the
law and to keep tales of his few failures from reaching the ears of possible
recruits. Orseus considers the fearsome
and yet mysterious reputation of the Red Brotherhood one of his best assets and
works hard to keep both intact, often forsaking profit for the sake of
furthering the group's infamy. He has
even gone so far as to pay bards and entertainers encountered in his travels to
tell tales of the Red Brotherhood, each more horrific than the last.
Orseus has
not told any of his followers of his true goals, preferring to play the part of
a vampire with strange tastes rather than one on a mission for great
power. Orseus secretly fears that one of
his followers may learn his true goal and try to stop him, or worse yet, beat
him to it. This is the primary reason
Orseus has refrained from creating vampire spawn, though his own experience as
a vampire spawn also lead him to avoid that choice. So far, Orseus believes he
is the only person who knows the secret of the Bone Cabal and has already
killed several scholars who have assisted him in the past to keep them from
putting the pieces together. However,
Orseus' current scholar, Lorca Junnio, has puzzled out Orseus' goals, a feat
that is sure to earn him a swift and painful death should Orseus learn of
it.
In the last
three centuries, Orseus has killed dozens of descendants of the Bone Cabal and
scores of other he suspected of being descendants, many of whom were nobles of
rank. This record has made the Red
Brotherhood a group feared by the nobles of many regions. In areas where Orseus is not thought of as an
old wives tale there is a substantial price on his head. Orseus works to enhance this reputation of
fear, but also works just as hard to remain more a rumor than a fact. Cognizant of the many forces that could
squash his band if they could find and corner him, Orseus knows the best
defense is to be impossible to find.
In the last
few years, Orseus has attracted a particularly skilled band of ruffians and ne'er-do-wells
to his side, growing his operation from a score of men to several dozen,
complete with spies, scholars, and magicians.
Buoyed by recent successes and his acquisition of more competent
minions, Orseus now looks to gain enough strength to strike more openly at
those descendants of the Bone Cabal who have managed to evade him with their
castles, armies, and powerful magics.
.
Important Personages
The Red
Brotherhood currently has around sixty members, though this varies from week to
week as casualties and new recruits come and go. No one really “leaves” the Red Brotherhood as
anything other than a corpse, a policy Orseus has worked hard to enforce and
keep quiet. Those who do wish to leave are allowed to do so, only to be hunted
down by Orseus or Blight a few days later. Orseus regularly spins yarns of past
members who retired to lives of wealth and leisure, but such stories are
complete fabrications. Only the group
fence, Old Tessers, has been around long enough to know the true fates of those
Orseus describes. However, Tessers is eager to avoid the cold hand of death,
and he keeps his mouth shut in the hopes his loyalty might convince Orseus to
transform him into undead as well.
Orseus
serves as the leader of the Red Brotherhood, but it has grown too large for him
to oversee every aspect of it himself.
To that end, he has recruited an inner circle of lieutenants who each
take some part if the band's operations as their responsibility. These individuals have mostly been promoted
from within the ranks of the Red Brotherhood, but some, like Alia Tyy, were
immediately promoted upon joining the group due to their special skills. These lieutenants speak with Orseus' voice in
matters related to their area of expertise, but that does not mean he will not
overrule them when needed. Orseus does
not trust his lieutenants any more than he has to and works to make sure they
have as much invested in the success of the Red Brotherhood as possible. He
also tries to play them off against each other, but is not very successful at
this, and his attempts are clumsy at best.
As a whole,
the Red Brotherhood is loyal to Orseus since he provides them with wealth,
security, and a fearsome reputation.
Most members know the group would not be as successful without Orseus,
so mutinies from within, of which there have been several, rarely find many
supporters. This does not mean that the
Red Brotherhood is made up of fanatics, and the loyalty of most members
evaporate as soon as they are faced with execution or torture. While Orseus has tried to impress upon his
men that he will track down any traitors and punish them more severely than any
agent of the law, his efforts have only met with limited success. Orseus' own focus on mobility and avoiding
the notice of the authorities has limited the scope and reach of his forces to
their current state.. While the Red
Brotherhood will not betray their master for coin, they will turn their coats
to avoid an inescapable death.. Orseus
has orchestrated several daring rescues over the years in order to further
inspire loyalty in his men, but only in situations where he knew he could
prevail.
Orseus
works to recruit his followers from those who are beneath the notice of the
general populace: the poor, the disenfranchised, and those outside the
law. These poor souls are usually
recruited from local criminal organizations, slums, and underworld hangouts,
but when hard-up for followers, Orseus has been known to press peasants into
his service. Such members of the
Brotherhood rarely survive long and tend to get all the most dangerous
jobs. Orseus tries to operate away from
the homelands of his recruits where possible to avoid anyone recognizing them
and to avoid any unexpected emotional entanglements.
