Dawn Blade

Dawn Blade insignia, circa 894 TG

The Dawn Blade cult, known to its members as the Swords of Dawn or, alternatively, the Awakeners, were a death cult born roughly a century after the Drowning. They are known across Esvaan for having been the cause of countless tragedies; cities being burned to ash, hundreds being murdered in a single night, and sacrificing the living in the name of awakening their god.

The Dawn Blade believed that all of existence was created by one singular being of utmost power - the Dreamer. This being, according to their beliefs, sleeps, and in sleeping has dreamt up all of reality in a craving for excitement. They were joined in the singular purpose to assist an unknown Hero in awakening the Dreamer and bringing about the end existence - that is, until they vanished off of the face of Eun around 885 TG. Now all that exists of them is memories and haunting stories to be told around campfires.

Or so you would be led to believe.

## Overview/Early concept

The Dawn Blade were a terrorist organization operating throughout Jindis, Avalon, Fel, Kana, Lyen and Galea, although they also perpetrated several acts in other nations. They espoused an insidious death cult, worshiping an entity they called 'the Dreamer'. Their creed was that the Dreamer had created all of reality, including the Gods, and that everything was a figment of its imagination. The Dreamer craved excitement, and as such span a tale, of heroes and villains, demons and dragons, epic wars that spanned centuries. The Dawn Blade ascribed all cycles of history to the Dreamer's Tale, and believed it to be their duty to bring an end to the Tale and wake the Dreamer- and their method of doing so involved wholesale destruction of Eun, believing that the most logical conclusion is one of lasting finality. Born a century after the Drowning, initially as a small underground society, they soon became radical terrorists that went on to plague Eun.

They prophesied that the End would be brought about by a figure known as the Hero, and that this Hero had manifested several times before in history, but had been thwarted in his mission to bring about the End every time. With their aid, the Hero would succeed, and the Dreamer's Tale would finally end. In order to bring their prophecy about, the Dawn Blade perpetrated several acts of horrific violence, razing entire towns and villages to the ground in unusually cruel ways, believing that by plunging the world into chaos they would hasten the apocalypse. They would capture a brood of Dragonkin and train them to violate men and women alike, then unleash them on unsuspecting cities- and to the mentally scarred survivors, they would implant subconscious suggestions that would trigger weeks later, causing them to slaughter their loved ones. This latter tactic grew so popular that survivors of Dawn Blade attacks were usually killed on sight for fear of becoming berserk in the future.

There are even villages in Galea that remember the Dawn Blade's predations, where half of the population would be killed and the other half forced to eat their flesh in order to be allowed to live, or where every child would be impaled and their parents forced to watch as they were devoured, still living, by flesh-eating insects. They would also use more conventional methods of terror, planting bombs in busy market places, and were particularly known for using young and untrained magic users as devastating living bombs. On rarer occasions, their mental magic would manage to reach a senior member of government, leading to them infiltrating the ranks and sowing dissent and paranoia, causing civil wars and devastating purges. In the southern reaches of Jindis, they used their subservient barbarian tribes to form a great roving band of death, slaughtering indiscriminately and only allowing those who killed their kin to live and join their troop, until this force was finally crushed by a Kana expeditionary force. They also gained even greater power nigh 20 years ago when, having gained access to First Godwar technology, they began an indiscriminate killing spree in Fel and Jindis, where not even the great legions could stop them. They were eventually halted by a lone knight, believed to be the Knight of Crows, who destroyed their weapons cache and eliminated that branch of the Dawn Blade.

From the beginning of the 880's, their methods became increasingly violent and overt, with spectacular acts of gruesomeness such as sowing a snake into a concubine's bowels, activating its rousing enchantment once she was with her lord, killing her as it ripped itself free and bit the lord to death. They would send their mad priests far and wide, preaching their bloody cant of death, and killing these priests would release a cloud of black miasma that would quickly bring about a highly virulent form of the plague, killing thousands. Those that did live long enough to terrify their captive audience with tales of despair told them that doom was nigh, for the Catalyst to bring about their prophecy had been found, and their sacrifices had almost satiated the prophecy's requirement.

The sordid and blood-soaked history of the Dawn Blade ended a little over six years before the Tower War, when all records of their activity suddenly ceased. The criminal underworld, their main partners and simultaneous rivals, know not where the powerful terrorists went, but not a single Dawn Blade operative has been seen. Rumours abound of the site of a great slaughter, found by a lone explorer who had spotted strange ruins of unknown make and gone to investigate, but these remain unsubstantiated, and since the explorer went mad shortly thereafter, they will remain as such.

The Dawn's Blade's symbol consisted of a sword formed out of the shape of a rising sun, with the blade and guard consisting of its rays, and the handle a single branch underneath