Around four
thousand years ago, the Faceless Lords were born. The leader, known as
'The One' or 'The Faceless Lord Himself', began the group in an attempt
to make himself a God and to rule Oerth (the lands where he was born).
Little is known about him, except that he had some sort of horrific scar
on his face, which he covered with a leather mask. This gives rise to
the group's name: The Faceless Lords. He made all the individuals in the
group wear a similar face-mask.
The first people to join were his old friends with whom he had
adventured in the past. They became the One's council. Together, they
started a new way of building an army - they indoctrinated followers
into what was at the time a cult by way of repetitive exercises. These
were designed to brainwash their followers, who lost much of their
previous identity and even memory of the past through their techniques.
The process took a long time, and it took them many years to amass a
large army. When they had, however, they became a force to be reckoned
with, and their armies won battle after battle.
The cause of their seeming invincibility was in the structure of their
armies - for a start, they had no problems with making anyone and
everyone work for them, men, women, children, old people, animals or
monsters. In addition, each soldier would lay down his life without even
thinking about it, if the army needed them to. But perhaps most
importantly, the entire regiment was not so much a collection of
individuals as a whole unit. The Lords practiced military discipline in
unheard of precision. The soldiers would walk as a whole, think as a
whole, and kill as a whole. Each unit was ruled by a single man or
woman, the one with the greatest tactical ability, which further
strengthened them. And finally, the generals ruling over these units
were themselves expert tacticians, stolen from various nations and
indoctrinated into the Lords.
For many years, the Lords' borders stretched further and further
outwards. They seemed to have a winning formula; their success even lead
them to start colonizing other planes of existence. They managed to
enslave entire demiplanes, and almost capture many more. Finally, all
lands and peoples who were not in the Lords realized that their
differences would have to wait; the Faceless Lords would need to be
destroyed first. But the resultant rag-tag and chaotic armies of what
became known as the Commoner's Alliance were no match for the Lords, and
their reign of terror continued. The Lords became known as the 'Creeping
Faceless Red' or 'Creeping Red', referring both to the colours on the
Lords' banner and the fact that the Lords' progress couldn't be stopped
by the Commoner's Alliance - the Lords' slow but inevitable conquering
of all lands by way of bloodshed was unstoppable. The Lords also gained
the title 'Unseen Doom' or 'Unseeing Doom'. The former referred to the
fact that the Lords had seemingly arrived from nowhere, but had been
such a successful force. The latter referred to the soldiers of the
Lords themselves, seemingly without mind and hence 'Unseeing'. The last
title was the 'Invisible Terror', which was a title given to the group
after they had fallen from power. It referred to the general feelings
about the Lords at the time, which were that they had been a group who
came from nowhere but who rose to great heights and ruled by terror, but
who had then become invisible again, sinking away to nothing again.
The height of the Lords' reign lasted almost half a century, and the
leaders of the group all became liches to ensure they remained alive to
rule their group. However, the Commoner's Alliance eventually brought
the Lords to kneel when they found a way of using the army's system of
power against them. The armies had one ruling figure, who, if killed,
gave the rule to a second, then a third individual. But if all three
were killed, the unit was without a leader, and all their unified
cohesion turned into a disarrayed mess. The Alliance focused on killing
these leaders - the subsequent destruction of the unit was almost a
joke.
And so it was that the Alliance triumphed against the Lords. The Lords,
seeing that the structure of their units, once so powerful, was being
used against them, changed it. But they did so too late, the Alliance
had picked up speed and wasn't going to be stopped. Perceiving that they
were about to have their inner sanctums destroyed, the lich-leaders of
the Lords hatched a plan. One of them would make good his escape while
the others stayed to fight to the bitter end. If all went badly, and the
Lords ended out loosing, then the one who had escaped had the task of
keeping their flame alight until the world had forgotten their name and
they could return again triumphant. And so it was, the escaped Lord lay
quiet in the wake of the ruin of the Faceless Lords, for four thousand
years. Even The One and his council had fallen to a band of powerful
adventurers. It had been necessary to allow all the council of Lords and
the One so that the Alliance didn't suspect that one Lord had escaped
their notice, and also if the one remaining alive had been one of the
council, they would surely have wanted to take The One's place as
supreme ruler rather than wanting to return him to life when the time
was right. And so it was decided...
The escaped Lord, known as the Red Prophet, lay low for thousands of
years. He ran a cult, known as the Red Cult, and quietly this cult
researched, looking for something that would show them the time was
right for the Lords to be returned. Meanwhile, the Red Cult gained spied
in every major guild, government and organization. These spies reported
back anything interesting to the Red Cult, giving the cult an enormous
insight into the running of Oerth.
Recently, they found what they were looking for. In an abandoned dwarven
mine, in the middle of a mountain, where the dwarves' greed had led them
to dig too deep as they are wont to do, an ancient artifact had been
found. The Red Cult found, upon investigation, that this artifact had
the ability to enslave individuals to its will. They realized that if
they could harness it, they would be able to build an army like the one
the Lords had, but in a year rather than decades. The process of
indoctrination that they had used would be bypassed. The time was right.
They set up a base in the mountain and began the process of returning
The One and his council to life.
A few years later, the lich-leaders of the Lords have been re-gathered.
The artifact's powers have been fully researched and are properly
understood, and seem to be better than at first thought. It seems that
the artifact is a sort of remnant of the first Creation, used to create
insects like ants. As such, it allows someone powerful enough (The One)
to enslave other minds to his will instantly. The effect is similar to
the effect of the indoctrination that the Lords practiced four thousand
years ago, but now units can be made which don’t need training – if a
skilled fighter is amongst the unit, his abilities can be transferred to
each member of the unit. If he dies, the next best fighter gains
control. The chain of command doesn’t end until each member of the group
is dead, removing the weakness that lead to the Lords’ downfall four
thousand years ago. Thus armed, the Lords are preparing for their
return…
Present
The One feels that his council of old are not trustworthy. He doesn’t
feel he can trust them, and believes that they will try to overthrow him
before he has properly entrenched himself as leader of the new Faceless
Lords. As such, he is planning to enslave them to the artifact and elect
a new council from amongst the Red Cult. The Red Prophet is one of those
he intends to promote.