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The Book of Faceless Hate

This terrible book is actually a collection of handwritten documents, letters, and notes (all scribbled in different hands, some nearly illegible) that someone has stuffed into a very short but disturbing tome called the Book of Faceless Hate. However, one can’t learn that title without reading the book itself—no title marks the tattered, dark brown cover at all. The Cult Book is full of rhetoric, myths, suppositions, half-truths, and twisted logic, but also some important information from three years ago. Characters who take the time to read through and decipher all of its pages learn the following information.

Chaos

True chaos, or “deep chaos,” is a religion based on the fundamental aspects of hate, destruction, death, and dissolution. The philosophy of chaos is one of change. It teaches that the current world is a creation of order and structure, but that it was flawed from the beginning due to lack of foresight or understanding of what living creatures really want or need. The gods of creation—gods of order—are untouchable and unknowable. They are aloof and uncaring, says the teaching of true chaos.

The Lords of Chaos

Even before the world existed, the Lords of Chaos were. Beyond mortals, beyond gods, these great beings wielded power unimaginable. Called the Galchutt by some, the Natharl’nacna by others, these dark ones attended the creation of the universe and called it flawed. The Lords of Chaos were unjustly trapped in a terrible prison, and we have been trapped with them, but soon we shall all be free.

To a fortunate few, the Lords of Chaos granted great personal power. These blessed individuals were called the Vested of the Galchutt, for they were invested with the Galchutt’s own essence. The first Vested were named Baalhazor, Gorgoth-Lol, Mrathrach, Thoggidrum, and Vladaam. Perhaps today, as the power of chaos rises again, new Vested will receive the Galchutt’s blessing. With such power, the faithful can strike down their enemies and clear the way for their ascendancy.

In the ancient days, the Galchutt spawned new creatures called the Elder Brood. Chief among them were the zaug, some of whom eventually rebelled and struck out on their own. Much more successfully, they forged the “earthbound demons” called the rhodintor. The pinnacle of their creations, however, was the new type of craft called chaositech: devices fueled by chaos itself that granted wondrous powers.

Chaositech

Chaositech, the gift of the Galchutt, is slowly returning to the world, as more and more of it is discovered in hidden caches every day. In Ptolus, much of it appears to be in the hands of a mysterious figure known only as the Surgeon in the Shadows. This individual uses his skills, coupled with chaositech and magic, to transform paying customers into living weapons or otherwise enhanced versions of themselves. Sometimes this transformation results in a hideous appearance, all for the glory of chaos. The Surgeon in the Shadows can not only alter the bodies of his subjects, but also the minds.

The Chaos Cults

The various Cults of Chaos in Ptolus today are numerous but small. However, they are growing. More and more citizens see the truth and the light in chaos. They finally acknowledge the oppression and wrongness of order and life as most people know it.

Each of the many cults usually has its own chaos symbol. Plus, there are more general symbols, such as the many-pointed arrow, the green spiral, and the broken square. Even when it would be prudent to avoid use of any kind of symbols, the cultists use them anyway. They feel they gain strength and power from them.

Brothers of Venom

Like the Deathmantle cult described below, the Brothers of Venom have a taste for death and murder. Unlike those in the Deathmantle, however, these worshippers of chaos like their deaths slow and their murders subtle. As their name suggests, they love poisons of all kinds.

The Brothers of Venom’s symbol is that of a shadowy, coiled serpent. They typically allow themselves to be called only “the Brotherhood” or “the Brotherhood of Ptolus.”

Crimson Coil

Members of the Crimson Coil wear hooded red robes and do not believe in showing their faces. They don’t mix into normal society, but prefer to spend their lives cloistered in remote temples, often established within the ruins of another structure for symbolic purposes. The only time these cultists make an appearance is en masse, to carry out some act of terrible destruction. They are neither subtle nor gentle.

The Deathmantle

Members of the Deathmantle cult, known also as Death’s Grimace, revere death, and obviously so. Each cultist wears a death’s head mask, usually of copper or bronze, but occasionally of iron painted skull-white. They worship murder, specifically slaughter. Mass murder to the greatest degree—the slaying of a whole town, a whole city, or a whole nation—is their ultimate goal.

The Deathmantle cult associates closely with an assassin’s guild called the Vai and with the death-lovers in the Necropolis known as the Forsaken.

The Ebon Hand

The Cult of the Ebon Hand worships physical deformity and mutation. The cultists refer to mutation as “the touch of the Ebon Hand.” The chapel of this cult always keeps a large, black-painted stone hand, palm exposed, somewhere within it. This statue is the heart of the cult.

Cultists of the Ebon Hand have no distinctive garb but usually bear some black hand symbol—a tattoo, a charm, a small embroidery on their clothes, and so on. And, of course, many of them are physically deformed in some way, ranging from a prominent birthmark or a withered leg to ritual scarring or a functional mutation, like an extra eye or oversized arms.

Order of the Blooded Knife

In prehistoric times, before most organized religions of today, a bloodthirsty human cult sacrificed people in honor of a moon goddess whose name no one remembers any longer. This cult exists today, after a fashion, in the form of the Order of the Blooded Knife. Gone is the reverence for the moon, but this newer religion preserves many of the exact same rituals involving human sacrifice. But human sacrifice is not enough to distinguish this cult from the other followers of chaos. The order’s unique trait is that it poses as other religions in order to establish itself secretly in society.

The members of the order usually keep a symbol on them somewhere depicting a curved knife dripping blood. Other than that (usually secret) symbol, they dress like members (and priests) of whatever religion they use as a front.

The Plagueborn

The cultists known as the Plagueborn seek to achieve the elegance and artistry of destruction through disease and pestilence. The Plagueborn also promote the accumulation of filth, rot, and decay that harbors disease.

Not surprisingly, Plagueborn temples are found in sewers, trash heaps, waste pits, and other places of filth and decay. They take the rat as their totem and call ratmen their brethren. They bear rat symbols and even wear the skins of rats and dire rats.

Tolling Bell

Certain ancient books describe the end of the world as coming like the “tolling of a bell.” The cultists of the Tolling Bell name themselves with this fact in mind. These cultists seek nothing short of the eschaton—the end of all the world. It seems that members of other cults sometimes “graduate” to this one, as though it held one of the inner mysteries of a general Cult of Chaos.

Cultists of the Tolling Bell wear tattered blue cloaks and carry large handbells. Their symbol is a bell with cracks in its surface.

The Night of Dissolution

In all chaos cults, change is regarded as a good thing. Members always speak of the “coming changes”: revolt, revolution, a rejection of the status quo, a reorganization of society, and punishment for those who oppose them and do not see the truth of chaos. The “coming changes,” and the goal of every cult, is ultimately the actualization of the Night of Dissolution, or the eschaton.

The Night of Dissolution is the theoretical night when chaos overwhelms the world. Most cultists, of course, have no real idea of when such a thing may happen, other than vague references to “sooner than you think.” They also have a multitude of scenarios in which they predict the night will arise:

• The Lords of Chaos will return all at once and destroy all who oppose them—and possibly the entire world, remaking it in their own image and somehow rewarding those who helped them.
• The world will destroy itself in conflict, revolution, and natural disasters, because that is the natural way of things (and why chaos reigns supreme).
• Ever so slowly, through the workings of those loyal to chaos, the world’s order will fall apart. The Night of Dissolution is merely the very end of that process.
• Some great cosmic event sent by the Lords of Chaos will end it all.

The Final Ritual

Spoken of only in whispers even by cultists, this ceremony is rumored to be the ultimate expression of loyalty and fidelity to the Lords of Chaos. It can be performed only by someone whom the dark masters choose to invest with power as they did in the ancient days, and it can occur only in times of widespread fear and panic. If completed, this ritual actually brings about the Night of Dissolution before its predestined time.