Mutual defense, memory stewardship, Council contracts, the Ripley Institute, and the Vault of Memory.
Factions of Modern Exandria (836 P.D.)
Public Record
Factions
The powers that hold the peace, strain against it, or wait for it to crack after Vox Machina failed to seize the world.
The Dawnfather, Raven Queen, Everlight, Stormlord, and a pantheon that rarely intervenes directly.
Romantics, radicals, whisper-cells, and resurrection-minded believers still arguing with history.
Public Canon
The Saviors’ Apparatus
The Concord of the Dawn
The treaty signed in 815 P.D. by the surviving Saviors. Not a government — a mutual-defense and mutual-respect agreement between the principal powers of post-war Exandria. Members:
- Lady Delilah Briarwood (Whitestone)
- Lady Cassandra de Rolo (Whitestone, governing seat)
- Dr. Anna Ripley (Wildemount, Ripley Institute)
- The Whispered One Vecna (Vasselheim, Vault of Memory)
- Orthax (Whitestone forge)
- The Chroma Council (Tal’Dorei, three living members)
- Lady Allura Vysoren (Tal’Dorei Council)
- Lady Kima of Vord (Vasselheim, Raven Queen’s temple)
- The Voice of the Air Ashari (Pala)
- Various lesser signatories
The Concord meets every five years at Whitestone. Decisions require consensus, which is why decisions are rare. What the Concord exists to do is keep memory alive and respond to existential threats, not to rule.
The Tal’Dorei Council
Founded by Allura Vysoren in the 770s. Headquartered in Emon. Governs the major cities of Tal’Dorei (Emon, Westruun, Whitestone, Kymal, Stilben) through a federated structure. Issues adventuring contracts, mediates disputes between cities, manages the standing watch.
The party will likely take Tal’Dorei Council contracts at Tier 1 and 2. Standard rates, professional treatment, paperwork.
The Ripley Institute
Wildemount-based. The premier medical, surgical, and prosthetic research institute on either continent. Roughly thirty residents at any time. Trains the next generation of doctors, surgeons, and (quietly) the people who carry on Ripley’s metallurgical-arcane work to keep firearms suppressed.
The Vault of Memory
Vasselheim-based. The Whispered One’s archive. Public access is limited but not forbidden. Houses some of the world’s most dangerous knowledge — and most precious. The Vault has its own small staff: roughly a dozen scholar-clerics who report to Vecna.
Public Canon
Religious Factions
The Sun Tree Cult (Pelor / Dawnfather)
Whitestone-centered. Tends the restored Sun Tree, the tomb of Lord Sylas Briarwood, and the ash-garden where the Briarwood-era atonement was performed. Open, welcoming, slightly austere. Lady Delilah is its informal high priestess; she has refused all formal titles.
The Raven Queen’s Temple
Vasselheim-headquartered. Lady Kima of Vord is the Champion. The temple is concerned with dignified death — proper rites, prevention of necromancy, opposition to soul-trafficking. Has been increasingly active since 813 P.D., partly because Vox Machina-era atrocities left a great deal of unfinished work.
The Everlight’s Faithful (Sarenrae)
Quiet. Wounded. Pike Trickfoot’s misuse of the Everlight’s signature shook the faith. The Everlight’s clerics are now careful, scholarly, and slow to offer their own blessings without confirmation. The faith is rebuilding.
The Kord (Stormlord) Faithful
Westruun-centered. Grog’s old faith. The Herd of Storms returned to ancestral practice and forbids his name. The faith is otherwise stable and traditional.
Pantheon, generally
The Prime Deities are mostly silent. They do not visit Exandria openly. Their clerics still receive divine magic. Their will is made known through quiet means. The campaign tone assumes the gods exist and are real but rarely intervene directly. Major divine intervention is a Tier 3 / Tier 4 event.
Field Notes
Mortal Powers
Whitestone
Ruled by Lady Cassandra de Rolo. Population ~12,000. The most-changed city of post-war Tal’Dorei: the Sun Tree restored, the foundry under Orthax’s keeping, the Castle’s east wing now a public library. Cassandra has invested heavily in education, public health, and the documentation of war crimes (in collaboration with Vecna’s Vault).
Emon
Capital of Tal’Dorei. Largest city on the continent. Diverse, cosmopolitan, recovered from the Vox Machina assault. Sovereign-governed (the current Sovereign is Uriel Tal’Dorei IV — an OC successor; the second King Uriel was killed in the Vox Machina attack and his son took the throne after the war, with the Tal’Dorei Council’s confirmation). Allura Vysoren is the de facto power; Uriel IV is a careful, cooperative young monarch in his thirties.
Westruun
Major Tal’Dorei trade hub. Recovered from Grog’s sack with Concord assistance. Ruled by an elected mayor and a merchant council. Still the gateway to the western marches and the Bramblewood.
Vasselheim
The Eternal City. Home of the Vault of Memory, the Raven Queen’s Temple, and the major faith-houses. Ruled by the Council of Templars — heads of the major faiths. Slow, deeply traditional, the spiritual heart of Exandria.
Wildemount
A continent unto itself. Distant, with its own complicated politics (the Dwendalian Empire, the Kryn Dynasty, the Clovis Concord) — see standard 5e Wildemount lore for detail. The Ripley Institute is in Rexxentrum, Dwendalian capital. Wildemount’s involvement with the Saviors’ war was real but limited; Ripley’s contributions are the most significant.
Zephrah / The Air Ashari
Independent settlement of elemental druids. Run by Voice Pala. The lake of Vesper Timbra is sealed and tended.
The Underdark / Emberhold
K’Varn’s domain. Not a “faction” so much as a watchful presence. Trade with the surface goes through carefully-controlled gates.
Whispered Truth
The Cults of the Fallen
The campaign’s principal antagonist faction (in any of the three stances).
The Vanguard’s Heirs
Largest and most public Vox-Machinist cult. Operates broadsheets, song-circles, and small chapels across Tal’Dorei. Roughly 800 members across the continent. Mostly nonviolent. Their stated belief: Vox Machina were liberators slandered by the victors, and Exandria would be better off had they won.
The Tal’Dorei Council monitors them. Allura Vysoren has declined to outlaw them on principle (she believes suppressing them outright would only radicalize the movement). Most are romantics, antiquarians, or third-generation children of war-era casualties looking for someone to blame.
The cult’s fringe — perhaps fifty individuals — is more dangerous. They are the ones who would attempt resurrections.
The Dawnchildren
Smaller, more violent. Roughly forty members, tightly cellular. They believe Vox Machina were not just liberators but divine candidates, and that resurrection of one or more of the seven would trigger an apotheosis.
The Dawnchildren are the most plausible source of the campaign’s “remnant” plotlines — the cult that might attempt to find Percival’s lost cache, raise Pike, snatch Vex’s bones, or weaponize the lake-presence in Zephrah.
They are not led by Scanlan. Scanlan is aware of them and finds them embarrassing.
Whisper-Cells
Tiny, paranoid, mostly local. Worship individual members of Vox Machina (a Pike-cell in Vasselheim, a Grog-cell in southern Wildemount, etc.). Mostly harmless on their own. Dangerous if a Dawnchild operative begins coordinating them.
Field Notes
Other Powers Worth Knowing
- The Clasp — major thieves’ guild network across Tal’Dorei. Politically neutral. Will work with anyone for the right price. Notably, declined to work with Vox Machina during the war (Vox Machina demanded ideological loyalty, and the Clasp does not give that).
- The Slayer’s Take — Emon-based adventurers’ guild. Still operational, but smaller and cleaner than its old reputation. Vanessa Cyndrial reformed it after the war into a licensed contract-house for monster problems, road escorts, missing-person recoveries, and dangerous salvage where the Council does not want to deploy soldiers. The Take is useful, professional, and deliberately unromantic: no heroic songs on the walls, no trophy culture, no private wars. Its members are expected to file reports, name witnesses, and know the difference between a beast, a person, and something frightened enough to look like either.
- Ank’Harel — the merchant city-state on Marquet. Distant, but their trade routes touch Tal’Dorei. Politically neutral. A Tier 3 arc could plausibly travel there.
- The Feywild Courts — generally neutral toward mortal politics. A handful of fae took an interest in the Vox Machina war (Vex’ahlia had a brief Feywild-tied subplot in life), but mostly the Courts watch.
- The Lower Planes — distant, traditionally hostile, currently quiet. Most clerics of the Prime Pantheon would say the Hells stay where they belong.