Veiled Lotus Monastery
About two hours north of Ravengro, a towering crag called the Griffon’s Roost casts a dark shadow over the muddy road to the town of Gloomwater. From a perch hundreds of feet above looms the Veiled Lotus Monastery, a three-towered monument to an obscure philosophy of the Way of the Long Death. Two score monks dwell within the monastery, dedicating themselves to a litany of exercises to perfect the body and spirit. The secretive monks hold dusk as the holiest of hours, and sonorous chants emit from the Twilight Monastery’s central courtyard when the night sky appears in the heavens.
Foremost among the monks is Izenfen, a peerless combatant thought to be among the wisest figures in the hills. Travellers frequently seek his council, but most leave Ravengro without ever having gained access to the Veiled Lotus Monastery, for Izenfen deigns to speak with only a handful of pilgrims foretold to him via the agency of the night sky and an immense mirrored lens called the Censer of Symmetry. The Censer dominates the monastery’s central courtyard. Junior monks polish its smooth surface throughout the day, and the whole order is prepared to defend it with their lives.
When word of the Censer’s predictive prowess spread to the miners of Ravengro 20 years ago, a desperate contingent petitioned Izenfen to predict the location of the richest unclaimed local ore deposits, appealing to his compassion with tales of starving children and dangerously unpaid debts. The master of the Veiled Lotus Monastery rebuffed their pleas, triggering the miners’ contingency plan—an ill-fated invasion of the monks’ compound that left seven miners and two monks dead.
Immediately thereafter, Izenfen gathered a cadre of stealth assassins from the ranks of his best warriors and silently set them upon the surviving invaders who still milked wounds in the petty shacks along Ravengro’s waterfront. At an annual celebration called Darkstar’s Kiss, the monks of the Veiled Lotus Monastery recite from memory the names of all fifteen miners murdered on that night, reminding themselves always to remain vigilant to the encroachment of outsiders.
Although the monks of the Veiled Lotus Monastery keep mostly to themselves and desire only to lead lives of undisturbed contemplation, they frequently appear on the streets of Ravengro to reprovision or to engage in the trade of Aurora Lotus, a rare psychotropic plant grown regionally only on the slopes of the Griffon’s Roost. Proceeds from this trade account for all of the monastery’s activities, but initiates of the order are forbidden from taking it in all but the most controlled ritual circumstances.
Aurora lotus is popular among all classes of Ravengro, but the real business is centred in the city of Caliphas. Both the wagons loaded with aurora lotus and the returning coaches loaded with city coin go unmolested in Ravengro, for all fear Izenfen’s relentless invisible killers.
Type
Monastery
Parent Location
Included Locations
