House of Knives
“We are the Veiled Priesthood – the providers of death, the bringers of blood. The Unseen One uses souls as we use coins, to barter and gain power among his fellow Gods. We bring him the gold to barter with. In return, he blesses us with power and stealth.”
Friends and Allies
The Congregation of the Dead: “They supply our god with souls, hoping to keep their own. Fortunately, they never stop with their harvest.”
The Temple of Sleepless Nights: “They understand how frightening death can be, and how useful we can be in creating that fear…”
The Parish of the Prolific Coin: “They understand the worth of a man is measured in quantity, not quality.”
The Church of Endless Night: “Darkness and blindness only assist us in our task.”
Foes and Enemis
The Halls of the Valiant: “They seek to prevent our collection of souls, mistakenly believing that the original owners have more need of them…”
The Church of Everlasting Hope: “Hope is wasted on a doomed one.”
The Founder’s Creation: “They build greater and greater walls, in a vain attempt to protect their souls for as long as possible."
The House of Solace: “They fight to keep their souls through any means necessary, believing that even a pain-filled life is better than death. How foolish…"
The Hall of Oaths: "They know nothing of falsehoods and vengeance – they waste their lives on pretenses of honesty and justice.
Tenets of Faith
ADVANCEMENT
Advancement within the House of Knives is based on meritorious acts and is granted by superiors. Superiors measure merit, at least partially, by clandestine missions successfully completed in the name of the Vindicator.
Unlike most other faiths, the Veiled Priesthood has no title distinctions among priests. Instead, clerics wear knotted cords at their belt they increase in length with the number of assassinations they performed. The distinction is difficult to make at higher ranks because a recent trend among senior clerics has been to add a knot for each assassination ordered or commanded as well as those undertaken personally. Thus, a single murder might allow a dozen involved clerics to claim a knot.
Worship
Followers of the Unseen One worship in underground temples. The House of Knives meets irregularly, although their meetings always take place during the dark of any moon. The “dark of the moon” is important symbolism among the faith, representing both the surreptitiousness of their activities and the public ignorance of an assassin’s presence. This simple dualism is a cornerstone of the faith.
According to local rumor, the House of Knives is making great strides in the nation of Zazahni, with its constantly shifting political scene and years of animosity among the Great Houses. The ever-widening circle of retribution makes the church rich in coin and influence. It is even possible the ranking Veiled Priest may attempt to seize control of this Kingless Land should the situation deteriorate much further.
SACRIFICES
Members of the Veiled Priesthood commit acts of revenge (major or minor) once per month.
Priesthood
The Veiled Priesthood
The Veiled Priesthood is like an ill wind – you cannot see it, but you know it exists. These clerics keep their identity and the location of their temple absolutely secret. A member of the Veiled Priesthood would rather die a thousand horrible deaths than Risk angering the Vengeful One by revealing the location of one of his Houses.
Assassins often pay homage to the Silent Slayer and virtually every assassins’ guild houses an altar dedicated to him. Indeed, the House of Knives runs and operates many assassins’ guilds. While it is True that the Veiled Priesthood receives profit and favors for their work, they do not kill to gain worldly goods. They kill to please their dark god. They believe that the Father of Murder sells the souls of those slain by his clerics to the god of Death or to any other god who would claim a soul.
Some say that a Cleric of the Seller of Souls can read the vengeful thoughts in a person’s mind. The Cleric then persuades that person to either act upon those thoughts himself or hire the Cleric to exact his revenge. Still others say that it is the Unseen One himself who plants the seeds of murder and revenge in a person’s head and sends his clerics to reap the evil harvest. In any case, the vengeful one who hires a Veiled Priest may name her exact revenge, and the Cleric carries out the instructions precisely as requested. Of course, this work is not without price.
The payment for assistance is two-fold: money is paid, and a favor is owed to the House of Knives. The favor may be called upon at any time, and could be anything. For example, if a prince received help gaining the throne, the Veiled Priesthood might request money, a special item of power, that a Cleric or follower of the Seller of Souls be appointed to an important position or a combination of these. Failure to pay leads to certain and horrible retribution.
RAIMENT
Membership among the spiritual leadership of the House of Knives is generally very secretive. Therefore, they appear in priestly robes only in their secret, underground temples. The Veiled Priesthood dress in red robes (preferably velvet), often with decorative black breastplates. If additional secrecy is required, clerics, particularly high-ranking ones, sometimes wear black hoods with veils.
Special Notes
A Veiled Priest who takes one or more levels of assassin is informally called either a Veiled Blade or Veiled Venom, depending on the typical method of murder (blade or poison) the assassin uses.
Political Influence & Intrigue
MAJOR TEMPLES
The most important temples to the Seller of Souls are said to exist in Lathlanian, Bet Kalamar and Bet Bireli.
Temples of the House of Knives usually rest underneath a common artisan’s home, or in the back of a rough-and-tumble tavern. In any case, the location is a secret not shared outside of the faith. Worshippers brought here must pass through several rooms separated by black curtains—symbolic of the House’s layers of deceit and secrecy. The temples themselves are small, underground if within a city, and feature no identifying marks or designs. If the authorities or an enemy Cleric were to find them, no permanent marks would identify the temple.
The House of Knives has no use for cathedrals. Meetings between clerics and their seniors take place in private elsewhere--a boat at sea, a clandestine meeting in the woods while serving a militia duty, or a few secret phrases passed along on the street. Local clerics have a great deal of authority, and assassinations that run contrary to each other do not pose a dogmatic problem for the faith, so the Veiled Priesthood feels no need to communicate its plans to other clerics in advance. Similarly, the faith has no holy seat, although Anmish in Zazahni is known to host a cell of the Veiled Priesthood whose members might be considered the faith’s leaders. Their constant use during that country’s extended civil wars has given them ample practice and they have refined their techniques of murder and escape to a very high degree. These clerics are certainly among the most senior and most fearsome of the faith’s killers.
