The Dark Six

Faith Profile: The shadow half of the Sovereigns-and-Six pantheon
Dominant In: Droaam, Darguun, Shadow Marches; covert presence across all Five Nations; regional dominance in parts of the Lhazaar Principalities and Q'barra
Followers: Vassals (historically); sometimes called the Beholden
Symbol: The Hexagram — a six-pointed star

"As is the world, so are the gods. As are the gods, so is the world. A world still wild and dangerous..." — Lady Stone, Cazhaak Priestess

The Dark Six are the shadow half of the same pantheistic tradition that produced the Sovereign Host. The same foundational creed underlies both — the Doctrine of Universal Sovereignty holds that the gods are present in all things, that the world and the divine are inseparable reflections of each other. Where the Nine govern the forces that sustain civilisation, the Six govern the forces that break it: the storm, the grave, the betrayal, the burning drive of unchecked ambition. They did not change their portfolios when the Schism happened. They simply lost their names.

Followers of the Six are still, in many traditions, called Vassals. The term "Sovereign Host" is, by some scholarly accounts, comparatively recent. The older designation for the whole tradition was the Nine-and-Six-and-One.

The Six

These are the Dark Six as they are known under the Pyrinean Creed:

The collective symbol of the Dark Six is the Hexagram — a six-pointed star that mirrors the Octagram in form but inverts its colours. The Hexagram is rarely displayed openly in the Five Nations; individual sects choose their own symbols, often deliberately mundane: a shark's tooth for the Devourer, a scorched piece of driftwood, a disfigured Kol Korran coin for the Keeper. A particular sect uses these symbols consistently, if not obviously.

Doctrine: The Same Creed, A Different Conclusion

The Six share the same core doctrine as the Host: As is the world, so are the gods. As are the gods, so is the world. Followers of the Six acknowledge the Nine; they may even offer occasional prayers to Sovereigns whose domains touch their lives. What they reject is the Pyrinean claim that the Nine are sufficient — that the dark half of the pantheon can be shunned without consequence.

The theological difference runs deeper than moral preference. Followers of the Six hold a fundamentally different view of the afterlife. Where mainstream Vassal teaching holds that Dolurrh is simply a place devoid of divinity where souls slowly fade, followers of the Six insist that Dolurrh is a place of punishment — reserved for the arrogant, the heretical, and those who refused to acknowledge the gods in their fullness. The Keeper is not, in this view, a random predator of souls. He is the Guardian of Gates, known among his congregation as the Opener. His mandate is ferrying souls to their appropriate afterlife, as determined by the gods collectively. His vote carries the most weight; those who wish to avoid Dolurrh direct their prayers accordingly. For the full treatment of this theological divide, see [Sovereign Cosmology and the Afterlife].

Sovereign doctrine, followers of the Six argue, is a tool — a priesthood's instrument for controlling its congregation. Telling people that Dolurrh is the only option, that happiness exists only in life and is secured by honouring the Host, keeps people docile and dependent. The Six prefer honesty: the world is dangerous, the gods are not uniformly benevolent, and pretending otherwise is a comfort that costs you your soul.

Who Worships the Six

The Six are rarely worshipped openly in the Five Nations. Such devotion invites social censure at minimum and legal trouble at worst. Worship tends to be private, disguised, or confined to communities that operate outside mainstream norms — the monstrous peoples of Droaam, criminals whose livelihoods depend on the Keeper's favour, sailors who beg the Devourer for mercy, individuals whose passions have burned every bridge the Host could build. It is more common to find a cult devoted to a single member of the Six than a temple dedicated to the entire pantheon.

But the worship of the Six appeals to far more than outlaws and monsters. Even the most educated and wealthy soul can benefit from showing reverence to the Six, and a great many do — in secret. Among the dragonmarked races, worship of the Six is often a matter of simple pragmatism: if the gods of the Host do not govern the more dangerous forces of existence, then logically those who wish to avoid misfortune would do well to appeal to those gods who do claim such dominion. Even Sovereign Host dogma acknowledges the purview of the Six. A priest of the Six, asked about the difference between the two traditions, might simply say: "At least we are honest about the way the world works."

Most worshippers of the Six devote themselves to a single deity rather than the pantheon as a whole — a pattern the mainstream Host considers schismatic. This is especially true in monstrous cultures and among the poor, who may know little about the other five.

Priests of the Six

Priests of the Six do not attend formal seminaries. Most come to the faith through a single formative rupture — a loss, a betrayal, a crisis that forces a reckoning with the parts of the world the Sovereigns do not address. They bear no visible sign of office in the streets; in areas where their faith is not dominant, they dress like anyone else, a concealed holy symbol their only concession to the divine.

The faith's internal discipline is severe but informal. Formal defrocking is rare. What is not rare is death: a priest who publicly fails to defend her god's honour, or who stands idle while her patron is mocked, is likely to lose her congregation's loyalty before she loses her divine abilities. A priest who cannot justify retreat does not usually survive to explain herself.

There are no formal orders among the Six as a whole, with one significant exception: the Flayed Hand, a monastic order devoted to the Mockery. Its members ritually mutilate themselves in emulation of their flayed god and are renowned as assassins of cold efficiency — secretive even by the standards of the Six. Those who employ them typically know exactly what kind of cruelty they are paying for.

For details on temples, shrines, sacrifices, and the rites of each deity, see [Temples, Rites, and Practice].

The Cazhaak Creed: The Six as Patrons

The dominant tradition of Droaam offers the sharpest alternative reading of the Six. The Cazhaak Creed, codified by the medusas of Cazhaak Draal, assigns the same portfolios to the Six as the Pyrinean Creed — but regards every one of those concepts as a virtue rather than a danger.

The Sovereigns are depicted as tyrants who demand worship and give nothing. The Six, by contrast, practise fair exchange. The Shadow gave its children wondrous gifts — the medusa's gaze, the troll's regeneration, the ogre's strength — while Aureon and the Nine hoarded their power. The Mockery is not the Betrayer but the Lord of Victory: he shows the path to winning, even if that requires treachery or fear. The Devourer tests the weak and fortifies the strong. The Fury is the patron of instinct — embrace your emotions and she will guide you through them; revenge is merely the other side of justice's coin. The Keeper's priests perform funerary rites that vary by species — from the medusas who petrify their infirm so they never truly die, to the trolls and ogres who eat their dead — and also serve as healers, since disease and infection are tools of the Keeper that a priest can remove for a price.

Every multicultural city in Droaam has a host of shrines tied to lesser paths, but the true temple — the one that matters — is a temple of the Shadow, most likely tended by a medusa priest. The Voices of the Shadow — usually medusas or oni — serve as the spiritual authorities of Droaam under this creed. Even those who follow other traditions within Droaam recognise a Voice of the Shadow with respect.

A Cazhaak cleric and a Pyrinean paladin who end up in the same adventuring party are an unlikely combination, but not an impossible one — each simply considers the other a sincere fool.

The Last War and Its Aftermath

The Last War was a crucible for the Six in a way it was not for the Host. Before the war, many priesthoods of the Six were content to worship quietly, without ambition or coordination. The war changed everything.

At the dawn of the conflict, priests of the Fury, the Mockery, and the Shadow convened in secret for what may have been the first coordinated meeting between the disparate priesthoods. Their strategy was two-tiered: infiltrate the armies of all five nations and spread the faith through soldiers who survived because they prayed to the Six; and simultaneously direct temple resources toward caring for war widows and orphans, buying the allegiance of people who had not previously considered the Dark Six at all. By the end of the war, prayers to the Fury, the Mockery, and the Shadow had become common practice on battlefields across Khorvaire.

The remaining three grew through a simpler mechanism: desperation. Sailors prayed to the Devourer tenfold. Soldiers whispered to the Keeper before every engagement. Everyone travelling into enemy territory kept the Traveler in mind. By the time of the Treaty of Thronehold, the Dark Six had grown more influential than anyone in the Five Nations could comfortably admit.

The wartime coalition of priesthoods has since disintegrated — most of its architects are dead, many killed by subordinates who viewed the diversion of resources as betrayal. Today, the Six spread through bribery, evangelism, manipulation, and fear, often separately and without coordination. But the genie does not go back in the bottle. The Last War taught an entire generation exactly who to pray to when the sanctioned gods were not enough, and that lesson has not been forgotten.