The Fallen Fools

An insular cult made up of ghosts gathers on the eighth level of the Tomb. Though they mistrust the living, they nonetheless will treat visitors hospitably, providing wine and even selling rope and new clothes, though in the choking fumes, their hospitality very quickly becomes a mire.

Their members are easily recognizable, both because they rarely leave the few crypts and caverns that they’ve made their cloister and because of their white robes and dresses, which resemble burial shrouds.

The cult’s doctrine only applies to the dead, and only the dead may join. They do not attempt to recruit through brute violence, though they will try to ply visitors with wine, and if a drunken mortal cannot escape the fumes on the level before their breath gives out, then a ghost’s renunciation of the follies of life is a joyous happening. Other than when toasting a living visitor, they do not drink; wine is one of the many mortal follies that they have abandoned.

They attribute the closing of the Gate not simply as an act of a few adventurers, acting on their own, but as a cosmic punishment. People have fallen from the ways of righteousness and wisdom that were laid out for them, the clear and obvious truth that even the gods are bound to adhere to, and as punishment for their folly, they have been denied a peaceful death; the ghosts trapped in the Tomb now are only the first afflicted.

Vaywyn, the cult leader, is a short woman with long salt-and-pepper hair, her back as yet unbowed by age, who has the rapt devotion of those around her. She will carry on long debates about theology with drunk guests; her knowledge is broad but somewhat shallow, and she has a quick mind and a willingness to invent what she does not know. Cult members will not make large trades with outsiders without her agreement; even answering questions about the lay of the Tomb (the cult’s knowledge is extensive for this level and the next) requires her agreement.

Visitors will also often deal with Mivvie, the tailor, who makes the cult’s clothes and also an extensive array of fine rope; spider silk from the upper levels is particularly useful to her, an old master who regained her dexterity as a ghost. They might also deal with Hinnam, the wine-keeper, who was a soldier in life.