Tower of Ascension

Feng's holy symbol is a white mask with black orbs as eyes. The white surface represents false innocence, blank identity, and the lie that nothing has happened yet. The black eyes represent the watching void, murder without remorse, and the loss of self beneath the cult's doctrine.

Common variants include:

To deface Feng's symbol, enemies often paint pupils into the black eye-orbs. This is meant to deny the cult's doctrine of facelessness by forcing the mask to “look back” as a person rather than an empty threat.

Feng is threatening, insecure, violent, jealous, and coldly murderous. He is not a wild butcher without thought. He is patient, resentful, theatrical, and cruelly intelligent. His murders are chosen not only to kill, but to reveal weakness, provoke panic, or punish those who once looked down on him.

In the Tower, Feng was weaker than many of the other future gods. The mockery and mistreatment he suffered there never left him. His followers interpret this as proof that the powerful only pretend to honor law, friendship, and mercy when they are already secure. Feng's answer is simple: make every safe person afraid.

Feng especially despises:

• Public trust.
• Open worship.
• Merciful rulers.
• Gods who inspire genuine love.
• Communities that protect the weak.
• Paladins, judges, and priests who cannot be easily bribed.
• Witnesses who refuse to be silent.
• Former servants who speak his secrets.
• Anyone who laughs at him.

He is pleased by:

• Murder performed with symbolic timing.
• Betrayal inside trusted institutions.
• False accusations that destroy innocent people.
• Holy days turned into massacres.
• Political killings that start wars.
• Assassinations that make rulers overreact.
• Fear strong enough to change public behavior.
• Masks worn by those who no longer remember their own names.

Feng does not merely want people dead. He wants the living to behave as if death is always in the room.

In mortal life, Feng was a chaotic evil humanoid rogue and assassin. He joined the company of those who would become the Major Gods late in their Tower journey.

The other gods disliked him and often bullied him, partly because he was weaker than they were during the Tower trials and partly because his temperament made trust nearly impossible. Feng remembered every insult. Where another mortal might have found humility, Feng found only grievance.

Temple records hostile to Feng often say that he became a god already half-poisoned by resentment. Fengite cults teach the opposite: that the Tower revealed the truth of power, namely that no one is ever safe unless they strike first.

After the Major Gods ascended, the divine order was not yet stable. The other gods sought to restore their fallen friend Krom and raise him fully into godhood. To do so, each god gave up a portion of divine power.

All except Feng.

Feng refused the sacrifice. While the others were weakened by their shared act of restoration, Feng remained whole. He hid his intent until the balance had shifted, then moved against the weakened gods.

This refusal is remembered as Feng's Betrayal.

Among Fengite cultists, this moment is celebrated as the first true lesson of the White Mask:

“Never bleed for those who would not kneel for you.”

Among every sane temple, it is remembered as proof that Feng had never truly belonged among the gods.

After the restoration of Krom, Feng suppressed the weakened gods and scattered artifacts containing portions of their power across the mortal world, especially throughout the Free Lands.

These artifacts became both prison and key. While they remained lost, the other gods could not easily reclaim their strength. While they remained weakened, Feng could act more freely in the mortal world.

This gave rise to the era later remembered as the Shattered Age.

For hundreds of years, Feng dominated much of the eastern world. His armies suppressed settlements, enslaved conquered peoples, scattered communities, and enforced obedience through fear.

His dominion was not always a neat empire. It varied by region. In some places, Feng ruled through direct military occupation. In others, masked priests, puppet rulers, goblinoid captains, assassins, or terror cults governed in his name.

Common tools of Feng's rule included:

• Goblin and hobgoblin military hosts.
• Masked executioners.
• Fear-driven puppet rulers.
• Secret police and cult informants.
• Assassination of rival priests.
• Suppression of local faiths.
• Seizure or corruption of temples.
• Ritual murders staged in public places.
• Forced tribute.
• Enslavement or recruitment of monstrous peoples.
• False accusations used to destroy community trust.

Later generations remember the Shattered Age as an age of masks, silence, occupation, and fear.

Feng's armies eventually pressed into the Winterlands, driving refugees before them. His advance gave rise to two of the region's greatest founding miracles.

In the eastern Winterlands, Feng's host besieged the half-formed refuge that would become Wintershield. The unnatural storm remembered as The Frostfell shattered his army and left behind the cursed battlefield called The Boneyard.

In the western Winterlands, refugees gathered at the Last Camp, where the divine Flame was found. The first Keeper of the Light arose, rallied the defenders, exposed Feng's masked priests, broke his western host, and founded the city that would become Thronstadt.

To this day, the Winterlands remember Feng not as a distant evil god, but as the enemy whose armies nearly ended their founding peoples before their cities were born.

The Shattered Age ended when mortal champions later remembered as the Chosen recovered the scattered divine artifacts. With their power restored, the gods moved openly against Feng.

The exact details of the divine confrontation remain to be expanded, but myth remembers it as the Dethroning of Feng.

Feng was not destroyed. He was cast down from worldly supremacy, weakened, and forced into a long decline. His armies broke, his direct dominion collapsed, and his cults retreated into secrecy.

This defeat did not end Feng's evil. It changed its method. The tyrant-god became the hidden god. The battlefield became the alley. The army became the assassin. The white banner became the white mask.

Feng is worshipped by those who use murder as a means of power, terror, profit, revenge, or spiritual devotion.

Common worshippers include:

• Assassins.
• Evil outsiders.
• Murder cultists.
• Plotters.
• Hidden killers.
• Corrupt spies.
• Tyrants who rule through disappearance.
• False priests.
• Masked inquisitors.
• Evil rogues.
• Certain goblinoid terror cells.
• Political murderers.
• Cults within criminal syndicates.
• Some pirates, especially those tied to hidden Triad rites.
• Evil creatures who thrive on fear and secrecy.

Most Fengite followers do not worship publicly. Open worship of Feng is a quick path to execution, exile, arrest, or mob violence in most civilized lands.

Bruce the Black is a likely champion of Feng and the current bearer of Ossavel, the cursed blade of Feng. Currently active as the current captain of The Revenant Tide and a pirate operating out of Corsair's Landing. His bitterness of being looked over, hunger for respect, use of undead, and growing reliance on Ossavel make him a dangerous modern vessel for Fengite influence, even if his exact divine allegiance remains uncertain.

Black Alice formerly bore Ossavel after recovering it from the tomb of an unknown lord of Feng. Although she recognized the sword as a source of evil, she refused to surrender it while her husband Robert Summerville's soul remained trapped within. After the Blackwake Crisis, Alice surrendered Ossavel and The Revenant Tide to Bruce the Black in exchange for a casting of Wish to free Robert.

This makes Black Alice one of the few living people who understands Ossavel's corruption, Bruce's current danger, and why Fengite cults such as the Blades of the Drowned may seek to reclaim the blade.

It is almost certain there are other Orders and Feng-aligned individuals who would love to take the unholy blade from Bruce.

Feng has few open power bases. His strength is hidden, cell-based, and parasitic. He thrives inside other institutions: pirate crews, noble courts, mercenary bands, cult networks, criminal families, and corrupted temples.

Known or suspected Fengite and Triad power bases include:

Fengite doctrine varies by cult, but several principles are widespread.

• Trust is a chain. Break it first.
• Fear is stronger than law.
• A public death can silence more people than a private army.
• The mask is truer than the face.
• Mercy is an opening for the knife.
• Names are weaknesses.
• The gods laughed. Feng remembered.
• Every throne has a shadow beneath it.
• Kill the symbol, not merely the person.
• Leave the living afraid to speak.

Opponents of Feng often summarize his doctrine more bluntly:

“Murder made into religion.”

Fengite rites are crimes given theological meaning. They are designed to erase trust, terrify witnesses, or offer murder itself as prayer.

The Masking is the initiation rite of many Fengite cults. The initiate receives a blank white mask and is forbidden to speak their true name while wearing it.

In its mildest form, the rite marks entry into the cult. In darker forms, the initiate must betray a friend, steal a sacred object, or assist in murder before the mask is considered “awake.”

Some cults claim that a mask only becomes holy when someone dies without ever seeing the face behind it.

After a murder, Fengite cultists may hold a period of ritual silence. No prayers are spoken. No songs are sung. No names are used.

The cult teaches that the silence after murder is when Feng listens most closely.

In cities where Fengite killings occur, this silence may spread beyond the cult. People stop speaking in public. Witnesses deny what they saw. Priests lock doors. Rulers cancel appearances. To Feng, that communal silence is the real offering.

The Threefold Mark is a Triad rite. Victims are slain in the name of Feng, Vinnin, and Icengrim, then marked with the blue triangle of The Triad.

Feng's portion of the rite is the murder itself. Vinnin's portion is the anger the death creates. Icengrim's portion is the cold dead thing left behind.

The Threefold Mark is usually used when the cult wants authorities to know the Triad is involved.

Fengite assassins frequently accept murder contracts, but the cult does not see payment as the true purpose. Coin is useful. The real offering is the carefully chosen death.

Some cults maintain ledgers of kills, clients, witnesses, and consequences. These ledgers are not mere business records. They are devotional texts showing how one death caused ten fears, ten fears caused one betrayal, and one betrayal caused a city to weaken.

Fengite cults often target rival clergy, temples, processions, hospitals, courts, and public rites on important religious days. They believe killing a holy person during a holy moment wounds the god they serve.

Common targets include:

• Priests of Lady Corinette
• Paladins of Torgo
• Magnorite healers
• Church of the Flame officials
• Talicite druids
• Gurkelite judges and bankers
• Rathite commanders
• Public witnesses, heralds, and oathkeepers

In this rite, a Fengite cult frames an innocent person for murder. The goal is not merely escape. The goal is to make law itself look foolish, cruel, or unreliable.

A successful False Confession can destroy public trust in a court, ruler, temple, or guard captain.

Feng has no universally recognized public holy calendar. His cults prefer stolen dates, inverted festivals, and anniversaries of old betrayals. The following are common among scattered cells, but local practice varies.

The Betrayal Vigil commemorates Feng's refusal to surrender divine power during the restoration of Krom.

Fengite sermons on this night teach that sacrifice is foolish, mercy is manipulation, and loyalty is a weapon used by those who want something from you.

Opposing churches sometimes use the same night for counter-vigils, teaching that Feng's refusal made him powerful for a moment and hated forever.

Many Fengite cults do not create their own holy days. Instead, they steal significance from others. A wedding blessed by Lady Corinette, a dawn hospital audit of Magnore, a Torgite pilgrimage, or a Church of the Flame civic rite may be targeted precisely because the day matters to someone else.

To Feng, stolen joy is sweeter than ordinary blood.

Feng is not a god of honorable death. He does not comfort the dying, preserve ancestors, judge souls, or guide the dead. Feng's concern is the social wound left behind.

Fengite cults often try to deny victims peace, identity, or clarity. They may hide bodies, leave misleading evidence, mutilate symbols rather than flesh, or arrange the scene so the living argue over what happened.

The goal is confusion. A straightforward murder creates grief. A Fengite murder creates suspicion.

Opposing clergy therefore focus on restoring names, facts, witness testimony, and public trust after Fengite attacks.

Fengite cultists are rarely given public funerals. Cells dispose of their own dead quickly. Some masks are recovered and reused. Others are broken so the dead cultist's identity cannot be traced.

A few elite assassins are said to be buried upright behind walls, facing outward, so they may “watch” through the stones until called again.

The Free Lands carry the deepest scars of Feng's old dominion. During the Shattered Age, many divine artifacts were scattered across the region, and Feng used the resulting imbalance to dominate much of the eastern world.

The region's many city-states make it difficult to eradicate Fengite cells completely. A cult driven out of one town may simply reappear as a mercenary company, smuggling ring, masked theatre troupe, or private security band elsewhere.

Potential Free Lands hook:

A play about the Dethroning of Feng is interrupted when one actor is murdered on stage, and the white mask used as a prop is discovered to be real.

In the Winterlands, Feng is remembered as the enemy of survival itself. His hosts drove refugees into the cold, besieged Wintershield, threatened the Last Camp, and helped create the conditions under which both the Frostfell and the Finding of the Flame became foundational miracles.

Open worship of Feng is almost impossible in most Winterlands communities. Even people who disagree about the Church of the Flame, Lazareth, Wintershield, or Thronstadt usually agree that Feng is an ancestral enemy.

Within the Church of the Flame, Feng is not tolerated, not studied as a morally ambiguous power, and not given a narrow civic role. He is an enemy of the Flame.

The Church teaches that Feng represents murder, domination, corruption, terror, deceit, and the destruction of lawful compassion. Worshippers of Feng and Vinnin may be arrested or attacked on sight in Church-held lands.

Fengite doctrine is seen as the opposite of Flame doctrine:

The Church's holy observances, especially the First Kindling and March of Cinders, preserve the memory of resistance against Feng's armies.

Potential Church hook:

A Fengite cell plans to assassinate a child carrying a Kindling Lantern during the First Kindling, hoping to turn Thronstadt's holiest night into a public crisis of faith.

Wintershield remembers Feng through the Frostfell. His army surrounded the young refuge and nearly destroyed it before the unnatural blizzard shattered his host.

Because of this history, Wintershield's hatred of Feng is both civic and theological. Lazarethite priests often use Feng as an example of disorderly evil: murder without preservation, cruelty without civilization, tyranny without discipline.

The Corsair Seas are fertile ground for hidden Fengite activity. Piracy, smuggling, privateering, assassination, and weak central government all create places where murder cults can hide beneath ordinary violence.

This does not mean the Corsair Seas openly worship Feng. Most pirates prefer gods of travel, luck, wine, storms, or profit. Fengite cultists are feared because they do not merely kill for coin; they kill to make every crew suspect every other.

Known or suspected Fengite presences include:

• The Blades of the Drowned.
• Secret shrines beneath old structures in Corsair's Landing.
• The Drowned Mask.
• Lord Karumantha's operations in the southern oceans.
• Hidden Triad cells within false-flag crews.
• Murder rites disguised as pirate justice.
• Coastal massacres tied to the Tide of Silence.

Corsair's Landing is chaotic, wealthy, dangerous, and ruled by coin. This makes it ideal for Fengite cells that know how to hide murder inside ordinary pirate business.

The city's existing underworld gives Feng's followers cover, but it also gives them rivals. Worshippers of the Scarlet Rogue, Beck, Sylvester, and the Coin Lords may tolerate crime, piracy, and smuggling, but a Fengite terror cult that damages trade or draws divine retaliation is bad for business.

Potential Corsair's Landing hook:

The Coin Lords secretly hire adventurers to remove a Fengite cell because public admission of the cult would damage the city's reputation more than the murders themselves.

Moonshadow is not naturally Fengite. Its public religious life favors Brian, Talic, Stannis, and Lady Corinette. However, the Triad page identifies a hidden ritual presence there: the Circle of the Withered Root, guarded by the Mask of the Three.

This makes Moonshadow a strong site for secret corruption stories. A city known for animal husbandry, dance, secrecy, and subtle intelligence networks may not realize that one of its hidden circles has become a Triad shrine until the murders begin.

The Barony of Varbis has a secular focus and already contains some Triad influence. Fengite cells here often operate through political suspicion, hidden murder, blackmail, and anti-clerical violence.

The Barony is not naturally devotional, which can help Feng's followers. A society suspicious of open religion may underestimate a murder cult until the bodies begin appearing.

Known Triad-linked Barony possibilities include:

• The Endowed.
• A forgotten lighthouse used as an astral portal smuggling base.
• Hidden noble assassins.
• Anti-Corinettan violence disguised as patriotism.
• Attempts to discredit Magnorite records by murdering witnesses.
• Cells embedded in secular intelligence networks.

Because the Empire forbids worship of powers other than the Emperor, Fengite cults would likely survive there only by hiding inside state violence, assassination bureaus, criminal syndicates, or anti-religious purges.

Possible Imperial Fengite patterns:

• Assassins pretending to be loyal Imperial agents.
• Cultists who murder unauthorized clergy and call it patriotism.
• Secret cells that worship Feng as the “truth beneath all authority.”
• False-flag murders designed to make rebel faiths fight one another.
• Masked executioners who begin serving Feng more than the Emperor.

A common anti-Feng legend says that during the Tower journey, Feng was mocked by the other future gods after failing a trial of strength. Feng laughed with them, bowed, and said nothing.

That night, the creature that had defeated him was found dead.

When accused, Feng answered:

“I passed the trial. You only mistook the test.”

Fengite cultists love this story. Other temples use it to teach that cleverness without honor becomes poison.

One myth says Feng made his first divine mask from the unmarked surface of a godly mirror. When he put it on, he could no longer see his own face, only the fear of those who looked at him.

The cult teaches that this was liberation.

Opponents teach that it was the moment Feng lost the last chance to be anything but a murderer.

The full divine story remains unfinished in many traditions. What is agreed upon is that Feng's power collapsed after the Chosen recovered the scattered divine artifacts and restored enough strength to the gods.

In paintings, Feng is often shown surrounded by masks that no longer hide him. The gods stand in judgment. The Chosen stand behind them. Krom's restored presence is usually placed at the center, not because Krom alone defeated Feng, but because Feng's betrayal began with Krom's restoration.

In the Winterlands, old stories tell of Fengite masks burned after the Finding of the Flame. Most turned to ash. One did not. It remained white in the fire until the first Keeper struck it with a sword and named every village Feng had destroyed.

Only then did it crack.

Church of the Flame priests use this tale to teach that evil is not burned away by fire alone. It must be named.

White Mask, black eyes,
hide the hand and hollow the cry.
Let the door open.
Let the witness doubt.
Let the name fall silent.

I was a face.
I was a name.
I was a weakness others could hold.
Take the face.
Take the name.
Leave only the hand.