Faction Lore
The Ossuary Dominion
“Let the living sweat. My dead do not complain. They simply build the future.”
Where kingdoms rot under the weight of tradition and divine tyranny, the Ossuary Dominion rises—an empire not of gilded illusions or fragile democracies, but of bone, smoke, and bound will. Governed by Her Sable Magnificence, Xandera of Hextor, the Dominion is both a sovereign nation and a sacrament to undeath. Its spires pierce the heavens not to pray—but to remind the gods they are no longer required.
Foundation of Bone & Bloom
The Dominion’s genesis lies in rebellion—not against tyrants, but against the cosmic hypocrisy of life and death itself. It was born when necromancy, long whispered as taboo, was formalized into institution, guild, and statecraft.
Xandera did not simply raise the dead. She repurposed them. Not as soldiers alone, but as laborers, architects, harvesters, and artisans.
Today, the Dominion is a sprawling necrocracy where the undead toil without rest or need, birthing an economic engine unrivaled across the continent. Factories pulse with ceaseless productivity. Mines echo with the chiselings of corpses too mangled to speak but still capable of carving. Foundries belch black smoke into a blood-red sky—not from slave labor, but from loyal, tireless husks, made to work beyond death.
This deathless economy has allowed the Dominion to underbid its neighbors, flooding trade networks with surplus goods, necroforged tools, and enchanted artifacts that would cost thrice as much elsewhere. Other nations grumble about ethics; meanwhile, their nobles purchase Dominion steel for their armies and Dominion silk for their beds.
Industries of the Dead
The Bloom-Factories
These massive temple-factories are where undead workers weave enchanted textiles from spider silk and embalmer’s thread, blending artistry with arcana. Some are living tapestries—stitched from the skin of condemned nobles, enchanted to whisper secrets as they sway in the breeze.
The Graven Mines
Beneath the Dominion’s fetid hills, ghoulish miners extract necromantic ores—soulstone, cryptite, marrowglass—that fuel their golemcraft and wardsmiths. Accidents are common. Mourning is not.
Ossuary Workshops
Skeletal artisans chisel old bones into jewelry, charms, and ceremonial armor. Every item holds a whisper of the life it once belonged to, adding “personality” to each product. These goods are sold in distant black markets and elite necromancer courts alike.
The Barrow Caravans
Nomadic bands of embalmed oxen and bone-drivers ferry goods through the swamps and ruins, keeping trade alive even where roads have succumbed to entropy. These caravans serve as both merchant fleet and mobile fortress.
Social Order of the Dominion
The living serve as visionaries, managers, artists, and commanders. The dead do everything else.
Citizenship is not denied to the dead—they are posthumously conscripted into service, often ceremonially, their essence fed into a new body or vocation. Some nobles even choose to die early, returning in gilded skeletons or barrow-golems to continue their legacy in a more “efficient” form.
Magic deemed heretical elsewhere is not only tolerated—it is celebrated. Blood alchemy, soul grafting, parasitic familiars, and necrotic flora cultivation are all regulated professions, taught in Bone Academies and certified by the Hollow Seal.
Even in death, one may rise in status—if not in flesh, then in utility.
Military and Defense
The Dominion's military is composed of:
Marrowguard: Intelligent undead commanders and tacticians
Wight Vanguards: Speed-enhanced zombies modified for combat
Disruptor Golems: Flesh-and-metal abominations stitched from captured monsters
Living Officers: Mages, necroseers, and enchanters who guide the horde
Territorial defense is further bolstered by bioluminescent necroflora, which scream when disturbed and spray bone-spores to paralyze intruders. Ancient barrows, repurposed as military bunkers, dot the swampland like cysts ready to rupture.
Political Philosophy
The Dominion believes that death is not the end, and thus, should not be feared nor revered, but utilized. All things that rot feed progress. All gods that demand praise without labor are false. The Dominion seeks to resurrect the Betrayed God—the first sovereign of undeath, cast out by the heavens—and in doing so, reshape the world into one where beauty, obedience, and purpose persist eternally.
Reputation Among Other Nations
Feared by priests, who call Xandera “The Black Bloom” and warn that her dominion is a blasphemy.
Respected by traders, who profit immensely from her underpriced exports.
Coveted by scholars, who envy her unrestricted magical institutions.
Despised by kings, who see in her the end of bloodlines—and the rise of perfectly loyal subjects who cannot die.
“Let them build empires of flesh and faith. I will build a kingdom that will never rot—because I already rule the rot.”
In the forgotten hollows of her lair, beyond the crumbling reach of kings and clerics, Xandera's empire grows not only in death—but in coin, in stone, in soul.
Where others see corpses as waste, she sees industry. Where others let graveyards fester, she harvests. Her undead thralls are not idle things: They march, they build, they forge.
In sprawling necro-factories—great labyrinths of rotting stone and weeping iron—her risen servants toil without ceasing:
Skeletal scribes inscribe ledgers of blood-ink, tracking the fruits of conquest and commerce.
Flesh-crafted laborers haul goods, stitch cloth from flayed sinew, and carve bone into priceless art and brutal weaponry.
Rot-forged artisans bend the treasures of the old world into new forms, crafting artifacts that fetch dear prices among mortals too cowardly to ask how they were born.
They require no rest. They demand no pay. They murmur no complaints. Each ruined soul, stitched and reanimated, serves until even the bones must be powdered and reforged anew. Thus, Xandera's coffers swell with wealth torn from the breathing world—a golden river of blood money, fueling the construction of her armies, her temples, her laboratories, her sovereign bloom.
"Gold is but another form of devotion. Every coin minted by dead hands is a hymn sung to my throne."
The Blooming Manor
At the heart of her dominion lies Xandera’s Manor—a sprawling, rotting palace wrought from bone-white stone, weeping iron, and living blackwood. Its spires coil like grasping fingers into the ashen skies, its windows gleam with shards of haunted stained glass, and its gardens bloom not with roses, but with blood orchids and corpse lilies, nourished by the decay of fallen enemies.
The manor itself is alive in some places—walls that breathe faintly, doors that shudder at her passing, floors that murmur when left alone too long.
Within its sanctum, her greatest works fester and flourish:
The Arcane Laboratory: The Black Orchid Sanctum
Deep within the manor’s bowels, hidden beneath ten layers of enchantments and necrotic wards, lies the Black Orchid Sanctum—her private laboratory and forge.
Here, surrounded by grimoires penned in skin and relics plundered from dead empires, Xandera refines her arts:
She crafts new undead monstrosities from the amalgamation of stolen flesh and spectral soul.
She weaves poisons and plagues into mists delicate enough to kill with a sigh.
She perfects the art of binding loyalty not through chains or torture, but through the alchemy of desire and rot.
The air is thick with the scent of crushed bone, singed blood, and burning memory. In this chamber, even death dares not breathe without her permission.
The Obsidian Study: The Blooming Archive
Adjacent to her lab, concealed behind a threshold of ivory fangs, is the Obsidian Study:
A vast archive of forgotten magics, ancient maps, relics, and historical records she has salvaged—or stolen—from the carcasses of older, lesser worlds.
Blackened shelves coil upward like the skeletal spines of dead dragons, filled with: Lost treaties from extinct kingdoms.
Tomes of forbidden rites, penned in languages mortals forgot to fear. Blood-stained treatises on the anatomy of gods and beasts.
In the center, resting upon a pedestal of polished bone, is her Living Codex—a sentient book that records her dominion’s growth, whispering its secrets only to her.
Thus, Xandera’s wealth does not rot in vaults. It blooms—into armies, into laboratories, into monuments of death and beauty unmatched.
Her factories bleed coin into her hands. Her laboratories birth new terrors at her whim. Her study plots the undoing of tomorrow’s empires.
And all of it—every coin, every stitch of flesh, every breath stolen from the living—sings a single hymn:
"The world may crumble, the sun may rot from the sky—but my garden shall ever bloom, watered by your ruin."
