The Powers of the Basin
The Basin of Cleaving Stone survives through a fragile balance of water, faith, trade, and fear. No single faction fully controls the region. Instead, seven major factions compete to shape the future of Adam-Ondi-Ahman and the surrounding provinces.
Throughout the campaign, challenge cards identify which factions are affected by the players' actions. Success, failure, honesty, expedience, mercy, or brutality all influence how these factions perceive the inquisitors. Over time, faction attitudes towards the inquisitors may rise or fall, unlocking opportunities, creating enemies, or reshaping entire regions.
Each faction possesses legitimate concerns, valuable knowledge, and dangerous blind spots. The inquisitors must decide which interests to support, resist, expose, or reconcile.
A faction's approval can provide resources, information, legitimacy, or protection. Its hostility can create new challenges, increase existing pressures, and complicate future choices.
The Abbans - Keepers of doctrine, law, and the sacred infrastructure
The Abbans are the dominant religious and political authority throughout the region. In the Basin, they oversee temples, water distribution, taxation, recordkeeping, and public order. To most citizens, they are simply the government.
The Abbans teach that survival in the Basin depends upon obedience to sacred law. Water rights, trade permits, and civic authority flow through their institutions. Their priests, inspectors, and wardens maintain the vast hydraulic systems upon which civilization depends.
The Yashemi - Seekers of hidden truth
The Yashemi believe the official history of the region has been deliberately altered. They preserve forbidden teachings associated with Yashem and search for evidence buried within ruins, forgotten records, and sacred sites.
Persecuted and forced into servitude, the Yashemi operate through scattered cells, coded messages, secret gatherings, and hidden archives.
Some seek reconciliation. Others seek revelation or revolution, regardless of the consequences.
The Qorihori - Guardians of the thunder scrolls
The Qorihori are scribes, hermits, ascetics, and mystics, many of whom dwell in canyons, caves, and remote sanctuaries beyond the confines of the Basin.
They preserve
fragments of ancient knowledge concerning storms, thunder, and the forgotten
powers concealed beneath the Basin. They rarely seek power and distrust nearly
every political movement.
Many believe they possess vital knowledge regarding the storm gate and the true nature of the ancient ruins.
The Merchants' Consortium - Masters of trade and supply
Caravans feed the Basin and the regions beyond. Water alone cannot sustain civilization; food, tools, stone, timber, textiles, and information all move through merchant networks.
The Merchants' Consortium is not a single guild but a coalition of trading tribes whose influence often rivals that of religious authorities.
They measure success through prosperity, contracts, and stability. Their loyalty is frequently practical rather than ideological.
The Wardens - Protectors of order
The Wardens serve as investigators, guards, escorts, and enforcers. Some answer directly to Abban authorities, while others operate with substantial independence.
Most Abbans view them as protectors against banditry, riots, and heresy. The rest see them as capricious instruments of violence, surveillance and coercion.
Wardens often find themselves balancing public safety against justice, obedience against conscience, and duty against truth.
The Desert Tribes - Survivors of the open wastes
The Desert Tribes include nomadic families, guides, raiders, scouts, and independent settlements beyond direct regional control.
Many possess generations of practical knowledge concerning weather, hidden paths, water sources, and forgotten ruins. Although outsiders often view them as a single faction, the tribes maintain diverse loyalties and frequently disagree with one another.
The Cistern Keepers - Engineers of survival
The Cistern Keepers maintain reservoirs, aqueducts, sluices, flood controls, and water records. While many formally serve the Abbans, they possess loyalties that transcend politics.
The Cistern Keepers understand a simple truth: belief systems may rise and fall, but failed infrastructure kills people immediately.
Many of the Basin's greatest secrets are hidden within the systems they maintain.
Faction Attitudes
Each major faction tracks its attitude toward the party on a scale from –3 to +3.
|
Attitude |
Meaning |
|
+3 |
Trusted
Allies |
|
+2 |
Supportive |
|
+1 |
Favorable |
|
0 |
Neutral |
|
-1 |
Suspicious |
|
-2 |
Hostile |
|
-3 |
Active
Opposition |
Faction attitudes change when reputation shifts or when challenge card outcomes directly affect a faction's interests.
High faction
approval may provide:
- Additional information
- Reduced challenge difficulty through narrative
support
- Access to new opportunities
- Political protection
Low faction
approval may result in:
- Restricted access
- Increased opposition
- Escalating conflict
- More severe consequences following failure
No faction track is intended to be permanently maximized. Tensions arise because helping one faction often creates friction with another. Inquisitors are therefore challenged not merely to choose allies, but to navigate competing visions of truth, survival, legitimacy, and power.
