The village of Ravenmoor was founded during the initial
burst of Chelish colonialism that saw the birth of much
larger cities like Magnimar, Korvosa, and Riddleport.
Yet where those cities flourished, Ravenmoor never
progressed far beyond its rural beginnings, for in the
early years the town was ravaged by what appeared to be a
supernatural blight. With the villagers close to starvation,
the town’s founder, a priestess of Desna named Iola
Kriegler, decided to undertake a sort of vision quest to
seek a solution to her village’s problems.
Alas, the visions she chose to follow came not from her
goddess, but from an ancient enemy, the god of parasites
and stagnation, Ghlaunder. Iola fell victim to these
dark visions and came upon a strange commune of his
followers deep in the Churlwood, from whom she learned
of a ritual that would ensure good harvests in return for
giving the spawn of Ghlaunder a place to safely grow—
her body, her descendants, her village.
Accompanied by two faceless stalkers disguised as
human druid advisors, Iola returned to Ravenmoor a
changed creature. But while her flock worried about her,
they could not dispute the miracles she worked, and the
harvest that year and every year since has yielded enough
bounty to keep the villagers well provided and safe. Iola,
now a priestess of Ghlaunder, recruited select members
of the village into her inner circle of allies, forming a
hidden cult within the populace who helped mask the
truth from the others. As Ravenmoor grew increasingly
isolated, the strange beliefs and traditions in town became
more and more distorted, and the worship of Desna grew
increasingly perverted into a mockery of her faith.
Iola eventually paid for her bargain with Ghlaunder
when her body gave birth to one of the Gossamer King’s
spawn, but not before giving birth in the preceding years
to several children of her own. The Kriegler line would
rule Ravenmoor for decades, both as mayors and as secret
spiritual leaders, and each of them eventually bore the
Gossamer King’s spawn in a gory ritualistic death in the
wee hours of the morning. Now and then, a particularly
astute villager would discover the truth, but the cult
was always quick to silence such folks before they could
spread the word.
And so, over the generations, Ravenmoor has stagnated.
Today, however, the cult faces an unanticipated peril.
Through chance and accident, the Kriegler line has
dwindled to a single member named Andretti Kriegler,
a man who has recently been forced to admit that he is
sterile. Without the ability to perpetuate his line, he
knows that the line of the Gossamer King’s spawn will
come to an end as well. Visions granted by his dark god
have made it clear that should Kriegler allow this to
happen, the town of Ravenmoor would not only suffer
greatly, but his immortal soul would be denied its proper
place in the Gossamer King’s court in the afterlife.
And so Kriegler began researching a cure for his
condition. He hopes that by performing a number of
fertility rituals centered around blood sacrifices that have
come to him in his visions he can cure his sterility and
father children to carry on the Gossamer King’s legacy.
Initially, the mayor intended to use his own followers
as sacrifices, but he worried that doing so would test the
limits of the non-cultists’ faith, and, even worse, make
them suspect that there was more to their beloved “Dream
Tender” than they were led to believe. The arrival of a tax
collector named Elias Kyle less than 24 hours before the
ritual was scheduled struck the mayor as a divine sign,
and though Kyle struggled and managed to kill one of
the cult’s faceless stalker allies, in the end his sacrifice
went exactly as Kriegler had planned, down to luring new
sacrifices to town for the next few rituals. After all... what
better sacrifice than a nonbeliever?