he Legion of Fate is the smallest, most irregular and, paradoxically, the most organized of the Stygian Legions. Composed entirely of those that Fate has marked as her own, its members presumably have the distinction of being the chosen servants of the entity who confirmed Charon to his post.
Those who make up the membership of the Legion are those whose deaths had special meaning. For most mortals death is simply another event in a life, distinguished only by its unique finality. This is not true for the Doomed. Most knew of their deaths before the Shroud’s descent upon them. The majority can tell the classic tales, the story of the solider, pilot, or man on the street who suddenly knows that tomorrow is the day. Others displayed a much more striking prescience in life. Such wraiths are not seen again after their Reaping and transport to Eurydice.
Many of those in the Legion are heroes in the classical sense – those who, with full knowledge, chose death over life. Some of them are heroes in the modern sense as well: the fireman who rushes into a burning building one time too many in an attempt to save an innocent life, the editor who dies from overwork trying to see that his newspaper prints the truth, the doctor who contracts a lethal illness while treating plague victims. Other selections are less explicable, or perhaps just less heroic, to our modern sensibilities. There are a lot of things one can do with the knowledge of the day and hour of one’s death; not all of them are suitable for printing in Reader’s Digest.
There are also many who pass the Shroud with Fate’s eye upon them who know not why. Fate does not justify her actions, and this is held to make little difference. Both the prescient and the bewildered are treated alike by the Legion’s exceptionally efficient Reapers. After a period of mourning and acclimation to the Shadowlands, the Enfant is taken to the Isle of Eurydice off the coast of Stygia, where the Ladies of Fate have made the Legion’s home. Their initial training in these strange, quiet corridors lasts between two to five months, depending on need and what role each Enfant will be assigned to. After this initial training, the Lemure is considered a full member of the Legion, subject to the same rules and responsibilities as any other Legionnaire.
Deathmarks
The Deathmarks of members of the Legion of Fate are usually much more obvious than those of the average wraith. To the ghostly eye, many of the Doomed have their Deathmarks visible on them long before death. The Deathmarks common to the members of this Legion are often associated with infinity and wisdom among the Quick. The inward-turning spiral, also the symbol of the practice of Fatalism, is particularly common.
Another common mark is the joined circles. These can appear like an infinity symbol, joined rings, an hourglass, a yin-yang or as a pair of concentric circles generally referred to as Odin’s Eye. Most members of the Legion are very obviously marked. These marks make the Legion’s inordinate protectiveness toward “their” Enfants, for which the Legion is justly renowned, all that much easier to implement.
The Isle of Eurydice and the Seat of Fate
The Ladies of Fate do not make their home in Stygia like the other Deathlords, but instead reside on the Isle of Eurydice. This island off the coast of Stygia was given to the Lady of Fate as her own by Charon, a gift from a grateful ruler to a most-trusted advisor. Originally, the Lady’s settlement on the Isle was a simple one. Over the years, the structure has grown haphazardly, so that today the entire surface of the island is a mazelike, fortified edifice.
The Isle is a miniature Stygia of sorts, a sort of colossal mansion, all courtyards and wings and balconies and porticos and porches. But if Stygia is clamor and racket echoing across the Sunless Sea, then the Isle of Eurydice is silence, where the sea breeze softly rustles the crowns of trees whose roots and trunks like protected behind the high storm walls of the courtyards. The Isle of Eurydice is one of the few places in Stygia where trees can be found, and the Legion of Fate closely tends these lush, ashen-pale trees of death.
Most of the stone used to build the great mansion comes from the Isle itself, from great hidden quarries beneath the Legion’s fortress-mansion. Much of the structure is disused, filled only with dust and silence. Some of it lies in barrow flame-scorched ruins, destroyed by a Maelstrom or two a go and not yet rebuilt. After all, everyone here knows that what must be done will be done – eventually.
It is said that no soul save the Ladies of Fate have ever trod all the hallways, and that none but the Lady of Fate herself have gone into the deepest of the natural caverns that lie below the mansion’s deepest basements. It is said that there are entrances to the Labyrinth, and to other, stranger places, below the dark expanses of the libraries, soulforges, storage rooms, and hidden armories.
The Legion’s building in Stygia, often called “the townhouse,” is ostentatious in a different manner. Set on a small, landscaped estate, one of the few remaining patches of open ground in Stygia, the townhouse is surrounded by a huge, black stone wall. This wall is thick enough to house the hundreds of wraiths the Legion donates to the garrisoning of Stygia. The estate is serene, and dotted with carefully tended trees from the banks of the River Styx. The townhouse itself bears somewhat of a resemblance to a Greek temple, and somewhat to a Roman villa in the Iberian style. Within its spare exterior is space for only a few dozen guests. This cool, black stone edifice is both tribute to the Legion of Fate’s influence and power, and mocking dismissal of the self-aggrandizement common in Stygian politics. The majordomo makes the Legion’s guests, usually Restless marked by Fate who have somehow evaded the Reapers, welcome until they can depart on the twice-weekly ferry to Eurydice. There is usually not a Lady of Fate, or indeed any significant official of the Legion beyond the Overlord of the Stygian garrison present, unless one has come to the city to engage in specific business.
The Ladies of Fate
The Ladies of Fate are probably the most enigmatic of the Deathlords. They maintain their distance from Stygian society, and even from members of their own Legion. It is generally assumed that the Ladies are the Lady of Fate’s handpicked servants, Moliated into identical forms to prevent outsiders from taking advantage of individual differences within the council. Some Masquers who have seen them agree with this, saying that the marks of Moliation are clear to see. Others equally expert in the Arcanos claim just as fiercely that they are clearly not Moliated, and are some sort of Plasmic, like Angelics or Demonics. And there are those, of course, who claim that the black, flickering light of Oblivion can be seen behind their masks, if one is observant enough.
Individual Ladies seem to have no difficulty with speaking for the Legion as if they were the sole power behind its decisions, yet the Ladies are known to sit in council to discuss important issues. The Ladies are extremely secretive about their numbers, however, and no trustworthy figures have ever emerged. There are known to be at least three of them, but most Restless who have spent a long period of time on the Isle of Eurydice claim that there are at least seven or eight Ladies of Fate.
The Lady of Fate has not made a public appearance since shortly after Charon’s disappearance, but vanishing is always a matter of degrees. While she has been absent from the whirl of Stygian politics, her hand is nevertheless felt. Her comings and goings to Eurydice are difficult to track. Those with any long experience in the Legion know that she does indeed visit the island, though her appearances are infrequent and rarely discovered until well after they have ended. The Lady’s appearance is similar to that of her servants, and there is a school of thought, particularly popular among certain Renegades, that the Lady of Fate is a hoax. None of these conspiracy theorists, who charge that the Ladies as a group have been impersonating the Lady of Fate since the Fifth Maelstrom, are from the Legion.
The Lady is known to travel the Shadowlands, the Underworld, and even the Labyrinth. Some claim to have seen her walking in the great places of the Quick, as if searching among them for someone in particular. A group of Helldivers report having watched her walk the corridors of the Labyrinth, calling out as if searching for someone. It is assumed (though not proven) that the Ladies of Fate know to what end that Lady wanders the Underworld. The Ladies aren’t telling, however, and so rumors abound. Some say that she wanders the Labyrinth and the Shadowlands searching for the lost Shadows of Ferrymen, others that she searches for Charon.
Politics The average Hierarch (if there is such a thing) has an attitude toward the Legion of Fate that is best described as “harsh indifference.” More so than any other Legion, the Fates have a clear goal in mind, and they aren’t sharing their secret plan with anyone else. They’re also led, at least in theory, by the person who gave Charon his mandate to rule the Deadlands. This connection confers an odd sort of status on members of the Legion of Fate, making them appear as “teacher’s pets” of the Underworld. On one hand, this lends additional weight to the arguments of the Fated in council, on the other hand it also generates an almost palpable resentment among members of Legions such as the Grim and Iron.
Many Restless, including more than a few members of the Legion itself, consider the Doomed’s designation as a Legion to be a purely pro forma issue. The Doomed work within the system because that’s the easiest way to get things done, but if the system weren’t there, they wouldn’t really do things any differently. The Fated are in the Hierarchy, not of it.
Also, the issue of the Legion’s geographical separation from Stygia proper raises uncomfortable questions. A group of wraiths ruled by a powerful being and her servants (who all seem to share a single mind) allows a fairly obvious conclusion to be drawn by those with inclinations toward suspicion. There has never been a formal charge to the effect that the Lady of Fate is a Malfean and the Ladies of Fate her Nephwrack servants, but the whispers to that effect have circulated in the Agora. Certain Deathlords, no doubt out of deep concern for the well-being of the Empire, have placed some weight behind this rumor.
Prescience and Nonsense
In general, a member of the Legion of Fate is trusted to operate independently and make necessary decisions competently without recourse to higher authority. She is also expected to question orders that seem stupid or suicidal, to ascertain that her commander is aware of the implications of the orders he has given. The Legionnaires are the valued servants of the Ladies of Fate, and the Ladies have no use for stupid or robotic servants.
Disobeying orders, however, is not an option. The Legion of Fate has no room for dead wood, and each member is expected to perform to his fullest in the service of the Ladies. In most establishments, disobeying orders is acceptable, so long as it bring success. In the Legion of Fate, disobeying an order, successfully or not, brings a future in the exciting field of lawn ornamentation. The philosophy behind this is that the Ladies of Fate are not predicting the future and acting accordingly simply so that their attempts can be thwarted by their own willful subordinates. Orders, even seemingly nonsensical ones that come down from on high, are expected, in the end, to be followed. This doesn’t just apply to the military side of the Legion, either. A Legion of Fate Hierarch told to wait on a street corner in Kansas City until a yak walks past in the Skinlands, and to come back with a report of the beast’s fur color had better be standing there until a yak goes past, or he’ll be relieved of his post and probably enthralled in the bargain.
This doesn’t engender the sort of resentment one would generally expect. The Legion’s officials, with the possible exception of the Ladies themselves, have risen up through the ranks through merit, and are not the sort to give nonsensical orders for the sheer enjoyment of it. The Ladies are definitely of the opinion that their servants are far too valuable to waste without great deliberation. As a result, objectionable orders aren’t passed down the line just to keep people busy or to prove that the officer in question can give any sort of order and have it obeyed. In any normal organization, this dogmatic insistence on obedience would be a horrible policy. Within the competent, fatalistic ranks of the Legion of Fate, it works well.
Stygian Politics
The Ladies of Fate themselves are the only members of the Legion, other than a few military and civil liaisons, involved at all in Stygian politics. The Legion’s engagement is primarily as mediators and breakers of deadlocks. Affairs after the disappearance of Charon have made the council of the Deathlords a freewheeling oligarchy, and the rapidly shifting web of alliances and betrayals produces seemingly insoluble stalemates between the seven “active” Legions with frightening frequency. The Fates often act as ringmasters in this carnival of a government. Since the Ladies also have the tie-breaking vote, they can always cast their influence behind the opponent of someone reluctant to come to the table.
The Doomed preserve their influence by strictly avoiding actually using their vote and becoming embroiled in the politics of the Dark Kingdom of Iron. Rather than being a minor voice in Stygian issues, they are invaluable facilitators and moderators of negotiation. Often thought of, rarely seen, and almost never heard of away from the bargaining table, the Legion’s perceived influence is far beyond their actual capabilities. The only time that the Legion’s voice can be counted on is when the issue is of direct and immediate concern to the Fated, or when the dilemma is so tightly woven that only active participation on the Legion’s part can unravel the snarled politics.
Necropoli
The Legion of Fate is, and always has been, more concerned with furthering their particular goals in the Skinlands rather than in rule and temporal power, and it shows. Operations in the Shadowlands are far more closely associated with the Stygian wing of the Legion than is normally the case. The two groups can really be seen as two distinct branches of the same organization, rather than as a Stygian power trying to sway the actions of distant and largely indifferent Anacreons. The Legion of Fate is too small (and too unconcerned) to have a permanent presence in anything but the largest Necropoli. Instead, the Fates normally operate on a regional basis. The basic unit of their Shadowlands operations is the Province, an administrative region of between three to 10 medium to large Necropoli and the rural areas between them, depending on population and geography. Each Province has a staff that varies from less than 100 to almost 1000. The New York Autonomous Region alone has almost 700 Legionnaires, but it is one of the largest concentrations of Doomed wraiths in the Shadowlands.
The Legion generally does not involve itself in Shadowlands politics. Normal procedure is for the Legion to auction off local authority for the right of autonomy and the payment of a certain number of Spectres and Drones over the next year to be sent to the Legion’s soulforges. The Legion keeps a single administrative Haunt, usually in or near the Citadel, staffed by a member of the Legion’s bureaucracy, who is occasionally supported by a patrol or cohort of troops. Legion members on assignments in the city can stop to rest or file reports, and the Haunt serves as a contact point with the rest of the Hierarchy. The Provincial Anacreon moves between the Necropoli under his command on a regular circuit. Using Argos or the Midnight Express, circuit riders can arrive at any given Necropolis within 24 hours, and often quite a bit sooner than that.
Non-Military Organization Each of the Legion’s Provincial administration is generally run by an Anacreon. In the standard model of Provincial government, they are served directly by three subordinates, the Chancellor of Reaping, the Chancellor of Politics and Administration, and the Overlord of Military Affairs. Below the rank of Chancellor, there is little formal organization. Most wraiths have some particular duty, but an administrative member of the Legion of Fate is expected to perform any task required of here. Ad hoc, mission-oriented groupings are the standard, with permanent assignments handed out only for the most-repeated tasks. To facilitate operations, there are only Ministers and Inspectors below the Chancellors. While there are some Adjusters and clerks on the Isle of Eurydice, they are used only as probationary ranks, given out to trainees as they progress through their course of instruction.
The small size of the Legion and the large area under the jurisdiction of each Anacreon make the members of the Legion’s administration something of the professional travelers of the Underworld. There’s never a dull moment, and six to seven-day weeks of 18 to 20-hour days are common. A Minister of the Legion might oversee the auction of the Legion’s seat at one of the local Necropoli one day, then work as a liaison with the local administration of a different city during a Spectre hunt the next, then spend a week working through a rural area as group leader in a Reaping team.
Military Organization Like everything about the Legion of Fate, the words that best describe its military are small, skillful, fast, and badly overworked. While it is larger than the Legion’s near-skeletal bureaucracy, it also has vast responsibilities. Each Province has about as many troops as the average Necropolis, and is responsible for operations in an area between one and ten thousand times as large. They compensate for their lack of numbers partly by being extremely skilled at their duties. The prevalence of Fatalism among the troops doesn’t hurt either.
Promotion in the Legion’s military is entirely by merit, through the ranks. Just as in the bureaucracy, everyone starts at the bottom and works his way up. The average Legionnaire seems to have been specially selected for his job, and will probably never “cross over” into the bureaucracy. Some of the Restless who later rise to rank cross over into the non-military branches of the Legion, but many simply rise to Overlord and stay there. Whatever process selects wraiths for the Legionary military seems to have a definite bias toward professional soldiers, rather than careerists.
Provincial Military Organization
The Legion of Fate organizes its military as well as its bureaucracy around the Provinces. Each Provincial Anacreon has an Overlord of Military Affairs who directs the Province’s military operations. Because the Legion of Fate is also concerned with the areas between Necropoli, the Overlord and his personal troops are often the only outside help that a small-town Necropolis can expect to receive. This makes them something like the Texas Rangers or the US Calvary in the American West – the force of ultimate appeal.
The smallest military unit in the Legion of Fate is the patrol, usually called a section. It consists of four Legionnaires and a Centurion. These wraiths are usually heavily armed – between one and three of the members of the section will usually carry firearms. Stygian steel equipment is relatively common at lower levels, and almost universal at higher ones.
Four to six sections make up a cohort, commanded by a Marshal. These units normally contain between 18 and 25 wraiths, making them roughly equivalent in size to a platoon. They are the smallest unit normally deployed independently, and make up the majority of units deployed on patrols and Spectre hunts.
Four to six cohorts make up a company. With between 80 and 100 wraiths, companies are the standard unit of deployment for long-range patrols into remote areas, attacks on Renegade and Heretic strongholds, counterattacks against Spectral incursions and similar battle assignments. A company is usually led by a Regent, who reports directly to the Provincial Overlord of Military Affairs.
Each Province has one or more companies assigned to it. Some extremely large or war-torn Provinces have as many as five, but one to three is much more common. Companies normally operate as independent commands, but they are occasionally “battalioned” together under the overall command of the most senior company commander or the Overlord. Each Province also usually has a cohort or three of commandos and other specialized troops, but there isn’t a standard for such matters.
The Stygian Battalions
If the Shadowlands arm of the Legion of Fate’s military is known for its elite, heavily armed forces, then the Stygian arm is apotheotic of the philosophy. The Legion maintains three battalions, for a total of 15 companies, in the Tempest. Each company is commanded by an Overlord, and they take their orders directly from the Ladies of Fate. Two are companies of Cataphractoi, heavily armed and armored Equitaes. Composed of crack troops and lavishly overequipped, the Stygian Squadrons of the Legion of Fate are generally considered second only to the Smiling Lord’s household cavalry in terms of training, and second to none in terms of equipage. At any given time, both of the cavalry battalions are usually committed to Byway clearance and patrol.
The 13 remaining companies are heavy infantry. Also overequipped and overtrained, these units are normally considered some of the best infantry in the Underworld. Doomed Legionnaires who have fought against the Jade Empire speak in complimentary tones of the Imperial Guard’s capabilities, but don’t treat them with the awestruck wonder common in other forces who have fought against them.
The 10 infantry companies rotate through duty stations. Five companies are generally kept as a garrison for the Seat of Fate on the Isle of Eurydice. This may seem high, but it should be remembered that the island is isolated, and a fine target for Spectral attack even when the Tempest isn’t in a blow. Another four companies are generally left in Stygia and form part of the garrison. The final company is kept as a reserve. It is used to assist units in distress in the Tempest, or as reinforcement for a Province that finds itself desperately in need of additional military strength.
Special Orders Order of the Scarlet Sword
Because of the small size of the Legion, personal contact and a lack of anonymity can make the personal ties of loyalty between two wraiths more important than their official relationship. This means that the investigation of a wraith who is thought to be corrupt or Shadow-eaten can require extraordinary measures. The Order of the Scarlet Sword are the people who take those measures, the Legion’s internal affairs and auditing section. The members are mostly Gaunts highly skilled in Moliate. There are persistent rumors that the Order was founded by former members of the Masquers Guild just subsequent to the Guild Revolt. These rumors are probably just embroidery on the more well-known rumor that the Scarlet Blade is also home to the Legion’s espionage and assassination section.
Membership in the Order is prestigious, and is only offered to Gaunts with extensive service experience in both Stygia and the Shadowlands. Those already skilled in Moliate are preferred, but the training program is said to include training in both basic and advanced Moliation, as well as instruction in other specialized Arcanoi.
Order of the Silver Hammer
The Legion of Fate participates in the soulforging trade, but in only the most limited fashion. The Doomed rely primarily on captured Spectres and harvested Drones for their soulsteel, rather than indulging in the mass processing of souls of which the Smiling Lord seems so fond. There are only a few dozen soulforgers and decorative Masquers in the Legion, and all of these are members of the Silver Hammer.
The soulsteel forged by the Legion has a very distinctive, glossy appearance. Stygian steel makes up a large percentage of the forges’ product, and the Doomed’s work has an appearance which sets it apart from more typical soulforged items. Doomed Stygian steel has an almost liquid look to it, as if it were black quicksilver, a look which other soulforgers have been trying unsuccessfully to emulate for centuries. Such steel is sometimes called Glisten, and it is one of the Legion’s biggest sources of income.
This quality of the steel from the Legion’s forges is attributed to many things. Some say that this is caused by the hammers used on the Legion forges, which are made form the silver pennies that were paid in tribute to Charon by the Quick in the days before the Republic. Others say that the Legion’s techniques are even more secret than this, involving special plasms and strange ingredients from other Dark Kingdoms. Some even whisper that the soulforges of the Legion are not operated in the tradition of the Artificers Guild, or even in the tradition of Master Nhudri at all. Whatever the case, Glisten is worth up to 10 times as much as standard soulsteel or Stygian steel of similar quality. The effect must either be incredibly difficult to achieve, or a closely guarded secret indeed, because it certainly isn’t through lack of trying that others of the Restless, even the masters of the Artificers Guild, have proven unable to duplicate this effect.
Official Policies Guilds? There are, of course, no Guilds, and all the Guildwraiths who took part in the Guild rebellion were turned into trivets. Of course. But the following story is till instructive, even if obviously patently false.
The Legion of Fate has always done a certain amount, nobody’s sure just how much, of what the Masquers quaintly call Arranging. As in, “…for someone to have an unfortunate accident.” Before the Guild rebellion, this was mainly accomplished out of house, through the Masquers Guild. A couple of days before the Revolt of the Guilds erupted, a couple of heavy-hitter Arrangers, heavy duty enough to be working for one of the Legions off and on, supposedly took a boat out to the Isle of Sorrow. This, if nothing else, can be said to place the story in the category of urban legend – how would a witness have known that they were Arrangers?
The anecdote continues that these high-end Arrangers went to see the Lady, maybe to ask an indirect question or two about upcoming events from friends in the Legion of Fate. So they heard some terrible things, not-so-vague prophecies of impending doom, and decided to sit out the festivities. These Arrangers were supposed to be doing some rather important job at the time, maybe taking out Charon, or a Deathlord, or opening the gate of the Onyx Tower, or whatever. No Arrangers, the important task doesn’t get arranged, and boom – the revolution fails. As a side effect, the prophecies of doom are fulfilled.
The obvious lesson here is not to consult the oracle of your enemy for advice about upcoming battles. But this particular story has all sorts of interesting implications. There’s another version of the story that says these Arrangers consulted people in the Oracles Guild.
The postscript is what really has impact, though. Practically nobody in the Oracles Guild showed up for the rebellion, and even fewer got bagged, which is no surprise at all, given that they’re seers of future events. The funny part is that some really beautifully Moliated members of the Legion of Fate turned up in Stygia once the whole mess of the rebellion simmered down, and only a few people remembered seeing them before. But with the Hand of Fate, who could know? They’re always scurrying around the ants, busy at some trivial scheme to use a grain of sand to unseat the axis mundi. As for the members in question of the Oracles Guild, they were never seen again. Fled into exile, consumed by the Tempest, secretly soulforged to prevent public outcry. Gone. So you put it together.
- Ahab Lawrence, Lecture on Politics and Intelligence, University of Pittsburgh Necropolis
Other Legions
The Legion of Fate is largely indifferent to other Legions. The Doomed don’t generally think of themselves as part of the Stygian system, so the other Legions are seen as equally bothersome. There one exception is that there is a general feeling of kinship among the rank and file of the Legion toward the followers of the Emerald Lord. Most of the Fate-touched feel a certain kinship with the victims of Happenstance, seeing them as being fellow sufferers under a burden they had absolutely no choice in. While this doesn’t color political relations between the Seat of Thorns and the Seat of Fate much, it can mean a great deal during a bar fight or a Maelstrom.
Heretics
The Ladies of Fate are studiously indifferent to the Heretics. While they have never come out directly against the idea that Transcendence is a myth, the ranks and file tend to practice a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Heretics who are peaceful and relatively quiet in their beliefs are ignored or even surreptitiously aided. Those whose faith in dangerous to the Empire, or whose poison religion is particularly virulent, are either sent to a re-education camp or to the forges of some other Legion.
Renegades
While the Hand of Fate is temperate in its treatment of Heretics, its handling of Renegades is less generous. Renegades in rural regions where the Fated are spread thin, who advocate the dismantling of the Stygian system, are apt to disappear and return much changed after spending time in a Hierarchy re-education camp. Others have found themselves dropped into Harrowings, or had their Fetters destroyed, leading to extremely short careers in Stygian politics.
There have been persistent reports that the Legion underwrites certain reformist factions in Stygian politics who might be called Renegades by their political opponents. This has never been proven, and doesn’t really rest on any evidence other than the long-standing Kassandra controversy, but the rumors have shown remarkable persistence that may indicate some basis in fact.
Guilds
It is a generally accepted fact that a fair percentage of the membership of the Oracles Guild, as well as a few members of the Monitors and Masquer “Arrangers,” found shelter in the Legion of Fate after their ill-advised involvement in the Revolt of the Guilds. The average Legion member, if he knows of the event at all, generally assumes that it’s all ancient history; whatever memory survives in the older members of the Legion is the last trace of the Guilds. Those high up enough or old enough to know the degree to which the Guilds survived the Ban are probably high enough up not to care.
Spectres
The Legion of Fate stands an extremely hard line against Spectres, and makes it the prime job of their extravagantly overarmed troops to hunt down and either capture (for the forges) or simply destroy Spectres. Mostly this is Doomslaying undertaken as a military operation: large, heavily armed brigades sweeping areas known to harbor nests of Spectres. Tactics used in these endeavors are something like a cross between Vietnam-style counter-insurgency warfare and a World War II-era patrol in force, and the combat is generally close-range skirmishing and ambush fighting.
There are reports that the Legion has sponsored one or more large-scale Helldiving operations. The operatives in question reportedly jumped off from the lowest basements of the Seat of Fate, though some reports indicate that these raids were Open Tempest operations. The purpose and degree of success of these incursions, if they actually happened at all, is unknown.
Transcendence
The Ladies and the uppermost ranks of the Legion’s Restless have some sort of other goal in mind toward which they’re directing the operations of the Legion. It clearly involves some sort of avenue to Transcendence – that much can be pieced together from the orders that come down from the Ladies of Fate. What or who precisely this involves is still a matter of mystery, but it often seems as if the Legion is preparing for something. Most assume this to be the Sixth Maelstrom, though others claim that it will be the coming of the Fishers’ messiah to the Deadlands.
Ferrymen
The relationship between the Legion of Fate and the Ferrymen is a mysterious one. The Lady of Fate is known by all and sundry to have given Charon his mandate to guide wraiths to the Far Shores. Since the sacking of the Temples and the flight of the Ferrymen, however, there has been no official contact between the Legion and the Ferrymen. Despite that, Legionnaires are ordered not to interfere with the doings or goings of the Ferrymen, under pain of the forges. Also, after they “proved a security liability” during the storms of the Third Great Maelstrom, all the windows that faced onto Ripple Bay were walled up. The Bay is an inlet on Eurydice once used for the launching and landing of very small boats, but access to the bay was also restricted after the Maelstrom. This has caused no small inconvenience, as Ripple Bay was the entrance to Messenger’s Run, a long blank hallway and spiral stair that allowed messengers who had the door key to gain entrance to certain chambers used by the Ladies of Fate. Reed boats have been witnessed drawn up on the banks of the bay, sometimes as many as several at a time, and it is generally assumed within the Legion that the Ladies of Fate are giving sub rosa support to the Ferrymen.
Transcribed By:
"Sultry":Former AICC-Wraith, Crimson Triangle &
Greg Stuessel:Former ARST-Wraith South Central Region, U.S.A.