Chandri Desoi

Celebrants of the Dead River

It's an article of faith among the well-heeled and genteel that living on the Tamar's banks is a fate worse than death, and an existence on the waters themselves is more or less unthinkable. Unusually, this is the view shared by most of the city's actual inhabitants as well-no sane person ekes out a life on the river's toxic edge if they have absolutely any choice in the matter.
Which, of course, leaves the entire district on the river's edge a festering hell of the unfourtunate and the damned. But living in the shadow of the city's countless bridges and the toxic smog of industry, there are some who wouldn't give up their perch for the world, and fight viciously to defend their little slice of hell.
They call themselves divers and dreamers, the priesthood of the dead Tamar, miraculously unharmed as the plumb its depths for all the knowledge and treasure they need to keep themselves secure. At the river's edge they trade with half-taught alchemists and the vicious gangs they lead, accepting with open arms all who seek to join them in their quest to return their God to its rightful throne.
The Tamar was great once, they say, and noble, a truly just god who gave its followers all they required. And now it lays rotting in Abhari's heart, caged in brass and flame, murdered with Imperial arts, desecrated anew each day with the filth that runs through what was once its flesh. But even a dead god is not truly gone, even caged it can whisper, and a certain lucky few dreaming on the water's edge can hear-and any in that situation is happy to receive a blessing, no matter what offers it.

Structure

The Desol's organization is both tight-knit and nearly anarchic. The Dreamers-those lucky few whose sleeping mind has found communion with the dreams of the dead Tamar-form the inner circle. Numbering no more than two dozen, they are either unwilling or incapable of passing far from the water's edge without great effort, and so spend their time diving for riches and secrets, conducting or preparing rites, and piloting through proxies.
Of them, Eser Nui is not the most thoroughly blessed-he still looks human, and plays the part of charismatic preacher to the destitute well-but certainly the most able and farsighted, and the rest generally defer to him in pragmatic affairs.
'Below' the Blessed in the cult's unofficial hierarchy are those initiates they accept, and those wretched they grant refuge on the rickety watercraft on which they live. Living in close proximity to a dead god's chosen tends to leave one with a very solid faith if it doesn't one screaming, and the purified (or at least potable) water and alien but edible fish the Blessed retrieve from the depths go the rest of the way to securing loyalty. All they ask in return is faith and service (or at deference and the occasional major favor, for those they feel they are protecting form unjust persecution).
While not part of the faith, per say, the painted gangs of Kotwoli Park are truthfully the instrument through which the Desol most often interact with the outside world. Fractious street thugs gathered around any of dozens petty alchemists and drug makers, they are more than happy to make themselves weapons of the faith in exchange for blessings or retrieved treasure.

Public Agenda

The city's opinion of the Chandri varies drastically depending on just who you ask. The Lusellan authorities and their close allies-when they take any notice of them at all-view them as hopelessly corrupt devil worshipers or deluded superstitious natives. Only their seeming irrelevance to the wider world and the Viceroy's disinclination to waste effort rooting them out prevent them being purged en mass.
To the Sanpang natives of the city, they're something of an urban legend-the saying goes that their leaders are all descendants of the ancient priests who once ruled the area, that they're going to destroy the colonial administration and drive out all the foreigners, and that they grant asylum to any native unjustly hunted by the authorities. The last, at least, is absolutely true.

Founding Date

946 AR

Type

Religious, Cult

Alternative Names

Divers, Chandri, Inks

Demonym

Desol

Leader

Eser Nui

Location

The Tamar River

Related Ethnicities

• Sanpang