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Soul Broker Manager

A mid-level officer of the Soul Brokers who runs the day-to-day of a stronghold like Aurelian's Spire—coordinating shipments of soul tokens, arranging the payouts promised to new recruits, reading the enthrallment ritual from the employee handbook, and sweating under nearly impossible performance metrics on pain of having their own soul token and autonomy revoked. A capable fighter with scimitar and daggers who parries well, though most prefer to let their thralls do the fighting. Durnan Bronzeforge is one such manager.

Featured In Modules

This lore entry is featured in the following adventure modules:

  • Ledger of SoulsWhen the delivery girl Kori crash-lands her flying gondola at the party's feet, her undeliverable brass cylinder—addressed to ring three, one-hundred-and-twenty degrees, "but there's nothing here"—proves to be the missing piece of the Soul Brokers' hidden archive. Following the swan Kori saw vanish into a canal culvert, the party plays her remembered melody (F-A-C-A-D-E) on a chained pan flute, defeats the water-jug scale guarding the inner door, and finds a brass clockwork counting machine binding the Ledger of Souls—the master tally of Aurelian's debtors, friends, and materiel. The Swan and his Ugly Ducklings bar the only way out, and a flying gondola chase through New Arcanum's canals follows, with Kori proudly at the tiller. The Ledger's first page names Aurelian's Spire as the seat of the whole operation.
  • Shining SpireOver dinner at an open-air cafe, Guildmaster Alyndor "Aly" Marvale sends the party on a night infiltration of Aurelian's Spire, the Soul Brokers' newly revealed stronghold. Climbing the tower with captured soul tokens as keys, they interrupt an enthrallment "orientation" run by the manager Durnan Bronzeforge—freeing the tavern keeper Nessa Vey mid-ritual—file Harlan Stonefoot's botched paperwork to restore his suspended clearance, battle the eerily positive Soul Broker Recruiters of the glass-walled third floor, recite affirmations to the professional-development mirrors, and reach the Enlightenment Lounge at the top. There they learn the tower is only "New Arcanum Sector 1" of a far larger operation, that even Regional Director Elara Voss is owned by Aurelian, and—as Voss speaks through her hand-mirror soul token and locks the penthouse doors—that she will be happy to discuss their future in the morning.
  • The Locket and the LedgerLieutenant Darnik De Roche of the City Watch of Grand hires the Adventurer's Guild to recover a brass-and-glass locket—a keepsake from his late wife—stolen by a westbound caravan fleeing into the desert toward New Arcanum. Tracking the caravan, the party ambushes a patrol of soulbound Thrall Grunt outriders, scouts a broken-down wagon, and confronts the soul broker Cassius. The locket proves to be collateral for a soul contract that would turn its owner into a thrall if not reclaimed in time, opening a new arc into how New Arcanum's soul contracts operate. Cassius, who prizes sentiment over gold, would rather bargain a Writ of Exchange than fight, and Darnik quietly pays extra to recover other trinkets he knows to be soul-contract collateral.
  • Underworld SecretsArriving in the magical metropolis of New Arcanum, the party puts on their detective hats for Guildmaster Alyndor "Aly" Marvale, who wants to know why sentimental trinkets are being delivered to the city like grand treasures. Working the city's secretive underworld—a tavern keeper (Nessa Vey) whose fortunes turned after her mother's bracelet vanished, a crotchety second-hand dealer (Milo Venn) who refused the brokers' bargain, and the cheerful customs clerk Orville Thrice-Checked, whose records show shipments expedited by the Church of Aurelian—they trace the Soul Brokers' rotating rented warehouses to the ninth ring. There they fight the expendable Thrall Grunts left behind to burn the evidence and recover the address of a hidden "Archive Intake" feeding something called the Ledger.