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Soul Brokers

The organized network of Aurelian's agents, who trade mortals their heart's desire for a keepsake of sentimental value—and with it, unknowingly, their soul. Centered in New Arcanum but with a far broader reach, the organization runs like a corporation and a church at once: shipments of "secondhand goods" expedited through customs by the Church of Aurelian, rotating rented warehouses where collateral is tagged and recorded, a hidden archive whose clockwork counting machine binds the Ledger of Souls, and regional strongholds like Aurelian's Spire. Its hierarchy of grunts, managers, recruiters, and directors is itself bound by soul contracts—even Regional Director Elara Voss is owned by the demigod—with performance metrics enforced on pain of having one's own soul token and autonomy revoked. Meticulous record-keepers and negotiators before all else, its members honor every promise they make, down to the letter.

Featured In Modules

This lore entry is featured in the following adventure modules:

  • A Horse With No NameGuildmaster Thalin hand-picks a party and sends them west from Kingdom Grand to New Arcanum to investigate the caravan of strangely well-guarded stolen keepsakes tied to Cassius and, he suspects, to Biscuit's fate. Given a wagon, supplies, and an unnamed horse they are urged to name, the heroes must survive a week-long trek across the Western Wastes—rationing food and water, weathering a blinding sandstorm that forces desperate choices about what to save, and threading between unstable arcane crystals whose shattering warps magic and flesh. At a rare oasis they drive off a nest of burrowing Giant Scorpions besieging a merchant caravan, earning the gratitude of its leader Elanor Westwind, who escorts them the rest of the way in comfort. They arrive to be welcomed by Guildmaster Alyndor "Aly" Marvale, their business in the desert city still to come.
  • All Sales FinalWith the Industrial Market sabotage traced to Biscuit, Master Thalin Fernstride grimly declares him a kill-on-sight fugitive and sends every guild party across Kingdom Grand to find him before the City Watch of Grand can. After a citywide search and a frantic chase through markets, alleys, and warehouses, the party corners Biscuit, where a brief moment of clarity reveals he is a thrall bound by a soul contract to Aurelian before he is forced to attack—and the heroes learn that ordinary magic cannot cure a soul contract. Thalin privately offers a way to spare him, subduing rather than killing him, so the guild can free him another way.
  • Evil from the PastThe four guildmasters of Kingdom Grand, Evenfell, Kdor, and New Arcanum send adventurers to Holt's abandoned laboratory beneath the temple of Vitalia, discovered through Sage Elbera's final intelligence. A magic mouth delivers Holt's farewell before vents release shimmering Lullwater that floods the chambers. Navigating rising water and failing magic, they recover Holt's journal revealing his childhood among the Molokite, his manipulation of their ancient desires, and his belief that their "god" was one of The Evil One's experiments—a creature grown from a tarrasque corpse through biomancy, controllable by the Lullwater. They escape the drowning ruin as the guildmasters prepare a full strike on Holt's camp at the dungeon gate.
  • Forge FireThe freed Cinder Guard need weapons, and only a sunsteel blade forged in divine fire can permanently harm He Who Slumbers's tentacles. Guided by Guildmaster Alyndor "Aly" Marvale and the ghost of Captain Kaelen, the party relearns the lost forging sequence at the Sunsteel Forge and uncovers the Book of Molok, Chapter IX, a prophecy naming the Living Seal needed to hold the Beast forever. The first new Sunsteel Blade is forged for Veyl.
  • 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.
  • Sound the Horns of WarThe four great guilds unite to stop Holt and the Molokite from awakening He Who Slumbers. Their combined forces march on the ancient gate beneath Kingdom Grand, where the final dungeon has opened and Holt's army has already entered. Adventurers join the vanguard, clearing Molokite cultists, mind-controlled adventurers from Evenfell, and remaining defenders to establish a forward operating base before the assault on the dungeon proper.
  • Terms and ConditionsA coordinated wave of sabotage and theft hits the Industrial Market, robbing Arhm's Arhms and Armaments and Elise's Registry's Index. Master Thalin Fernstride sends the party to investigate, and a tracking bead leads the trail back to the Adventurers Guild Hall itself. There, wounded guild members turn out to be Turncoats rigged with a Glyph of Warding, and every clue—footprints, ledgers, a witness's description—points toward Biscuit. The evidence reveals he is bound by a soul contract to the demigod Aurelian, the guild's first brush with the reality of thralldom.
  • 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.