The Synarch

"Repent and Believe" 

The Darkmanse is sacred ground. The island is the most holy place in all the world, and only two kinds of people are permitted there: the priestly and the dead. This has become something of a joke among the planetouched, who say that it can sometimes be hard to distinguish one from the other.

The island is not large. It measures only about sixty square miles. Prior to the cleansing grace of Megadeath, the human population there did not exceed half a million people. The waterway that separates the island from the mainland—before the advent of Megadeath, this stretch of water was called, appropriately enough, Fresh Kills Reach—spans less than a third of a mile. Today, this waterway is called Acheron, the "river of woe."

Families do not bring their dead to the Darkmanse. They leave them on stone slabs in the charnel grounds to be collected by the priests, who, like Charon the ferryman, convey the deceased across the water to the land of the dead. The charnel grounds are on the mainland, across the reach from the island. There is a small temple where the faithful may light candles for the departed. The capstone over the entry to this shrine is engraved with three simple words: Repent and Believe.

The priests come at night to collect the bodies, their pale white faces concealed by hoods, their oars stirring the waters of Acheron. Nobody visits the charnel grounds after sundown. It is taboo to look upon a priest of the Darkmanse—bad luck for the living. 

In Agartha Sits the King of the World 

The original underground shelters built by the RAND Corporation were a religious mystery waiting to happen. In the imaginings of the theologians, Herman Kahn became the new Noah, while Megadeath became the new flood. And the Dead Hand? The doomsday machine referred to as Systema "Perimetr"—Perimeter—in Soviet training manuals? The Dead Hand became the ineffable will of the maker, and also his ineffable grace.

As you can see, a repurposed bomb shelter can assume many meanings. As an adventuring party, you will visit the interior of the earth to find the philosopher's stone. Can you fathom this? Do you not understand? There is a war in the heavens. Find Agartha, the legendary city, where the King of the World sits.

The Darkmanse is presided over by a council of eleven—seven from the lower orders, three from the Shining Ones (this is the college of theologians), and an eleventh who has been identified at birth as a pontifex, a "bridge" to the divine. The identities of these eleven are a secret even to the priests.

As it is written: Guard your tongues always, for even the lowest among you may be a king in disguise.

The eleventh is called the Synarch, a name that inspires hatred among the Seven Caravans.