Celtumpra
[KEL-tum-pra]
Enclave Focus
When introducing a Celtumpra enclave, consider how it views magic and its place in the world. The following options help define an enclave's philosophy, shaping its role in the game.
| d8 | Enclave Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Retreats into hidden sanctuaries, believing magic's survival depends on secrecy and preservation, not conflict. |
| 2 | Strikes at factories, railways, and mines, convinced that only by dismantling industry can magic reclaim its place. |
| 3 | Manipulates the powerful, weaving magic into politics, finance, and trade, believing survival lies in influence, not war. |
| 4 | Scours ruins for lost spells and artifacts, hoping to restore what was lost or, at the very least, keep it from fading. |
| 5 | Rejects tradition, reshaping magic into something new, whether through reckless experimentation or unnatural fusion with industry. |
| 6 | Sees magic's decline as inevitable and either lash out in defiance or resign themselves to recording its final days. |
| 7 | Scavenges magic from wherever they can, including other enclaves, in reckless attempts to cling to power. |
| 8 | Embraces the corruption of magic, warping flesh, unraveling minds, and reshaping reality, believing transformation is the only path forward. |
Celtumpra on Other Factions
Celtumpra interacts with other factions based on the priorities of its fragmented enclaves. Some avoid all contact, guarding their knowledge in isolation, while others secretly influence political or industrial powers to serve their goals. More radical groups sabotage industrial progress, targeting those they see as threats to magic. These varied approaches create unpredictable and inconsistent relationships with other factions.
Colderyn. At best, enclaves are apathetic to Colderyn, seeing them as a temporary blight that the world will eventually reclaim. Radical enclaves, however, see them as a cancer on the land and actively wage a covert war of magical sabotage against their mines and forges.
Mustring. Although many Celtumpra enclaves view Mustring with contempt, whether morally or due to their "theft" of magical artifacts, most still do business with them. The more pragmatic enclaves actively use the Mustring's networks to seek out and transport artifacts and materials.
Navrow. The pirates are seen as little more than a public transport service by the few enclaves that require their use. Their smuggling ships are a convenient, deniable method of transportation, as the crews are too unsophisticated to understand the nature of their cargo.
The Navtog. To most enclaves, the Navtog's trade empire is another means of non-magical travel and a distribution system for arcane materials. To other enclaves, they are another symptom of the industrial sickness that needs to be cured.
The Osprey. Most enclaves see The Osprey as irrelevant financiers, another temporary blight not worth their attention. More manipulative enclaves, however, view them as the world's central nervous system and the ideal target for infiltration to subtly shape global events.
The Ironpenny Poke. To the more isolationist or apathetic enclaves, The Poke is seen as fleeting foolishness that will eventually rust away. Interventionist enclaves, however, see their rapid technological expansion as an immediate threat and are the source of the magical sabotage that The Poke misattributes to corporate rivals and enemy factions.
Zaharmak. Radical enclaves view Zaharmak as useful, if crude, allies in the war against industry and will secretly offer them magical aid. Non-radical enclaves, however, rarely pay any heed to them unless their actions affect them directly.
Celtumpra NPCs
Celtumpra's members are reclusive sages hoarding lost knowledge, radicals striking against industry, and stewards preserving fragile traditions. Their independence fosters brilliance and mistrust in equal measure. Enclaves clash as often as they cooperate, each convinced they alone know how to protect magic. Some work quietly in shadows; others act with explosive force, leaving ruin in their wake.
Major Players in Celtumpra
Fionn Ó Faolán. The ancient Daoine Si Fionn Ó Faolán does not merely hoard knowledge; his paranoia has turned his entire domain into a weapon. His crumbling tower is the epicenter of a blighted zone, saturated with centuries of overlapping, decaying wards. The air itself crackles with unstable aetheric energy, and the land is hostile to life. He doesn't just turn away visitors; the automated magical defenses he has layered over the years will kill anyone who gets too close, a fact he views as a regrettable but necessary consequence of his isolation.
Sora Nishida. Sora Nishida, a gray-feathered Tengu from Sharasa, operates as a Severant for a militant enclave of Celtumpra. She fights a war not to stop industrial encroachment, but to cripple civilization itself. Her sabotage targets not just factories, but the workers who serve them. She has poisoned factory food supplies and collapsed mine tunnels on entire shifts, viewing the deaths of humans as acceptable losses in her crusade for the natural world.
Seren Penllyn. The Ellyllon Custodian Seren Penllyn is not waiting for the return of magic; she is trying to force it into existence by conducting reckless experiments with the most powerful and unstable artifacts in her care. Her unwavering belief that she can control these forces has led her to ignore all ancient warnings. Her private workshop is a site of localized time slips and magical radiation that has left her assistants sickened and mutated, a price she deems acceptable for the glorious future she is trying to build.
Celtumpra Adventures
Celtumpra's enclaves act in isolation, each too consumed by their own vision to trust others, even as the world crumbles around them. Focus on the external impact of this fractured nature. Show how their inaction, infighting, and paranoia create collateral damage: beneficial knowledge hoarded away; destructive magical fallout from their conflicts; fear stoked among the masses. Highlight the voids they leave: spells misused by the untrained because no enclave intervened; ancient relics forgotten because pride prevented cooperation; or disasters allowed to unfold. Their harm often stems not from malice but from neglect and self interest, creating ripple effects that threaten the very balance they claim to protect.
Working with Celtumpra also means confronting a faction defined by internal disarray and missed potential. This deep seated disunity is their greatest tragedy, ensuring they cannot recapture what was lost or fix what is broken. Even when unity could save them, they remain too focused on their own goals, too suspicious of their rivals, to cooperate. Illustrate this internal struggle through its members: the Custodian guarding knowledge no one will ever use; the Severant demanding sacrifices for a war they cannot win; or the enclave so paranoid it would rather destroy its secrets than risk sharing them. They are a hundred scattered voices, each convinced it alone is right, leaving adventurers to navigate a world worsened by their stubborn pride.
Faction Scenario: Celtumpra
Primary Operation. To ensure the survival of magic against the encroachment of industrial powers and widespread superstition. This goal is pursued not through unified action, but through the conflicting efforts of isolated enclaves, each seeking to sequester arcane power, manipulate political structures, or dismantle the technological progress that threatens to render them obsolete.
Methods
Calculated Attrition. Militant enclaves use magic to degrade industrial infrastructure, causing catastrophic failures that appear to be accidents or shoddy workmanship. The goal is to make technological progress economically unsustainable. The resulting deaths and injuries are blamed on the industrialists, fueling labor unrest while Celtumpra remains undetected.
Political Parasitism. Pragmatic cells infiltrate the political and financial institutions and use mind-altering magic to control leaders. These pawns are forced to take actions that benefit the enclave, such as sabotaging their own companies or committing crimes, oftentimes leaving their lives and reputations ruined.
Knowledge Sequestration. Isolationist enclaves, convinced that open conflict is futile, work to hoard what arcane power remains. They scavenge ancient ruins for artifacts and lost spells, raid other Celtumpra cells deemed reckless or ideologically impure, and are often apathetic to the growing Aetheric Saturation caused by their conflict and hoarding.
Complications
War of Enclaves. Celtumpra's most persistent rival is itself. The faction is a loose network of competing cells whose conflicting philosophies lead to open animosity. An enclave's attempt to sabotage a corporation may be foiled when they discover another Celtumpra agent has spent years infiltrating that same company's leadership, with each cell undoing the work of the other.
The Unstoppable Machine. The industrial progress of The Ironpenny Poke and Colderyn serves as their primary external competition. These factions command enough resources to treat Celtumpra's attacks as mere operational costs, replacing destroyed machinery and rerouting supply lines with an efficiency that outpaces the sabotage.
Arcane Decay. The concentrated use of magic within their hidden sanctuaries leads to rising Aetheric Saturation. This instability can cause unpredictable magical consequences, turning their greatest weapon into a self-destructive liability and forcing enclaves to abandon sanctums they have held for centuries.
Adventure Hooks
Soured Milk. A Celtumpra Steward requests the party go retrieve a young boy showing signs of immense magical potential. The father warns them that his cursed son uses his power to torture animals and set fires. Distraught, he has called the local guard to come in the morning to "collect" the boy to be hung in the village square.
The Tremor in the Thread. The PCs are meeting with a rather unpleasant city official who has given them work in the past. The official's personality is now warm and inviting, which they may discover is from being under the effects of a mind-control spell and, presumably, a hidden Celtumpra puppeteer.
The Standoff. The party stumbles upon two Celtumpra Enclaves squaring off against each other in a hamlet with several of the locals wounded or dead. One of the enclaves stole a magical artifact from the other, and this is where it has come to a head. The Aetheric Saturation is rising as the battle continues.