Cult of True Windren

"The Isles were broken the day they vanished. We will bring them back."

The Cult of True Windren did not begin as a cult but as an insurrectionist movement against the First Windren Empire, which flourished under the rule of the Guardian Twins, Laphelia and Saphiel. As the daughters of the Isles' original creators—a powerful mortal mage and a forgotten deity—the twins inherited stewardship of the Anchors, ensuring the Isles’ stability between the Material Plane and the Astral Sea, but not all were satisfied. A growing faction of scholars, politicians, and zealots believed that the twins had stolen what rightfully belonged to their parents. To them, the true creators of the Isles had been forced into exile or abandoned their work too soon, and it was the duty of the Isles’ people to bring them back—by any means necessary.

This ideology gained traction, culminating in a full-scale civil war. The insurrectionists saw the Guardian Twins as unworthy caretakers of the Isles and sought to expose them as frauds. They demanded that the original creators return to restore order, believing that the Anchors, rather than maintaining balance, were preventing the Isles from reaching their true divine potential.

The Civil War and the Guardian Twins' Fate

The war was long and brutal, fracturing the empire and leading to its ultimate downfall. During its final battle, Saphiel was slain, suffering her first death while defending the Arcane Anchor. Though she would reincarnate, the shock of her death marked the beginning of the Isles’ decline, and the Anchor’s power was permanently weakened.

Laphelia, devastated by her sister’s fall and fearing further bloodshed, vanished into hiding, allowing the empire to collapse into warring factions. She took the knowledge of the Anchors' inner workings with her, ensuring that they could not be easily tampered with or destroyed.

With their greatest enemies gone, the remnants of the insurrection should have disbanded. But rather than fading into history, their ideology mutated into something far darker. The movement rebranded itself as the Cult of True Windren, no longer just seeking the return of the creators but willing to sacrifice anything to bring them back.

Beliefs & Goals

As the centuries passed, the cult's goals evolved, shifting with each new leader. While some held onto the original belief that the creators had to be found and restored, others saw the Anchors as a barrier to progress, something to be either controlled or destroyed.

At its core, the cult embraced the following tenets:

• The Guardian Twins were failures, their continued reincarnations a mistake that must be corrected.
• The original creators of the Windren Isles must return, either through summoning, restoration, or divine intervention.
• The Anchors were an unnatural shackle, preventing the Isles from reaching their true potential. Some saw them as a power source to be harnessed, while others believed breaking them would force the creators' return.
• Some sects believed the cult itself should rule in place of the Guardian Twins, while others saw themselves as mere harbingers preparing the way.

The First Spear Ritual and the Creation of the Badlands

By the time of the Highwall-Skyreach War, the cult had abandoned any hope of controlling the twins or their anchors. Their patience had run out, and their ideology had shifted toward destruction rather than reclamation. If the Anchors were broken, they reasoned, the power bound within them could be released, harnessed, or at the very least, removed from unworthy hands.

Their first attempt to shatter an Anchor came during the chaos of war, hidden beneath layers of distraction and political turmoil. In secret, they constructed a ritual weapon—a spear infused with enough concentrated magical force to pierce through the protective bindings of Laphelia’s Anchor and annihilate it. While The Six made efforts to stop the ritual, they failed to prevent its completion.

The spear was launched. It should have succeeded.

But Alyra, a mortal warrior infused with the strength of a dying silver dragon, caught the blade with her bare hands. The cult had not accounted for such an intervention, and while the weapon had been designed to strike its target instantly, Alyra’s interference forced it into an agonizing, slow-motion struggle, pushing forward inch by inch over the years.

The ritual’s failure had unintended consequences. The backlash of raw magic shattered the Weave in the surrounding region, warping reality itself and giving birth to the Badlands, a wasteland of unstable magic and untamed forces. Though their goal had not been fully realized, the cult had still left a permanent mark on the world.

Broken but not defeated, they faded back into the shadows.

The Second Spear Ritual and the Final Battle at Laphelia’s Anchor

For centuries after their first failure, the cult remained fragmented, its influence rising and falling with the tides of history. Some believed they had given up. Others knew better. They were waiting.

Their moment came at last with the destruction of Saphiel’s Anchor. With half of the Isles’ foundation undone, the cult emerged once more, this time launching a full-scale assault to finally finish what they had started.

This time, there was no war to hide behind, no veil of secrecy. They struck with overwhelming force, teleporting waves of cultists directly into the heart of Laphelia’s sanctum. The Six and their allies fought to hold the line, but the cult had learned from their past failure. Alyra was broken, the spear finally struck true, and the Anchor was shattered in an explosion of divine and arcane energy.

But the cult’s final victory was once again denied. Fenik, with his centuries of preparation, had woven a failsafe, and Laphelia, with her final sacrifice, gave the world one last gift. The destruction was contained, its force redirected into the Astral Sea, sparing the Isles from annihilation.

The cult had failed again.

Aftermath and Current Status

With both Anchors destroyed and the Guardian Twins merged into a singular deity, the Cult of True Windren lost its original purpose. What had once been a movement to restore a lost order had turned into a history of failure, a cycle of destruction that left them with nothing but ruin and retreat.

Now, they are leaderless, their remaining members scattered or in hiding. Some still whisper of their return, but with their ultimate goal undone, it is unclear whether they have the means to rise again. Some may seek new leaders, new visions. Others may still search for the original creators, clinging to the last embers of their ancient faith.