Elaboration on the Brotherhood of Seth. Did pass muster of Gnomey and Infragris, so it can plopped into TR and P:C if so desired.

Official History

The original Cult of Seth began and evolved during the stifling, absolute rule of the Marukhati order of the Alessian Empire.

While monotheistic worship of The One was the state religion, the rulers of the Empire encouraged minor cults to form in supplication of the cult of The One, offering lesser deities to glorify the chief position of the one, true God. The “Cult of Sethis” formed as one such cult, its followers worshiped an approved version of Sithis as the indescribable action of The One. Even at that time, the nature of its mystery made it attractive to persecuted Nocturnal cultists, who used it as a cover to secretly worship the Ur-Dra.

 

During the centuries between the collapse of the Marukhati state and the emergence of the Reman Empire, the new era of intellectual freedom changed the Cult as well. Worship of the mystery became more overt and “The One” became downplayed, with the indescribable action becoming more and more prominent in itself.

Over time, “Seth” had become the indescribable (mortal) action warring against (divine) will. Attractive not only to the old worshipers of Sethis, would-be rationalists, a second cabal of Nocturnal worshipers, and death cultists that viewed mortal action as agency over life and death. During the late Reman Empire, the cult had essentially split into three sub-cults held together by a council of Elders.

 

Before this identity crisis could be resolved or the cults split, the Reman Empire collapsed into the Akaviri Potentate. The cult left an increasingly hostile Cyrodiil shortly afterwards and migrated to the barely civilized frontier cities of Black Marsh, settling in the town of Gideon. Soon enough they were the unofficial rulers of the city, which they remain to this day.

 

Cult activities include the furthering of natural philosophy, mystic rationalization, and a focus on the stars and planets as representatives of the Gods. “Seth, the Black God” stands for a void in common divine influence, the supplanting of natural order with mortal intellect.

Cult activities often involve the ritual extinguishing of candles, recitation of mathematical mantras under the influence of drugged incense, and fortune telling by using entrails of sacrificial animals (which, in Black Marsh, are naturally not goats or pigs).

 

Various scatted cells of the Cult of Seth exist all over Black Marsh, some of them little more than a front for the Dark Brotherhood or local murder cults. The cult elders in Gideon are taking an active interest in stamping out these heresies, often with the help of unaffiliated mercenaries.

Despite their efforts, Gideon remains “the Black City”, an eerie place that many avoid if they can and those in the know believe that the assassins are cultists and there is some deep, dark secret hiding in Gideon.

 

Secret History

During the early second era, the unified teachings and rituals of modern times didn’t exist yet. Several sub-cults existed: renewed veneration of the Ur-Dra‘s mystery, attempts to intellectually connect the pseudo-god Seth to Sithis, a philosophical understanding of the divine as states in contrast with mortal actions, and worship of the Serpent stars were the most prominent ones.

 

Fascinated by the Argonian Hist worship and dissatisfied with the consolidating cult and its emerging intellectual and dry nature, a large but internally divided group set off into the swamps of inner Black Marsh to learn more and spread their own teachings in turn.

 

After long travels, they encountered aberrant Hist worshipers near the impenetrable swamps of central Black Marsh. After an agreement was reached, they underwent various vision quests, involving Hist Sap, Nibenese drugs, and assorted poisons said to originate from Vaermina‘s realm.

 

They contacted, or believe to have contacted, an entity associated with or residing in the outer void. Conceiving as alternatively a black Hist, a goat with too many horns, an inverted dodecahedron, or an emaciated woman holding a skeletal baby, the presence bored into the minds of the questers. Their own world now seemed too lively and unbearably colorful in comparison, and when they woke up the next day, they found themselves changed both physically, mentally, and spiritually.

 

The newly-formed Brotherhood of Seth (now alternatively the “Black Tree”, “Dread Father”, or “Dark Mother”) went out to murder the world piece by piece. Capable of supplanting the Argonian bond with the Hist and forming similar bonds and sharing the vision with outsiders, they proved themselves capable survivors and eventually supplanted their parent Cult in Gideon, although it survives as testing ground for new members and containment for the members that are too squeamish to advance in rank and into the inner mysteries.

 

For those in the know, the “true” Brotherhood can be contact with arcane rituals or trances. They will murder a target for a price paid in blood, money, or other things. Many rulers of Black Marsh have contacted the Cult of Seth in order to murder their rivals, and often the price was paid in peasant lives.

 

Cells are spread all across Black Marsh, often as part of traditional and unsuspecting Argonian villages. Feelers have started to reach into southern Cyrodiil, southern Morrowind, and eastern Elsweyr since the Simulacrum.

Several low-level conflicts exist with the Dark Brotherhood, who have successfully been trying to establish a foothold in Black Marsh and the Morag Tong, who does not accept unsanctioned assassins in Morrowind.

 

The Tennets

The Cult of Seth is first and foremost focused on sending souls to their Dread Father/Black Mother to lessen the vibrancy of the world and bring it closer to the void. They believe their instrument to be murder with ritually prepared knives.

In truth (and the leadership is aware of this) their own souls are sent to Seth after a life of murder and assassinations while their victims are recycled in the Dreamsleeve. Only neophytes would balk at this, as the veterans and fanatics of the Cult are too enamored with the sterile outer void to fear it and have consumed too much of Seth’s black sap to live in the mundane world anymore.

The Cult associates itself with darkness at all levels. Whereas they reject the cults of Namira and Nocturnal as too illuminated and avataresque, they feel a certain kinship to the void between the stars.

Children born under the signs of the Shadow and the Serpent are often kidnapped or donated by lay Cultists and grow up in the cult, killing since a young age. Argonians, the most numerous of the Cult’s rank and file, raised this way are called “Shadowscales” and are the Cult’s most well-known assassins within Black Marsh.

 

Implementation

The Brotherhood of Seth exists primarily to “absorb” the Dark Brotherhood niche that Oblivion, Skyrim, and ESO turned the formerly worldly assassin’s guild into.

Sethite cells should be found in several of the Argonian settlements around Helstrom (the unofficial capital of the Cult) and as cave interiors in the wilderness. NPCs should have the faction association, but nothing else. Deliberately chosen topics would alert the player that the Argonian farmer is actually a Cult member, leading to a certain feeling of low-level hostility.

Their impact should primarily be antagonistic, perhaps as part of the Imperial Legion questline of EoA. Sethite cult cells could replace generic bandit caves in Black Marsh’s interior, and dead Dark Brotherhood members (perhaps with a sigil in their inventory) would add to the mystery.

Ultimately, for the player in the know, they should invoke the sort of cosmic horror that the Daedra should have been. The Black Tree is purported to be something from beyond the stars, older than Anu, and even those that contact it via secondary means (corrupted Hist sap, which in itself is worrysome) are irrevocably driven insane.

It's not a nonsensical question.

Foreign born Argonians are very much a thing. While they don't ingest hist sap (and as such don't carry bits and pieces of the Hist soulmass within them), they are about as sapient and capable as any other Argonian. They might be lacking some inherent understanding or spirituality that the native born Argonians have, but the difference would be subtle.

The Hist sap was responsible for uplifting the tree-climbing lizards of Black Marsh, but it's not some sort of a drug whose absence will regress the Argonians: once uplifted (and it wasn't intentional on part of the Hist to begin with), they are going to stay uplifted. As such, the whole hist sap smuggling and selling business is not going to happen.

Current region setup. Thanks Charger24!

Benthic Yobesh

Part of the ancient realm of the Hist submerged violently beneath the waves in the prehistoric wars between the Elhnofey. Argonians call the region Yobesh-Xul - "Dead Yobesh", and shun the area. Aside from a handful of Imperial bathyscaphe-surveys, Benthic Yobesh (designated as such by the IAS to distinguish from the littoral Yobesh ruins found along the eastern coasts of the Althii isles) is mostly uncharted. While the seas in Benthic Yobesh are deep enough for ships to traverse safely, the twilight realm of ancient, twisting trunk-husks, strange aquatic wildlife, and scattered volcanic atolls unsettles many sailors, who prefer to take a wide arc into Lilmoth from the north.