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The Rising Phoenix

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Updated
BySuraia Silverbell

“From ash we rise” – and drag others down with us

Overview

The Rising Phoenix is a criminal syndicate operating across the Xaverion Islands and beyond. On paper, they are ghosts—no official records, no legal recognition. In practice, they are one of the most dangerous underworld powers in the setting, known for:

  • Human trafficking and slavery

  • Narcotics production and trade

  • Exploitation of healers and magic users

  • Running brothels and entertainment venues with predatory, unethical practices

  • Systematic abuse of vulnerable individuals

They are the sworn enemies of the Dawnstrider Order and stand as its dark mirror: where Grov’s house enforces consent and protection, the Rising Phoenix profits from corruption, control, and pain.

Image & Ideology

The syndicate’s name, “Rising Phoenix,” reflects how they see themselves:

  • A force that survives every purge,

  • Regroups from every defeat,

  • And returns harder to kill each time.

They have no public manifesto, but their behaviour suggests a simple guiding belief:

Power comes from owning what other people won’t touch.

Where respectable society looks away—slavery, narcotics, torture, exploitation—the Rising Phoenix steps in and builds an empire.

Activities & Modus Operandi

From collated accounts and Dawnstrider intelligence, the Rising Phoenix are primarily known for:

  • Human Trafficking & Forced Service

    • Kidnapping or coercing people into slavery and forced sex work.

    • Special interest in “marketable” victims—healers, mages, or those considered exotic or rare.

  • Narcotics Trade

    • Creation and distribution of illegal narcotics.

    • Supplying drugs to dens, brothels, gambling houses, and private clients.

  • Exploitation of Magic Users

    • Targeting healers and casters for exploitation, forced service, or sale to secret buyers.

    • Using magical suppression methods—drugs, runes, restraints—to keep victims compliant or powerless.

  • Front Businesses

    • Operating or backing brothels, entertainment houses, and gambling dens whose true profits come from coercion and vice.

Modus Operandi:

  • Work through intermediaries and falsified identities.

  • Maintain a network of hidden safehouses and “clean” fronts.

  • Use a mix of physical coercion, magical suppression, and financial hooks to keep people trapped.

  • Prefer slow entanglement over open force in civilised areas—by the time someone realises they’re in too deep, it’s often too late.

Connections to Noble Houses & High Society

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Rising Phoenix is their connection to high-ranking nobles:

  • Lord Malgareth Vaelorin Dawnstrider (Grov’s father) had dealings with the Rising Phoenix, involving narcotics and trafficking. This corruption at the top of an elven noble house was a key reason Grov turned against him.

  • Many of the “respectable” guests killed during Grov’s coup at the House of the Eternal Dawn were believed to be Phoenix members or associates.

The syndicate’s influence reaches:

  • Major cities, where coin and status can disguise a lot.

  • Smaller, quiet cells, the kind that snatch lone but desirable targets.

Even now, there is constant suspicion that the Rising Phoenix may still have friends seated in noble houses, merchant guilds, or local authorities—people who look the other way, or actively help their operations for a share of the profits.

Conflict with the Dawnstrider Order

The Rising Phoenix are explicitly identified as the sworn enemies of the Dawnstrider Order.

Reasons:

  • They embody everything the Dawnstriders exist to destroy:

    • slavery, trafficking, narcotics, non-consensual exploitation.

  • Malgareth’s alliance with them made the conflict personal for Grov. His first major act as Lord Dawnstrider was effectively a mass execution of Phoenix-linked elites in his own estate.

Since the Order’s founding in Year 16 (Fifth Era), the relationship between the two organisations is essentially a private war:

  • The Dawnstrider Order hunts Phoenix cells, suppliers, and buyers.

  • The Rising Phoenix retaliate in kind, or shift operations to more secretive channels.

To criminals across the islands:

  • Being suspected of ties to the Rising Phoenix is enough to put a Dawnstrider target on your back.

  • Being known as a Dawnstrider ally is enough to make Phoenix enforcers watch you very closely.

Organisation & Structure

The Eonil World doc doesn’t give a formal rank chart for the Rising Phoenix, but their behaviour implies:

  • A layered, cell-based structure:

    • Local cells handling kidnapping, brothel management, and distribution.

    • Regional handlers coordinating money, narcotics flow, and moving victims between islands.

  • Heavy use of:

    • Fake identities and shell owners for front businesses.

    • Cut-outs who can’t betray what they don’t fully know.

Decision-making seems to come from hidden leadership—the people behind the name “Rising Phoenix” are notably absent from open scenes, letting lieutenants and intermediaries take the visible risks.

Territory & Reach

While no single island is openly “theirs,” evidence points to:

  • Operations across multiple Xaverion Islands, especially where:

    • there are busy ports,

    • high concentrations of wealth and vice,

    • or corruption in local law enforcement.

  • Presence in both:

    • Major cities – where they hide behind luxury, “respectable” establishments, and noble ties.

    • Smaller, covert cells – used for grabbing targets or stashing people and goods out of sight.

They are very likely tied into inter-island shipping routes and black-market contacts that overlap with those monitored by the Seafarers Accords and the IGA.

Narrative Function

In your canon and notes, the Rising Phoenix are deliberately framed as:

  • A dark mirror to the Dawnstrider Order

    • Dawnstriders: consent, protection, brutal justice.

    • Rising Phoenix: control, exploitation, profit at any cost.

  • A recurring antagonistic force tied to:

    • Grov’s personal history and his father’s corruption,

    • The justification for the Order’s extreme methods.

They offer:

  • A continuing underworld threat you can drop into multiple storylines (Outcasts, Dawnstrider arcs, IGA investigations, Wanderers League expeditions that stumble onto Phoenix operations).

  • A way to test characters’ limits when it comes to what justice looks like in a world where official law can’t or won’t touch certain crimes.

Rising Phoenix in the Present Day (Year 22, Fifth Era)

By Year 22 of the Fifth Era:

  • The Rising Phoenix remain very much active, though more cautious than before the Dawnstrider coup.

  • They have likely:

    • shifted bases,

    • changed routes and contacts,

    • and tightened internal security in response to Dawnstrider attacks.

  • Their reach still extends across the islands, particularly wherever local power can be bought or blackmailed.

To ordinary citizens, “Rising Phoenix” is a name that only surfaces in rumours and whispered warnings.

To people like Grov, Thrisha, and the IGA it is something far sharper and more personal:
a reminder that somewhere in the shadows of the islands, there is always someone willing to turn a living person into a commodity—and call it business.

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