1. Families

Finches

Normal

The Finches reside on the outskirts of Zarash’ak, where civilization pretends to dwell in the heart of the Shadow Marches. Their estate is sprawling and grand, but its fences are rusted, its paths overgrown, and its walls peeling.

The Finch family has long laid claim to titles of aristocracy within the scattered, clannish society of the Shadow Marches. How much of that claim is genuine, and how much a pretense to mask the poverty that has slowly overtaken them, even the Finches themselves no longer know. But they have their pride. They have their ties to the community of Zarash’ak, where the people are happy to take their coin even as they whisper behind upraised hands. And the Finches have their gods: dark, alien powers who they believe will restore the family’s wealth and power and set the Finches to rule atop the festering graveyard of twisted flesh once called Eberron.

Oh, yes, and one other thing: Every Finch for generations uncounted has a burning, inherited madness.

Rumors

The Finches are one of the region’s oldest families. They dwell on the Finch Estate, just outside Zarash’ak. Family members mostly keep to themselves, except when they send servants or younger members into town to buy goods and supplies. They’re a stiff, proper, unsmiling bunch, but they’ve been decent enough to the community.

The Finch family is ruled with iron fists by Thelonius and Lucretia. They have one son, Julius, who’s not known for his intellectual capacity. Their favored heir is Lucretia’s niece, Eliza Winthrope, who came to live with them when she was just a child.

Rumor has it that the Finch estate is haunted, but that the Finches won’t admit to it in order to avoid shaming the family. This, some locals say, is the reason for their stern, unbending demeanor.

The Finches have a bit of orc blood quite a ways back in their ancestry. They seem determined to hide it, despite the fact that it’s not particularly shameful, especially in the Shadow Marches.

Using the Family

The Finches are the perfect candidates for every creepy, insular, darkness-worshiping, backwoods family story you’ve ever imagined. They can serve as a typical evil cult, as a slow cancer eating away at a (mostly) decent society, as political and mercantile rivals of the PCs, or as the heart of a Lovecraftian nightmare. The Finches kill, to protect their secrets or as sacrifices to their dark gods. They corrupt, spreading their influence over local governments. They raid and steal, acquiring wealth and magic items. They delve deep into secrets mortals were not meant to know. But because none of the Finches are overwhelmingly powerful individually, the PCs can face them at early levels, introducing the characters to the larger threat of the Khyber cults,

Members

Thelonius and Lucretia look to be in their early fifties. He dresses in somber blacks and grays like an undertaker, and wears a well-kept but thick beard to hide the deformed shape of his jaw. She dresses in fancy gowns with extravagant trains, long enough to hide the fact that her left leg ends not in a foot, but in a grotesque, fleshy flipper. Both have dark hair and soulless eyes.

Julius resembles a younger version of his father, but with an exaggerated musculature. He is incapable of smiling and is well known for his temper. He’s not particularly intelligent, and he looks unintelligent—more primitive than his parents—and he knows it.

Eliza lacks the physical quirks of her relatives; she’s a trim, attractive young woman. Her eyes, however, burn with a madness that the rest of the family has nurtured in her since her childhood.