Your lies and false values, dressed up as truths and ideals, have failed your followers. Your castoffs become the stuff of my faction's strongest members, the core of mercy and despair.

- Factol Lhar

  A faction who don't even bother to preach, the Bleakers just resign themselves to facing life as it heaps its woes upon them. There's no Grand Meaning of Life, no Hidden Truth, not even a morsel of Hope left. Life just happens, and then it stops. Happy now? Being slapped in the face with your own insignificance and mortality doesn't do most cutters much good. In fact, the Bleakers take it upon themselves to look after the ones whose tiny insignificant egos couldn't face being pointless and lost the plot. They're all cared for in the Bleaker's Madhouse. Charitable sods, the factioneers also set up soup kitchens throughout the poorest areas of the Cage to care for the poor, the destitute and the down-on-their-luck. Just because there's no meaning to life, it don't mean you shouldn't help feed a hungry mouth, berk!   So the Bleak Cabal take events as they come, trying to keep a grip on their sanity in a Multiverse slowly losing its own head. In time people will realise, when they finally get sick of looking for the elusive Answers. They'll never be found because they were never lost, see? They never even existed. And the sooner cutters realise this, the less suffering there'll be in the end...  

History of the Bleak Cabal

The Bleak Cabal is an ancient faction; it seems there's always been a need for some to repudiate the tenets of others. Cabalists believe in nothing, save whatever twisted meaning they can wring out of themselves.   Ever since the faction was born more than nine centuries ago, acceptance of the Bleakers has waxed and waned according to whichever philosophies had the biggest toehold in Sigil at the time. During periods of intense recruitment by other factions, when a factol would try to boost his numbers for some scheme or another, the Bleak Cabal’s numbers would fall to the point of almost nonexistence. But in time, the other factions’ numbers swelled and grew ungainly. When attitudes eventually shifted and some other philosophy came to the fore, folks’d all jump on the latest bandwagon.   At the end of all these cycles of up and down and up and down, many members would renounce their vows, seeking freedom in the nihilistic approach offered by the Cabal - that the multiverse made no sense. Thus, the Bleak Cabal regularly became the single most powerful faction in the Cage; every few hundred years, its point of view prevailed throughout most of the city.  

The Grim retreat

Although the Bleakers had (and still have) some desire to mold others to their way of thinking, the very nature of being Madmen defeated them. See, when their numbers increased, so did the pressures and tensions of dealing with the loss of belief. Particularly stressful was the influx of new members, for many of them hadn’t yet found the peace and acceptance notable in older Bleakers. And when the Cabal’s ranks became glutted, the tensions became too much for older faction members. Many went truly insane, fleeing Sigil or retreating into the depths of the Gatehouse. Most often, this madness lingered until merciful death.   The Grim Retreat, as Bleakers came to call their strange illness, struck each time their faction numbers swelled too quickly. The factol and other high ups in the Cabal were frequently the first victims, leaving only inexperienced members behind to take the reins. Even today, the Cabal has the highest factol turnover rate of any faction although Factol Lhar continues to impress with how long he's been Factol.  

Giving Alms

Its been almost half a century since the last great Grim Retreat, and the number of Madmen seeking voluntary commitment in the Mad Bleaker wing of the Gatehouse has dropped dramatically. Part of this good fortune stems from the Bleak Cabal taking a greater interest in Sigil. More than a century ago they opened up an almshouse in their faction headquarters, helping to care for the poor and lost. It still operates today, along with small kitchens throughout the city. These places of safe h open to a body in need of a warm or creed. And if the sod happens to be a Bleaker, he and his cutters can get a cot in a back room for a night.

Faction Philosophy

"There's no meaning to it all," say the members of this faction, "so just give it up, poor sod. Whoever said reality had to make sense?" To these folks, the multiverse ain't even a cruel joke, because that would give it all meaning. Look at all those fools in their factions, running around, trying to discover the meaning of something that's senseless. They'll waste their lives at it. And they call the Bleak Cabal mad - hah! Here's the Bleaker credo: "The multiverse doesn't make sense, and it ain't supposed to." That's all there is to it, pure and simple. It ain't "The multiverse is without meaning," because that answer's a meaning in itself. Look, the primes, petitioners, proxies, even the powers don't have The Answer. Nobody is here for some higher purpose. Things just are, and whatever meaning there is in the multiverse is what each being imagines into the void. The sad part to the Cabal is that so many others refuse to see this. Looking for the "truth," these people don't see it. Once a sod understands that it all means nothing, everything else starts to make sense. That's why some folks go insane - from hunting for the snipe that ain't there. 'Course, some folks just can't handle the truth. They're the ones that howl and rage, gibber in the corners, and plead with the powers, as if that would help them. Well, too bad for them. Bleakers know the hard truth, and if other folks can't deal with that, it's no concern of theirs. For someone to join the Cabal, he or she (or it) has got to do three things: quit looking for meanings, accept what happens, and look inward. There's no meaning on the outside, so the question is, "Is there any meaning inside?"

Role-playing the Bleak Cabal

The question often arises as to why any Bleaker would bother to join a party of adventurers or undertake any sort of quest in the first place. Wouldn’t it be easier to remain in Sigil and perform charitable works to eae the pain and suffering of others, as well as one’s own? Wouldn’t it be more fitting to lie in bed all day and refuse to show interest in anytbing the world bas to offer?   Perhaps, but a true Madman welcomes his duty to embrace the pain of life, wrestle with the demons of insanity, and emerge the stronger for it all. For the same reason why the Cabal endures the tormenting winds of Pandemonium, so do Bleakers set out on adventures - the madness of it all moves a cutter farther along on the path toward selfawareness. After all, the faction’s core belief says that a body’s got to find meaning within himself, but such meaning can’t come without first experiencing the intrinsic folly of the rest of the multiverse. Exploring the ruins of a castle or escorting an infant prince across a desert won’t mean much to a Bleaker other than what be can take away from it - how the experience can help him look inward and find truth.   A Bleaker doesn’t dwell on treasure the way other adventurers often do, but that doesn’t mean he won’t take his fair share. He’ll hold on to it, prepared to spend it in whatever fashion he thinks best - perhaps to bolster a struggling orphanage or aid a sage’s medical studies toward relieving mental illnesses. But if he can’t think of a suitable use for a pile of jink, a Bleaker just might leave it where it lies - one of the many reasons why other factions call them Madmen.   Of course, all of this assumes that a Bleaker’s made hisdaily saving throw against the futility of existence. A Bleaker must roll ld20 at the start of each game day. A result of 1 means the sod‘s thrown into a fit of melancholia, overcome by the pointlessness of life. He won’t take any actions unless his comrades can provide a convincing philosophical argument as to why be should bother. Demonstrating that the action will relieve the Bleaker’s depression may work, as might appealing to the sods charitable inclinations. However, the mere sight of a friend being menaced by a monster isn’t enough to rouse a Bleaker who’s failed his daily roll.What's more, a Madman who is role-played to the hilt is likely to steel himself against arguments that his cutter throw at him repeatedly, forcing them to come up with new and better reasons for the Bleaker to take action.   A Bleaker's daily roll can get him into troubly in other ways, though. A roll of 20 indicates a state of manic euphoria. The character's overcome with flights of fancy and free association, and he's likely to believe that he's some sort of messiah. Fortunately, this only lasts for one day. To role-play this manic state of mind effectively, a player can speak very quickly, jump from one thought to another without logic, and respond to everything he hears by word association.  

Alignment

Bleakers can be of any alignment save lawful. Lawfully aligned characters can't stomach the basic premise of the Cabal, that the multiverse doesn't make sense, for without sense there's no order.   However, further distinctions of alignment seldom troubly the Bleakers. "Good" and "evil" aren't necessarily the standard definitions to Madmen: instead, they prefer "sanity" and "insanity." The thin like that seperates these extremes for any given Bleaker is often a faint one, blurred by trying to live and keep at bay a body's inner demons. A member of the Cabal can be quite sane one day, and a fortnight later be in the throes of a depression bordering on true insanity. It's all a matter of outlook.   Similarily, Bleakers of opposite alignments can work well together despite clashing viewpoints. If the factol assigns two Bleakers to tend the soup kitchens near the Foundry, they will. The chaotic evil fellow will dish up broth with as much speed and determination as his chotic good partner, though his heart may not be as gladdened by the ded. the two Bleakers have a far more primal urgency to deal with - their own internal struggle for sanity. At one point or another, all Madmen share the pain inherent to their faction, and not even alignment can seperate two Bleakers who know the terrors the other has endured.  

Class

Intelligent characters - notably wizards, clerics, bards, and other classes with scholary inclinations - are particularly attracted to the Bleak Cabal, with its emphasis on the mental over the physical. Thieves and fighters can also join the faction, but these classes typically do so later in life. Perhaps a warrior sees too much killing, or a highwayman spends too many years on the run - whatever the case, the burden of life takes its toll and sends him a bit off the edge. Their haunted pasts drive them to even greater acts of sacrifice and compassion.   In game terms, this means that all Bleaker fighters and rogues of 10th level or above must turn over 50% of all treasure gained to local charity (most likely the soup kitchens run by the Cabal, but not always). by trying to soothe their conscience in this manner, these characters recieve some measure of relief from despair. Interestingly, these characters gain one extra Charisma point for every 2 levels they rise (regardless of their racial limitations), to a maximum of 25. An aura of beneficience surrounds these characts, even if their physical appearances are displeasing: they're looked on with great favor and often considered genuine heroes by folks in Sigil. When a Bleaker's Charisma score reaches 25, he's automatically granted the best possible outcome in any meeting with those of opposing viewpoints - a Hermonium patrol won't even serag the Madman for jaywalking.

Bleaker Membership

At first, it seems like joining the Bleak Cabal's as easy as stepping though a portal. A body's just got to decide that he wants to be a member and then make his decision known to any Bleaker, wheter at the Gatehouse, in a soup kitchen, or on the hollowing plane of Pandemonium. But then comes the initiation period, which tends to break most berks. the Bleaker's response to the applican't won't be much more than a grunt or a shrug of the shoulders. He won't explain what to do, where to go, or anything of the sort - the sod's on his own- Oh, he can tag along with the Bleaker he's attached himself to and continue to struggle for acceptance, but the Madman'll try to ignore the sod and may even try to talk him out of joining. Most berks change their minds in the face of such repeated disinterest or downright antagonism. But those whose hearts are truly bleak, whose will is such that they persevere, eventually get accepted into the faction as namers. Typically, this initiation period lasts from six months to one year.   A sod who makes it through the initiation has to drop his last name or family name: all members of the Cabal are known only by their given name. It's a sign of their willingness to give up a life of past "meaning."  

Primary Plane of Influence

Pandemonium. This plane, the Howling Land, owes its existence to no one and no thing. Its passages rage with the screaming winds of madness, an apt home for the Bleak Cabal. In Sigil, the Cabal maintains its headquarters at the Gatehouse, the asylum before the Hive.  

Allies and Enemies

The Bleak Cabal isn't a group most others view neutrally. The Doomguard, Dustmen, Revolutionary League, and Xaositects all view the Bleak Cabal sympathetically. The Fraternity of Order, the Harmonium, and the Mercykillers all have great difficulties with the Cabal's nihilistic point of view, and so must be ranked among their enemies.  

Eligibility

The Bleak Cabal is open to characters of any race, class, or alignment save lawful. By their nature, lawful characters can't accept the Cabal's basic premise - that life exists without meaning - for without meaning there's no order.  

Faction Abilities

Those who persevere and make it into the faction find themselves with a number of special powers tied to their beliefs. first of all, Bleakers are immune to all madness-inducing spells such as confusion, feeblemind, otto's irresistable dance, and Tasha's hideous laughter. They are also allowed a saving throw against psion like abilities that usually wouldn't have one.   What's more, Bleakers are naturally immune to certain psionic abilities, including Tasha's mind whip, psychic crush and others. And once a faction member reaches 7th level, he gains an ability that's a natural extension of his own immunity: the power to absorb artificially induced madness in others. This power works, a Bleaker must first meditate for one hour, cleansing his mind of all thoughts. (This is often impossible. A Bleaker's got a 15% chance of failure: if he fails, he can try only one more time to cleanse his mind for the same victim.) The insane berk's got to hold still, either voluntarily or otherwise, and the Bleaker then begins a ritualistic massage of the victim's head. The massage must be kept up until the barmy's body grows numb, at which point the insanity is absorbed by the Bleaker. The process is exhausting, taking 1d12+4 hours to complete. If the ritual is interrupted, the Bleaker must start over: otherwise, success is guranteed and the victim regains full mental health immediately. However, the Madman'll suffer mental anguish for two days afterward, during which time he sorts out the absorbed insanity.   A spellcasting Bleaker of 5th level and above who's served the faction well is taught the use of the following spells and adds them to their spell list, both of which were expressly created by the Cabal.     Course, members of the Cabal have to endure a few setbacks along with their new abilities. The most immediate problem is the daily 1d20 roll against futility. A Bleaker who fails the roll three days in a row may be considered for incarceration in the Mad Bleaker wing of the Gatehouse. 'Course, it's up to him whether or not he wants to commit himself to the asylum. But if he chooses to postpone or forgo the trip, he faces the possibility of extended madness - the very next time his daily ld20 roll results in either a 1 or a 20, the Bleaker immediately goes insane and will remain in that condition until he’s taken to the Gatehouse for treatment. What’s more, the player must make the roll secretly, so other players won’t automatidly know if the Bleaker’s gone mad. While insane, the Bleaker may wander off if left alone, may try to lead his group into trouble, won’t be able to take direction or cast spells, and won’t make a distinction between enemies and friends in combat.   Any faction member who enters the Mad Bleaker wing for treatment is allowed as much time as he needs to recover, receiving the care (such as it is) of Sruce and her workers. Only one of three things can happen.

• The Bleaker dies in his cell. There’s a base 10% chance of death; for each Constitution point above 14, the chance is reduced by 1%
• After much soul-searching, the Bleaker returns to his faith in the Cabal and is released. He won’t be subject to extreme melancholia for the next six months of game time (he needn’t roll a 1d20 each day).
• If the Bleaker neither dies nor reaffirms his faith, his will to live is shattered by the horrors within his mind and the weakened physical condition brought on by inaction. He can do nothing to escape, nor can he intimate to anyone that he wants to escape.

In this last case, the Bleaker's cutters may try to rescue him. But even if they make it throuh the Gatehouse to his cell, the Madman's likely to scream at the sight of his former friends and resist rescue. Should the group succeed in taking the Bleaker from the Gatehouse and care for him intently, the sod't got a 70% chance of making a full recovery after 1d4 game months of rest (the chance is increased by 2% for each point of the Madman's Intelligence over 14). however, if he fails the recovery roll, he retreats into a cataconic state fore either 1d6 months (if cared for constantly) or 1d20 months (if cared for haphazardly). The Bleaker's cutters may choose to return theyir catatonic friend to the Gatehouse for treatment.   Even if the Bleaker keeps making his daily 1d20 roll and never goes insane, he still faces a greater drawback to belonging to the faction. All members of the Bleak Cabal suffer from a shortened life span, as years of living with madness and melancholia eventually take their toll. For humans and tieflings, this penalty is relatively minor: a subtraction of 10 years from a character's expected life span. Halflings lose 20 years, while gnomes and half-elves lose 50 years. Full-blooded elves are the hardest hit, loosing 100 to 200 years of their life span: drow are docked 400 years. (Oddly, dwarf and bariaur Bleakers suffer no ill effects.) 'Course, many faction members see this as not a curse, but a blessing. Think about it - who'd want to live long in a multiverse that didn't make sense?  

Restrictions

Bleakers are subject to fits of deep melancholia as they reflect on the pointlessness of life. At the start of each game day, the player rolls 1d20. On a roll of 1, the character is overcome by the futility of his or her own beliefs. The basher won't do anything unless philosophically convinced by another that it's worthwhile. Note that a monster eating another party member is not sufficient justification. (To the Bleaker, the poor sod's life or death is pointless anyway.)

Notable Faction Members

Name	Rank	Race	Class	Gender	Description
Factol Lhar	Factol	Half-Orc	Fighter	Male	Leader of the Madmen
Factor Ezra	Factor	Bariaur	-	Male	Runs the Almshouse Wing of the Gatehouse
Factor Tessali	Factor	Gray Elf	Fighter/Wizard/Rogue	Male	Runs the Criminally and Irrevertably Insane wing of the Gatehouse
Factor Tyvold	Factor	Gray Elf	Fighter/Wizard/Cleric	Male	Runs the Orphanage and Insane Asylum wing of the Gatehouse
Factor Sruce	Factor	Human	Wizard	Female	Runs the Mad Bleaker wing of the Gatehouse
Marris Warrow	Factotum	Dwarf	Cleric	Female	Matron of the Madhouse
Jax Bleskril	Factotum	Tiefling	Fighter	Male	Attempts to rival Marris Warrow for the control of the Madhouse
Addle-Pated	Factotum	Tiefling	-	Male	Runs one of the most popular soup kitchen