There is a Legacy version
here.
Whispering WaySource Divine Mysteries pg. 250Life is frequently messy, complicated, and brutal. Many mortals have sought to tame the inherent chaos of existence, seeking control of their circumstances through philosophy or strictly enforced law. Yet there are existences beyond mortality; the scholars who formed the Whispering Way chose to solve the tumult life brings by snuffing it out entirely. To the Whispering Way, life holds no value: it is a wasteful state chained to constant biological needs and irrational emotions. Unfettered by such paltry concerns, the Whispering Way seeks to embrace the perfection of undeath, transcending mortal ecology and creating a utopian society free of flaws or dissent.
The Whispering Way attracts those bereft of compassion or morals, reframing these mortal vices into the virtue of rationality. It likewise draws its fair share of megalomaniacs, surprising few who know of it. It views undeath as a route to power and personal apotheosis, catapulting an adherent beyond their mortal limitations. While followers laud any state of undeath as higher than life, most adherents are self-serving enough to seek a comfortable existence as a higher form of undead, rather than a mindless drudge to the more powerful.
Liches are idealized above all others due to the intense knowledge, courage, and magical mastery required to attain lichdom.
Death also has a way of smoothing over mortal differences. Conflicting needs, internal prejudice, and clashing cultures have a way of fading from importance once their members are plunged into the cold of undeath. The Whispering Way thus seeks to save the world, delivering it from the short-sighted clutches of those ruled by their emotions and their flickering life spans. The grim dispassion of the dead is the only solution to the impassioned selfishness of the living. While the Whispering Way is united in its proclivities, goals, and reverence for undeath, its philosophy has many branches. Just as there is no universal path to lichdom, so too are there many different views on undeath and the path to paradise. These philosophies cannot be learned from books or actions; it must only be spoken in a breathless rasp from the mouth of one to the ears of another. Tomes revealing the truths of the Whispering Way are either rambling hoaxes of the delusional or penned by the philosophy’s most hated enemies. Should word of such written lore get out, the Whispering Way is quick to hunt down these books and burn them.
The Whispering Way claims no founder, prophet, or divine muse; the Way merely is and exists as a realization to be grasped by those intelligent, realistic, insightful, and ambitious enough to fathom it. It needs history and mythology no more than do mathematical principles or physical laws, and by the same right, requires no belief to be true. Those who understand it accept it as fact and work to attain the stagnant utopia idealized at its heart. Those who instead fear it and the fundamental changes it means for the living world, would rather embrace death’s ultimate oblivion than divest themselves of the ephemeral comforts of a chaotic world. Such are the understandings of the Way, and its adherents require no greater pedigree or reason to pursue its objectives than the promise of the dark powers and immortal influence they’ll wield in the idealized corpse-world of their dream.
Category Faiths & PhilosophiesEdicts seek the perfection of undeath, cleanse the world of the living, master the magical secrets of life and death
Anathema speak the secrets of the Whispering Way above a whisper, write down the philosophies of the Whispering Way, act irrationally due to concerns for the living
Areas of Concern undeath, lichdom, secrets
Devotee Benefits
Divine Attribute Intelligence or Charisma
Divine Skill Arcana