The White Speaker Cult (Patreon)

This article is a patron request from Jeff Steel, as always I am happy to consider any requests for articles from you guys. I can't guarantee I'll write them, but I will always take a look.

As always in these series, where the text is in italics, it is from an official source. Anything else is my own conclusions/speculation/theory and just because I was completely correct about the Manhunter doesn't mean I'll be right here.

Let's start with a bit of history from the White Speaker model

Long ago, the White Speaker cult's savagery threatened the few enclaves of human civilization. The Order of Twilight Knights rose up nearly destroying the cult. Now, small covens of White Speakers can be found meeting in abandoned places, sharing the secrets of their blood magic, passed on from one White Speaker to another through intricate tales, whispered and screamed in frenzied, transcendental rituals.

This short piece sets the stage for the cult as they stand today, they are smaller than they once were, broken by the atrocity committed by the Twilight Order (in response to the White Speakers' own actions or not doesn't really matter, two wrongs do not make a right, the Twilight Order remains a bunch of asshats). 

We're left with a small cult, scattered and mostly living in secret, travelling to where the stories they seek are located. It's also worth noting here that White Speakers do not use lanterns to travel, they don't need them - which means they're more comfortable in the dark than monsters like the Butcher or King's Man.

"First" Appearance

This rather old piece of art shows one of the first conceptual White Speakers, here she is a part of the buried and entombed, Labyrinth. Forever lost to the hubris of a man who just doesn't know how to create good content in a timely fashion.

The White Speaker was originally going to be one of the available classes for the Warhammer Quest "clone" Kingdom Death: Labyrinth (alongside Snow the Savior, Paul the Survivor, the Priest, Alister the Twilight Knight and possibly Aya the Survivor). In this setting the White Speaker would likely have worked as the groups "wizard" casting spells and providing fire support with blood magic.

So, each White Speaker always knows three stories that give them traits that sit across (almost) all White Speakers. The Story of Death, which stops aging. The Story of Blood, which is is the source of their blood 'magic' and the Story of The Body which changes them into the young forms you see in the pictures/miniatures and also gives them extreme hyper-sensitivity. Which is the excuse to explain why they wear nothing but a bunch of belts and tiny veils. It is also why they can wear the blindfolds they do and not suffer a loss of combat ability, they feel everything through the threads of the world (see Story of the Invisible Hair in the core rulebook).

Note: There is a long collected article of notes on scribd here that you can access if you either have a subscription or are willing to set up a free trial and then cancel. I'm not comfortable with doing so because the site holds a lot of pirated material, but you may feel otherwise.

White Speaker Boss

The White Speaker Boss wears the crown of Phoenix chick feathers, each one a memory of an unlived life, the impossible story of her past. She stands in the ritual baths of blood, reciting the treasure of her insight to her sisters. These stories of the might-have-been give her cult uncanny luck in the what-is-now.

One of the best looking White Speakers, the unnamed boss has an unusual outfit in comparison to the rest, her crown giving access to 'what ifs' and allowing her to use these past possibilities to direct and lead the cult. It is however, a fallible system, because as we will see further on, this phoenix chick crown could not foresee the greatest tragedy that would befall the cult.

You'll notice her red eyes, something that is common across all of the order is the loss of natural eye colour and the replacement of it with red. She is also the most overt depiction of how much the order uses phoenix parts in their trappings, but you'll see more young phoenix bits ahead.

This phoenix based foretelling is confirmed as being something directly from the phoenix in the victory conditions for beating the Legendary Phoenix. Survivors experience it very differently, but still come out the other end changed and powerful.

Nico

Nico is a second White Speaker in the Kingdom Death range. She represents more aspects of the White Speaker cult, their ritual garb and weapons. This figure is presented as a many-option kit, there are tons of pieces to choose from to customize Nico's appearance. Including: Three heads: Plain, Skull Helm, Divination Crown. Weapons options: Wand with hand holding eye, spine knife, empty hand (both), and magical blood spell, skull bludgeon. Cape options: short cape, long cape.

These alternative options are rarely used by miniature painters, we tend to only get the model matching the above picture, so for reference here are the other possible loadouts that Nico can have.

These other trappings are quite fascinating, we can see antlers and another phoenix head in amongst the options.

Nico is one of four known unique White Speakers, the others being the Boss, the Pariah and the deceased Fade and she's basically the 'face' of the organization, turning up not just in her own resin release, but also as in the Christmas holiday release that gives access to the excellent Story in the Snow (which is very fatal for Saviors, something you should remember and pay attention to, these stories do not seem to mix well with savior blood - probably because saviors come from an "evil" source aka Dreams/Watchers/The Ethereal Dreamer/Sky Whale).

White Speaker Sword Hunter

There was a settlement of humans so powerful that they defied one of the great entities. In response, the entity drank their only lake and waited for them to turn to dust. Undaunted, the humans grew plants rich in water and survived. The furious entity took up its mantle and invaded, wiping out the humans. It left one man as a warning, cursed with an unslakable thirst.

Desperate to end his suffering, the man took up the sword, mastering it with single-minded focus. Exactly 1000 years to the day, the Prince of the Sword stood triumphant over the dying entity. Drinking its blood quenched his thirst for the first time but did not end his torment. Eternally he wanders drinking the blood of worthy adversaries to momentarily satisfy his thirst.

White Speakers that tell the story of the Prince of Swords seek the taste of blood stains and remnants of gore on ancient weapons. In this way gaining the prowess of their former wielders.

An example of just how many different Stories there are out there, and how specialised the White Speakers can become. The Sword Hunter encountered in Monster is drawn by Excalibur, a very fatal event for the survivor who touched it last. But they are also capable of improving other swords while tasting them.

Fade

Fade violated White Speaker's oath against childbearing. Expecting no mercy, she fled the cult with her child and the Sword of Silence stolen from the Sword Hunters' armory.

We will learn more about Fade when the Red Witches expansion comes out. For now we know that she was able to cast a ritual that summoned a Harvester to protect her child from her killers (Red Witchers who shot her to death with arrows) and that she wielded a Sword of Silence, which has unique properties and that also seems to be shunned by White Speakers (at least settlements that have this sword will not be visited, except by Sword Hunters who will inexplicably turn up and improve the weapon sometimes).

The Pariah

The Pariah is the last male white speaker. He violated the vows of the white speaker cult by murdering countless white speakers, unravelling the quivering lobes of their brains, to piece together a forbidden story hidden in the cult's members.

Once learned, the story bestowed the Pariah with Cyclopean Empathy, a means of communication so deep and personal that it could speak to the core of a person with a single gesture. The Pariah's empathy is so complete that he can manipulate any wounded heart to obey his capricious whims.

The white speaker cult erased knowledge of the Pariah from all members save for the Red Witches who were tasked with hunting down the Pariah.

At the moment this is all we have on the Pariah, I would however like to express a very large level of disappointment at this. Having no other male White Speakers means we have been denied sexy, thicc men with thin belts and veils barely covering them. That's a huge undermining of Adam's comment justifying the appearance of the white speakers (see below), it would stand up as fine (ish for justifying the extreme sexual representation of women White Speakers represent) if... IF... the men were treated in the same fashion. But because he's chosen to erase all the male White Speakers except for the Pariah, and corrupt the Pariah in such a monsterous fashion. His defense of the skimpy belts outfit being justified by the lore just falls apart and this is one thing I would stand up and applaud a retcon on. GIVE US SEXY MEN IN WHITE BELTS ADAM. 

It'll be interesting to see the Pariah in all his glory when Wave 4 comes out in 2029.

The Red Witches

The Red Witches are the enforcers of the White Speaker Cult. Above the Cult's own sacred laws, they are the only ones given permission to kill cult members. The Red Witches remove potential threats to the order, chase down exiles, and search for resources and relics to add to the cult's armory.

Their Witching cloaks are sewn from the hairs of the Red Haired Dragon's stomach lining, which allows the wearer to physically switch places with another wearer. Using a network of cult members in training, they are able to rapidly travel using their cloaks. The training is a mandatory part of the cult. Training to become a Red Witch is harsh and combines long periods of solitary traveling with a sensory deprivation suit. The suit's purpose is twofold: to help cultivate the trainee's hyper sensitivity and to protect them from the cloak itself (which eats exposed flesh and might absorb someone completely).

Adam's comments on the above artwork and the way that White Speakers look in general:

I am sorry you feel that way. The White Speaker cult has been a long and established part of Kingdom Death. A White Speaker was actually the very first miniature we ever released! There are reasons for their appearance that we have hinted at over time spread across our store lore and within the KDM rulebook. I will, as gingerly as I can, remind you that KD:M is a mature rated game that is a very open exploration of many themes. The leader of the Red Witch's is still female, but has decided to forgo the "story" that alters their physical appearance in order to gain more power for drawing her bow.

The White Speakers have a form of physical hyper-sensitivity that gives them the ability to navigate through the darkness of the world without light. It also makes them exceptional fighters, but weaker than they could otherwise be. 

We also find that the Red Haired Dragon is mentioned here, this is a different Dragon to the Dragon King, and we're not sure if it is a single Entity that works with the cult, if it is a "natural" creature that is hunted by the order for its stomach or if it's long extinct and these cloaks are not a replaceable resource. Perhaps, one day, the unreliable narrator will shed more light on these.

Slenderman

There's not a lot to tell on this one, the woman who dies during the Slenderman introduction story is a white speaker. She likely tangled up with the Slendermen due to its association with the Phoenixes and was abducted into the pod dimension where they seem to come from. As an alternative, she may have gotten there through the use of magic, or been abducted directly and escaped. We'll never know, but what we do know is the White Speakers do not seem to be well equipped to deal with the Slenderman. Likely because Slendermen erase memories of them, which makes stories about them almost impossible - and without stories the White Speakers lack power.

Storytelling & White Secret

Speaking of Stories, this brings us to the two most overt ways that survivors interact with the White Speakers, either through remembering an encounter with them during the White Secret or by bringing them to the settlement through the act of storytelling. 

We have documented evidence of the White Speakers knowing the following stories:

• Story of the Dead (aka Story of the Ageless Man - they do the same thing)
• Story of the Body
• Story of the Blood
• Story of the Young Hero
• Story of the Invisible Hair
• Story of the Goblin
• Story of the Prince of Swords
• The Forbidden Story (Cyclopean Empathy, which seems to be linked to the Cyclops Knight in multiple ways).
• Story of the Survivor
• Story of the Forsaker

One of the interesting aspects of White Secret is how this indicates that the given survivor met with a White Speaker, received one of the secrets and then had the memory erased from them. This memory erasure ability the cult has can also be seen the Pariah's text, where they practiced it on themselves.

We can also see during the White Speaker event (from storytelling) that passing on these stories is both difficult and dangerous for the speaker and the person receiving the benefit. They hand out these stories to people chosen for specific reasons - a settlement cannot receive the Story of the Forsaker for example if they have a Forsaker mask. The story of the Goblin is especially dangerous for the speakers to invoke, the Goblin does not take kindly to this (or the fable of the goblin is so dangerous that it kills sometimes when used).

There are, almost certainly, more stories, because that is a huge part of the cult, and they represent one half of the coin that attempts to preserve history. The Twilight Order attempts to preserve it through historical means (books, ledgers, artifacts etc) while the White Speaker Cult preserves it through the power of folklore and fable. 

One thing is clear, the tales of their supposed savageries do not really hold up when you look into how the White Speakers behave in game, they take great risks and pass on powerful abilities to survivors - even agelessness or things that might kill the speaker who invokes them. They have weird and terrifying powers due to their unatural forms, control of blood and 'magic' but they are far more benign and helpful to survivors than the Twilight Order ever could be. So honestly, despite their depiction as a 'cult' I think the White Speakers are the closest we get to genuine heroes in this setting. It would be fair to call them (mostly) good witches, or at least as close as good as one gets in this world.

Between trading population (new recruits) in exchange for powerful gear, helping survivors with powerful secrets or turning up to settlements that have learnt storytelling and gifting stories to them (stories the survivors can pick from no less) they are the first faction I'd call the 'heroes' of the setting and a big part of why I consider the Twilight Order to be a mostly negative force with their more conservative outlook on things.

The White Speaker Cult isn't infallible though, as the Pariah demonstrates, and in the future we'll get more information on that, about what happens when survivors cross the Red Witches (rather than get help from White Speakers) and we'll learn more about Fade and maybe why the order opposes childbirth (but isn't willing to actually kill the child directly) especially because said child turns out to be completely normal when rescued...

Interesting times, it's just a shame that excessive heel dragging and procrastination means we'll not see these stories in an acceptable timeframe.