AFFILIATION Cleric order, sworn to the deity Krell
KNOWN FOR Hostage-taking, ritual violence, the Sunset Ray incident
FIRST ON RECORD Session 19 – the Sunset Ray hostage crisis

The Vessentaag are a militant clergy sworn to a deity called Krell – and on the evidence gathered so far, they mean every word of that devotion.

The Agents’ first real encounter with them was the Sunset Ray, a passenger vessel taken hostage in open water by Vessentaag acolytes under a priest named Henri Larcaud, who held a Chuza diplomat and a NIL diplomat at scythe-point alongside the ship’s own crew, and it set the tone for everything since: hostages as leverage, casualties treated as acceptable cost, and a scythe wielded like a religious instrument rather than a weapon of convenience.

FILE NOTES

Henri Larcaud didn’t survive that encounter.

He fought with the calm certainty of a man who considered dying for Krell a promotion rather than a defeat, and very nearly took the whole boarding party with him – killing Agent Hawke below decks before Raven and Crowe finally brought him down, wounding him badly, then finishing the job as he tried to retreat into the berth where a prisoner, Kharsden, was being held.

Krell’s healing kept him standing for one extra round. It wasn’t enough.

“Smite this Dhruzina worm.”

Henri Larcaud, calling on Krell, moments before Hawke fell

But the Vessentaag outlasted him easily.

A second priest, encountered later at the Regent Theatre understage, confirmed the order runs considerably deeper than one dead cleric.

Their full case file – case file S18-77-VES – is attached above, exactly as recovered from Section 18 records.

“Cleric of Krell, led the Pandurian Acolytes (Vessentaag) on the capture of the Sunset Ray, and hostage exchange of the crew and passengers.”

Agent Elowen Crowe, lead investigator, case file S18-77-VES

ADDENDUM – SESSION 59

Deep in the ruins at Borthanza, something considerably older than the Vessentaag’s faith spoke directly to the question of what – or who – Krell actually is.

By that account, Krell isn’t a god in any sense a Vessentaag acolyte would recognise, but an ancient invader, the same kind of threat the voice’s own long-dead crew had themselves been fleeing when they crashed on this world a thousand years before the Cataclysm ever touched Chuza’s own history.

Whether that changes anything about how the Vessentaag themselves understand their own faith is, as yet, entirely unknown. 

STATUS: Filed under The Bad. An active hostile order, responsible for at least one Agent’s death and an unknown number of others, worshipping something that may not be remotely what they believe it is. Approach accordingly.