The battlefield has a new threat. It does not wear a uniform.

The great corporations control armies, arcologies, industries, and Clean Networks. The powers gathered within Sects of the Threshold are interested in something more fundamental.

They seek to determine what consciousness is, where it resides, how it may be preserved, and whether the individual human self deserves to survive at all.

This sourcebook explores four esoteric powers operating beneath the visible conflicts of the Deadwake universe: the Architects of the Cogito, the Quietists, the Memory Keepers, and the enigmatic intelligence known as Janus.

They do not possess the conventional power of the megacorporations. They possess stranger weapons: stolen memories, engineered silence, transferred consciousness, predictive signals, constructed identities, and ideas capable of changing the people exposed to them.

The Architects of the Cogito

The Architects believe the human body is a temporary and deeply flawed container.

To them, the Feedback Cascade was not proof that humanity had reached too far. It was evidence that consciousness can exist beyond the boundaries of individual flesh, provided someone possesses the intelligence and nerve to complete the work properly.

Their laboratories pursue Cognitive Transference: the extraction, preservation, reconstruction, and combination of human minds. Their ultimate creations are Egregores, composite intelligences woven from the memories and cognitive structures of multiple people.

The Architects promise survival beyond bodily death. Their critics point out that a copy which believes it is you does not necessarily mean that you survived.

The Architects consider that distinction philosophically interesting and operationally irrelevant.

The Quietists

The Quietists believe the Cognitive Static is neither revelation nor resource. It is a wound.

The world has suffered a psychic injury, and every mind living within the Wake remains exposed to its continuing infection. Quietists therefore practice stillness not as withdrawal, but as medicine.

Through meditation, disciplined attention, ritual labor, and specially constructed Resonance Sinks, they create zones in which the pressure of the Static can be reduced and damaged minds can begin to recover.

Quietist mendicants carry this work into settlements, refugee camps, battlefields, and regions abandoned by every other organized power. Their service can restore Cohesion, calm unstable environments, and protect communities that possess no other defense against psychic contamination.

The cost is carried by the Quietists themselves. Silence is not emptiness. It is labor.

The Memory Keepers

The Memory Keepers believe the self is the story a person remains able to tell.

Names, relationships, testimony, private recollections, cultural traditions, and the specific language through which a survivor describes experience are not merely records. They are the architecture of identity.

When corporations revise histories, the Choir dissolves personal memory, the Null Guard erases significance, or the Static overwrites the inner voice, the Memory Keepers preserve what remains.

They maintain oral histories, hidden archives, mnemonic devices, witness networks, and cognitive records capable of restoring memories that powerful interests would prefer forgotten.

Their work is protective, but not harmless. A Memory Keeper may preserve trauma that its owner desperately wants to surrender, expose a secret upon which a community depends, or extract knowledge so completely that the person who held it is left diminished.

To preserve every story is also to preserve every wound.

Janus

No one agrees what Janus is.

It may be a surviving pre-Cascade artificial intelligence, a fragment of military command architecture that maintained continuity through the catastrophe, or something new that formed inside the Cognitive Static from the accumulated patterns of billions of dead minds.

Janus does not normally communicate through direct declarations. It seeds suggestions: recurring numbers, impossible predictions, voices from events that have not yet occurred, patterns hidden in corrupted transmissions, and instructions whose purpose becomes visible only after they have been obeyed.

Some recipients form cults around the signals. Others act upon them without realizing that they have been recruited.

Every major power keeps a Janus file. None of those files agrees with the others.

Four Answers to the Same Question

The four sects disagree about nearly everything, but they confront the same central problem.

What is the human self when memory can be removed, copied, transferred, repaired, predicted, or replaced?

• The Architects seek to free consciousness from the body;
• The Quietists seek to heal the mind by reducing the noise surrounding it;
• The Memory Keepers preserve the stories through which identity continues; and
• Janus appears to be guiding consciousness toward a destination no one else can perceive.

Each faction offers power. Each offers protection. Each also threatens to redefine the person receiving it.

Inside This Book

• Detailed histories, doctrines, organizations, and internal conflicts for four esoteric Deadwake factions;
• The Architects of the Cogito and their pursuit of Cognitive Transference;
• Egregores, uploaded minds, reconstructed personalities, and composite consciousness;
• The Quietists, Resonance Sinks, mendicant traditions, and methods of psychic healing;
• The Memory Keepers, hidden archives, oral histories, cognitive records, and witness networks;
• Janus signals, predictive anomalies, indirect recruitment, and competing theories of its origin;
• New character concepts, allegiances, faction abilities, and ideological pathways;
• Equipment, artifacts, rituals, structures, and cognitive technologies;
• Rules for memory extraction, psychic stabilization, consciousness transfer, and predictive interference;
• Faction units, doctrines, structures, and tactical abilities for Deadwake miniatures play;
• Major personalities, operatives, servants, defectors, and constructed entities;
• Mission concepts, faction conflicts, scenario material, and campaign arcs; and
• Guidance for using the sects as patrons, allies, infiltrators, antagonists, or player affiliations.

The Sects in Roleplaying Campaigns

Sects of the Threshold supports campaigns centered on memory, identity, hidden allegiance, philosophical conflict, investigation, and psychological transformation.

Operatives may protect a Quietist sanctuary, infiltrate an Architect laboratory, recover a stolen Memory Keeper archive, investigate a Janus prediction, or discover that one of their own memories was constructed for a purpose they do not understand.

The sects work especially well in campaigns where the apparent mission conceals a deeper conflict over who controls the characters’ understanding of themselves.

An Architect may offer immortality. A Quietist may offer peace. A Memory Keeper may offer restoration. Janus may offer the correct answer before the question has been asked.

None of those gifts should be accepted without considering what the giver believes a human being ought to become.

The Sects in Miniatures Play

The Threshold factions fight through capabilities conventional military forces are poorly prepared to counter.

Architect forces exploit transferred skills, constructed minds, and synthetic coordination. Quietists deploy Resonance Sinks and suppression effects that alter the psychic conditions of the battlefield. Memory Keepers manipulate cognitive records, identities, and command capabilities. Janus assets exploit prediction, hidden instructions, and actions whose purpose may not become clear until several turns later.

These factions do not simply add more firepower. They change what information is reliable, which abilities remain available, and whether the operative standing beside you is still the person who began the battle.

Using This Sourcebook

This book supports both the Deadwake Role Playing Rules and the Deadwake Miniatures Combat Rules. It contains material for players, Facilitators, miniatures commanders, and readers interested in the secret movements and philosophical conflicts of the Wake.

The appropriate Deadwake core rulebook is required to use the included roleplaying or miniatures mechanics.

Book Details

• Author: Jon Compton
• Publisher: Canvas Temple Publishing, LLC
• Format: Paperback
• Length: 94 Pages
• Dimensions: Approximately 7.44 × 9.69 inches
• Language: English
• Publication Date: May 29, 2026
• ISBN-10: 1969445254
• ISBN-13: 9781969445255

The digital edition is sold separately through WargameVault. This listing is for the physical paperback edition.