Ravagers

The Ravagers are a death cult dedicated to Gruumsh the Ruiner located across Dividing Plains.

Society

They are rumored to be ruled by four Slaughter Lords leading four main branches of the horde. However, no one outside its ranks knows who is really in charge, the long-term plans of the horde, or even if they exist. Ravagers are fanatically devoted to their deity, the Ruiner, who grants the lords blessings, artificially enhancing them before the battles, and provides them with magic powers, allowing them to cast several spells.

Around the time of the founding of Turst Fields, a cell of Ravagers seeking favor with Yeenoghu, Demon Lord of Slaughter used demon ichor to mutate a number of the hyenas of the Plains into gnolls to attack the new village. This plan backfired when the gnolls, upon drawing blood, were filled with anguish and turned against their creators. Thereafter they became the Dustpaw gnolls and integrated as trusted members of that community.

One branch of the Ravagers, led by the elf Kalydria Darkeye, has created a fort within the Bramblewood Forest. There they performed a ritual to transform the local giant spiders into demonfeed spiders. Another branch led by the half-elf /half- dragonborn Grud the Great is highly organized and instead worships Bane the Strife Emperor, and plans to march on the village of Turst Fields.

Behind the scenes

In the Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting sourcebook, the Ravagers were overwhelmingly orcs and their goblin slaves, with other goblinoids also sometimes involved.

In the " Explorer's Guide to Wildemount Q&A and Fireside Chat with Matthew Mercer " (Sx53), Matthew Mercer discussed the process that led to the reconsideration of the how orcs and the marauders of Tal'Dorei were depicted:

There is still a brief reference to goblin Ravagers in the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, but the sourcebook laid out a social, rather than inherited, explanation for some orcs' behavior. And in the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, moreover, the Ravagers have their roots in a goliath herd, are composed of people of many races like firbolgs and humans, and it is explicitly their "choices, not their ancestries," that make them evil.