The People of the Night
by Francesco DefferrariIn the History of Traladara that I wrote many years ago "People of the Night" was the name that the first traldars gave to the Tal people, the descendant of northern taymorans survived in the area after the destruction of their empire... These people are mentioned also in Giampaolo timeline but in his it's simply assumed that they were absorbed in the general traldar population.
That happened in my timeline too, but not completely.
Some of the Tals didn't integrate because they had very different traditions, the most important of which was the cult of Nyx. When the traldars arrived there was a centuries old bitter struggle going on between the cult of Nyx and Thanatos, with Hel too involved occasionally on one or either side. Initially the traldars aided the cult of Nyx and the neutral oriented nosferatus against evil vampires and followers of Thanatos. There was also a short time of nosferatu kings that ended when Tarku Radu, the last nosferatu king, turned from Nyx to Thanatos and unleashed the three years of winter on Traladara before his destruction...
From this moment on vampires and nosferatus were lumped as "evil beings" in traldars minds and the followers of Nyx were often persecuted along with the followers of Thanatos.. A succession of crusades were unleashed by traldar clans and kings against undeads, the first in 1423 BC, then in 1147 BC and 343 BC.
In 342 BC the queen Irina Lutescu concluded the Peace of the night with the still unintegrated Tal people. The queen agreed to stop persecuting nosferatus and followers of Nyx.
Yet another persecution ensued in 445 AC during the Silver Purge. By this time the Sulescu family was the only major clan that protected the Tal people and indeed in this year Ion Sulescu left the council of nobles in protest.
But despite this in 450 AC king Boris Achelos Halarov massacred the last free Tals in central Traladara. That was indeed the end of the People of the Night as a distinct culture.
Neverthless a major centre of the cult of Nyx survives to these days in Sulescu. During another persecution by the king Arku Marilenev in 703 AC, the current Lord Sulescu, recently turned into a Nosferatu, was able to defeat the king's troops, estabilishing a de facto independent territory. Sulescu bowed to the thyatians in 900 and 970 AC in exchange for the unwritten agreement that foreign religions would not come to bother his land.
The Sons of Night that appears in Dungeon Magazine 024 are naturally connected to this history... the adventure encourages individual DMs to further develop the organization, and says only that they are wizards who want to bring forth the "Dread Night" and are headed by a "Fraternity of the Grand Darkers".
It should be indeed up to any DM to decide if they are followers of Nyx seeking revenge for past persecutions or uttely evil followes of Thanatos, or even followers of Hel. They could be the heir of the traditions of the People of the Night, trying to find a way to bring back the Time of the Eternal Lords...