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Well, I gave you the timeline on the Berklist. Here's a prop for a game I never got to run. It covers the area you seem to be most interested in: An account of the foundation of the Order of Hermes in the Library of the Haven, attributed to Tytalus. Magical practice began in the Alps in ancient times. As is the way of the primitive peoples, magicians were the servants of powerful spirits. In the Danube’s lands, worshippers of the river goddess flourished. Her priests married her handmaidens, producing children with power over weather. The worshippers of Artio, the bear goddess, may have dabbled in shapeshifting in a way reminiscent of the Bjornaer. Jupiter Pennius demanded worship, as did the harvest goddess of the Rhaetians. Much promiscuous avatism was practiced. Among this muck of knee-benders is a single tradition that we might claim as antecedent in honour, if not in power. The oldest of the warped shades hoarded in the House of Criamon were shamans: workers with the natural powers of stones and herbs. They used a hallucinogenic mushroom, the fly argic, to project their minds into ephemeral states. They had the power to command, not beseech, spirits. They passed learning from master to student, through a complex oral history and painful initiation rituals. These, the crazed and freakish things in the shadow of the Axis Magica, are more honourable ancestors than the Cult of Mercury. When the Romans colonised the Alps, they bought magician-priests. You are wise enough to know that what we call the Order of Mercury was a heterogeneous group of magicians, representing various traditions of worship. They were co-ordinated by the High Priest of Mercury who was, in theory at least, under the control of the Pontifex Maximus. Various colonies favoured different traditions of practice. They do not, in the final summation, matter. Revenant rituals aside, these older practices died. Jerbiton believed that the Coming of the Son of Man banished the Old Gods. Trianoma believed that the dawning Age of Pisces altered the radiant vis, forcing beings of the Ariean type to flee the mortal world and the poisonous influence of the stars. In my own time this subtle reasoning has mattered not at all, but in yours, it may be of consequence. Dutiful servants were left to empty temples and worthless supplications The gods had once claimed to give their servants powers, but these were often the result of faerie blood or the Gift. Imperial Romans thought the Gift literal: magical ability was a sign that a god had chosen you for service. When the gods were banished, or fled, it become apparent that magical affinity was not sacerdotal. The priests continued their mummery for hundreds of years, through a mixture of their personal magic, use of magic items forged with the aid of the missing divinities, and alliances with faeries and spirits. The Cult of Mercury, god of thieves, con artists and merchants, co-ordinated and enforced the deception. When the Rock came to Rome, and his disciples infested the catacombs, the little spirits who allowed the pretence of the old religion were banished by the Dominion. This then, is where our tradition begins: a world changed, its Order swept away. The remnants killing each other for the substance that can take the place of their missing gods. Killing each other not just from avarice or fear, but because finally – crushingly – we are now unnatural. The natural forces of the world, which once we served through their personifications, no longer love us. Horses throw us. Dogs bark as we pass. Humans, of even the meanest wit, know in their bones that we are dangerous and they loathe our presence. We are human: we hate each other. The Messiah is come or the stars are poisonous and unlike our ingrate masters, we cannot flee to Arcadia or Olympus. We are mortal. We must remain. These then, are your ancestors – the magi wise enough to flee the decaying Mercury cult and use their powers to carve lands for themselves at the edge of Roman influence, or centuries later, magi wise enough to loot their useless temples, beat out the brains of their fellow priests, and disappear into obscurity. My own ancestor was of the second group, of course. He was a priest of Mars. During the expansion of the Order, it was one of my great passions to hunt the remaining servants of the war god. Merinita loathed it, my killing those she saw as my kin. I could not regret it then. Our god had betrayed us, and his servants were too stupid to see that they could be free of him. Were I to do it again, I would do it differently. I was too quick to choose warfare as my tool – to keen to prove myself more skilled in combat than Flambeau and, later, Tremere. Enough… I will not speak of the origin of Trinoma. I will not name her, even now. Those who claim she was a Greek are mistaken. Those who say she was Roman, well, did she not train with Bonisagus? I can claim fairly to be the last of the Founders, but when she left us, it was afoot, and I still hope, before my end, to receive an intimation that she endures. Her gambits in life were always perfectly timed. Trinoma’s journey across Europe, gathering the most potent magi of the age, is recounted in various stories, most foolish. I can verify that she met Bernice, mater of Jerbiton, in Greece. She travelled then to Italy, and met Verditus and Guernicus, before travelling to Valnastium, where the apprentices of several of Bernice’s allies were living. From Jerbiton, Trinoma learned of Criamon, a mystic with whom he had debated theology and the theory of illusions. From Criamon, she learned of Bonisagus. She joined him in 731. Trinoma negotiated with the most powerful magicians in Europe, for thirty-six years, to bring together her vision of Order. Many scorned her, and some did not live to see the end of the negotiations. My own mistress, Guorna, had agreed, but passed away before she could swear the Oath. Bernice of Thracia lived, but had broken her spine in middle age, and was too frail to travel, so Jerbiton swore the Oath instead. I was unable to force my younger brother to serve me, and twelve was an auspicious number, but I have often felt I failed Trinoma that day. Had my brother been bought to heel there would only have been eleven Founders. The symmetries of numerology and astrology would have demanded one more. It would be wrong to think that there were no large magical groups until the Foundation of the Order: each Founder, save my brother, had a retinue. In Jerbiton’s case they lived in his family home, a term, House, that became fixed. My brother and I bracketed the continent. I planned to surge across the Channel and make the British Isles a pleasance. He planned to spread insidiously eastward until he reached Cipango. We were, of course, far less wise than in later years. My skirmishes with the British antagonised Diedne. Tremere’s stupidity in Greece unified the Hellenic magi against him, under the convenient flag of House Jerbiton. Criamon was the first Founder to pass away. His House almost disintegrated into covenants, but the other Founders would not permit it. In his final hours, Criamon gave Trinoma a prediction concerning the future of the Order. She founded Haven in 817.
Knowing I had become disillusioned ...[Message truncated]
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