orders.html

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The Orders

        The magickal hodge-podge Clan, as I recall it, was divided up into 12 officially recognized orders, and about a half dozen unrecognized... that I knew about. In my time, I worked for no less than four. They took me on because, frankly, after 150 years of devoted occult study, I was more knowledgeable then most of their third century members. The sad truth was that due to their hierarchical structure, they had far too many students that would spend more than half of their time climbing the social ladder rather than sticking their noses in books. To be fair, I was a fanatic. I would go on binges of 20 years or more where I would do nothing but eat, drink, sleep and read until I was broke, and then I would spend another ten years dividing my time between amassing a fortune and amassing books that would take me another several decades to get through. Even during those times of building my library and my wealth, I would constantly read, using up every moment that was not absolutely necessary for building up my bank account, although this included making friends with people who might help my career. When I had enough money, I would fake my own death, then move to some other city under a new name, and retire into my dark cave of a library with my books.
        I remember that there had been, someplace, a magickal blunder on a monumental scale. I had been the one to clean up the mess, and thought that I could slip quietly back into my seclusion after doing so. I was very, very wrong. I'm not sure how it was that they first contacted me, or why, but I do know that when I first visited an order of "The Clan" everyone knew who I was. They knew things about me that no one could have or should have known. It was more than a little disturbing; it made me wonder exactly how much my sire knew.
        The Clan may be famed for their magickal abilities, but their main trade is knowledge. It comes in many flavors, and "occult" is only one of many.
        My clearest memories of working for The Clan, are of working for The Order of Luna, and for The Order of The Serpent. These names are approximations; the actual names are lost to me because they are satirized in Ellanna's mind to the point of being completely renamed. She called then the orders of Lunar Pillow Stuffing and Holy Erect Serpent, respectively.

Since I plan to cover the Serpents in greater detail in my recollection on Torel, I will set down my clearest memory of the other order.

        The building that served as the headquarters for O.L. (Order Luna) was a large building, lit only with candles. They were a people of absurd ritual flourishes above and beyond any order I had ever dealt with, and you could clearly see it in their architecture. The walls were made out of soapstone and ivory, polished daily with white wax so that the candle light reflected off the walls, and the entire place looked as though it was illuminated with moonlight from within. Students in the cellars squinted by this light to read their books, and many of those who had once had perfect eyesight in their mortal days, had taken to wearing reading glasses.
        I was lead through this building on my first day by a man I called "Abbot". Whether this was a title or a name, I don't know, but Ellanna kept making puns on it; "a bit stuffy" and "a bit loony" and so forth.
        We came to a room larger than the others. It was very much like a Christian sanctuary, but for that where a Christian place of worship would have had a cross, this room had a twelve foot tall statue of the Goddess Diana set into the wall, half in relief. It was all white; the seats were white, the altar was white, the ceiling was white, the carpets were white, and the chandelier was white gold or silver. I looked around wondering exactly how many books I could buy with the resources wasted on this room.
        The only thing that was not white was a small cedar box with some ivory detailing. There were ivory pentacles all over it.
        "What's in that?" I asked conversationally. Abbot gave me a very grave look.
        "The contents of that box are sacred. We are never to open it, or speak of what is inside." I took this to mean that he hadn't the faintest clue.
        I raised an eyebrow. "But for all you know, it could be a collection of Kool-Aide packets! What's the point of having the box if you never open it?" -- I'm not sure whether I said this aloud or merely thought it, but in any case, he simply lead me out of the room.

The students I had in this Order were respectful to the point of being nauseating. They treated me with a reverence that bordered on worship. I was absolutely disgusted by it. Apparently they had several ritualistic phrases that they were taught to use with teachers of any kind: one for asking clarification, one for greeting, one for thanking, and one for asking for pardon from a lesson. They never said anything else, out of pure fear. It was, bar none, the strangest place I'd ever visited.