I'm still tinkering with my alternate setting saga, and I find myself wondering: What if I move the foundation of the Order to another point in history? What if, instead of being founded in the 8th century in the shadow of Charlemagne, the Order was born later... perhaps as late as the 12th century, spurred by the influx of scholarship and mysticism brought back from the Arab world? Or perhaps earlier, what if Pralix's war with Damham-Allaidh coincided with the Norman Conquest?
My own, still forming, ideas see Hermetic magi as essentially Natural Magicians. The rise of the Order is tied to the rise of scholasticism, cathedral schools and universities. I see the Order as essentially a mystery cult, lurking the shadows of the academic world, with covenants hidden within universities.
I'll post more as my ideas take shape, but what do you think? How would things be different if the Order was born a few centuries later?
I think playing in a 13th century where Bonisagus is teaching at the University of Bolonga would make for not only a very different saga, but a very different Order of Hermes.
Depends on how far you want to push hisotical concurrence. The Order of Hermes was set in the time it was to coincide with a historical change in how magic was percieved in society.
If the Order is brand new in your saga, there would still be a great deal of recruitment and discovery to accomplish, and conflict between the "innies" and the "outies." "Hedge" wizards and non-conforming traditions would abound. Forming the Order would, itself, be a major story Hook in that case.
Very, very different saga, indeed. But it might also be a very different Europe.
Well, I'll be the first to admit I'm neither a medieval historian or an expect on medieval occultism, but what little I do know suggests to me that the Order simply does not fit. I mean, alchemy isn't introduced to the West until the mid-12th century. The actual historical Hermetic traditions don't reappear until, as I understand it, the Renaissance and later. It just seems to me that an organized body of magical scholars with a unified magical theory is centuries ahead of its time if it starts in the 8th century.
Would House Bjornaer even be founded? Perhaps it would have to be descended not from germanic tribes, but from slavs, if the order was to be founded in the 12th century.
WHat about Diedne?
Most houses would need a rewrite and some might not even exist...
House Bjornaer, I was thinking, might be descended from Norse hedge wizards... not vikir, but something more like the trollsynir or maybe the nightwalkers.
Diedne would have their roots in the Welsh and Irish bardic traditions, which were descended from the druids and continued into the high Middle Ages.
The specific histories of the Houses, especially as they appear in the Houses of Hermes series, would obviously need rewrites... but the general concepts of Bonisagus scholars, Jerbiton nobles, Flambeau warriors, etc. could still work.
I like the idea and the way it would tie Hermetics in a closer way to the real physical and intellectual worlds of the period. My own ideas go in a different direction, to go with the existing origin story for the Order but to set the game in the 9th or 10th century. Both of our approaches lead to a smaller order with less synthetic history.
I wonder if your 13th century university-based order would ever reach out to the non-Hermetic and non-Latin traditions that are incorporated into the canonical OOH. You might consider ditching the continent-wide Wizards Guild concept.
It's more accurate to say that alchemy was re-introduced to the West in this period, since Hermeticism and other occult traditions existed in Late Antiquity. The canonical origin story for the Order makes sense in the context of the survival of ancient wisdom through the learned magi gathering in their hidden covenants. An issue, for those who care/bother, is that the intellectual tradition that would have been preseved was quite different from the new thinking arising in the universities by 1220. By going with a later origin and basing Hermetic Magic on the actual exchange of intellectual material going on by the 13th century (rather sparse as the esoteric component of that actually was), you can avoid the problem and bring the Order more in sync with the Christian centered cosmos featured in recent AM books.
I've come up with an idea set during the Rennaissance. I studied this period extensively and really like it.
I think that with the rise of protestantism, the widespread usage of people like Dee in Elizabeths court. Henry VIII's break from rome. The ideas of a unified order with links to other factions on either side of the religious devide, plus a rising feel of piety and anti-heretical motion.
The St Bartholomews say massacre could be a great example of the infernal twisting religious friction.
I think you just need to know something about the period, and you can fit the order into it.
I had the order and it's history the same just expanded with a few ideas and added a few research ideas to integrate some breakthroughs into the order.