Brainstorming a clandestine infernal societas

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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I’m running my first saga soon and an overarching conflict I envision a clandestine infernal cabal inspired by both the Sundering of Tremere and Betrayal of Tytalus.

This group would be united in believing that mages are God’s chosen and should by divine law rule Mythic Europe for the betterment of all. They see themselves as revolutionaries, viewing the Order as too restrictive in their judgements and rulings. However, to bring about the change they desire they wish for great cataclysmic upheaval of which only mages can control, and thus cement their control over the lands.

The infernal nature of this group lies within it’s leadership, a powerful demon of pride masquerading as a mage. This demon would seek out particularly ambitious and prideful magi and corrupt their vainglory to make them think themselves as the rightful heirs to the land. The magi would then becoming unknowing tools to bring about cataclysmic change purely to spread sin and evil.

My question is what sort of (effectively doomsday) events could proport such a change? How to bring it about? How big could a secret group like this be?

The idea behind this group came about with a player taking a major blackmail flaw wanting to have to do unsavoury acts like murder and sabotage with a group like this being the force behind it. My other question is what could these acts look like and what purpose? To merely taint and spread the infernal at first?

For reference my saga is going to be set within Stonehenge using Yosano’s Orphans of Merlin setting.

Let me know if you have any additional ideas or suggestions!

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That is just the Ash Gild dialled up. It might take as little as a very successful foray into Sweden and a Twilight episode for Philippe the Black ex Flambeau…

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Mind telling me a bit about this Ash Gild? I’ve not come across it before :smile:

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It is in the Rhine book, Guardians of the Forest. I do not have it on hand.

But for shirt, they are magi who think that they should rule over mundanes and that violence is alright, to caricature things. In my saga I present their leader as kind of a scary loony Nietzschian “what is good? When the feeling if magical power increases!”

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I had a cursory read through and this seems like the starting point I was looking for, thank you!

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Well, there is the classic Syndrome gambit of bringing forth demons so that magi could fight them off and be seen as heroes. Although the cult might find this doesn’t quite work as advertised, what with the Gift and all.

A more subtle effort along these lines might be to combine this with undermining the Dominion and replacing it. Start with a series of assasinations of people with True Faith and such. Simultaneously, groom and spread the power of Heroic characters and pagan-like hedge wizards, making sure to arrange for themt to fight-off monsters and calamities to replace the Church as the ‘saviors’ and ones the community can rely on.

The standard cataclysmic ‘magi should rule the world’ scenario is releasing the titans and undoing the titanomachia, there are two adventures around that in Dias Irae IIRC. While not quite what you are after, perhaps these could serve as inspiration.

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I’m a fan of this idea, though I imagine this would take decades to have an effect in areas having quite an entrenched dominion (though any long-arching scheme is going to take such time).

I’m not a huge fan on the whole titans idea, though I do plan on incorporating the End of Time scenario later on. Should the moon ritual go through I would imagine this would be the perfect event for the cult to capitalise on.

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If you saga is set in Stonehenge during the 13th century, I would suggest reading on Wikipedia about the lives of Alexander II and Alexander III and the Wars of Scottish Independence that erupted shortly after the death of the latter. The cabal may well end up briefly achieving their goals - being none other than the Guardians of Scotland, after having been thwarted at the end of Alexander II’s reign (in both cases you have a succession problem, with a dying king who leaves a child heir and a kingdom ready to erupt into war), This may be the culmination of a long-running plan to become the powers behind the scottish trone that started over a century earlier, with Alexander I, and is hinted at in the 3rd edition supplement Lion of the North (pp.127-128):

King Alexander I appointed Henry de Goulis as his seneschal, and such was Alexander’s dependence on Henry that he made the title hereditary in 1121. The seneschals served the kings of Scotland with dedication and intelligence, soon making themselves indispensable. David Goulis, Henry’s great-grandson, began construction of a castle named “Monksend” in 1187, having taken the lands of a Benedictine monastery for his own. Rumors immediately started to spread of David’s atrocities: the Benedictines claimed that David had slaughtered the abbot of the monastery and laid him under the cornerstone of the castle. In 1189 David brought forward a monk to dispute these allegations, but still they persisted. The castle of Monksend became known locally as a haunted place, and it is avoided even by armed cattle raiders.The land around the castle supports the rumors, appearing dark and gloomy even on the brightest day. The people of the Borders claim that on nights of the dark of the moon David rides forth, attended by his familiar, Robyn Redcap, and a host of demon dogs. He seeks innocent souls to sacrifice to his demonic master. The strongest man is unable to pierce Lord Goulis’s armor, and the fastest horse cannot outrun the hounds… Yet the true danger of Lord Goulis lies not in his nocturnal forays but in the fact that he has the ear of the king and is able to influence him.

The chronicles are full of juicy stuff like this that you can use (e.g. the “creature resembling death, naked of flesh and lire, with bare bones right dreadfull to behold" that appeared at the end of a dance at Alexander III’s wedding to Yolande de Dreux); and I find that enmeshing players in the secret history behind real historical events, Tim-Powers style, lends to sagas a depth and epic feeling that is hard to match with entirely made-up stuff.

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Very cool! Blending real history is something I definitely want to try. Initially the saga will be focused more towards the south of England, though I do want to have some adventures north into Scotland. My only query is how does the Lion of the North supplement hold up, specifically with information regarding the Loch Leglean tribunal? Is there bits which need to be added or changed to align with 5e canon?

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In game terms you have a few basic constraints on group size, depending on organizational structure. The first is that since the group is hierarchical (whether they know it or not) there are limits in terms of membership based on leadership scores. the most effective strategy will be to present as an initiatory mystery cult, and people can be “directed” towards the goal by the flaws they take as part of their initiations, with each cell (number of participants equal to or less than the leader’s leadership ability) promoting members until they can lead their own cells, by which point they will be fully dedicated to the cause.

If you are wanting to rule a society the most obvious catastrophe to engineer would be the collapse of the existing social authorities- both church and state, so society devolves into anarchy that the mage-kings can save them from.

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There’s also some canon (or at least canon rumours) around the role of the Hedyosmos magi from the Greece book in the Sundering.

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I think one of the first things is to establish how obvious do they want to be? I just can’t see any way to do the large change wanted, a Magiocracy, without being very obvious, so I’m going with that theme.

Your description implies they are of the ends justify the means type. The gift is a big problem, but not insurmountable. If an outside threat is big enough, scared people will line up behind monsters (and the Gift has peasants putting magi in the monster category), if that monster will keep them and their family safe.

  1. Create a plague. Wander London, perdo corpus a bunch of workers. Aim for food handlers, couriers, etc, to make sure you’ve got a decent disease transmission vector. Aim for sailors and docks workers if you want all of Europe.

Have cities covered by a year long Purification of the Festering Wounds.It would be resource intensive as boundary is a ritual, and it would also warp, but peasants wont know about warping, and even if they did, warping is a small cost to pay to stay alive.

The magi make it known at the start of the plague they will protect cities that ask for their help but only so many. The peasants hear about the rest of England losing 1 in 3 people, but lets say Birmingham and Manchester asked for help, they are losing 1 in 100. The peasants will love the magi. The Lords will be completely dependent on the Magi, as the magi could always take their protection away. While I’ve said make it obvious, clearly not obvious the magi started the plague.

  1. Engineer a war between feuding lords. You could do mundane scheming, you could literally use enslave the mortal mind, Whatever fits the skill set of the group.

End the war. Again, go with the skill set. Fly over the battlefield. Have the extreme combat mage mastered group Incantation of lightning blast 30 trees and demand the war ends. Enslave the mortal mind, demand the war ends. Be showy. Make it clear the magi have absolute control.

Even a war is small beans in the big picture. I’m not as knowledge with history as others, but the continent spanning war like WWI, WWII, Napoleonic, etc, are a while away. While the 100 year war is big, it’s mostly France and England and that is 100 year away. I think a plague or something similar is the cataclysm to aim for.

  1. Demand allegiance.Prior to this, visit lords and give a display of power. Literally kill ever lord in England who does not swear allegiance. A Corpus specialist could Seven league stride and Clenching Grasp of the Crushed Heart a lot of targets. Throw in a veil of invisibility for safety. You could split the task between magi. A lord’s bedroom being torched, another mysteriously drowning in his own bed, to increase the terror.

The issue is the kickback. The order will push back. How you run the Divine matters. Does God care if Magi rule? Ars Majica implies angels may intervene in Earthly matters. There are miracles. If a cataclysm gets big enough is God’s hand felt more? The easy answer is no, and I don’t think it is a bad answer, but it needs to be considered, especially if a Demon is at the helm.

Ars, especially magi with 30+ years out of gauntlet, is rarely a question of can I, it is a question of should I? Enough vis, enough time, and the right magi, with boundary rituals you can go crazy. We are often talking level 50+ spells, but a shady cabal, willing to have magi act as lab assistants to buff study totals, making high level spells becomes reasonable.

You could make a flood of near Biblical proportions. You could reproduce the plagues Moses sent to the Pharoah. The options are near endless, only limited by the specific skill sets of the magi.

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Thank you for such an indepth reply this is very useful. I feel the plague angle could work quite nicely and I believe such manufactured plagues already have some precedence within Vardians Tomb?

Initially I don’t plan on things going too alt history, but engineering wars between some minor lords could also work quite nicely. Since I aim to involve this with a PC’s blackmail flaw, I’m imagining the delivery of some infernally tainted objects to tempt them (or like you mention, mind domination).

Small scale I doubt the Divine would necessarily notice if magi gain more control, but as it grows it becomes a more pressing matter. True faith individuals recieving word from angels and God to push back against the mages? A further rift between the church and the order?

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I think the big question is whether demons get impatient to collect the souls of their followers before they repent or whether the divine sends angels to intervene first. Rifts between the Order and the Church are more of a collateral damage issue that is going to motivate the order to try and shut down the cabal, but they should have been doing that from the beginning. They might start getting more help from priests and holy men in that mission, but that is a slow escalation compared to truly getting the attention of the divine itself.