my assumption in most games is this: Tremere believe in the demonized image of Diedne. Most magi don't concern themselves with it, though there are exceptions (the covenant of Vigil in Hibernia, for example). What few magi might sympathize with the Diedne in principle will likely turn in your magus to protect their own skin to avoid guilt by association, but not all, and obviously there are others whose magic is of Diedne descent.
I really like this view of how magi will think of Diedne. It's been about 200 years since the Schism War and there's one left alive who will know the truth, certainly not from first hand experience. People will tend to think, oh House Diedne couldn't have been that bad, especially considering House Tremere's reputation for ruthless political opportunism.
I think this would really depend on houses. Like the Bjornaer and Merenita never thought of the Diedne as that bad whereas the the rest of the order, especially the Flambeau and Tremere probably still do. I imagine that the perception of house Diende falls down along the lines of Roman traditions.
I rather see house Diedne as having become the internal boogeyman example, something that the Tremere would be happy to play up so that they do not wear that mantle.
The big question is in fact, were the Diedne ever that bad?
- If they were committing human sacrifices to the faeries, then there is a good case for why they would have been singled out for destruction.
- If they were not committing human sacrifices to the faeries, then this was just a power play by the Tremere which used the Flambeau and others as pawns in their bid t orid themselves of a mighty rival.
(I also think that if the question were to come up in a game I putatively run, I would say that either no Tremere in the party or the whole party should be Tremere and I'd call the game the nest of vipers)
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Perhaps there is a bit of historical revisionism at play too. In the rather christianized world of 1220 human sacrifice might seem to be an unambiguous example of pure evil, but most pagan religions did practice human sacrifice in some form, at least occasionally. Heck even the romans got in on some human sacrifice action on rare occasions (even though they denied it fervently).
So I dont think it is fair to say that if the diedne practised human sacrifice then they were evil and deserved to die as they would have been sadly unexceptional in practicing human sacrifice. Especially not in the context of northern europe in about the year 1000 where pagans were much more common.
Have a look at TCI p.11 The Order of Hermes in Ireland:
13 years later, Diedne arrived. Hoping to recruit Irelandâs druids, she was rejected, and responded with a 17-year long pogrom to kill every druid she could find. The Ulster-born Cuin-dallĂĄn, Latinized as âQuendalon,â returned from the Rhine to save what he could of the older magic traditions. Aided by other members of House Merinita, he accepted some into his House and hid others in Connacht. Meanwhile, the Diedne magi formed covenants and sent down firm roots.
By the early ninth century, many traditions of native wizards still existed. Some stayed hidden, some were protected by powerful regional kings or safeguarded by Hermetic allies, and some were strong enough to fend for themselves. A score of the more powerful wizards assisted Pralix in the war against Damhan-Allaidh (see ArM5, page 10), and the survivors were immediately accepted into her new Order, which eventually became House Ex Miscellanea.
So you can conclude, that at least many powerful Merinita and Ex Miscellanea magi held a strong grudge against Diedne.
Looking up TCI p.12 Hermetic Magi and Irish Wizards, you find:
To end hostilities, the Order agreed to acknowledge the Coill TrĂ, a confederation of hedge wizards who had earned the title of druid, and to conclude a peace agreement with them. House Diedne refused, but on the verge of what many assumed would be open warfare, House Diedne retreated from Hibernian politics. In 851, Primus Obregon announced that Diedne magi would no longer protect her âundeserving sodales.â [scilicet: from the Ostmen.] Hibernian Diedne retreated to their covenants. In their absence, the Hibernian magi signed the Treaty of Cnoc Maol RĂ©idh (see Chapter 10).
House Diedne still held a dominant position in Ireland. They did not recognize the Treaty of Cnoc Maol RĂ©idh and entered Connacht regularly.
So for the 9th century, Diedne made sure to be viewed by the other magi and the Irish wizards as a hostile and threatening power in the Order before isolating themselves in the 10th. This certainly tarnished any goodwill Merinitae and Ex Miscellanea might otherwise have had for them, when after 1000 the Schism War broke out.
I don't have access to any of the 4th ed books. What I've think that I've read is the 5th ed stuff that said that a number of Diedne were allowed to quietly join house Merenita as "former hedge mages".
Now that I re-read what I wrote, it really feels like the Blood Libel of the Jews, anyone we don't like is sacrificing innocent children in their evil ritual! (I don't think that my game will last until 1287, but the party have been to Bacharach, where one of the worse and longest lasting examples happened.
This is the kind of thing that the group should probably discuss, if it might be relevant to the game.
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Whether Deidne were actually bad as the order made them out to be is left up to troupe interpretation, but at the very least House Bosinagus seemed to see kind of upset about it.
It's also worth pointing out that House Geurnicus ended up doing a human sacrifice at some point in the schism war, which is pretty hypocritical/situationally ironic.
I'm sure Geurnicus would be horrified of that.
Yeah I remember chuckling at the hypocrisy of it when I read that.
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It seems pretty clear that whatever crimes the Diedne might have committed they were likely not targeted primarily because they practiced human sacrifice, given that many other houses seemed willing enough to sacrifice people.
That is not to say that the Diedne were not guilty of any crimes or that they had not done anything to bring the schism war upon themselves. It merely shows that the official story is most likely a later fabrication. Either to justify the schism war where the victors felt that it might have been less justified than they desired or that it provided a cleaner and simpler narrative to justify a war that might have had complicated causes.
Which of those is the true explanation is probably not possible to determine from the canonical material.
Could you source this please? From what I've read, that was pretty much the one iron clad rule of the roman republic and the roman empire. Do not sacrifice humans.
Unless you count 'secular sacrifices' like gladiatorial combat or political violence, obviously.
Political violence like killing prisoners of war after showing them Rome during the triumphal procession?
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it was rare admittedly but there is a case after the battle of Cannae where the romans were desperate and the Sibylline books ordered the sacrifce of 4 people which the romans then did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylline_Books).
Then there are the ritual murders of political prisoners conducted during a religious ceremony as part of a triumph in front of the temple of jupiter optimus maximus. The romans insisted that this was not human sacrifice. But its worth noting that killing a person in front of a temple during a religious ceremony would be considered a human sacrifice if it had been done by anyone but the romans.
EDIT: I forgot to add this but IMO the roman sacrifice of those four people after the battle of cannae strikes me as suspiciously similar to the guernicus decision to sacrifice a person during the schism war.
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... and could well have been the author's inspiration, now that you mention it.
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arguably the hanging or burning of heretics during the inquisitions could be viewed as a form of human sacrifice. However as described in the house source book the Tremere had less issue with the fact that people were being killed/sacrificed than with whom they were being sacrificed to- namely faerie gods. Their own house had apparently done this at some point pre-hermeticism and had some awareness of results his caused (which are not specified) that they found abhorrent.
Which leaves all kinds of interesting potential developments for a) what the Tremere had done so long ago and b)What the Diedne were actually doing, whether it was in fact the same or different.
Were they not explicitly a death cult of Hades? Best way to please the psychopomp is to save him time and send people directly to him.
At different times Aita (Etruscan goddess of the underworld) and Pluto, not Hades.
That's kind of the way I'm thinking it will go in my campaign. There's a conspiracy lead by high ranking Jerbiton who seek to remove the more uncouth Germanic houses by any means. They can use Tremere as the attack dogs because Tremere hate Diedne with a passion. The campaign has just started and Bjornaer have already had the finger pointed at for releasing information to non-Hermetic magi about Parma Magica.
I like house Bjornaer, and I like the Cintera schism plotline. It is simmering in the background in my campaign, Heorot will be sacrificed to try and unify the whole Covenant behind one thing, but in time it will boil over and it will be the first step in the civil war between Fengheld and Dunremar.
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Maybe not so arguably... Even when the final result is the same (someone dying in a ridiculously complicated and painful way), the difference is not in the what or the how, but in the why. A sacrifice is an offering. Iâm not really a pious man, but Iâm quite sure inquisitors burnt people at the stake as a form of punishment, not as a present to God.