I never found any Hermetic House ever making statements like "okay sure, we're Christian, just like the rest of the order" in any kind of official context - whatever that could be. So this must be specific to your campaign, with which I will not interfer.
Cheers
Interestingly enough, in my game, my PCs managed to push a clarification on "join or die" to "join, be enslaved, or die." A Hermetic wizard can capture a non hermetic wizard and have them be considered "magical property of the Magus" provided they don't cause any problems. The intent being to enrich hermetic theory by mind-mining the non hermetics for their powers.
Do you really think any house would not declare themselves as at least nominally Christian following the schism war?
Why should any declare that? Even House Jerbiton and Tremere will in most campaigns - yes, not yours - at least have Muslim and likely Jewish members, and would by such a declaration obviously disavow valued sodales. See e. g. BaS p.103 for Sharaf al-Din 'Umar of Jerbiton and Amber of Tremere. And who would even care or check for a House to be 'nominally' Christian? (Apparently you got mixed up officially and nominally before, did you?)
Cheers
Interestingly enough, in my early order game, the PCs had a similar, but different idea: Find Non Hermetic Wizards, integrate their magic, then charge other Magi from other covenants to learn this new magic for profit.
Interestingly enough, I'm setting up an adventure following a similar idea, only on a smaller scale.
Something my players' magi did gathered enough mundane attention that it was talked about in the area. And those stories are being repeated often enough that it's caught some fae's attention. Soon, those stories will be sufficiently known in the local area that some faeries will take up the roles of the magi player characters in their reenactment of their story, and playing out a similar role in other stories involving local peasants.
Once the player magi notice something going around with some purported local magi and investigate, it will be quite fun for them to find faeries copies of themselves made to be caricatures of how people viewed them due to their known actions during that incident.
Regarding this I'd like to point out that, according to TSE, it was probably House Jerbiton at work here more than House Guernicus. At least in the Sundering itself, if not in the later negotiations with Tremere. I'd like to invoke serf's parma about it, though.
Edit: Edited to add that I was completely wrong. After checking TSE, it does indeed point to House Guernicus, and also House Tytalus, as rumors kind of point at Hedyosmos for this. The rumor can be found in TSE pages 66 (third column) and 67 (insert), and it's also mentioned at the beginning of page 22.
Even Mythic Europe has its myths.
There are no Latin wizards. Associating with Rome is prestigious, so wizards gave themselves a Roman heritage. That kind of thing is pretty common in medieval society, and magi are not immune. Rome wasn't really big on magic to begin with and the city had been Christian for a long time by the time the Order was supposedly founded. The idea of the Order begins to glimmer only after Rome falls. All wizards have "Germanic" or otherwise non-Roman beginnings, which is why honest voting and real Tribunals of all the people are held as ideals. This is also why the Order adopted "barbarian" law. Explaining this to a magus is a sure way to be toasted.
There was no Schism War. There never was a House Diedne. Druidic traditions and lineages were exterminated a millenium ago! The very idea is silly, so silly that magi believe because it must be true, since it would be too implausible a lie. What really happened is that the corruption of House Tytalus was a much bigger affair than people let on, that it encompassed every House in the Order rather than just House Tytalus, that eliminating the (obvious) problem took a long time. By the time it was over, with so many magi dead and so many lineages tainted, magi found it comforting to posit a secretive House Diedne acting to corrupt the Order from within. Over two hundred years, covenants ruined during the conflict became associated with "House Diedne." But was all the corruption eliminated? What is House Guernicus hiding at Duresca and Magvillus? Or Tremere in their fortified fastnesses? Is the Ritual of 12 Years really about Bjornaer checking each other out for symptoms of corruption? And what happens when Faerie House Diedne "come back?" Or when the real magi of "House Diedne," sustained by infernal rites that even remove their Decrepitude try something new?
The Order was founded by demons, or more probably by human Infernalists. The Code is pretty much impossible to live by, so magi are routinely oathbreakers. Magi tend toward pagan or pagan-like traditions, which taints them with sin even if the traditions are made up; it is the intent that counts. Non-interference with mundanes tends to keep magi away from confession and congregation. Only Pride can result from the belief that magi have access to secret knowledge. The Criamon are especially damned, for what is the point of works without faith, or the wages of believing in a man rather than God? Hell need only wait. The biggest flaw in this plan are demons themselves, impatient and quarrelsome, stirring up unneeded trouble. But hoplites address that problem nicely.
The dream of the Tremere the Founder never died but has been kept alive by the vexillation of the candle, always led by the primus. Over the past few decades, a wonderful opportunity has presented itself: House Tremere and the Mongols know about each other, and are aligned. The Mongol plan to bring order to the world and a single law works well with House Tremere and they share military doctrine. Tengriism is magic-friendly and the Mongols have a revered place for wizards on their side. It isn't quite what Tremere the Founder had in mind, but it looks quite workable. They need not even break the Code, what with Mongols happy to deal with mundanes. What will the rest of the Order do, when the time comes to choose sides?
The Order has long dismissed the warnings of House Bjornaer regarding shapeshifters as fanatic, barbarian ravings, even though House Bjornaer has defended the Order against assualts time and again over the centuries, receiving derision instead of thanks, being lectured about "real history" when the true shape of things is obvious. Things have been quiet for a long time; too long. Shapeshifters have infiltrated every corner of mundane society, able to change the shape of their bodies, the shape of their minds, and even the shape of their auras. The most adept and ancient shapeshifters can do even more unexpected things, changing the shape of other people and even -- slowly -- changing the shape of small societies. What will the Order, and especially House Bjornaer, do when (if) they find out?
Pralix is Dav'nalleous. So are all the other primi of Ex Misc. He has already destroyed one House through "Ex Misc incompetence" and massacred others, without casting a spell or lifting a weapon. True, no opportunities on that scale have presented themselves since, but a spider knows how to wait...
So, to bump my own thread from nearly 8 years ago... I took the History is a Lie concept a step further and decided there was a whole other 14th house no one currently remembers at all, destroyed by a secret & hidden diabolic conspiracy within the Order of Hermes.
Also, there are lots of new folks around, so new/modified ideas are very welcome.
Had this rattling around in my head. Any contradictions to established lore are fragments of lost timelines, and definitely not me not fact-checking.
At some point in the last few centuries, God Forbade Time Travel.
Swimming against the river of Time used to be possible, though extremely difficult. Several of the Founders, definitely Bonisagus and Mercere, likely also Trianoma and Viea, probably Criamon, and anyone else thatâs Spicy for your saga, were from The World That Would Have Been. As OoH Mages are to hedge and rival practitioners in terms of potential power, the Warpless Wizards of The World That Would Have Been are to the OoH Mages. The Future Founders came back to the 8th century with the intent to stop The Bad Future - Norse Ragnarok? Biblical Armageddon? The Spider Victorious? The less dramatic slow fading away of magic due to the Dominion? Pick your poison. Bonisagus created The Order to be a bulwark against whatever would have been coming. The reason Parma and the Aegis work so well and notably donât cause Warping is because theyâre from a future where Warpless Magic was invented.
This is also why the founders were able to achieve comparably mighty things, and why Bonsaigus was able to integrate so many things into a unified system - he understood magic to a far more nuanced level than was possible in 1220, let alone the 8th century. A bit like a modern scientist finding himself in the 8th century and quickly inventing steam engines, refrigerators, and psychology.
Much like the Death of Pan, the Silencing of the Oracles, God put a stop to all this. Perhaps He wants the apocalypse to happen, perhaps because He was worried about what would happen if mages went further back and stopped Christ from doing All That, perhaps there was some other reason. Perhaps God didnât exist until after the 8th century, and wanted to prevent Himself from never becoming. Time Travel became impossible, and anything that had been done in the past by Time Travelers was rewritten to create a coherent world where it happened in a chronologically plausible way. Some Future Magic that was brought to The Past became what gets lumped into Ancient Magic, Mercereâs knowledge of traveling up the threads of the tapestry of history were razed so thoroughly that his Gift went with it, and Bonisagus became just a really cool guy who happened to invent some amazing spells and gave them away to his friends because he was so smart and nice.
However, you can only rewrite reality so much. Viea at the very least saw this coming, or perhaps saw the world being Rewritten around her. She did some magic to try to insulate herself against the rewriting, and went mad in part from having two sets of memories in her head. âBonisagusâ Notesâ are largely histories of The World That Would Have Been, as well as the actual activities of The Founders. Some Devils and powerful Faeries, the ones in the deepest parts of Hell and Arcadia, escaped the rewriting, and have fragments of the whole story. Criamon fled not into Twilight but back to his own time - the door he holds open is a tiny crack in the walls God built around continuity.
I think it might be fun if Diedne (the House) figured it out at some point, and the reason they were wiped out was partly to suppress what they discovered. There may have been concerns about the social ramifications of everyone finding out the truth, or perhaps Tremere wants to keep anyone from being too ready for whatâs coming. After all, Bonisagus came back to stop something. And that something might still be coming.
That's quite different than the kind of thing I've thought of in the past, and the exact reason I created this thread. Very cool.