Eumenides

Love, Death and Justice Until the End of the World

Death is a lover and a lesson, walking with us all our lives, teaching the value of every moment – and when life ends, Death gives us a chance to explore the universe again, atone and learn. Still, this incarnation is critical. As a human you have the best chance to Ascend. Pursue ecstasy fearlessly, ferociously; every blissful second is a spark in the darkness of Sleep, illuminating a greater world.

And, if anyone wards the gates of ecstasy with oppression or abuse? Kill them.

This is what the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, the Left Handed believe. The body and mind are instruments they tune with sensations: pain, starvation, sex, drugs and other acts that arouse extraordinary states of consciousness. Ecstasy harmonizes a mage with other spiritual states: the souls of the gods, the earth, visible and invisible powers. Every entity plays its role in the Wheel of Creation, but the Kindly Ones have the occult tools to play them all – as do we all.

Enlightenment has enemies: abusers, moral tyrants. The Tradition fights them in the cultural sphere and through direct action. The Eumenides ethos holds that any consensual act between adults is permitted (though some are not necessarily wise) and that to bar any of them is an offense against the spirit. Foolish taboos and abuse make it difficult to pursue every suitable path to enlightenment.

People who cannot find their bliss have one option left: The Good Death. The Eumenides reserve this for psychopaths (who will never find bliss through pleasure, but only the base domination of others) and people so damaged in mind or body that nothing can renew the capacity for ecstasy. The Left Handed kill influential preachers and other leaders who advocate immoral positions like homophobia but this – along with the murder of Hegemony agents – is simply pragmatic assassination.

History

In almost every large civilization, some men and women reject arbitrary moral codes. They look for truth in experience: hallucination, orgasm, carefully inflicted pain-turned-pleasure. These outcasts found gods in moments of bliss and developed supernatural gifts.

Since the proto-Eumenides rejected moral orthodoxy, people asked them for help to circumvent tradition. Sleepers deserved revenge, but the target was a lord or priest. They wanted prosperity but came from a despised caste. The early Left Handed made a new moral code, where mainstream religious and political concerns meant nothing. All that mattered was how an act shaped the capacity for ecstasy.

Many cults foresaw that unless they took the initiative in enforcing the new law, their parent cultures would forever persecute them. They became killers and disaster bearers, shapers of civilizations, though always hidden in fear of the reprisals that would surely come if anyone discovered the great work. Sleepers attributed these deaths and curses to divine punishment, and it was at this point that certain mages claimed the titles of Fury or Kindly One from the gods that bore them.

Not every sect followed the code, but those that did formed alliances against enemies, from Kyriarchs to rival Traditions. In 400 BCE, disastrous contact with the Vajrapani led to countless conflicts in the so-called “Wheel War” across incarnations. Tensions still exist between the Traditions, though most members now acknowledge that both are valid paths to Ascension.

The Eumenides were still not a fully formed Tradition by the time of the Aurora Tribunal. Other mages still distrusted them, thought them as insane or depraved – but after the Great Betrayal, these mages sought them out nonetheless, desperate to find allies against the rising Hegemony. Bound by similar beliefs and a common, degraded social state in comparison to the great magi of the Grand Convocation, they stepped forward as one Tradition at last, with a name that reminded all of their purpose.

Appearance

Unless they use Life magic to alter themselves, Eumenides bear the marks of their practices, such as whip scars, tattoos, piercings or signs of habitual drug use. It all depends on the mage’s journey. Left Handed mages rarely become addicts or suffer prolonged illness and injury from what they do, but one does not become skilled in the Art without making a few mistakes along the way. Some of these signs are only transitional, representing a particular ecstatic focus. Eumenides can turn from being skeletal from intense fasting or heavy from gorging themselves in a matter of weeks.

The Tradition’s devotions manifest in members’ styles. Many gravitate toward rave or fetish clothing, or wear signs of affiliation with certain artistic scenes or sexual subcultures. The mage usually keeps elements of her favoured mythology on hand for ritual purposes, but these can be very subtle tokens – the real signs of divinity are found in one’s soul. A large number of Left Handed mages pursue aesthetic pleasure by following fashion. They blend in but have an air of the deviant about them.

Virtually all Eumenides keep knives at hand as foci, tools and weapons, with mages split evenly between special ritual implements and purely practical blades. Most own a handgun because it’s an efficient way to inflict the Good Death – or ordinary profane death, when necessary.

Paradigm

The Tellurian is the Wheel of Creation. Driven by inescapable karma, the Wheel determines the nature and fate of all beings, even gods and natural forces. But the Wheel is more than its edge; it’s a complex design whose depths correspond to natural forces and forms of spiritual awareness. Fire is a god, a chemical reaction and a refined spiritual state, all at the same time. Fate sets it all in motion, and transforms entities to take their proper place – but humans find it easiest to be many places at once.

Human beings could access these states of being to master supernatural, elemental forces but they’re afraid of losing a sense of self-identity, afraid of censure from their families and societies – even afraid of themselves. That’s the Consensus, favouring the fetishes and rules of a few over the full, wild garden of moral human desires. The Hegemony intensifies these fears and forces people to rely on external tools – especially those they cannot reproduce without the structures it put in place.

Magic is a state of being where one assumes the consciousness of a divine power. The mage actually becomes a god – but the god is no different from a specific human spiritual state. Focused ecstatic experience creates the divine mind. It’s best attained through real ecstasy: pleasure, pain and other consciousness-manipulating acts at the moment of spellcasting and beforehand or to recall through, meditation and symbolism when desired.

Other mages perform this type of magic but most of them don’t recognize it – they focus on tools, tricks, and other ways to keep from taking responsibility for their actions. If they acknowledged that magic was a passion within, they might have to confront truths within themselves they’re unwilling to admit: secret appetites perhaps, or long-buried insecurities.

All things reincarnate according to their karma, changing in each cycle according to previous acts, but death and rebirth always contain a chance to reach Ascension, the state of eternal bliss that encompasses all states of being, forever beyond the limitations of one mind and body.

Foci

Art, bones, ascetic practices, dance, drugs, knives, mantras, meditation, music, sex, yoga (and similar disciplines)

Spheres

Destiny or Life

Sects

The Tradition’s synthetic history means it accepts a great deal of variation within its ranks. Groups draw upon religion and myths from virtually every part of the world. The following groups are prominent but don’t contain the majority of Eumenides mages. Many do not even follow a particular cult – a choice that is more common in recent times.

In India, the Chakrasarpa are often confused for Aghori: ascetics who live in poverty and reputedly eat the flesh of corpses. The Wheel Serpents swing between sensual worldly lives and the extremes of the burial ground to enact the cycle life and death within their own bodies. Thus, their lives flow through every part of the Wheel. As ash-covered renunciates they confront ghosts and the energies of Death; as wealthy decadents they master their own sexuality and manipulate social relationships. Chakrasarpa mages focus on the Tradition’s belief in reincarnation more than most, and are said to drive individuals toward particular future births by influencing their lives and deaths, even to the point of staging ritual Good Deaths.

The Golden Chalice is the Tradition’s premiere league of assassins. They’re responsible for the (false) legends that during the Crusades, Nizari Ismaili warriors ate hashish and dwelled in a secret paradise. The drugs and the garden are real, but the attribution is wrong; the proto-Chalice used the Nizari as a cover to give important targets the Good Death and protect its temporal interests, but members are not orthodox Muslims.

By the late 14^th Century the conspiracy moved to Venice, using its mix of ascetic discipline and Islamic alchemy to dispatch enemies and enrich itself. It aims to create Paradise on Earth through political murder, manipulating society to dismantle unnecessary taboos. Any Eumenides can join the Chalice if they prove themselves loyal and survive its gruelling training.

The Knights of Rhamnous’ name comes from a medieval disguise; they’re the latest manifestation of an ancient Greek cult devoted to punishing moral offenses and protecting those promised to a certain destiny. Knights honour Nemesis, the Furies and chthonic deities with orgiastic rites: mysteries where they actually become these gods and earn the authority to act on their behalf.

As divine servants, Knights act in situations that demand the gods’ attention. In ancient times, the list of offenses against the gods included familial killings, breaking an oath and violating the laws of hospitality. Modern Knights enforce extreme violations of the Tradition’s code.

Concepts

Artist, assassin, cult leader, drug dealer, globe-trotting aesthete, musician, sex worker, yogi

Stereotypes

Æther Society: We like their toys. Oh yes. But where does their spirituality enter into it?

Order of Hermes: Their fetish for tools and formulae isn’t bad in of itself (Who are we to criticize a fetish?) but they mistake it for ultimate truth.

Templars: If I kneel and tremble before God, it shall be as a lover does – and no code will stop me from taking Him or Her into my embrace.

Transhuman Adepts: It’s foolish to escape humanity when you haven’t sampled its true pleasures, and futile to run from death.

Vajrapani: Let them approach enlightenment in fear and moderation, as long as they stay out of our way.

Verbenae: They take their legends at face value, crippling their potential to become gods instead of worshiping them.

Hollow Underground: Magic is bliss, not fashion.