The Third Saeptum: (name lost - colloq. Nameless, or Pilgrims)
The Third Saeptum: (name lost - colloq. Nameless, or Pilgrims)
“The third door on the left? That’s just the garbage chute. Leave it closed, or you’ll stink the place up and get dust everywhere."
Since the inception of the Septs, the Third Saeptum was the Eustachius Abbey. Quiet, proud, and deadly, they were the feared and revered hunters of those who committed Amaranth. No rumour was too unlikely, no stone too small to be left unexamined. To drink the corrupted soul of kindred was to call them down to your demise – not to the oblivion of final death, but to the horrific punishment of eternal nightmares. Every one of rank knew there was an enclave somewhere remote – the actual Abbey of Eustachius – where the bodies were kept staked and booby-trapped with fire and sun, where the successful initiates went to train. To prove themselves as worthy, admittance the order is bought with the body of a staked diablerist.
In the sixteenth century, things came to a head. Many sought entry and were accepted, and far too many were eager to prove themselves worthy. The witch-hunts of those years were the unrecognised reflection of the paranoia and injustice of arrogant neonates. It reached a point where a suspicion, or a rumour, or a suspicion of a scandal, became enough to call the rough attentions of the Eustachian hunters. What among humans considered as an angry mob with torches and pitchforks, was a much more severe proposition among kindred- and kindred everywhere were affected.
Retaliation came in the form of an attack on the Sect. With so many hopefuls taking their staked bodies to the Abbey, its location was no longer impossible to find for kindred who sought to find it. No one was certain of how the interlopers breached the defences but what is known is that when they came none survived - on either side. The Eustachian hunters who came afterwards, bringing the staked bodies of diablerists, found the abbey ruined, from within and without, the tumbled stones unnaturally warm, the roofs caved-in and a thick layer of ash covering everything. A few hopefuls tried to bring their tributes inside of the prison...and most made it back out. The Abbot, having been ordered to Rome earlier, was called to account for the failures of his Saeptum and privately accepted his sentence of eternal torpor as an appropriate penance. He was entombed in the catacombs under Rome and remains in the care of the Lancea et Sanctum.
In 1874, a Mekhet Invictus neonate from Austria with his head full of the glories of the Holy Roman Empire visited Rome and begged to visit the catacombs so he could walk among the dormant elders. Being so obviously devout, he was granted access and escorted down as he wished. Shortly afterwards, he sought admittance to the Lancea et Sanctum and vanished for years, only telling those closest to him that he was going on a pilgrimage. On his unremarked return, he was wearing a simple black robe with a lead ampoule on a chain around his neck, much like those used for holy water by medieval pilgrims. His actual name lost to the annals of history; became known as Father Eustace the Younger.
The Invictus do not recall the loss of this idealistic neonate - so many meet final death because of foolishness, why question his disappearance? They had no reason, therefore, to warn the Sanctified that the absentee was one of the rare few who could speak silently with the sleeping elders and make their wishes known to the wakeful. The Sanctified who permitted him entry and escorted him into the catacombs never considered that the sleeping Abbot could find in this pious naïf the seed of the Saeptum’s renaissance. Over the decades following, Father Eustace the Younger learned, and in turn taught, and carefully selected others who were fit to take up the Abbot's nameless work. Now that the holy terror of Eustachius has devolved from diablerist hunters to an elite order of exorcists – which is meaningful work, no doubt, but poorly respected and derided by the ignorant instead of
feared – they will only recruit kindred who will be not only content with but proud of their secrecy, patient and silent, yet unrelenting hunters. The once-proud Saeptum is scoffed at by those outsiders who can remember them for their fall in notoriety, and the pilgrims of the renascent order must not rise to the bait; some comfort themselves with the idea that, like Kindred, their Saeptum died and rose again stronger.
When a likely candidate is found and vetted, the Order secretly gives him an open lead ampoule, a cork stopper, and directions to the ruined abbey. The order ensures that only pilgrims, wearing the open ampoule inverted around their necks, can approach. When they reach the place – if they can even find it – they fill the vial with the ashy earth from the ruined prison at the centre of the compound and seal it. When they return, the ash is examined by a Mekhet and, once confirmed genuine, the ampoule is crimped closed and given back to the new initiate along with their new holy orders. It serves as a reminder of the secret of the history of their dark past, why caution is essential and the price of failure. In these nights Mekhet and Nosferatu densely populate the nameless sept, salted with Gangrel and Ventrue of a certain eccentric perspective. The Daeva members who had been so prominent in the old Eustachius Abbey are almost unheard-of in the nameless sept – their preference for showiness is generally considered unsuited to the work.
Relic: Ampule of the Seer (supposedly of the Grand Abbot Seer)
Merits:
O: Academics Spec – The Testament
OO: Crusader 1 or Kindred Dueling 1, Academics Spec – Tactics
OOO: Crusader 2 or Kindred Dueling 2 (Following on from Level 2) and Danger Sense (Merit)
OOOO: Crusader 3 or Kindred Dueling 3 (Following on from Level 2), Mediative Mind 2, Weapon specialty: Called Shot
OOOOO: Temple of Damnation 3: (ideology: Perusing Violators of the Traditions)