3 November 1993
Naomi Gayle Rivkis
Okay, here the thing is... to clarify briefly, I'm not writing the House-as-destroyed, though I've put a fair bit of the pre-Schism War history into the background section. The House as given here is working under the assumption that a few members of the House *did* survive the war, fled, returned nearly two centuries later, and have been readmitted to the Order in a bitterly-fought Grand Tribunal decision within only the last few years. Also, a brief word of warning: many of the mechanical aspects were worked out on the spot; I've played these people for the last two years, but in a troupe that didn't use dice much, so I'd never worked out the details. Ignore those at your pleasure, the pure background information is the essence here, and you can figure out how to play it technically a hundred different ways, I'm sure.
"We will stop this hysterical game we are playing right now. Yes, I know what all of you have lost -- and you know what I have. If I do not weep, how dare you sit there, hand them the final victory they could not take, and yet call yourselves brave?"-Llewellyn, to the six survivors of House Diedne after the Schism War
Motto: Love Is the Law, Love Under Will
(transcriber's note: where Crowley picked it up is not entirely understood, but individual branches of the Diedne line survived, well-hidden, for a very long time after the Order fell. It's possible he read something written by a late-period House member during his research into Druidism.)
Symbol: Used to be a simple bursting sun, yellow ablaze against scarlet. That was the one the Quaesitors blotted out after the war. Since their return, it's been modified: the sunburst now is only a corona, the inside is blackened in ironic tribute to the Quaesitors' old interdict. Over it rises a phoenix, and in the blackened part of the sun there are two tiny, barely-visible fox-eyes peeping out of the blackness. This is the official symbol; in practice, many Diedneans still use the old sunburst, because it still sends the blood pressure of Quaesitors through the roof, which Diedne considers no bad thing.
History: House Diedne considers its history to start some years before the founding of the Order, though the details are shrouded in secrecy. It is known that Merinita's teacher, a priestess named Leonara, was initially asked to join the Order by Bonisagus himself, the only one he asked directly rather than letting Trianoma choose the members. Leonara declined, recommending instead Diedne, another student of hers and an apparent member of her coven of druidic priestesses. Merinita herself had long since split off from the group and joined separately, though she and Diedne were always close.
Two other members of the same coven joined the new Order under Diedne; one of them, Adraye (pronounced ah-DRY-eh), later became Prima after Diedne's death. They brought in others of their sect as full wizards from the start, rather than establishing a line strictly from Diedne's students, and they remained a very close-knit and exclusive group. They have traditionally been the only House to draw their apprentices primarily from among their own children -- that most Diedne members will have children at all before settling down on their longevity potions is considered a little weird, of course.
Adraye, a militant and a separatist who had always been suspicious of Diedne's decision to join the Order, kept the House as isolated as she reasonably could. Her successors somewhat reversed the trend. Llewellyn and Diana, a pair of apprentices trained by Adraye at the same time, inherited the House after her retirement, with the official title going to Llewellyn as the more even-tempered of the two. Late in their tenure, when the situation was tense and war looked inevitable, Llewellyn started one of Diedne's best Terram experts on the project of designing a Hermes' Portal to someplace he'd never seen. With assistance from a teleportation-expert scout, the escape-hatch was made, and cloaked from magical discovery, as a fallback if the war went as badly as it looked like it was going to.
Always paranoid, always isolationist, and secretive of their special brand of spontaneous magic, House Diedne took the Quaesitorial investigation after the Tytalus demon scandal as a dirty trick aimed at them personally, designed to steal their magic. It was Diana who wanted to stay and fight; Llewellyn was uncertain whether to simply pick up the entire 100-member House and flee. Diana eventually persuaded her husband, playing on his fondness for the Order and the knowledge that if they ran, there would never be a way to rejoin.
Having decided to fight, Llewellyn and Diana did not see it necessary to wait until they were struck first. If Tremere was going to get away with declaring Wizard's War on an entire House and the Quaesitors were going to stand for it, Diedne would take full advantage of the terms under which Wizard's War is fought. The instant the last sliver of moon disappeared and the war was officially underway, a half-dozen specially-trained Diedne wizards ranged themselves around the outside of the Coeris walls, and converted their own bodies into explosive raw heat energy, blowing the Domus Magnus of Tremere into complete oblivion and of course committing suicide in the process.
There was no way, at that price, they could maintain that kind of attack; few of their members knew how to do the Muto Corporem spell they called the Sunburst anyway. Diana was one of them, and when Flambeau magi, under the direction of Tytalines, attacked the Diedne medical tents, she found the largest clump of them and used the same trick directly in their midst. It bought her people time, but nothing more. Llewellyn, fighting elsewhere, in front of the Didne Domus Magnus called Southwind, held the portal open until he heard definite word from the one survivor of Diana's band that she had been killed, then ordered the six living magi, all that remained of the House, through the hole. Staring at the crumbling wall of Southwind, he drove into it with his eyes the chilling words still to be found there (see the Order of Hermes book), then, as the next wave of enemies came barely into sight, slipped through the portal himself, and closed it behind him.
Where Diedne spent the next century is not entirely clear, even to them. Wherever it was, there was nobody who knew of the Order there. Slowly, the seven surviving magi rebuilt the House from scratch, and Llewellyn, who drove them with a determination beyond imagining, was determined not to make the same mistakes twice. As soon as basic provisions had been made for survival, their experimenters were busy. A slightly altered variety of Parma Magica spell, a group of magic objects that allowed any House member basic telepathic communication with the entire House, and a more thorough understanding of sneaking and hiding than anyone in the Order had previously had to know came out of this period of creativity. Llewellyn, remembering the damage the House had taken from Flambeau in particular, made his people learn Ignem, and most Diedne people still hold it as a secondary specialty. There were losses, too -- all Diedne's Corporem specialists had been killed in the war, and of course they could take no books with them. Much of their skill in that field was lost entirely.
After a century, Llewellyn's successor, Zachary, judged that if they were careful, they could be relatively safe in Europe, and that there was no other way to begin working toward the goal Llewellyn, who had always loved the Order, had set for them: readmission. Reopening their old, sealed portal, they slipped out in front of their ruined tower and did not stay to look, slipping quickly and silently into the woods beyond. The House became nomadic during this time, for safety reasons, living in isolated sections of the British Isles, mostly, and moving on whenever there was a chance of their being noticed. Faced with strict carrying-weight discipline that effectively forbade books, they developed an oral tradition, with magical education coming from a variety of sources instead of a single master, and are still relearning the art of using books in their magical training. Slowly, they began working the politics of the Order, planting members in other Houses when they could (there is a rumor that at one point they slipped someone into Tremere itself), speaking to those very few magi they thought they could trust, leaving their own propaganda disguised as history books in libraries where a different, less demonic picture of the House might grow in the minds of those who read them.
It took another eighty years before their preliminary work was done and they could petition openly. Sending one of their members who had become a member of House Merinita,, and who hence had legal standing in the Order, to bring Diedne's case before the Grand Tribunal, the rest of the House, fearing for their safety, remained out of sight. By a narrow vote (and helped along by a number of Flambeau and Tremere magi who wanted to lure the remaining Diedne magi out of hiding so they could be crushed), in a tightly-fought debate that included one certamen between archmagi on the Tribunal floor, Diedne was restored to official standing as a House of the Order four years ago.
Leonara: not officially of the Order, considered the House's founder by its members.
Diana: The determining factor in the decision to fight instead of run, and Diedne's inspirational heroine for the generations since the war, for her valor during it.
Llewellyn: Primus of the House at the time of the war, Diana's husband. Formed most of Diedne's current practices regarding discipline, and gave the House its dream of reacceptance into the Order.
Zachary: Primus at the time of the return to Europe, responsible for much of its guerilla training.
Membership: 19 magi, 6 apprentices, 3 children under apprenticeship age.
Prima: Dominique, a lovely, delicate woman with the heart of a soldier. She takes the position that eventually, in another generation or six, Diedne will be accepted as a real part of the Order, but that this period, when they are open and in one easily targeted place, is the most dangerous time for them, and that nobody from the rest of the Order can really be entirely trusted.
Domus Magnus: Apollonius, in the Normandy Tribunal, still somewhat under construction. The official explanation for the name is that Apollo is the Roman sun god and Diedne is known to worship the sun; the internal explanation is a bit different. According to Greek legend, Apollo is the god who was tricked and cheated out of his own creation by the infant Hermes. All of Diedne currently is based here, for safety reasons, and Diedne members have never lived frequently in non-Diedne covenants. If there are Diedne members in other covenants now, they're on assignment from the House for trade or other purposes, or are still-hidden spies in other Houses.
Current concerns: Staying alive. The more pessimistic of them don't expect to pull it off. So far, the Quaesitors have come down hard on anyone threatening open warfare, but there have been minor skirmishes over the last few years, resulting in the deaths of four Tremere magi, six Flambeau, and two Diedne, one of them a child. This ratio explains why there are seldom such incidents anymore.
Diedne is the oddest combination of absolute discipline and absolute freedom you've ever seen. Its members are entirely on their own when no orders are given, and there is no ranking within the House except for the division between the Prima and everybody else. Any member may speak their mind as harshly as they feel warranted to the Prima or anyone else, and debates on House policy get thrashed out informally, with much shouting each other down, for as long as it takes till people are sick of it -- when they have the time. But after such a debate, the Prima goes and makes her own decision, and is not responsible to the consensus of the group in any way, shape or form... and if she decides something has to be done *now* and there's no time to argue it, any member is expected to shut up and obey, on the spot. The House demands, at the same time a graduating apprentice takes the Oath of Hermes, that he or she take a second oath, to the House itself, and it will only allow them to take it after escorting the apprentice through a gruesome Imagonem display they've preserved carefully since the War of its more hideous moments (taken out of the memories of the survivors shortly after the escape), so the kid will know *exactly* what they are letting themselves in for. After that, discipline is absolute when it's called upon. The maxim of the House is: "Patently suicidal orders are still orders, and are to be treated like any other. If you didn't like it, you didn't have to take the oath."
House members consider each other family, even those who are not biologically related to each other (and most are). Their love for each other was born in the hardest of times; there is little now that can start an intra-House feud, though arguments are common among opinionated people. The style is family-oriented as well, overwhelmingly informal by the standards of most magi of the Order, and they keep no covenfolk, having grown used to doing things themselves in the nomadic period and having no wish for non-members as constant company. Their status as magicians is almost secondary in their lives -- the magic is used routinely, without thinking much about it, but Diedne magicians are seldom research-obsessed the way those of other Houses often are.
Magical training is run on a three-part system very unlike the rest of the Order's apprenticeship. Until a child of the House is seven, they are raised in group classes like an ordinary grammar school, but with minimal magical training included; Diedne policy is that it's never too early to start getting used to it. They are assigned a single master after this point, who takes on the bulk of their generalized training. When they're roughly fourteen, they can petition for the right to take the apprentice's gauntlet, which is designed by the teacher for the individual student -- and which does not, in Diedne, mean the end of apprenticeship as it does elsewhere. At the same time, they begin work on as complex a magical project as they can manage, in the area they want to specialize in, using everything they can to show off their skill. When they have successfully completed the Gauntlet, they are considered an adult by Diedne standards, though not a magus, and they are honored at a House party at which they present their magical project to show off to the House. The project takes on crucial importance in the next stage.
After a vacation from magical training, which lasts as long as they like (they've still got regular functioning chores to do; it's no holiday), the apprentice decides which of the magi they want as their third-stage teacher. It is their responsibility to ask their preferred master to train them; the master can accept or refuse, and often does so on the basis of the talent shown in the show-off project mentioned earlier. If the master accepts, they begin working together on areas of joint interest, in a sort of mentor system -- there is an equality of position, though not of learning. This stage lasts as long as the teacher and student wish it; Diedne magi consider it royally stupid to be impatient, as it's about the freest experimental time you're ever likely to have. When a student does want to graduate, he discusses it with his teacher, in whose judgement the final decision rests. If his teacher agrees that he's ready, he prepares another major magical project, this one customarily a gift for his master, to be given on his graduation in thanks. The teacher will present the student to the Primus in front of the House, and a graduation, with its attendant double-oath, is a full-House affair or it waits until it is -- no one becomes a Diedne magus without the consent of every member of the House. (Nobody trained in the House has ever been refused, though a few have been made to wait.)
The House is still officially Druidic, and most of its members believe, but its practice has of necessity been toned down to suit the requirements of secrecy and safety. There are two or three official priests and priestesses in the House, but most of the members show up at the regular year-cycle festivals and settle the rest of the time for what hasty and casual worship they can fit in, and for treating the Earth as well as they know how.
Mentality of a Diedne Magus: You have inherited all the emotional scars and wounds of your House and feel them as your own, but your internal discipline frowns on showing fear. You love deeply the rest of your House, whom you consider your family, and are fully prepared to die for their safety at a word from the Prima. You have been taught to use magic the way you have been taught to use a knife and fork -- at such an early age you can't remember when you began, and in a careless, easy fashion as a routine tool of living, but your focus in life is on living rather than on the magic. You distrust everyone but your own people, though the world and the Order may hold a curious fascination for you; your reflexes are honed to precision and you are as competent with sword or bow as with spells of defense. Free and affectionate within your own group, you participate in everything from running jokes to wild House parties as any member of a large family would, and the casualness of your manners may startle some more formal magi even if you remember to try and rein them in.
Priorities:
Bjornaer: They hid during the War, and they hide still. Let them; if they are no friend, at least they are no danger.
Bonisagus: Stuffed shirts who wouldn't know reality if it came up and bit them. They should be leaders, but they never go anywhere the rest of the Order hasn't gone first. Be careful of them if the others turn against us.
Criamon: Mostly harmless, being too busy contemplating their navels to notice a war going on over their heads.
Ex Miscellanea: Some real loonies in this group, but overall better magicians than they're given credit for, and often we've had cause to be grateful to them.
Flambeau: Just let them try. We match them in their own field now.
Jerbiton: At least they look up from their books once in a while and notice the rest of the world. But *why* have they got this thing about Christianity?
Mercere: They get far too little respect, for their lack of magic. They keep the Order from chaos, and with their acceptance, there is much less the others can do to us.
Merinita: May be the only real friends we have, though they took the coward's route in the War when, of all Houses, they should have helped us. But Meri would have laughed herself silly over this ob- session with faeries.
Quaesitor: Never trust one, never get close to one, *never* offend one.
Tremere: Our blood is on their hands and can never come clean for the rest of time.
Tytalus: On any conflict, Tytalus will be divided. Find the ones that are on your side *immediately*; they're the smartest tacticians you're going to get.
Verditius:
The Church: Please, not so soon after lunch.
Intra-House Relations: The Prima is one step above the god and goddess. If she tells you to jump. shut up and jump, and don't waste time asking how high; if she'd needed a specific height, she'd have told you. Your friends, your lovers, your children, everyone you care about is within this House, and the overwhelming loyalty puts a bit of a distance between you and the rest of the world. There are occasional somewhat dreaded assignments that take you away from them; you aren't supposed to show fear, and have probably learned to suppress it by now, but nothing can keep away the loneliness, even the Mentem facilitator you carry that allows you to stay in regular mental contact with the rest of them. Their respect and love are vital to you, as yours are to them; what occasional disharmonies as there are (and they can get pretty loud) don't shake the loyalty but can be profoundly upsetting.
Necessary Virtues [Note: I'm doing virtues and flaws on a no-limit- as-long-as-they-balance system. If you don't, you may want to assume the emotional effects of some of these without actually taking the virtue or flaw and without affecting the dice.]
Necessary Flaws:
Abilities:
Starting scores are different from the rest of the Order:
Speak Gaelic (the House language, more or less) 5, Speak
Latin 4, Scribe Latin 1, Magic Theory 5, Hermes Lore 2,
Hermes History 2/1 (split score depending on whether the
subject is before or after Diedne's disappearance, when
they lost touch), Parma Magica 4
Practical abilities will be much more heavily emphasized over
scholarly abilities than in other Houses.
Magic:
Corporem deficiencies are common in Diedne magi -- they still
haven't quite gotten the hang of the Art after it was lost, and
they're doing their best to trade for training in it now that
they're back. Elemental magic is fairly common, and at least
a decent Ignem score is necessary before they'll let you out
of apprenticeship.
There are rumors that the Sunburst spell [Muto Corporem 30, Ignem req.]
is still known to a few of the elder magi, who are teaching it to the
best of the younger magi, in case they ever need it again. Nobody in
the House will admit to knowing it; though Coeris has long since been
rebuilt, the Order has a long memory.
Status in the Order: Known in House Merinita, she was one of those who took cover there before readmission. She's respected for her ability and her raw personal force there, though more than a little feared for her temper.
Description: Raven is in her late 20's, and has not yet begun taking longevity potions. She is quite tall, with the long, well-toned body of a dancer, which indeed she is. Dark brown hair is very long and absolutely straight; that and very dark brown eyes make her fairness of skin look shockingly dramatic. Her hands are large and quick and always moving.
Personality: Unable to speak due to a magical accident during her tempestuous apprenticeship, Raven manages to make her feelings plenty well known through an expressive array of hand-signs, dance movements, glares, and the occasional well-directed shove. Impatient, temperamental, fiercely loving, she is tolerated by her Housemates with good grace even when an abrupt slap becomes her way of telling them to shut up and let her finish. Mostly, they just worry about her getting into trouble with someone else, a worry probably very reasonable, as she tends to be reckless to the point of stupidity when not restrained.
Favored Magic: Raven is the closest thing to a Corporem specialist Diedne has, being by nature focused on the way the human body works, since it's her only form of expression. (Within the House, of course, there's the Mentem tools, but then, within the House, everyone more or less know her signs anyway.) She's the House healer, though she prefers Rego to Creo, so her methods are a bit unorthodox, and she has a limited range in her field.
Background: Dominique is the only one who can control Raven, and then only with a direct command. A superb dancer and hunter, she provides most of the meat for the House when she's home, as well as being their on-call medic. Recently, she's been travelling extensively, studying healing from other magi of the Order; the nervousness and insecurity of being away on her own have subdued her somewhat, but she is still liable to shock people inadvertently by forgetting her manners, which have never been any too good to begin with. Politically, one of the liberals in the House, favoring increased interaction with the Order.
Quote: (Said, of course, by Mentem-link, which is the only way I can get a quote from her...) "Damn it, Jory; you'll remember to get me bindroot this trip out or I swear I'll make you a cut that'll *need* a poultice, and then you can whistle for one!"