Houses of Hermes: True Lineages Chapter Four: House Tremere

History

Before the Order

House Tremere’s ancestors were a tradition of diviners who summoned the ghosts of the recently dead and forced secrets from them. Initially servants of Aita, later Pluto, they became priests of Mercury Psychopompos — the Conductor of Souls — when the Cult of Mercury swallowed their tradition during the reign of Augustus. They did not have temples, and met in secret, in the places of the dead.

When the catacombs under Rome became the meeting sites of the furtive Christian churches, Tremere’s ancestors sensed the welling of the Dominion. They could not agree on a response, and their sect shattered into acrimonious shards. After centuries of surreptitious warfare, the cult consolidated into several rival groups. Trianoma met Guorna the Fetid, the ruler of the remnant group in Naples, in 757.

Guorna’s tradition had secularized since its desertion by Pluto, then by Hermes. They retained their power over ghosts and dreams, but became increasingly competent in the animation of the dead. Guorna was perhaps the finest necromancer of her age, but the primitive rituals that extended her lifespan had made her pus-filled and cadaverous. She designed a ritual that would move her spirit to a younger body, but her apprentices, Tytalus and Tremere, fled before she had the chance to use it.

While Guorna studied with Bonisagus, Tytalus and Tremere brutally slaughtered her followers, looting their subterranean stronghold. Where and how Guorna died is unrecorded, but few doubt her vengeful apprentices were responsible. They studied with Bonisagus, and were more forthcoming than their ancestor.

When the Order formed, many assumed that Tremere would join House Tytalus. Tremere, however, bought powerful allies to the Tribunal — another necromantic remnant group from Dacia. Tytalus was unwilling to battle Tremere and his followers.

The Final Founder

Tremere was the youngest Founder and, although he would never admit it to anyone but himself, the weakest. During the Order’s formation, Tremere sought ways to avoid becoming Tytalus’s servant. He found allies among the other Founders, and then outside the Order.

There are several, contradictory, epiphany stories explaining Tremere’s decision to create a personal army. The historical moment has been lost but its effect, that Tremere with his supporters could dissuade Tytalus or Flambeau from aggression, is the kernel from which the House grew. Soon after the foundation of the Order, Tremere retired to the Transylvanian Alps to build a defensible base, now the covenant called Coeris. He then began extending his influence through force: attacking magicians in the Byzantine Empire and sacking their sites of power.

Tremere’s empire building was unsuccessful. A group of magi in the Empire pledged to support each other, accepted Jerbiton’s nominal suzerainty, and retook much of the territory Tremere had gained. Forced into a settlement with the Theban League, Tremere sought other ways of achieving power.

Tremere attempted to subvert the Order’s legal tradition. He aided Bonisagus in the creation of certamen, and then propagated it with the assistance of Trianoma and Jerbiton. He became a master duelist, able, in this limited sphere, to face Flambeau or Tytalus without the need of supporters. In 817 Tremere was able to have the Grand Tribunal accept certamen as “decisive in all disputes”, which gave Tremere advantages in pivotal matters.

In a strategy stretching over decades, Tremere took control of vast sections of the Order. He manufactured disputes, and then settled them with certamen. Some magi respected him as the final Founder. Others were convinced that they needed a strong leader, by Tremere’s fear mongering. His House bound others through economic convenience and political aid. In the final stages of his plan, Tremere used naked force to subdue key enemies, and cowed others with threats. Tremere intended to have himself declared overlord of the Order at a special Grand Tribunal in 850.

A group of magi ruined his plans in 848. They broke the minds of Tremere’s lieutenants, leaving him vulnerable to the many mages he had browbeaten into submission. The Primus of Guernicus arranged a truce between Tremere and his enemies. In exchange for his promise to cease his attempt to dominate the Order, Tremere’s lieutenants were restored. To ensure Tremere kept his promise, the Primus of Guernicus removed his memory of who was responsible or where he had met them. Tremere agreed to have his memories monitored, to ensure he would find no way to recollect his foes.

The House View of Tremere in 1220

Members of House Tremere do not venerate the Founder. They respect Tremere, but they are distant enough from him that they can analyze the flaws in his strategies. Many see him as a tragic figure, who reached for more than he could grasp. Although he was rightly doomed for his hubris, they have a sly affection for a person so willing to dare so much. This view is popular outside his House, also.

Many magi assume that were House Tremere ever to discover who ruined their plan for dominating the Order, it would rouse them to war. This isn’t accurate, although individual Tremere magi would trouble the descendants of the Sunderers. The spell involved was probably a Perdo Mentem ritual that worked inside Coeris. Many Tremere magi assume that it was a particularly devious blow by Albanus, Tremere’s successor. If it was not he, then the House wishes to be sure that it could prevent the same happening again.

The House After Tremere

In the eyes of many other magi, House Tremere regained its honor on the battlefield.

After a century, the leaders that had faced the Founder had passed away, and although their descendants distrusted Tremere magi, they did not hate them with the same virulence. Tremere magi aided the Quaesitores against demonically corrupted Tytalus magi; then, barely forty years later, were massacred in the Schism War. Compared to demon worship and human sacrifice, megalomania was a bland vice, easily forgiven by allies.

It is popular, in parts of the Order, to suggest that perhaps House Diedne did not deserve extermination. Perhaps, some say, the druids were not the evil figures depicted in stories of the time, which the Tremere magi may have spread anyway. The Schism War, they point out, allowed House Tremere to hold its head high again, so perhaps it was responsible for the general breakdown of Hermetic culture that preceded its intervention. Tremere magi do not believe this to be true.

It may be that they believe their own lies, but members of the House fervently believe that the magi of Diedne deserved death. They accept that hatred of non-Latin magi ran deep in their House, but they do not question that Diedne magi practiced abhorrent rituals and were abetting the widespread turmoil that threatened the Order. They do not claim that they behaved impeccably during the campaign, but over half of House Tremere’s magi died during the Schism War. Those failing to show proper respect for the members of the House that died to protect the Order are enemies of the House.

At the end of the Schism, mundane warfare threatened the House’s interests. In 1014 a Byzantine army invaded Bulgaria, defeating the Bulgarian army. The Byzantine leader blinded his 14,000 captives, save one whom he blinded only in a single eye so that he could lead his fellows back to the capital. Samuel, the King of the Bulgars, died of shock at the sight of the fumbling mass of men, and the kingdom was subdued entirely within four years. Members of House Tremere could never prove that covenants from the Theban Tribunal precipitated this invasion, but the coincidence of timing was exquisitely unfortunate for the House. Tremere magi offered sight back to many of these men, in exchange for lifelong service to the House.

For around 60 years after the Schism, House Tremere became introspective again. Its leaders continued to interact politically with other magi, but its resources were spent in a reconstruction effort that was, with hindsight, excessive. The leaders of House Tremere knew that the Schism had devastated and impoverished the House, and could not be certain a further challenge did not await them. Many of the House’s military magic items date from this time, built to replace items exhausted or destroyed in the Schism War. By 1071, House Tremere’s leaders felt that their preparations against the absent leaders of House Diedne and easily corrupted Byzantines had become embarrassingly fulsome. Large numbers of Tremere magi begin to join multi-House covenants in the 1070s, in part to make the House appear less threatening to other magi.

Why Did They Care?

When rumors began to circulate that the members of House Diedne were practicing human sacrifice, most magi were unconvinced or disgusted, but only House Tremere felt driven to annihilate the druids. The Tremere say that this was a simple matter of principle, and many magi accept that explanation, but there was a deeper reason for their loathing of the Diedne wicker men. House Tremere’s ancestors worshipped Aita, then Pluto, then Mercury. They served each god of the dead with devotion for centuries. Their tradition became secular because each god, in turn, abandoned them.

Members of the House will never again love anything so much that they will die for it, except each other. On a level beneath thinking, they remember that they have been three times betrayed. Many Tremere do not trust anything that desires human worship. This colors their view of the religions of others, although there are many Tremere magi who follow the Christian religion, whose God, in an unusual inversion, let humans kill Him.

Tremere magi know that ghosts are less than people. They are just reflections, usually tied to the world by duty or grief or love. Tremere magi understand, with absolute clarity, what happens to a person when they are murdered to please a god.

They don’t think that gods are worth it.

Mortal Affairs

The Tremere have never formally decided to foment trouble among the nobility of their Tribunal but, on a purely local basis, they have tended to prevent power aggregating. This lack of powerful nobles has helped fuel an endless cycle of invasion and civil war. During the Twelfth Century, the Byzantine Empire invaded Hungary and Bulgaria, the two principal kingdoms in the Tribunal, over twenty times. Before 1185, patchy civil war was incessant.

In 1185 a pair of brothers, minor lords from near Tirnova, rebelled against the Empire and forced a truce that removed the area north of the Bulgarian mountains from Imperial control. The elder brother, called Asen, began raiding Thrace and Macedonia, forcing Emperor Isaac Angelus to send his forces north. The Bulgarians crushed the Byzantine army, sending shocks through the Empire’s government.

The Bulgarian rebellion persisted under a series of kings leading to Ivan Asen II, the current Tsar of Bulgaria. Ivan II claims the title “Emperor of the Bulgars and Greeks” and is a skilled enemy of the Latins who currently occupy Constantinople. He wishes to take the capital from them, to serve as the center of his Bulgar-Greek Empire. The main factor protecting Constantinople from his armies, in the decade following 1220, is that it is the weakest of the four players in the game of empire on the Balkan Peninsula. Ivan is more worried about either Epirus or Nicea than the Latins.

Amber Eyes

The Tremere returned sight to over a thousand blinded Bulgars with a single ritual, since this was the least expensive method. The new eyes the Bulgars grew were colored amber, the sigil of the maga who cast the ritual. Many of the covenfolk in Transylvania have inherited this eye color, which deepens with Warping. Children with these eyes are often named for the blind bard Thamyris, and are more likely to be homosexual than other characters.

Peace Initiatives

The previous Primus of Tremere gently supported the Asen rebellion, a policy the current Prima adheres to. This support was not formal alliance. The Primus simply directed that Tremere magi should assist local disputes to non-violent resolution. The Primus believed that stable monarchies would prevent brigandage, invasion, and the diabolism that accompanies widespread suffering. In Hungary, conflicts between the king, Andrew II, and his nobles are also gradually being resolved. The servants of Tremere magi have cordial dealings with many Hungarian nobles, so a constitutional system may develop. The daughter of Andrew II married John II in 1218, partially due to Tremere influence.

Coeris

Coeris, the Domus Magnus of Tremere, is a pleasant place. Tremere originally designated it as a site where damaged warriors could take the waters of forgetfulness and be healed of their psychological injuries.

According to the House’s history, Coeris surmounts the Gate of Eurydice, the abyss through which Orpheus departed into the underworld. Some Tremere magi claim that they could visit Hades if they wished, but the use of the Gate of Eurydice causes Warping, so they choose not to. The House as a whole has little practical interest in the Gate of Eurydice, because most Tremere magi many believe it to be a regio that shows visions from the quester’s own thoughts and dreams, leading to self-absorption and detachment from reality.

The Gate of Eurydice is the focus of the House’s funereal practices. Tremere’s coffin was carried through the Gate of Eurydice, and the ashes of his descendants are poured into it. The walls of the cavern that surround it have ten thousand niches. There is a space for the sigil of every Tremere magus, ordered by Gauntlet date. The Primus, for ceremonial reasons, sometimes removes the Founder’s.

Coeris is the ultimate strong point for the House. It is not considered a place of final retreat: the House assumes that by the time Coeris becomes the final bastion of the Order, all hope is likely lost. Coeris is the storehouse where the magi of Tremere keep much of their vast treasury to be expended in future conflicts. It is also their mustering point of preference in times of Europe-wide conflict. That the Primus has immediate call on the House’s reserve is not lost on fractious senior Tremere.

Large Tremere House covenants are found in the Tribunals of Transylvania, Iberia, Rome, Stonehenge, and Thebes. Small House covenants are found in five of the other Tribunals. The House covenants serve as storage depots, research facilities and fortified rallying points. Experienced magi, each usually accompanied by a young assistant, live in many of the multiple-house covenants.

Single Tremere magi are sometimes found in covenants at the borders the House’s sphere of influence. These magi receive special attention from their superiors, since their position is exposed. They are also likely to be from Transylvania, and unaccustomed to the self-indulgent, short-sighted and tiresome ways of young magi from other traditions. Members of the House hope that these young wizards will develop into experienced magi with assistants of their own, over time.