Background

Lucia was apprenticed to a magus in the turbulent Lombardy region. She watched as the cities around her fought to gain influence, to protect resources, and most importantly to secure freedom and self-determination. This intrigued her, and she began to compare these struggles to those going on within the Order of Hermes. She found the Order lacking: why, she wondered, is the Order content to live in contrived awkward peace? Why should the resources of a weak covenant be protected from those who have the might to claim them? It is not so in the mundane world, so why should it be within the Order?

She first tried to bring her Calliclean philosophy to a cabal of Tytalus magi, but her extreme aims met with disapproval, not because the idea was unattractive to certain like-minded individuals but because the risks and dangers were considered too great. Ironically, given the events to come, Lucia's parens, Maximus Severis, the last member of Castello del Selvaggio (Castle of the Selvaggio Family), was present. He and Lucia recognized each other, and he was

particularly outspoken against the plan. So Lucia resolved to find other allies and to repay her parens for his failure to support her.

Avedutus' rejection of his House's traditional role attracted her, and he soon saw the potential in her plan: if they succeeded they would rewrite the Order's creed, and if they failed they would achieve a glorious end. The Verditius then found Al-'Aqrab, a magus largely ostracized due to his spiteful nature and the repeated conflicts he brought upon himself. Without a covenant and forced to eke out his magical existence in the deserts of North Africa, Al-'Aqrab saw the chance to change his circumstances. Patronus was the last to join. Attracted to trouble like a crow to carrion, Patronus had been watching Lucia for some time and he sensed that something big was about to happen. On the verge of becoming a faerie and leaving his mortal life behind him, the prospect of bringing a shift to the Order seemed to him the perfect symbol of change that he needed.

The four came together at Casalmaggiore in the Roman Tribunal, in a hunting lodge owned by Federico Estensi. There they determined to use violence and the threat of violence to force other magi to submit to their will.