Order of Hermes
📜 Order of Hermes of Madison
"We are not merely the keepers of knowledge—we are its architects, its defenders, and, when needed, its erasers."
The **Order of Hermes** in Madison represents the oldest, most structured, and paradoxically most fractured magical Tradition in the city. With three major power centers, deep historical roots, and responsibility for **New Avalon** and the **Capitol Node**, their failures—and successes—are engraved into the city’s very foundation.
🧱 Origins and Role in Madison
The Order has operated in Madison since at least the 17th century, when **Jay Dee** first arrived at Teejop and began shaping the leylines into **sigil-encoded infrastructure**. Hermetics founded the **Capitol Node Seal**, established the Madison cabal network, and spearheaded the creation of **New Avalon**, the Horizon Realm tethered to the city.
They were once revered as spiritual architects. Now, they are accused of being its **silent saboteurs**.
🏰 Key Members
Jay Dee – The Reality Architect
- Founder of New Avalon - Warden of the Capitol Node - Current emotional state: **Unstable, haunted by paradox** - Believes the glyph to seal the Nameless has been lost—or perhaps rewritten by him unknowingly
Leon Keone Bone – The Burdened Librarian
- Keeper of forbidden texts and possible **holder of Excalibur** - Believes love is his greatest failure and redemption - Suspects the original glyph has infected the library with recursion
Sophia “Sable” Moreau – The Arcane Archivist
- Appears to be a ghost or echo-persona - Holds prophecies and records no one else can read - Could be the last living link to a Hermetic House erased from history
Gwydion Kelly (Hermetic Ally)
- Once Jay Dee’s rival, now increasingly paranoid - Believes the only way to fix the glyphs is to burn them and start over - Keeper of timelines no one else remembers
🧠 Practices and Beliefs
The Madison Hermetics focus on:
- **Sigil-based spell structure**
- **Quintessence manipulation via Prime geometry**
- **Temporal geometry (via Sable and Gwydion)**
- **Hermetic echoes—scripts from forgotten cycles**
Many Hermetics in Madison also follow **House Ex Miscellanea**, a catch-all House of rogue scholars, rewritten mages, and failed Sealsmiths.
📉 Current State (1985)
| Aspect | Status |
|---|---|
| Leadership | Fragmented and fracturing. While Jay Dee remains nominal leader, he operates more as a ritual architect than a political unifier. His increasing isolation and cryptic behavior have fractured the Council of Hermes into silent camps, those loyal to him, those who follow Leon, and those who fear Sable's echoes more than trust them. No true Primus has been confirmed since 1982. |
| Sanctum | The Hermetic strongholds include:
• The Capitol Vault beneath Madison’s Capitol dome—sacred seal site and paradox furnace. • The New Avalon Citadel, a crumbling glyph-engine embedded in Horizon resonance. • The Alabaster Index, an archive outside time, managed by Sophia “Sable” Moreau, where paradox makes rooms shift and books whisper truths. |
| Trust Level | Severely diminished. The Hermetics are blamed—quietly or openly—for:
• The fraying of the Third Anchor. • The Mirror of Shadows’ corruption. • Allowing Nephandi code to echo into New Avalon. Members of the Verbena, Dreamspeakers, and Akashics now meet in secret, planning fallback rituals in case the Hermetics lose full control. |
| Paradox Influence | Critically high. Around Hermetic ritual chambers and sigil-nodes, strange phenomena manifest:
• Books change language when unread. • Reflections move independently. • Mages speak phrases they never learned. Paradox storms centered around Jay Dee’s old labs have even begun warping avatars, causing flashbacks to alternate lives—or to fates that should not exist. |
⚠️ Secrets and Concerns
- Jay Dee may be the **original author of the glyph that broke the Seal**
- The **Mirror of Shadows** in New Avalon was created by Hermetic design—now it warps memory
- **Sophia may not be alive**, but the Seal reacts to her presence
- **Excalibur**, held by Leon, may be a recursion anchor that draws the Nameless toward him
📜 Legacy vs. Threat
The Order of Hermes in Madison **built the city’s spiritual skeleton**. But some believe they also **introduced the disease**. Now, they must decide whether to **rewrite the truth**, **erase their own works**, or let the city fall—because of what they did, or failed to do.
📚 See Also
"All names have power. And one of ours may have doomed us all."