Page 128 - Hunter - The Vigil

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They say there’s a room somewhere under the ground, where for well over a thousand years, generations of one family
have kept hidden the head of John the Baptist. It still sometimes prophesies disaster, they say. Who guards it?
They tell the story of Berenger le Saunière, a poor village priest who, all of a sudden, became fabulously rich. He left
cryptic clues in the fabric of his church. The confessor would not absolve him on his deathbed. What did he fi nd?
The story of Jacques de Molay, burnt for heresy, still does the rounds, ending with a rumor of a treasure
and a curse, lost since that day. Who knows where it can be?
Does the tomb treasure of Akhenaten, heretic pharaoh of Egypt, still exist? Or the looted treasure
of Troy? Or the golden chains that once bound Zenobia? Or the tomb of Gilgamesh?
The Guardians of the Labyrinth know. They are the Aegis Kai Doru, the Shield and Spear.
They believe it has been their business since before history began not only to guard the magical
treasures of countless lost worlds, but to use them against creatures of the
supernatural realm, against whom they still nurse an ancient grudge.
They’re antediluvian: they tell their initiates that they predate

the great flood event common to the myth of most Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern cultures. Some even call it Atlantis, or Lemuria,
or Pan, or Mu. Once, they say, every one of their number
could use magic freely. Even then, they were the
custodians of a vast labyrinth in which the
greatest magical treasures were kept.
A quarrel turned into a war, and
one faction ejected the owners of that
ancient maze from the island. They made plans to return, but
the cataclysm came too soon, because — so the Aegis Kai Doru
believe — the shape-changing people broke an ancient taboo
and brought down the wrath of heaven and the spirits. The
isle sank. The exiles were joined by other exiles. But they
did not forgive. They blamed the disaster on those who
had cast them out, and began to wage war using the few
relics they had taken with them. The others had destroyed
paradise, they said. That could not be forgiven.
More than a thousand years later, they had forgot-
ten their own magic and had become the Aegis Kai
Doru, the Shield and Spear, after the treasure of Troy
(which some of their number absconded with when
the city fell). The relics were theirs to keep and, when
necessary, use to protect those people who suffered at
the hands of callous witches and hungry fi ends.
They maintained this purpose through the ages
of Greece and Rome, the Byzantine
Empire and the Renaissance, the En-
lightenment and the Modern Age, all
the time seeking out those objects that
it was their right to protect and use.
Even now, an Inner Circle still meets
in Athens, and keeps a list both of the relics
found, lost and destroyed, and the witches
and monsters they have killed. Few among
the Aegis have ever met the purported nine
who sit upon the council, but those who
have speak of their fervor, of the strange look they
have in their eyes, of the vast chamber of which ev-
ery one of a hundred alcoves contains a thing of im-
measurable value and power.
Hardly any of the Guardians get as
far as the Second Initiation into the
Secrets of the Aegis Kai Doru;
few are even aware that the Aegis

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