Page 132 - Hunter - The Vigil

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A ASCENDING ONES (CONSPIRACY)
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Every night the sun dies; every morning it rises again, and will do so until the end
of the world. In Egypt, the great beetle Khepri rolled the new sun back across the sky;
Amon-Re shone with brightness and power and died at the end of the day, to be reborn
again. In the same way, the Phoenix, so the legends said, immolated itself at the end of
its life only to be reborn from its own ashes, never to die.
It was in Egypt that two sects of soldiers were born, two cults that were charged

from a time before memory to fight the forces of the dark. By night, the Cult of Set
protected the people; by day the Cult of the Phoenix fought the forces of evil.

In time, the Cult of Set became compromised by the creatures it was fight-
ing. It vanished, leaving only the Cult of the Phoenix to patrol both day and
night. Although it was strong of spirit, its task became too much for its mem-

bers. One of the founders of the cult of the Phoenix fought to find a way to

keep his men fighting when lesser men reached the point of collapse. He
began to brew potions.
One night, he drank a draught of his first elixir and led his men into

battle. In the morning, he led his men into battle again. That evening, he

could still fight, and so he continued, for a week, and then a month, and
then a year, and after three years, three months, three weeks and three
days, the potion wore off and he died.
Another founder created a similar potion, but this one he tem-
pered with poison, that he would not be tempted to over drink as his
predecessor had done. And so, he drank a little and instantly died.
The third man took to prayer and self-discipline: he brewed that
poison-laced potion again, but made himself ready for it, and as he
drank, his faith changed the poison into sweet water, allowing the

power of the elixir to flow through him. And this is how the Cult
of the Phoenix Ascending from the Flames, the Ascending Ones,
gained their elixirs: poisonous to all but those who know the self-
discipline necessary to transform the poison into a powerful trans-
formative concoction.
Their cult continued, strictly regimented. Its form changed
little from century to century. They fought the monsters that
made their home in the Middle East. They ranged across the Ro-
man Empire, and they continued through the rise of both Chris-
tianity and Islam. Both Christ and Muhammed had a profound
effect on the Ascending Ones. The strict hierarchy of the Ascending

Ones fit well with the hierarchical, paternalistic structure of these ear-
ly religions, and although the mystic tradition survived in Europe, many
of the Ascending Ones in the Middle East became Muslim or Christian,
seeing the phoenix as either a parable of Allah’s mercy, or as a represen-
tation of the Son of God rising from death.
As time went on, the Ascending Ones became adept at brewing
and distilling not only their own poisoned brews, but others, too. Realiz-
ing that if they were to be able to support themselves as hunters, they had
to find a means of reliable cash, they became among the earliest traders

and cultivators of opium in the Middle East.
As the centuries wore on, the Ascending Ones waged a continu-
ing war against the monsters, with many cells supporting themselves
by manufacturing and trading drugs. As governments gradually made
narcotics illegal, so the Ascending Ones found themselves taking part
in organized crime, even while trying to defend the human race from
the monsters. It manages to be a hard line to walk: to do battle against
the darkness, it seems sometimes necessary to cloak oneself in shadow.
The Enemy
The Ascending Ones protect the human race twice over.
They protect the people from the monsters, fighting the crea-

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