The Ordo Dracul - A History
I shall then make known to you something of the history of this man, which has been ascertained for me. So we then can discuss how we shall act, and can take our measure according. — Bram Stoker, Dracula
The Ordo Dracul prides itself on thorough Research, careful application of the scientific method and strict adherence to rules of secrecy. Throughout the covenant’s existence, the members have tried to combat the Fog of Eternity by carefully transcribing their experiences, their breakthroughs and their thoughts, leaving those notes in the hands of childer or capable assistants.
And yet, for all their best efforts, the historians of The Ordo Dracul have many of the same problems that mortal historians face. While the covenant might include elders who remember the Order’s early nights, the effects of Vitae on memory clouds even the sharpest mind. Even the best notes do not fully compensate for differences in culture, Language and context, and this can lead to faulty assumptions and outright falsehoods about the covenant’s past membership and practices. The Ordo Dracul makes its records available to all of its members, but scholars grudgingly admit that much of what the covenant holds as “history” requires a bit of faith.
This chapter provides a look into the covenant’s history, but the reader should be warned: the further from the present, the less verifiable the history.
Vlad Tepes was a monster long before he was a vampire. Born in 1430 or 1431 in Transylvania (then part of Hungary, now part of Romania), Dracula was the son of Vlad II, also called Vlad Dracul. The name “Dracul” is translated either as “devil” or “dragon” —Vlad II was inducted into a society called the Order of the Dragon in Nuremburg during that same year. Vlad Dracul’s Order of the Dragon, founded in 1418 by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, listed “fighting infidels” among its various goals, and bore no resemblance in ideology to the vampire covenant that Dracula would found more than a century later.
Vlad Dracula ruled Wallachia during three different periods: in 1448, from 1456 to 1462 and briefly in 1476. About his first reign we know little, as it lasted for only a few months and came to an end due to the region’s turbulent politics. What most of the world knows of the historical Dracula comes from his second reign.
Other tales of Dracula’s cruelty abound, and members of The Ordo Dracul are quick to point out that the worst excesses of brutality attached to his name were committed long before his death and return as a vampire. However, Dragons do mention that Dracula was a unique ruler in other, more benign ways as well. When a noble was imprisoned or executed for a crime, it was traditional for the ruler to give the noble’s lands and goods to a member of his family. Dracula, however, often gave such lands to someone entirely new, sometimes even someone from the peasant class, and in this manner created a new nobility that owed its existence to him. His personal police force followed similar lines — most of these men were battlefield heroes whom Dracula had respected and granted Status. Vlad Tepes was a brutal man, true, but he knew how to inspire loyalty both with and despite that brutality.
The first was a story that dates back to 1447 or so, discovered by a member of The Ordo Dracul in Turkey in the late 1930s. The tale, scribed by a Turkish chronicler in Egrigoz, in Asia Minor, speaks of a “young man with light skin, but dark eyes, and his brother, who at first blush appeared to be a woman. I watched them together, and the older one said to the younger, ‘I have remained pure and kept my mind and heart free of these infidels’ rantings, while you are one short step from bending knee to their God. But know this: Nightly our brother and father visit me, and tell me of dark and terrible things in my future. I shall see the day when the unconquerable shall fall and the circle is broken, but you shall die upon broken promises and in great agony.’”
This tale seems to refer to The Invictus (“the Unconquerable”) and The Circle of the Crone (“the Circle”), and as the Rites of the Dragon indicate, Dracula would later have dealings with both covenants, though of course they did not suffer any kind of defeat at his hands. More interesting is the reference to Dracula’s father and brother visiting him and telling him of the future. While it’s possible that Dracula was simply lying to his brother in order to frighten or shamehim, the fact remains that Radu the Handsome did indeed die of a “broken promise.” According to the Rites of the Dragon, Dracula impaled his brother upon a stake after promising, falsely, to Embrace him once he died.
The second piece of evidence linking Dracula to the supernatural, indeed to the Kindred, while he was mortal comes from an extremely dubious source. This incident supposedly took place in 1911. A Kindred historian of the Libitinarius bloodline attended her sire, along with two other observers of different clans, while the sire lay in Torpor, recording his fevered dreams through the use of Auspex. One of them later stated that “she [the historian] began to convulse, her nose and eyes leaking profuse amounts of blood so dark it resembled pitch in the dim light. As she did so, her hand continued to work upon the page, but instead of writing fragmented sentences culled from her torpid sire’s mind, she wrote in clear, precise script, albeit in a Language with which I was unfamiliar. At the end of the script was a signature that filled me with dread: DRAKULYA, A.D. 1459.”
What the “Libitinarian script,” as it is known among the Dragons, actually said was never revealed. All four Kindred — the sire, the childe and the two observers — perished in a fire later that year, and the script itself vanished. Rumor has it that the Kogaion of an unknown city has part or all of it in her possession. If this is true, surely some members of the Libitinarius bloodline would give much to obtain it.
Dracula rose up As One of the Kindred that night, and claims in the Rites of the Dragon to have no sire, but was given the curse of undeath directly from God.
From there, Dracula went on to become intimately involved with Kindred society, running afoul of The Invictus, making a puppet ruler of his brother Radu the Handsome and Embracing the first of his brides, whom he named Mara. At this point, Dracula had already decided that change was necessary to escaping the curse that God had laid on him, but wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed. As the years wore on, he came into contact with other Kindred, first of The Lancea Sanctum and then of The Circle of the Crone, and learned the sorcery of each. But with both covenants, he found the teachings lacking. They could enact change upon the world but not upon themselves, and that was what the Impaler truly desired.
Ordo Dracul historians disagree on what happened after Dracula fell into Torpor. Covenant histories from the 17th century, what few still exist, are wildly skewed in favor of one branch of the Sworn. Some state that the Sworn of the Axe (under Mara) ruled that many members of the other two branches of the Sworn were unfit to learn the Coils and should be destroyed, while other histories state that the Sworn of the Dying Light (under Anoushka) ruled much the same thing. Clearly, some sort of schism occurred within The Ordo Dracul, and current popular theory has it that only the Sworn of the Mysteries remained true to the purpose of the covenant for many years.
Whatever the truth, none of the three brides have been seen in many years. Mara was the first to vanish. No reliable records of her exist past the American Revolution. Anoushka is said by some to have traveled to India when England began its colonization and never returned. Lisette, the youngest of the three, was an active member of The Ordo Dracul up until 1889, when she boarded a ship from London. To her attendants (whom she forbade from following her), she would only quote William Shakespeare: “I have a journey shortly to go/My master calls me, I must not say ‘no.’” The ship was bound for “parts East,” but that is all any Kindred historian has ever discovered of it.
Unfortunately, such cities provided ample feeding for the Kindred, a fact not lost on members of the other covenants. A university town was usually a hotbed of conflict, especially between The Lancea Sanctum and The Invictus, and neither covenant took kindly to an upstart faction of vampires taking up valuable Resources in “their” cities. This, coupled with the fact that The Ordo Dracul claimed Vlad Tepes as its founder (stories of his cruelty circulated among mortals long before Bram Stoker’s time, and Dracula’s vampiric career was a subject of much discussion among the Kindred), drove many Princes and Bishops among the undead to refuse admission to their city to any vampire with a known association to Dracula. When the infighting between the brides and their respective factions worsened, it wasn’t uncommon to see Kindred exposing their enemies to hostile members of other covenants and then attempting to fill their positions or usurp their knowledge. This, of course, did not aid the covenant’s progress.
Without clear leadership, without a clear method, The Ordo Dracul fell into chaos in the early nights of its existence. The Impaler had provided a set of terms and a vision, but had slipped into Torpor without taking the time to solidify his dream. All across Europe, isolated chapters of Dragons arose and struggled, but if their enemies in Kindred society and in even their own covenant didn’t destroy them, their slipshod experimentation with the Coils often did. Communication with other chapters was rare. It had to be, as the risks of frequent communication were too great. A missive might fall into enemy hands, a messenger would vanish between chapter houses or domains, or, worse, provide an “ally” the tools she needed to advance. The spirit of academic cooperation, then as now, proved fatal to many Dragons.
This isn’t to say that The Ordo Dracul kept no records, but the records the Dragons kept were often incomplete and laden with references that only a select few Kindred could understand. Originally, this was done to prevent enemies or rivals from using the information should it be captured, but it also had the effect of robbing The Ordo Dracul of much of its early history. Even tonight, caches of documents are sometimes discovered, usually near Wyrm’s Nests, that clearly bear Ordo Dracul symbols and terminology but are so vague that not even the elders of the covenant can reliably interpret them. Some of these documents, if properly decoded, contain information about the events pertinent to the covenant at the time the information was written, some are maps to Wyrm’s Nests or other places of interest, and some are primers on learning the Coils.
The Ordo Dracul in general is aware that some ideological exchanges took place between the Dragons and the Acolytes, but has no idea to what degree. Rumors occasionally surface, however, of a sub-culture of vampire “witches” that has passed on to its members the secrets of both Crúac and The Coils of the Dragon for over 250 years. Such rumors have created tensions between Dragons and Acolytes in many domains, especially in America, but The Ordo Dracul has encountered no credible evidence that the practice of sharing either covenant’s secret mystic rites thrives outside of odd transgressions perpetrated by a few independently operating traitors.
As the saying goes, it never rains but it pours. Over the next hundred years, the covenant would experience its most tumultuous time.
But just as the spiritualists had much to offer the Dragons, so did those who sought to discredit spiritualism.
Once the covenant embraced these methods, though, the Dragons found a wealth of knowledge waiting for them. Scientists of the era helped the Order (without knowing, of course) to determine which areas of mystical study were dead ends and which might bear fruit. The Ordo Dracul used skeptics to determine which mediums were frauds and which ones could actually help the covenant — or, sometimes, which ones could harm the Dragons, and therefore needed to be removed. This new method of approach to the Coils provided the covenant with a much-needed renaissance.
The Freemasons are believed by some to have evolved from a much older organization of monastic soldiers called the Knights Templar, but their incarnation even in 1717 (when The Mother Grand Lodge of Freemasons opened in London) bore little resemblance to the Crusader knights of old. The Masons were not warriors or monks, but men who came together with only a reverence for truth and individuality binding them. The Ordo Dracul was less interested in the Masons’ origins or ideology, however, and more interested in their information network. Masons from all over the world could recognize each other with a handshake or a gesture, and the organization’s membership includedleaders, scientists and artists of the highest caliber.
If The Ordo Dracul ever made a serious attempt to penetrate or gain influence over the Masonic Order, current records do not speak of it. Over time, however, The Ordo Dracul did gain advantage from studying the rites and practices of the brotherhood, and, by the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837, The Ordo Dracul had withdrawn from Kindred society almost entirely. For the next six decades, the covenant remained quiet, its members never advertising themselves as such. The Ordo Dracul had become a secret society rather than an open covenant, and, for a brief time, it was possible for a vampire to claim membership in The Lancea Sanctum, The Invictus or even The Circle of the Crone as well as The Ordo Dracul. Just as their unholy ancestor Vlad Tepes had supposedly done, Dragons could learn the secrets of blood magic as well as The Coils of the Dragon.
In short, for much of the Victorian period, The Ordo Dracul did very well for itself. The leaders of the covenant took the codes and titles that they had inherited from Dracula and his brides, and worked this ideology into the extensive practices that the Ordo still follows tonight. The covenant probably would have been happy to remain a secret society, a quaint fable from the “land beyond the forest,” remembered only in the torpid dreams of elders. But in 1897, Bram Stoker introduced Vlad Dracula to the world.
As with any reaction to a mortal phenomenon, the undead were slow to react to Dracula. The novel didn’t immediately inspire mortals to grab torch, rifle and Bowie Knife and go hunting through the abbeys of England for wayward vampires, after all, so it didn’t seem to do much harm. But as news of the novel filtered back to some older Kindred, alarms sounded. Although The Ordo Dracul had been out of sight for decades, some Kindred did remember a blasphemous society of vampires named for the title character of Stoker’s novel, even if none of them remembered Dracula himself.
The Ordo Dracul did its best to avoid exposure, but there was precious little the Dragons could do. Members of other covenants performed their own “investigations” in many domains, flushing out the hidden members of the Order into the common sight of Kindred society. The Ordo Dracul realized that wasting energy hiding was no longer useful, so the Dragons simply declared their allegiance formally. Thus The Ordo Dracul transformed, in many domains, from a secret society within the hidden world of the Kindred into a covenant of its own.
In many domains, the emergence of the Order shook the solidarity of other covenants and broke the bonds of trust between many Kindred. Loyalties shifted, allegiances collapsed and Suspicion spread like spilled ink in many cities. Some Kindred kept their Status as Dragons secret, or quietly withdrew from the Order. Those Dragons who had held joint membership in The Ordo Dracul and other covenants often became sacrificial lambs during those nights, though some of them retreated from Kindred society and became Kogaions. This was the beginning of the modern incarnation of that position.
Even so, it’s a bit of a coincidence, and The Ordo Dracul has been searching for evidence of supernatural tampering in Stoker’s life ever since his novel first saw print. While true evidence eludes them (and talking to Stoker directly became impossible once the novel saw print, as members of the other vampiric covenants maintained constant surveillance of the author until his death in 1912), one very interesting fact points to Stoker having sources beyond those available to normal mortals. He was a member of the Golden Dawn, an occult organization that dabbles in theosophy and Tarot — much like The Ordo Dracul itself.
Was Bram Stoker an occultist of any skill, perhaps a mage? Did he learn something of The Ordo Dracul, and if so, from whom? He reported that the idea for Dracula came to him after a conversation with Arminius Vambery and a Nightmare. Was Vambery, then, the tool of some occult society, pushing Stoker to discover the truth about Dracula? Did Stoker, in fact, die and undergo cremation in 1912? Or is he among the undead even now?
The Ordo Dracul does not know the truth.
Meanwhile, the Great War in Europe brought with it advances of a different kind. New weapons and new tactics brought a body count of unprecedented proportions. The politics of the time caused nations’ borders to be redrawn again and again, and this meant that the Dragons in Europe, carefully safeguarding Wyrm’s Nests, had their hands full stopping battalions of soldiers from stumbling across these places of power and ruining decades of work. Kindred throughout Europe and the United States had to cope with the loss of mortal herds (though of course those in Europe had much more direct problems), and scholars within The Ordo Dracul made a special study of what the Great War and the influenza pandemic that followed it were likely to do to the world’s Wyrm’s Nests and mystical energy flow.
What they found was that the worst was yet to come.
Hitler outlawed Freemasonry during this reign in Germany, as any secret society was a threat to his rule. The much-publicized fact that Hitler dabbled in the occult didn’t do much to help The Ordo Dracul survive those years. A selection from the journal of a Kogaion from Poland speaks of The Ordo Dracul’s activities in Nazi Germany:
“We had our chance. Had we ingratiated ourselves with the Third Reich at the beginning, when Hitler was first made Chancellor, we might have stood a chance of retaining our Wyrm’s Nests in Germany and Poland. We might have made Hitler our puppet as our founder’s diaries say he once did to his own brother. But we were afraid, or lazy or both. We had our own balance of power with The Invictus, and if they did not corrupt leaders with their blood, why should we?
“We had our chance, but when Hitler’s secret police found our Wyrm’s Nests and scattered our notes to the wind, burned the ancient writings (which they, of course, could not decipher) and exposed our havens to the light, we saw that we had lost it.”
Theories in the decades since the war state that Hitler did indeed have several secret projects dedicated to finding what The Ordo Dracul calls Wyrm’s Nests, as well as summoning demons, recruiting ghosts to spy for the Reich and learning the secrets of magic. Very few of these rumors bear enough evidence to seriously consider. What is known, however, is that many of the Wyrm’s Nests in Germany, Poland and even Romania fell out of The Ordo Dracul’s hands during the Second World War, and many of them have not yet been recovered.
Some major modern areas of concern for The Ordo Dracul, both geographic and ideologic, follow.
Rumors circulate, too, that Anoushka, the second bride of Dracula, walks the Earth again. Some tales place her in Egypt, some in the Sudan and some in Turkey, but almost all state that she is somewhere in the Middle East, and that she is gathering members of her covenant.
And yet, for all their best efforts, the historians of The Ordo Dracul have many of the same problems that mortal historians face. While the covenant might include elders who remember the Order’s early nights, the effects of Vitae on memory clouds even the sharpest mind. Even the best notes do not fully compensate for differences in culture, Language and context, and this can lead to faulty assumptions and outright falsehoods about the covenant’s past membership and practices. The Ordo Dracul makes its records available to all of its members, but scholars grudgingly admit that much of what the covenant holds as “history” requires a bit of faith.
This chapter provides a look into the covenant’s history, but the reader should be warned: the further from the present, the less verifiable the history.
The Early Nights
The Ordo Dracul emerged as a potent and legitimate covenant in the 19th century, but all Dragons agree that the Order’s history stretches back four centuries before that point, back to the time of Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia. Also called Vlad Tepes (“the Impaler”), he is better known to the world as “Dracula.”Vlad Tepes was a monster long before he was a vampire. Born in 1430 or 1431 in Transylvania (then part of Hungary, now part of Romania), Dracula was the son of Vlad II, also called Vlad Dracul. The name “Dracul” is translated either as “devil” or “dragon” —Vlad II was inducted into a society called the Order of the Dragon in Nuremburg during that same year. Vlad Dracul’s Order of the Dragon, founded in 1418 by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, listed “fighting infidels” among its various goals, and bore no resemblance in ideology to the vampire covenant that Dracula would found more than a century later.
Vlad Dracula ruled Wallachia during three different periods: in 1448, from 1456 to 1462 and briefly in 1476. About his first reign we know little, as it lasted for only a few months and came to an end due to the region’s turbulent politics. What most of the world knows of the historical Dracula comes from his second reign.
Policy and Atrocity
One of Dracula’s first official acts as Prince was to murder most of the boyar (noble) class of the region. One famous story states that he gathered 500 of these nobles together and asked how many princes’ reigns they had survived. Some had survived as many as 50, but even the younger men had seen seven princes come and go. Dracula then had most (or all, depending on which version of the story one hears) slain, claiming that they had seen so many reigns because they caused the deaths of the princes with their own politicking. He was probably referring specifically to the deaths of his father Vlad II and brother Mircea, who had been betrayed and assassinated in 1447.Other tales of Dracula’s cruelty abound, and members of The Ordo Dracul are quick to point out that the worst excesses of brutality attached to his name were committed long before his death and return as a vampire. However, Dragons do mention that Dracula was a unique ruler in other, more benign ways as well. When a noble was imprisoned or executed for a crime, it was traditional for the ruler to give the noble’s lands and goods to a member of his family. Dracula, however, often gave such lands to someone entirely new, sometimes even someone from the peasant class, and in this manner created a new nobility that owed its existence to him. His personal police force followed similar lines — most of these men were battlefield heroes whom Dracula had respected and granted Status. Vlad Tepes was a brutal man, true, but he knew how to inspire loyalty both with and despite that brutality.
Dracula, Touched by the Unseen?
Some stories accuse Dracula of being the “son of the Devil” or otherwise linked to the infernal or supernatural during his mortal lifetime. Pursuit of proof of these stories is popular among neonate members of The Ordo Dracul, who know that a quick route to Status in the covenant (in addition learning the Coils) lies in discoveringdetails about Dracula’s life and Requiem that have heretofore eluded mortal and Kindred historians. Such enthusiasts usually run into dead ends, with two notable exceptions.The first was a story that dates back to 1447 or so, discovered by a member of The Ordo Dracul in Turkey in the late 1930s. The tale, scribed by a Turkish chronicler in Egrigoz, in Asia Minor, speaks of a “young man with light skin, but dark eyes, and his brother, who at first blush appeared to be a woman. I watched them together, and the older one said to the younger, ‘I have remained pure and kept my mind and heart free of these infidels’ rantings, while you are one short step from bending knee to their God. But know this: Nightly our brother and father visit me, and tell me of dark and terrible things in my future. I shall see the day when the unconquerable shall fall and the circle is broken, but you shall die upon broken promises and in great agony.’”
This tale seems to refer to The Invictus (“the Unconquerable”) and The Circle of the Crone (“the Circle”), and as the Rites of the Dragon indicate, Dracula would later have dealings with both covenants, though of course they did not suffer any kind of defeat at his hands. More interesting is the reference to Dracula’s father and brother visiting him and telling him of the future. While it’s possible that Dracula was simply lying to his brother in order to frighten or shamehim, the fact remains that Radu the Handsome did indeed die of a “broken promise.” According to the Rites of the Dragon, Dracula impaled his brother upon a stake after promising, falsely, to Embrace him once he died.
The second piece of evidence linking Dracula to the supernatural, indeed to the Kindred, while he was mortal comes from an extremely dubious source. This incident supposedly took place in 1911. A Kindred historian of the Libitinarius bloodline attended her sire, along with two other observers of different clans, while the sire lay in Torpor, recording his fevered dreams through the use of Auspex. One of them later stated that “she [the historian] began to convulse, her nose and eyes leaking profuse amounts of blood so dark it resembled pitch in the dim light. As she did so, her hand continued to work upon the page, but instead of writing fragmented sentences culled from her torpid sire’s mind, she wrote in clear, precise script, albeit in a Language with which I was unfamiliar. At the end of the script was a signature that filled me with dread: DRAKULYA, A.D. 1459.”
What the “Libitinarian script,” as it is known among the Dragons, actually said was never revealed. All four Kindred — the sire, the childe and the two observers — perished in a fire later that year, and the script itself vanished. Rumor has it that the Kogaion of an unknown city has part or all of it in her possession. If this is true, surely some members of the Libitinarius bloodline would give much to obtain it.
Draculas Death and Rebirth
Vlad Dracula died, as far as the mortal world knows, in 1476 near Bucharest. As with many famous leaders, fantastic stories and conspiracy theories about his death abound. The most famous is that he dressed as a Turk to escape his enemies and was subsequently killed by his own men. In any case, his story doesn’t end there.Dracula rose up As One of the Kindred that night, and claims in the Rites of the Dragon to have no sire, but was given the curse of undeath directly from God.
From there, Dracula went on to become intimately involved with Kindred society, running afoul of The Invictus, making a puppet ruler of his brother Radu the Handsome and Embracing the first of his brides, whom he named Mara. At this point, Dracula had already decided that change was necessary to escaping the curse that God had laid on him, but wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed. As the years wore on, he came into contact with other Kindred, first of The Lancea Sanctum and then of The Circle of the Crone, and learned the sorcery of each. But with both covenants, he found the teachings lacking. They could enact change upon the world but not upon themselves, and that was what the Impaler truly desired.
The Brides
Rites of the Dragon state that Dracula Embraced three times, and that his three “brides” went on to help him found The Ordo Dracul (with some persuasion). But this again raises questions of lineage. If Dracula was clanless, what did that make his brides? The Ordo Dracul upholds the following four main theories as to the true nature of Dracula’s brides:- Dracula belongs to a clan. Many Ordo Dracul scholars believe that Dracula did, in fact, belong to one of the five clans and that his perspicacity with various Disciplines was simply indicative of his intelligence and supernatural ability. If this were the case, then his brides could well have been his childer, and likely have created childer of their own.
- Dracula belongs to no clan, and did not Embrace his brides. This theory supposes that Dracula was cursed directly by God, and was incapable of creating childer. That simply means that his three brides were Kindred of other clans, who came into Dracula’s service after their respective Embraces, and came to follow him. It is also possible, if unlikely, that Dracula Dominated these women into believing he was their sire. Proponents of this theory have various beliefs about which clans the brides belong to, which usually depends on the clan of the theoretician in question.
- Dracula belongs to no clan, but could sire childer. The weakest theory, but most popular among Rites of the Dragon purists, is that Dracula Embraced his brides, but, for whatever reason, they could not create childer of their own. Some proponents of this theory spin elaborate tales of the brides attempting to create childer and watching in horror as these Kindred devolved into ash and slime before the brides’ eyes. In any case, this theory leaves many questions unanswered.
- Dracula was/is beyond clan. This theory posits that Dracula was either Embraced into a given clan or cursed directly by God, but Dracula’s mastery over his own blood was such that he could Embrace childer into whichever clan he chose. Dragons who specialize in The Coil of Blood favor this theory, and strive to achieve this effect themselves. Proponents of this theory go on to explain that Dracula and his brides had such control over their own Vitae as to render identifying them through their childer or grandchilder impossible (proponents of other theories point out exactly how convenient this notion is).
The Ordo Dracul Falters
In the 16th century (the exact date is a subject of debate in the Ordo Dracul), Dracula and his three childer set down the first laws, terminology and structure of The Ordo Dracul. It was then that the Sworn were first named, with each of the brides acting as the first of each order. The membership at that point probably numbered fewer than a dozen Kindred all told, despite later claims that vampires across Europe were prepared to join the nascent Ordo. Indeed, although The Ordo Dracul and most of its terms and practices were in place by 1600, the covenant entered something of a “dark age” thereafter, not coming into its own until almost 300 years later. Why was this?Infighting
Dracula entered Torpor not long after codifying The Ordo Dracul, leaving the leadership and maintenance of the covenant to his three “brides,” named in the Rites of the Dragon as Mara, Anoushka and Lisette. This was a dangerous move to make, as the three women had vastly differing views of the Coils and their uses as well as the nature of God and the Requiem in general. Indeed, they had originally refused to work together, but Dracula (again, according to the Rites) tricked the three of them into cooperation based on competition. Each one would strive to prove her way correct.Ordo Dracul historians disagree on what happened after Dracula fell into Torpor. Covenant histories from the 17th century, what few still exist, are wildly skewed in favor of one branch of the Sworn. Some state that the Sworn of the Axe (under Mara) ruled that many members of the other two branches of the Sworn were unfit to learn the Coils and should be destroyed, while other histories state that the Sworn of the Dying Light (under Anoushka) ruled much the same thing. Clearly, some sort of schism occurred within The Ordo Dracul, and current popular theory has it that only the Sworn of the Mysteries remained true to the purpose of the covenant for many years.
Whatever the truth, none of the three brides have been seen in many years. Mara was the first to vanish. No reliable records of her exist past the American Revolution. Anoushka is said by some to have traveled to India when England began its colonization and never returned. Lisette, the youngest of the three, was an active member of The Ordo Dracul up until 1889, when she boarded a ship from London. To her attendants (whom she forbade from following her), she would only quote William Shakespeare: “I have a journey shortly to go/My master calls me, I must not say ‘no.’” The ship was bound for “parts East,” but that is all any Kindred historian has ever discovered of it.
Kindred Persecution
The greatest threat the young Ordo Dracul faced probably was not its fractious leader caste, however. As the teachings of The Ordo Dracul slowly spread, they became farther removed from the three brides, and pockets of the covenant slowly began to arise in various places in Europe. As The Ordo Dracul attracted scholars (as it continues to do tonight), the logical places for these pockets were in cities that boasted large communities of learned peoples, i.e., university towns.Unfortunately, such cities provided ample feeding for the Kindred, a fact not lost on members of the other covenants. A university town was usually a hotbed of conflict, especially between The Lancea Sanctum and The Invictus, and neither covenant took kindly to an upstart faction of vampires taking up valuable Resources in “their” cities. This, coupled with the fact that The Ordo Dracul claimed Vlad Tepes as its founder (stories of his cruelty circulated among mortals long before Bram Stoker’s time, and Dracula’s vampiric career was a subject of much discussion among the Kindred), drove many Princes and Bishops among the undead to refuse admission to their city to any vampire with a known association to Dracula. When the infighting between the brides and their respective factions worsened, it wasn’t uncommon to see Kindred exposing their enemies to hostile members of other covenants and then attempting to fill their positions or usurp their knowledge. This, of course, did not aid the covenant’s progress.
Lack of Focus
Finally, The Ordo Dracul suffered from the myopia of its members. While some of the Kindred who joined The Ordo Dracul were forward-thinking vampires who followed the agenda Dracula (or his brides) prescribed, many only wished to partake of the fantastic knowledge that the members supposedly had. Intelligence, then as now, does not necessarily mean that a given vampire had the right tools to learn the Coils, but the young Ordo Dracul, already in chaos in many ways, had to work with what it could. Ordo Dracul historians theorize that until the scientific method became prevalent, the Dragons had to rely on incomplete notes, word of mouth and sheer luck in experimenting with the Coils. This is dangerous, and probably hampered the growth of The Ordo Dracul in many places.Without clear leadership, without a clear method, The Ordo Dracul fell into chaos in the early nights of its existence. The Impaler had provided a set of terms and a vision, but had slipped into Torpor without taking the time to solidify his dream. All across Europe, isolated chapters of Dragons arose and struggled, but if their enemies in Kindred society and in even their own covenant didn’t destroy them, their slipshod experimentation with the Coils often did. Communication with other chapters was rare. It had to be, as the risks of frequent communication were too great. A missive might fall into enemy hands, a messenger would vanish between chapter houses or domains, or, worse, provide an “ally” the tools she needed to advance. The spirit of academic cooperation, then as now, proved fatal to many Dragons.
This isn’t to say that The Ordo Dracul kept no records, but the records the Dragons kept were often incomplete and laden with references that only a select few Kindred could understand. Originally, this was done to prevent enemies or rivals from using the information should it be captured, but it also had the effect of robbing The Ordo Dracul of much of its early history. Even tonight, caches of documents are sometimes discovered, usually near Wyrm’s Nests, that clearly bear Ordo Dracul symbols and terminology but are so vague that not even the elders of the covenant can reliably interpret them. Some of these documents, if properly decoded, contain information about the events pertinent to the covenant at the time the information was written, some are maps to Wyrm’s Nests or other places of interest, and some are primers on learning the Coils.
Witchcraft and Maleficium
Witch trials and executions were very much in vogue during the first century of The Ordo Dracul’s existence. While any vampire might conceivably be called a servant of Satan by a “witch-pricker,” the Circle of the Crone and The Ordo Dracul made for especially convenient targets (the Ordo Dracul was nominally Christian, but many members didn’t so much practice Christianity as take it for granted). Members of The Invictus, and especially The Lancea Sanctum, steered witch-hunters toward enemies in these covenants when possible. In places where this persecution grew especially intense, the Dragons, often cut off from their own covenant and in danger, fell in with The Circle of the Crone.The Ordo Dracul in general is aware that some ideological exchanges took place between the Dragons and the Acolytes, but has no idea to what degree. Rumors occasionally surface, however, of a sub-culture of vampire “witches” that has passed on to its members the secrets of both Crúac and The Coils of the Dragon for over 250 years. Such rumors have created tensions between Dragons and Acolytes in many domains, especially in America, but The Ordo Dracul has encountered no credible evidence that the practice of sharing either covenant’s secret mystic rites thrives outside of odd transgressions perpetrated by a few independently operating traitors.
Dracula's Dream Realised
In the 19th century, The Ordo Dracul experienced its greatest boom in membership and progress, as well as its greatest threat. The covenant emerged in the new century confused and on the verge of collapse. Two of its three leaders had vanished, and, as the 18th century ended, Lisette was spending much of her time locked away, buried in deep study. Many of the membership had “plateau’d” in their knowledge of the Coils. Clearly some major breakthroughs were necessary if the covenant’s chapters were to survive.As the saying goes, it never rains but it pours. Over the next hundred years, the covenant would experience its most tumultuous time.
Membership Increases
Beginning in about 1820, Ordo Dracul chapters throughout Europe, North America and Asia experienced surges in membership. Dragon historians cannot point to any one specific event that triggered these surges, but records and eyewitness accounts suggest several key factors.Spiritualism
The practice of contacting ghosts through séances grew in popularity during this time, first in England and then in the United States. The other covenants of Kindred were uneasy with the notion of séances, for a variety of reasons. Few Kindred, apart from a few rare and exotic bloodlines, have any facility with the ghosts of the departed, but vampires of all stripes can create ghosts by killing mortals. While few Kindred ever voiced their concern, many of them feared the night when they would attend a séance with mortal acquaintances and be exposed by an angry shade. Members of The Invictus and Lancea Sanctum lent their support to religious and secular groups decrying spiritualism for one reason or another, but The Ordo Dracul found a great deal of support within the ranks of spiritualists. People who believed in ghosts, after all, and were willing to search for answers in the hereafter sometimes had the necessary temperament, the ability to think outside what they had been taught, to benefit The Ordo Dracul, either as members or as “consultants” (many such consultants were killed after their work was complete). Mediums, too, could sometimes serve as guides to Wyrm’s Nests, especially those situated on haunted places.But just as the spiritualists had much to offer the Dragons, so did those who sought to discredit spiritualism.
Scientific Method
What we now think of as the scientific method has, of course, been around for many centuries. Muslim scholars and scientists were testing hypotheses long before the birth of Christ, and Roger Bacon presented the scientific method to the West in the 13th century (though he was imprisoned for heresy for his trouble). But if mortals are fearful of new ideas and methodologies, the Kindred are much more so. It took centuries of observation, stubbornness and stagnation before The Ordo Dracul was ready to truly apply methods of experimentation to its work, and, in the end, it took the Industrial Revolution to convince the Dragons to do it.Once the covenant embraced these methods, though, the Dragons found a wealth of knowledge waiting for them. Scientists of the era helped the Order (without knowing, of course) to determine which areas of mystical study were dead ends and which might bear fruit. The Ordo Dracul used skeptics to determine which mediums were frauds and which ones could actually help the covenant — or, sometimes, which ones could harm the Dragons, and therefore needed to be removed. This new method of approach to the Coils provided the covenant with a much-needed renaissance.
Learning from the Masons
Most Kindred of other covenants know little about The Ordo Dracul’s activities during much of the 19th century. While all of the other Kindred covenants had their own concerns (a major one being the emergence or expansion of the Carthian Movement), The Ordo Dracul’s secrecy stemmed from other factors as well. One concerns a mortal organization with which The Ordo Dracul is occasionally (and usually incorrectly) linked — the Freemasons.The Freemasons are believed by some to have evolved from a much older organization of monastic soldiers called the Knights Templar, but their incarnation even in 1717 (when The Mother Grand Lodge of Freemasons opened in London) bore little resemblance to the Crusader knights of old. The Masons were not warriors or monks, but men who came together with only a reverence for truth and individuality binding them. The Ordo Dracul was less interested in the Masons’ origins or ideology, however, and more interested in their information network. Masons from all over the world could recognize each other with a handshake or a gesture, and the organization’s membership includedleaders, scientists and artists of the highest caliber.
If The Ordo Dracul ever made a serious attempt to penetrate or gain influence over the Masonic Order, current records do not speak of it. Over time, however, The Ordo Dracul did gain advantage from studying the rites and practices of the brotherhood, and, by the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837, The Ordo Dracul had withdrawn from Kindred society almost entirely. For the next six decades, the covenant remained quiet, its members never advertising themselves as such. The Ordo Dracul had become a secret society rather than an open covenant, and, for a brief time, it was possible for a vampire to claim membership in The Lancea Sanctum, The Invictus or even The Circle of the Crone as well as The Ordo Dracul. Just as their unholy ancestor Vlad Tepes had supposedly done, Dragons could learn the secrets of blood magic as well as The Coils of the Dragon.
In short, for much of the Victorian period, The Ordo Dracul did very well for itself. The leaders of the covenant took the codes and titles that they had inherited from Dracula and his brides, and worked this ideology into the extensive practices that the Ordo still follows tonight. The covenant probably would have been happy to remain a secret society, a quaint fable from the “land beyond the forest,” remembered only in the torpid dreams of elders. But in 1897, Bram Stoker introduced Vlad Dracula to the world.
Exposure
Vampire legendry was and remains a staple of life in Romania, the birthplace of Dracula and The Ordo Dracul. All cultures have taken half-remembered encounters with the Kindred and turned them into tales of horror, complete with proscriptions and remedies that seldom have any other effect but to make their undead targets laugh. The Gothic literature movement that produced Frankenstein and The Hunchback of Notre Dame also produced several other works about the undead. John Polidori’s story “The Vampyre” saw print in 1819, and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla was published 53 years later. The Kindred of some domains reacted with mild interest, but the Masquerade had seen and survived the circulation of tales of horror, even of vampires, before. Such tales seldom reflected enough of reality to be worrisome outside of a few unfortunate domains.Stoker's Masterpiece
And then, in 1897, an Irish writer named Abraham Stoker published a novel about Count Dracula and his travels from Transylvania to England. The mortal audiences loved it; a stage version of the novel, four hours in length, was being performed before the novel actually saw print. The Kindred, of course, were somewhat less than amused.As with any reaction to a mortal phenomenon, the undead were slow to react to Dracula. The novel didn’t immediately inspire mortals to grab torch, rifle and Bowie Knife and go hunting through the abbeys of England for wayward vampires, after all, so it didn’t seem to do much harm. But as news of the novel filtered back to some older Kindred, alarms sounded. Although The Ordo Dracul had been out of sight for decades, some Kindred did remember a blasphemous society of vampires named for the title character of Stoker’s novel, even if none of them remembered Dracula himself.
The Ordo Dracul did its best to avoid exposure, but there was precious little the Dragons could do. Members of other covenants performed their own “investigations” in many domains, flushing out the hidden members of the Order into the common sight of Kindred society. The Ordo Dracul realized that wasting energy hiding was no longer useful, so the Dragons simply declared their allegiance formally. Thus The Ordo Dracul transformed, in many domains, from a secret society within the hidden world of the Kindred into a covenant of its own.
In many domains, the emergence of the Order shook the solidarity of other covenants and broke the bonds of trust between many Kindred. Loyalties shifted, allegiances collapsed and Suspicion spread like spilled ink in many cities. Some Kindred kept their Status as Dragons secret, or quietly withdrew from the Order. Those Dragons who had held joint membership in The Ordo Dracul and other covenants often became sacrificial lambs during those nights, though some of them retreated from Kindred society and became Kogaions. This was the beginning of the modern incarnation of that position.
What Did Stoker Know?
Bram Stoker took inspiration from several sources: Romanian legends, historical accounts of Vlad Tepes, the works of Le Fanu and Polidori and discussions with Hungarian professor Arminius Vambery, thought to be the inspiration for Abraham Van Helsing. Some evidence exists to suggest that Stoker also studied the history of Elizabeth Bathory, the “Blood Countess” of Hungary who murdered hundreds of young women in the 18th century. It is not at all beyond the realm of possibility that he made the connection between “Dracula” and “vampire” with no help at all from any supernatural entity.Even so, it’s a bit of a coincidence, and The Ordo Dracul has been searching for evidence of supernatural tampering in Stoker’s life ever since his novel first saw print. While true evidence eludes them (and talking to Stoker directly became impossible once the novel saw print, as members of the other vampiric covenants maintained constant surveillance of the author until his death in 1912), one very interesting fact points to Stoker having sources beyond those available to normal mortals. He was a member of the Golden Dawn, an occult organization that dabbles in theosophy and Tarot — much like The Ordo Dracul itself.
Was Bram Stoker an occultist of any skill, perhaps a mage? Did he learn something of The Ordo Dracul, and if so, from whom? He reported that the idea for Dracula came to him after a conversation with Arminius Vambery and a Nightmare. Was Vambery, then, the tool of some occult society, pushing Stoker to discover the truth about Dracula? Did Stoker, in fact, die and undergo cremation in 1912? Or is he among the undead even now?
The Ordo Dracul does not know the truth.
The 20th Century
Following the end of the Victorian era in 1901, The Ordo Dracul found itself exposed in the Kindred world again, but this time in a position of much greater power. In the wake of Stoker’s novel and the subsequent attention, more Dragons fled to the United States, searching for Wyrm’s Nests and other secrets that lay untouched there. Although these “New World Dragons” followed the same methods and rituals as their European predecessors, as time passed and the United States developed, The Ordo Dracul there took on many more American traits. The dogmatic approach to covenant structure chafed newer members, and The Ordo Dracul found itself in danger of losing members to The Carthian Movement. As the mortal herds drifted to America in search of new freedoms and opportunities, so did the vampires that preyed upon them.Changes and Advances
The early years of the 20th century saw science progress faster than ever. In 1916, blood was first refrigerated for transfusion purposes. Blood that could be preserved would concievably negate the need to hunt mortals altogether (this realization was met with some reservation from many Dragons who enjoyed the act of feeding, however).Meanwhile, the Great War in Europe brought with it advances of a different kind. New weapons and new tactics brought a body count of unprecedented proportions. The politics of the time caused nations’ borders to be redrawn again and again, and this meant that the Dragons in Europe, carefully safeguarding Wyrm’s Nests, had their hands full stopping battalions of soldiers from stumbling across these places of power and ruining decades of work. Kindred throughout Europe and the United States had to cope with the loss of mortal herds (though of course those in Europe had much more direct problems), and scholars within The Ordo Dracul made a special study of what the Great War and the influenza pandemic that followed it were likely to do to the world’s Wyrm’s Nests and mystical energy flow.
What they found was that the worst was yet to come.
World War II
The Ordo Dracul sprang from a man years ahead of his time in terms of psychological warfare. Vlad Tepes understood all too well that brutality could be used as a method of control. During his time, he ordered the deaths of 100,000 people within his principality (the population of which was about half a million). But Dracula would have been amazed by the Nazis.Hitler outlawed Freemasonry during this reign in Germany, as any secret society was a threat to his rule. The much-publicized fact that Hitler dabbled in the occult didn’t do much to help The Ordo Dracul survive those years. A selection from the journal of a Kogaion from Poland speaks of The Ordo Dracul’s activities in Nazi Germany:
“We had our chance. Had we ingratiated ourselves with the Third Reich at the beginning, when Hitler was first made Chancellor, we might have stood a chance of retaining our Wyrm’s Nests in Germany and Poland. We might have made Hitler our puppet as our founder’s diaries say he once did to his own brother. But we were afraid, or lazy or both. We had our own balance of power with The Invictus, and if they did not corrupt leaders with their blood, why should we?
“We had our chance, but when Hitler’s secret police found our Wyrm’s Nests and scattered our notes to the wind, burned the ancient writings (which they, of course, could not decipher) and exposed our havens to the light, we saw that we had lost it.”
Theories in the decades since the war state that Hitler did indeed have several secret projects dedicated to finding what The Ordo Dracul calls Wyrm’s Nests, as well as summoning demons, recruiting ghosts to spy for the Reich and learning the secrets of magic. Very few of these rumors bear enough evidence to seriously consider. What is known, however, is that many of the Wyrm’s Nests in Germany, Poland and even Romania fell out of The Ordo Dracul’s hands during the Second World War, and many of them have not yet been recovered.
The Ordo Dracul Tonight
After the war, The Ordo Dracul in Europe took to secrecy once again; in the United States, it remained as visible as any of the other covenants. As such, members of The Ordo Dracul are thought to claim domain in a greater number of cities in the New World than in the Old, but the overall number of Kindred who claim membership in The Ordo Dracul is probably larger in Europe.Some major modern areas of concern for The Ordo Dracul, both geographic and ideologic, follow.
Academic Competition
The Ordo Dracul includes some of the finest Kindred scholars in the world — but like mortal scholars, the desire for glory and credit for a find sometimes outweighs the find itself. A Dragon might share news of a mystical breakthrough with her fellows, only to discover that one of her contemporaries claims the accolades. The ruling bodies in most Ordo Dracul domains try not to get distracted by this sort of petty politicking, but when individuals and coteries keep secrets from the rest of the covenant to make themselves appear more powerful, the problem grows. Outwardly, Dragon chapters may claim that mages, werewolves and other covenants are the primary rivals for the acquisition and understanding of occult sites and artifacts, but in truth the Kindred of the Order are often each other’s most dangerous rivals.Stagnation
The Dragons might strive for change, but they are still vampires. The mortal world around them is changing faster than ever. Many Dragons see the staggering pace of technology and cultural shift as a good thing — it forces them to keep up, to keep changing themselves and studying their world, or else retreat to a Haven and wait for Torpor. Unfortunately, as members of the covenant strive to keep up with mortal innovations, they have little time remaining to study the Coils, which, of course, are the main source of renown within The Ordo Dracul.The Middle East
Historically, The Ordo Dracul has been weak in this region of the world, due to the lingering bias of its founder. In recent years, however, much of the world’s attention has been focused on the Middle East, and The Ordo Dracul has recognized that the area of the world that birthed the three major monotheistic faiths probably has secrets still left uncovered. Dragons Embraced in the 20th century care more about the covenant’s pursuits than the out-dated bigotry of the Impaler. Although the region is torn by war, corruption and fanaticism, a growing number of Dragons are exploring the ancient mysteries that hide therein.Rumors circulate, too, that Anoushka, the second bride of Dracula, walks the Earth again. Some tales place her in Egypt, some in the Sudan and some in Turkey, but almost all state that she is somewhere in the Middle East, and that she is gathering members of her covenant.
What Really Happened?
Vampire players might read accounts of Dracula’s “spontaneous Embrace” and wonder what really happened. After all, 1476 is hardly outside of recorded history, so this quasimythological tale of a vampire with no sire might seem somewhat out of place. Members of the Ordo Dracul have been stating the same thing since the late 19th century, and asking an important and frustrating question — who was Dracula’s sire?In the Rites of the Dragon, Dracula writes of his final battle as a mortal and talks of fighting against the Turks. He describes a fight with a “thick brute” who seemed to seek him out particularly: “My other hand found his throat as his face eclipsed the moon, his nose and mouth bleeding into me — or was it my own blood, spat upon him, dripping back?”
Some members of the Ordo Dracul who read these words immediately leap to the conclusion that this “thick brute” must be Dracula’s sire — but it isn’t so simple. If that warrior were, in fact, Kindred, why did he Embrace his enemy and never once try to contact him? Dracula speaks of crushing the man’s throat, but such an injury is an inconvenience at most to a vampire. Where was he while Dracula slew the Turks the next night, or when Dracula made a ghoul servant of his brother Radu? Where was this sire when his childe formed the Ordo Dracul? The obvious explanation is that he met Final Death soon after Dracula’s Embrace, but this doesn’t explain why Dracula’s childer are credited with knowing a wide variety of Disciplines and never once respond to blood sympathy with any clan.
Ultimately, the truth of Dracula’s undead parentage is one of the greatest mysteries of the Ordo. In over five centuries, no better answer than the one Dracula himself provides has ever surfaced, although of course Kindred historians have hosts of theories, which range from laughable to entirely plausible.