Euthanatoi, Black Omega, or Ultramarines?
The Euthanatoi are a group of Mages who hold the Seat of Entropy on the Council of Nine Mystical Traditions.
Early History[]
From the earliest times, there have been magick-users who were obsessed with the ideas of Fate and Destiny. Seeking information about the Destinies of themselves and those around them, they sought answers in the patterns of the stars, the entrails of animal sacrifices, the movements of flocks of birds, and the dancing of sparks in the smoke of sacred fires. They cast lots, rolled dice, and read tea leaves. Many others dismissed them as fortune tellers, quacks, and charlatans, but a few of them became so adept that they became the most feared and respected of mages in the ancient world, the first Oracles.
When the ancestors of the Order of Reason began to impose their ideals on the unawakened in an attempt to control consensual reality, some of these mystically-minded Mages who specialized in what had become recognized as the Sphere of Entropy decided that the best way to fight back was to find their own method of reshaping reality as they wished. But while the vast sea of subconscious beliefs of the unawakened majority was the ultimate basis for the shape of reality, it was also self-evidently obvious that a few exceptional individuals with particularly powerful or persuasive beliefs could direct the flow of the beliefs of others and thus actively reshape reality according to their whims. But while the ancestors of the Technocracy decided to use this idea to become those exceptional individuals and control reality by controlling the beliefs of others, the ancestors of the Euthanatoi decided that the key to control of reality was to control those exceptional individuals. But as such remarkable men and women are incredibly difficult to control, the Euthanatoi decided to settle for merely wielding the ultimate Veto Authority over their actions. Thus the Euthanatoi seek to control reality by removing from it those indivudials who, in the eyes of the Euthanatoi, are reshaping reality in ways they do not like.
Modern History[]
Nearly chased out of Europe and the West as practitioners of witchcraft and dark magic by agents of the Order of Reason during the Inquisition, the Euthanatoi took refuge in India and among the Gypsies, themselves refuguees from persecution in India who had fled to Europe. Influenced by the symbolism and concepts of Hinduism, they adapted their rituals and practices somewhat, but remained magical assassins removing dangerous awakened individuals from reality through murder. A founding member of the Council of Nine Mystical Traditions, the Euthanatoi have long been its spies, assassins, and covert operatives. During the Victorian age, a Euthanatoi sub-sect known as the Order of the Black Willow caused so much disruption to the operations of the Order of Reason in the British Isles that it directly led to the reorganization of the Order of Reason into the Conventions of the Technocratic Union at the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851.
Gehenna and Beyond[]
When Gehenna changed the rules of magick, the Euthanatoi rose up to take out much of the leadership of the Technocracy, but with mixed results. The Technocracy's rigid and hierarchical organization provided for smooth transition of power down to the next man on the totem pole if one fell to a Euthanatoi blade. And with so many magical factions violently vying for control over reality, the Euthanatoi were kept busy fighting on a dozen fronts at once, against the Technocracy, the Nephandi, the Marauders, and against Vampires and Werecreatures corrupted by the Wyrm. The Euthanatoi were successful in eliminating thousands of extremely dangerous individuals, but in the end there were simply too many worthy targets, and too many of them were too powerful or too well guarded. The Euthanatoi's numbers were greatly depleted, and when they and the rest of the Traditions were forced underground by a triumphant Technocracy and the Tech Infantry they had created, the Euthanatoi became one of the key components of the nascent Resistance movement. Using their skills as assassins to take out Federation officials and Tech Infantry officers, the Euthanatoi were nonetheless unable to prevent the Resistance from being crushed by Arthur Clarke following the destruction of Earth by Erich Von Shrakenberg. Driven into hiding once more, the few remaining Euthanatoi members have either joined with the Terran Republic as its internal security apparatus, or abandoned their larger goals to seek mere survival as criminals in the underground of whatever planet they can find refuge on.