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Ordo Dracul

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The Ordo Dracul

For certain minutes at the least

That crafty demon and that loud beast

That plague me day and night

Ran out of my sight;

Though I had long perned in the gyre,

Between my hatred and desire.

I saw my freedom won

And all laugh in the sun.

The Order teaches that nothing is permanent, and that even vampirism can be overcome. To achieve this weighty task, the Order must share information with each other. The greater the pool of knowledge, the better suited the Order is to the task. So they welcome all clans, all experiences, all possibilities. They believe strongly in the philosophy that all can teach and learn.

It is hard to believe tonight, given the Ordo Dracul's constant influence in the city, but the covenant was only a minor presence in Chicago from the early nights after the Fire until the mid-1940s. When the Ordo was just getting established in Farragut's city, individual Dragons were constantly wooed by the city's two conflicting powers-that-be, the Invictus and Carthian Movement. Seeking sites of mystical import and resources to further their studies, the Ordo's members were participating on both sides of this political tug-of-war, which made it tremendously difficult for the Academy to maintain any sort of internal stability. Meetings and convocations that should have been dedicated to scholarly pursuits became dominated by social intrigue between the "Carthian Dragons" and the "Invictus Dragons."

In those early nights, when the idea of a regency system was still forming in the mind of Prince Farragut, even he was at a loss to determine which individual would step forward to represent the entire Ordo politically. In Chicago, among mortals as well as Kindred, there has always been a tendency to identify organizations with strong leaders, and the complex, intertwining and subtle structure of leadership among the Ordo Dracul made them even more enigmatic to Chicagoans looking for a figurehead to acclaim or slander. At that time, there also was no single geographical region dominated by the Ordo Dracul. This state of affairs ended quite concretely in 1942. When scientists at the University of Chicago managed to produce a controlled nuclear fission reaction, something changed. The University campus immediately attracted the attention of Dragons not only in the city itself but across the nation and the globe. Chicago's Ordo Dracul surged in population almost overnight, and all flocked to Hyde Park, which had for decades been established as the home ground of Anton East, Professor Emeritus of astronomy at the University. East, long dismayed by political divisions within the Ordo, established a doctrine of neutrality that persists to this night.

Now, the Ordo Dracul walks a fine line in city politics. They attempt to project the image of being separate from (some would say above) temporal power, and officially take no position on issues that don't directly affect them. Individual Dragons barter and bargain with other covenants to secure significant sites in the city, and their much-lauded neutrality largely recuses them from suspicions of intrigue. Of course, this same perception of neutrality makes Dragons the ideal spies for one covenant into another's territory, and every so often rumors circulate about an Ordo Dracul spy network ferreting information from one Regency to the next via some mysterious Hyde Park safehouse.