Lineage:The Rebellion

Tenets of the Rebellion

The Rebellion has no official list of its commitments as an organization and different Orders and individuals come to very different conclusions about what the movement stands for and what its essential beliefs are. However, there are a few things that every Order accepts. One is that all mages should be at war with Heaven and Hell for the good of all humanity. Another is that no human being is deserving of Hell.

Joining an Order of the Rebellion

Nobody is born into the Rebellion. Apprentices are recruited as adults or teenagers if they show promise as a mage and have political opinions that the mentor finds appropriate. They are subjected to a battery of tests and if they pass them, they will receive an intensive political reeducation. Only then will be given training in skills that the Order finds important and last of all they will be taught spells. The procedure is grueling and many fail, usually getting their memories wiped.

Joining an Order means dedicating yourself to a cause by dedicating yourself to a larger community, most broadly the form of the Rebellion and most specifically in the form of the Order joined. It means pledging to be a member of the team, to receive protection and training in return for allegiance. It means accepting that Heaven and Hell alike are enemies of humanity and must be fought. It requires rejecting that anyone deserves Hell.

Religion and the Rebellion

The Rebellion exists for one reason, to oppose the power of Heaven and Hell. Throughout human history, they have pledged resistance and have fought to stand up for humanity against both powers. This resistance includes the act known as “harrowing”, invading a hell with the intention of killing any humans trapped within. In the eyes of the resistance, humanity is locked in a war that it must find some way to win. The Houses betray humanity by remaining neutral, and have actively helped the forces of Heaven and Hell in the past by trying to suppress the Rebellion. However, the Rebellion is not ultimately against them but humanity’s supernatural oppressors.

History in Brief According to the Rebellion

For as long as humanity has existed, humanity has been preyed on by Heaven and Hell. The great mage Houses have never cared. They are concerned only with wealth and power and not with the fate of the human race. They have been nothing but impediments in the great war, too obsessed with their purses to open their eyes to what is going on around them. Only the Rebellion has stood to defend humanity against its endless persecution.

Everyone has their own theory about when and where the Rebellion began, whether it was born from the hunters of Neolithic Africa, or from the slaves of Jericho, or sprang from Eve’s first taste of forbidden fruit. Its is known at least that its Orders had already spread far and wide by the time the first system of writing evolved to record the human story. Everywhere, The Houses strove to put The Rebellion down, so obsessed with protecting their own power that they could tolerate no other force in the world. Yet The Rebellion endured, for humanity could never be forsaken.

Then, in the 16th century, history was changed forever by a rogue mage of House Medici, known as Niklaus Copernicus. Copernicus proved once and for all that the Earth orbits the Sun and that Heaven has no physical place without our universe. The revelation sent shockwaves through The Houses as long-standing orthodoxies were shattered and mages everywhere began to question the world around them. Blooded mages flocked to the Rebellion and movement could no longer be contained. Slowly, the Houses of the western world called off their war, one after another. They still fought all comers for territory and glory, of course, but they no longer dared to set themselves against the Rebellion itself. This was the greatest victory for humanity in history. It is because of Copernicus and his triumph that mages of The Rebellion in the modern United States need not hide themselves from the great and powerful.