Editing LeviathanTempest:ChapterFive (section)

==== History ====
 
The Wicked Tribe has existed since the primordial era, preying on humanity, crushing hopes and dreams as they mould people into slavish worshippers. But one group has said no more! Adventurers! Men of Science! Guardians of the weak and defenders of justice! The Marduk Society!
 
Well it’s not that simple, it never is. In actuality the Marduk Society harks back to the disciples of Marduk, he who drew upon humanities desperation, defeated Tiamat and freed mankind from the shackles of the Progenitors. Marduk taught his magic to disciples, grew old and then died. His disciples turned their backs on Marduk’s principles. To preserve their power they betrayed humanity; turned nation against nation, brother against brother, growing powerful on humanity’s despair. To preserve their youth they hunted down those of the Wicked Tribe, gorging on divine flesh, a cancer in the heart of humanity and the greatest enemy of the Tribe. 

Actually that's not it either. The real truth is that the Marduk Society are not more good or evil than other people. A loose movement of sorcerers, priests, kings and warlords who banded together in ancient Mesopotamia for mutual protection against the Tribe. The armies of man took arms against the cultists of the tribes. Priests and Magi bargained for power to oppose the Tribe's eldritch might. And they were victorious. The alliance grew and spread, sweeping the Tribe ahead of them into the mists of history. 

Or perhaps it's none of the above, or some combination of all of them. All that can be said with certainty is that the Marduk society appear in the earliest records of the Tribe. Hunting Leviathans with sky splitting sorcery. It may not even be the same society, thousands of years is a long time. The society may have been usurped or be multiple groups thorough history. Each adopting legitimacy by taking an earlier Conspiracies name or making use of  the mystically potent Sigil of Marduk. There's translation errors in the Tribe's records as well as "obvious" interpretations for phrases like "our great enemy". 

As records progress Marduk shows increasingly technological methods. According to tribal lore Marduk’s disciples discovered that without humanities oppressors the population of man grew rapidly. They alone were simply too few to either save or damn mankind but were loath to share their powers with others who might decide they were made for greater roles than servitude. The disciples turned to artifice and refined Marduk's sky sorcery into powerful tools for their servants so that they would not need to teach the secrets of true power beginning a shift that has been a constant in the society’s history. Today Marduk operatives hunt the Wicked Tribe with submarines rather than sorcery. 

The second great shift in Marduk started, according to varying sources, either as early as the 15th Century during the Age of Discovery or as late as the 19th Century. Hiding their motives behind a façade as academics, archaeologists, philanthropists and scientists the Society began to receive interest from actual scholars and charitable gentlemen. At first these idealistic members served as unwitting pawns and cats-paws for the conspirators, but their numbers grew. 

Before too long entire branches were entirely staffed by this new breed of Marduk. Worse, while conspirators by nature distrust their own the new idealists talked to each other. They shared information and watched each others backs. They may have been ignorant about their own society: the Leviathan breeding programs, the dark pacts, wicked deals and blasphemous immortality at the heart of it all. But as “gentlemen adventurers” they were second to none. The original disciples watched in horror as cults were smashed, victims rescued and Leviathans hunted down, their flesh left to rot.

In the heart of the Society sit six immortal Old Men, perhaps Marduk's original disciples, perhaps not. Once they ruled, now they are reduced to manipulating their own organisation from the shadows, but they’ve had a very long time to get good and they’re holding on, for now. Of those few Leviathans who know of them most long for the day where the Society turns upon the Old Men and dream of dancing on the graves of the Wicked Tribe’s most ancient of enemies. The others dread it, for when that day comes Marduk will still be hunting. Yet without evil at the heart of the Marduk Society the Wicked Tribe will no longer take comfort that “humans are the real monsters”. They are the monsters, alien and harmful to the world, oppressors of humanity. And the heroes are coming for them.