Dead Wrens
The Dead Wrens
Pirates and vagabonds, the Dead Wrens do their collective best to remain out of the struggles of the Awakened. While the cabal considers itself a member of the Consilium, the Wrens only reluctantly involve themselves in politics. After all, there’s little profit to be made there if you’re a little fish, and one never knows if and when the Guardians of the Veil may attempt to extract a pound of flesh from the easiest nearby target that presents itself. Instead, this cabal of miscreants eats, drinks and makes merry, driving back the shadows with laughter, and doing what they can to make peace with those shadows that fail to flee.
The nominal ringmaster of the Dead Wrens’ sanctum, the Emerald Scroll, is the modern-day buccaneer, Davy Jones (see Mage: The Awakening, p. pp. 383-384 and p. 389, for details on both Davy and the sanctum). In addition to the Scroll, the Wrens maintain some dock space along Boston’s waterfront (see “Downtown,” p. 23), in order to have ready access to the sea.
Sanctum: The Emerald Scroll
Sanctum Size ••••; Security •; Hallow •••; Library: Local Legends, Witchcraft, Haunted Ships
The original Emerald Scroll was founded in 1892 to serve Guardians of the Veil and allies in the Order of the Golden Dawn. Proceeds from the Temple of Thme enriched the true cabal: the Emerald Scroll. The Golden Dawn’s Sleepers knew nothing of the cabal but its name, and assumed that it was some secret rank of initiation. That knowledge made them even more committed to their brotherhood in their thirst for whatever prize the rank might offer.
Founding a secret society to lure the wealthy and attract apprentices was a standard practice, but the order campaigned for prestige more blatantly than it had elsewhere. In the end, the cabal cheapened its position and gave away Golden Dawn degrees too freely. Bostonian Sleepers eventually saw membership as just another social bauble that entertained them with secret handshakes and other nonsense. Eventually, dissatisfied initiates founded rival societies with their own idiosyncrasies, deviating ever further from Golden Dawn’s slivers of true magical theory.
The Emerald Scroll’s mages scattered after the Free Council’s subversion, but not before they suffered a final insult. The twisted, corrupt remnants of the Golden Dawn and its offshoots managed to spark Awakenings of their own: mages who joined a “false” inner circle of the Free Council. A small contingent from the Guardians of the Veil did their best to destroy these upstart mages, but the survivors tenaciously stuck to the margins of Boston’s underworld.
The libertines submerged themselves in the city’s maritime sector. The Second World War was an immense boon. Lend-Lease trade with England, war trophies and smuggled artifacts netted immense profits. Successive cabals used newfound resources to scout locations that other mages had never searched, until they found a Hallow southwest of the city proper, in Roxbury. They paid to get a blocky brick building built around it and christened it the Emerald Scroll — a final claim to supremacy. That building is now where Boston’s mages (and enlightened visitors) meet to do business and socialize. The Dead Wrens own it today, and tolerate a wide range of behavior, but violence or anything that would obviously piss off the Ebon Noose is not allowed.
Modern Roxbury is a rundown neighborhood; open drug dealing and shootings are common. The building looks a little out of place, because it has a front as an upscale, members-only club. After passing through a foyer, visitors reach a large main hall decorated with stained-glass panels of the Tarot’s Major Arcana. Across from a stage, a bar serves drinks at cost. One of the Dead Wrens is usually sitting there, chatting with the bartender. The bartender is the only Sleeper allowed on the premises (she’s a Sleepwalker, someone who doesn’t act as a witness for Paradoxes). She’s a relative of one of the Wrens who needs extra cash. She is paid handsomely and usually magically compelled to keep quiet about what goes on inside. No other Sleepers staff the place.
On the upper levels, private meeting rooms cater to the Dead Wrens and anyone who wants privacy. Mages are generally not allowed to sleep here. The Wrens allow visitors to browse their library and even acquire Tass (in the form of arrowheads and pottery shards), but they must pay steep prices. Costs fluctuate, but Tass usually goes for around $10,000 per point of Mana (a unit called a “pawn”; payment must be in genuine US Mint currency and non-sequential bills). The Dead Wrens are hospitable enough, but nothing’s free.
