Circle of the Crone

==Circle of the Crone==
The Mother's Army
"Your God might be jealous, friend, by mine? Mine's royally pissed off."
The Chase brings with it a feeling of elation, a sort of wild, fierce joy. I can feel the dappled moonlight filtering through the leaves onto my skin. I can hear the animals go silent as I pass nearby; I like to imagine the sad papery sound of death, of flowers withering away instantly as I brush past them. I can feel my hot, iron-heavy breath coming in heavy gasps — unnecessary breath, born of a reflex, some remembered race-memory from before I was even living, as if the beast from which I evolved could only return to me after I died, after I had ceased to be human. I can feel my blood burning, the needle-sharp points of my teeth against the tip of my tongue. And the fear, too. A sense of absolute terror, always, the feeling that it’s a dangerous thing, that any of us could end up completely destroyed, become the next victim, if not of the quarry, of the thing inside.
It’s wonderful.
I almost fall headlong into the hollow, tripping over a root, but landing, hands splayed, legs sprung on the bare earth. Our quarry has fallen — the root clearly got him. He’s on the ground in the hollow, crying like a child. The sole of one of his ridiculous boots has come away and he’s too scared to know quite how much it hurts, that he wouldn’t be walking away on that ankle even if I let him go. Half of his ponytail has come loose. I can see the others catching up out of the corner of my eye, and they’re hungry too. But this is my first Chase, and what happens next is up to me. 
He’s managed to turn over. He’s pleading with me. Begging. He’s saying, “I didn’t mean it. Please. I didn’t mean it.” He doesn’t really believe it, doesn’t believe who I am, even now. The ring in his nose has been ripped out, and the blood is running down over his mouth into his goatee. I hate him so much. I’m enjoying the feeling of breathing so much. My hands are flexing like claws. “I take it back,” he says, between sobs. “Please, I take it back. Please. Please don’t. You’re not faking. You’re real, you’re real. Just, please, please don’t. Please.” I start to laugh. “You wanted the real deal. You want to see the Goddess? Here she is. And she’s hungry.” The others, all around us, begin to sing. It’s not an old song but it sounds old.
Nobody who cares hears him screaming.
===You want to join the Circle of the Crone because ===
You believe that you are strong. You want things to change back to an earlier, less structured time. You believe in a distinction between spirituality and religion. You think if you’re going to be a monster, you’d better do it properly. You are afraid that there won’t be a place for you in the future.
===The big picture ===
Vampires in other covenants hide their monstrous natures behind veneers of self-control, or hellfire religion, or politesse, or ideological fire. But the vampires of the Circle of the Crone are the howling beasts who roam in bloodstained packs. In other covenants, the dead try to hold fast to religions and ideologies, maintaining hierarchies and rigid systems of control. The Acolytes believe that you must change. 
Other covenants believe that to be a monster, you must do the will of God, or have a will to power, or study dark secrets. But the Mother’s Army is made of monsters just because it’s the way they are. They are the attendants at every witches’ coven you’ve imagined, the crazed, naked bacchanals who tear apart the bodies of those who get in their way, who sit like spiders at the centers of orgiastic witch-cults populated by the unwitting and the lonely. Their thinkers and mouthpieces might affect etiquette in some quarters, but have somehow more energy than the theologians of the Sanctified or the boardroom manipulators of the Invictus. They are the ebullient academic occultists and the old-fashioned coven leaders who give the covenant an eloquent, seductive voice.
The members of the Circle of the Crone might call themselves pagan. These are the vampires who see the Curse as anything but — as a blessing bestowed upon the strong, the survivor. They are a part of nature. They are monsters because it is the way of things. 
And natural creatures evolve and develop. The Ordo Dracul believes that the a vampire should become a different sort of monster. The Sanctified force the Kindred to subjugate their own feelings and afflict humanity. But the Acolytes believe that both beliefs are restraints, and the only way truly to enjoy the bliss of monstrosity is to leave all restraints behind.
Their priestesses and hierophants do not, unlike their Sanctified rivals, impose a structured theology upon their followers and allies. In fact, they’d probably inflict Final Death on anyone who tried to. The Circle is more a convenient banner under which many disparate groups with disparate practices and beliefs can rally in the face of opposition from the more monolithic covenants. Under different circumstances they might be enemies, but these groups recognize their common ground in the face of common opposition. Individually these groups would have been destroyed centuries ago. As the Circle of the Crone, they’ll probably still face destruction — but they’ll take their enemies screaming with them.
The Circle’s component movements range from old to new, from ancient blood-cults to post-modern feminist magick societies. Within the covenant, secrets and magics are shared freely, but outsiders are kept forever in the dark. None of them are human religions, or owes much to human mysticisms; every one is a dark mirror of living superstition. In the few, brief centuries since the Circle’s founding, the Crone’s Acolytes, the self-styled Army of the Bitch-Mother, have created a chaotic, freely contradictory synthesis of belief, and with it, a roughly-defined system of blood-magic that has spread like a virus across the Western world. The Acolytes cheerfully lead cults, covens, and societies of outcasts and freaks, the human herd from which they choose both their prey and their childer. If the Acolytes seem strange, even by Kindred standards, it is not unrelated to the strangeness of their preferred subjects for the Embrace.
===Where we came from ===
There have always been pagan vampires, or those who hold to the indigenous beliefs of their living years. We, the Circle of the Crone, came into being less than two hundred years ago. A number of coteries in Scotland and Ireland were pushed close to extinction, and sick of watching their friends and allies forcibly converted to the creed of the Lancea et Sanctum through the Vinculum and direct mind control. They organized as best they could, and won some of their first victories there on the bleak moors. They spread the news of victory across Western Europe first, and then to the Americas, where vampires belonging to the indigenous and enslaved minorities there were quick to bring their own voices to the Covenant. The First and Second Estates were not ready for the violence of the new covenant’s birth. A dozen or more princes were reduced to ash in a few decades. The Acolytes brought blood, fire, and wrath to the dead, showing the monsters what monstrosity truly was. Led by one crazed, self-proclaimed Mother-Goddess after another, the Circle of the Crone swept through the society of the dead, not so much uniting the pagan underbelly as giving them a common name and a common purpose.
Right from the beginning, the Circle of the Crone has served as something of an underground railroad among the Kindred, allowing us heretics to find each other with a speed impossible for other Kindred. Few used — and still use — the Cacophony with our ease, making up for a lack of organization and formal ideology with the speed of communication.
It was no doubt our command of the Cacophony that allowed for the formulation of Crúac. Although our blood sorcery is given an Irish-Gaelic name, the magic happened by itself as we communicated, weaving a synthesis of dozens of forms of blood magic, some ancient, some brand-new. Of all the magics the Kindred practice, it is the most fluid, the most susceptible to change.
Change in everything is the key; we Acolytes realized that early on. Change is sometimes violent, sometimes personal, but always constant. The anger of the heathen gods, of the Carnivorous Mother-Goddess from whom we draw our name, demands an alteration in the order of things. Things must change. For the new to survive, the old must be swept away, in fire and blood. And that means the covenant itself must change, and change constantly. The dead are cold and in stasis, so the old guard say. But the Circle of the Crone, notwithstanding our archaic name, will accept only evolution or destruction — and if destruction is the way, it won’t be alone. 
===Our practices ===
It’s hard to pin down any one practice as generic. Our rituals are often unique to our homelands, a mixture of old and new; every ceremony constantly changes, and might be wholly different from one night to the next. We dance naked, run in wild hunts, light ritual pyres (always risky for the dead), and perform blood sacrifices. Sometimes the sacrifices are human. Sometimes strangled, sometimes stabbed, sometimes suffocated. It’s not as common as the other covenants would like to believe. But they happen. 
Most of us have some sort of involvement with a human cult of some kind: a controlling “personal development” cult that steals its members from their families and friends; a neo-Bacchanalian sisterhood; a cerebral occult study group; a coven of blood-drenched witches. The cultists are sometimes dupes, lured in by the half-deceptive promises and glamours of the vampire. Often transformed into willing servants by bonds of blood forged in mock-pagan ceremonies, these cultists can become our effective and willing agents. They recruit. They bring in money. If, a lot of the time, we are more closely involved with the affairs of our herds than the devotees of any other covenant, it is at least worth it for the benefits we receive. Human agents — often unwitting — can go places and do things we can’t. And of course, they’re expendable. This is just as well. We are the least numerous of the covenants (with the possible exception of the Ordo Dracul). 
We exist in a state of sometimes open, sometimes undeclared war against the more established, hierarchical covenants. We need all the help we can get (whether the help knows it or not). Neither ideologically tied down like the Carthians, or possessed of the tools of power that the Invictus have, we of the Circle have only our desire for change on our side, our absolute need to be better.
===Cruac===
Among our most powerful tools is Crúac , our vicious system of blood magic; it is flexible and ever-changing, but not for the conscience-stricken. We share Crúac freely among our members — outsiders looking to steal our power find we guard our secrets jealously and fiercely.
Nicknames: The Acolytes (within the covenant, formally); The Mother’s Army (within the covenant, informally); The Witches (derogatory)
===Concepts ===
Riot grrl, working-class matriarch, indigenous people’s rights campaigner, reclusive wealthy occultist, dissolute swinger, technopagan clubber, body modification enthusiast, voodoo priest, strange-eyed street ganger, witchy librarian, aging old-school libertine; suspiciously friendly laird of the manor
===When we are in power ===
Of all the covenants, only the Ordo Dracul controls fewer domains. That might be because when we are running things, vampire society becomes a free-for-all. When newly in power, we settle grudges that might go back for centuries, purging former oppressors with unparalleled ruthlessness. A domain under Acolyte control is no place for the weak, nor the squeamish. “Do what thou wilt” becomes the whole of the law, and with it comes what is either (depending on which way you look at it) the perfection of vampire society, or its utter dissolution into Darwinian violence: Less anarchy, and more the rule of the strong without formal laws or any pretense of “civilization.” While the Invictus have strict patterns that govern their brutality, and the Sanctified use the tools of religion to justify horrific acts of violence, the Circle of the Crone use their liberty to destroy anyone who steps out of line. How “stepping out of line” is defined, however, can change from night to night — sorry.
===When we are in trouble ===
When cornered or persecuted, we undergo a peculiar change. While not exactly organized, our Mother’s Army closes its ranks, becoming more secretive than ever, and in our own way rigidly organized. Backs against the wall, we are prone to acts of astonishing flamboyance and brutal violence; those who take it upon themselves to oppress the Acolytes find their havens put to the flame, their ghouls ritually strangled, and their neonates staked at sunrise in the middle of lonely forest crossroads.