Banishers

BanishersWilg Gogi 23:00, January 26, 2010 (UTC)
Less and Order than a category, Banishers are mages whose Awakening was twisted in some way, resulting in a mage who believes that all magic (and those who use it) is evil and must be destroyed. Banishers usually work alone, like extremely specialized killers, they are drifers moving from one city to the next, and tend to target a mages or cabals who become careless, and after weeks of careful surveillance and compiling all detectable weaknesses, eliminate them. Any Library material, artifacts and so on are usually either breifly studied (just enough to glean some minimal new insight into how the 'enemiy' works) and destroyed, or destroyed outright.

Certain Mysterium researchers have offered a theory regarding the fifth Atlantean Order, the Timori, which arose after the Fall and formed the basis of the Banisher philosophy, though most Awakened simply accept that the Banishers were mentally or spiritually unable to accept the full responsibilities of will-working and focused on destroying the rest of the Awakened.

Banishers alone are bad enough, Banishers who learn to work together can be exponentially more dangerous. Much as cabal-mates can cover each other's weaknesses (for example, the Inferior Arcanum for each Path is a Ruling Arcanum for another Path) teams of Banishers can often eliminate enemies that one alone could not handle. Worse, it is possible for Banishers to form cults, attracting mortal followers and Sleepwalkers, making the prospect of eliminatin a Banisher cult a very dangerous undertaking.