The Auld Covenant is a Cabal of Mages in Edinburgh.
Overview
In the late 1300s, Michael Scot, a member of the Hermetic House Ex Miscellanea, settled in Edinburgh, planning to use the city as a base of operations for his studies of the mystical sites in the area. An avid astronomer, he wondered if the movements of the stars and constellations were behind the frequent shallowings he detected at several sites in the city and in the Borders region.
Scot's scholarship and personality allowed him to form strong connections with both practitioners of the Wyck in the Highlands and with other Hermetic Orders in Paris and London. He helped the members of the Wyck, and they exchanged knowledge of their Life magicks. Eventually, he attracted students, and they formed the Auld Covenant. Together they completed the first edition of Scot's Almanac of Shallowings
The Auld Covenant thus began its first mission: to know the habits of the shallowings and to protect the Sleepers from the beings that might harm them. Through their will, the members managed to defeat several Umbrood and diabolists in the area. Although many stories of Michael Scot spawned during these times, the covenant was never discovered. Strangely, no written or oral records of his physical description exist, even though the people of Edinburgh and the borders seemed familiar with the man. (Reference: The Arcane of Michael Scot, 1621, by Evelyn Davies.)
In the late 1400s, the Grand Convocation's ordering of magick into Spheres frustrated the Auld Covenant, since most of the mages were practitioners of Spirit Arts. Scot, always a pragmatist, sent his students out to find a Hermetic Master of Forces. The quest ended a few years later when Mary Hay, the youngest member of the Auld Covenant, tracked down Thomas Weir. Weir was one of the last members of the House Flambeau. She persuaded him to meet with the covenant. Eventually, he came into the Auld Covenant to teach his Arts.
Weir was a lackluster teacher, but an excellent student. Perhaps Scot's preternatural age got the best of him, but he seemed to teach Weir without regard for the harmful effects of such knowledge. The Master of Forces devoured the material at an incredible speed.
When Master Scot realized that Weir was holding back from his students to satisfy his growing interest in Spirit, Scot refused further lessons. Weir exploded in anger (literally) and left the Auld Covenant to study on his own. Before Weir disappeared completely, the students brought back reports of his sighting both in the city's pubs and in the outlying Border towns.
Weir returned to Edinburgh five years later in the company of an older woman he called his sister. Wizened with age, he leaned upon a black staff carved with images of satyrs and serpents. Settling in East Bow, they formed a church called the Saints of East Bow, and began weekly meetings. He refused to meet with Michael Scot, but began to teach again.
Scot did not stop his students from attending; many of them were strangely attracted to the older woman, who was said to have been a dark faerie. Even after Mary Hay became convinced of a new sinister side of Weir, she could not move Scot. In fact, Scot became increasingly hard to find, even though he lived at the chantry. Mary Hay reported that she forgot Scot's existence for weeks at time. Suddenly, he vanished completely. The adepts of the Auld Covenant reported that even the outer layers of the walls and floors of his room disappeared with him. It was as if he had been erased.
Mary could not entice the other members of the covenant into action. They believed Scot had abandoned them, and were contented with Weir as their new teacher. Mary fled Edinburgh for Paris in an attempt to find the members of Scot's old Order, Ex Miscellanea. On the dark streets of Paris, she found another mage, Phillipe Clemenceau.
Clemenceau listened to her story intently, then revealed that he was a Euthanatos. Some of the Good Deaths he had awarded in Paris made the city a difficult place for him to work, so he agreed to help as long as he was allowed into their covenant. Mary Hay agreed. They snuck across the channel to Edinburgh, but found that in the months that Mary had been gone, the Auld Covenant's house had been abandoned. The other students had moved into Weir's new "chapel."
Hay and Clemenceau's magics were too weak to take on Weir directly, so they set about exposing his practices to the Kirk. At Weir's chapel, windows and doors suddenly flew open during rituals. When the Saints of East Bow performed ceremonies in the isolated countryside, picnickers would show up out of the blue. Spirits seemed to move Weir's black cane around the neighborhood. Eventually, the populace had enough. Weir, his sister, and three of his "congregation" were tied to the stake, strangled, and burned.
Mary Hay and Clemenceau rebuilt the Auld Covenant and gave it a second purpose, to root out the Awakened who had strayed. Michael Scot's disappearance was never explained, but his arcane nature seemed to imbue the sturdy frame house that he lived in. His room is still maintained, as empty as the day he disappeared, in hopes that he will return.
Of course if Evelyn Davies' treatise is correct, he has never left.
- See also Covenant House
Other Members
- Margot Stair
References
- MTAs. Isle of the Mighty, p. 97.