The Masters of Stonecrop is a secret group of sorcerers comprised of select faculty members and a small cohort of graduate students. They originally formed to defend the Stonecrop Institute from the Fair Folk. In the modern era, they’re much more concerned with creating the most boundary-pushing, magically-infused art they’re capable of, using the rock and earth of their home as well as the blood of sacrifices to achieve their greatest work.
History[]
Stonecrop’s Board consider themselves England’s only line of defense against forces that have threatened the British Isles for thousands of years. Before the Vikings and the Romans redefined the land, Britons knew of a different invader — the Fair Folk.
For centuries, the Masters also extended their influence further south to the site of Athelbarn, until the Athelbarn Masters gave up on their rituals to hold what is now known as the Athelbarn Hunt at bay, resulting in their swift annihilation. Now, the Masters are fully confined to Stonecrop.
The Masters of Stonecrop have lost sight of their original mission. The current members are only vaguely aware of their duty to hold fast against the vengeful Fair Folk. They regard it as an origin story, not a job description.
Overview[]
The Masters work magic drawn from primal connections to the land. Their magics are of blood, earth, sex, and the hunt. They’re capable of great results, but at high costs to people abducted for sacrifice and bloodletting, hunted as prey, or subjected to other abuses. The magic feeds back into the earth that fuels it and pollutes and corrupts the area around Stonecrop. The seasons have distinct emotional impact, the geography’s even more bleak and unwelcoming than the rest of the northern moors, and the animals that make their home there are aggressive and threatening.
Recruitment[]
A select few Stonecrop students — those in whom the Masters see potential in the sorcerous arts — are invited to remain on campus over the summer break, when their tuition takes a decidedly macabre turn. Those inducted into Stonecrop’s magical society are entombed in the earth as a ritual of communion. Their bodies lie beneath the rose garden and their consciousness (the Masters claim) becomes one with the land from which they draw their occult power. Some initiates don’t survive the experience, but there are enough actual, innocent dropouts between academic years that this doesn’t usually raise questions.
The students who do survive become official members of the Masters of Stonecrop, the magical society that underlies the trappings of a respectable art school. They participate in acts of ritual magic that deepen their bond with the other Masters of Stonecrop and the land on which it sits and supposedly help them shed the trappings of modern life, refining them to become better vessels for their art.
Role[]
The art the Masters make, whatever their medium, has a certain raw, primal energy that audiences find compelling and disconcerting in equal measure. This is most true of the Masters, but the ethos that creates this art bleeds out into the way all students are taught. They make honest and moving art, insisting that all humans, under all their layers of civility, are animals driven by lust, fear, and rage. Consuming it, on film or in text, or viewing the lush, powerful shapes of a visual piece, makes people feel raw and somehow dirty, but the art always feels somehow quintessentially real. It’s powerful, and it makes Stonecrop graduates successful in their subsequent endeavors.
The Masters are only a small proportion of Stonecrop’s faculty. Most of the professors, visiting or tenured, are creative professionals whose vision resonates with Stonecrop’s no-holds-barred, confrontational, artistic values. Only a few administrators and senior staff — notably Sir Qeith Eugende, S.B. Ronson, and Ffion Llewellyn — are sorcerers. Most of the practicing sorcerers at Stonecrop are young postgraduate students (every one of whom did their undergraduate studies at the university and was initiated into the Masters). They stay on campus for a few years, pursuing nebulously defined projects funded by grants from obscure sources, then leave and spread their wings. If they find financial success in their subsequent endeavors, they’re expected to channel some money back to fund the postgraduate studies of future generations.
Operations[]
Normal students at Stonecrop don’t know anything about the Masters; if they ever hear the term, they assume it’s an archaic word to describe the administration. But the Masters’ work touches their lives regularly. So regularly, in some cases, that they no longer recognize it as strange. A few hikers and tourists go missing every year on the moors. The local police aren’t concerned (because the Masters pay them not to be), so the students assume they shouldn’t worry either. Most were raised in cities, so they accept that the wilderness is dangerous. Legends of huge, dangerous animals — panthers and bears — are so common that sightings are laughed off as paranoia and superstition (or overindulgence in alcohol or narcotics). That’s often true, but sometimes those sightings are glimpses of the Masters roaming the woods and moors in animal form.
Art is challenging and designed to make you feel things. So, the fact that some of the faculty and graduate students’ efforts can induce nightmares or make a viewer feel physically ill are simultaneously a sign of powerful art and an unsophisticated viewer. Students know they’d be looked down on if they admitted discomfort, so nobody does.
Members[]
- Sir Qeith Eugende: The chancellor of the Stonecrop Institute itself, the oldest and most sorcerously powerful of the Masters, and a Picture of Dorian Grey-style immortal.
- Aaron Mackenzie: Displays statues of unsettling, quasi-human forms made from dead wood, brambles, rock, and mud. They’re actually examples of The Formed, enchanted to stay dormant until called upon.
- Avery Symonds: carves statues from hunks of weathered, local stone and infuses them with minor sorceries she can call out by smashing the rock.
- Elliott Sterling
- Ffion Llewellyn: One of the newer Masters and the primary threat to Eugende's faltering reign.
- Gabriel Holdstock: A theoretical member of the teaching staff and a habitual thorn in the side of the Athelbarn Hunt.
- Roslyn Beckett
- S.B. Ronson: A detached shapeshifter and Eugende's "attack dog".
References[]
- HTR: Alma Maters, p. 113-137
Sorcerous Affiliations | ||
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Standard Affiliations | Ancient Order of the Aeon Rites · The Arcanum · Balamo'ob · The Children of Osiris · The Cult of Isis · The Cult of Mercury · The Dozen Priests of the Pythian Order · The Fenian · Forn Jafnaðr · Maison Liban · Mogen HaLev · Nebuu-Afef · The Nephite Priesthood · The Newburgh Group · The Seven Thunders · The Silver Portal · The Society of Enlightened Altruistic Ideologies · The Star Council · Thal'hun · US Government: Project Twilight · Uzoma | |
Mage-run Affiliations | Council of Nine Mystic Traditions · Disparate Alliance · Technocratic Union | |
Redworking Affiliations | The Almost Assembly · The Calderone · CRONUS/DOVECOTE · House Carna · House Goratrix · Lui Domien · The Plague Oracles · Sunburners | |
Minor or Defunct Affiliations | Asatru Futhark · Bata'a · Masters of Stonecrop |