In The Beginning

The first stirrings of our Cabal came long before the Sundering, back in the days when the Old Gods walked amongst us. The world was simple, then. It was a simple thing filled with simple ideas.

The Old Gods were the first gods, and they, like the world that gave birth to them, were simple beings. They arose from immediate human needs and fears: primitive concepts given form and voice, crackling with the untold power of a new world. Food and Fire, Sex and The Darkness, Hate and Pain and countless others. For untold aeons of prehistory it was they who oversaw this world.

One of these Old Gods was Desire. Desire was one of the first of their number, perhaps the child of Life. And S:he, in turn, gave birth to the twins of Agony and Ecstasy, who attend Hir still.

Now, Desire was the most powerful of all the Old Gods. Every other concept that arose from need could feed into Hir domain, and the satisfaction of desire was rarely denied in those days. The inadvertent worship that merely living gave Hir provided Hir with enough power to move Heaven and Earth.

In fact, it is said that S:he often did.

The Nature of Desire

The Solicitors say that Desire is no less than a God, and that Hir very presence created Hir co-Gods Agony and Ecstasy. These three went about Their business in the worlds of Spirit and Man, charged - like all the Old Gods - with a Great Secret. In Their case it was the secret that the Solicitors call the Dread Secret: the one that Desire is said to have given the Center of the Wheel; the same one every true Solicitor learns.

Desire is portrayed as a beautiful, androgynous figure. S:he could be either male or female, and is depicted in such a way that the onlooker is rarely certain of anything but her own desire for Hir.

Agony and Ecstasy are also beautiful androgynes, and seem to be identical twins. However, while Ecstasy is portrayed as being permanently enraptured, like a child who's been granted its fondest wish, Agony wears a permanent scowl, as though Hir each and every longing had been cruelly turned in on itself.

One might wonder what place Gods have in the modern world. Some of the Cabal claim that they have seen Desire Hirself while undergoing the Induction Ritual. Others claim to have caught elusive and enticing glimpses of Hir while doing Hir will. Agony and Ecstasy tend to manifest Themselves more subtly, in the form of coincidental pairings, but there are those who say that They have also been seen.

(As to what they really are, or if they really exist within the framework of the World of Darkness, such calls are up to the Storyteller as befits her own game.)

Ancient Mythology


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