Mage/Theme/Orders/Adamantine Arrows/History

 The first Constantine to grace these shores was a product of the schism within the Arrows that arose during the Italian Renaissance. He was a proponent of perpetual war, and saw the promise of the new world as being one of glorious, unending, limitless conquest. The land was vast; so much more vast than any European had seen before outside of Russia. After seeing what there was to see, he summoned his confederates to join him in the mouth of the Delaware. And they came. The world hasn't been the same since.

 The Great Hubris of Gaveston is often seen as the sole sin of the colonial period of the consilium, but that is an oversimplification. Yes, he was Hierarch. Yes, the buck stopped with him. But he had help. He had a lot of help. And it came in the form of Constantine's caucus of war fighters. What disease and deprivation could not destroy, Constantine and his followers put to the bayonet.

 When the blood had congealed and the bodies stacked, the Martyr's Tree was standing in the place of an Archmage and the War of the Unnamed had concluded. A victory, but at what price?

 For the centuries since, the caucus has been rather ahead of the curve of the Arrows path towards progress. It took the rest of the order until 1945-- civil wars, revolutions, and two world wars --to realize what had been learned already by the Philadlephia caucus: taking sides in temporal wars for temporal ideals is a fool's endeavor. The enemies of the Supernal, they are eternal. They are the true enemy from which all other enemies derive their power. To the extent the local caucus chooses to involve itself in temporal conflict, it does so only to counter the influence of their true enemies. And only after such evidence has been produced.

 The consequence of this fact is that the Martyr's Tree remains centuries ahead of the rest of the order in terms of its learning in this regard. The Thunderbolt Guardians of the caucus are often tasked with traveling to consilii across the world to lecture on the Adamant Way as practiced in the Martyr's Tree.