Mage/Theme/Orders/Guardians of the Veil/History

 The history of the Guardian caucus of the Martyr's Tree is cautionary tale that the Order recounts to new recruits and incoming transfers with clear eyes. Walsingham, The first Epopt of their order, and likewise the first Moros Councilor of what would become the Martyr's Tree consilium, was complicit in the atrocities of the Unnamed War, and present during Gaveston's Great Hubris.

 It was Walsingham that directed the Order towards the furtherance of the esoteric precepts, and first uttered the word Hieromagus to his susceptors and trusted advisors. He and his inner circle worked tirelessly to massage the other orders into drafting "common sense silver law precepts" which the Guardians took every pain to oppose in public. They conspired to enshrine in law their particular vision of Hubris, and how it ought to be punished. By making each Magus responsible for their own messes, and providing the safety of contrition and atonement for those who breach the law, they turned their order from a secret police almost universally loathed for their meddling, to ritually obligated executors of the will of the Awakened Nation as a whole.

 It freed them to pursue the esoteric precepts, to spread their labyrinths and cults far and wide, and to turn their enforcement focus onto the servants of the Lie. They have raised confounding the Seers of the Throne to a high art, creating an air of mutual respect between the two organizations born of buried bodies and shattered ambitions.

 In the centuries since, they have worked to make allies of the Arrows, consultants of the Mysterium, and political tools of the Silver Ladder. Their preferred method of guiding Awakened society is through Walsingham's Gambit; which is to say, they make everyone else suggest their ideas for them, oppose them, and thereby ensure their passage.