Whispers of what's to come.

A Whisper from the South — A Rumor of the Moody Badger, Mid-August 1553

It is said — soft as smoke and twice as bitter — that a rider came through the Myrddin Door barley three nights past, boots cracked with dust from the sun-bleached roads of southern France, and lips trembling with words better left unspoken.

He swore upon oak, iron, and the name of Saint Michael that in the late Summer of 1553, the Order of Gabriel has begun a new and blasphemous rite.

In hidden abbeys and war-camps tucked among the vineyards of Languedoc and the shadowed hills of Provence, elder Kindred are taken alive — not for fire, not for steel, but for the draining of their ancient vitae. This sacred blood, stolen from creatures of ages past, is said to be mingled with consecrated wine and blackened oils, then forced upon chosen soldiers of the Order as a profane sacrament.

Those who survive are no longer merely men.

They are pale-eyed hounds of the Order — ghouled knights and sanctified killers, strengthened by stolen Kindred power yet shackled by holy chains. Their veins burn with borrowed immortality, their senses sharpen to a predator’s precision, and their oaths rewritten in blood and scripture.

These chosen hunters are then drilled in secret chapels, taught the signs of Vitae, the scent of the Damned, the rhythms of feeding, and the weaknesses of the Clans. They are loosed upon the night as living weapons, sworn to seek and destroy other Kindred — to hunt monsters using the strength of monsters.

The rumour claims entire small companies now stalk the roads between Toulouse and Avignon, acting not as soldiers but as executioners, whispering prayers as they strike, their lips still stained faintly red.

No banner marks them. No herald claims them.

Only the sign of a broken chalice scored upon their gauntlets.

And it is whispered even here, beneath the warm hearth of the Moody Badger, that one or more elders yet breathe in iron cages beneath Gabrielite sanctuaries... kept alive not for mercy, but for harvest.

Take care, Kindred of Avalon.

For if this tale speaks true, the Order no longer hunts the night with mortal hands alone…They now wield the blood of your own ancestors as sacred steel.