The Nameless Order of Nassau is a unique democracy of mages, each with an equal vote and an equal share of arcane spoils, and access to the Mysteries its members discover or wrench from the hands of other mages defeated upon the high seas. Formed from a deeply eclectic group of disenfranchised mages, they found that only by submitting to shared discipline could they truly work together toward common goals — and in doing so, they found Yantras and Praxes developing with startling rapidity, shredding the magics of their enemies.
A merry life, and short, is the goal of the Company of the Codex: Aggression is their birthright, doom their future, and freedom their legacy.
Mages join the Company when they’ve been forsaken by Diamond and Throne alike, they find value in their fellows’ hard work and companionship, they want the sweetest cut of Mysteries and spoils without scraping and waiting decades, or they want to smash the chains that hold humanity fast.
Core Beliefs: The Codex
The Codex is both a definitive Supernal Artifact and a concept derived from the articles of agreement governing privateering ships and the now-destroyed native tradition of swearing oaths. It is a compact drawn between willing participants (first Mages, but then other supernatural people of the Caribbean), pledging themselves to a higher ideal, becoming more than the sum of their parts. Joining the Company means swearing an oath upon the Codex, writ in blood and signed with name and date. Individuals unwilling to swear such an oath or representing a danger to their fellows, such as most of those the Diamond considers Left-Handed — Scelesti, Banishers, etc. — as well as less stable Beasts or Deviants aren’t allowed to join, although Company mages maintain a looser definition of what constitutes a Left-Handed practice. By longstanding tradition, the Rapt are accorded berths (albeit wide ones) if they’re composed enough to take the oath.
Individual captains may craft their own articles according to their vessel, but everyone swears upon the Codex. Sleepwalkers and Sleepers crew every Company ship, stubbornly inculcated with the Mysteries of magic whenever possible, though all but the most reckless Picaroons unleash Forces spells only when safely ensconced within a cloud of powder smoke.
I. Every Picaroon a vote, every Picaroon a voice
All sworn are equal under the Codex, no matter their origin. Some may be more equal than others, they’ll allow, but the shared voice and individual sovereignty grant true freedom and serve as an arrow against all tyrants. Captains are voted up from among the common Picaroon, subject to a vote of no confidence if they fail to uphold their duty. Those learned among the Company teach those less so, but they claim no more rights for it. To every captain, two shares; to others of the Company as the captain wills it.
II. Take all you can; usurp nothing
The only accorded order is the Company’s. Once somebody has sworn adherence, to step outside the order is to invite ruin. Those not of the Company aren’t subject to the protections of brethren: Their possessions are forfeit, their structures tainted by association. A Company pirate may siege a plantation to rob it of reales and rum, but she never sets herself up as owner. A Picaroon might take a ship in fair combat and set himself up as captain of the new vessel, but he won’t sign a privateering agreement afore the king (not that he’d be offered such, anyway).
III. The casting of magic before Sleepers is the snap of a gun in the hold
On any ship, firing a firearm within the hold risks not only severely wounding fellow sailors — a likely death sentence upon the high seas — but blowing the vessel’s powder stores, shattering the ship entire with a spectacular display. Similarly, using magic before a Sleeper risks calling the Company’s enemies. Despite this, sailors are a superstitious lot; the Company deliberately creates an air of casual magic at sea, the better to instill fear and discipline, and lessen the sting of the Lie.
Origins
The sapphire waters of the Carib tribes gave rise to waking world dreams as fierce and strong as monsoons. Mages Awakened to islands teeming with Jacobite revolutionaries, Welsh privateers denied pay by English masters, illegal Dutch settlers fighting the invading Spanish, and French buccaneers. In the sun-dappled rum shops of Tortuga and Port Royal, the few indios who kept fragments of their native lore met counterparts with occult traditions from 100 different shores. The dispossessed found common cause in magic and anger, watching all around them scrape and bow for scraps handed down when it pleased those above. If reality was truly this unjust, they would need to fight it with iron and mettle. When the Orders descended upon the Antilles to search for Mysteries, they found the Company’s furious cannons rising to greet them.
No Consilium or Tetrarchy claimed the area when the first Awakened swore upon the Codex. The Company absorbed foreign Awakened from the Indian Ocean and African slave trade, growing organically with the town of Nassau as their capital and sanctum in the decades before the Treaty of Utrecht. No few were disillusioned and dissatisfied Diamond and Seer mages,
defecting with occult secrets and Mysteries to solve. The Company grew powerful and influential enough to claim the Bahamas for themselves long before any could displace them. In the seas between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, the Company preys upon Sleeper and Awakened vessels alike.
Mysteries
None name the Picaroons among the subtle. What Mysteries the Diamond Orders puzzle over in walled villas, the Company wrenches from their grasp and displays as purloined baubles.
This even applies to the Yantras and Imagos used to construct Awakened magic; the dread Nimbuses of pirates erode the symbols Orders use to work magic, rendering the Supernal a contest of pure will and instinct — and thus, an arena where the brethren have the advantage. Smashed and forcefully taken Mysteries are sometimes impossible to Scrutinize, but they are freely spread among the Company nonetheless.
Take what you can; usurp nothing.
Long-sealed ruins and pacts give way before Company dispellation, and many pirate Awakened feel the satisfaction of their avarice lies within the tombs and prisons of the many Bound in the Caribbean. If these beings fell to weak mages armed with spear and sword, how will they fare against a 46-gun flagship?
Magical Symbolism: Discipline
The lash, the matchlock pistol, the bowline knot, the articles: The Company is tied to the experience of a ship and the harmony of life at sea. Every sailor from deckhand to boarswain must willingly act according to their skill and their staton, or all will perish. The Company sets these roles down before a working or a voyage, and their ability to act in concert terrifies Diamond and Seer alike. The ship itself is perhap their most powerful Yantra, a symbol of the Company entire.
Hubris
In a world without Mysteries, the names writ in the Codex would be a roll of heroes. In the Fallen World, they are that, but bloodthirsty villains besides. The pirates' appetite for plunder infects the magics of the Nameless Order, cuasing them top Reach far too often and exceed their graps. Fortune favors the bold, but the Company tends toward recklessness at best.