Zweihander

Zweihander was a powerful fraternal organization based in Utrecht, Holland. It held considerable influence throughout the German states and had a key role in the unification of Germany in 1871. Its stated goal was the unification of German-speaking countries under a single banner and the advancement of the German people. Along with The Lords Of The Silver Twilight, The Philosophes, and The Golden Cockerels, Zweihander were one of four organizations that controlled world politics for the centuries before World War I.

The Dream of Nyarlathotep and the Foundation of Zweihander
In the year 1632, the Outer God Nyarlathotep visited four people separately in a dream. These four: Carl Stanford of England, Hugh Carre of France, Johann Reuchlinn of Germany, and Valerian Malinin of Russia were among the most powerful magicians in Europe at the time. In this dream, Nyarlathotep showed the four a vision of the dark star Ghroth. Ghroth, Nyarlathotep foretold, would arrive on earth in about four-hundred years time, awakening the Great Old Ones slumbering on the earth. Unless humanity transcended, Nyarlathotep posited, they would be wiped out. Nyarlathotep then told the four magicians of a means to Transcend. First, they must find the Spell of Transcendence, an ancient Hyperborean spell that would allow the user to Transcend. Second, significant blood sacrifices would have to be made. Thousands of people would have to be sacrificed to the Outer Gods for the spell to work, their souls harvested immediately after death and stored inside great magical artifacts to be used when it was time to perform the Rite of Transcendence. The four magicians vowed to seek out the tablets, no matter what the cost.

Reuchlinn awoke from the dream disturbed and afraid. He immediately told his closest friend and only confidante, Frederick von Zahringen. Von Zahringen had been approached by Reuchlinn about such dreams before, and usually they had been prophetic. He listened seriously to Reuchlinn, and upon hearing all he had to say, suggested the creation of a group devoted to seeking out the True Rite of Transcendence and to attaining the sacrifices needed to Transcend..

The group, he suggested, would be led by Reuchlinn and himself, with Reuchlinn helping agglomerate magical talent throughout Germany to help research independently a means of Transcendence, and him utilizing his power as elector to manipulate the whole German state into helping look for the True Rite and accrue sacrifices. Von Zahringen spent the ensuing night drawing up a charter for the new organization, and by the morning, Zweihander had been created and had adopted its first two members.

When asked by Reuchlinn why the group would be called Zweihander, Von Zahringen replied that Zweihander was “two hands swinging the same blade,” emphasizing the two halves of Zweihander: the political and the magical.

The Reverends
For the first few decades of its existence, Zweihander focused primarily on expanding its magical talent. Reuchlinn journeyed throughout Germany seeking out powerful magicians whom he could add to Zweihander’s roster. These magicians, including Carolin Heidenreich, Evelyn Hecke, and Dietrich Stelzner formed the backbone Zweihander’s Reverend division.

The Reverends essentially served as Zweihander’s attack dogs in its early years, forcing the support of the electors when negotiation failed to work. They each also helped Johann Reuchlinn to research the means to Transcenence as well as possible locations in which the tablets containing the True Rite were located. The Reverends would continue to expand over the years, representing the biggest agglomeration of talented magicians in Germany over the ensuing centuries.

Frederick William and the Zweihander Electorate
Zweihander was founded at an opportune time; that is, an unstable one. Germany had long been ravaged by The Thirty Years’ War, which had exhausted the German people and made the nobility hard, cynical. The chaos of The Thirty Years’ War had produced a powerful desire for order across Germany, and Zweihander represented that order. In a region ravaged by war, Zweihander promised peace. In a region split by disunity, Zweihander promised unity. In this way, Zweihander was able to creep into the electorate of Germany, gaining control of an increasing number of electors and moving Germany, especially its elite,  towards the development of a more centralized national identity. One controlled by Zweihander.

Yet Von Zahringen could not begin his revolution from Holland. The provinces were too torn, ethnic divide between Germans, French, and Spanish in the region too strong. While Von Zahringen established a powerful local following among the Northern German states, Zweihander and its affiliates could not muster the military might and organization necessary to totally dominate German politics.

To remedy this, Von Zahringen turned to a rising star in Germany, Frederick William of Prussia. In the year 1710, Von Zahringen met up with Frederick William, offering him glory and power over the electorate controlled by Zweihander in exchange for the military of Prussia. Frederick William agreed, and the two worked together to establish control over the of Germany. Using corruption, bribery, and a range of political marriages, Von Zahringen helped Frederick William to make Prussia into the most powerful state in Germany. In exchange, Frederick William joined Zweihander as a Solis, pledging his undying loyalty to their cause. Together, the two dominated the electorate, bringing the majority of the German states under the control of Zweihander.

Having taken control of the wealth of the German states, Reuchlinn expanded his research into Transcendence, funding the design creation of a number of great alchemical machines and processes which were hidden away in Castle Wahlendorf, just south of Berlin. These machines harvested hundreds of souls in their time and were fueled by Prussian criminals brought in by Von Zahringen. The souls harvested were then projected onto, fittingly, a literal Zweihander, which would later be wielded in the form of a katana by Reverend Friedrich von Junzt.

Frederick The Great and the Zweihander Purge
Zweihander would encounter a major roadblock in 1740 with the ascension of Frederick II “the Great” to the Prussian throne. Possessing a violent temper and a fierce independent streak, Frederick the Great had watched his father act as the puppet of Zweihander throughout his life and had simmered with rage at the injustice of the things they did. When he ascended to the throne in 1740, he spearheaded an effort to exterminate Zweihander from Prussia and the rest of Germany.

To accomplish this, Frederick the Great first courted the interests of The Philosophes to help oppose Zweihander’s Reverend Division. Second, he employed the aid of The Philosophes’ covert Cavalier Division to force any members of the nobility associated with Zweihander to recant their allegiance or be killed.

Rebasing to Austria
Fearing the wrath of the new king, his army, and The Philosophes, Zweihander fled Berlin, rebasing to Vienna where they hid in the court of the Zweihander-controlled Maria Theresa, where they remained for over seventy years, tying their fates to the Austrian army. During this time, Castle Wahlendorf was abandoned and its machines fell to rot. Reuchlinn’s research was set back several centuries and would not return to full capacity for almost a century. Over the ensuing years, Frederick the Great invaded Austria a number of times in an attempt to root out Zweihander, but was unsuccessful.

All the while, The Philosophes continued to grow in influence throughout Germany, establishing a number of salons throughout the country and influencing Frederick the Great’s new government, one based on The Philosophes’ ideal of Enlightened Despotism. This new French-style government proved popular for many years, with Prussia and its allies enjoying a period of considerable power and influence. However it would also prove to be The Philosophes’ downfall come the nineteenth century.

End of Philosophe Rule in Germany
The late eighteenth century saw a number of events that turned Zweihander’s fortunes around. First, the death of Frederick the Great saw the rise of a new generation of Prussian monarchs that were more sympathetic to Zweihander. Second, the beginning and end of the Napoleonic Wars, which fostered within Germany first a cynicism and then a hatred towards French ideas and French control, creating a void in which Zweihander was able to step in.

Death of Frederick the Great
Frederick William II ascended to the throne in 1786 and, after some coaxing and against the advice of Philosophe advisors in Berlin, allowed Zweihander back into Prussia. While Frederick the Great’s violent hatred of Zweihander had led him to court The Philosophes, Frederick William had no such hatred and often saw Zweihander’s ideas as more advantageous to both his and his country’s position. Increasingly Frederick William took advice from Zweihander than from The Philosophes.

The French Revolution
This coincided with a decline in Philosophe power throughout the world, including in their own country. People in both France and Germany had grown tired of The Philosophes’ weak hand and the corruption associated with Philosophe control. The Philosophes knew they needed to introduce major changes or their hegemony over France and Germany would be over. These changes came in the form of The French Revolution, in which The Philosophes staged a movement to overthrow the French government, backstabbing their former patron King Louis XVI and instituting a number of new governments in France. The revolution grew far beyond what The Philosophes could have anticipated however and, in the interest of stability, The Philosophes placed rising general and Philosophe-member Napoleon Bonaparte on the throne of a new imperial France.

During this time, Prussian rulers had grown even more hostile to The Philosophes, viewing The French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon in particular as a threat to their interests. Yet with soft words and gentle diplomacy, they convinced the Prussian kings to allow them to remain in Berlin, competing with Zweihander for their influence. They knew this uneasy balance was only temporary, however, and knew that if they were to regain control in Germany they would have to employ force.

The Napoleonic Wars and the Reascension of Zweihander in Germany
For the next few decades, The Philosophes would aim to incorporate Germany under the direct rule of Bonaparte. To do this, they staged a war between Bonapartist France and the German states, a war which the French won. In the ensuing peace, the French created The Confederation of The Rhine, which redivided the borders of Germany and made most of the German states into satellites of France.

While this measure was temporarily successful in reigning in the monarchs of Germany, discontent with the French had reached an all-time high. Zweihander saw this as an opportunity, and through a number of uneasy alliances with both The Silver Twilight and The Golden Cockerels, were able to defeat The Philosophes’ Bonapartist regimes first in The War of the Sixth Coalition and then during The Hundred Days. In 1812, The Philosophes were expelled from Prussia and by 1815, Zweihander had firmly re-established itself as the major power in the German-speaking world, billing itself as the alternative to The Philosophes and blocking out The Silver Twilight and The Golden Cockerels in negotiations at The Congress of Vienna.

New Reverends
Over the ensuing decades, Zweihander would attempt to emulate the model that had made them great in the first place. First, they inducted three new Reverends into the mix in the period from 1810-1853; Emily Schiele in 1810, Friedrich von Junzt in 1840, and Phuong Tien in 1853. This second generation of Reverends would serve much the same purpose as the first generation, but having doubled their numbers, Zweihander could now safely command magical authority in the German-speaking states.

Otto von Bismarck and a Resurgence in Power
Zweihander also continued to bill themselves as seekers of order and unity, this time attaching their fortunes on newly-influential statesman Otto von Bismarck. Von Bismarck, whose family had been loyal to Zweihander even during the years of Philosophe rule, was an ideal choice both for his loyalty and his malleability, as he proved easily susceptible to the will of Von Zahringen, who wielded his influence like a puppeteer. By 1866, over two-hundred years after its founding, Zweihander was finally able to use the apparatus of the state to search for its intended purpose: to seek out The True Rite of Transcendence, with Castle Wahlendorf and its great machines being reoccupied in the Winter of that year.

The Alsace Incident
Over the ensuing years, a number of efforts and exploratory committees were created by German statesmen both to scout out newly acquired colonies in Africa and to explore the interior of Germany. While the explicit purpose of these expeditions was scientific, working off of enlightenment rhetoric, the true purpose was to find the True Rite. These expeditions generally met with failure, but in 1869 one of these expeditions was led into a hallucination by Nyarlathotep. The group, which had been sent to Alsace, returned to Germany with reports of what, upon hearing them, Reuchlinn believed to be the ruins of a Hyperborean city containing The True Rite. Little did Reuchlinn know, however, that The Philosophes had also been given visions of this false city, and would also go looking for it.

The two organizations sent large exploratory parties into Alsace to find the ruins of this Hyperborean City. Yet conflict between the two parties led to considerable bloodshed, with both groups taking considerable casualties and failing to find the True Rite.

Franco-Prussian War
Eventually this conflict boiled over into the political sphere, with both The Philosophes and Zweihander vying for control of Alsace. In 1870, the conflict erupted into war. By 1871, the victor was clear. Zweihander took control of Alsace and in the process was able to unify Germany as a single political entity. This put Zweihander closer than anyone else to finding the True Rite, or so they believed and in a more advantageous political position than any of the other four major powers.

While later uninterrupted expeditions failed to turn up the city reported by the early Alsatian expeditions, Zweihander had succeeded in dealing a blow to The Philosophes and establishing itself as the dominant power in Europe, inspiring the ire of the other three major organizations. As a result of this new competition, Zweihander stepped up its efforts to find The True Rite and continued to consolidate their power in Germany.

The Kindergartens
Following the Alsatian incident, Zweihander found itself in a unique position. Due to their rapid acquisition of power, they had drawn the ire of every other magical organization in Europe, yet they barely had the infrastructure to support it. While on paper Zweihander’s numbers exceeded those of both The Silver Twilight and The Philosophes, in practice very few of these members were magicians, and while The Reverends remained a force to be reckoned with, the size of Zweihander’s influence was becoming too much for them to handle alone.

To address this problem, Zweihander needed a source of magical talent to help bolster their ranks-- and fast, as the other organizations were already working on plans for annihilating Zweihander. The solution came in the form of an intelligence report from England. The report contained detailed information about an experimental magical training program called “The Silver Dawn School of Etiquette,” which used Social Darwinist principles to help create magicians of great skill. The experiment had been abandoned in under a year, as the children used in the experiment were deemed “too unstable,” but nevertheless the experiment intrigued Von Zahringen.

By 1883, the first Kindergartens had been founded in several of Germany’s most prestigious military academies. The Kindergartens used extreme violence and brainwashing to get the most out of their students’ magical potential. While this first generation of Kindergartens was almost abandoned, an incident in which Dominic Von Waldstein executed his fellow students using some advanced magical techniques led both to his promotion to Templar and then Reverend as well as to the renewal of the program, which would continue to churn out students until Zweihander’s disbandment in 1918.

World War I
These conflicts culminated in Germany's entry into the First World War, which saw the destruction of Zweihander as a faction. Its remains continued to work within the new German government however and eventually consolidated themselves into the Karotechia.

Magisters

 * Lord Frederick IV of Baden

Reverends

 * Johann Reuchlinn
 * Carolin Heidenreich
 * Evelyn Hecke
 * Dietrich Stelzner
 * Emily Schiele
 * Friedrich von Junzt
 * Phuong Tien
 * Dominic von Waldstein