Editing Order of Hermes (section)

===Major Houses===

- If the Order of Hermes are a real wizard's wizards, then '''House Bonisagus''' is a wizard's wizard's wizard. The wizardiest wizards to ever wizard. While the other Houses concern themselves with specific subsets of Hermetic lore or worldly interest, the Bonisagi work towards a unified and holistic understanding of the Art. They're predictably bookish, even by Hermetic standards and, depending on which Metaplot you use, currently reeling from the loss of all their ancient offworld libraries. 

- '''House Flambeau''',  by stark contrast, cut out a lot of the more esoteric intellectual detritus from their Art, focusing instead on its applications in conflict. That's a very circlejerky way of saying FIREBALL! FIREBALL! FIREBALL! They act as the military arm of the Tradition and have pretty much never been politically unpopular as a result. Despite this, they naturally have a reputation for being hot headed (pun intended) and alarmingly cavalier about Sleeper fatalities in their offensives.

- One of the younger Major 
Houses, '''House Fortunae''' are the Order's numerologists, focusing on gematria, divine numbers, all that jazz. Despite the fairly dorky sounding elevator pitch, they're some of the Tradition's smoother operators, excelling at finance and gambling. This proclivity is largely responsible for their meteoric rise in power, making them an invaluable, if sometimes suspicious, resource.

- '''House Quaesitori''' is the Order's judges and, with the destruction of House Janissary, its internal police too. As you can tell by the number of splinter cells, double agents, and secret traitors in the order, they aren't actually all that great at their job. They are devoted to the ideal of justice, bless their hearts, but still throw a hissy fit when the [[Euthanatos]] try to do their job for them.

- '''House Shaea''' are Truenamers. Wait no, come back! Not [[Truenamer|that kind of Truenamer]]! They are specialists in the essential names of things, being experts in spirit binding and the mysticism of the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the name was an essential component of the soul. They're also disproportionately female, due to their links with the cult of Isis. 

- '''House Tytalus''' focuses on the Awakened Will above all else, exalting hardship so as to train its adherents to better remake reality in their image. As you can imagine, this makes them come off as overbearingly machiavellian, even by Order standards. They were pretty much perpetually politically ascendant until a couple of their members decided to commit the ultimate betrayal of their ideology: subordinating their wills to some [[Vampire: The Masquerade|vampires]], kicking off the Second Massasa War and severely wounding the House's reputation, because apparently Hermetics never learn their fucking lesson. 

- The wondermakers and enchanters of the Order, poor '''House Verditius''' has a messy and tempestuous history. One of the founding Hermetic Houses, the Verditii provided much of the material wealth of the Order from their superlative craftsmanship. Unfortunate, it was also the incubator for the Hermetic heresy thay would grow into the Craftmasons, who went on to found the Order of Reason and, well... the rest is history. By the Industrial Revolution, the other Houses decided that their brand of "olde tyme master blacksmithe magicke" still resembled too much of their enemy's techniques for comfort and stripped them of their political power. It was only recently that the Lesser House emerged and combined with the shattered remnants of its spiritual successor, House Thig, that it regained its place among the Major Houses.