Of course, you may have heard that we were broken down and exposed by the Magisterium Veritatis a few centuries after the First Great Maelstrom, and subsequent founding of the Empire. It is entirely true... at least, so far as they needed to know, anyway. Their "victory" was more of a feint on our part than anything else.

That episode, which we like to call The Great Rout, started when the Magisterium became rightfully suspicious at the way things were going in Stygia. People would suddenly change their minds on important matters, claiming a change of heart or mind or, sometimes, unable to say why at all. Programmed individuals would do the craziest things, like try to assassinate a Deathlord, and then have no idea why, either. For a few years, it was not an uncommon thing for many people to behave very, very strangely...

Now, you should recall from your official history that the Magisterium Veritatis were Charon's elite watchmen, created to enforce the Proclamation of Reason. What you might not have known was that their senior and founding members were old, turncoat Ferrymen - the ones who had not turned their backs on Charon when he appointed himself Emperor. They were, like their loyal brethren, not only resistant to our methods, but very well-schooled in recognizing them.

So it did not take them long at all to realize that the Society of Desire was behind this. By carefully following the trails from act to initiation, they were able to track us. And by spending quite some time just watching, there in the shadows, they were able to see just how much of the Empire we controlled.

To say that this scared them was an understatement. I do not mean to brag, but it is safe to say that a perhaps half of everything that happened on the Isle of Sorrows - and, then, the Empire itself - had our hand in it somewhere. We even had one of the Senators... excuse me, I forget. They were Deathlords then.

Yes. One of the Deathlords was a Client. That was how far we had gone.

So you could understand that Charon was livid when the Magisterium Veritatis brought their evidence before him. The Emperor bade them to move without let or hindrance, and not stop until our entire network had been smashed underfoot and our leaders broken on Nhudri's forge.

And so they did! I must give them high marks for their zeal. They rousted every last one of us they could find and went to work trying to undo the damage they had done. They even found the Center of the Wheel - all eight members of it - and had them tortured for hours, just to get every last scrap of information out of them...

Oh, yes, I see your confusion. Have no fear - this all makes sense in the end.

After their showtrial, the Center of the Wheel were paraded down the Way of Iron and fed to Kyklops, there to be made into whatever took Lord Nhudri's fancy that day. Bricks. Swords. Maybe a helm or two. Charon sat triumphant on his throne, satisfied that justice had been done, and the Magisterium lapped up his praise like stale manna from a far-off, false Heaven...

Of course it was all misdirection. How could we be here, otherwise?

We spent more than two centuries constructing a false network of dupes, patsies and fakes. All of these Society Members in name only were controlled from the shadows without ever once seeing their masters. Mnemoi... well, they were the Society of Memory, then... I think...

Well, it matters little. Memory-shapers we had bent to our will implanted false memories into those ones, just as we changed their desires to fit those new remembrances.

And then, we needed only arrange the sloppy incidents. This ensured that their web was seen. We even gave the Magisterium the directions to find the Center of Wheel, all cackling in glee at how evil they were... the melodrama was a bit much, I think, but it served its purpose well.

And while the Magisterium was busy rousting dupes and programmed patsies from their boltholes, the real event was happening all the way across the Isle of Sorrows. A number of upstanding members of the various Societies, worried that the deals that their lessers had made were about to come crashing down about them, desired to meet with those of us who remained. And this time, they, so desperate to hold onto their power, were willing to meet with us in person, rather than sending lackeys.

These fools became Clients, in the true sense of the word. Some of these Clients have been with us for the ages since. And they have been very, very useful... as we will get to, later...

So Charon gained nothing but a wonderful show of Imperial might, whereas we gained everything that we have enjoyed to this day. The Clients were merely the... what do you say these days, the icing on the cake? Yes. The icing on the cake.

The best thing we gained was a terrible reputation. Before the Great Rout, we were looked upon as another Society with something to sell. Any Society's Arcanos could be used for good or ill, depending on the temperament of the individual who used it. You should see what some of the Sandmen and Songbirds do for coin...

But we made ourselves look utterly and totally evil. And this not only made us seem more frightful than we truly are, but made our own Arcanos seem to be corrupt in and of itself. This meant that no one in their right mind sought out instruction in it. So we were no longer besieged with requests to share what we knew with our "equals" in the other Societies. And, as a result, the Great Secret was preserved.

Our disgrace also set us apart from those Societies. They did insist on calling us a Guild when the names all changed, though. And we did go along with it - misdirection, again - but only as it served our ends. We remained in the shadows, where they were happy to have us be, and that suited us just fine.

But one of the best things that our criminalization did was to make what we did three times as valuable. This was due both to its rarity and our seeming scarcity. Before we were disgraced, what we did was regulated and bound to certain measures. But afterwards, we could ask whatever we wanted, and - as it was illegal to deal with the "remnants" of our Society - no one could complain if we charged too much.