| Name: | Austere |
| Nicknames: | Clockworkers |
| Path: | any |
| Order: | Guardians of the Veil (left-handed) |
| Arcana: | Life, Matter |
The Austere are a left-handed Legacy that has forsaken their ties to the flesh, which they regard as weak and inefficient. They are among the most ruthless mages among the Visus Draconis, known to abduct mages who accumulate enough Paradox and to slay Sleepers that come too close to the Mysteries. To further exemplify their connection to mechanics and anachronistic technology, they specialize in the two Arcana of Matter and Life.
Description
The mage who founded the Legacy, a Guardian who is remembered as the Prime Mover, developed a metaphysics that envisioned the Tapestry of Creation and the Diamond Wheel as an immense and intricate clockwork mechanism. In his view, the Abyss was a misalignment of key elements in this Eternal Movement. To restore the smooth functioning of the Mechanism of Creation, he concluded, mages must become Austere: pitiless, free of sentiment, even machinelike in their outlook. They must reject all trappings of mercy and compassion, which obscure one’s ability to perceive and correct the flaws that prevent the smooth functioning of reality. Further contemplation — or derangement — convinced the Prime Mover that simply attempting a detached, mechanistic view of Creation was not enough. He and his inheritors would need to become machines in fact as well as in outlook. By replacing their body parts with superior mechanical analogs, the Austere would advance their detachment from their own humanity and increase their sympathetic connection to the Eternal Movement. The Austere are barely tolerated within the Order, but as long as they focus their task on those deemed unworthy by the order’s betters, they are tolerated.