Missionaries

From Circle Of The Crone

The past few decades have seen the Circle of the Crone take up dedicated missionary work, where the growth of its membership was once simply one more responsibility on the back of every coterie and cult in the covenant. This isn't to say that the covenant placed a low value on the expansion of its ranks, but it does demonstrate the sort of operational trends that can occur when covenant elders get the word out.

Traditionally, the Lancea Sanctum has played the role of the gospel-barking missionary, and the Circle of the Crone played the inverted role, keeping the faith and tending it like a field. Now that's changing. The Circle is actively drumming up new membership with coteries of proactive spiritual advisors. Instead of spreading like a net beneath the streets to catch the chaff from the other covenants, the Circle is now going out and plucking new converts from the tree.

In some domains, the role of the Circle missionary is more like the role of an explorer. The covenant doesn't follow any mortal model of missionary work, so when a Circle coterie seeks to expand its constituency, it doesn't necessarily make the fact known by thumping its holy text and building a temple. Instead, Circle missionaries monitor the attitudes of the local vampire and mortal populations and estimate the kind of Acolytes in the area and the quantity that could be culled from both bodies. When the coterie's confident in its assessment, it either gets to work extending and refining covenant territory in the area, or it goes back to existing covenant territory and seeks out a coterie that's a good match for the local population. Even when the Circle overtly pursues new converts, its missionary work is subtler than its ceremonial practices.

Low-ranking coteries don't know what's inspiring the new missionary work, but many assume it's the result of the covenant's recent study of the Lancea Sanctum. If the vampiric population as a whole is losing interest in the strict and penitent ways of the Sanctified, then perhaps Kindred society is approaching a tipping point. Now is the time to find out, by gathering as many vampires around the Crone as possible by taking advantage of the Lancea Sanctum's cracking flagstones and convincing casual allies to solidify their relationships.

-- Coteries, pg 79