History of the Ordo

a history of the ordo dracul


I shall then make known to you something of the history of this man,
which has been ascertained for me.
So we then can discuss how we shall act, and can take our measure according.

The Ordo Dracul prides itself on thorough research,
careful application of the scientific method and strict
adherence to rules of secrecy. Throughout the covenant’s
existence, the members have tried to combat the Fog of
Eternity by carefully transcribing their experiences, their
breakthroughs and their thoughts, leaving those notes
in the hands of childer or capable assistants.
And yet, for all their best efforts, the historians of the
Ordo Dracul have many of the same problems that mortal
historians face. While the covenant might include
elders who remember the Order’s early nights, the effects
of Vitae on memory clouds even the sharpest mind.
Even the best notes do not fully compensate for differences
in culture, language and context, and this can lead
to faulty assumptions and outright falsehoods about the
covenant’s past membership and practices. The Ordo
Dracul makes its records available to all of its members,
but scholars grudgingly admit that much of what the
covenant holds as “history” requires a bit of faith.
This chapter provides a look into the covenant’s history,
but the reader should be warned: the further from
the present, the less verifiable the history.


The Ordo Dracul emerged as a potent and legitimate
covenant in the 19th century, but all Dragons agree that
the Order’s history stretches back four centuries before
that point, back to the time of Vlad III, Prince of
Wallachia. Also called Vlad Tepes (“the Impaler”), he
is better known to the world as “Dracula.”
Vlad Tepes was a monster long before he was a vampire.
Born in 1430 or 1431 in Transylvania (then part of Hungary,
now part of Romania), Dracula was the son of Vlad II,
also called Vlad Dracul. The name “Dracul” is translated
either as “devil” or “dragon” —Vlad II was inducted into a
society called the Order of the Dragon in Nuremburg during
that same year. Vlad Dracul’s Order of the Dragon,
founded in 1418 by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg,
listed “fighting infidels” among its various goals, and bore
no resemblance in ideology to the vampire covenant that
Dracula would found more than a century later.
Vlad Dracula ruled Wallachia during three different
periods: in 1448, from 1456 to 1462 and briefly in 1476.
About his first reign we know little, as it lasted for only
a few months and came to an end due to the region’s
turbulent politics. What most of the world knows of the
historical Dracula comes from his second reign.




One of Dracula’s first official acts as prince was to murder
most of the boyar (noble) class of the region. One
famous story states that he gathered 500 of these nobles
together and asked how many princes’ reigns they had
survived. Some had survived as many as 50, but even the
younger men had seen seven princes come and go. Dracula
then had most (or all, depending on which version of the
story one hears) slain, claiming that they had seen so many
reigns because they caused the deaths of the princes with
their own politicking. He was probably referring specifically
to the deaths of his father Vlad II and brother Mircea,
who had been betrayed and assassinated in 1447.
Other tales of Dracula’s cruelty abound, and members
of the Ordo Dracul are quick to point out that the worst
excesses of brutality attached to his name were committed
long before his death and return as a vampire. However,
Dragons do mention that Dracula was a unique ruler
in other, more benign ways as well. When a noble was
imprisoned or executed for a crime, it was traditional for
the ruler to give the noble’s lands and goods to a member
of his family. Dracula, however, often gave such lands to
someone entirely new, sometimes even someone from the
peasant class, and in this manner created a new nobility
that owed its existence to him. His personal police force
followed similar lines — most of these men were battlefield
heroes whom Dracula had respected and granted status.
Vlad Tepes was a brutal man, true, but he knew how
to inspire loyalty both with and despite that brutality.

Some stories accuse Dracula of being the “son of the
Devil” or otherwise linked to the infernal or supernatural
during his mortal lifetime. Pursuit of proof of these
stories is popular among neonate members of the Ordo
Dracul, who know that a quick route to status in the
covenant (in addition learning the Coils) lies in discovering
details about Dracula’s life and Requiem that
have heretofore eluded mortal and Kindred historians.
Such enthusiasts usually run into dead ends, with two
notable exceptions.in the late 1930s. The tale, scribed by a Turkish chronicler
in Egrigoz, in Asia Minor, speaks of a “young man
with light skin, but dark eyes, and his brother, who at
first blush appeared to be a woman. I watched them together,
and the older one said to the younger, ‘I have
remained pure and kept my mind and heart free of these
infidels’ rantings, while you are one short step from bending
knee to their God. But know this: Nightly our brother
and father visit me, and tell me of dark and terrible things
in my future. I shall see the day when the unconquerable
shall fall and the circle is broken, but you shall die
upon broken promises and in great agony.’”
This tale seems to refer to the Invictus (“the Unconquerable”)
and the Circle of the Crone (“the Circle”), and
as the Rites of the Dragon indicate, Dracula would later have
dealings with both covenants, though of course they did
not suffer any kind of defeat at his hands. More interesting
is the reference to Dracula’s father and brother visiting him
and telling him of the future. While it’s possible that Dracula
was simply lying to his brother in order to frighten or shame
him, the fact remains that Radu the Handsome did indeed
die of a “broken promise.” According to the Rites of the
Dragon, Dracula impaled his brother upon a stake after
promising, falsely, to Embrace him once he died.
The second piece of evidence linking Dracula to the
supernatural, indeed to the Kindred, while he was mortal
comes from an extremely dubious source. This incident
supposedly took place in 1911. A Kindred historian
of the Libitinarius bloodline attended her sire, along
with two other observers of different clans, while the
sire lay in torpor, recording his fevered dreams through
the use of Auspex. One of them later stated that “she
[the historian] began to convulse, her nose and eyes leaking
profuse amounts of blood so dark it resembled pitch
in the dim light. As she did so, her hand continued to
work upon the page, but instead of writing fragmented
sentences culled from her torpid sire’s mind, she wrote
in clear, precise script, albeit in a language with which I
was unfamiliar. At the end of the script was a signature
that filled me with dread: DRAKULYA, A.D. 1459.”
What the “Libitinarian script,” as it is known among the
Dragons, actually said was never revealed. All four Kindred
— the sire, the childe and the two observers — perished in a
fire later that year, and the script itself vanished. Rumor has
it that the Kogaion of an unknown city has part or all of it in
her possession. If this is true, surely some members of the
Libitinarius bloodline would give much to obtain it.