Order of the Weal
The Order of the Weal was a secret counter-intelligence service and instrument of state power founded by the Imperator to protect the common good of the Homeworld in anticipation of the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Newtons Sleep) The Imperator put Chatelaine Thessalia, a fellow member of House Dvora and Chatelaine of House Ixion, in charge of the Order. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Initiates to the Order were deprogrammed, taught to reject what they saw as the Great Houses' spurious and ideological myths, such as the Yssgaroth and the anchoring of the thread, in favour of their own direct experiences. The Order may have generated and planted false histories and counter-myths to observe the vectors of information among the Houses, beginning a lasting age of paranoia on the Homeworld. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Despite being founded by the Imperator, the Order identified interventionism as the greatest threat to the Homeworld. The Order was instrumental in exposing him to the ruling Houses, who chased him off the Homeworld and (eventually) executed him; later, they mainly targeted those interventionists who would later become the Celestis. However, as the War in Heaven came closer, the Order began working to track and isolate the Homeworld's future enemy. They may have also helped create the babels in preparation for an invasion, and they used all their timeships for monitoring Violent Unknown Events such as the one at Zo la Domini. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
After Thessalia's disappearance in a VUE on the frontier in time, the Order never found another effective leader. It was finally destroyed four hundred years before the War in Heaven. Many Weal agents were recruited by groups like Faction Paradox. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | edit source]
"Order of the Weal" is a punny reference to the works of Clive Barker: The Book of the War interprets "weal" as meaning "that which is best" (as in "common weal"), which matches its description of the Order's mission; however, with the other meaning of "weal" – a type of physical injury – a parallel is revealed with the Order of the Gash from the Hellraiser franchise. Notably, The Book of the War's Eremites are a clearer homage to the Cenobites, Barker's name for members of the Order of the Gash.
