Purge Of The Faithless

All these advances had a price. My old political allies in the clann fell away from me. I think to many of them it wasn’t so much that they didn’t like the direction I was taking the clann in, it was just that I was now the establishment to be rallied against. Meetings were long and drawn out. It was not the most pleasant place to be as there was more debate than cooperation. A consistent annoyance (even at the good meetings) were those members who always wanted to leave early to go role play. This always seemed to happen just as we would start to get something constructive done. Suggestions for changes that were not researched or thought out were summarily dismissed in a quick manner which bruised a lot of egos. Adding to this cut throat climate was my complete intolerance of members failing to live up to there word. I publicly chewed out those who had more excuses than constructive input. ( I think I developed some kind of complex from the MSR days.)

But perhaps the single most damaging thing that took place was the enactment of a particular law know as "The Vortigern Clause". Many new members that had come to the clann were not of Celtic persona but Germanic. The Vortigern Clause was an attempt to allow other persona types to be adopted into the clann and yet assure the goal of Celtic re-enactment in a majority rules forum. In other words… if it ever happened that there was one more German in the clann then Celt… it didn’t mean that we would suddenly become a Germanic tribe with Germanic customs. The name of this law refers to an incident in history that we thought was a metaphor of our situation. Vortigern was a Celtic king of Britain that had invited Saxon mercenaries into his domain to help combat his enemies, these mercenaries treacherously rose up and killed many Celtic nobles at what was supposed to be an unarmed "peace conference". This incident in history is commonly referred to as "the night of the long knives".

While the new members understood and accepted this clause, this law served to anger the old Germanic element of the clan. Their protest of this law aroused the suspicion of the Celts in the clann and only justified in their minds the enactment of it. This, fueled with constant personality clashes, alienated the old Germanic element. Many attempts were made to bring them back into the fold and resolve personality issues, but their way of dealing with it was to ignore and avoid. This only worsened the situation as they showed up for events to enjoy the fun but skipped out on the grueling meetings to plan them. Their avoidance was interpreted as an insult to the members who had offered in good faith to sit down and resolve the issues that left a such a noticeable blot on morale. Trelvis, Otto, and Helga’s membership was revoked by a vote of the clan. Though we knew we would not be seeing Rayna (Trelvis’ girlfriend) anymore, her membership was not revoked as she had always been a positive asset to the clann and was considered a victim of circumstance. Conn resigned his membership to be with his comrades.