Ermes Om'Ta [English]

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ERMES OM'TA o LA VENDETTA DI ERMES

Typology: Secret cult

Name of the cult: Ermes Om'ta

Etymology: The word Om'ta comes from Ancient Hornian (the language that was once spoken on the Horn Blu Island) and it means "vengeance". Ermes is the name of the lord that they serve, or that they believe to serve, and that, potentially, might have been the most powerful among dragons, or maybe the one that has abused the most of his power.


Ermes Siegader To'Rvak clearly has been one of the greatest, and most infamous, dragons of history.
After his departure in the Great Battle of the Temple, some of his human servants set themselves the task of completing their great lord's work. They could be seen as authentic fanatics, suitors that yearned to become dragoneers linked to the Evil One (this is the nickname they have, not too imaginatively, to Ermers), and who, unable to realize their power fantasy, tied themselves to each other instead in a sort of "fanclub" that had initially very little impact on the society of that time, as it wasn't really clear what was "the great lord's work" that had to be completed. The founder of the Ermes Om'ta was Mattheus Braunson, former Satanist fanatic, that identified in the great dark dragon's figure an incarnation of evil, and decided to serve him, unable to comprehend that Ermes was already dead. He also wrote the first "great book" of rules, a literary work halfway between grimoire and constitutional order, called "The Will of the Dark One"; it was adopted as if it was a Sacred Bible from other groups other than the Ermetians themselves.
The cult grew, mostly thanks to the organization of tournaments and other recreational activities that convinced people to join as if it was just an  unusual "club" in which was mandatory wearing dark tunics and following strange, but funny rules.
The great number of people present in the cult hid its "dark core" that occupied themselves with the study of arcane subjects and magic arts such a necromancy, with the purpose of bringing Ermes back to life. Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much they could do: death is the ultimate frontier of this existence and nobody can reverse it, and they, too, couldn't achieve their goal, but they managed to safely hide away Ermes' body anyway, without desisting in their purpose to find, even in a distant future, a remedy to death herself.
Interestingly enough, indeed, the corpse of the big, black dragon did not decompose as one could expect: it remained fresh as if he had just fallen, just unmoving, cold, silent.
 
Years passed and the Ermetians, discouraged but not defeated, resolved to replace Ermes instead of trying to reanimate him, and they begun sabotaging the Empire in any way possible, setting fire to the fields, killing farmers, creating and awakening to life small sized monsters to unleash in the city streets.
The cult also started operating a stricter selection among its followers, partially because many of them distanced themselves of their own will from what wasn't looking like such a fun place anymore, and partially because it was now necessary for the Ermetians to count among them skilled individuals: magic users and warriors were preferred, but wealthy fianciers weren't disdained.
Matthew Braunson had been dead for some time when the Ermetians stupidly their first public declaration regardin their true intentions, when they were recognized as guilty of the "pubblic accidents" happened in the last seven years and, as such, prosecuted by law.
Ermetians thus became outlaws, and had to find reserved places for their assembles.
Their numbers grew to excess by recruiting misfits and crazy maniacs of conquest plotting in the dark, until they were really able to launch an attack.
Being unable to bring Ermes back to life, they decided to create one ex-novo, a creature half dragon and half man (since they noticed that, for some unknown reason, it was impossible to replicate a complete dragon), that they named “Ermes Junior”, with a mixture of genetic engineering and dark magic.
The new creatur had almost nothing of the original Ermes' majesty, as he was just a litte bigger than a horse, with a shorter neck and a vaguely anthropomorphic physiognomy, but he had the power hunger of his "parent", and was instructed to become lord of the world to the point that he considered any creature, even dragons, below him.
Satisfied by this, the Ermetians slyly attacked the Empire again through a series of small rebellious acts at first, then they decided to kill the new dragoneers, kidnapping and executing them one after the ofter, in front of a modest audience.
 
They convinced one of the dragoneers, Mark McWoodland, to side with them: he accepted, perhaps believing that was his destiny since the egg laid centuries before by the great Ermes had hatched for him, and from it had been born an hatchling named "Shadow".
There were great celebrations among the Ermetians for the birth of the rightful heir of Ermes, and even Ermes Junior had been happy of the news, despite the opinion of many that he was simply faking it and waiting for the right moment to kill the heir and replace him. This, however, never happened: Ermes Junior took, quite literally, the newborn Shadow under his protective wing, and he started to train him  in "doing what the dragons do": skills like spitting fire, flying, and other activities typical of their species.
Mark McWoodland, however, wasn't happy of how things were going: the Ermetians had promised him power and were not keeping their word; they were just waiting in the shaodws for the little dragon to grow, and for Ermes Junior to have some sort of illumination that allowed him to conquer the world, and all of it seemed to Mark as very daring and much unprofessional.
Mark disappeared, fleeing on the mainland together with his dragon after leaving behing the guards, and allowing the escape of princess Ollia, who had been hostage of the Ermes Om'Ta for years now.
For over two years Mark was impossible to find: he had fled America, managing somehow to go over the barrier that prevented people from abandoning the island of Horn Blu. Then, incredibly, he returned. 
Instead of getting angry at them, Ermes Junior welcome them with open arms and focused with even greater zeal on the education of the little dragon, which hadn't grown much in those two years and, opposed to his legendary and cruel father, showed a sweet and submissive disposition.
Shadow quickly grew on the island, becoming robust and aggressive, but he had such enthusiasm that one morning he left the hideout in which he had been training safely to attack on his own a small convoy that was escorting one the royal messengers. He was wounded in the scuffle and had to flee by foot, with aching wings.
His dragoneer, Mark, was enraged by this, and argued severely with Ermes Junior, accusing him of being careless with the most precious creature in the world, but Ermes Junior was stronger and wounded him to show him his superiority; he then ordered for Mark and Shadow to be removed from the Ermes Om'Ta's lair unil those hot heads hadn't sufficiently cooled out.
Mark e Shadow were forced under a probation of sorts for some time, but unsatisfaction was brewing in them, and they started cultivating the idea of running away from what was rapidly becoming a cage to them, a brake for their power.
Ermes Junior called them back to him around three months later, and entrusted them with the mission to attack a small city.
Ermes e Mark obeyed, finally able to let out their anger, and threw themselves into battle: without receiving so much as a scratch, they killed twelve of the most precious knights of the kingdom, beheaded their steeds and exposed their harnessed heads on the boundary walls. It's been said that Shadow's ferocity was such that whoever had seen him that day couldn't help but believe that the great Ermes had returned.
Mark, unsated, scouted the surrounding fields to find the fugitives and tore them to shreds, while Shadow, with blood-soiled talons, begun asking himself if that was really the right thing to do, even if he had been raised exactly for this purpose. Killing was power, but was it right to kill?
When Mark came back Shadow shared with him his thoughts, but he didn't convince him immediately: they stayed under the control of the Ermetians, as their most powerful weapon, for seven more months.

Ermes Junior, which had grown even more in the meanwhile, was not satisfied by the work of his dragoneer, despite him being bloodthirsty enough to secure the Ermetians more power than they ever had, and he scolded him, telling him he wasn't giving enough to the cult, that he had to "free the darkness that was in him".
Mark e Shadow ran away once again, followed by half of the Ermetian guard, e did exactly what Ermes Junior had asked of them: they killed remorselessly those men who wanted to bring them back (although legend says that Mark didn't directly kill any of them, rather making them fall prey to a series of traps), arranged them on the ground in a circle, and wrote with their blood "No, idiot, no" at the center of said circle.
Ermes Junior, furious, knew he had gone too far, but he also knew that he had to off Mark and his dragon before Shadow could reach adulthood.
Shadow e Mark, far from the Ermetians' hideout, lived in the countryside, hunting wild animals. They were hunting werewolves in particular, since after some of them had attacked Mark in his sleep and would have killed him, hadn't been for the timely intervention of the dragon that had chased the beasts away purely thanks to his physical strentgth.
In the meanwhile, Ermes Junior had dedicated himself completely to experimenting with genetics and dark magic to the purpose of creating an army of hybrids, the only thing that could stand up to those mad dragon and dragoneer, but a genius of evil doesn't always reach his impossible goals... and he didn't: he only obtained miserable avi-human hybrids able to fly, lighter and weaker than common humans; the other experiments died even before reaching full formation, and there was de facto no steps forward in the creation of a superhuman army.
An albino giant was then sent to find Ermes and Mark and convince them to go back, but in that moment the Black Knight, as Mark had been nicknamed at the time, had decided to join the cause of the Empire and was protected by other fellow dragoneers.
At the same time Aureo was born, a white dragon, thing that the Ermetians interpreted as a bad omen and the Empire as the light of a bright hope; at birth the little dragon immediately bonded with his dragoneer, Nadia, an Italian girl that wasn't even eighteen years old yet.
The albino giant found the girl and the white dragon, but couldn't attack them: they were escorted by Imperial soldiers, other than Mark and Shadow, who had found themselves in the role of nannies for those young ones.
The albino tried to persuade Mark to go away with him during the night time, but he instead had to flee when the man, very calmly, declared his will to cut off the albino's head and that of every single Ermetian that crossed his path.
Aftera a series of scuffles, the Ermetians retired almost completely,  waiting for better times to come, and keeping on their meticolous sabotage work.

The legendary Ermes awakened in the year 2006, proving to the world that he hadn't been dead at all, shocking in equal measure his enemis and the Ermetians, that weren't ready to welcome with all the honors their master "reborn", and, caught in a sort of frenzy, some followers appeared before him, bringing random gifts and apologizing obsessively.
Ermes didn't even understand who those people were suppose to be, or what they wanted from him, but the moment he understood he got enraged: what they were doing was not only lacking in noble intent, but also lacking sense. He could get over their vileness, but he had never asked all of this from them! And they had also been incapable of doing what they set out to do: they didn't give Ermes the world upon his awakening, they had merely brought him rubbish and hollow words.
So Ermes killed and devoured all of them except one, the young Tantalo, which was tasked with bringing back to his cult mates a message: the Lord of Hell is alive, and he doesn't love us. Instead, he will exterminate us all.
The Ermes Om'Ta gradually lost all of the power it had gained with difficulty, Ermes Junior was killed by the young white dragon Aureo, and today, nothing is known of them all.



Trivia:

• All the Ermetians had to tattoo on themselves at least a variant of the cult's symbol, a black dragon surrounded by two circles and surmounted by six. In many of the variants, the tattoo also includes the word “Om'Ta”.
• The typical uniform of the Ermetians is a simple red-rimmed robe, equipped with an hood. It's required of the major representatives that they don't wear anything underneath it; an exception could be made for one single item of underwear, but only if it's black in color.
• The Ermetians boasted about being the culprits behind the extinction fo the dodo, but nobody knows for certain if this information is true or not.
• The original book of rules of the Ermetians, “The Will of the Dark One”, declared “none of us can love a woman”, perhaps intended by the writer as an invitation to practice chastity, but expressed and understood badly enough that the quantity of homosexual relationship inside the cult forced the council to delete this rule, without putting limits to the followers' relationships.
• One of the most recent book of rules of the Ermes Om'Ta said explicitly that falling in love with the Dark Knight, Mark McWoodland, is a crime worth of the death penalty.

One of the tattoos that were typical of the Ermetians.

 

 
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