The Rex Nemorensis, or Kings of the Grove, are the male fellowship keeping alive the sacred traditions of the Skyfathers and Dark Lords as well as that of the Earth Mothers, practicing men's magic and teaching their own lore.Members are ranked as Maidens, Mothers and Crones according to both age and mystical knowledge (Arete), and focus on healing and fertility magic, fate weaving, mystic handcrafts, and the arts of illusion and prophecy. The Deas Matri, or Mother Goddesses, are the female fellowship devoted to the Great Mother Goddess in all her forms, preservers of sacred women's magic and knowledge.Some go so far as to consider themselves the only "true" Verbena and inheritors of the Wyck. They are usually looked upon as the leaders of the Tradition - and often present themselves as such - and are some of the most conservative in their outlook and practices. The Gardeners of the Tree are the sturdy trunk of the Tradition, the "mainstream" Verbena from as far back as when Nightshade and William Groth founded the formal Tradition, keepers of the Old Ways and sacred rituals (often those of Celtic, Germanic, Greco-Roman or Slavic origins), preservers of ancient sites, mystic bloodlines and natural purity. My own take is that these four factions are seen as symbolic parts of the Tree of Life, of which each Verbena is a "sacred branch" (that's what verbena means in Latin), and much like the revised Akashic factions, have various subgroups. I never actually read the revised Verbena book, so I have no idea what it, or M20, have to say about it. However, I've never been able to find any actual confirmation of this theory one way or the other.Īnyway, the revised core book did away with (or at least severely downplayed) the idea of the factions being Essence based. Allegedly, negative reactions to the Akashic Brotherhood book, the last one to come out before Second Edition, caused this idea to be scrapped, and so when Celestial Chorus and Cult of Ecstasy finally came out a bit later, there were just a bunch of small factions instead of four big ones.
Hence, the four Verbena factions and the pre-Revised four Akashic Brotherhood groups (Orange Robes, Blue Skins, etc.). There used to be a theory that the original idea in First Edition was that all of the Traditions except for the new "technomancer" Virtual Adepts and Sons of Ether (and maybe the Order of Hermes) were each going to have just four internal factions based on the four Avatar Essences.