This began as one of my 'Fall' posts about 'Cults of 5thCentury Rome, which I rapidly discovered I could not write as I don't actuallyknow anything about 5th Century Rome, and then later because I realised I found8th Century Rome more interesting. So instead this is more of an "open post",discussing some of the possibilities for a game or story set in Rome during itsnadir, and asking the readers if anyone out there actually knows anything aboutthis period in history.

DREAM OF A DARK DETECTIVE The population graph of Rome over history tells the storybetter than I could;

an extremely, even unnaturally for the time, denseand highly populous city declining into a smallish town, leaving its stones andtenements to moulder.

Based purely on population it stays this way through theentire middle ages, only leaping into action again as we approach the modernera.

But even during this Nadir there was quite a lot going onin Rome. It was still the seat of the Western Christian Church, (some of thetime), and while its population was relatively small, it neverdisappeared.

I've always loved this liminal period of Europeanhistory, especially notable in Britian, and I couldn't stop thinking of somekind of ancient detective story set in fallen Rome, of a Knight or Investigatorsent out into the grass-filled ruins and down into the Crypts to deal with thefreaks and oddities which, at least theoretically, might have beenhanging out there.

It is a lot of very dense, overgrown, largely empty,ruined and available property. Really a great place to set up shop if you are acult or criminal gang, so much that you might almost want to start a cult justso you could hang out in the ruins of Rome, being weird.

The Silentiary The Silentiary, ("Silentiarius, silentiarios), was aByzantine Court post. Originally it seems to have been a job of keeping all thenobles and petitioners in the Imperial court in order, and then later wastransformed into an honorific of its own.

I learned of the role through the strange name of"John the Silentiary" a Byzantine court agent who played someimportant role in the fate of Rome in the mid 8th century.

It’s a general idea of mine to that to create aDetective, first build a world of social layers, factions, racial groups,ideals and religions, and when you look down through the stacked Venn diagramof all these different groups, find the part where as many overlap as possible,and make your Detective right there, stuck in the middle of everything.Make sure they have enough putative authority to walk into the homes of richand poor, but nowhere near enough to guarantee they can get what they want.They need a ritual, neutral role, something socially protected, but not onethat can afford its own range of patronage.

The Silentiary is a curious ritual role from a foreigncourt, one of the "Bearded Classes", (i.e. not a eunuch), though itcould be amongst the lowest official roles, and could be awarded honour-ily,presumably for notable or useful deeds. They seem to make a perfect detective,a Silentiary of the Ruins, or Silentium Ruinarum.

But what cults or mysteries will they be investigating?Here things get difficult! If we assume a period for the Detective Storiesaround the middle part of the 8th Century, before Byzantium is driven out ofItaly by the Lombards, it might be a little like this;

Some ideas for cults; > Local Powers Islam - A surprisingly big chunk of southern France isunder Islamic control up until the mid 8thC. What could be more Lovecraftianfor a Catholic Roman Italian than sneaking through the ruins and discovering...Secret Muslims!

Germanic Wotanism - At the same time the Lombards arecurrently ruling northern Italy, and I think are still Germanic Pagans. TheFranks are Christianised, but how Christian are they really? There must be somehold outs and crypto-Wotanists. Native post-classical Pagnism is one thing butwhat if the Goatherds find a Blood Eagle in the Temple of Jupiter. SecretGermans? Or is someone trying to throw you off the scent.

Christian Cults - The Heresies There are SO MANY fragments of early Christianity thatget banned or ejected; Arianism, Docetism, Ebionites, Gnosticism, Marcionism,Montanism, Trinitarianism. I barely know a damn thing about any of them.

"Sethian - Belief that the snake in the Garden ofEden (Satan) was an agent of the true God and brought knowledge of truth to manvia the fall of man."

"Ophites - Belief that the serpent who tempted Adamand Eve was a hero and that the God who forbade Adam and Eve to eat from thetree of knowledge is the enemy."

Finding secret heretical Christians lacks theElevator-Pitch high concept energy of secret Muslims but is a lot more likelyand probably just as upsetting for the authorities of the time.

There were also "The Cults of the Martyrs" and"The Cults of the Saints", though I know nothing about either ofthese or if they even match my requirements for cults.

Surviving Roman PaganismJulian the Apostate died in 363, so a looong time agorelative to our story, but who knows, maybe some remnants of the Senatorialclasses, or one of the families of Rome, or some shady Bishop, or just localpeople, maintain some form of Classical Paganism. The most likely are theactual Gods of Rome, (there must be statues about), Isis Worship and theMythratic Cults, who, tbh, would really love hanging out in mysterious ruins.

Byzantine Crypto-Paganism The Empire still stands after all, and the great textsand ancient knowledge of Rome still exists, just not here.

An interesting thing about Byzantine Crypto-Paganism ishow modern it feels. Courtiers and Bishop are being accused ofCrypto-Paganism in 7th Century Byzantium and 600 years after that, GemistosPlethon writes a book recommending areturn to some form of Platonism.

Instead of being a weird superstition, here the moral andphilosophical challenge is coming from within the texts themselves. You can'tjust un-write Plato and it looks like there was some kind of weird undercurrentin Byzantine thought that maybe questioned this whole Christianity thing andwas a bit too interested in the Old Books.

Secret Platonists in the ruins! A plot of intellectualelites driven by a search for truth.

Satanism It’s a classic for a reason. I think even the medievalidea of Satan hadn't taken shape by the 8thC but a belief in the Devil and inMagical Powers and Demonology and Witchcraft more generally kind of tugs alongin the undertow of Christianity by the middle middle ages, driven by peoplelike Clerks, Alchemists and overeducated oddities.

Our Silentium could run into the first hot new actualSatanists! Imagine being the first guys to work that one out!

And of course, not to forget the European Classic;

Jews Because it wouldn’t be a European conspiracy story ifthere weren’t Jews in the tunnels.

Queen Mab's Palace!
The Kickstarter is still running and we are heading for a painted cover!