Faternity of Weavers - An Ancient Secret Society of Assassins

The Fraternity of Assassins is an ancient secret society of assassins whose weapons are Fate itself. The mission of the Fraternity is to preserve the balance of the world by eliminating those who are predicted by the "Loom of Fate" to disturb this balance and cause harm. The code of the Fraternity is "kill one, save a thousand."

Origin
Almost all mythologies and beliefs of the world contain images and symbols of weaving. The Primordial Great Weaver is the creator of the universe, weaving on his Loom of Life the fates of all that exists. All the goddessess of Fortune and Time are spinners and weavers. The Weaver is also the Cosmic Spider, who weaves the thread of life from his own substance, attaching to himself via umbilical cord all the world's people and intertwining them into the web of the world's designs. Thus the thread of the Great Weaver is the umbibilical cord that connects man with his Creator and his own fate, intertwining him into the design and fabric of Creation.

The warp represents a vertical view of Creation, connecting all levels of existence, the qualitative essence of things, the unchanging and the permanent, the male, the active and the straightforward, the light of the sun. The weft is horizontal; it is nature itself in time and space, the quantitative side, the accidental and the temporary, the ever-changing and the impermanent, the human condition, the material, the female and passive, the reflected light of the moon.

Symbols
The symbol of the Fraternity of Assassins is the Bee. To reflect that inner change, a newly inducted member of the Fraternity must allow their body to be tattooed. For the Fraternity, each tattoo has specific meaning and historical significance. These tattoos constitute a complex system of symbols with origins dating back centuries. Some commemorate important events or orders. To those who are able to decipher their meaning, a Weaver's tattoos reveal detailed and secret information. When a new member is initiated, they receive a special gun with the design of the tattoo on their hand. They must use that weapon to carry out the ritual assassinations that are ordered by the Loom of Fate.

All Fraternity bullets are engraved with ancient designs. The engraving on each bullet is not only symbolic of the Fraternity's heritage, it has a practical purpose as well. The lines etched in the bullet casings augment the ammunition's ballistic properties, affecting trajectory and speed. The engravings also serve as identification, so the craftsman who dispatched the message can be recognized.

Abilities and Training
Looking like very regular people outwardly, members of the Fraternity in reality possess great physical abilities, often hereditary. They are not superpeople, but they can expand the possibilities of their bodies at will. They do not study for years some special combat techniques or acrobatics - their main asset is the ability to mobilize the reserves of the organism at a crucial moment.

In a necessary instant, they can turn on a special mechanism, entering Battle (or Assassin) Mode - augmenting human physical abilities. To enter Battle Mode, they learn to awaken and mobilize the resources of the body at critical moments. Battle Mode is not a supernatural phenomenon. When they enter this mode, their heart rates increase to upwards of 400 beats per minute, sending an overload of adrenaline through their bloodstream. Being in Battle Mode, they possess an enhanced receptivity - allowing them to see and react a hundred times faster than regular people. Sight, hearing, and other senses are also amplified dramatically. They are able to pinpoint the sound of a gun-lock or a trigger amongst the noises of a city at great distances. They can see far, have very advanced peripheral vision, and are very receptive to movement.

In contrast to the Fraternity's weapons training, Battle Mode is not teachable. These abilities are hereditary. Although they can be honed, they cannot be acquired by an average person. To enter Battle Mode, they do not so much train to perform special stunts and techniques, but learn to awaken and to use the abilities of the organism. This includes surviving extreme obstacles and brutal ordeals, putting them on the edge of life and death, or forcing them to withstand pain, exhaustion.

These physiological changes also block typical pain responses, an effect that has both positive and negative consequences. Even in Battle Mode, based on the situation, Weavers could receive bodily or psychological harm of varying degrees, even as far death. In Battle Mode, a fighter can continue far past the threshold at which a normal body would shut down through loss of consciousness. This means that a fighter in Battle Mode is far more susceptible to permanent injury or even death.

Weaving in History
The thread of life, spun by the Almighty or Great Weaver, combines the two principles of creation. These two principles are counterbalances that keep the universe in harmony. They are known by many names and expressed in many ways: yin and yang, light and dark, male and female.

The Great Weaver spins the thread of life with a celestial distaff and spindle. Gestating the raw fiber until it is spun, the distaff manifests the female principle, while the rod-like spindle express the male.

As in nature, both distaff and spindle, female and male, also contain their own complements. A spinning distaff is built upon a physical staff, as the word "distaff" is built upon the masculine root "staff." Even today "distaff" in thoroughbred racing refers to the maternal lineage. Likewise, the spindle expresses the feminine by its rotation, collecting a sphere of thread on its vertical axis.

To appreciate how deeply masculine and feminine archetypes permeate history and culture, consider our system of mathematics, all of which is built on a binary foundation of 1s and 0s. In addition to expressing their mathematical utility, the two symbols themselves suggest the male and female principles of the phallus and the womb.

The dependencies between the masculine and the feminine are integral to the philosophy of the assassins. They call themselves the Fraternity of the Assassins, but they are more properly a brethren or blood alliance. Throughout history these legendary assassins were male and female, as they are today.

Since pen first touched papyrus, nearly every culture's folklore has included tales, myths, and figures related to weaving. One of the most ancient of these figures is the Egyptian goddess Neith, whose hieroglyph resembles a loom. More than 5,000 years ago, Egyptians considered Neith to be the deity who wove the world into being on her loom. The Egyptian roots for weaving and being are both nnt, from which Neith derives.

In Greek mythology, even Zeus feared the three Moirae (or Fates), who controlled the life and death of every mortal and immortal. The three Moirae were Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Clotho spun the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle; Lachesis measured the thread of life; and Atropos chose the manner of a person's death by cutting the thread of life.

The connection to the Fates of Greek mythology continues to this day via the French word moire, which is a type of textile, and the moire effect, an optical effect when two grids are woven together. Moire and other patterns are important to the Fraternity as messages can often be hidden and divined within the weave.

The Loom of Fate
Mathematics is built on two numerals--0 and 1. The symbols themselves suggest the complementary principles so often found in the world, such as good and evil. These numbers are mathematical stand-ins for the most eternal archetypes. Weaving also manifests the binary principles of 0 and 1 through the warp and the weft. In a perfectly woven fabric, the weft and warp create an alternating pattern resembling a checkerboard or perfect matrix of 0s and 1s. It is possible to view the Loom of Fate as the world's first computer, encoding language in the binary patterns it produced in a weave.

When a loom produces defects, such as a knot or missed stitch, the perfect matrix of 0s and 1s is disrupted. The decoding technique involves converting the weave into a long string of 0s and 1s, removing the "correct" regions of the sequence, and stringing the imperfections together. Rather than the symmetrical "...01010101..." of a perfect weave, the resultant string would resemble something like "...11010111...".

Since the Loom of Fate operated on a binary principle like a computer, the Fraternity developed a translation key sufficient to represent letters, numbers, symbols, and other characters. Today, the Fraternity of Assasins continues this legacy by deciphering names produces by the Loom of Fate. They are the names of people who Fate itself has decreed must be killed as a necessity to maintain balance in the world. This upholds the Fraternity of Assassins overarching tenant of maintaining stability in an unstable world.

Fraternity of Weavers