Faust Chronicles

Phoenix Foundation

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The Phoenix Foundation.

Founder/ Chairman: Geoffrey Du Vallier (Jeff Duvalle)
Headquarters: London, England
Area of Influence: International (the majority of the European Nations.)
Public Image: Private Organization dedicated to assisting in the preservation of historical monuments, aiding the victims of violent crime, and general relief operations

The Phoenix Foundation was originally founded as an Order of loosely aligned academics, nobles and disaffected clergy. Their stated goal was to find and remove from the world at large any item found to be imbued with magic not Divine in nature.

While not founded by or associated with the Church, the general consensus was that any magic that was not wielded or practiced in the name of the Almighty or for the greater good of society was too harmful and corrupting for the populous at large.

Since material objects were much easier to control than people or society, the focus was to remove these corrupting influences from the grasp of the covetous and society in general, destroying them if possible, secreting them away if not.

One of many such societies and orders, the Order of the Resplendant Phoenix Rising was moderately successful in its quest. In order to dilute the corrupting influence of the objects of power they collected and lower the risk of corruption, the Order spread their collections amongst many caches throughout the countries of the known world and kept their numbers relatively small. (European continent and surrounding islands.)

Like many of its contemporaries, the Order of the Phoenix enjoyed status and privilege for its members. However, as the decades and centuries passed, society’s focus turned from the mystical to the practical; from magic and religion to science and technology. As the belief waned so did the level of magic. As the objects of power began to lose their potency, many of these societies merged and failed until only the Order of the Phoenix remained.

No longer viewed with the respect they once enjoyed, the Order’s membership, small to begin with, began to dwindle. Knowing that a time would come when they would be needed, the members of the order shifted the public image of their order. Renaming themselves the Phoenix Foundation, the order focused it’s accumulated wealth into publics works, maintaining and rebuilding various churches and public buildings as well as setting up programs to help the underprivileged and victims of crimes.

Eventually around the early 20th century, the populous' beliefs began to shift again and the level of magic began to rise again. Sensing the re-awakening of their secret’s danger, the Foundation went on a membership drive to help guard and maintain the vaults and protect the general populous from that which had begun to awaken.

Unfortunately, one of the new recruits, Edgar Faust, proved susceptible to the newly awakened object's corruption, and quickly fell under the sway of a most diabolical object. In the dead of night, Faust began to spirit away the objects until the vault he guarded was nigh empty. Over 200 objects were stolen before Faust finally disappeared.

The search was long and hard, but finally Faust was found. The possessed scholar had opened a small curio shop and had sold the entire inventory of objects he’d appropriated from the foundation’s vault.

When finally found and confronted, Faust became violent. In the ensuing struggle, much of the shop’s interior was destroyed including the object that had corrupted young Faust. Both the shop owner and the Foundation member had died. Several oil lamps upset in the struggle caused a fire that decimated the shop and nearly caused another city wide conflagration.

Jeffery Duvalle, the reclusive chairman of the Phoenix foundation quickly and quietly bought the shop, intending to use the facility as a safe house and base of operations for his operatives. Unfortunately, the accumulated imprint of the objects that had been sold out of the shop made the place unusable without heavy warding and cleansing. It took nearly a century of sporadic work by the founder of the Order to properly rebuild and cleanse what only a few short months had imprinted upon the shop’s walls. During this time the little shop gained the dubious reputation of one of the top ten ‘haunted’ locations in London.

During the decades required to cleanse the shop, only a comparative handful of the objects were recovered. This was attributed to many reasons, chief among them the lack of manpower and the diminished belief and dedication amongst the new generation of foundation members, many of which had had no direct exposure to the horrors these objects could inflict. The nature of the ‘modern’ world also worked against those actively seeking the objects. The ease of travel and the depredations of two world wars also served to disrupt the active search for these objects.

With the founder’s renewed drive to protect society, the foundation again began to search for members. This time, rather than recruiting large numbers, each candidate was to be carefully selected. Rather than adhering to hidebound traditions and philosophies, the newest members of the Phoenix Foundation had one overarching priority, find the objects stolen by Edgar Faust, destroying them if possible, return them to the Foundation’s vaults if not.

Given the subsidized shop that Faust operated out of as a cover, the new members were left to their own devices, with the Foundation leaving all of it’s records and resources available while providing only minimal direction.