The House of Sage

The House of Sage is the House of the Toreador Elder Octavius Sage and his descendents. Based in Milan, Italy, it is one of the oldest and most prestigious of Toreador Houses, considered rivaled only by the Milanese House of Augustine and the Parisian House of Villon.

The House is notable for being extremely large as vampiric lineages go, with sixty-six members in its first three generations descended from Octavius and an even larger brood of younger descendents beyond. It is also fiercely loyal to the Camarilla, with its members carefully chosen and thoroughly programmed with the tenets of the sect from well before their Release or even Embrace. Any members of the House who attempt nonconformity are severely punished until they are drawn back in line, up to and including being executed if they simply will not behave, but this is rare; after all, the House's patriarch is well-known for being a ruthless "re-educator", and his childer and their childer learn those skills early in their existence.

The House skews heavily Italian and is mostly male, although the further away a generation is from the original founder, the more likely it is to be more diverse. Mortals being considered for membership must be superlative musicians, preferably in the vocal arts although rare exceptions are made for composers or instrumentalists, and must also be considered physically perfect. The result is a House entirely populated by what most Elder Toreador would consider only the pinnacle of achievement. Members of the House of Sage are highly sought-after by other Toreador and even Camarilla society at large as court entertainers and musicians in residence, their presence considered a social coup for any Prince who manages to attract and retain their attention for any length of time.

It is also notable that the House seldom teaches or even condones skills beyond those traditionally learned by Clan Toreador. Octavius disapproves of out-of-clan powers and skills; each childe of the House is taught that power lies not in diversifying into other vampiric powers but in successfully mastering their own to the point of sublime perfection.

Family Tree

History of the House

The House of Sage was founded in roughly 383 C.E., when its patriarch, Octavius Sage, Embraced his first son Titus Marcius as support for his work with Julian Augustine to found the Camarilla and ensure that Milan's Toreador power base could compete with the Ventrue-dominated city of nearby Rome. Although Octavius' exacting standards meant that building the House was a slow process, he created new childer at a rate of approximately one or two a century until the modern era, when his final childe, Maeve Glaistig, was Embraced in 2005.

The crest of the House of Sage, featuring its motto: Et quod colligit carnifex obliviscitur tempore, meaning "The exceutioner remembers that which is forgotten".

In the lower generations, the House flourished over this long period of time, numbering hundreds of loyal Camarilla performers and enforcers across Europe and the Americas. Multiple of its members were able to achieve fame as world-class musicians before their deaths, or even after them before time forced them to publicly age and die in order to protect the Masquerade. Thanks to the amicable and occasionally competitive friendships between Octavius, Julian Augustine of the House of Augustine, and François Villon of the House of Villon, the House became not only an ascendant political force in its own right but a foundational part of a Toreador alliance that stretched around the world.

Although previously headquartered almost exclusively in Italy, the House also began to branch out beginning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sending some of its younger members to settle more permanently in the hopes of creating their own more stable branches. Octavius, meanwhile, began to travel more extensively, leaving the running of the House to his eldest childer in Milan while he performed executions and reeducations at the behest of the Camarilla, sometimes traveling as far as the United States in order to do so.

This long period of prosperity was disrupted in the mid-2000s to mid-2010s, when both Augustine and Villon went missing and the former was eventually known to have been assassinated, and finally came to an end in 2014, when Octavius Sage himself died under suspicious circumstances. The House is currently in a state of dramatic disarray, with its European wing attempting to consolidate under the leadership of the eldest son Titus Marcius as a new patriarch while members from other countries flock back to Milan for information and leadership. After Jean Claude Danut, scion of the House of Augustine, announced that he had assassinated Octavius, the two Houses erupted into a full-blown and vicious feud with casualties on both sides, and unless the matter can be resolved and honor satisfied, the conflict shows no signs of stopping any time soon.

Known Members

Agostino Caponetti	Antonio Brunelleschi	Constantino Allegri	Felice Bassi	Francesco Rasi	Gaetano Majorano

Giulio Crimi	Lucius Verginius	Maeve Glaistig	Octavius Sage	Petronus Montefalco	Salvatore Licitra	Titus Marcius

Lesser Members

• Achille Errani
• Adolphe-Joseph Alizard
• Adrianna Ferrarese del Bene
• Aeneas Mercurius
• Aldo Bertocci
• Alessandro di Moro
• Aloysius Saporiti
• Americo Persiani
• Anastasio Robinson
• Andreas Nozzari
• Anthony Hicks
• Anton Raaf
• Aris Christofellis
• Caterina Cavalieri
• Cecilia Arne
• Charlotte Brent
• Edouard du Puy
• Emmanuel Albertazzi
• Enrico Corradi
• Enzo Gallo
• Faustina Bordoni
• Florence Maison
• Gemma Basini
• Genevieve Orseau
• Giambattista
• Gianni Luria
• Giovanni da Palestrino
• Giuseppe Fioravanti
• Harry Green
• Johann Gottlieb
• John Beard
• Josef Greindl
• Joseph Calvesi
• Jules Bledscoe
• Leon Rothier
• Leone Giraldoni
• Lucinde Paradol
• Luigi Senescino
• Margherita Farinelli
• Maria Phillips
• Mario Malibran
• Mattia Battistini
• Michael Kelly
• Michael Maniaci
• Mimi Benzell
• Montague Lytton
• Paolo Modesti
• Renata Rivoli
• Sesto Bruscantini
• Thomas d'Urfay
• Ulisse Badoaro
• Valentin Berger
• Vincenzo Righini
• Vivian Rossi
• William Brown

This list of members of the House includes only those within three generations of the patriarch - that is, the childer, grandchilder, and great-grandchilder of Octavius Sage. Although the House boasts members of younger generations as well, they are too numerous and scattered for a comprehensive list.