Brotherhood of the Black Stag

The Brotherhood is a Neo-Pagan organization that focuses on the worship of the natural world in the modern age. They use a stag’s skull complete with antlers blackened over a fire as their symbol as the stag represents the combination of nobility and raw masculine power. Their sacred space is located in the forested region outside of the city where they can hold their rites and ceremonies in private.

History
The Brotherhood is believed to have existed for nearly fifty years - making it one of the first covens which has survived the infancy of the American Pagan movement and the Satanic Scare of the early 1980’s. The Brotherhood was originally just a ‘back to the earth’ group of men who liked the idea of occasionally shedding their mundane lives and going for a hunt in the forest. It was under their founder, a professor of ancient history from the UK who moved into the area, that the group took on more pagan themes. Their first official rite was the Hunt of the Stag which was reportedly blessed by the appearance of a white stag. The rare event has only happened three times in their history and each year that it has happened has signaled a significant change in their organization.

In the latter half of the 20th century, just before the end of the millenia, the third white stag was killed by the one who would become their new leader. Up until then, the group was fairly low-key; a hunting club with some pagan themes and the occasional orgy with some local, masked prostitutes. When the newest leader came to power, the group changed. They no longer gave a passing glance towards their pagan origins. The gods they worshipped, for the first time, started to answer their rituals. They started to acquire real power in their mundane lives. Those businesses the members held started to flourish and the money started to flow but only so long as the group maintained their annual sacrifice.

In their third year under the newest leader, their annual hunt of the stag succeeded but the power that they had come to rely upon was absent. It was, their leader revealed, because the Horned God required a more potent sacrifice. So the leader held another hunt at the hunter’s moon (the first full moon after the harvest moon) and this time the target wasn’t a prized stag but rather a man dressed as a white stag. The man was a local drug dealer who was caught and covered with a white ash paste to turn him a pale, ghostly white. The antler mask and hide was the only thing he was dressed in and set loose within their protected forest.

The members stalked and killed their prey - though some claimed to have mistaken the man for a deer after the fact. With the sacrifice completed upon the altar, the powers and health that they had grown to rely upon had returned. Each of the men was stronger, faster, more agile than they would have been if they had been half their age.

Another thing that their new leader had changed was recruiting younger men into the Brotherhood. Most of their members had grown into their forties and fifties by the time their new leader had come to power as recruitment wasn’t really a great concern with them. Now with an influx of new blood, their organization spread beyond the halls of their own, private businesses. They began to enter politics, law enforcement and nearly every corner of authority within the area.

Worship
A chief figure depicted within their ceremonies would be the old god stag god of the hunt himself. Cernunnos was a Celtic god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld.It is through his worship that the coven operates with at least four main rituals each year: the Hunt of the Stag in Autumn and the Feast of the Stag in Spring. The hunt is a ceremonial run through the forest for the participants, each wearing a horned mask and carrying only a broad spear. With it, they must track and kill a large stag which has been protected within their lands. The feast is a quasi-fertility festival whereby the members are dressed in their ceremonial horned masks (and only their masks) and are encouraged to fornicate and spread their seed upon any and all participants. This is, essentially, a spring fertility orgy.

The annual spring fertility feast, a favored date upon the spring calender of the older members, had switched from a simple orgy to something of a competition. Like in the wild where stags will challenge others for the best mates, the Brotherhood, with their new found improvements, competed with each other for who would gain the boons of their god in the coming year. Races, competitions of strength and weaponry became the norm. Those who lost their matches also lost their antlered masks and would have to earn them back. This often meant doing what they could to please the member they lost it to. Many a young buck would tuck his tail and be mounted, if that’s what the stag required, to be eligible for the hunt in Autumn. Only the best could run with them.

Temple
The base of their worship is deep in the forest they have claimed as their own. Their temple is a large oak tree which is several hundred years old. The tree is adorned with a huge black deer skull tied to it through the skull’s eye holes with rope. Above the antlers is a crescent moon carved of bone and kept pure white (a dichotomy between the blackness of the skull). Below the skull and before the tree is a stone altar created from a massive, rectangular rock. The surface of the stone has been carved with many different designs but chiefly spirals and diamond-shapes.

Then, around the tree and the altar are dozens of torch stands that hold torches at roughly head height to fully illuminate the space on the nights of their rituals.