History of Septum Civis It’s somewhat difficult for me to put down how exactly Septum Civis was started. I have lived in the area since I was a small child. I grew up here. I knew the politics, the people, and the nightlife. I was a part of the Norfolk coffeehouse crowd since the age of 16. I became a part of the alternative scene around the same time, since everything tended to blend together here. Pagans and Wiccans rubbing shoulders with the Goth crowd, and the occasional Vampire in the mix. In high school I had a close knit group of friends. Claudia was one o ne of them. She got the nickname from the fact that she was short and looked like she was eight when she was 16. It was unclear if it was diabetes or genetics which caused her to be so short, either way; me and the midget had some fun times. The Vampire community was something that was deep underground at the time. It was not easy to find. To some extent you had the LARPs and Gamers, Ga mers, but what of the real deal? You heard whispers, rumors, but we never found the people involved. More than likely they were good at hiding in plain sight. Things stayed that way for a few years. We got out of high school and not soon after, the shit hit the fan. It was around 96 or 97 when John C. Bush got busted for statutory rape. This in and of itself wasn’t newsworthy, however the fact that he was a LARPer, who used “The Masquerade” as a s an excuse to form some sort of “Vampyric family” and try to get underage girls in his bed. Well, that was news, especially in a small minded, conservative area (televangelist Pat Roberson’s 700 club is within spitting distance). The coffeehouse I frequented frequented had become part of an investigation, and the the undercover cops stuck out like a sore thumb. The local press (or should I call them tabloids) didn’t bother to differentiate the difference between the Goth community and the Vampyric community, lumping both together. This unfortunately caused a lot of bad blood for many years. Anything and everything Vampyric went underground. It was difficult even for the Goths to get anywhere for a club night since no venue wanted the attention. It took a couple of years for that to die down. I spent time in my college years mining the internet for information on the Vampyre community. There wasn’t much, but finally I found some information on the Sanguinarium. I was skeptical, but decided to to read the teachings and make an informed decision when I was done. In the meantime Claudia had died due to kidney failure. Her death was a great loss to all of those in the coffeehouse culture. In many ways, she was our Kitra. She was able to get many different groups to work together who otherwise wouldn’t speak to each other. She may have died, however it is said that her ghost haunted the coffeehouse and some people. I know she haunted me, and my dreams. So I don’t drag this out for a long time, a few years later, the Goth scene had gown big enough for two club nights in the area. One on Tuesdays at The Wave, a gay bar that welcomed our business, the other was at Jillian’s at Waterside. One of those nights at Jillian’s, I was sitting on the balcony with a few of my friends. It was a warm night and I had a sense that something was coming in on the wind. I wasn’t sure what or who it was. I just knew something or o r someone was coming.
In walks a tall, skinny Puerto Rican wearing a set of fangs and a D’Drennan ankh. ank h. I had only seen it online, and from what I knew, the Sanguinarium was mostly centered in NY. So I figured the worst I could do was ignore this person, why not talk to him? Find out if he is one of ours, or just some gamer who knows where to shop. He introduced himself as Ryu, and we talked for a time. He spoke of Father Vincent, whose name I had heard in passing (always in a good goo d way). We spoke of other things, various va rious people we knew, and what not. We spent a couple of months gathering at local coffee shops having discussions on various topics. Ryu spoke of his household Noctem Aeternus, and their their teachings. I was able to send a friend of mine to him when he was seeking information and a teacher. Ryu and I discussed a general g eneral respect for the Black Veil and the need for some local laws to head off another John Bush problem. A lot of innocent people had been hurt, and the Va. Beach police had ha d been sued for civil rights violations as a result of the investigation. One cop in particular, Don Rimer, seemed determined to destroy anybody involved in the Vampyric community. He was convinced that all vampires were devil worshipping pedophiles who were going to come after your kids. A couple of years later he was charged with 2 counts of assaulting a female officer. He retired and an d the charges were dropped. Virginia Beach was always known as a good old boys club, so I was not surprised when one of their star detectives with 20 years on the force got a sweetheart deal. Since then Don has spent the last few years giving lectures and seminars on “Occult Crime”, mostly to the fundy church crowd (which there is a lot of in Va), and occasionally to law enforcement. He’s been debunked by members of the local Pagan community and other law enforcement officers (Google “The Cycle Continues” by Kerr Cuhulain for more info on Don’s shenanigans) . The Lanning Report is another resource that completely contradicts Don’s silliness. He makes grand statements with no facts to back them up, such as “Occult Crime is growing” and “the Church of Satan is growing faster than ever”. Most of the time people don’t question these statements and when pressed, Don whips out a wild emotional statement such as “have you ever had a dead kid in your arms?” It would be easy to ignore this guy if it were not for the fact that innocent people have been hurt by his actions. Don is a fanatic who spreads ignorance and fear and makes no bones about it. Eventually the inevitable happened. Someone who claimed to be a vampire was almost murdered by his household, at the behest of an ex lover. He survived, worked with the police and testified against his attackers. Some of those who attacked him got g ot a deal to testify against the ringleader, Teresa Davidson. She is now serving 50 years in prison (she is appealing the case). The victim in this case, Jonathan Barron, continued to work with Don Rimer, and I have reason to believe he was a paid informant (I have no evidence to back that up, however I find it interesting what the police know about the community when we don’t speak with them). Once I learned what happened, I had no choice but to shake my head. I’m an elder in this area, and because the crime itself happened not far from where I live, I should’ve stepped in. I was too wrapped up in my dayside life, paying bills and moving in to my first home, to know what was going on in my own backyard. As an elder, I had a responsibility to the others in my community to look out for it, to offer help to others
when they were in need, and give guidance and advice when asked. I failed to do that, and I was ashamed that I had let the community down. I felt that the only way for me and the other elders in the community to make this right was to come together as a group and set down some basic rules, structure, so that when we had a problem or dispute in the community, it could be dealt with inside the community. So I called together all the households and elders (including Lord Ryu and Lord Ramirez) and after long talks, we came away with an agreement. We agreed that we would follow the Veil, form a court, much like the rabbinical courts within the Jewish community. The elders would hear various disputes, such as breaking the Veil or other local traditions. We also made it clear that we would not tolerate breaking mundane mundan e law. Doing so brought too much attention to us and endangered others. If we had reason to believe that a serious breach of mundane law occurred, the court would contact law enforcement and hand over the offender to them. Sometime later Jonathan was later exiled by the cou ncil for sexual harassment of a female member of his house. It appears that later on he attempted to stab Ryu at a local haven, and the establishment banned him from the premises. Rumor has it he might be moving to Florida to establish a household there. Even with all of that, we’ve managed to show others that we have a system that works. If someone has a grievance against another, and said issue cannot be worked out between the two, they are welcome to bring it to the council and be heard. Whereas there have been a few minor disputes, most have been worked out on their own. Over the years, word of this court and how we work has headed off a few issues before they became a problem. This in and of itself is an accomplishment. Septum Civis is in an area that has a lot of transient people, usually in the military. It’s not hard for someone to come in, claim to be the king of all vampires (or other such silliness), and try to get in some girl’s pants. Now they know, if they drop names, we can usually call the people in question and find out if it’s true. Yes, we do background checks, namely to keep out minors, sexual predators, and the media. Rumor has it that local law enforcement has investigated us, and thus far not found anything to charge anyone with. Hopefully they will know that we don’t want problems, we want to fix them. Lady Raven Cadwell (aka Darci) Co-Reagent of Septum Civis
