Dragon (Secret World)

"All war is deception. When they think we are in front of them, we are behind them. When they think we are weak, we are strong. When they think we are few, we are legion. For there ever to be true balance, there must first be chaos. And chaos is ours to orchestrate. One word can equal the might of a thousand swords. And one sword can obliterate a thousand lives. Everyone and everything has a purpose and a path, if only as a ruse or a diversion. Everything can be manipulated into usefulness by those who truly understand the very nature of things. We understand. We create chaos in order to achieve balance. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. We are Dragon, and we have both."

- The Dragon

The Dragon is one of the three main secret organizations found in the MMO known as Secret World, like all the main factions they are morally dubious and thus serve as protagonist villains - they are in opposition to the Illuminati and the Templars.

The Dragon are unique in the fact they work on the theory of chaos, believing that acts of small-scale terror and violence have larger consequences and that within chaos lays true order.

To this end the Dragon seek to manipulate and control the world via using chaos to unlock secrets, they are quite open in the fact that in order to do this they will engage in acts of terrorism but unlike traditional terrorists they do not tend towards mass-murder and mayhem, instead they plant the seeds of chaos and watch events unfold.

Origin
The Dragon began before recorded history's unrecorded history's previous unrecorded history. The world has been reset no less than three times, and by all accounts is in it's Fourth Age in The Secret World, The Dragon were first conceived in the First Age- though by some accounts the concept of them existed even before that, if unformed. The Dragon was first conceived by a child-prophet in ancient China, she had a fleeting vision of a dragon in a pond, as she reached out to embrace it she began to drown, however she achieved some form of enlightenment. When the girl was found she was nearly dead but whispered her vision to her rescuers with her labored breath. Around the girl's vision a cult emerged, this was the Dragon.

The cult spread through-out The Orient. It was the enlightenment of the prophet that allowed the followers to see certain events as linked, in an effort to validate the vision, the followers began outlining certain seemingly insignificant events and following them, ultimately leading each agent to a position of magnanimous influence just from being in the exact right place at the exact right time and letting seemingly random chance reward them. The cult did not directly control anything, a member might come upon a wounded man and help him, only for the man to be revealed to be a king, who then came to reward the agent with great trust, which the agent would then use to spin further events which lead to even more members being placed in fortuitous situations.

Style
"Manipulators and conspirators, the Dragon have survived for millennia by playing their enemies against each other. Since before the first empire, through the aggression of the Mongol Khans and the ebb and tide of political change, a whisper in the right ear, a strategic assassination, alliances carefully crafted and broken - and the world eventually bends to the patient will of the immortal Dragon.

With a spiritual and philosophical approach to the secret crafts, as an acolyte of the Dragon you are taught to listen, shown how to teach others, and expected to respect the balance of the universe and to be humble in the face of fate. Yours is not the path of force, though force is often needed to clear the path.

Few know of the Dragon and their long history, and that is how the Dragon want it. You are invisible but pervasive, silent but all-knowing, and when the other secret societies have decimated each other, you will rebuild the world from the ruins of their arrogance.

The Dragon is too easily underestimated, but those who do so live to regret it - or die before they get the chance."

Structure
Through-out the years the Dragon have searched for their leader, who is titled The Dragon/The Voice of The Dragon/ The Golden Child - for the Dragon is always a child. The Child is perpetually reincarnated and is presumably the first prophet who enlightened the first disciples of The Dragon. The Dragon spend years looking for the new reincarnation, they seek out those born at the exact moment of the previous Child's death. All candidates are rounded up and given rigorous tests to detect enlightenment and ties to their previous identity. The children who fail the test are disposed of but without fail there is always one who meets the test parameters completely. The newly discovered Golden Child is appointed as The Dragon. It is unknown what the Child does for the Dragon - for the Child never speaks directly. In keeping with The Dragon's belief that even tiny events can create cataclysmic chain-reactions, it is believed if anyone so much as hears The Dragon the effects could be devastating. Only one person is permitted to listen to The Voice of The Dragon, The Mouth of The Dragon. The Mouth listens to The Child who whispers instructions in private, the Mouth then communicates The Child's wishes/insights/visions to the members of The Dragon who must take action. The Inner circle of The Dragon are a group of monks, monks with mouths that are stitched shut, that they may never tell of what they overhear while tending to The Child and The Mouth of The Dragon. The Monks are true believers in the greater purpose of The Dragon, they protect The Child and see to it the Mouth can never usurp control by acting falsely on the Child's behalf.

Since the Child's direct actions are only comprehended by the child him/herself and the silent-monks, as well as possibly The Mouth, it is unclear what The Child's function is, but it is essential. However whatever it's function the child only remains enlightened enough to influence The Dragon while he/she is a child, when it becomes a full-grown adult, it loses whatever je-ne-sais-quoi it bestows upon The Dragon. For many years this would create in-active intervals for The Dragon; However, The Dragon eventually concluded that since The Child would reincarnate anyway, it would be much faster to kill The Child shortly after reaching adulthood and then just spend a few short years searching for it's new reincarnation rather than waiting a full life-time. Each Mouth eventually cracks under the pressure of their station and when the event models they plan around The Child's influence start to deviate to unacceptable levels they are replaced by another. The Child chooses someone who can interpret their will and that person becomes the new Mouth of the Dragon, and may well outlive their Child. The previous Mouth of The Dragon's mind is blanked, with all memories of their time with The Dragon erased and they are placed back in their previous life, none the wiser. The exact process for the silent monks is unknown, but as they are all mortal they are also subject to successors. The Child, The Mouth of The Dragon and the silent monks form The Head of The Dragon.

Because all parts that make-up The Head of The Dragon are rotated out based on things like natural life-spans, psychic receptivity or success-rates, even the very commanders of The Dragon are subject to the tides of change and fate. This is all part of The Dragon's grand dance to make sure it never becomes as stale as those it manipulates. It is constantly in flux, and despite the seemingly random events controlling it's rotations, the entire process is based on the instruction of that first little-girl who gave the Dragon enlightenment.

Incarnations
The Dragon would meet the Templars and Illuminati eventually, their first meeting is unrecorded, but their most recent one is stated to be some-time at the dawn of civilization. The Dragon retreated from the initial contact but acted as a wall to keep The Templars and Illuminati from crossing too deeply into Asia. The Templars and Illuminati could never gain influence in eastern Asia due to the mass web of events the Dragon had a stake in all across the continent. The Templars and Illuminati were working together at the time The Dragon made contact with them and all three are said to have descended from a pre-cabal called The Four-and-Sixty but it is unclear if this pre-cabal was formed from the first disciples of The Dragon, or the Dragon joined The Four-and-Sixty as some sort of compact.

By the time the Four-and-Sixty had split apart and The Templars and Illuminati rediscovered The Dragon they were rivals. The Dragon never made any play for power over The Templars and Illuminati but rather just prevented them from gaining power too far east. The Templars took The Dragon's obstruction as a sign they were enemies and proceeded to fight them off whenever agents of The Dragon appeared to try to influence European affairs leading to only brief, unseen but often epic encounters. It was The Illuminati who placed the idea of The Dragon as a monster in the ears of The Templars. Dragons appear in all the great myths around the world, Zeus fighting Typhon, Thor fighting Jormungandr, Michael fighting a dragon-like Satan, all these symbols and stories of great holy warriors fighting dragons were spun as propaganda by The Templars, enlightened by the Illuminati to sync The Dragon with negative aspects that might frighten away those influenced by them. While this method worked for the most part, there were always exception, children who heard the tales and wanted to be the dragon in those stories.

The Dragon worked silently for years as they dared not spread far during the time when the Templars and Illuminati were unified as the powers behind The Roman Empire, they did bleed into Europe after Rome's fall. The Dragon speak of The Fall of Rome as a great time for them but they did not actually organize it (it was actually orchestrated by the Illuminati to clamp down on the hedonistic Emperors that stopped being functional puppets). While society was rebuilding itself in The Dark-Ages, The Dragon's first major experiment was The Black Plague, rats were injected with tiny amounts of the decease and placed on ships at specific ports to see how far the modeled plague would carry - the resulting devastation was seen by the Dragon as a glorious way to test just how far their acts of microscopic terrorism would spread across the world.

The Dragon would have many other influences including writers who planted deviant ideas in the masses preventing them from being completely controlled by the Templar and Illuminati propaganda machines. They organized the downfall of both Emperor Puyi and Tsar Nicholas II, leading to the fall entire ways of life though consequently creating other rivals such as The Red Hand. The years of seeming chaos, beyond even The Dragon's control, were always documented so the Dragon might learn from the experiment and perfect them. The most recent major advancement for The Dragon was the invention of the internet, another invention actually owed to the Illuminati but that the Dragon were more than happy to profit off of. With the invention of the internet, The Dragon found their influence could be limitless, their recruitment would no longer need to be carefully mapped out based on long chains of event but instead could allow them to plant ideas in others from around the world with the literal push of a button. Many times Dragon recruiters and organizers appear to the common-man as internet-trolls but their presumed randomness is always carefully crafted to stimulate events to fall into their models. The Dragon is now completely reliant of the internet to spread and keep their influence, at least outside of their intimidate headquarters.

The base of The Dragon changes as the Child does, where-ever the Child is found The Dragon spring-up around it. The area is concealed from outside influence and the neighborhood becomes a living ghost town. The current Dragon headquarters is in Seoul in South Korea. A variable twisting fortress has been forged just from the connecting alley ways. Back-doors are barricaded to force residents out the front, work schedules are carefully calculated and influenced to keep the locals busy, and so none walk the streets of Seoul's twisting back alley-ways save those meant to. This is how the Dragon cultivate all power, not by taking but by setting up a million seemingly separate instances none would think twice about in order to dominate the negative space it-self.

Templars
The Templars and Illuminati remain The Dragon's main rivals, though they rotate them out as enemies, pawns and even partners. The Templars in-particular switch between enemies and pawns the most. The Templars are always looking for a fight and completely uncompromising in their conviction, however this makes them predictable and The Dragon have played The Templars as pawns many times - As shown during one of the Dragon's promotional mission, they even arranged for a man to be born who would grow up to be a trusted warden of Templar artifacts. The Dragon arranged for the man's parents to meet, both were Templars - thus meaning their child would have to be one, the two mated resulting in the pre-planned individual. The Dragon sent agents to influence a resentment in the boy at various important moments in his life for his parent which would later be projected on the Templars themselves as his parents' main influence; the boy would betray his post as intended, go to fence the artifacts to the Illuminati and the Dragon would intercept it, kill the boy, replace the artifact with a replica and let the Templars and Illuminati each blame the other for the betrayal/assassination. This single event had been planed for years and death of their Templar agent is seen as nothing more than a balancing act as he would have never been born in the first-place if they had not arranged for his parents to meet. According to Bong Cha, the current Mouth of The Dragon, this is just one of many, many times such a scenario has been played and as much trouble as the Templars can be, if the Dragon remain undiscovered their anger is often directed at others instead.

Illuminati
The Dragon's relationship with the Illuminati is far more complicated than that of the Templars. The Illuminati are not beyond being fooled as the Templars are but it is significantly harder to trick them. Instead The Dragon focus on simply setting up opportunity for the Illuminati to follow. The Illuminati are nothing if not pragmatic, so keeping them busy usually involves making them chose between either stopping a Dragon operation or gaining some great boon, the Illuminati always hoard their toys as a priority. Tricking the Illuminati is substantially less easy and some of the Dragon's most carefully hidden away secrets are undone through the Illuminati's massive spy-networks. The Illuminati never strike directly because they are well aware of how completely The Dragon can manipulate random events to essentially give even their best agents one massive run of bad-luck. In truth the Illuminati are kept as paranoid of the Dragon as conspiracy-theorists are of them - ready to jump at any scare gone viral. This means there is substantially less deception involved in keeping the Illuminati at bay and far more obscurity needed instead. The Illuminati consider the Dragon worthy rivals to remain as elusive as they are; The Dragon in-turn view The Illuminati as terrifyingly efficient and the two maintain a certain level of shared respect as worthy adversaries.

Orochi
One of the first things the girl-prophet who created The Dragon spoke of was an eight-headed naga. This may be symbolic of Orochi - in myth an eight-headed dragon, in the modern world a monopoly made up of eight different subsidiaries all working for the same parent cooperation. Orochi controls medical research, mass media, clothing industries, food products, banking, gene-splicing companies and fuel companies. Orochi have even more influence than The Dragon in some ways. As Orochi is a company it's plays for power are as wide-spread as The Dragon, but they are far more rigid in their application as they follow a cooperate structure. The Dragon know Orochi can manipulate scenarios in the same way they do but on multiple levels, however the need of the company to keep far more events occurring at once means they are more easily confused. Orochi's experiments frequently blow-up in their face and so the Dragon have steadily learned that their rivalry with Orochi is an issue of quality vs quantity; Never-the-less Orochi has slowed Dragon operations to a crawl. When Orochi projects end-up falling apart due to their over-exertion The Dragon make a point to swoop in and collect every last piece of data they can to improve their models when dealing with countering the evil cooperation.

The Morninglight
The Morninglight are a new-age self-help group, which operates like a cult. In truth the Morninglight have been reborn many times over the years appearing as everything from social-groups, to terrorists, to death cults, to empires (in-fact their influence over Roman society would ultimately be what lead the Illuminati to collapse the empire). Their latest incarnation is that of well-dressed social-workers who sell self-esteem to people in order to reinvent themselves to succeed. Their members slowly work their way up the Morninglight food-chian and deeper and deeper into their primevel orginis. The Morninglight are at their core something dark, pitch-black. The Dragon don't know entirely what the Morninglight are up to, but their ability to convert agents of The Dragon into true-believer Mornniglight has kept the Dragon very concerned. The Morninglight are a dark-mirror of The Dragon: A cult centuries old which reinvents itself, preys off rigid structures, announce themselves as harbinger's of change and follow more of a philosophical structure than a chain-of-command. Unlike The Dragon though, The Morninglight have no desire to balance the cosmos, but rather consume it. All this has made The Morninglight The Dragon's arch-enemy.

Trivia

 * Akma(kor. 악마) means 'a devil' in Korean.