☙ What Genres Kindle the Spirit of the Order ❧
“There are those who burn with sunlight—and those who burn with shadow. We are of the latter kind.”
The Order of Vulgarian Knights is not a fandom club, nor a historical society, nor a game guild—though it may look like any of these from the outside.
What we are, instead, is something stranger: a torchbearer fellowship, united not by a single work or world, but by a shared attraction to the gothic, the mythic, the eerie, and the sublime.
This is what we mean when we speak of kindred fire.
This is the Gothic Flame.
✠ The Genres That Feed the Flame
Our fellowship draws from many wells, but the water always tastes faintly of rust, ink, and old stone.
Gothic Horror — castles, catacombs, secrets in bloodlines. Think Dracula, The Others, Ravenloft, Crimson Peak.
Pulp Adventure — noble rogues, lost tombs, grim laughter. Think Solomon Kane, Indiana Jones, The Shadow, Big Trouble in Little China.
Weird Fiction — alien geometry, unknowable forces, the spiral of madness. Think Lovecraft, The Endless, Annihilation.
Folk Horror & Mystery — ritual, ruin, and the superstitions of quiet towns. Think The Wicker Man, The Witch, The Secret of Crickley Hall.
Arcane Sci-Fi & Retro-Future — the speculative filtered through typewriter keys. Think Logan’s Run, The Twilight Zone, Bradbury, Asimov.
You do not need to love all of these. You only need to recognize the scent of strangeness and wish to walk toward it.
✠ Why These Genres?
Because they are not only thrilling. They are revealing.
They ask strange questions:
- What makes us human?
- What would we sacrifice for knowledge?
- Where does faith end and fear begin?
These genres reflect the soul of our fellowship. They are not bound by realism. They are not afraid of beauty. They know that candlelight and terror often dwell in the same room.
✠ A Fellowship of the Flame
There are many orders out there, built upon encyclopedias of canon and towers of trivia.
We are not that.
We are the wandering torch, the errant scholar, the dreamer who still believes that an old book may whisper truth, and that a rainy night may yet bring a knock at the door.
This is the Gothic Flame.
It does not seek to burn the world.
Only to light the way within it.
