By Sammy Coker (smcoke19@idt.net)
As told by Mestha, Osiris was a cruel overlord who banished his even more cruel brother from the Delta region only to later be embraced. After his destruction at the hands of his also embraced brother, Osiris was finally reformed by the magics of a grieving Isis and a vengeful Anubis to destroy the monster Set to save her son and Anubis' brother, Horus. But Osiris was even more evil than they suspected. After being reformed, Osiris immediately attacked the son who had helped in his apparent resurrection from final death, draining him to the point of death, as Mestha recounted. And then it began -- the titanic battle between first Set and Osiris, and then Set and Isis, Set being the victor. What the recently-risen Mestha did not notice, however, was that the lifeless body of Anubis was not so lifeless, after all.
As Osiris feasted upon his son, he realized that he would need aid to face his younger brother. Deciding he had found such a way to defeat his brother, he began to embrace his son. But the process was to be interrupted. Anubis' half-embraced body was left to witness the destruction of his father by his step-father and uncle.
When the battle ended, Set took Isis, Horus, and the half-embraced Anubis, and fled into the desert. There he would hold Isis and Horus prisoner as he tried to understand the magical process which turned Horus into a Mummy. Knowing, however, that his sister would not reveal her magics, and knowing that, should he embrace her, her magics would be lost, he turned to his nephew, Anubis. Anubis would reveal the secrets to him, for even though his magics slipped away, his knowledge remained, and with the knowledge Anubis gave him, Set would have himself mummified and rule the world with an army of immortal soldiers, not hindered by Ra's light. So Set completed the embrace of Anubis.
Anubis, however, was of an incredibly strong will, and his hatred for his sire was carried over from his life into his unlife. As his magics drained away with the last embers of his life, he was able to use the last of them to escape Set's clutches and his realm, and he immediately began to try and build an army to destroy Set and rescue his aunt and half-brother. But this could be no ordinary army; it would have to be an army capable of destroying the evil that Set had become. Without his magics, he would have to use the one thing he had left -- his own unlife, which had been made much in the image of the evil which he wished to destroy. So, in the same method that Osiris had created a strong army, so Anubis created an army, and he would claim his father's vengeance as his own, declaring he and his progeny the Children of Osiris.
These early children were much like their grand-sire's, and their morals decayed as quickly. They fought Set for centuries, eventually freeing Isis and Horus, but ever being denied the final victory that they sought. Anubis, however, contemplated his situation, and, with the help of his aunt and half-brother, came to the conclusion that the only way to truly continue the struggle against his uncle was to retain those shreds of humanity that seemed to try and slip away. With Isis' help, he developed a new discipline to this end, one that would become known as Bardo.
As Egypt's power waned, so did the power of the Children of Osiris. They followed their sire, Anubis, who himself followed Set, hunting him and those who aided him. Many of the original Children of Osiris, those sired by Anubis before he developed Bardo, could often slip among the Setites, appearing to be much like the evil lord himself. Those created later reflected the calm demeanor of their sire after he achieved a state of being able to retain and restore his own humanity. Always they hid among the Kindred for fear that the growing Setites would overtly destroy them. So they sought to covertly infiltrate the Kindred society, never publicly acknowledging their bloodline, their one constant ally an Antediluvian who shared what he knew of the peaceful arts with Anubis while Anubis shared with him the discipline of Bardo.
For aeons, the battle between the Followers of Set and the Children of Osiris raged on. Finally, the Children's greatest hope came in the middle ages when the Code of Hermes and the Hermetic orders were established. However, this hope would be destroyed as Set's corruption extended even into the Order, planting the idea in a young magus in a small house that immortality might be gained by studying the undead, an idea which eventually lead to the founding of Clan Tremere. The Children, however, had their own ideas, and they influenced a rival of that young man, a man named Etrius, to foster virtue and maintain his conscience despite the inhuman influence about him. And through him they learned a new discipline -- Thaumaturgy. Set, however, plotted against the Children, and information which he fed to the newly-embraced lord of House Tremere led to the destruction of Anubis' friend and ally, Saulot. Destroying the allies of his enemy, Set anticipated, might break the spirits of his hated nephew's bloodline and its vindictive crusade.
The Children, already secretive, became even more so, concerned with the prospect that what had befallen the Antediluvian might also befall them, and they became all but lost to the myths and legends, only the Salubri remembering anything of them.
Today the Children are a hidden and scattered lot. They have greatly evolved from their original state as being almost identical with the Setites to appearing at times to look like Salubri or Tremere. Their evolution has caused their blood to grow thin over the centuries. Anubis, himself, remains in hiding, but he and his progeny, the Children of Osiris, despite the changes they have undergone over the millennia, remain united in their common cause, awaiting the day they will rise up and destroy Set and all his evil.