A woman stands in the ruins of Paris, her gaze switching between the workers searching the rubble and the live feed displayed on her phone. The names of the dead flash across the top of the screen as she stares, watching, waiting for the name she knows, deep in her gut, is coming soon.

James Crichton

She turns the screen off and stares up at the overcast sky, her free hand clenching into a fist. She forcibly relaxes, breathes deeply. When she speaks, her voice is steady:

‘Behemoth.’

The rubble nearest to her moves,cascading down in a shower of dust until suddenly it isn’t rubble any more, but a roughly humanoid figure, hulking and tall and with a face that looks as though it had been shaped out of clay.

‘My former keeper has passed,’ the elemental says. He doesn’t look too pleased about this, but then, you get the impression there are very few things he looks pleased about. ‘My guardianship falls to you.’

‘I know.’

My research into the Order of Behemoth has been, alas, patchy - not so much because they are the most secret of organisations but because, unlike the Freemasons or the League of Starfish Catchers, they are incredibly small, functioning more like an elite taskforce than anything else.

The Order is named for the elemental Gaian of Earth. While a part of Gaia, who was reportedly rather friendly towards humanity herself, Behemoth was known for levelling several cities in the wake of his reawakening. Therefore the Order serve as a reminder - sometimes a rather persistent reminder - that there can exist evil within us all, and that we should always strive to keep a check on it.

Of the structure, little is known. It is known that the role of leader is passed down from one person to another upon the death of the current leader. Its founder was James Crichton, who, after passing away in the tragedy of 2032 passed the reins on to Gabriela Sanderson.

— From An Incomplete History of Secret Organizations