This conspiracy has been running on the Near East for at least 500 years. It's mostly composed by Turkish and Egyptian soldiers and policemen (who provide intelligence and some firepower) and some radical Muslim priests, who provide a network of contacts and the necessary scholarship. 

All started in 1560 when an Osman Bey, an important Ottoman aristocrat, was in Mecca during his hajj (pilgrimage). A man of great intelligence and imagination, with an enormous interest for the past, he was in contact with some Renaissance intellectuals in Europe.

During his stance in Arabia, Osman met a Bedouin sheikh who talked him about the lost city of Irem, build by djinns and full of treasures and pleasures. Having himself explored Petra and the ancient relics of Egypt, Osman became enthusiast about discovering a new Pompeii. With a great caravan of Egyptian and Sudanese servants (the Arabians were reluctant to join him), Osman and his guide started his journey into the desert.

After two weeks of a sand hell, they met Irem! But if Osman thought about finding Shangri-La he was disappointed when the sand-dwellers ambushed and captured them. The sheikh was in reality a Cthulhu worshiper, who has summoned Osman to provide food to the child Cthonians of Irem's basements.

Fortunately for Osman, his bodyguard Rustem (a former Jenissery-Ottoman army elite corps-) has escaped from the ambush. When the last of the captives has been thrown to the pit of hungry cthonians and only Osman rested, Rustem appeared with two barrels of gunpowder, two guns and a torch. The previously horror-shocked, lethargic Osman suddenly outraged and killed the sheik with his own teeth. With the chaos of the explosions, the two survivors fled from the city.

When Osman came back to his home in Smirna, most of his friends of family didn't recognise him: he had become a true believer. The formerly licentious and dilettante gentleman has been buried in the desert. He take part in several military expeditions and become a ghazi (Turkish holy warrior)

Three years after his ordeal, Osman received a letter of one of his European friends (John Dee) who asked him about the Greek translation of the Necronomicon. With a strong suspicion, Osman found (and read) the book. He become almost mad.

In 1570, following some indications found in the damn book, Osman traveled to Egypt, where with the help of some Christian monks (from the St Pakomios abbey), he prevented a cult of Isis (Yog-Soggoth) worshipers from summoning their god. Osman was prized with the Sword of Akmellah, a scimitar blessed by Mohamed and Abraham which could kill anything. The loyal Rustem died in the fight.

Knowing that he wasn't alone, Osman started a campaign of recruiting agents and contact through the Ottoman Empire. His network included a general and some Jewish cabalists. During a campaign against Hungary, the general and Osman achieved his best success in destroying the cult of the Black Stone and his god, a toad-like creature, was trapped inside a cavern (See Robert Howard's "The Black Stone"). Some relics of the cult were kept in Osman house in Smyrna.

But the cost was heavy: Osman, who had fatally injured the beast with the Scimitar, was left paraplegic; ten members of his circle were dead and the general died in the following battle with the Hungarian. Osman spend the last ten years of his life seeking (and sending agents to destroy) mythos books and artefacts, recruiting agents, etc. When he died, the Brotherhood of the Scimitar of Akmellah has become a permanent secret society, swearing on the sacred weapon saving the world from the Devil.

The Scimitar keep a low profile during most of his career: but some of their actions prevented major horrors. In 1666, a Nyarlathotep avatar, posing as a Christian prophet, almost started a religion war inside Istambul, but was stopped. In 1799, when some French archaeologists tried to send to Europe the Nitocris mummy, Egyptians members of the Brotherhood managed the ship being sunk by the British fleet (but the mummy returned to Egypt... somehow). In 1840, Von Juntz escaped from a fire vampire in Damascus thanks to Brotherhood members... who wanted information from him.

With the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire and the starting of World War I, the Brotherhood became very busy. In 1898, they discovered that the first Armenian massacres were in fact mass sacrifices to the Old Ones, made by some mad officers. In fact, some of the terrorists acts in Istanbul in 1899 were made by the Brotherhood to kill that officers. Their success were limited, as the massacres started again, but there weren't indices of being sacrifices in reality. However, some Armenian erudites and priests were saved by the Brotherhood.

In 1917, the Brotherhood discovered the existence of the Brotherhood of the Skin in Istanbul, but with most of their younger members in the army, were unable to stop them. After the war ended (and the Ottoman Empire collapsed) some of the younger members returned alive, and a secret war between the two Brotherhood started.

In 1926, veteran British Army officer Major David Cornwalk, who has started a private investigation by his own, was saved by the Scimitar Brothers from the Skin cultists. Thanks to his influence with the Turkish government (and some help from American adventurers), the Brotherhood of the Skin was exposed and destroyed. Cornwall, a future PISCES member, kept some contact with his Turkish friends the following years.

In 1925, the Brotherhood was aware of the attempts to reincarnate Nitocris, and keep some of the necessary items guarded (using even the Sword).

During the Second World War, the Brotherhood helped PISCES with some operations, but only if Cornwall in person met their agents. Cornwall was also forced to never talk his bosses about the Brotherhood.

Most people (even in Delta Green, PISCES and SV-8) ignores that in 1940, a German expedition to Irem, send by submarine from Italian Somaliland, was destroyed by the action of friendly Bedouins and Egyptian and Turks army officers, with weapons provided by Cornwall. But as often happens with their battles, the losses were heavy, and even was more heavy to find new members. The rest of the war, the Scimitar tried to help Jewish cabalist to escape from Europe (and Karotechia) to neutral Turkey with help from their member into the Paris Turkish embassy.

After the war, the Brotherhood has kept an even lower profile. Most of their members died by age and madness due to long expositions to dark books. The survivors tried to keep the fight, recruiting members from policemen and university professors. In 2000, their first woman member, the journalist Leila Hamid, exposed a Y'Golonac degenerated cult in El Cairo. The Cult had connections in the homosexual community (homosexuality is a crime in Egypt), and providing forbidden pleasures to their members. With the help of police detective Mustafa Baghdadi, most of the cult members and wannabes were arrested in an "anti-gay" police raid. Baghdadi forged enough false proofs of child pornography and the like to make the two priests end in prison. One escaped after, and the other one was killed in jail by other inmates (paid by Bahgdadi).

Today, the Brotherhood of the Sword of Akmellah keeps open a front against mythos in Egypt, with some contacts in Istanbul, Syria and Lebon. The St. Pakomios abbey has only twelve priests, but they have a good mythos library and know spells. One of them is a survivor of the 1940 campaign (and still keeps a loaded Luger in his desk!).

They also have memories books and reports from members since the XVI century.

Principal members of the Brotherhood are Leila Hamid, This liberated Arab woman works for a feminist/liberal magazine in Cairo. He was exposed to the Mythos during a student travel to Arkham in 1998 and she slept in the House of the Witch (see GUIDE TO ARKHAM book). When back in home, she had used her job and contacts in favour of the Brotherhood. Most of its members, being old Jewish cabbalists and Coptic priests or Muslim Ulemas, doesn't like to have a girl (unveiled girl!) almost in charge.

Mustafa Baghdadi was the dirtiest of the dirtiest's Egyptian policemen before tasting the Plutonian drug. Frightened by what he saw, Baghdadi investigated the drug dealers and discovered something... Now is the Brotherhood main enforcer and executioner.

The Sword of Akmellah is kept in Ib Tulun mosque, well protected, with a protector sign in his scabbard. However, since the XIX century, any warrior hasn't been enough pure to be its master.

It's used rarely.


Credits: capita_senyera