Decline
Months later, under the orders of the Anointed One and his right-hand man, Absalom, the Order puts in motion a plan to resurrect the Master. The Master's bones are excavated and those around the Master at the time of his demise — Rupert Giles, Willow Rosenberg, Cordelia Chase and Jenny Calendar — are kidnapped to be sacrificed in the ritual. However, Buffy Summers, Angel and Xander Harris interrupt the ritual and slay all of the vampires except Collin, the Anointed One, who escapes. The Slayer smashes the Master's bones to dust, destroying the Order's last hope of resurrecting the Master.
Later, the Aurelian vampires resolve that whoever could kill the Slayer should take the Master's place and rule the Order. They choose the 'Night of Saint Vigeous', when a vampire's natural abilities are enhanced, for the contest. The plan is derailed when Spike, a new arrival in Sunnydale, is unable to wait and leads a mass assault against Buffy a few nights early. The assault is a failure and many vampires are killed. The Order's rules demand that Spike offer his life in penance, but Spike instead kills the Anointed One, takes the remaining vampires as his own minions and announces that they will have "a little less ritual and little more fun". With no one to continue leading its members, this is seemingly the end of the Order.
Following Spike's departure, The Mayor Richard Wilkins asserts control of a few of Sunnydale's vampires during Season Three, in preparation for his ascension into demon form. Following Wilkins' death, no central vampire authority is known to have replaced him.
Read more about this topic: Order Of Aurelius
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)