Cecila is a Vestalis, a holy virgin and a priestess to the Goddess Vesta, goddess of home and hearth, promised to the order for thirty years.

As a Vestalis, she, along with the sisters of her order, must tend to the fires of Vesta and carry her sacred water from the well. She is a conduit from Vesta to the people of Rome. She is granted privileges of the highest government—to maintain sacred and proprietal documents, the rights of men—to vote, to own land; and is a protector of the city.

This is all done with the exchange of the purity of her body—a body her mother offered to Apollo since her birth, a bride to the God of the sun.

If this purity has gone out, as does Vesta’s fire: A withdrawl of protection to the city. Punishment of the highest order are bestowed on a Vestalis: they are to be flogged and then locked away in a crypt until they wither to death.