It’s been entirely too long since I did any proper lore digging, so forgive me if I’m a bit rusty and forgot anything…
I was originally going to make this post in the recent Wool/Silver thread, but it kind of spawned its own subject. It occurred to me that we don’t know much about the structure of these magiqal organizations, like how they operate and who’s calling the shots?
Here’s a list of things we do know:
- Monarch’s Mountain. They have royal houses who seem to collaborate together to come to decisions. There’s a Collector who has some position of power, but ultimately defers to the houses. Steve’s info spoke of “the First Council” and “The Acolytes,” but we don’t know how they fit in.
- The Silver. We don’t really know how they’re structured. We do know that they hate everything about Monarch’s Mountain and so we can posit that they might not follow the structure of the royal houses.
- The Low. It had a tiered access system, where the more trust you gain, the more knowledge and power you have. Closer to modern times, people who spoke out about magiq were blacklisted, their memories erased. According to Mr. Wideawake, Monarch’s Mountain cultivated the Low and used the loosely connected organizations to confuse the Storm. But are these people considered to be an arm of the Woolies or something else?
- Loose ends. There are a couple organizations that didn’t quite fit into either group. Kemetic Solutions was merely a tool for the Silver, but not officially a part of it (and there’s a question of, how many other organizations like this does the Silver have?) Also, there’s the organization that once controlled the Cagliostro - who are they and how do they fit into this? Their behavior seems rather Silvery, but who knows. Oh, I guess we should also consider the Mounties as well. We were considered to be following the Path of Wool, but of course we don’t have any official ties to Monarch’s Mountain.
- The misfits. It’s worth mentioning, but it seems like there are a lot of isolated people floating around who are sensitive, but aren’t a part of any particular organization? Sullivan was kind of like that, before he found the coven. Then we know there were small groups of people like Colby et al. who practiced together.
The other thing is, how are these organizations recruiting? We know the old stories about how people would find paths to magiq, but we also know that both paths are in ruin. We also know that, at least for the Woolies, they’re willing to recruit capable individuals from outside their group, as they did with some of our old Mountie pals. But what about the Silver? Is it just a hereditary thing, where generations of families pass down their magiqal knowledge? Of course we know they’re willing to reach out to create lackeys, but what about the real part of their organization?
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I have some speculation of my own, but a lot of it’s kind of baseless. I wanted to throw these questions out there, at any rate.