In which Wak rambles about the Guild

[Wakshaani]

I was about to lament the formatting that would be lost, but I just realized that I can attach files to threads. Which means I can make this downloadable. Joy!

This is about an hour's work, hammered out while watching TV, so you may well find a few errors in the mix. It's also not finished (obviously), but it should show a bit of where I'm going. Over time, I'll add more stuff to this thread, to lay out more details, to toss in some new gear, some new tomes, and who knows? I might have assembled a whole dang book by the time it's done. I'm not sure how often this'll be updated, but, I'll keep chipping away here and there for a while.

Never give a bored writer a week off with no projects. He starts to create.

 

(Edit: And there's a problem with the file. Which means I have to cut n paste after all. Which means you lose out on all teh pretty formatting. Aw.)

The Guild

 

You’ve seen the Guild Guards on patrol, keeping the city safe. You’ve heard the Governor-General giving speeches across the Aethervox. You’ve witnessed the majestic machines, from the skycars to the automotons to the very train what brought you to Malifaux. You know everything there is to know about the Guild.

 

You know nothing.

 

If you read this, however, if you commit it to memory for when the inevitably find and destroy this tome, then it falls to you to pas sit along, to write it down, to make certain that what is known never becomes what is forgotten. This is true of many things, but none so great as the Guild as it’s built on a field of lies. Read on… and know the Truth.

 

The Founding of the Council

Oh, you know some of the history, how the Breach was first torn open, how the death toll was staggering, and how the survivors eventually turned on one another, slaying their bretheren one by one over arcane secrets and magical artefacts of a different world. Of how a truce was eventually called, and with it peace filled the magical world.

 

It’s a lovely story for children.

 

The Council’s founders were, to a man, the most ruthless, cold-hearted bastards to ever clutch the strings of aether in their hands. They were more afraid of losing their power than of dying, and the Founders knew that, should they turn to attack one another, they would be vulnerable to the others. The names of these Founders are lost to us (save one, as I will detail) for one simple reason; they knew the Olde Magics, and with the Olde Magic, names hold power. Words are meanings, and simply placing one on something gives you power on it. Do you doubt me? Take your best friend and call him a welcher who pays not his debts. Tell everyone you know this, hang that word around his neck, and in a fortnight, it will be as if it were always true, with others sharing stories of how he owed them but never repaid. Holding a True Name is even more powerful, so the Founders hid theirs away, claiming new names, new words, with which to define themselves. These Founders formed the Innermost Circle, which survives at the heart of the Guild even today. They are known, now, as the Necromancer, the Enchantress, the Sorceress, the Illusionist, and John Smith, He Who Holds the Center, and, it is whispered, the Fatemaster.

 

The five Founders clawed their way to the top of their respective styles, forming the rest into neat little rows. Remember when I said that words have power? By classifying magic, be distilling it into an Essence that they could master, whose applications they could define, they showed the ‘proper’ way to do magic, clipping the wings of the birds that would follow. Why can’t a Sorcerer raise the dead? Why can’t an Illusionist animate a construct? Because these magics were chained, bound, and defined by words, and now they are limited where once they were potential.

 

Do I have your attention now? Good.

 

The Four Schools

Parcelling out the controlling forms of magic, regardless of tradition, the four primary schools of magic were defined (not created, never that), and the Founders were seated as the Grandmasters of each, enshrining themselves in power as they formed a feudal structure for the others to fall in to. The schools were given elements of the compass, and the elements, and in some cases numbers and symbols, to further define what was ‘right’ from what was ‘wrong’ and to fool those who would come after into thinking that magic only worked a certain way.

 

Sorcery was the East, given primacy of position as a nod to its power. As the Sun rises in the East, so does power rise to the command of the Sorcerer, and Fire is their element of choice; wild, powerful, but one that can be tamed by the right hands.

 

Necromancy was the South, given the ‘low’ position as befits its dark art, while cold stone as its element. Nevermind that some spells were the destruction of undead abominations, while others preserved things, such as books, from rot. It was seen as an ‘unclean’ school, to balance the fact that it served one very valuable service: the Necromancers have ever been the ones to charge the Soulstones that enabled the Guild to still use magic all these years.

 

Illusion was the school of the West,  home to the mysterious Moon, and given dominion over the Air. The Illusionists were often called upon to sell others on the usefulness of the Guild, using whispers from the wind to learn what should not be known, to use those secrets not in the halls of power, but behind the curtains. Illusion is not only presenting what you want someone to see, but also in preventing them from seeing what you need to keep hidden. They are the least known of all the schools, with good reason.

 

Enchanting sat at the North, and drew from the element of Water. Water, always moving in balance; the giver of life, measuring both ebb and surge with equality. It is the supporting force, the one that nurtures others, rather than being strong on its own. That it has a natural opposition to Undeath, rather than being two sides of the same coin, is the work of the Guild’s wordsmithing.

 

The Center is never mentioned, but exists as a neutral arbitrator, reflecting the balance, and the element it governs is Aether itself, the fifth, unknown, magical element that runs through the others and is the very definition of magic. If the Center cannot hold, then everything else crumbles. Some say that those who master the Center master Fate itself, able to both see, and manipulate, the strings, twisting them in ways that favor the outcome that you wish with no one being the wiser.

 

The Traditions

Less easy to wrangle than the creation of the schools were the methods of magic, the individual tricks, tomes, and tongues that called forth power and gave it direction. There were scores of magical traditions, each claiming to be no less effective than any other… did the simple fact that their spells worked not show that their method was a correct one? The Founders knew that magic was not formed by these gestures and objects, but that magic was, and that these crutches were there to allow the human mind to grasp on to something, to limit the magic by placing a harness upon it, so that it could be guided in the direction the caster wanted. They paid lip service to the authenticity of assorted methods, as one would imagine, in order to salve bruised egos and soothe rifts, but all the while, they worked to create a unified method, a controllable method, which they could name the True Form of magic. They found it in the Oxford Method.

 

The Oxford Method

“But Oxford didn’t exist at the time!” I hear you complain. And you are right … it did not. Originally, it was the Bohemian Method, named for the region of Europe which gave rise to it. I cannot tell you who of the Founders followed this tradition if, in truth, any did, but the method of it appealed to the hunger of magical minds. Numerous sigils, unusual patterns, a solid mathematical base, wrapped in words, numbers, and symbols, it was both something that could be taught and something which you had to struggle to comprehend, a perfect blend of complexity and simplicity that would allow many novices but few masters. The name ‘Bohemian Method’ soon fell from use as it was simply the method, the one from which all other magic drew. The Founders knew that they had a good thing, and set out to eradicate other, competing methods. First, they did so subtly, challenging those of other methods to face them in competitions or duels, besting them with their power and setting forth that their Method was thus superior. They won many young mages to their banner in this way, and in time, these converts became an army, converted to the belief and far more zealous in its defense than the creators ever were. Others found themselves pushed to one side, watching the Council’s method rise to primacy. When the Breach closed and Soulstones were the only method to draw forth magic, the Council was able to set forth a simple fact: Adopt our ways to gain access to our cache, or keep your ways and fade away.

 

Needless to say, most joined.

 

This ideal system lasted for nearly forty years, but as the Founders died off, the next generation lost that knowledge of what magical war truly was. The generation that followed knew even less, but had raw power in their hands and a hunger for more. Thanks to the Council having spread worldwide, and thanks to having the ear of the ruler of most nations, it was only a matter of time before the wrong words fell to the wrong ears, and the wars started again.

 

The Powder Wars and the New Method

I won’t go into the Powder Wars here, but suffice it to say that the damage was staggering. Hundreds of thousands of mundane people died, thousands of the magically active were cut down, and, worst of all, a number of Soulstones were lost forever, crushed for short-term power, burned by one mage assaulting a second, or simply stolen and hidden away by those afraid of losing it forever or never knowing what they had truly stolen from a mage’s lair. Less damaging were the loss of tomes; the Grandmasters knew that magic was bigger than any one method, but it was still a blow. The Innermost Council gathered in their secret chambers, to craft an answer, for fear of magical war erupting again. This lead to the formation of the Thalarian Doctrine and, just as notably, the Guild.

 

The Thalarian Doctrine

In order to restrict the power of magic, the Council chose one man, Abel Thalaric, to stride forth and serve as the voice for the new way of magic. “Magic,” he would say, “Belongs not to a secret Council, but to all of us!” He was an Enchanter, and would demonstrate how his magic, his inventions, could be handed about to anyone and still operate. You didn’t have to lurk in some stodgy old library and study under dim candlelight for twenty years, you could simply pick up a gun made of glass and brass and from it discharge lightning itself. Oh, it wasn’t as powerful as ‘true’ magic, but it was easy to reach, and the majority will always choose quick and easy over difficult and slow. The Illusionists helped, of course, always out of sight, always out of mind, but never out of touch, influencing here, redirecting there, and ensuring that the Thalarian Method ws the –right- method. Abel eventually won the right to sit in the Council itself, defeating the Grandmaster of Enchantment, and set about resculpting the Council into a new form. That it was actually the plan all along, with the Grandmaster of Enchantment having thrown the fight, the Guild’s restructuring the Council’s long-term goal, and that Abel was a figurehead puppet for an aged John Smith was never so much as whispered.

 

Today, the Thalarian Doctrine has become the method of magic in the eyes of most. For eighty years, it has stood supreme, managing to neutralize the power of those who follow its methods while stretching out the duration of Soulstones due to the weak force it draws, and in many eyes it’s the only form of magic that exists. Abel still sits atop the ranks as Grandmaster of Enchanting, kept alive by an astounding array of magical machinery, now in his twelfth century of life, even if he’s as much a prisoner of those machines as a patient. His second attends meetings of the Innermost Circle in his stead, and it is presumed that she will take the position when, or if, he finally dies.

 

That the Bohemian Method was reassembled from old pieces and began to grow to strength once again, away from their control, is a truth which continues to vex the Innermost Circle despite most of them using it themselves. They do not like the idea of their power being challenged, but have not yet been able to seal it away for good. They choose to let the name ‘Oxford Method’ exist, as it draws the curious away from ancient riddles to ‘know’ where it came from, but in time, they feel that they will have to find a way to bury it once more … and, this time, to ensure it stays dead.

 

The Guild Today

The Guild, the true Guild, resides on Earth. The Great Masters were unwilling, or in the case of old Abel unable, to risk the Breach, to gamble away the power that they had in hopes of gaining more. The Great Masters instead sent proxies forth to lead in their name, to form the Guild of Malifaux. To them it seemed a safe enough gamble; let those who travel through gain a title, some riches, and some power. In exchange, the Geat Masters remain safely ensconced in their homes, growing fat off of Soulstones as they are shipped through and the riches that are spent to purchase them.

 

The Guild of Malifaux is lead by Grandmasters, the title traditionally given to the highest circle of a nation, despite being little more than a city and some wild lands. The five of them are the true power behind the Governor-General, the hidden hands pulling the strings of their puppets.