The Gryphon Clerks: Mike Reeves-McMillan

Archives: Wiki Pages

  • Research Institute

    Founded by Master-Mage Amiable for research into magic, including the recovered magic of the elves, and the knowledge of gnomes, as well as new materials and processes. Basement contains projects on fungi, yeasts, etc.

    The Clever Man’s Works are now a part of the Institute.

    Senior Director: Amiable – does public relations, interfaces with the Inner Council, University of Illene and Council of Mages
    Operations Director: Gizmo – runs things day-to-day
    Research Director: Blessed of Reedford (unfashionably long, raven-black hair, prominent nose) – responsible for the researchers and publication.
    Commercial Director: Encouragement Limner (tall, thin, salt-and-pepper hair) – responsible for the finances and direct profitability. Abundance Tailor was appointed as Commercial Director briefly, apparently so that the Master-Mage could make a point to her about prejudice, since she was unable to work with Gizmo and was fired.
    Head of the hardlac section: Prominent.

  • Reliable Chandler

    Secretary to Determined. Has a rabbitlike face, and at first a rabbitlike demeanour, but gains courage from his master, to whom he swears an oath of devotion.

  • Redbridge

    Village north of Gulfport, home to Patient Carver.

    As well as his shop, it has a tavern (which serves a decent lunch), a post for the wardens, and a post office.

  • Red General

    An ancient elven military man who wrote a famous book on strategy and tactics, Victory‘s favourite book. His other claim to fame is that he rose from the Copper Class to the Gold Class and became Emperor at a particularly war-torn time in the Empire’s history. He was a sergeant when his unit was caught behind enemy lines, and managed to get them back largely intact, but without the Silver lieutenant. He was promoted (and taken up to the Silver class) to replace the lieutenant, and rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming a general, which put him in a position to take the imperial throne.

    He states that any plan quickly meets chaos when implemented, but chaos favours the prepared.

    His famous list of key elements for success is:

    • Allies
    • Intelligence
    • Logistics and Supply
    • Troops
    • Plans (for attack, defense, withdrawal, and a plan for when the other plans fail)

    The Nine Factors:
    “The wise commander, seeing a force that has superior numbers, does not despair. Rather, such a commander takes action, refusing to meet the larger force face to face on open ground, and takes steps to use the opponent’s numbers to advantage. For there are nine factors of victory to consider, apart from the number of the enemy. These are the factors of location, being terrain, placement and manoeuvrability; the factors of one’s troops, being their condition, training and armament; and the factors of the mind, being tactics, intelligence and attitude. Only when one’s opponent is one’s equal in all of the nine factors do numbers become insuperable.”

  • Realmgold’s Creatives

    The Realmgold’s Creatives are artists, inventors, innovators, philosophers and the like who are supported by Victory in order that they may dedicate themselves to their creative work without worrying about where their next meal is coming from. She provides housing, medical care, and assistants whose job it is to make the creativity practical and, preferably, profitable.

    The creatives may sell their works to anyone, but the Realmgold has first option, and takes an eighth of their profit if they sell to anyone else (as cost recovery). If a creative comes up with something that can be replicated, like an invention, they get license income – standard is 1/32nd of retail.

    The Realmgold’s representative to and from the creatives is her factor, a cheerfully out-of-shape, casual, matter-of-fact middle-aged man named Hardy Fuller.

    Dignified Printer is initially under this scheme, until he is transferred to the Research Institute. So is the political philosopher Perspicacity Weaver.

  • Realm Agents

    Originally known as the Realmgold’s Agents, briefly as the Realmgolds’ Agents after Unification; the more neutral Realm Agents was adopted to emphasize their political neutrality in the service of the realm.

    Under Glorious, functioned as secret police directed against the political opponents of the realmgold, and were usually referred to as the Black Agents because of their dress (when not undercover).

    They carry silver badges marked with an eye and the motto (in Elvish) “Always Vigilant”.

    Victory purged them, got rid of the psychos, torturers and stormtroopers and made them an anti-corruption, anti-tax-evasion and anti-organised-crime force.

    They also have equivalents of the Denninger Intelligencers, who gather intelligence on neighbouring realms.

    Corruption

    Victory offered amnesty early in her reign for corrupt judges, Golds and other public officials. If you ceased taking bribes immediately and registered on the amnesty list, you wouldn’t be prosecuted for earlier actions or forced to hand over your takings. Widely ignored, until the prosecutions started, then there was a rush of registrations. Of course, this gave the agents a list of self-confessed bribe-takers to keep an eye on…

    When corruption implicates a Gold, they have the option of donating an assessed sum for the furtherance of education, or losing their title, whereupon the family must elect a new head. Some have had to give up their mansions as school premises. Others who attempted to do so have been blocked by their families and forced to resign. Those who saved up the money or spent it on something that could be resold are able to get away with it and keep their homes and titles, but they are carefully watched.

    This has created three things:

    1. Lots of well-endowed schools.

    2. A number of new Golds who owe their position to Victory.

    3. Some resentful, formerly corrupt Golds who have joined the Tried and True party.

    A corrupt localgold will be required to fund a local school, but corrupt central government officials fund the Clerks’ College and the law schools, providing scholarships for the impoverished.

    Victory’s aim is that every Koskant citizen can receive a good education, fair and just treatment in the courts, and good government regardless of ability to pay.

    The agents are intensively conditioned (using mindmagic) to be resistant to bribery, and attempting to bribe them attracts a fine five times the amount offered. The agent who resists a bribe and gets the would-be briber convicted is decorated and rewarded with a bonus.

    Organised Crime

    The agents target organised crime through unaccountable earnings as well as street informants.

    Proceeds of crime (and tax evasion) are confiscated and used to help fund the Agents and the Clerks’ College.

    Dissidents

    There are still some radical dissidents left in the artists’ quarter of Gulfport. The wind has been taken out of their sails to a large degree because Victory has given the people the reforms that they actually care about, so most of the remaining dissidents are campaigning for the implementation of obscure, complex, unworkable political or economic theories that only they understand. But the Agents keep a very quiet eye on them in case they do anything violent.

    Most of the more violent dissidents have either been caught or switched over to organised crime.

    After the Unification War, most of the focus on dissidents shifted to the Denninger loyalists, both in and out of the Reversionist Party.

    Intelligence

    The main intelligence-gathering foci are the Human Purity movement and the pirates of the Corsair Coast. Both have been infiltrated.

    A few intelligencers do monitor neighbouring nations as part of the diplomatic missions to those nations, but they don’t do much more than keep a finger on the pulse. Koslin is not at war with any of its neighbours or planning to be in the near future.

    Members

    Senior Agent Conquest: tall, about 35, touch of harshness in the jawline, moves like military.
    Agent Apt
    Active Hedger

    Fidelity Sutter, senior agent in charge of protecting the infrastructure of Lakeside Koslin.

    Valley Carter, senior agent. He has three small children with his oathmate. Notably lacking in prejudice.

    Innocent Carter (no relation), an analyst.

    Wood, Wisdom, Devotion: field agents who work with Piston and Active. Wood is promoted to investigator.

     

  • Realm Benefit Party

    The so-called Realm Benefit Party was the political expression of the Human Purity philosophy, led by Admirable Silverstones, Countygold of Upper Hills. It was banned after the Unification War because of its treasonous activities.

    The Reversionist Party consists of those members of the RBP who managed to escape conviction for treason.

    The enforcers of the RBP were the Special Security Group, large men who wore dark-grey coats down to their shins and (in the period before open war) carried long wooden staves. Dark grey was the colour of RBP uniforms (though many troops wore only brassards).

    The RBP flag was bright red, with a white circle to symbolise purity.

  • Provincegolds

    Provincegolds of Denning:

    • Felicity Lake (middle-aged, unruffled facade, languid style of speech). Capital: Lakeside Koslin.
    • Courteous Westcoast (daughter: Courtesy Hollowtrees of Westcoast; about 60, gruff, grey-haired, wears a long blue coat). Capital: Port Sunset.
    • Tenacious Northriver (replaced by Constance Blueclay). Capital: Northgate.
    • Consolation Thousand Hills (elderly, given to complaining, tremulous, querulous; her province has a lot of mining, but little agricultural production, and her citizens tend to leave to look for work in Lake or Southcliffs). Capital: Mount Morin.
    • Beauty Six Gorges (middle-aged, a little older than Felicity).
    • Southcliffs (middle-aged, older than Beauty, weatherbeaten face). Capital: Koslinmouth (becomes known as Old Koslinmouth when New Koslinmouth is founded across the river as the capital of Koslin).

    Provincegolds of Koskant:

    Magnanimous Gulfhead (son of Realmgold Glorious), older than Victory but young enough to have been at school at the same time. Capital: Gulfport.

    Other Koskant provinces:

    • Western (Victory’s province). Capital: Westport
    • Gulfshore. Capital: Havenpoint
    • Islands. Capital: Deepwater
    • Eastern (impoverished). Capital: Riverbend Market
    • Inner. Capital: High Rapids

    The realmgold of Koskant was elected from among the provincegolds. By firm tradition, the (province) heir of the previous realmgold could not be elected immediately after him or her.

    There are plans to establish a Northeast Province in the beasthead lands, of which a beasthead would naturally become provincegold – making them eligible to become realmgold of Koslin, and raising the number of provinces to 13. This is naturally controversial. The capital would most likely be Snakemouth.

  • Protocols of Hesh

    Hesh is a small village at the bottom of a bluff, north of Coriant. From the bluff, the site of the city of Elwenar is visible: a crater lined with dirty grey glass, in which nothing will grow.

    About three thousand years ago (before the elves even brought humans to the world), the destruction of Elwenar shocked everyone sufficiently that mages came together in Hesh and created the Protocols, binding mindspells that prevent anyone from using magic to deliberately do harm to another person. These bindings also include the requirement that nobody may teach magic to anyone not similarly bound. The childhood’s end rites and the adulthood rites include preparations for the Protocols, so even someone who discovers their magical power independently and tries to learn out of books is inhibited from doing so without a proper binding from an existing mage.

    There are, of course, loopholes. If you don’t believe you’re doing harm, but in fact are, you can cast the spell. “Harm” means “lasting harm”, so a fear spell, for example, can be used in battle or to protect something. Hope at Merrybourne was able to curse her lover Faithful because her geas didn’t physically harm him, had an escape clause, and was primarily a restriction on doing something, though because of her malicious intent and her own issues, she did experience splashback.

  • Plait

    A pretty gnome woman with short chestnut hair. Worked as a hairdresser while a member of the Underground around Gnome Day; later a candidate for the Gnome Party. Angry, and not a fan of Bucket and Briar.
    Bucket had a crush on her when she was his contact in the Underground, but it never led to anything.