The Grey Order

Background

The Grey Order is the kind of organisation that could only have appeared in Irgar. The situation is perfect: free run to meddle with steamworking, a might-is-right style of land ownership that gives people the ability to turn inquisitive neighbours away, and an open distrust of gods in general.

The Grey Order consists of individuals expelled from variously the Clockworkers' Guild and the Steamworkers' Guild, along with a group of dangerous heretics worshipping the Toolmaker. Thrown out of their respective organisations, they found a common ground with each other, and began to try meshing their ideas together.

The results amazed everyone involved; not least Bjorn Jeffers, the fanatic who had dreamed up the concept. While what they had created was only a prototype, the principle was clear: they could build a machine that could trap and control a god.

The Grey Order fought tooth and nail to gain control of an area of land in Irgar. It helped that Bjorn Jeffers and several other members of the Order were native Irgarim, and could claim conquerors' rights. Then they started building. The Order constructed the Citadel of Steam, a mechanomantic nightmare of a place, all gears, pulleys, exhaust and polished brass. And at the centre of the Citadel, a huge, empty chamber where the captive God could be stored.

When the Citadel was finally powered up for the first time, to everybody's surprise, it worked. The dials showed that a god had indeed been sucked into the Chamber. What they didn't show was which god exactly was in there. The machinery behind the citadel had acquired the weakest and most vulnerable God at the time, which happened to be the Intercessor. Oblivious, they began their experiments. Soon, they had suceeded in perverting the captive God's power and creating an entirely new brand of magic, imaginatively titled Grey Magic.

Grey Magic

A member of the Order draws the correct rune and signs it with a special code assigned to him. The captive god observes this and filters it through to the appropriate bureaucracy within the Citadel of Steam, who approve it and send the request back to the god, who (under the influence of the machinery) performs the appropriate miracle where the rune was drawn.

There is one problem with this system. A Grey Mage's signature can be forged. Illicit operators can mug a Grey Mage for his details and begin using his magic themselves. The agents of the Grey Order take a very dim view of this, and such hackers have a habit of disappearing. The Order ration their magic tightly and while they're more than happy to boast about their new powers, they are also doing their level best to stop anybody finding out what exactly the secret behind them is.

Structure

The Grey Order have passed through their psychopathic-fanatic period. Now, as befits a group of people who know that an incorrect measurement could result in the release of a deeply angry god, they're cold, sober and careful. Their public agents dress in drab grey robes at all times; more secret members of the Order wear whatever will help them blend in. The Order has five levels of membership:

Servants of the Grey Order are those members who perform various above-board duties in exchange for the right to use a small amount of Grey Magic. They are only required to swear a very basic oath not to reveal the secrets of magic to outsiders; beyond that, their magic is rationed according to the degree of their service.

Agents of the Grey Order are given a greater degree of autonomy; they are told details of the Order's agendas by the Adept in charge of them, and allowed to go out into the world to pursue these as they see fit. They are required to swear oaths not to betray the Order and not to reveal the secret of Grey Magic to outsiders, and they are required to obey any direct commands from their Adept. They are afforded a greater degree of Grey Magic than Servants of the Order.

Adepts of the Order are rationed a greater degree of magic than Agents, and put in charge of a cell of three or four Agents. They are told the Grey Order's wider plans and objectives for the field they work in, and required to swear more oaths of loyalty.

Equal in rank to Adepts are Engineers who work in the Citadel of Steam. They are not informed of the details of their work; just of basic instructions along the lines of 'pull this lever and turn this crank five seconds later'. Thus, the secret of the source of the Grey Order's power is kept secret from them, though one or two have doubtless guessed.

Commanders of the Order are not let into the secret workings of the Citadel. They are left to strategise the Grey Order's long-term policies, plans and decisions. Each has a large number of personal Adepts who answer to his orders, and there are many more Adepts who answer to the committee of Commanders as a whole.

High Technicians of the Order can exert some influence over the committee of Commanders, but mostly their business is in the fine maintenance, troubleshooting and redesign of the machinery of the Citadel of Steam. The High Technicians have the heaviest burden of them all: ensuring that the captive God does not escape. Because of the nature of their business, High Technicians must know of the terrible secret at the heart of the Citadel of Steam. Nobody is quite sure how many High Technicians there are; perhaps only half a dozen, perhaps two score.

In terms of the rank system:

1: You are a Servant of the Grey Order. You perform a mundane, above-board duty for them. Perhaps you repair their taxis, perhaps you clean their offices, perhaps you make their supper. In exchange you are given a Poor income but provided with a room in communal barracks and regular (if unsatisfying meals) in a mess hall. You have sworn an oath not to reveal the secrets of Grey Magic to outsiders, and in exchange are given clearance to perform one (1) Grey Magic spell.

2: You are an Agent of the Grey Order. You have been assigned an Adept who tells you the Grey Order's current plans and schemes, and who can issue you direct orders, which you must obey. You have sworn an oath not to betray the order and not to reveal the secret of Grey Magic to outsiders, and in exchange are given clearance to perform four (4) Grey Magic spells.

3: You are an Adept of the Grey Order. You know the Grey Order's wider strategies and have sworn a great deal of elaborate oaths of loyalty. You are in control of a cell of four Grey Agents, who answer to you and who you can issue direct orders. You are given clearance to perform any and all Grey Magic spells.

4: You are a Commander of the Order. You sit in the boardroom of the Citadel of Steam and make the Order's highest-level decisions. You are left to strategise its long-term policies, plans and plots. You have several personal Adepts who answer to your orders, and there are many more Adepts who answer to the committee of Commanders as a whole. You are given clearance to perform any and all Grey Magic spells. You still have absolutely no idea how they work.

Public information

The Grey Order are a renegade group of steamworkers and clockworkers who have fled from their various Guilds and worked together on some esoteric project. It appears to have worked, because the Grey Order now have their own brand of magic to control, imaginatively titled Grey Magic. By drawing the correct runes, they can produce a range of startling effects that it's hard to attribute to any regular Powers or Gods. They claim that the power behind this is protected in their homebase in Irgar, the clockwork Citadel of Steam, but none of them claim to know why exactly this power works; the secret is protected by the very highest-ranking members of their organisation (if any still exist).

Since they've gained this power, the Grey Order have swelled from a breakaway faction of weird engineers to a fairly reasonable power-group, with agents in a variety of locations. It's still not entirely clear what their agenda really is; their lips are characteristically sealed on it. Public figures in the Grey Order always dress in loose grey robes; it's known (though they don't admit to it) that the Order also has a certain number of plain-clothes operators.