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Listen kid, you’re dead now, so all you gotta do is worry about your loved ones (or hated ones) and your anchors. Yea, yea, there are some other spooks on the block, but you stay out of their business and they’ll stay out of yours, right?
Wrong.
Technically, you’re still human, just dead. Your brain is still ‘wired’ the same way, figuratively speaking, so it’s the same ol’ shit, different existence. Let’s break it down real simple with an example, shall we? You get two wraiths who hate each other trying to ruin the other’s anchors. Pretend that they hate each other because of some illegitimate biases that they had in life. Naturally, one wants to hurt the other and the easiest way to screw another spook over is to attack their anchors. A spook with no Anchors gets a one-way ticket to Stygia. So one decides he needs some friends watching his stuff while he’s out and about, so he makes a few pacts here and there. You know, simple stuff, like you watch my stuff, I’ll watch yours, and everyone is happy. Well, that other guy realizes he’s not only outmatched, but now the other guy is hitting his anchors while he’s Slumbering. So he too makes a few pacts. Pacts become gangs of a sort, and those gangs become like governments. It’s natural for some pseudo-tribal gang crap to go that route. Unlike the mortal agencies, the ones in the afterlife have had thousands of years to evolve.
Death changed nothing. This is the way it’s been ever since humans started dying.
The most basic group you have to worry about is the Circle. It’s not so much a government or gang as it is an understanding. Restless who have the same Haunt, the same Anchors, or the same whatever sometimes form these Circles. It’s basically an “I’ll watch your back if you watch mine” kind of deal. Some Circles are just benevolent wraiths watching out for the same building or other mutual interest, while others are nasty sons-of-bitches who are out to do you some harm or thief your relics.
A Consortium (some more urbanized and corporate areas call them Syndicates, instead) is really the only big-time government you’ll likely encounter unless you’re living in a huge city like New York, London or Venice. Consortiums are a loose alliance of various Circles for mutual protection and governing. Some Circles just like having one guy or gal in charge and some form of justice and organization going on. Almost every small city and large town has a Consortium, but not every Restless or Circle is a part of it. Most actually aren’t, as petty politicking tends to get annoying. I mean c’mon, you’re DEAD! Think about the schemes, grudges, and pettiness in mortal society, then multiply it a thousand-folds because suddenly everyone’s immortal (so to speak).
Then comes the Hierarchy, the big boys on the block; these guys are only found in exceptionally large towns and cities. The Consortium’s aren’t part of the Hierarchy, per say, but they know that working with the Hierarchy means soldiers to hunt down Spectres and an enforcement of the Dictum Mortem, things that any Consortium would benefit under. The Consortium’s remain mostly autonomous, but you can count on the more powerful one’s having at least one Hierarchy representative hanging around. I bet you’re wondering who this Hierarchy is if they have such an impressive name and outrank the Consortiums, right? They’re Stygia’s representatives in the Shadowlands. Stygian politics have almost no effect on the Shadowlands, but Shadowland politics have a huge impact on Stygia. Stygia is all about politicking amongst the Legions, and a Legion’s members are determined by not only how they died, but what their political agenda is. And a wraith’s political agenda is usually determined by their stay in the Shadowlands. So the Hierarchy makes it’s presence known in the large cities to not only sway the Restless towards their form of thinking (else they either never head off for Stygia or worse, join the Heretics or Renegades), but also start steering people into the Legions ahead of time.
-- Max, Necropolis Berlin
Politics are for the living and have no place in the afterlife, but some find the trappings of life easier to abandon than some it would seem. The Hierarchy pretends it is the protector of all the dead, while the Renegades play at being whiney, spoiled twelve year-olds. The Heretics make the most sense out of all the factions if you ask me, and since you did I’ll also add that that doesn’t mean I think the Heretics make any sense what-so-ever. I mean c’mon, we’re dead and there’s still no Heaven or Hell. Wouldn’t that clue you in that Sunday school was a fucking joke?
-- Eric, Necropolis London
Somehow people believe all of the rhetoric of anarchists and zealots and have a low opinion of who we are. No matter how benevolent an organization is, it will attract more and more naysayers the more powerful it gets. Alive or dead, people will always rail against the Big Man on the block just because they want to separate themselves from the status quo. Of course, now that we are all dead things get even pettier.
The Hierarchy is not some evil Big Brother institution out to discorporate any free-thinkers or progressive types. We encourage those types of people, for only through self-critique can we grow as an organization. The Hierarchy exists for three reasons. The first is the Dictum Mortuum, perhaps the most important rule in the afterlife! Contact with the living and influencing the Skinlands is forbidden for legitimate reasons! The second is simple organization. Anarchy is the bane of civilization, and dead or not, humans feel the need to organize. Organization brings comfort, peace, and stability to the traumatic afterlife as well as created a viable workforce with the (if you will pardon the pun) hierarchy based upon merit and service. The third and most important reason for the Hierarchy are the Legions. Besides simple organization, as described above, the Legions of Stygia police the Underworld. Who do you think will protect your Haunt from any old wraith who walks by and likes it? We do! Who enforces the will of the People? The Legions do. Not only do the legions protect the denizens of the Underworld from each other, they also hunt down Spectres and give help to those Wraiths who are being consumed by their darker side. It is the Legions who make the streets safe at night, even in places they aren’t wanted but still tread.
The afterlife would be complete anarchy were it not for us, the Hierarchy.
-- John, Necropolis New York
They call us Heretics for having faith! Heretics! Us! Heretics are those blasphemers that have no faith, who do not accept G-d in all his glory! We have been stigmatized with a name that is the opposite of what we are simply because we do not accept Charon as our savior. Pah! Does Charon bring eternal life or an eternity of slavery? His Hierarchy pulls the strings of all Consortium Councils to make them brute squads against us and that rabble called Renegades because we do not accept Charon as our new G-d and his Hierarchy as the new Disciples. We still believe in our earthly fate, and we know this quasi-death we are in is nothing more than the final test, a purgatory where we await to be judged. Live as the Scriptures tell us to and stray not from the shepherd’s field into the den of the wolves. Some of us also see this as a chance to be redeemed for a life of sin and wickedness. They tend to Seth’s descendents in imitation of the heavenly host and the angelic choirs. Even others wander the afterlife preaching the words of G-d in order to save them from their plunge into damnation!
-- Ivan, Brotherhood of the Choir
Oh, I’m sorry. Were you expecting someone named “Spike” or “Joey the Snake” to tell you about the Renegades? Bullshit! The Hierarchy has you fooled my friend! They and the Consortiums label anyone not in either’s favor as a Renegade. It helps to lend an air of banditry or outlaw status us rather than us being those who simply chose not to buy into the bullshit. I am a Renegade. I am wanted by the Consortium of Reno and San Francisco. Why, you ask? Because I believe that no one has the right to tell me who can and can’t live in MY Haunt up to and including myself! It is MY house. MY property! And those living beings that dwell in the house are MY wife and kids!
I have a Right to be there. But another wraith bastard who also claims the house as hers at some point in time decided that she didn’t want anyone except her in the place. Unfortunately for me, she had some low friends in high places and I found myself EVICTED out of my own home. What good is property to a ghost!?! We don’t need shelter beyond a place to hide when a Maelstrom blows into town. I would have been willing to share the place with her and anyone who needed a place to hide. I have Anchors in that house, man! So I raised some hell about it and found myself banned from Reno.
The same BS was found in San Francisco only it wasn’t me being the one getting the shaft. I saw some poor girl hauled off in manacles, probably to the forges or something just as bad, for having the same Haunt as the local constable and she didn’t want to leave. After all, it was her place as well, wasn’t it? I figured it was time to teach these arrogant pricks a lesson. I jumped into a Quick and used him to commit a rather out of control act of arson to the property. So now I’m a wanted man because I won’t buy into the bullshit. This one is for all the little people…
-- Roger, Redding’s Horsemen
Roger has failed to add that the act of arson destroyed all of the girls Anchors and as a result she was forced to live in Stygia. The Renegades are good at omitting certain facts of the matter at hand to vilify whomever they want to bitch at, at the time.
-- John, Necropolis New York
The true Renegades don’t call themselves such. Titles are for the posers that want to pretend they’re down. They aren’t down. Whining, robbing, crying, stomping, it’s what these wanna-be’s do to get attention. Real freedom fighters don’t pull that shit, and they’re way more effective at controlling abuses by the Hierarchy or the Heretics. Hell we’ve even gone toe to toe against a Ferryman once. You got a problem with soul-forging? What the fuck is bombing a forge or killing a priest going to do other than piss people off and make you public enemy number one? Knowledge is our power. Enlightening the masses is the only way to end these injustices.
If only the various cells could agree on what constitutes an “injustice”.
-- Alice, Necropolis New Reno
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