Fraternity of Order
Table of Contents
Who We Are
Once upon a time, the Fraternity of Order ("Guvners") saw to law-enforcement themselves. Sadly for them however, it didn’t particularly catch on. Seems the sods weren’t forceful enough or something. Instead, they now work in tandem with the Harmonium and the Mercykillers to form the triumvirate of justice within the Cage.
Guvners know the laws and manipulate them, guiding Harmonium policy and actions. The Hardheads look out for lawbreakers and arrest them, who are then put up for trial. The Guvners facilitate the trial, acting as the presiding judge (and also more often than not the prosecutor, defender, legal staff, court recorder, and so forth). The Mercykillers then execute the punishment.
It’s easy to see how a group who could find a precedent for anything, and who run a large portion of the justice system, could find themselves with a lot of power. Their philosophy of knowing the laws that facilitate control is one that leaves most folks peery, and many assume that were it not for the Lady, they’d be running Sigil themselves.
A word from your Factol...
Rules, Laws and Axioms govern everything. As you are here talking to me, you evidently already know this. Whether or not you believe it is irrelevant. Laws govern everything regardless; they don’t need your permission.
From day to day life to the inner workings of science and magic. By learning these laws we can use them to their fullest. Those who learn the laws of magic can weave new spells, those who learn the laws of science can build all manner of new contraptions, and those who learn the laws of our fair city can defend you in court and keep you and your freedoms safe should anything threaten them.
I feel I should make one thing perfectly clear: some misguided berks believe that we learn the rules so as to best learn how to break them. This allegation is not only untrue, but slanderous misinformation. We do not break laws. Ever.
Loopholes on the other hand… well, there’s nothing wrong with exploiting loopholes. Were the law wholly correct it would have no loophole. Sometimes we must expose these flaws so as to best fix them and improve them.
If you are not happy with what I have just imparted upon you, I do pray you never need an attorney.*
A Guvner's Journey (A Game of Numbers and Letters)
Joining the Guvners is a rather straightforward affair; any berk who can pass their initial test covering the various laws of Sigil, magic and science (as well as a bit of general knowledge for good measure) is granted membership within the faction and the title of Aide (Namer).
All members of the faction, Aides especially, are required to serve time in the Court seeing to its day-to-day functions and facilities. Aides serve as assistants to high-ranking Administrators - serving as file clerks, research assistants, or court recorders when needed. Those in need of punishment or teaching a lesson are assigned guard duty or some other physically-exhausting task like scrubbing the floors (Guvners have a tendency to abhor manual labour in all its forms).
Aide (Namer)
The smallest cogs in the machine of law, Aides see to the faction’s mundane, everyday needs - serving at the beck and call of the higher ranks. Most work their hours as file clerks, research assistants or court recorders. Some study to be lawyers, taking on what trivial cases they can to get on the ladder of internal court politics.
Administrator A10->A1 (Factotum)
Every 100 days, Aides are given the chance to sit an exam for a shot at progression. Those who pass earn their first ‘proper’ rank - that of an Administrator A10, the lowest ranking of Administrators.
Low ranking Administrators often feel like glorified Aides, serving as personal assistants to the Bureau Chiefs or other, more high-ranking, Administrators. Some have managerial tasks, whereas others spend more time in a courtroom. Either way, working their way through the ranks of the Administrators is a process that takes years of hard work in all but the most exceptional of cases.
Administrators of higher ranks, A5 through A1, will often have Aides of their own. Some will undertake dangerous research missions in the name of knowledge, whereas others will be prosecuting or defending in the courtrooms.
All Administrators answer to a Bureau Chief. Progression between A10 and A1 is done on merit.
Bureau B5 -> B1 (Factor)
Advancement to Bureau Chief occurs only when a vacancy opens up, meaning there is quite the bottleneck of high ranking (A3-A1) Administrators clamouring for a promotion. When a spot does open up, the Factol themselves assigns the most promising Administrator A1 to serve as a Bureau Chief B5.
B5s supervise lesser bureaus (individual departments within the Faction), many of which form parts of larger bureaus. The highest ranking Bureau Chiefs might be in charge of one of the Star Bureaus: those of Record-keeping, Research, Internal Affairs, Planar Affairs and Prime Affairs.
Members rise from B5 to B1 on merit, at the behest of either the Factol or a Bureau Chief B1.
Factol
To become Factol, the position must first open up by the current Factol dying, retiring or being otherwise removed from office. In such a case, all B1s hold a vote to elect one of their own into the position. In the event of a tie, all Bureau Chiefs are invited into the vote to break it.
Faction Mechanics & Character Options
You’d be hard-pressed to find a berk who spends more time with their nose in a book than a Guvner. These sods ain’t exactly the most sociable lot outside of their faction - but if you peak their interest or get them going on a topic they know a lot about or particularly enjoy… be prepared for a long night.
If you are creating a character who has been a member of the Guvners for a while, you may pick one of the following backgrounds at character creation. A list of suggested bonds within the faction and philosophical ideals is also presented below.
Backgrounds
Not every Guvner is a silver-tongued, smooth-talking legal type. In fact, most work behind the scenes, crunching numbers and filing reports to ensure the gears of justice run as efficiently as possible.
- Skill Proficiencies: Any two from: Arcana, History, Nature or Religion
- Tool Proficiencies: One type of gaming set, calligrapher’s supplies
- Languages: Any one
- Equipment: A masterwork quill and ample ink, an abacus, a set of fine clothing, a gaming set of your choice, a key to an unknown filing cabinet, and a pouch containing 10 gp
Feature: Repository of Law
As an action, you can consult your accumulated knowledge about the laws and unspoken rules of Sigil, or currently-understood laws of nature. Doing so is like consulting a textbook on the topic, and you are able to recall a relevant passage or excerpt. You may do this once per long rest.
Whilst Guvners are not the only lawyers in the Cage, they are certainly the most prolific and respected. They know the laws of the Cage inside and out, and can blag their way out of just about anything.
- Skill Proficiencies: Any two from: Deception, Insight, Investigation or Persuasion
- Tool Proficiencies: One type of gaming set, calligrapher’s supplies
- Languages: Any one
- Equipment: A large tome on a very dry topic, a lucky copper medallion, a quill, a set of courtroom attire, a set of fine clothing, and a pouch containing 15 gp
Feature: Expert Witnesses
You have an array of contacts from your time in the courtrooms. Choose two of the following fields of study: Arcana, Criminology, Engineering, History, Linguistics, Medicine, Nature, Psychology or Religion. You have a well-respected contact in each of those two fields who owe you a favour. One of these contacts likes you, the other does not. Pick which.
Mathematicians have spent a little too much time among the Gears of Mechanus, listening to their infernal clacking as they write out their endless equations. These sorry sods are so full of law and order that they are often mistaken for Xaositects or other chaos-lovers. Truth is, they're just operating on a much, *much* higher level than the rest of us.
- Skill Proficiencies: Any two from: Arcana, History, Investigation, or Perception
- Tool Proficiencies: One type of gaming set, tinker's tools
- Languages: Tick-Tock
- Equipment: An abacus in base 17, 289 ball bearings, a "whirlygig", a large flask of coffee, a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 3 gp
Feature: The Gears are Turning
The sounds of the Great Gears of Mechanus haunt you wherever you go, and those who stare deep into your eyes would never question your insanity. You can make Charisma (Arcana) checks to attempt to explain your workings towards the Theory of Everything in order to hold a person's attention or convince them of your peril. 'course, they may never look at you the same way again...
d4 | Faction Draw (Ideal) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bookworm, I love reading - give me a good book of laws or minutes and I’m happy for an hour |
| 2 | Power-hungry, Knowledge of laws could lead me to ultimate power. I’ve been studying relentlessly to get there |
| 3 | Duty, Everyone needs a lawyer. Especially, the guilty |
| 4 | Mathematics, I signed up to help write the ultimate equation of everything. We’re so close. Every time I close my eyes I see the gears of Mechanus… taunting me... |
d4 | Faction Mentor (Bonds) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Sun’s Ray, an enigmatic librarian with a revolutionary new filing system |
| 2 | Belysia Irinia, a haughty scholar who’s rarely ever seen |
| 3 | Jones Farland, a public lawyer with a great track record |
| 4 | Cubit, a modron mathematician with an eidetic memory |
Faction Restriction
Guvners do not knowingly break any laws that apply to them- not unless they can find a loophole around them or prove them to be faulty. Those who do often find themselves going to great lengths to justify it to themselves and their faction (even going so far as to prove the law wrong in the first place).
Whilst there are no alignment requirements for joining, Chaotically-aligned berks tend to be in it for the promise of power more than any actual love of law and order, and faking an undying love of bureaucracy can be rather too tedious for them.
Roleplaying a Guvner
Style and Flair
Faction colours for the Fraternity of Order range from forest greens to any of the lighter greys, with golden accents. Whilst there are no set uniforms of the likes, most members working the City Courts wear a plain set of robes in either grey or blue.
The Faction emblem is always golden and polished to the highest standard. The symbol is 15 small circles arranged in a ring around an arrow ('The Arrow of Justice').
A "Good" Guvner...
- Keeps meticulous notes and records of any interesting phenomena or events they encounter (and ensures that these are sufficiently reported and filed away).
- Does not interfere with the execution of justice or the law (unless they can prove the application to have been faulty in the first place).
Faction Powers
Guvners are experts at finding loopholes, and as such have an excellent attention to detail. When making an Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Survival) ability check to notice a hidden pattern or something out of the ordinary, you may add 1d4 to the result.
Once per long rest, or by spending inspiration, you may ignore disadvantage from any number of sources for any one roll you make.
When you make an Intelligence ability check in which you are not proficient, you may add half your proficiency modifier (rounded down).
When you use your Loophole, you may ignore disadvantage from any number of sources until the start of your next turn.
The Chant
Section (1): Our Goal. As you obviously know, we dedicate ourselves to law and knowledge.
- Subsection (A): Laws are representations of power.
- Point (1): Laws govern the lives of every being.
- Point (2): Laws order the actions of everything.
- Subsection (B): Knowledge is power.
- Point (1): With knowledge comes understanding.
- Point (2): With understanding we gain the ability to manipulate things around us.
Conclusion: Knowledge of law, then, is the ultimate power.
- Point (1): Everything is governed by laws (see Subsection [A] points [1] and [2]).
- Point (2): Knowledge of all law is the power to manipulate all things.
History
The Fraternity of Order is a faction with a long and extensive history that could fill countless books and half a dozen berks’ brain-boxes. Thing is, reading it would bore you half to the dead books. That’s not to say they don’t have anything particularly colourful or interesting in there - they sure do! Thing is, every point has been so boiled down, overanalyzed, and dissected, that even the most salacious of events are presented in the most mundane of ways.
Having such granular accounting has led to the Guvners being able to trace their origins back over a thousand years - back to the first group of sods who thought to establish the Municipal Laws of the Cage. Their thinking was that the Lady had her hands full keeping out the gods and generally ensuring the safety of Sigil as a whole; so those living within it really ought to organise themselves to help keep her house in perfect harmony.
Technically, this means that the Fraternity of Order is the first ever faction. They established the charter under which all other factions were registered, and theirs was the first name on that charter. Others would disagree; they’re far from the oldest, after all. But the Guvners make technicalities a hobby, and flexing them a delicacy.
The Paper Trail
When the Great Upheaval came, the Guvners surviving it came as a surprise to no-one. They were well established and by far the most well-documented of factions, with regular meetings and detailed minutes taken at every one. Fact is, minutes from a meeting held a thousand years ago are still mouldering somewhere in a vault in Mechanus. Their status as a faction was never in doubt… They had the paper trail to prove it!
They also keep a lot of other writing. A lot. Every new finding or interpretation of the law is stored away in their extensive records library, every trial held in Sigil is documented, and any new precedent noted.
This makes them exceptional lawyers, legal advisers and advocates. Give them enough time and they’ll find a precedent for nearly anything. They have millennia of events to pore through, after all… the skill is in finding it.
Their role as legal advocates also makes the Guvners one of the wealthier factions in The Cage. They can make an awful lot of coin off the big names of Sigil, mediating everything from property disputes to Factions filing for damages against one another. It’s the latter that brings home the coin though, which they then use to finance all manner of research expeditions, field trips, and thesis papers. All of which are, naturally, just as well-documented and meticulously analysed.
So… what now?
The Guvners are, for the most part, a fairly uniform and like-minded faction. They’re very scientifically minded, needing hard evidence before they’ll even budge on a position. But there is a growing sect of theoreticists that’s making waves among the Guvners: The Mathematicians.
The Mathematicians started as a small group of philosopher Factotum and Factors, most of whom were long retired or among the field teams some decades ago. They have a fascination with the gears of Mechanus - more so than any other Guvners. Most of them have even taken up residence on the Plane of Order itself, chasing their current theory: that everything, anything imaginable, exists in potential form on Mechanus.
They are using logic, symbolism, and abstract mathematics to derive a ‘Formula of Everything’. With this, they claim that they could predict the future, or create absolutely anything they wanted - maybe even controlling Mechanus and the Multiverse itself.
They’re not having a great deal of luck. Nevertheless, the funding keeps on pouring in, and their numbers continue to swell...
Addendum
- Rules. Minor laws. Mortal-made laws. These govern how living beings should act. Power structures have discovered countless of these Rules, and continue to discover them every day. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “doesn’t "the man" set the Rules?”. No. That point is subject to debate, but strong evidence suggests that all laws exist at all times. We only discover them. And with each new discovery, a little more order is placed upon the multiverse. The more laws we uncover, the more Rules we cause to be written, the more we control the multiverse.
- Laws. We call these the Laws of nature - those that the highest of powers make. Again, whether they create or merely discover them is up for debate (sign up to Theory 7b with Selene Dyonis to learn more on the topic). For the most part, these remain immutable by all but the Powers’ hands. Once we understand them however, we can use them to our advantage.
- Axioms. Rising above the most important of Laws are the Great Axioms - universal truths to which there is no contention. They are immutable and utterly immune to manipulation. Every power, being and object is subject to these axioms at all times. And truth be told, we know very little of them. We are privy to one, perhaps two, of them within our Order. One may need knowledge of an Axiom to become a power, and one who understands all Axioms may well rule the multiverse.
References & Inspiration
- Mimir's Guvner page - General reference and inspiration