Far Harbor Club

They are bards, artists, spies, and scholars, powerful people who drift through the halls of Kreniko with eccentric personalities and unusual foreign outfits. They take the most feared magical arts and aesthetics of Zerua and weave them into pleasing wonders. For the Prince and for the Nozari family, they are elite spies and personal mages. For anyone else seeking secrets or magic, they must pay a hefty fee or come bearing a truly valuable secret to trade.
Strangers who arrive in Kreniko with foreign magical arts and unusual aesthetics may find the Club to be a useful faction to affiliate with. Bards of all stripes are welcome if they are competent, and druids, wizards, and Ederstone or Divine sorcerers can also find a home here if they wish. But the Club rarely gives without expecting services in return - an initiate will be expected to work for their entry, either gathering information, entertaining, or creating useful items.

Structure

The Far Harbor Club is led by an enthusiastic and flamboyant Keveket  Prism named Kess 'of Many Ports'  - a prolific mage and charismatic speaker exiled from the distant Latashu Sovereignty. Kess is perhaps the least Maradian-acting Maradian, a true misfit with no brain-to-mouth filter and a deep-seated need for attention. He is all intellect and no wisdom or self-control; he would be an excellent scholar, linguist, mage, and even engineer if he wasn't such a verbose goofball. He is a popular leader, a likable face for the group, and a fantastic mascot, but he is far too trusting and distractable to keep a tight control over his people. Indeed, he has allowed Nadwa the Eboran, a sharp-minded foreign spy desperate to take control of the Club for his own purposes, rise to astonishing power within the organization despite all red flags. 
Within the Club, there are Houses - subgroups who specialize in specific arts or professions. Every House has an Officer, appointed from among their number by the Club Head (leader). The Club Officers hold council together to make administrative decisions and assign each other roles like Treasurer, Secretary, Scribe, Quartermaster, etc. All Officers are given a role by the Council, though not all roles have equal power or obligations.
Of the Houses, there are several of main Houses:

• The House of Service, a wing dedicated entirely to etiquette, court service, party planning, and information gathering. Led by Nadwa the Eboran.
• The House of Illusion, a group dedicated entirely to furthering one's magical abilities. Led by Kess of Many Ports
• The House of Sounds, a group dedicated the music of all kinds. 
• The House of Sights, a group dedicated to painting, sketching, scultpure, and other visual arts.
• The House of Words, a group dedicated to authorship, calligraphy, poetry, and playwriting.
• The House of Movement, a group dedicated to dance, acrobatics, and acting

There are a number of smaller niche Houses, but these are not particularly important

History

The original Far Harbor Club, founded in 1729, was one group of a network of spies and bards from the Kingdom of Esedeta, tied to Esedetan merchants and colonial holdings across Ekraht. This original network went by many names, often a different one in each port, but the Kingdom called them the Iaken (or 'repeating rings' - roughly what we would call cells). They worked as missionaries, diplomats, mages, and merchants. They were the furthest reaches of the Esedetan Intelligence Apparatus, intended to use magic and skills to subtly gather information and engage in decentralized covert operations. Their highly decentralized nature made them difficult to break apart, and the Esedetans sponsored dozens of Iaken across the continent who all developed their own ideologies, techniques, and agendas. 
The Iaken strategy was part of an old war of spies - a war that the Empire of Zerua arguably won. But even after the Esedetans lost battles and suffered revolts at home, the cells remained. For example, a different Iaken in the Vice-Kingdom of Azalek launched a rather nasty revolt in Zerua in the 1840s. The Far Harbor Club, the Iaken established in Kreniko, monitored Darakan refugee networks that posed threats to Esedeta, and sought to undermine the fragile order of the Vice-Kingdom of Mikena.In the 1850s, the Kingdom of Esedeta turned inwards, but the Club remained active. It had already started to drift in purpose; groups of Maradian converts taken into Mikena as refugees had joined the Club and brought alternative ideas of Keveket theology and politics. In the late 1800s, leadership fought itself over whether to pursue Esedetan or Maradian agendas - and, in 1892, a small group of Maradians from the far East helped the dissenting faction take the cell over.
The Maradian takeover turned the cell away from espionage for the sake of another country, and towards espionage for the mutual enrichment of its membership. Membership opened to a larger variety of foreign bards and spies, all eager to make money and acquire influence. The Club's pre-existing philosophical angle also became more pronounced, with members hosting raucous debates and playing with strange and exciting ideas. The genuine artistic and intellectual freedoms of the Club began attracting people from further away, and the less-imperialistic goals of the group made it more palatable for many. The 1890s were a golden age - but they did not last long. In 1900, a terrible economic depression hit Mikena. The Club struggled. In a desperate bid to remain relevant, the Club began making more overt and public plays. At first, it faced repression, but it was slowly normalized and accepted as a magical education guild and lobbying group in the 1950s. 
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the Far Harbor Club struggled to find a place in the world. Were they radicals, artists, merchants, mages? Their unstable leadership moved them dramatically between those points, and the group struggled to remain cohesive. In the end, it was a nobleman and a prince who intervened and turned the Club from a suspicious and eccentric business group into the model for a new age of Mikenan high art. The first elite to truly recognize the potential of and invest in the Club was a member of the upper merchant-gentry named Imoxar Nozari - a wealthy nobleman who owned much of the thriving entertainment industry of Kreniko. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Lord Nozari became increasingly involved in the Club as a Patron - he sponsored their bard schools and businesses, and they acted as entertainers and spies. Nozari first saw the bards as useful for entertaining large numbers of rabble at once with their magic, but he slowly introduced them to higher and higher levels of society. What Lord Nozari began, Prince Mazaru Eramzir finished. Mazaru began to contract with and patronize the Club himself in the later 1970s as part of his bid to seize power in Mikena - and when he did take the Mikenan throne in 1980, he carried the Club into the highest echelons of power with him.

"No Harbor too Far to seek Merry; No Sea too Large to be Crossed; No Burden too Heavy to Carry; No Vision can ever be Lost"

Founding Date

1729

Type

Guild, Mages

Ruling Organization

Vice-Kingdom of Mikena

Location

Kreniko

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