The Moderators' Council
The Moderators' Council was a global organisation which operated symbiotically with the powerful local states of the day with a specific remit to manage the education and licencing of mages throughout Magicians' End. Through their judical arm, the Examination Board, with its own feared secret service, the Final Examiners, the Moderators' Council also dispensed punishment to magic users who transgressed against the laws of the Council. In this way it both supported its members and policed their actions.
Structure
The Supreme Circle was the inner body of nine key decision makers within the council. It always consisted of the Arcane Chancellor of the Institute of Magical Analytics and the Provost of the Free Union of Magical Scholars. In the early days there was a representitive from the Society of Arcane Adepts but after the reforms of 2447 APC their right to a place was removed. Two further places each were appointees of the Chancellor and Provost, leaving two (and later three) places for state representitives from the most powerful cites and regions of the day. The Senior Moderator was elected by the circle from within their ranks.
The Licencing Authority issued certificates to officially moderated mages. It worked very closely with the IMA and the FUMS and applied only a light touch of regulation over the internal authority of their own teachers.
The Examination Board was the judical arm of the Council, with investigative powers and an inquisatorial role. Their feared enforcers were the so called Final Examiners, who assasinated mages found guilty of breaking the Moderators' more serious laws.
History
Refer to the timeline behind the button at the bottom of this page for a comprehesive chronology of the precursor events leading to the formation of the Moderators Council, the events that occured whilst it was in power and those that followed in the immediate aftermath of its collapse.
Reasons for the Formation of the Council
To understand the events that led to the formation of the Council, it is necessary to appreciate the changing public attitudes to magic that spread throughout the world during the later part of the age of the Four Aerial Courts. Two different streams of thought mingled to create a perfect mix of conditions that allowed the Council to seize control of the political narrative. On the one hand, the formation of the Institute of Magical Analytics and the Free Society of Arcane Scholars had given a certain academic respectability to the formal collective and open study of magic which it had not enjoyed since the days of the Old Pale Empire. Under previous governments and institutions, magic had been passed on from master to apprentice in a relatively haphazard and secretive way, but in the 23rd century APC that all began to change. The masters of the new educational and research organisations were ambitious. They sought a way to accrue more power for their centres of learning and to exercise control over arcane practice in the same way they were increasingly monopolising its teaching. By the first half of the twenty fourth century, the IMA and the FUMS were issuing certifications that were becoming an accepted norm for the employment of mages. This was a much more organised system than anything the Society of Arcane Adepts had ever offered and the benefits of the structured learning it provided caused the older, haphazard apprenticeships which had been the tradition in earlier centuries to fall out of favour with city polities and kingdoms throughout the world. Three major events in the later years of the Four Aerial Courts accelerated this process. Firstly, there was the inexcusable failure of the the North Western Myruthean Soil Fertility Project, a flagship project of a group of Sunrock aristocrats and mages. Far from improving agricultural yields, their bungled spells corrupted the land and accelerated its transformation into the virtual desert it is today. Since this scheme had been closely associated with mages operating within the Society of Arcane Adepts, it humiliated the Myruthean magic users and raised the stock of the new learning institutes of Tinturbean, simply due to the fact they had nothing to do with it, and nothing to do with it in a very public manner. A second scandal rocked the Society of Arcane Adepts with the discovery of the Green Eye in 2391 APC. This was an illicit portal from Magicians' End to The Green World created in the northern jungles of Punjuki by the mage and mystic Alsaibior Rettul. The creation of interdimensional gateways like this was strictly forbidden in case it endangered the realm, particularly after the Planar Conformation. The scandal was not so much that a rogue magic user could break the rules, but more that the Society of Arcane Adepts were so slow to find out about it and then were so ineffectual even when it did come to light. It transpired that they had been warned by a former friend of Alsaibior Rettul and had ignored or dismissed the warnings until it was too late. Subsequent analysis conducted by the Institute of Magical Analytics, the Free Union of Magical Scholars and the Society of Arcane Adepts determined that it was now more dangerous to attempt to close the portals than to leave them open, and so there the Green Eye stands even to this day, a permanent wound in reality which does not help the long term stability of Magicians' End. It has been necessary to post a permanent watch at the site and from time to time, strange creatures emerge from one of more of the intermediate realms the Green Eye connects, to plague the jungles of Punjuki. As for Alsaibior Rettul himself, he went missing and is presumed to have entered the The Green World never to be seen again. Finally in 2410 APC the infamous Jebbin City Mage Riot led to a great deal of popular discontent with magic users amongst other citizens and completely undermined the good will which the Festival of the Elements had traditionally engendered for the Society of Arcane Adepts, turning them from glamourous (if somewhat tarnished) heroes into mistrusted villains overnight. This was the moment when the leaders of the IMA and FUMS seized the opportunity to call for stern arcane regulation, managing to pin all the blame for all three recent failures squarely on the "lackadaisical" and "inept" Society of Arcane Adepts and presenting the Moderators' Council as a solution to leaders and populace alike across the world. They met for the first time in 2412 APC and in short order the Supreme Circle had built an imposing palace on an island in the lake offshore from Quarowl and were issuing directives no mage could afford to ignore. The age of the Moderators' Council had begun.Geopolitics in the age the Moderators Council
As the Moderators Council began to exert an increasing influence on the employment and attitude of mages throughout Magicians' End, there were changes in the relative political strengths of the old Aerial Courts. Quarowl rose to become the first amongst the former equals. Highloft was also a winner, acting as a counterbalance and able to use its monopoly over Arcane Amplification Perfume as leverage in the power struggles of the age. By contrast, the former Myruthean hub towns, Sunrock and Nephatar were sidelined and dropped out of the very top tier of important world cities. The Council functioned for the best part of six hundred years running up to the end of the third millenium APC and gave its name to the age where it exerted such a significant political influence on the world. Readers more familar with the historical timeline of Earth Zero might find it helpful to imagine that the Council played an analogous role to the Catholic Church in Europe in the early part of the second millenium CE, mediating between cities and kingdoms, sometimes apparently aloof above the political fray and sometimes actively taking sides but always scheming for power, honoured and dishonoured at the fulcrim of the great events of the age. A timeline of events relating to the history of the Council and the age it gave its name to can be found at the bottom of this article. It includes more details than can be shown within the higher level history of Magicians' End.The end of the Moderators Council
Ironically, the Moderators' Council was ultimately undermined by the politics of its capital, Quarowl, as a direct consequences of policies established long ago in the age of the Four Aerial Courts designed to strengthen the hand of the city. In part those policies had already worked incredibly well, when they had delivered the government of the Moderators' Council and made Quarowl the leading city of the age. Yet when they finally came to full fruition near the end of the third millenium APC, they had consequences none had forseen. In 2964 APC the long standing program of the Institute of Magical Analytics to derive an alternative to Arcane Amplification Perfume, delivered what at first seemed like a spectacular success in the form of Synaptic Unbinding Potion. SUP, as it was also known, was more potent than AAP and it was eagerly adopted by many mages. Unfortunately it turned out to have some highly undesirable side effects, which included mental disturbance up to and including outright madness and these effects did not become apparent at once. Even when they were obvious, some ambitious magic users were prepared to take the risk for the addictive power rush experienced by arcane users of SUP. Fuelled with SUP, rogue mages chaffed at the restrictions of the Moderators' Council and the best assasins in the Final Examiners could no longer contain them. The Council crumbled in a rather spectacular manner to be followed by an era when enormously powerful mages, openly displayed their defiance of previous Moderator principles and fought openly for control of cities and states. This was the beginning of the Time of Terrors.Disbandment
On the 1st of Tivith, 3004 APC, the Examination Board was notoriously dissolved in both a figurative and literal sense when Zemdath the Terrible committed an infamous atrocity, the details of which are written up in his biography. The Supreme Circle went into hiding and the city government was taken over by Zemdath with the Arch Baron as his puppet. Elements of the old Council continued to hold out, in particular a fierce group of loyalists from the Final Examiners but the Council could no longer claim to be an effective policy making body and it gave way to a much more chaotic and patchwork polticial landscape which became known as the Time of Terrors.
Military
The greatly feared Final Examiners dispensed the justice of the Examination Board and were a band of extremely powerful and secretive mages which might have been considered a kind of military wing of the Council.
Laws
The Council imposed many rules and laws which it applied to all magic users, regardless of whether they considered themselves members or not. The most important rule was a prescription against the creation or use of portals and inter-dimensional gateways of any kind. Any magic user found to be working in this area was subject to a trial by the Examination Board and if found guilty, would be sentenced to execution at the hands of the Final Examiners.
DISBANDED/DISSOLVED
2nd Kerax, 2412 APC - 1st Tivith, 3004 APC
Type
Guild, Mages
Capital
Predecessor Organization
Leader Title
Founders
Government System
Magocracy
Power Structure
Transnational government
Economic System
Traditional
Judicial Body
Location
Related Ranks & Titles
Magicians' End - Stephan Crux - Chancellor of the Institute of Magical Analysis by DMFW with Midjourney
Magicians' End - Galen Farmery - Provost of the Union of Magical Scholars by DMFW with Midjourney
Comments