Office of Vizieral Counsel

Vizier

Equinox Road pps. 52-55
Wyrd	●●●●●●●
Preqs	Politics ●●● Occult ●●● At least 12 dots in various Contracts
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The members of this order all act as sorcerer-advisors to the kings and queens of the freehold. It is their sole purpose. While not all of them are addled madmen capable of leveling an entire town with some long-forgotten clause of some heretical Contract, many are, and joining this order helps keep their lunacies at bay.

Mien

The Wyrd bleeds off the Viziers in waves — and it seems to manifest as reflective of the character’s core persona. A lustful Lailokin might find that the air above his flesh is suffused with tendrils of sultry red smoke. A frenetic or angry Vizier may crackle with sharp snaps and pops of lightning or static. Charity as Virtue might cause a halo of burnished light, while a cruel and callous Vizier might simply be cast in an unsettling shadow.

Privileges

The Eternal Advisor

The Vizier does not age, at all. Her duty is eternal, for she is now bound as an advisor to the freehold and its rulers. She can still die, of course: a bullet to the head or an iron fireplace poker through the heart is still damage. She’s not immune to any source of damage except that which may come from aging. Whatever age she’s at when she joins, that’s the age at which she’ll remain... until she leaves the order, of course. Leaving the order means that her normal years will catch up with her (or at least “normal” in compared to how the Wyrd might have normally extended her years). If that puts her past the normal years of survival, then she withers and turns to dust, dead.

The Clarity of Duty

Joining the Office of Vizieral Counsel is like pulling back from the precipice to a stable, safe place. While a member of this order, a changeling gains +5 dice when making a roll (usually Resolve + Composure) to resist the manifestation of an existing derangement. She also gains +1 to any Clarity rolls made in an effort to resist gaining new derangements, too. Finally, she can ignore all Major Frailties (but Minor Frailties still apply).

Leaving the order, however, is damaging to a changeling’s sanity. Upon ceasing her Vizieral duties, she automatically loses a dot of Clarity.

The Clausemaker’s Boon

Magic comes easily to the Viziers. Frankly, it needs to — it’s their job. Provided that the Vizier’s player can explain how purchasing a given clause of a Contract will help her perform her duties for the king or queen, then purchasing that clause (i.e. that dot of a Contract) only costs the player the same as it would if she bought a Merit (new dots x 2). This is regardless of whether or not the Contract is affinity or non-affinity. Note that it still means she must buy the Contract one dot at a time — just because it’s useful to her duties doesn’t mean she can jump from Fang and Talon ● to Fang and Talon ●●●●.

Joining

It’s easy to let one’s Clarity slip out of one’s grip, submerged beneath the tides of magic. Madness comes. Derangements manifest, and so do Frailties. It won’t be long before the Gentry start to see the character as more a kindred spirit than an escaped captive.

However, ways exist to help a changeling mitigate this and find some stability and sanity. The Office of the Vizieral Counsel is one such way. Joining this eldritch order gives the character a purpose and a vent for her magic. Becoming a Vizier allows her to feel anchored, not as if she’s going to float away at any moment and be snatched back to Faerie like a wayward balloon.

Most changelings that join the order do so at the summons of another: the Viziers offer the changeling a chance to join their estimable ranks, and unlike many other noble orders, this offer doesn’t come only once. They make the offer as many times as they’re able, actually — provided the subject hasn’t gone off the deep end or earned himself such enmity that the whole freehold wants his heart on a stick, then they will continue to urge the character to join the Viziers. Some even stage “interventions” for particularly troubled and troublesome fae.