Voter
A voter needs no qualifications besides allegiance to be worthy of liberty in the Free Council.
Host
A host is simply any voter who donates his space to the order for an Assembly or debate. A mage who routinely hosts meetings or who sacrifices his time or money to create a great environment might retain his local status for weeks after an Assembly. The mage who merely lets his fellow Libertines use his basement when it’s his turn enjoys the benefits of status only as long the meeting lasts.
Emissary
Emissaries are among the most common positions in the Free Council. An emissary is, in general, only as good as he is liked by both the Assembly dispatchers and the audience to which he is sent.
To be a good emissary requires tact, poise and a willingness to let others get the attention. In exchange, an emissary gains a ready audience, face time with influential local wizards and a reputation for discretion. Emissary is not a prestigious position, but it can be a valuable one.
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Letter Carriers
A letter carrier may be any emissary who travels abroad to carry a mes- sage on behalf of the order. Historically, a letter carrier is specifically an emissary who allows his memory to altered with Mind spells so that even the courier himself may not have access to the message.
Minuteman
Any Libertine who agrees to fight (in some Consilii even just figuratively) may customarily be called a minuteman.
A minuteman is expected to come when his cell phone rings or the strategos calls out to him through telepathy. Minutemen pull on their boots and convene in empty parking lots at four in the morning because a Seer pylon has found someone’s sanctum. They drive to the Assembly site when a mage needs to be escorted out of town. These are the citizen soldiers of the Free Council, and they are all volunteers.
Citizen Agent
The title of citizen agent is reserved for those Libertines who go beyond the call of the minutemen and serve the order as watchmen, spies and covert operatives. A citizen agent’s iden- tity as an operative of the Assembly is seldom kept secret. His missions almost always are. It is an oddity of the order’s desire for democratic transparency and its needs for security. These mages jeopardize their lives for the sake of the order, and in exchange they gain celebrity, clout and a degree of unofficial authority.
Strategos
The strategoi are the generals, pundits, experts and directors of Free Council Consilii. They’re like straight-jacketed presidents, managers and executives of their small area of authority, but powerless outside their purview.
The position of strategos is an artifact of Libertine hope, however. The role of the strategos makes the most sense in areas where Libertines are numerous enough to make rapid communication and quick decision-making difficult. Not that many Consilii have so many mages, much less so many Libertines, that the role of strategos can be kept adequately apart from other roles in the order.
A strategos represents a willful surrender of democratic power on the part of the people — the voters’ authority is invested in the strategos with the understanding that it will be paid back later. As an investment, many Libertines expect their power, or the order’s, to be more valuable when it is returned. The people give up a degree of their liberty to the strategos, who gains a great deal of authority but also becomes responsible for the safekeeping of that liberty. It’s a quietly cherished rule of the Free Council that a strategos who hoards authority and shirks liberty can be toppled by popular revolt.
The traditions of the Free Council prohibit a single mage from serving as a strategos in more than one area of expertise, so even if a single experienced and bril- liant wizard is the ideal candidate to take on responsibility for both affairs of medicine and affairs of science, she must be restricted to one or the other.
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Syndic
The syndics are statesmen, transforming complex and often delicate issues into surmountable topics for debate and eventual voting at Assembly.
They are meant to be a kind of idealized Greek debater — clairvoyant neo-Ciceros shaping the ideals of a shining future. In the eyes of the founding Libertines, the syndics might be idolized and revered — certainly they should be appreciated and respected — but they should not be elevated above the voters. In theory, a syndic is merely an agent of simplicity, translating many voices in a single cogent argument.
But a syndic is meant to enjoy no more power than any other Libertine. A syndic gets one vote, the same as any other mage. A syndic should have responsibility, not author- ity. For that she deserves thanks, not obedience.
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