Free Council Traditonal Terms

The Free Council, although known for modern style and casual language, is still a subculture of specialists, still a secret society. Thus, they’ve created or adopted a sizeable amount of distinctive jargon.

These are Traditional Terms that seem to date to at least the formation of the order or are so ubiquitous as to be common.

Assembly

(n.) A regional congress of Libertine mages or their representatives. An Assembly is separate from the local Consilium, though not necessarily opposed to it.

See also Column.

Column

(n.) An Assembly convened to prepare and organize Libertine mages for battle. A Column may refer to the whole body of the militant Assembly or, less often, to its figureheads alone.

Emissary

(n.) An ambassador from one Free Council body (e.g., a cabal or Assembly) to any other Pentacle organization, including the Consilium. An emissary typically is endowed with no authority beyond visitation, messaging and oratory, though the emissary may be empowered with further responsibilities and freedoms at the discretion of his representatives.

Libertine

(n. or adj.) Any mage with a worldview, personal philosophy or personal attitude that is compatible with or friendly to the Free Council. Though often used to describe mages with actual membership in the order, this term can also refer to any mage who thinks or acts in a manner congruent with Free Council philosophy.

Rarely, Libertine is used to mean any young, liberal or egalitarian mage.

Lorehouse

(n.) A storehouse of records, manuscripts, files and other data important to the Free Council, overseen by a particular body (e.g., cabal or order) in the region. A Lorehouse may be open to friendly mages of any order or may be restricted to use by Free Council mages or even members of only a particular faction or cabal.

Ring

(v.) To sound genuine or authentic; to be persuasive; to change someone’s mind.

Strategos

(n.) A Free Council representative endowed by his constituents with the power to make decisions on their behalf, within his purview, without calling for a vote. Strategoi are typically named to their positions in times of desperation, when time is too short to afford elections; thus the position is typically one with martial or defensive authority.

Essentially, the strategos’s constituents vote in advance to back whatever course of action the strategos decides. A strategos’s authority is always limited to a single area of his or her proven expertise, such as investigation, archaeology or battle.

Syndic

(n.) A elected representative for a cabal, faction or other Free Council body, who is tasked with debating that body’s issues against other bodies, usually within the order but also against other Pentacle cabals or factions. A syndic has no real power except as a mouthpiece, but may attain great celebrity or influence within the local Pentacle community due to his or her visibility and oratory.

Techné

(n.) The Free Council style of magic. Techné incorporates ancient Atlantean mysticism with modern (and sometimes experimental) styles of art, technology and culture to create a kind of wizardry that blends well into the contemporary world and draws from vibrant modern symbols.

The Great Refusal

(n.) The defining moment of unity and integrity for the Free Council, when it turned away from the offers of the Seers of the Throne and thus chose participation in the Pentacle as a single, united order.

The Nameless

(n.) The various unallied but philosophically related sects, cabals and factions that predated the Free Council. These political and philosophical bodies created early forms of the Free Council’s tenets and societal structures but misspent them on angry or misaimed revolutions. The body politic that would become the Free Council were the jewels cultivated from the dross of the Nameless cabals. (Prior to the formation of the Free Council in 1899, the Pentacle used the phrase the Nameless orders, as no one could be sure how many potential new organizations — friendly or hostile — were trying to emerge from the ideological chaos of the day.)