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In this week’s blog, we talk about a small group of people that has a huge impact on the life of Rund: The Inquisition.
THE INQUISITION
The Inquisition is an independent organization that operates separately from the Empire. It was established by the former members of the Second Legion shortly after the Empire itself was founded, driven by one fear: that if people who possess magic talent are left uncontrolled, then eventually the horrible events of the Cataclysm will happen again – and the world as we know it, will be finally destroyed.
The central seat of the Inquisition is in Rund’s capital city, from where several hundred inquisitors manage its regional branches. Every big city – currently, 10 – has its own office of the Inquisition, numbering around 50 people each, with the overall current headcount of the organization standing at a bit over 1,000 people.
The Inquisition doesn’t have a single person at its head – rather, it is governed by The Council of Fathers, a group of 7 who attained the highest possible rank. Like the army, the Inquisition attracts bright youths with a promise of a brilliant career for those whose dedication to the cause is exceptional. It accepts recruits from all walks of life, though it’s a known fact that the sons of rich lords tend to become officers much faster than the sons of village blacksmiths – which you can blame on the lack of education of the second group, or attribute to a special protection enjoyed by the first group.
The Inquisition is focused on 4 big tasks:
- Managing the Guild of Mages
- Seeking out mages outside of the Guild
- Clearing out new lands from non-humans
- Performing special operations: catching runaways, and so on.
MANAGING THE GUILD OF MAGES
Among all the tasks that the Inquisition undertakes, managing The Guild of Mages is the task that requires the most effort.
First, the scope: there are offices of the Guild in every big city, plus more temporary housing in smaller towns. Every mage needs to be fed. Every mage needs to be protected. And every mage needs to be accounted for, least some decide to become runaways.
Second, the diversity of issues to be solved: from indoctrinating new mages to communicating with customers – lords or officials of the Empire – and then performing the allowed common magic, to collecting payments due.
It is true that the Inquisition is the only organization in the Empire that is not subject to any taxes. It is also true, that the Inquisition does not have any other sources of income, and so it fully depends on the Guild of Mages to generate whatever revenue it needs to support its structure and its ambitions.
Ironically, without the mages the Inquisition will not have the funds to control the mages.
SEEKING OUT MAGES OUTSIDE OF THE GUILD
Every day brings reports about people who are suspected to possess magic talent. It falls to the Inquisition to verify each report, and to bring the people who are confirmed to having been born as mages, to one of the offices of the Guild of Mages. There, these people will receive a basic education, and their magic talent will be put to use – strictly within the allowed limits, and to the financial benefit of the Inquisition.
Every day also brings reports about people who are suspected to use their magic talent outside of the Guild, practicing unlicensed magic – whether as undercover mages, hidden by some of the lords; or as wild mages, hiding on their own in the borderlands.
Since the punishment for practicing magic outside of the Guild is public burning, verification of this type of reports is more demanding: firstly, you need to send a whole group of inquisitors, so that if the suspect attempts to run away, then he or she is easily caught; secondly, your group should be strong enough to face, and win, a possible fight with the mage who is cornered and has nothing to lose.
Disappointingly, most such reports turn out to be false, and that can drive the morale of the lower-ranking inquisitors down. Having spent days on the road to a remote village only to discover that there’s no magic involved… they would sometimes get aggressive, just to send a message to the villagers – maybe beating the hell out of the accuser who made them come all the way, to prevent future false alarms. Occasionally, this creates a higher-level problem, as the families of the victims may seek revenge. But what can you do? That’s life.
CLEARING OUT NEW LANDS FROM NON-HUMANS
Where an office of the Inquisition in the capital may look like that of a trading company, with the majority of people involved in management and processing of data and orders, an office of the Inquisition in the borderlands is much more similar to army barracks.
Here in the Wild Lands, the major task of the organization is sending out expeditions to destroy non-humans – considered to be dangerous remnants of the Age of Mages. Once the land is “cleared”, it is normally given to settlers or, more often, is transferred into the possession of the nearest big lord, who then sends there his own peasants.
As a few people in the capital have observed, sometimes the lords in the Wild Lands would blow the threat of non-human dwellers out of proportion, requesting expeditions into the lands that pose little strategic threat. Perhaps the true reason in these cases is their greed for more land, and the Inquisition becomes but a tool that they use to get it from the Empire – for free.
SPECIAL OPERATIONS
A runaway mage from the Guild is a rare occurrence, not the least because of the severity of the punishment: a public burning of the runaway as well as of every single person who helped them plan and make the escape. But whatever the risks, these things tend to happen from time to time, and when they do happen, nothing is as efficient as a special operations unit of the Inquisition that has among its ranks a number of mages who help them with tracing the escapee.
As to the other sorts of special operations, like putting down the invasions of non-humans and mutants – on these occasions, the Inquisition serves as consultants, with the Legion itself taking assuming control of the situation at large. The last time anything like that happened was a long time ago, when non-humans bread specifically for conflict got around to taking control over several nearby tribes, thus creating a real and tangible threat to the Empire (of course, they were smashed to pieces).
HARDLINERS AND MODERATES
As any organization numbering in hundreds, the Inquisition is far from being a monolith where every person shares the same view. Generally, higher-ranking officers of the Inquisition work off a blueprint for Rund where mages and normal people co-exist.
However, there’s a secretive group of “hardliners”, whose vision is that of the world where every mage is killed. Their “big idea” is the belief that if you start killing off mages, then eventually the number of people who are born with a magic talent, will start to fall, until the day when no mages are born at all...
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That’s it for today – and thanks for being a part of the community! Did you know that there’s nearly 1,000 people on the official Discord already? Every week, we run there a Q&A session with the game designer, answering 15-20 questions from players. You can join it here, or read the answers from the previous Q&A sessions here. See you around!
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