The syndicate is a criminal organization of clairvoyants based in the Scion Citadel of London. It is governed by the Underlord or Underqueen, which leads the Unnatural Assembly.
Description[]
Members of the syndicate are called syndies and they specialize in mime-crime. Originally, the clairvoyants of London had only ever met in small groups with a few large gangs such as the Forty Elephants. But it was a catoptromancer named Tom Merritt who had stepped up and taken charge of it all in the early 1960's. Along with his lover and talented anthomancer Madge Blevins, he divided the citadel into sections, created the black market, and given each clairvoyant a job. The most committed were raised to positions of power, becoming the first mime-lords and mime-queens. In 1964, Tom's work was done. He declared himself Underlord and Madge his mollisher. The first scrimmage happened twelve years later after Tom and Madge had both been killed in a freak accident. The first scrimmage was won by the Golden Baroness who became the first Underqueen. She ruled for four years until she was brutally murdered by an axinomancer. Her mollisher, the Silver Baron, inherited the position of Underlord.
While the syndicate may flout Scion law merely by existing, it has its own justice system. It's not an effective one, but there is one. One law, for example, is that it is illegal to steal spirits from other sections. Another law is that creating a rogue poltergeist is illegal. Moonlighting is also illegal in the syndicate. All voyant businesses are supposed to give a cut to their local mime-lord or mime-queen. This is called the syndicate tax. The syndicate allows a voyant to kill a busker or a fellow gang member, but they can't go against their own mime-lord or mime-queen or the Underlord or Underqueen, and they need to report it to their mime-lord or mime-queen. It's the syndicate's high treason. The First Code of the syndicate states that without sufficient proof, the word of an amaurotic is rotten. A new clairvoyant is expected to announce themselves within forty-eight hours of moving into a mime-lord or mime-queen's section. To form a new gang in the syndicate, one must seek permission from the mime-lord or mime-queen of the section you are in. If they approve, then the Underlord or Underqueen would have to give their blessing as well. If you try to form a gang without following those rules, you'd be killed, as would anyone you employed. The levels of the syndicate begin with gutterlings at the bottom, then kidsman, then a regular syndie, mollisher being the second highest, and mime-lord or mime-queen at the top, with only the Underlord or Underqueen above them.
About half of the syndicate members abandon their legal identities, giving themselves wholly to the underworld. But the other half still hold on to respectable jobs in Scion, forcing them to hide behind masks and aliases. It is rare for a syndicate member to be publicly unmasked. Thus it was a big shock to everyone when Didion Waite does it to Paige Mahoney after Scion announces that she is public enemy number one.
Before On the Merits of Unnaturalness, the voyants of SciLo have attempted to organize themselves before, but without success. Examples include organizing by the luminosity of auras, another idea, suggested by the mollisher the Fool of Farringdon in 1986, was organizing by shoe size. Over the years, the London syndicate has grown stronger. The clairvoyants the Rephaim and Scion capture are mostly outsiders, the ones that live alone or on the streets because they're unable to control their powers or their families have evicted them.
Trivia[]
- The sign of respect in the syndicate is to touch three fingers to the forehead.
- In the syndicate it's taboo to speak the names of executed monarchs out loud.
- The History of the Great Syndicate of London: Volumes 1-3 tells the history of the syndicate. It was published in 2045.