The Conspiracy

The Conspiracy is a criminal organisation localised in the Farmore region of the Dratoran Isles. It is exclusively made up of cornixes, crow-hybrid humanoids with a penchant for hoarding, and traces its origins back to the exiled Mad Marquis Jacques Dawson V. They are infamously wealthy, notoriously well-informed information brokers, and revered gangsters. Their control over the people of Farmore is cemented with protection rackets and blackmail, though they have no qualms about resorting to murder when the occasion calls for it. The Conspiracy is largely characterised by their use of doll's bane poison, an incredible deadly draught that is favoured by Conspirators due to their natural cornix immunity to its effects.

The known members of The Conspiracy, organised according to their Feather (squad), include:

• Marquis Jacques Dawson V - The deceased founder of The Conspiracy, he had a pied plumage and an obsession with planes beyond Dratora after the mysterious disappearance of his son, Jacques "Jack" Dawson VI, which he attributed to abduction by inter-planar forces.
• Jacqueline "Jackie" Dawson - Jackie is the descendent of Jacques Dawson V and current Murder Mother of The Conspiracy. She has a black and silver plumage and always keeps an eye on the bigger picture. She seems more diplomatic and less aggressive than some of the others, but it should never be forgotten that she carries one of the few prototype firearms in Dratora and has an itchy trigger finger.
• Dorian - Dorian is Jackie's husband and is the Murder Father of The Conspiracy. He is the face that the public see, and oversees the Extermination and Acquisition Feathers. He has a grey plumage and is slightly taller than Jackie.
• Maggie - Maggie is the wife of Pietra. She has a pied plumage and belongs to the Secrets Feather. She is notorious for her strokes of good fortune and her beautiful singing voice, but her true value lies in her incredible intelligence.
• Ryan - Ryan is Carrie's husband and belongs to the Secrets Feather. His plumage is black with a green sheen. His most striking characteristics are his manners; his demeanour upholds a level of professional conduct that is as unnerving as it is respectful. He never seems to forget a face and keeps a close eye on the activities of any potential dissidents.
• Capieta - Capieta is a member of the Secrets Feather. She is tall and slender, she has a black plumage with a purple tinge, and she dresses in a long cape. Capieta has a husky voice and a bubbly attitude.
• Bill - Bill is a member of the Secrets Feather. He has a black plumage and a larger beak than most other Conspirators. Bill is adaptable and quick-thinking; he approaches his contracts as a game of chess against the target, and he is always three moves ahead. He is incredibly sociable and manoeuvres through crowds with adept precision and delicate manipulation.
• Nieve - Nieve is a large, member of the Acquisitions Feather, and wife to Morgan. Her plumage is black, brown, and glossy, and she has striking, dark brown eyes. She dresses in fine silks that accentuate her naturally glossy look. She is a master of deception, which makes her deadly in social combat. She also has an uncanny understanding of what makes a worthwhile deal, and when somebody is offering a poor trade. Her speciality is the acquisition of knowledge, the more taboo and forbidden, the better.
• Pietra - Pietra is Maggie's wife. Like Maggie, she has a pied plumage. She belongs to the Acquisitions Feather; her keen eye for art and design quality enables her to discern a fake at little more than a glance. She also has a morbid habit of making grotesque art from those that stand in her way, her trademark of her work being a decorated corpse with the eyes plucked out.
• Colin - Colin has a black plumage with a collar of white feathers around his neck. His role in the Acquisitions Feather is to source exotic ingredients for The Conspiracy to use. He is notoriously lazy, and has developed something of a reputation amongst locals and within The Conspiracy. 
• Houdin - Houdin is a member of the Acquisitions Feather and husband of Dederick. He has a black and grey plumage. His eyes are dark brown and his beak has a reddish tinge. His speciality is acquiring items by way of breaking and entering. Much like his husband, he favours wearing a hood to disguise his face.
• Carrie - Carrie belongs to the Mob Feather and is married to Ryan. She has a black plumage with a purple sheen. She is notoriously talkative and loud, with a deep-toned voice. The Mob Feather are responsible for eliminating problems, either by means of murder or intimidation where a lighter touch is needed. Carrie has been known to lead ambushes against a troublesome individual at night on their way home from the tavern to send a message.
• Dederick - Dederick is a member of the Mob Feather and husband of Houdin. He has a black and grey plumage. His eyes are the colour of slate. Dederick is slow and often heavily armed, hiding his face behind a hood. He is often the one left to dispose of an expended source of information, often resorting to dry-gulch.
• Rudolph - Rudolph is a member of the Sentinel Feather. He has a black plumage with a white beak. The Sentinel Feather watch over the rookeries and other bases of operations, patrolling the widow's walks and staying vigilant for unwanted investigators poking around. Rudolph learnt quickly that nosy neighbours often have little time to cause problems when their food stores are poisoned, their fields burnt, and the ground they tend salted until barren. Rudolph is well-spoken and able to imitate voices remarkably well. Rudolph's unnerving appearance made him the target of more racial abuse than most other Conspirators.
• Morgan - Morgan is a black-and-grey-feathered member of the Sentinel Feather, and partner to Nieve. Their feathers are also glossy, even more so than their wife's, and their eyes are the colour of slate. They speak in a low-toned voice. Morgan is an inventor, and is largely responsible for rigging traps around the entrances to The Conspiracy's base of operations. They also train and keep wolves that serve as guard dogs for The Conspiracy.
• Edgar - Edgar is a full-bodied member of the Occult Feather, and husband to Alan. He has a dishevelled black plumage with white feathers around his throat. Edgar is remarkably intelligent, hence his affinity for the occult arts, but also playful and almost childlike in his demeanour. His speciality is in calling to the deceased, having been resurrected himself. He whispers to disembodied souls, encouraging them to approach and do his bidding. Through these spirits, Edgar is able to glimpse scenes from the past or future. Alan - Alan is a member of the Occult Feather, and husband to Edgar. His plumage is black and oily, giving him a permanently greasy look. Alan is a monk with a peculiar religious outlook, seeing all aspects of magic as tools to be used to become closer to the divines. Unlike his husband, Alan is quite lithe and nimble, as much an accomplished martial artist as he is an occultist and divine practitioner. Alan and Edgar argue frequently, but are deeply devoted to each other and aligned in their cause.
• Cho - Cho is a Doll, though both the Occult Feather and Acquisitions Feather have fought hard to bring her into their Feather. Her plumage is black and her beak is blood red. She favours gloves and boots that match her beak, giving her the look of one that has crawled through blood to reach her position. Her speciality is acrobatics, both on foot and on the wing. Hence, she works alongside the Acquisitions Feather regularly. She has a reputation for being able able to put the evil eye on one that draws her ire, and she has miraculously and mysteriously sidestepped death more than once. Hence, she also works with the Occult Feather.
• Pip - Pip is a Doll with a pied plumage. Little is known about her as of yet.

Structure

The Conspiracy is run by the Murder Mother and Murder Father. Typically the Murder Mother is the organisational and political powerhouse behind everything, whilst the Murder Father is the face of operations with the public, including where protection rackets and extortion are concerned.
Long standing subordinates are referred to as Birds and are organised into squads called Feathers. New members of a Feather or to The Conspiracy in general are called Dolls.
Collectively, all members of The Conspiracy are referred to as Conspirators.

Culture

The Conspiracy perceive the world as a series of problems; puzzles to be overcome through cohesion with the Conspiracy, where any solution is permitted so long as it improves the position of The Conspiracy as a unit. To Conspirators, legality is simply an obstacle, as is morality, when the only universal truth worth considering is logic. Knowledge, communication, and ruthlessness are all tools of The Conspiracy, and they hold respect for any that manage to out-manoeuvre them.

Assets

The Conspiracy have accumulated a vast hoard of wealth that they use to fund their activities. Some of this wealth is in coinage, whilst the rest is made up of gems, artefacts, magical items, and art. They also have an extensive library of lost or forbidden knowledge that they monopolise and leverage for political power.
Whilst The Conspiracy happily peddle contraband, including drugs, their alchemy labs are more commonly used for the bulk production of poisons. The Conspiracy have one of the largest collections of poisons and poison-making ingredients in the Dratoran Isles.

History

The Conspiracy was founded after the mysterious disappearance of Jacques "Jack" Dawson VI, the heir to the Marquisate of Farmore. Following his disappearance, Marquis Jacques Dawson V became paranoid, claiming that agents from another plane of existence had stolen his son. His demands to search for his son turned up nothing but dead ends, and the responses to his orders turned from dutiful compliance to bitter mutiny. When the revolution finally came, Jacques Dawson V was forced to retreat into an old castle built into the mountains with his family and most loyal followers. Their position was defensible for a while, but it was only a matter of time before the people of Farmore found means of sieging the castle, preventing escape even by air. 
Realising that he had limited time to act, Jacques Dawson V turned to some of the occult tomes the search parties had turned up whilst looking for his son. Ever devious and determined to get back to the search for his heir, Jacques Dawson V ordered that the castles gates be opened and the sieging forces be allowed to enter. They did so, and many cornixes were killed or captured as the rebels stormed the castle, but the old Marquis was not among them. Rather, he had commanded his most loyal to delay the rebels whilst the rest of them escaped through the castle walls using goblin doors, feats of illusion and apportation hedge magic that the fey supposedly use to steal children, that Jacques had learnt about from his tomes. Once outside, the cornixes used copious amounts of fire medicine to cause a landslide from the surrounding mountains that sealed the rebels within their castle tombs. Some of the cornixes left behind managed to fly out of the watchtower to reunite with the rest; the fates of the rest remain unknown.
Unable to return to the throne without inciting more insurrection, and taking the opportunity to feign his death in the old castle, Jacques Dawson V used his newfound occult secrets to create a base of operations hidden in the mountains themselves, obscured behind goblin doors that allowed him to enter and exit the town unseen. He concluded that the world and planes beyond were against him, as was life itself; little more than one big series of challenges that would destroy him unless he could overcome them by any means. He named those loyal to him Conspirators and welcomed them to The Conspiracy: a collection of those who knew the truth about the world, who knew that there were threats beyond the Veil that could not be ignored, and who knew that the true Marquis' noble line still lived on in him. 
Throughout the rest of his life, Jacques Dawson V continued to accrue wealth, weapons, magic, artefacts, and knowledge in the pursuit to find his son's abductors, to no avail. When he died, the legacy of The Conspiracy was passed to his daughter, a ruthless woman who refocused The Conspiracy towards domination in Dratora. With the resources she inherited from her father at her disposal, and the quick and decisive murder of her rivals, little stood in her way as she turned The Conspiracy into a criminal organisation powerful enough to rival the Wicked Witch and the Assassin's Guild combined.

Territories

The Conspiracy claims territory across the region of Farmore in the Dratoran Isles. Whilst Conspirators do operate beyond the Farmoran border, it is ordinarily in the interests of acquisition of assets. Seldom do The Conspiracy commit crimes outside of Farmore, unless there is an immediate gain for The Conspiracy in doing so.

Foreign Relations

The Conspiracy live seemingly harmoniously among the people of Farmore. They are revered and in many cases feared by the locals, but The Conspiracy have a vested interest in maintaining political stability, so long as the person in power does not interfere with their activities. Previous Harbingers that have opposed them have conveniently disappeared, and as such many of their more recent successors have come to accept the activities of The Conspiracy as unavoidable events, the damage from which must be mitigated, much like natural disasters.
The Conspiracy have a mutually beneficial and mutually fickle alliance with the Wicked Witch and the Assassin's Guild. Whilst they compete for a niche, often relishing at an opportunity to weaken the other, The Conspiracy have no intention on expanding into a country-wide criminal empire; their strength comes from a close-knit community of aligned Conspirators. Hence, the Wicked Witch is fairly content to allow them to operate in Farmore, and the Assassin's Guild honours the territorial boundary unless they believe they can get away with a contract unnoticed.

Education

The Conspiracy have a culture of storytelling. Information is hoarded through old texts and tomes, but the preferred way of disseminating information amongst Conspirators is by word of mouth. Dolls (new Conspirators) are also taught practical skills within their Feather, often on easier jobs until they are confident enough to run their own activities on behalf of their Feather.

Infrastructure

The Conspiracy base of operations is a system of tunnels and caverns built into the mountains of Farmore which are protected with creative traps and magical goblin doors. The latter prevents most people from identifying the location of their headquarters, whilst the former brutally punishes any talented or lucky enough to find it regardless. The sleeping quarters and personal chambers are built into tall, vertical caverns called Rookeries, often one per Feather, most of which have a natural chimney of stone that have been modified into widow's walks.

Tenets of Faith

The tenets for The Conspiracy have changed over the years, but the core tenets that have lasted the longest unchanged are as follows:

1. Life is a series of problems that may be solved by any means necessary. 
2. There is never more to life than meets the doll's eye; no problem cannot be solved with creativity and poison.
3. Knowledge is power; it should be gathered fervently and offered sparingly.
4. Bird of a Feather flock together. Loyalty to The Conspiracy and one's Feather is to be upheld at all costs.

There is never more to life than meets the doll's eye

Founding Date

15:Elf

Type

Illicit, Syndicate

Alternative Names

Referred to as "The Crows" or "Squawkers" by those that are not in the know.

Demonym

Conspirators

Major Exports

The Conspiracy is one of the few organisations dedicated to mass production of poisons. Whilst they are particular about which poisons they are willing to sell, and who they sell them to, the quality of these concoctions has earned The Conspiracy a reputation as elite poisoners. Their trademark poison, to which their motto alludes, is doll's bane poison. Doll's bane is the poison The Conspiracy most readily sell and use, primarily because it does not affect cornixes, and thus cannot be used against The Conspiracy. Doll's Eyes, the berry from which the poison is brewed, rely on birds for seed dispersal, and as such as evolved a toxin that does not harm birds. The Conspiracy quickly discovered that their avian-hybrid nature granted them immunity to doll's eyes and any poisons derived from them. The threat of doll's bane poisoning alone is in large part responsible for the vice grip that The Conspiracy has over the Harbingers of Farmore, and has acted as a deterrent against any future uprisings against the organisation.
The Conspiracy also barter with knowledge. For those brave enough to treat with them, they are some of the most reliable and well-informed information brokers the Isles have to offer. However, no knowledge is given freely, and the cost is often steep, especially when the Conspirators do not have any information to offer.

Major Imports

The Conspiracy collect wealth in many forms from across the Isles. These are acquired through auctions, bargaining, cashing in on favours, and of course theft and extortion. Amongst their various treasures are gems of unparalleled beauty, magical relics, vibrant works of art, and innovative armaments. It is rumoured that Jaqueline "Jackie" Dawson herself carries one of the few prototype firearms that Dratora has to offer.

Legislative Body

The tenets of The Conspiracy are dictated by the Murder Mother and scribed by her own personal Feather.

Judicial Body

The Murder Mother and her Feather are consulted on interpretation of the tenets of The Conspiracy directly to avoid miscommunication that might weaken the organisation.

Executive Body

The Murder Father enforces the tenets and the agenda of The Conspiracy, both within the Conspiracy's walls and with regards to the wider public.

Location

Farmore

Related Species

• Cornix