The Arcane Coalition

"When evil magick rears it's head, the Coalition will see it dead." -Mantra of the Arcane Coalition

The Arcane Coalition is Everwealth’s iron-clad regulator of magick, born of The Great Schism's ashes, baptized in fear, and armed with laws sharp as their blades. Once lauded as protectors, they now walk the razor’s edge between necessity and tyranny. Tasked with controlling arcane practice across the kingdom, they operate with unchecked authority and divine sanction, snuffing out unlicensed spellwork and silencing magickal dissent. Their fortress, Fort Sunless., serves as both a training crucible and a prison for those deemed dangerous, or simply inconvenient. Though once a measured order, their methods grew harsher after claiming the Fort, coinciding with rumors of a hidden influence beneath its cold stone halls. Now, the Coalition’s reach grows with each “incident" they are, oddly, prepared for, pledging to stop similar incidents from happening again should the kingdom bend to their newest demands these situations 'necessitate'; Its agents casually wield materials like Hexsteel and Mire-Iron while condemning their use in others with extreme prejudice. To the public, they are necessary evil. To mages, a noose in gleaming armor. To some... a puppet... dancing on far older strings for far more wicked hands than we may realize until their growing power is too much for us to stop. Recent implications suggest the Coalition has discovered an internal method to suppress or bypass the toxic anti-magick effects of Hexsteel, further fueling accusations that their monopoly on such materials is strategic rather than precautionary. While civilian contact results in seizures, fugue states, or death, Coalition reports lack such symptoms entirely, implying a hidden solution they refuse to share. The Coalition is not only the enforcing arm of arcane law, it is the sole architect of it. The License to Practice Magick, the most feared legislative instrument in modern Everwealth, is a Coalition creation, written, enforced, and revised solely by its uppermost Mages. Every clause, inspection mandate, and sanctioned spell book originates within Fort Sunless, granting the Coalition legal dominion not just over magickal events, but over the very souls permitted to cast.

Career

Qualifications

Entry into the Coalition requires either a proven aptitude for magick or exceptional physical and mental resilience. Candidates are often scouted young, particularly orphans, delinquents, or the magickally inclined, then processed through secretive trials or recruited through Guild affiliation. Those who show raw potential are brought to Fort Sunless. Formal education is discouraged unless it's through Coalition-approved channels like The Scholar's Guild or sanctioned Magick Guilds under their thumb. Candidates with active licenses are often fast-tracked through lower trials, particularly those with Tier III or IV certifications. However, former license-bearers found to have violated doctrine are recruited as test subjects or pit-cadets, rarely surviving their first assignment.

Career Progression

All recruits begin as Initiates, stripped of titles and names until they survive four years of brutal instruction. If they endure, they become Task Mages, enforcers of magick law. From there, a select few rise to positions of oversight or become specialist Inquisitors. The highest rank, Magus, is granted to only the most ruthless and loyal, commanders like Cameron O’Leary who enforce doctrine without question. Advancement is earned through obedience, utility, and survival. Many high-ranking Coalition operatives retain their licenses, but under internal protocols that exceed Tier V restrictions. These private certifications include unique clauses such as “Instant Invocation Waiver,” “Post-Mortem Nullification Clearance,” and “Preemptive Subversion Execution”, tools effectively turning their bearers into magickal judge, jury, and executioner.

Payment & Reimbursement

Coalition agents receive steady wages, food stipends, and priority housing, often funded through taxes levied on licensed mages and Guilds. Higher-ranking officers earn privileges such as enchanted weaponry, off-duty immunity, and land grants. Informants and external collaborators are paid in coin, favors, or amnesty.

Other Benefits

While the Coalition’s reputation is bleak, internal benefits are substantial. Access to forbidden magickal knowledge, immunity from common prosecution, enhanced training, and black-budget artifacts. Veterans often retire to quiet posts or serve as judges, bounty contractors, or underground consultants for nobles who require discreet power.

Perception

Purpose

To regulate, monitor, and suppress unsanctioned magick; to license only state-approved arcane activity; to investigate, imprison, or execute violators; and to ensure that the knowledge of The Fall and The Great Schism is never repeated through unchecked power. The Coalition is not only the enforcing arm of arcane law, it is the sole architect of it. License to Practice Magick, the most feared legislative instrument in modern Everwealth, is a Coalition creation, written, enforced, and revised solely by its uppermost Magi. Every clause, inspection mandate, and sanctioned spell book originates within Fort Sunless, granting the Coalition legal dominion not just over magickal events, but over the very souls permitted to cast.

Social Status

Coalition members enjoy a twisted prestige. In high society, their authority grants them deference, but also unease. Among commoners, they are feared rather than revered. In magickal communities, they are loathed. In hidden covens and circles, they are killed on sight. Rumors persist that high-ranking Coalition mages are no longer entirely human, having undergone arcane “insulation” rituals allowing them to survive long-term exposure to materials like Hexsteel. While unconfirmed, their immunity to its effects continues to drive public suspicion. Licensed mages, especially low-tier ones, are often mocked for their subservience to the Coalition, called “leashed flames” or “paper-sorcerers.” Coalition members, by contrast, are feared not only for what they enforce, but for what they’re allowed to ignore.

Demographics

Roughly 2% of Everwealth's population belongs to the Coalition, but their influence extends like a shadow. The organization is intentionally small, elite, mobile, and overwhelming.

History

Formed shortly after the Great Schism, the Coalition arose when rogue mages and volatile magickal relics threatened the fragile new kingdom. Armed with divine sanction and royal funding, they were given power over all arcane affairs. Over centuries, they became less a watchdog and more a ravenous hound. Documents uncovered in the deeper vaults of Fort Sunless hint at early experimentation with Mire-Iron-laced shackles and memory scramblers, preceding their regulation by nearly two decades. This suggests the Coalition not only foresaw public resistance, but intended to retain exclusive mastery over forbidden materials from the start. License to Practice Magick, ratified in 211 CA, was born in these chambers. After a series of catastrophic arcane disasters during Everwealth’s post-Schism reconstruction, the Coalition was given sweeping powers by King Lucius Valmore. The License became both their sword and their scripture. Every amendment since, most notably the Silent Conduit Clause, has further blurred the line between protection and oppression, extending the Coalition’s reach into every guild, home, and street where magick might whisper.

Operations

Tools

Coalition members are armed with spellbound shackles, anti-magick bracers, enchanted blades, relic detectors, and binding scripts. Uniforms vary by rank but often include black leather reinforced with enchanted steel and veiled helms. Fort Sunless is rumored to store tools so potent they are warded from the minds of even its own members. Task Mages carry miniature replicas of License seals, enchanted to flash upon detection of subversive spellwork. These devices burn hotter the higher the unauthorized tier detected. Inquisitors are said to carry black seals, granted once per generation, that instantly brand a caster as irredeemable without review.

Materials

Witch Wax (used to maintain arcane surveillance rituals), Mire-Iron (preferred for psychological attrition in containment zones), Blackglass Dust (employed in memory-cleaving salves), and other restricted materials feature heavily in the Task Mage's toolkit. Despite regulating these materials as “too dangerous” for civilian use, the Coalition stockpiles and deploys them freely, especially Hexsteel which they claim is lethal to handle. Internal records, however, indicate sustained long-term use without known symptoms, suggesting Coalition-exclusive immunity or alchemical intervention kept secret from the public.

Workplace

While fieldwork occurs across Everwealth, their true workplace is Fort Sunless, a fortress beyond daylight, hidden in an arcane pocket. It reeks of sweat, blood, ozone, and desperation. Dungeons rumble with restrained energy, training halls echo with the screams of the broken, and no door opens without magickal surveillance.

Provided Services

• Magickal licensing and enforcement.

• Interrogation of magickal suspects.

• Relic seizure and containment.

• Arcane crime investigation.

• “Discreet” magickal assassinations.

• Controlling magickal outbreaks and rogue phenomena.

• Selective alchemical regulation enforcement (focused on compounds identified under the Alchemical Concord, with leniency toward licensed black-budget operators)

Dangers & Hazards

Though publicly dedicated to protecting the realm from reckless magick, the Arcane Coalition is no stranger to dangerous practices themselves... Most notably, they regularly restrain prisoners using shackles forged from Hexsteel, an alloy derived from Blackglass Dust and Mire-Iron, despite it being banned for civilian use due to its volatile anti-magick properties and deeply harmful effects, including seizures, blood maladies, and fugue states. The Coalition cites necessity, claiming Hexsteel neutralizes spellcasting, but critics argue its use is both hypocritical and inhumane, especially since no reports of their own suffering exist, while deaths from even brief civilian contact are well-documented. In addition, raw Mire-Iron is often embedded into prison walls, execution platforms, and interrogation rooms throughout Fort Sunless. While less overtly destructive than Hexsteel, its innate affinity for curses and mental decay makes it ideal for psychological erosion. Whispers persist that long-term exposure to such materials breaks prisoners not just in body but in soul, accelerating confession or madness. These methods, and the Coalition’s increasing reliance on them, only became prominent after their occupation of Fort Sunless. Prior to this relocation, the organization’s practices were more measured, its influence less total. Now, with rising reports of manufactured incidents and secretive training deaths, some question whether the Coalition is still governed by its original mission, or if something far older and darker, buried within the fort, is quietly reshaping its doctrine. Curiously, while exposed civilians experience fatal side effects from materials like Hexsteel, vomiting blood, memory loss, or complete magickal severance, Coalition operatives display no such afflictions. It is now speculated that hidden rituals, alchemical treatments, or even biologically engineered resilience have been developed at Fort Sunless to allow exclusive use of these materials without harm. License enforcement has grown more brutal over time. Fugitive casters found outside registration are subjected to Silent Sanction, a doctrine found nowhere in public scrolls but whispered about by underground apothecaries and charmwrights. Under this clause, violators are erased from record—no trial, no burial, no memory. Their names are replaced in all official ledgers by a burn-marked sigil: a spiral swallowing itself.

Alternative Names

'The Cloaked Judges', 'Mage Hounds', 'The Magickeaters', 'The Real Cult'.

Demand

Their demand is ever-rising. As new magickal threats appear, or are manufactured, the Coalition's mandate expands. From rogue mages to potion smugglers, few threats fall outside their purview.

Legality

The Coalition itself is the law on magick. They write the rules, interpret them, and break them when necessary. Though technically answerable to the Crown, their word carries final authority on all magickal matters. Accusations against them just as over-half of the mages, that we know of, which they target are, buried, or mysteriously silenced. The License to Practice Magick is the Coalition’s crowning achievement, and its most divisive creation. Its clauses are rigid, its punishment swift. Coalition Tithers patrol cities with mirrored scrolls bound in silent vellum, capable of scanning nearby license-holders for violations. Those caught casting even above-tier spells in self-defense are silenced. The Coalition claims the License prevents “a second Fall.” Most see it as institutionalized subjugation, a tether from soul to state. Even alchemical practices now fall under its expanded clauses, with brews above Potency Class II requiring formal tier documentation, ingredient logs, and sanctioned cauldron registration.