Mystic Politics & Society

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Mystics have one distinct advantage over the other supernaturals inhabiting this world. They are, essentially, human. This means they can pass for normally mortals amongst society at large allowing themselves to remain unknown, even to vampires and lycanthropes. However, this mortality is also their weakness in comparison to other supernaturals, they live no longer than 'normal' humans and without their magical powers they are no more powerful than them either. Consequently, whilst all supernaturals are communal either by instinct or ancient codes of conduct, mystics group together out of necessity.

The political factions of the mystic community are not as universally structured as lycan packs and vampire clans. A mystic cabal can be any congregation of mages from a traditional highly structured hermetic order or wiccan coven to a whole host of more free-form groups. Some cabals require you to be a practitioner of a certain magical tradition, or even a specific school, some do not care, as such cabals run the the entire spectrum of organisational styles.

However, whilst cabals are self-sustaining self-governed entities, there is also the Council of Seven, the de facto ruling body of the world's mystic population. Once every year the leaders of each of the world's cabals must convene with the Council for an annual meeting, report and general social gathering, this way the Council can keep an eye on what is going on, deal with major issues affecting mystics as a whole and generally enforce their authority. The Council is based in the city that serves of Darkening Nights' core setting.

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As the name suggests, the Council of Seven consists of seven members, elected from among the global cabal leaders once every five years. There is only one restriction on the composition of the Council, it must include at least one representative of each of the three Traditions that make up the 'Inner Circle', these positions are voted on amongst the Councillors, however if there is ever only one representative of a certain tradition they are given an Inner Circle seat by default (which has lead to some problems in the past but it has always prevented the Council's decisions to be called biased... at least legitimately).

Aside from the large annual meetings the Council holds private sessions every month to discuss issues, voice concerns of their own or that have been brought to their attention by various cabals and to ensure that the proverbial left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

The distinction between the Inner Circle and the rest of the Councillors is minimal, they hold no more power in terms of decision making and voting, however less experienced Councillors often sensibly defer to their advice as they are considered the most knowlegable and wise of the Council, hence why they were voted into their position in the first place.