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SOLICITORS

(Outlaw)

ARCANOI

A Solicitor can learn the following Arcanoi at initiate and common level

  INTIMATION            CASTIGATE          LIFEWEB   

Any other Arcanoi a Solicitor  learns is common level only

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Intimation is the subtle but potentially devastating power to manipulate desire. With this Arcanos’ arts, a wraith can inflame zeal, unearth long-suppressed urges, or turn fervent motivation into crushing lethargy. A master Solicitor can so completely subvert her target’s will that only monstrous programmed obsessions remain. According to Solicitor and Pardoner lore, Intimation arose from primitive attempts to understand and influence the Shadow. The relationship between Intimation and Castigate is one neither guild likes its clients to examine too closely, but the Arcanoi do share a common origin. Where they diverge is in focus. While Castigate uses the Shadow’s desires to tame that particular shard of Oblivion, Intimation focuses on the desires of both the Shadow and the Psyche for their own sake. Extreme applications of Intimation are nothing less than brainwashing. Even its minor arts can be profoundly unnerving if a self-aware target realizes that a sudden urge is of alien origin. It’s easy to apply in ways that gratify someone’s Shadow, whether the Solicitor’s or the target’s, and a Shadow in control of a Psyche with access to Intimation is profoundly dangerous. Because its effects are subtle and corrosive, particularly when the Shadow holds the reins, it may be the Arcanos most likely to give Oblivion an unnoticed foothold in a wraith’s mind. Between the ease of abuse and the disquieting tendency of self-serving practitioners to become Spectres, known Solicitors have few friends and only the limited trust that they can build (or create) themselves. For Circles that count a Solicitor among their number, reciprocal checks for strange behavior aren’t paranoia — they’re a matter of survival.

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Guildmarks

Every Solicitor’s left eye has a glimmer of toxic green fire that grows as her mastery of Intimation increases. It’s normally the approximate luminosity of a candle, but when she actively uses an Intimation art, it brightens to momentary incandescence, sufficient for reading (if anyone wants to read by it). It’s possible to cover or hood this light — the Stygian fashion for masks certainly enables it — but such deception is itself cause for suspicion among knowledgeable wraiths. Since the 15th century, the Solicitors’ Guild has used a stylized Catherine wheel as its sigil, invoking the symbolism of breaking a victim’s will. Modern Solicitors don’t advertise their skills frequently, but they certainly use jewelry or accessories with a wheel motif for mutual identification or subtle intimidation. For more overt effect, a Solicitor conducting a long-term campaign against a particular target will arrange for small wheels to be rolled past him at distracting moments.

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The Guild

Never a large organization, the Solicitors’ Guild has always been intertwined with the decadent and conspiratorial elements of Stygian nobility. Its first known political dabbling came through a circle of Athenian Guildwraiths who set a price for determining the outcome of necropolitan political deliberations. Since then, it’s made its reputation and fortune as a tool of intrigue and influence — and, at times, served less as kingmaker than as ruler in both name and fact. Intimation’s capacity to affect both deathless and mortal personalities made it a valued resource, not only for wraiths who sought power in the Underworld but also those with interests in mortal politics, economics, or theology. Solicitor power reached its brief zenith at the end of the War of the Guilds, when the Black Death created a massive influx of new wraiths in the Shadowlands and triggered far-reaching upheavals across Europe. Business for Solicitors was brisk, as any titled wraith of note sought advantage over his peers. Distracted by the Skeletal Legion’s sudden surge in power, Stygian authorities failed to regulate Solicitor excesses. The emboldened guild saw a chance to seize the reins of power on a massive scale and turned on its patrons — not in a sweeping conspiracy, as its enemies later portrayed, but in 1,000 personal betrayals and power plays that encouraged and fed one another when the involved Solicitors weren’t acting at cross purposes. Had the effort truly been organized, the result may have been the guilds, led by the Solicitors, successfully breaking away from Stygian authority a century before the Artificers’ ill-fated attempt at a coup. As it was, the Solicitors suffered the fate of any tool that turns in Stygia’s hand. Judging them too dangerous and unreliable to tolerate, Charon and the Deathlords outlawed them and the practice of their art. A concerted campaign of slander, led by the Legions and the Pardoners’ Guild, ensured that most wraiths quickly came to mistrust and fear the Solicitors. The Solicitors who survived their betrayals’ consequences did so by forming the very conspiracy of which they’d previously been innocent. Abandoning contact with their former patrons, they turned their attention to the remaining Guilds, seeing them as a means of exacting revenge on the Deathlords. The events of the Guilds’ subsequent overreach are well-documented…

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Factions

The modern Solicitors’ Guild is more secret society and social organization than trade guild, with elaborate initiation rituals (and attendant use of Intimation) to ensure new inductees’ loyalty and co-opt would-be spies. Competition for prestige and influence is cutthroat, with only one ironclad law: Thou shalt not use Intimation on accepted guildmates. The Spoke of Leo enforces this dictum ruthlessly and without regard for rank. It also pursues knowledge of the Shadow and Spectres. The vindictive Spoke of Aries maintains endless ledgers of Stygian offenses real and imagined. Its leaders carefully tend their ancient grudges and keep their subordinates tirelessly working to infiltrate the Legions to disrupt Hierarchy affairs. Conversely, members of the Spoke of Capricorn see the Skinlands as a giant game board and count their achievements in mortal affairs bent to their whims. Solicitors who still ply their Arcanos commercially are drawn to the Spoke of Taurus and count their wealth in favors owed and wraiths bent to their will. The Spoke of Pisces maintains the Solicitors’ few remaining connections with other Guilds and broader society, particularly the Pardoners’ Guild and the Silent Legion. They’re the Solicitors most likely to be willing to undo others’ work for the right price, but also those most likely to be behind Heretic personality cults. At heart, the Solicitors remain a cabal of political meddlers. Wraiths who learn enough Guild lore often wonder how far Solicitor control of the Underworld really extends. However, the Solicitors’ Guild has always been its own worst enemy. An organization capable of manipulating desire in all its forms attracts personalities with strong desires of their own who refuse to sublimate their wants and needs to a greater agenda. Powerful Solicitors have suborned individual Necropoli, whispered poisoned honey into Legionnaires’ ears, or become the secret masters behind Heretic cults, but none of their grand conspiracies reach beyond local power. A charismatic leader who could unify the Solicitors behind her own plans would shake the pillars of Stygia. Fortunately for the Hierarchy, no one has yet aligned the factions’ figureheads without succumbing to the temptation to use Intimation on fellow guildwraiths. In fact, the Spoke of Leo has been remarkably adept at exposing and destroying such would-be demagogues for a very long time…

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