The Summoners of the 4th Society are an oddity. Descended from the Alchemy, Psychic and Faerie Societies, their place in the world of the Six Societies is ambiguous.
Alchemysts are known for their facility in creating potions, artifacts, weapons and constructs. The Faerie create the dreamscapes that are training grounds for initiates. Knights are defenders and the Aelfan are enforcers of Society Law. Psychics maintain the Network.
Each Society provides a service that benefits the others, except the Summoner. Aloof and secretive, they reserve their prowess in Biochemystry for themselves. This is puzzling; their near miraculous facility in surgery could greatly benefit others, especially the other two Militant Societies.
- Lord Julius Comfrey, Honoured Son and Head Archivist of the Third Society. CE 1934
Nathaniel Sparrow, First Maker of the Summoners, is a lean, sallow skinned man. When not in his Bookshop on Pennyworth Row, a nowhere street in a nowhere town in gloomy fog-bound Scotland, he's likely to be found in his laboratory dreamspace. Very rarely he would be found at the Summoner’s Collegium, which masquerades as the Université Ste. Julien near Nantes, France.
Sparrow has a thin, pinched face and a rather unattractively broken nose that had never been straightened. As a boy he had been ruddy skinned and healthy, with a nose far nicer than the one he has now. Endless hours spent indoors after his initiation into the 4th Society and a fight as a young man had robbed him of that healthy glow and pretty nose in a rather cruel manner.
Today as on so many other days, Mr. Sparrow is at work within his dreamspace. He hums softly to himself as he does, a tune of classical heritage. Sparrow is putting the final touches on a Modified version of a Standard Model No. 257 - The Steel Golem.
He thinks to himself with wry chagrin, “Whilst scientists of the unhidden world have been messing around with artificial intelligence and silicon bits for a few decades, we of the 4th Society have been creating advanced dolls, homunculus and beasts for centuries.”
Sparrow can’t wait until The Rising, when the hidden world collides with the bland one of the pathless. It would be a grand new world where Summoners could finally receive the respect they deserved.
His mind mulls over the memories from the last meeting of the Six. The tiny tot, who had illusions of being more than a puppet, had spoken with gravity about the inevitability of the Seventh Society. Sparrow hadn't been fooled. The Seventh Society was obviously an idea brought forward by Tenzin. The bald monk used his dotage to hide the fact that his mind was still as sharp as a whip.
The Princeps and Archon of the Sixth and Seventh Societies had been intractable at first. That had been as he had expected. His very logical arguments to both Leaders before the meeting had been towards that end. It was unfortunate that a reminder of the cold war brewing between Gray and Simon Magus had swayed them.
Tenzin’s revelation of the child of the Eighthborn was the final bit of salt that ruined his carefully prepared sauce. Remembering the very well placed rhetoric of the Thought Father almost made him flub one of the tracery lines he was etching with his fingers. He was no novice initiate however, his fingers nimbly and unerringly untangle the error as he continues his work.
Acceptance of the Magi as a legitimate Society was something that could not... must not happen before the Rising. The Magi had to be part of the primed dynamite that would make the unhidden world accept the dominance of Societies. The principle was so simple, it was amazing the Six couldn’t see it.
Well, no matter now. He had gained new and powerful friends. He couldn’t trust them, but then again who needs good friends when you can have devious enemies.
His fingers finally come to a standstill. He rubs his fingertips together unconsciously, as if wiping them, a bad habit he had picked up as an acolyte over two decades ago. He then stretches, grimacing as the knots in his back come undone, and goes over to a crank-lever. A single, easy rotation and the colossal body of the golem is turned over onto its front.
A crystal clear chime cuts through his thoughts as he is completing the last of the leylines on the Golem.
He ignores the chime and presses his left palm onto the key mark on the upper left of the golem's massive body. The lines on the key distort slightly as it responds to his thought signature. With his right hand he picks up a slender copper-colored tube - an Eternity Engine of his personal design.
The Eternity Engine had become the most reliable (and popular) means to provide locomotive energy to a Doll type Model. It was one of the great injustices of the Societies that Alchemysts, not Summoners, made the best Engines.
The core of the Engine thrums softly as its ley terminals connect with the lines at the key. The thrum fades to a hum as he pushes the engine into the cavitated lightsteel. The alloy returns to solid form when the operation is done and his left palm no longer lies atop the key.
Another turn of the worktable crank and the Golem is face up again. The face on it is not meant to be pretty: A menacing facial grille is in the shape of an upside-down pentagon. Behind the grille sits a single, large, crystal eye lens. The lens glows faintly, like the center of a cut diamond.
Finally done, he gives the construct mental instructions. It smoothly sits, then stands and lumbers away.
He watches it appraisingly as it moves away, checking for imperfections in gait and balance. Sparrow is a perfectionist. If there were the slightest defect he wouldn’t hesitate to pull out the eternity engine, then the thought-core, turning the doll to slag.
He smiles thinly and praises himself at once more achieving perfection. The Golem has the more modernist form proposed by Abel Montserrat in the 1800’s - a bottom-heavy ovoid with short legs and long arms, steady and solid.
He'd made it a bit smoother than the standard model too. It irked him to give in to new-age fads. But then again, it did look a tad better that way. He's, First Maker after all, no one will be forward enough to mention that he's using a format that he'd had lambasted as a Summoner Professer. That had simply been a move to gain the support of one or two other Professors; a cunning political move that they acknowledged in grand style.
The chime repeats again.
He ignores it again and takes his time to order his workspace. He places everything meticulously, in assigned positions. Order was, after all, the mark of the 4th Society. Taking his time will also give the bloody bastards at the Collegium a reminder of who holds the reins.
The Summoners have the lowest membership, by far, of any of the Societies. If his schemes bore fruit he hoped that those numbers wouldn't be a barrier to their superiority.
The impending Rising meant that the faux independence of the Societies would have to end. They'd need a strong hand to rule them. It took an exceptional mind to become Summoner, it made sense that their Society should guide those minds lesser than theirs.
He blearily opens his eyes. Unlike the dratted Faerie, he has to fall asleep before he can 'shift himself into his personal workspace. That personal space is the only part of the full dreamscape he can access, draw from and store into.
The limited dream shaping abilities of Summoners continually gave him a tic. He had to take tools and materials into his workspace one by one. The alternative is to contract a Faerie and risk losing his privacy. A man needs his privacy.
He curses colorfully as the chime sounds in his mind again, then grunts when his joints realize that they're back in the waking world.
He links to the network, calls for a Dreamshifter and then shuffles to his cramped kitchen to wait.
Greta had called the kichen cozy. She died ten years into their marriage and he had never had time to remarry. Being cutesy was no longer something he abided with.
A dream shifter fades into his kitchen after ten minutes. It’s a teenage brown boy, Paki or Indian or something. The Summoner wrinkles his nose distastefully - brownies tend to have a smell about them - and glances pointedly at his watch.
“Sorry sir, I had to drop off a parcel in Brighton first” The boy says solemnly, a South London accent mixed in with his singsong Paki one.
“In my days, “ Sparrow says, as he shifts to his feet, “We were properly addressed as befitted our standing. You will address me as ‘My Lord First’ or ‘My Lord”.
The boy's eyes flash with indignation for a moment, before he remembers his station.
Eyes downcast he mumbles “Sorry, My Lord First”.
The First Maker grunts in reply and then grips the boy’s shoulder.
“The Hall of the Professors, Summoner Collegium.” He growls.
The boy nods and frowns in concentration, lips set in a tight line.
The room slowly fades into a dreamscape replica. Their surroundings shift and blur from location to location until, after a few jumps, they are at a field outside Nantes and then in front of a pair of solid doors.
They shift back into the waking world where the doors sharpen and become more real. They now stand before the ancient oak doors of the Inner Chamber of the 4th Society.
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