Great Refusal

The defining moment of the Free Council was the Great Refusal. Following a century of the Nameless War, the Seers of the Throne came to the technological, revolutionary mages and offered them wealth and power if they would join with the Seers in controlling the mass of the Sleepers. To the last, the Nameless cabals refused the offer — some of them destroying the tempters sent to them — and joined together to form the Free Council, which would “stand for Liberty and Democracy, ever op- posing the Lie.

That is the story, and many Libertines believe it. It is plausible, in part, because it is not too far from the truth. At the close of the 19th century, the Seers of the Throne did send out emissaries with offers of alliance, hoping to co-opt these vigorous mages. Most of the mages so contacted did refuse the alliance, and these mages did come together to form the Free Council. However, things were rather messier than the legend suggests.

In the first place, the Free Council did not exist before the famous New Year’s Eve meeting in 1899. The Nameless cabals were not united. All the approaches were individual, to local cabals. They started around 1895, increasing to a peak in 1898 and by the beginning of 1899 most of the unaligned Libertine mages had been contacted.

Most of the willworkers in the Nameless cabals did reject the offers of the Seers, which led to those Nameless being targeted by the Seers as enemies. Many Nameless were killed at that time, but they were used to fighting. Some actually defeated the Seers sent after them; other Nameless escaped. These survivors started contacting other groups with similar aims, warning them of the threat. These contacts were the beginnings of the Free Council as an organized body. By late 1896, these mages, inspired by a Persian mage calling himself Razi, were spreading a common plan; the cabals expressed tentative interest in the Seers’ proposals, but refused to commit themselves. Meanwhile, they gathered information and prepared for a devastating strike.

The groups were not used to working together, and had little experience of the realities of a large network. Looking back, Razi said that the most remarkable thing was that the betrayal came as late as it did. In March 1899, a cabal of mages in London decided that, given what they had learned about the Seers, joining them was a good idea. By handing over the information they had about the plot, the mages could win themselves a place of influence. Fortunately for the mages who would become the Free Council, one of those mages had a lover in a cabal in Paris, and he sent a message to warn her.

She told everyone.

The Great Refusal was enacted before the mages were ready, and wasn’t the catastrophic blow against the Seers that it could have been. It did, however, very clearly demonstrate that the proto-Libertines were not interested in working with the Seers.

Unfortunately, not every unaligned group joined in. Some made the same decision as the London cabal. These groups were hunted down. Many of their members were killed or had their minds destroyed with magic, so that they could not reveal any information about the new order to their enemies. The fact that the Free Council’s birth involved a witch hunt against people who disagreed with them is not something that its founders took pride in. They quietly wrote the renegade revolutionaries out of the Free Council’s history. The Great Refusal was portrayed as unanimous.

The first Assembly was convened at the end of 1899, finishing with the New Year’s Eve declaration that founded the new order, the Free Council. In 1900, a Great Convocation was called, which might not have met weren't it for the Free Council, its great war against the Seers of the Throne and the epochal shift in Awakened politics. It would surprise the average, modern Libertine that the Silver Ladder played an important part in this order’s rise to power. Many Consilii wanted to treat the Council the way they’d always treated its members: as a rabble made of idealistic communards, rogue scientists and errant cultists. The Great Magisterium of Europe encouraged European mages to recognize the new order. The rest of the world followed its lead.