“You have control over doing your respective duty only, but no control or claim over the results.”
~Nishu Bharti
After the 6th Great Maelstrom and the end of Charon, the Hierarchy is in shambles. With a loss of the Deathlords, the devastation to their Legions, and the destruction of Stygia the Necropoli are all that are left as holdouts of the empire.
Life in the Hierarchy
When you die you become one of the commonwealth of restless dead that make up the Hierarchy. For sake of organization, newly cauled restless are sorted into legions based on how they died.
- Iron Legion: Victims of Age.
- Skeletal Legion: Victims of Disease.
- Grim Legion: Victims of Violence.
- Penitent Legion: Victims of Madness.
- Emerald Legion: Victims of Happenstance.
- Silent Legion: Victims of Despair.
- Legion of Paupers: Victims of Mystery.
- Legion of Fate: Victims of Sacrifice*.
- The Lady of Fate has final say who enters her legion, so the empty sacrificial lamb need not apply. She’s always right.
Once branded (yes, your corpus is branded) you begin your afterlife as a member of the Hierarchy. You have two paths to travel – choose wisely, your choice is for eternity.
The Military – the Life of a Legionnaire
The quintessential icon of the Hierarchy is it’s legions, more specifically it’s legionnaires. Soldiers, fighters, scouts, everything military (both archaic and modern) is found amongst the Legions. These hapless souls got decimated following the Sixth Great Malestrom, but you could be one of the rare few left. Be advised, you walk on dangerous footing.
Legionnaires are the image of a dream that is now gone and that some argue never existed. Sure, you may do good, but your legacy is tied to an Emperor who evokes both awe, love and disdain all at once. And let’s not talk about what comes to mind with your bosses the Deathlords. No one liked them really, unless your the Fated Legion. Now that the power of Stygia is robbed from you, your presence doesn’t evoke good feelings among other restless.
Legionnaires in the necropolis serve as police and military all rolled into one. You go on patrol outside the Citadel, you clear threats, you quash violations of Dictum Mortuum. You go home to drink and relax to do it the next day. You have a boss, your Centurion, who controls multiple bands of legionnaires, like a Captain.
Regents and Marshals are unheard of following the Sixth. They used to control areas outside the Citadel, expanding the Hierarchy’s influence to cover an entire city. With so few military personnel now, these positions are vacant as the Hierarchy only has enough manpower to keep 1 Citadel afloat, let alone three or four.
Anacreons are the highest authority, and it makes sense for the military to take top billing. The Hierarchy was designed to defend against Oblivion, so the military takes charge. Anacreons control and lead a Necropolis, often with their Overlord advisors. Some Necropoli have Anacreon Councils of multiple legions, others have 1 Anacreon stronger than the rest.
You should play a Legionnaire if…you enjoy playing the person no one will like, but will flock to for help. Depending on your legionnaire, they could be a force to be reckoned with, curbing the tide of Renegades and Spectres to keep the peace or someone who has let the resentment shown to them go to their head, leaving them out to dry if and when the next Malestrom comes. Like cops, they are often mocked until needed. When your needed, what will you do?
The Civilian Branch – the Hierarchy’s Remnant
Civilian workers keep the Hierarchy functioning, even after the Sixth. Someone has to keep the affairs of the dead in line and with so few legionnaires? Someone has to step up. The Hierarchy didn’t just rely on military power to maintain order. Bureaucrats, laborers, and clerks greased the wheels to keep things intact. Imagine working for city, state, regional and federal government all at once. That is the life of a civilian in the hierarchy and the only part really following the Sixth.
At the tipey-top is your Chancellor citizen. They organize and oversee the affairs of the Necropolis and report to the Anacreons. The social stuff. Arbitration, price conflicts, all the boring stuff. Like their military cohorts, they have goons too. Ministers oversee different departments of a Necropolis and Inspectors oversee areas of said departments. Nowadays Inspectors are more like Deputies than social workers given the loss of Marshals and Regents, keeping an eye on affairs to keep the peace.
then you have Adjustors and Clerks. Clerks grease the wheel of the machine and Adjustors point the grease.
You should play a civilian of the Hierarchy if….You want to play the closest thing to a normal person that Wraith has to offer. Civilians of the Hierarchy are just like ordinary people – they have a 9 to 5, they go home, they do it again. Part of the Hierarchy’s success for centuries (or some argue it’s biggest failing) was that it provided a life people understood and could wrap their heads around. So if you want to play just a normal person wrapped up in a lot of stuff beyond their reckoning, Renegades and Heretics and Weird Stuff while having to worry about filing that TPS report? A Civilian Hierarchy may be a good spot for you.
Joan Crawford – Anacreon of Los Angeles
Then she walked out of the Tempest. Though Joan Crawford died in New York, her lingering fetters were all in L.A. Mrs. Crawford had always exerted a magnetic pull over the Hollywood elite, and while that glamour had collapsed into ruin as a mortal, it came back in terrifying force as a Wraith.
By dint of her tremendous force of personality, Mrs. Crawford (that is how she prefers to be addressed) pulled together the feuding tatters of the Hierarchy and asserted herself as leader of the Los Angeles Hierarchy, leveraging its power and creating Arisen Pictures, a more modern “Corporate” studio to compete with the Union. Crawford served a stint as a CEO in life, and she runs the Hierarchy in an authoritarian manner with herself at the top – she makes all the executive decisions and controls the flow of pathos produced by Arisen with an iron grip. Mrs. Crawford is as hated as she is feared by most of the Los Angeles Wraiths, but she’s also the only real rival to Tinseltown Studios, and so those who can’t get pathos from them must get it from her. Don’t fuck with her, fellas.
For her part Mrs. Crawford would like nothing less than to run Tinseltown into the ground and be the only game in town in the L.A. Shadowlands. She’s endlessly scheming to that effect. Perhaps she would have succeeded, except that many Wraiths feel Ms. Crawford and the Hierarchy returning to power in L.A. would be a lateral move.