The Talents of the Fallen - 21. Glossary

Terms and hierarchies in Talent of the Fallen

The Coven:

As an organization led by the Master it aims to spread the Talent abilities to as many as possible. One of its rituals is known as Cake Day, where the flesh and blood of past followers is consumed. To rise in rank one must prove one’s strength by killing their rivals.

Hierarchy of the Coven

The Master

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The Chosen

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Prelates

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Prefects

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Captains

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Acolytes

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Initiates

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Unconverted

The Master is the leader of the Coven. No one knows the Master’s age or bloodline. Since the beginning there has only be one Master. He has the power break his followers. Once broken they are incapable of betraying him.

The Chosen are the territorial leaders of the Coven. As a Chosen Landon controls the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi.

The Prelates manage regions within a Chosen’s territory or serve the Master directly. Kate, one of the eyes and ears of the Master is one of the few women who has risen to the rank of Prelate. To rise to the rank of Prelate a Prefect must remove the other Prefects within their region.

The Prefects oversee the running of individual Coven Dens. They are the ones who spend the greatest amount of time searching for Talents that can be converted into the Coven. To become a Prefect a Captain must kill the other Captain within the Prefect’s Coven

The Captains are charged with seeing to the defense of individual Dens. There are two captains to each Prefect. They are selected by their regions Prelate from among the Coven’s acolytes.

The Acolytes are members of the Coven who have taken part in at least three Cake Days and are over the age of 13.

The Initiates are members of the Coven who have taking part in at least one Cake Day.

The Unconverted are those who live within a Den who have not taken part in a single Cake Day. Aaron, having lived among them but never taking part is still seen by the Coven as one of its members as an Unconverted.

The Order:

As an organization it seeks to make sure that only those carrying the blood of one of the 200 original families develop true Talent. To ensure the purity of their blood they marry within their own families. They plot to rid the world of those with no Talent. It therefore opposes the Coven and its attempt to spread the Talent among the Untalented.

Hierarchy of the Order

Grand Master

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House Master of the Greater Line

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House Lord of the Greater Line

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House Lord of the Lesser Line

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Free Lord

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House Knight

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House Servant

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Blood Servant

The Grand Master leads the order. By tradition the position of Grand Master is given to the First Born son of the Greater Line of House Balthazar. The present Grand Master is Oliver Balthazar, father of both Greg and Andrew Balthazar

House Masters of the Greater Line are the leaders of one of the original families. When they die their children are the ones who inherit his position.

House Lords of the Greater Line are the children of a House Masters. As their father leads House Balthazar Greg and Andrew are House Lords. When Greg becomes House Master, his younger brother remains a House Lord, but any children Andrew might have will be ranked as a Lesser Lords and be removed from the line of succession.

House Lords of the Lesser Line are the children of the members of the Greater Line who are no longer in the line of succession

Free Lords are members of the ruling family three times removed from the ruling line. They are allowed to serve whichever family they wish regardless of their blood line.

House Knights are members of one of the original families five times removed from the ruling line. They must serve whichever family their Free Lord swears loyalty to.

House Servants are members of the original families at least seven times removed from the ruling line. They are free to serve whichever family they swear fealty to.

Blood servants are Blips, Talents of impure blood who have sworn to serve the families of the Order. They hope that by serving the Order they will be spared when the Order culls the world of those with impure blood

The Council:

The Councils were created to prevent open warfare between the Families. At present 35% of the Council is made up of members of the Order. The Coven, which is made up by mostly Blips, have control of only 20%. The remaining 45% is made up of the Neutral Families. They control the Council and are able to demand concessions from the two main factions. According to tradition the head of the Council is always selected from the staunchest supporters of their neutrality. Having gained the support of the greatest number of neutral families Jon’s father, Berg Omicron, leads the Chicago Council. Out of all the Councils it is the one in London that carries the greatest authority.

The Liaisons:

The Liaisons are the Council’s enforcers. They are also tasked with handling the interactions between Talents and the Untalented. Selected from the Untalented or weak Talents their authority is limited to neutral Council Cities such as Chicago, New York, and London. Greg Omicron’s lover, Ryan Harper, is the Untalented Captain of the Chicago Liaisons.

Talents:

There are five know types of Talent but only three are considered true ones; Empathic, Mental, and Kinetic. The remaining two are Physical and Null. There were once other forms of Talent but over the millenniums they disappeared. Examples of lost Talent include Mirror and Shifter.

Empathic Talents have the ability to control the emotions of others. They can cause terror, grief, and hatred in their enemies. What they are most well-known for is their ability to cause a person experience pleasures of the body with little or no physical contact. Sam, an unusually powerful empath is one of Chicago’s most desired escorts. Very few empaths have the ability to control the emotions of more than one person at a time. Sam is not one of them. Only members of House Casper are known to possess that kind of power.

Mental Talents have the ability to insert thoughts and control the minds of their targets. Like empaths only a rare few have the ability to control more than one mind at a time. The only ones known to possess that sort of ability were the members of House Melchior. It was out of fear of such power that trigger the last Talent War. In the end all the other Houses banded together and kill every single member of the Melchior line. Except for the release of Mind Bombs there hasn’t been a person with that kind of Talent.

Kinetic Talents have the ability to move matter with their minds. House Balthazar is famous for its kinetic Talent. Out of his siblings Andrew was the most gifted. There is a limit to their Talent however. They cannot effect the internal bodies of living organisms such as crushing a person’s hearts with their mind. If one had such a Talent then they would be the perfect assassin.

Physical Talents have the ability to change their bodies from the inside unlike kinetic Talents. This allows them to run faster, swim underwater longer, have bones stronger than titanium, and muscles fibers as flexible and strong as thick ropes of unbreakable spider webs. In a few rare cases a physical Talent can use his Talent on another person. While unable to change another person’s entire body it does give the strongest among the gift of healing. Jon Omicron is an example of such a person.

Null Talents are Talents with the ability to cancel all others. The other Houses would hire them as assassins to kill their rivals. During the last Talent War they were used with great effectiveness against the Melchior family. In fact they proved too effective. Fearing for their own lives the London Council ordered that the Nulls be eliminated. While the Nulls were declared extinct at the end of the war the leaders of the factions were believed to have kept a few alive to use in the next war.

Shifters are Talents with the ability to change into the forms of other animals. They were therefore considered the lowest of the known Talents. Not even the Shifters, who considered the other Talents as being corrupt, viewed themselves as true Talents. Unable to hide what they were they were considered the first great threat to the Talented World’s desire for secrecy. The risk that the Shifters would reveal their existence led to the First Talent War. All were killed and knowledge of their existence suppressed until only legends and myths remained.

Mirror Talents are the least well known. It is believed they had the ability to reflect the use of Talent against them at their opponents. Though always few in number they, like the Shifters and later the Nulls, were marked for elimination. The other Talents, not willing to risk their Talent being used against them, sent their Nulls to rid themselves of the threat. While the Nulls rampaged through Europe, the world’s few remaining Mirrors banded together to make a last stand in a series of cave in the far north of Scandinavia. No one knows how long they stayed in the caves but when the Nulls finally found them all seventeen were found frozen in ice.