Editing Magipunk:Organizations (section)

== The Roget Alliance ==

=== General ===

If Mek Scarsen created the concept of an Alliance as an integration of trade guilds and craftsmen -- the Alliance as an economic institution, in other words -- then Duke Alamar Roget is responsible for the Alliance as a fusion of political and economic power. The Roget Alliance, while lacking the sheer wealth and economic power of the Glassmakers Alliance, has absorbed within it an incredible amount of the political sway of the old Nobility. 

Duke Roget of Etersbruh saw what the Glassmakers were doing more than three decades ago, and recognized it as the wave of the future. Determined that his family would remain at the top of the social order even in these rapidly changing times, Roget quickly decided to construct his own proto-Alliance, not as a means of enriching tradesmen, but of tying them to his family's power. The Roget Alliance emerged as the first major group to manage to stand up to the Glassmakers Alliance in the economic arena. 

Roget's vision of tradesmen controlled by Nobles did not remain pure, as the Nobles found it increasingly necessary to defer to the better business sense of their tradesman vassals in order to compete with the Glassmakers, especially once the Glassmakers started essentially buying up political power, and were thus able to block Roget and his lackeys from regulating them out of existance. In the end, while the Glassmakers began as tradesmen with pretentions of real power, and the Rogets began as nobles protecting their political power from tradesmen, both have grown towards each other, and now the two Alliances are more similar than they are different. 

The Roget Alliance is a bit more hierarchical and blue-blooded than the Glassmaker's Alliance, and is most heavily concentrated in the manufacturing sectors of the economy -- the most plentiful and cheapest worked goods are sold under the auspices of the Roget Alliance's striking eagle embelem. 

Today, Alamar Roget has officially retired from active leadership of the Alliance, but in practice, he is still the most powerful figure behind the scenes. The titular head of the Alliance is Deran Lauriel, a Count of impressive pedigree, but no particular intelligence and weak will. Lauriel frequently turns to Roget for "advice," and Roget in turn relies heavily on his neice, Baroness Jallion Nerie, and Sir Kevam Cartson, who are themselves powerful officers in the Alliance. Roget has long since given up on his goal of protecting the privileges of the Nobility, and is now concerned almost solely with increasing the power of his own family and of his Alliance. Kevam and Jallion are both ambitious sorts in competition with each other to take Lauriel's place as the chief officer of the Alliance. 

=== The Roget Eagles ===

The Roget Alliance employs a large body of men to protect their assets and enforce their interests. These guards wear the striking eagle emblem of the Roget Alliance, and are called by the common pople the Roget Eagles, simply the Eagles, or (never to their faces) the Pigeons. 

Until only five years ago, the Eagles wore conventional boiled-leather breastplates, a startling anachronism in the face of modern weaponry which made such armor useless, and both these armors and the more formal metal breastplates that officers sometimes wore are still gathering dust in large warehouses, occaisionally brought out for formal purposes. However, Eagles in the line of duty now wear wide sashes, color-coded to their rank, that have protective spells on them of fairly modern design (almost all are obsolescence 2 -- the Roget Alliance likes to replace their gear in single huge generations, in contrast to almost everyone else's practice). Eagles are also issued solid wooden truncheons with stun spells inscribed on them (also obsolescence 2), which are much better thought of by most knowledgeable people than the Gold Guard-style slat-clubs, even though they lack a kill setting. In cases of emergency, the Eagles have small stores of spears with kill enchantments on them, meant to be handed out when there's a particular need, but the stores are rarely dipped into, and there don't exist enough such spears to supply more than 10% of the Eagles in any case. 

The Eagles are generally considered the best trained of the regular police forces in the city, the legacy of various Noble generals and actual war-men who were tapped to create the guard. An Eagle on patrol is equipped with one fully charged power token, and the men are not as loathe to use them as are Gold Guards, as they tend to be both cooler under pressure, and have commanders who are understanding about legitimate uses of the tokens. Veteran Eagles will often supplement their duty-issue sashes and clubs with innocuous secondary weapons, defenses, or utility magic, but Alliance policy prevents them from carrying obvious non-standard gear. 

Like all Alliance guards, the Eagles are reviled by the common people of the city that they must draw their ranks from. As such, the ranks of the Eagles are rife with social misfits, bullies, and sadists -- if better trained ones than the Gold Guards could boast -- and brutality and corruption is endemic across their ranks.