Editing Magipunk:Organizations (section)

=== 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.