I figured, before I got too much further into things, that I ought to do some basic world building. To start, welcome to The Mage Council - a primer

History: The Mage Council was created 700 years ago. As with today, there are innumerable magician guilds throughout the world. However, before the Council, there was significantly more conflict between them - not only the traditional rivalries, such as those between Healer and Necromancer guilds, but also significant inter-guild warfare, as various loosely affiliated guilds would attempt to steal each other's secrets, by either stealth or force. This, naturally, led to a very slow progression in magical research - it is hard to build on the foundation of previous researchers, if everything is hidden, and it is hard to get research done, when you spend most of your time defending it from would-be thieves.

Enter April Leon, the Golem Master. A genius by any standard, the first Construct became frustrated by all the in-fighting within her guild, and with affiliated guilds, as it interfered with her work. She dreamed of a unified Constructs guild that would allow her to learn from others, and let others learn from her, a guild where she could research without worrying about someone attacking her because of her excellence. She started by becoming guild master of her own personal guild - The Workshop of Knowledge, located in Tramalin - and then, radically, started offering the knowledge of her guild freely, IF another guild did her a similar courtesy. As she was the most hotly spied mage in the city, there was great interest, though there were many, many problems initially - when should research be shared, for example. Too early, and a promising theory might cause significant harm. Too late, and the mage violated the agreement to freely share information. Mage Leon instituted a yearly symposium, and required each guild that had taken her offer to present their general findings, with additional presentations, lectures, and debates based on noteworthy advancements.

While the initial decade of her efforts proved very rocky, the second saw a vindication of Mage Leon's methods - between the drop in budgetary expenditures for spying, the increased time to do research, and the information sharing, The Unified Constructs Guild Union of Tramalin was making advancements at a rate that far outstripped any other city. Even the weakest and poorest Construct Guild in the city produced constructs (a catch-all-term brought into vouge by April, referring to animated objects or "creatures" that had previously never been alive, and, generally, did not contain components of either living or dead beings) that surpassed anything made outside Tramalin's walls, which sold for rather princely sums beyond those borders.

This, of course, led to several cities declaring war on Tramalin, either for economic reasons, as Tramalin constructs drained capital from the surrounding countries, or fear, as Tramalin constructs could be used as soldiers - at least, that was the theory. And, in one sense, this fear proved accurate - the Living Wall of Tramalin, the name given to the legion of war golems constructed to repel the second wave of invasions (including the newly-repaired walls of the city itself) proved to be an exceptional defense, one that broke sieges and shattered armies on its non-living flanks with little apparent difficulty. However, as Mage Leon knew, and many a later commander discovered, constructs need workshops, and the more complex the golem, the better the workshop it needs to keep running - Tramalin's defense was unsurpassed in its day, but its Legion could not invade.

At this point, a construct guild in Reman tried a daring gambit - they asked to join the UCGUT. April, who had been rather frustratedly waiting for this exact thing, happily invited them in. Significantly more kerfluffle occurred - it was the same fights she'd first waged bringing the UCGUT into existence, at a scale 100 of times larger. Complicating matters, the non-construct guilds saw their power waning as the Constructs Guild Union (as the expanding organization had been simplified to) grew, leading to more and more attacks - though these most often came in the form of economic warfare rather than direct combat.

However, this also gave rise to many mage guilds following the CGU's lead - a small set of ununified guilds could not compete, and the CGU's success proved what a boon to progress cooperation was. Most noteworthy was the Darkmoor Brotherhood, the collective necromantic guilds of the Falls Deep region. 50 years after Mage Leon first claimed her guild's leadership, a journeyman of the Brotherhood, Peter Marris, came to the city of Tramalin, and asked to study with them, reasoning that the ordering of a dead body couldn't be that different from the ordering of a non-living one. Mage Leon happily accepted, got impeached, was found not guilty, was almost voted to be expelled - lively times, to say the least. But she stuck to her decision, and while young Marris' supposition proved to be less accurate than he'd hoped, both sides nonetheless benefited from the resulting exchange - to the point that Marris' thesis on macro-zombie programming using mass-construct design techniques revolutionized the use of undead in the Darkmoor Brotherhood, leading to an agricultural boon to the Falls Deep region that remains to this day.

The next decade saw 2 major advancements - Leon successfully unifying 90% of the construct guilds world-wide, leading to the name simplifying for the last time to "the Constructs Guild," with her taking overall leadership of the massive body, and being awarded the title Construct, to denote her standing above any guild head or workshop master (many sources say the title was initially offered as a jest, but she was so taken with it that it stuck). The second was Marris, now called the Zombie Mind, rising to leadership over the Dm B. His first act was to offer an alliance with the Constructs Guild, one Leon happily accepted.

The two guilds began to exchange information on a huge scale, resulting in many advancements on both sides...and the further weakening of the other mage guilds. There was one additional change to note - undead started getting a better reputation. Zombies had always had a very negative public sentiment, for fairly obvious reasons, but Zombie Mind's innovations had led to something of a change, as the new undead he crafted were more reliable, less prone to rampages, and cleaner. The benefit to the Falls Deep region, which had gone from an almost universal hard-scrabbled life that needed to import food badly, to a food exporter well known for its mushrooms, among other things, improved the reputation further.

This reputation improvement caught the eye of Willasto, newly appointed head of the Mind-breaker Guild of Brascon (which she immediately renamed "the Empath's Guild"). If any group of mages had a poorer reputation than necromancers, it was the mental mages, whose exploits were infamous to the point where many kingdoms had a "kill on discovery" standing order. Aligning her group with the well-liked Construct Guild might be another way she could improve her guilds standing (one of many many projects she undertook to improve her guilds public image).

This...was not something the Construct really wanted, but she couldn't deny her interest when Willasto offered research on neural arrays, telepathy and telemetry, and many similar subjects. Mage Leon did, however, require Willasto to set some very strict guidelines to her membership's behavior...restrictions Willasto was more than happy to implement - she'd been looking for a reason to do something similar already, and having April play boogeyman suited her right down to the ground.

Willasto's "forced" reforms, and her extreme charm offensive, paired with Leon's vouching, made the Empath's Guild the only tolerated mind mage guild in the world, which in turn lead to it becoming the only one, after a fair bit of struggle. The Darkmoor Brotherhood similarly continued to grow in power, becoming a defacto leading organization, though notably more internally fractious than either of the others. While having Leon lead made sense, having the Construct guild be superior to the other 2 didn't. To stave off the eventual in-fighting, the three agreed to form a council, with Leon being a "first among equals" in the arrangement, and letting the triumvirate resolve inter-guild conflicts, while each leader still held power over internal matters.

At this point, it became pretty clear how the chips were going to fall. While most of the remaining sects of magery continued to put up a fight for years after - most notably the Healers Guild, who refused to have anything to do with the necromancers for over 50 years after the Council's initial founding - the capacity to resolve conflict peacefully, to grow from interdisciplinary research, and to create a unified front in times of need, made the Council's effectiveness undeniable, and the eventual incorporation of the remaining 6 "big guilds" almost unavoidable.

Location: The Council meets in the appropriately named Tower of the Mage Council, a structure constructed near the end of April Leon's much-extended life. The Tower, and it's Guardian, are considered the finest and most complex unification of magical theory ever crafted - the many year's long work of all 9 heads acting in harmony, based on Mage Leon's blueprints and theories. While these construction materials are all still available for perusal, very few have even grasped the most basic nature of the designs - Varta, current Life and Death, is heralded as a genius because she could understand the most basic points of the guardian's creation, leading to her own Living Construct. Upon a mage being made guild head, the Tower automatically telepathically contacts the new Council-person, determines an appropriate location, and creates a teleportation point convenient to them for Tower access. It also applies certain critical safeguards, and imparts certain basic security protocols - for example, the current contents of the Forever Vault, and all the basic procedures and precedents for Council business, along with the proper revocation incantations for that information, for use if they stop being a Council-person.

Structure: The Mage Council currently runs 9 seats - representing the guild heads of the 9 biggest mage societies, guilds, and brother/sisterhoods. These guilds are: the Constructs Guild, The Stargazers, The Darkmoor Necromancer Club (DNC for short), The Empath's Guild, the Illusionist Council, the Healer's Guild, The Convocation Consortium, the Evocation Masters, and The Way of the Flow. The Guild head titles are as follows: The Construct, The Star, The Death, The Mind, The Mirage, The Life, The Summon, The Evoke, and The Flow. The Council rules on matters that affect all mages, regulates and facilitates the dissemination of information relating to magic, and establish basic laws of conduct and professionalism for the mage community as a whole. They do not create guild specific rules, but do insist that the named head must both be a master of their magical art, and an able administrator, as demonstrated within a given guild, or some similar group.

Beside the 9 heads, the Council may create temporary positions to appoint non-voting members. The longest standing of these is The Evolt - a member of the Evolt community, raised to consult, advise, and represent the unusual members of that community, and by extension, similar magical creatures and species without a base - sort of a "voice for the voiceless" position. Until recently, this position has been fulfilled Xeres, but for classified reasons has recently been passed onto Sara, a new-comer to the Council. Xeres remains as the Council's historian.

Other Notables: Seiwa Megenado - Guardian of the Tower. The last construct of April Leon, and her greatest creation. Also, her "daughter" - the first living construct in history. Seiwa possesses an innate ability to read and manipulate the Flow, is integrally linked to the Tower of the Mage Council, allowing her to wield it as an extension of her body, and able to know all things within it, be they living, dead, illusion, or object. She is immune to all external forms of spatial magic, and, within the Tower, can move instantly to any space there-in. She can also forcibly defenestration people from the tower, should she deem it necessary. She has a small capacity to read the future as it pertains to the council and the Tower. She shares an awareness with the Tower, though the Tower is not sapient and has its own separate sentience. In general, Seiwa serves as chief of security, as well as an unbiased observer and advisor to the Council.