Council of Venice

The Council of Venice are a central peace-keeping force in the M.M.O., The Secret World. The Council of Venice is composed of high-ranking bureaucrats from the Templars, Illuminati and The Dragon and collude with each-other in order to keep their root factions from fighting each-other, throwing the world out of balance or exposing the secret world to the general public. While all three factions are playable, and thus may be backing for the Player's various good deeds, all have alternative motives. The Council of Venice, unlike the factions it is built out of, is entirely dedicated to protecting the common man from the machinations of the Secret Societies and the various hidden evils they fight. However despite their altruism, the Council of Venice are in-fact seen by The Big Three as an incompetent leader skilled only in applications of red-tape and not in solving any on-the-ground problems.
==Founding==
The Council of Venice was founded some time between 3,000 B.C.E. and 1,300 C.E.. although as The Bees refer to them as ancient by mortal standards the early 3,000 B.C.E. is probably closer to the exact date. The Council was founded in Jerusalem, Israel, but later was moved to Venice, Italy during the early thirteenth century (likely the source of the wide time-range). The Templars, Illuminati and The Dragon had all come to re-discover each-other, much of their history having been lost even to them. All three tied back to a prehistoric cabal called the Four and Sixty, which they all fractured from. By the time all three met there was conflict for supremacy. The details of the conflict are unknown but it was nearly world-ending. The conflict could have been easily avoided in retrospect and so the societies decided to form an official treaty organization - The Council.
==Structure==
All three main societies have representatives on The Council, but they also humor representatives from other societies such as the Phoenicians, The Druids and official unofficial overseers from the Orochi Group. Once a member of one of the societies rises high-enough in their society they are given an option to be transferred to the Council of Venice - however no such figures are anyone who has risen due to field-work but rather paper-work, in essence making the Council of Venice bureaucrats that have transcended their root factions due to the amount of thankless busy-work often over-looked but still essential to keep each faction running. Having a place in the Council is considered a comfortable assignment as pay is excessive, physical danger is virtually non-existent and it comes with all manner of luxurious living conditions. As their positions were largely benign yet their seats on the Council are near beyond reproach, the Council of Venice members often quickly lose touch with those they are supposed to represent. The Council have back-log that stretches as far back as the Classical period, one which gets swept further and further back by additional busy-work used by rivals to delay decisions that would be unfavorable to them. As the Council can not refuse any action taken, they are often kept too busy to even address any real problems, let alone solve them. Months after Tokyo is attacked the Council of Venice are still in deliberation on if they should send help or not, this is to say nothing of what form that help would need to take. Though nearly all members want to help keep the people safe, their complex policies delay them from acting for so long that their faction members ignore the official need for sanctions and simply go to address the problems themselves, unofficially.
==Factions==
===The Templars===
The Templars have been around since the time of Babylon, actually founded by Abel after his brother Cain tried to kill him. The Templars were created for the express purpose of vanquishing evil, earthly monsters, extra-dimensional demons, the undead and exceptionally cruel human-beings. Arrogance caught up with the Templars and through a series of poor choices they ended up inadvertently empowering the Illuminati and going from the strongest of the secret societies to one kept afloat by little more than it's massive military. Past glory-days aside, the pedigree of the Templars keeps them as decorated members of the Council of Venice. In-truth the Templars have the largest seating of members on the Council of Venice, a point of pride for them as no vote passes to govern the societies that ignores the base moral sensibilities of the Templars. Despite the polite smiles the Templars put on for people deemed their treaty keepers the shear amount of time it takes the Council to do anything often tests the patience of the Templars and they are known to act before having Council sanctions for action "assured the Council will eventually approve them" of-course.
===The Illuminati===
The Illuminati were conceived in Egypt as a shadow-government who put Pharaohs on the throne and ruled through them, often with Pharaohs themselves unaware of just how much power actually came from seemingly benign merchants, mediators and priests. When they encountered the Templars in Sumeria the two joined forces, with the Templars preferring to rule publicly and the Illuminati preferring to work behind the scenes. The two societies would eventually have a falling-out. The Illuminati avoided the attempted ethnic-cleansing and would eventually go on to build their own empire in the Americas. In it's current incarnation the Illuminati is a mix of arcane knowledge and cutting edge-technology wrapped in a corporate structure. The Illuminati at their core want power - secret knowledge, political influence, wealth, advanced technology, all forms of power the Illuminati hoard. The Illuminati have nothing but contempt for the Council of Venice - for not only are the Council antiquated compared to the ultra-modernized faction but even the Templars, resent them - and that is coming from a faction so old-fashion they still carry around swords. The Illuminati put-up with the Council of Venice, but contrary to it being a sign of respect it is a sign of pity - considering the Council a group of out-of-touch elders to be pacified but pose no-real benefit or threat. The Council members seem to think the Illuminati could easily help straighten out their back-log or enforce their standards, however as the the Council provoke only scorn from the Illuminati such notions are well past unlikely to ever occur.
===The Dragon===
The Dragon are a massive network of agents that can be traced-back to a tiny cult in main-land China, so old no-one is quite sure of the era. The cult started when a little girl had a premonition of a Dragon after a near death experience and began predicting vital areas to be at precise times - those who followed the advice of the girl were given fantastical positions of power. Rather than attributing this to divine intervention the members of the cult began to map out seemingly non-connected events to try to deduce the grand web of cause and effect. The Dragon have gotten to where they are, as one of the world's most influential societies, by mapping-out and triggering butterfly-effects. Sometime The Dragon trigger seemingly innocuous events, and sometimes acts of what appear random terrorism, but all are inter-connected in the Dragon's grand quest to model the world. The Dragon are the most reliant on the Council of Venice of the three main factions. The official channels of the Council keep the Templars and Illuminati under relative restraint, which allows The Dragon more operating room. The Dragon do not trust the Council of Venice to do anything practical however, thus they see the Council mostly as just one of thousands of unwitting cogs in the machine of fate.
===The Brotherhood of Phoenician Sailors===
The Brotherhood of Phoenician Sailors, often simply shortened to "The Phoenicians" are the figurative black-sheep of the secret societies. The Phoenicians were founded by Cain. After Cain tried to kill his brother, Abel banished him. Cain brought with him his supporters to form the Phoenicians as a society with no single home - always on the move. The Phoenicians became pirates and worked as mercenaries through-out the secret history of the world, everything from armies for hire, to treasure-hunters, to assassins. The Phoenicians have kept up influence to mirror that of their brother society - the Templars, but use their might for monetary gain instead of any real cause, something which the Templars see as a perversion of themselves. The Phoenicians have official members on the Council but are seen as degenerates even in diplomatic company. Many a dangerous artifact has ended up in the hands of non-secret-worlders thanks to the Phoenicians - who are willing to steal from any of their compatriots and sell them off for profit. Due to their open contempt for policy in recent days the Council have levied more and more sanctions against the Phoenicians, reducing their influence to little more than mandatory votes on matters that concern all societies.
===Druids of Avalon===
The Druids of Avalon are one of the lesser societies. Very little was known about them, and they were only referenced as a background society in three minor missions. They are very keen on magic and organizing small-scale spy-work but thus far they have not been documented as engaging in any major combat situations. In the later versions of the Council of Venice's Scenario program (part of a holographic training chamber) the Druids of Avalon are shown to maintain and protect wards on areas of power around the world and particularly Stonehenge. The Druids appear to protect similar sites around the world to the benefits of all the societies but welcome extra help whenever another society can spare the man-power.
===Orochi===
The Orochi Group was founded in the 1940s C.E.. They control much of the public world from clothing production, to food distribution, to bio-engineering, to medical supply, to media supremacy. The Orochi Group has built it-self a monopoly in every field, with each subsidiary existing under the massive parent company. The company C.E.O., Samuel Chandra, knows much about the secret world and has used his influence to catch empirical evidence of it. Though not an official member of the Council of Venice, Orochi has black-mailed it's way into representatives watching out for Orochi interests to any major decisions. Orochi largely simply wants to be left to conduct it's own business and maintains non-interventionist arrangements with the societies - no official actions are ever taken against Orochi and Orochi refrains from exposing the Council of Venice and all it's society members to the public in a 60-minute exposé or viral web-video. Samuel Chandra claims to have treaties forged in blood binding the factions from interfering in his affairs. Though the Council is bound by their treaties with Samuel, the societies who make them up have no such patience for the contracts and attempt to undermine them at every chance they can to test just what "interference" constitutes.
== Outlook ==
Many of the senior Council members are aware of how many of their members see them as a joke. Being removed from the field, has rendered many in the Council of Venice out of touch with the secret world, but their distance from real-world troubles has seen most of them become very moral, or at-least philosophical. The Council do not deal with any situations more shrewd than treaty negotiations, and so where other societies would justify their actions, the Council condemn them, and push for reform. The Council appreciate the Templar's moral support of inter-society policy, but they find their act-first, ask permission second attitude undermining. The Templar's and Council share military training methods and as such The Council is very close to the most potent aspect of the Templars - their superior military, but Templars tend to break chain of command to "do-what-is-right"/sacrificing big-picture policy for on-the-ground immediate results, making the Council's staunches allies their most potentially radical operational risks. 
The Council admires of The Illuminati - for with their resources and great minds they could remove most of the inter-society problems overnight and bemoan the Illuminati's utter lack of motivation to help them. The Council agree with the Illuminati that technology, science and education must progress for non-secret worlders, but the Council unfortunately must limit how much advanced technology, science and education reforms make it to the common-man - to ease man-kind into the changes the Illuminati would otherwise visit upon the world all at once. Because of this relationship, though the Illuminati is interwoven into the Council's hopes and dreams for subtle societal reform, but they have no counter for when the Illuminati wants to figuratively and literally 'give-them-the-finger' (a relationship the Illuminati frequently demonstrate to them. 
The Council treasure The Dragon's ability to keep the Templars and Illuminati from concentrating solely on each-other. The Dragon may often resort to terrorist tactics, but the Council of Venice appreciate that they keep such acts too ambiguous to be traced back to anyone. The Council believe The Dragon's uniqueness could make all the difference in forming a lasting peace between the societies and are incredibly frustrated they only use it to keep tensions stable, seemingly to remain unique. 
The Council of Venice collectively hate the Phoenicians - for they possess all of the issues with the other societies and none of their virtues. The Phoenicians are as brazen as the Templars, but lack any moral compass, they are as self-serving as the Illuminati but possess none of the progressive insights, they are as much a wild-card as the Dragon, but use it to disrupt policy rather than enforce negative-space. Even the Phoenicians on The Council are seen by the other members as just crooks who managed to con/blackmail their way into their illustrious halls for little more than cashing obscenely-high pay-checks and otherwise ignoring policy. 
The Council have a cold relationship with Orochi - they honor their agreements with Orochi, and Orochi honor their agreement to avoid directly interfering with Secret World politics... on the surface. Senator Henry Cicero, of the Illuminati, has stated that just in the US, the Orochi pay-off 2/3s or the senate at any given moment, meaning while the Illuminati steadily control the other third if Orochi want to keep a law from passing or make one pass all the Illuminati can do is slow them down. If this is true for other countries, it means that while Orochi doesn't interfere "directly" in Secret World politics it plays mundane politics well enough that The Societies in the Council responding to them are still having to counter their policies without having a legitimate power to do so, only clean-up the messes they make. As Orochi get more and more radical through-out the game, the Council are simply content to stop policing the societies and through inaction letting Orochi become consumed by their enemies.
At their core, the Council want to do what is best for the world-at-large, the sheer scoop of those they must over-see often renders them abortive in their quest for peace. The Council have failed so often they have actually become wise to lost causes, and use this to pick their battles very carefully. The fact they are something of a joke as far as administrators goes, has actually worked in their favor some-what, for many of the societies resent authorities higher than their own, and with the Council so inert - they can actually more easily get the ear of those in-charge of the individual factions. For the Templars the Council know to appeal to their morals, for the Illuminati they know to appeal to their cold pragmatism, for the Dragon they know to appeal to their mercurial nature. Seeing innocent people die is sickening to all members of the Council of Venice, except the Phoneticians, and Venusian agents are immediate to arrive on the scene when the supernatural strikes - if not to stop what is preying on the common-man, at-least to warden it off to create small safety zones in an area; They take both pride that they can-at-least do this but shame in the fact that is basically all it can do while the proper meetings and paper-work are being slowly scheduled.
Category:The Secret World Heroes
Category:Organizations
Category:Benefactors
Category:Protectors of Innocence
Category:Elderly
Category:Incompetent
Category:Wealthy
Category:Supporters
Category:Paranormal Investigators
Category:Passionate Learners
Category:Pawn of the Villain
Category:Secret Agents
Category:Scapegoat
Category:Voice of Reason
Category:Deal Makers
Category:Officials
Category:Lawful Good
Category:Extravagant
Category:Weaklings
Category:Dimwits
Category:Sophisticated