Window Polishers

### **Motto**

"Ut pervideas per speculum hominis."("To peer through the looking-glass of man.")

### **Leader**

Grand Polisher Franklin Clabspoddle Jenkinsdaughter

### **Size**

7,000,000

The Absolved and Tolerated Order of Window Polishers are an oath-bound secret society devoted to transparency and fraternal unity. Window Polishers practice organize in "greenhouses," where they conduct symbolic rituals dedicated to "peering through the looking-glass of man." According to legend, Polishing dates back to the time of the Biblical Adam, although it can be definitively traced to at least the 15th century, with Lord Dunkett Alverson Windowman's *Constytushyns ov Ye Polishyrs' Gild* (1443). Despite the preservation of manuscripts such as Windowman's, the antiquity of Polishing has been called into question by the Most Definitely Outraged Brotherhood of Greenhouse Technicians, a similar fraternity founded in 1993 by Sir Alfred Liar.

Members of the Window Polishers are ranked according to "stories." The first two stories are referred to as the "One-Way" or the "Mirror," and are required for all Polishers, while the highest story of mainstream Polishry is the 128th story of the Shanghai Tower Rite. Many of the Window Polishers' rites and duties are performed in cooperation with its appendant orders, such as the Superb Order of Gardeners and the Imperial School of Mystic Nubian Basementeers.

## The Window Polisher's Legend

The Window Polisher's Legend states that Polishing began with Adam, who built the first greenhouse in the Garden of Eden. The Legend states that the greenhouse was smudged when the serpent slithered over it, an allegory for the smudge on mankind brought by the original sin. In the initiation ritual for the first story of Polishing, initiates are dragged against their will into the greenhouse by a rope tied around their ankles. Polishers refer to this as "the first slither."

Adam taught the art of Window Polishing to his lost fourth son, Rupert, who the Polishers believe is not mentioned in the Bible out of fear of offending God. Rupert taught Polishing to Noah, who used the knowledge to maintain a greenhouse on his Ark during the Great Flood. Meanwhile, Rupert rode the seas to Babylon in a transparent glass box inscribed with all knowledge. In Babylon, Rupert taught Polishing to Enkidu, the best friend of Gilgamesh. Enkidu then taught Polishing to Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. Qin hired Enkidu as his court's official Polisher, but eventually sent him into exile after he threw a football through the mosaic in the throne room. "Enkidu's Game" is reenacted by Polishers upon being initiated into the 4th Story.

After the flood, the secrets of Polishing were lost, but the glass inscribed with all knowledge was eventually found in the English Chanel by Lord Dunkett Alverson Windowman. Lord Dunkett copied all knowledge related to Polishing into his 1443 manuscript, *Constytushyns ov Ye Polishyrs' Gild,* which also proclaimed the creation of a "gild to prytect ye anchient art ov Polishyng." However, when Lord Dunkett was taking the original inscribed glass to the York Magistrate for the purpose of "provyng ye thing ecksist," he "trypped an brocke it an stypped onnit an loss't all ye smytherines dowyn't a drane." The modern Polisher's Legend is based on the version recorded in Dunkett's manuscript, and it is contentious whether there was any version preceding Dunkett's.

## List of Notable Polishers

* Leon Trotsky
* Doogie Dan
* Herbert Hoover
* Nikolai IV Romanov
* Alexei IV Romanov
* Gabriele D'Annunzio
* Jesse Ventura
* Theodore Roosevelt
* Heinrich Himmler
* Pope Pius XI
* Cab Calloway
* Adrian Adonis
* Bill Clinton (Member of the Youthful Polishers of the Saint James)
* Lyndon B. Johnson
* Charles Hughes
* Harry Truman
* Italo Balbo