Sidereal Conventions

The Five-Score Fellowship has many powers and gifts, but what it surely lacks are numbers. Sidereal Conventions are committees of the Sidereal Exalted which evolved from this restriction, to allow coordination of their activities across Divisional lines and a focus of efforts on pressing problems. There are two types of Convention: Directional, covering a geographic area, and Special, focused on a topic of particular concern for the Bureau of Destiny. Each Sidereal Exalt serves on at least two Conventions, one of each type, and many serve on several more. The venerable elder Chejop Kejak, for example, chairs the Capital Convention while also chairing or holding seats in every one of the Special Conventions.

Conventions maintain meeting chambers and offices within the Dome of the Perfect Lotus, and the directional conventions also keep Convention Houses in Creation.

Directional Conventions

Capital Convention

Convention for dealing with the Blessed Isle. Chaired by Chejop Kejak and dominated by the Bronze Faction.

Convention of Air

Convention for dealing with the North. The position of Convention Chair is currently unoccupied, and the Convention is hotly contested between Gold Faction and Bronze Faction.

Convention of Fire

Convention for dealing with the South. Chaired by Nasri, who has made it a haven for those Independent Sidereals without stomach for Factional infighting.

Convention of Water

Convention for dealing with the West. Currently chaired by Righteous Tsunami, and severely understaffed with little relief on the horizon.

Convention of Wood

Convention for dealing with the East, including the Scavenger Lands. Chaired by Ayesha Ura and dominated by the Gold Faction.

Special Conventions

Convention on Deathlords

Formerly the Convention on Shadowlands, the Convention on Deathlords is researching and collating information on the emerging threat of the Deathlords, the Abyssal Exalted, and Necromancy. There is some speculation as to the identity of the Chair, as the position is certainly not vacant but the identity of its holder is unknown. Most assume it to be Chejop Kejak or the Green Lady.

Sub-Convention on Thorns

This sub-convention focuses exclusively on the Mask of Winters and his forces. It was formerly a sub-convention of the Convention of War, which had been concerned with the conflicts between Thorns and the Confederation of Rivers, then Thorns’ struggles with the encroaching undead, but the fall of the city-state to the Mask saw the entire sub-convention transferred. It is chaired by Lupo.

Sub-Convention on Udr

A new and secretive sub-convention, whose formation was engineered by Chejop Kejak following discoveries made by the Dragonblooded sorcerer-physician Ragara Bhagwei. The sub-convention seeks to research the connection between the Deathlords and the Great Contagion, doing so with extreme secrecy (and likely violating required inter-convention information exchange by excluding the Convention on Disease from their investigations). It is chaired personally by Kejak, and has only a handful of members, all close allies from within the leadership of the Bronze Faction.

Convention on Essence Wielders

Convention dealing with the destinies of spirits, Exalts, and other beings whose manipulation of Essence can disrupt or defy the destinies seen in the Loom of Fate. Once used by the Bronze Faction to inundate their peers in the Gold Faction with busywork, the return of the Solar Exalted has made this Convention far more significant.

Given that the Convention Chair, Gold Faction leader Ayesha Ura, can and does assign as much (if not more) busywork to member Chejop Kejak as to any Gold Faction members, some wonder why the leader of the Bronze would not make an exception to his approach of membership in all special Conventions. Kejak himself always replies that the Sidereal Exalted must carry their proper duties, but younger members of the Bronze tend to laugh and declare he does so to prove Gold complaints are hollow: Kejak can carry the burden they decry, and that of all Creation besides, without complaint.

Of course, those young Bronze Sidereals do not mention the additional Essence-User-related assignments their leader suggests they take up in addition to their own duties…

Sub-Convention on Demons

Convention on dealing with demons in Creation, chaired by Ayesha Ura.

Sub-Convention on Forbidden Gods

A convention staffed by only two Sidereal Exalts, layabouts and conspiracy theorists who hold that ‘Forbidden Gods’ still exist in Creation, hiding from the eyes of Heaven, awaiting their chance to strike. The Bureau of Destiny has dismissed their claims.

Convention on Natural Disasters

Natural Disasters are the purviews of gods outside the Bureau of Destiny, be they weather-gods of the Bureau of Seasons, or the natural-phenomena gods of the Bureau of Nature. And yet, some destinies require the backdrop of a thunderstorm, or a village swept away by flood, outside of the normal schedule established by those bureaucracies. The Convention on Natural Disasters is charged with liaising to those Bureaus in order to ensure the needed events (or needed calm without such events, as the case may be) occur.

In general, the Bureau of Seasons is the more amenable to requests, but expects those petitioning for weather to present a complete plan accounting for not just the needed event but all surrounding events and consequences, the Bureau eager to spare itself the workload. For its part, the Bureau of Nature is far more stubborn, and securing cooperation with its gods tends to demand a great deal of favour-trading with individual members of that Bureau.

Given that gods guard their positions jealously, this Convention does not favour those who enjoy the violence of a volcanic eruption or hurricane, but rather those who are most diplomatic, able to offer and to threaten in order to achieve the Convention’s objectives. .

Convention on Plague

The Convention on Plague was originally formed in the wake of the Great Contagion to study that illness, its source, and defenses against its return. After centuries of fruitless examination, the Convention moved on to cover diseases of all types. Much of the Convention’s work in the present time involves liasing with the Board of Ill-Health to ensure illnesses afflict those whose destinies require it, and studying the alien afflictions which emerge regularly from the Wyld. The word of the Convention can have great influence when the Board seeks to legitimize a new disease (and through it a new job for an ally), which brings both power and conflict to the Sidereals of this Convention: when two parents must perish by Stilling Sickness so their son will be driven to become the physician whose ministrations are required to save a princess, it may be that the Board of Ill-Health simultaneously appoints a deity to oversee the newly-legitimized illness of Infernal Burn.

Convention on War

The Convention of War is, for the most part, a consulting and forecasting group attached to the Crimson Panoply of Victory, allowing that Division to make use of the unique expertise of all Sidereal Aspects. Though the fact the War Gods answer to the head of the Crimson Panoply means the need for liaising is lesser than for matters such as disaster or disease, there is another important function carried out by the Convention: direct strikes agains threats to Creation. Circles of Sidereal Exalts, trained for battle and covert operations, are not numerous enough to confront every threat, but for those identified as so great there is no other choice they offer a line of defense which can halt a dangerous encroachment.

Sub-Convention on Halta

This sub-convention monitors the conflict between the lands of Halta and Linowa. While the conflict itself is long and expansive, the sub-convention is under-staffed and under-funded, with both Bronze and Gold Factions pulling their members to serve in different areas. It is perhaps fortunate or perhaps despicable that this has occurred, as it has meant the flagrant violations being committed by gods on either side, such as Caltia the Eternal’s arrangements with the Fair Folk, can continue unabated.

The post of Chair for the Sub-Convention is currently unoccupied.

Sub-Convention on the Hundred Kingdoms

This sub-convention oversees military conflicts between nations of the Hundred Kingdoms. As with many conventions related to the East, the Gold Faction dominates, and while the responsibilities of the convention produce an inordinate amount of petty busywork its members have been using their positions to cover for the newly-emergent Solar Exalted who are quickly coming to dominate the region’s mercenary landscape.

Sub-Convention on the Bull of the North

A currently defunct sub-convention born to deal with the rise of the Icewalker Yurgen Kaneko, known as the Bull of the North. It was essentially disbanded in the wake of the War with the Bull, in which one of its members was killed by Kaneko, another executed by the censors for abusing their post.

Convention on Oversight

The Convention on Oversight stands above the ranks of the Sidereal Exalted, issuing its mysterious commands and eyeing every action for misstep and corruption. Its inner workings are inscrutable, its leaders and its members unknown and surrounded by rumor: some whisper that it is headed by Nox, forgotten brother of the Five Maidens who was reshaped for service after the Primordial War; some whisper that it is the domain of a Sixth Maiden of Destiny whose task was to grease the workings of the Loom as her Sisters spun and cut; some say it is the purview of the Little Sister, the consensus of the Five Maidens given form and authority over their Chosen…

Those who say such things are wrong, and most of them are well aware of it.

Heaven is a complex bureaucracy staffed by innumerable figures who have had an eternity to maneuver and scheme, to build grudges and forge alliances. Into this, a newly-Exalted Sidereal Exalt will be thrust, immediately placed under the authority of numerous divine superiors, each of whom pursues the agendas of their office, their alliances, and themselves.

A millennia or more of interests will lie behind every instruction, and each misstep the Exalt makes will be watched by a thousand eyes eager to exploit weakness. The pressure is immense and the landscape more complex than any in the mortal realms, with these pressures worsened by the fact that each Sidereal Exalt is precious, few in number and long in coming, and so cannot be allowed to get ensnared in webs that might pull them down to ruin.

Oversight provides clarity. For a young child introduced to Heaven, or a new Exalt who has grown up in Creation, ‘Oversight’ allows Sidereal mentors to convey tasks without their protégé needing to understand the whole of Heaven’s intricacies, and its existence provides a deterrent to stop young Sidereals from falling to the temptations Heaven and its denizens can offer… a youth offered luxuries and lovers beyond mortal imagination, who might think themselves as Exalted able to outmaneuver the spies of a dozen censors and conspiracies, is more likely to decline if they believe in an omnipresent eye upon their actions, and likewise if instructions come from an all-powerful overseer they are less likely to be questioned or changed based on the manipulative comments of those who wish to take advantage of naivete.

Eventually, a Sidereal Exalt ‘comes of age’ when they have internalized the structures and interests of Heaven’s denizens to such an extent that they recognize it is impossible for an organ such as Oversight to exist… the conversations with their mentors on this revelation are sometimes heated, but most often over Tea or Wine they see their past actions examined, with hindsight letting them grasp the dangers they would have fallen to in the absence of the lie… almost invariably, should that Sidereal become a mentor in their turn, the ‘Convention on Oversight’ will play a role as they guide their own proteges.

For membership information, refer here.