Grand Normandy
An Example Cryptic Nation

Grand Normandy is a Cryptic Nation, formed at the end of the Hundred Years' War. It is a Cryptic superpower—old, populous, widespread, wealthy, and influential. (Still smaller than Monaco and, of course, unknown to the prosaic world.)

Languages: Chenelaise ("shen-el-ey-z"), English, and French. Chenelaise started as a creole of English and Norman French. Most Grand Normans are trilingual in these and often know additional languages, since there are Grand Norman enclaves in Russia, Italy, and so on.

Grand Normans will often shift freely between French and English forms of the names of things, places, and people, if both exist: e.g. Stephen/Etienne and Alice/Alix.

Honorifics: Senair (m), Domna (f), or titles of rank

See also the Glossary.

Religions: Avignese Catholicism, followed by (in order) Roman, Orthodox, Celtic, and Western Catholicism. So, yes, Catholic, but you can shop around and it's a buyers' market. See The Sundered Church.

There are small minorities of Protestants (including Sundered forms of Anglican) and Jews. There may be visitors and residents of other religious positions, but they are not accepted as subjects and are at legal and social disadvantages.

The Crown reserves the right to appoint bishops in any of the Catholic churches. The upper levels of government are entirely Catholic in one form or another.

Veneration of saints is widely practiced by all the Catholics and Anglican Protestants (very "high church"). Saints frequently invoked include:

• The Virgin Mary, because Catholic.
• St. Hugh or Hugo, or Roi-St.-Hugues, third king of Grand Normandy, regarded as the national saint for his work in promoting the Alician religious orders and so regularizing the relations between Grand Normandy and their patrons, the Channel Fays, culminating in the Channel Pact.
• St. Geoffrey of Alderney, or St. Geoffrey of Burhou, regarded as the other national saint, right-hand man of St. Hugh, hero of many adventures among the fay, some historical, many legendary. He did not come from Burhou and may not have come from Alderney (both Channel isles), but some of his best adventures started there.
• Saints for magic:
  • St. Alice, q.v., missionary to the Channel Fays
  • St. Albertus Magnus, canonical, mentor of Thomas Aquinas
  • The archangel Raziel, traditional.
  • The antedeluvian patriarch Enoch, traditional.
  • Jannes & Jambres, traditional, Pharaoh's wizards in Exodus, converted after their defeat by Moses
  • The Magi, canonical: Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior
• St. Michael Archangel, canonical, is as suitable to the Grand Norman military as he is to any other military.
• St. Nicholas, canonical (yes, Santa Claus), is patron of sailors along with children, merchants, and pawnbrokers, and Grand Normandy is strongly maritime. Grand Norman children believe he sails a ship through the sky to deliver his gifts, crewed by fays.
• St. Brendan the Voyager, canonical, because of his connection to otherworldly voyaging.
• St. Vincent of Saragosa, canonical, proto-martyr of Spain, is patron of wine and winemaking, a major industry of Grand Normandy. He's also associated with ravens, for added color. A popular tale describes how he climbed a grapevine into the sky, to defeat a giant and bring back down the vine stocks Grand Normandy now uses.
• Grand Normandy's famous cavalries take as patrons St. Martin and St. Elegius, a.k.a. Eloy or Eloi, canonical saints of both equestrians and horses, so even the centaurs feel they fit in there somewhere. There is an Order of St. Martin, in which the monastics are all cavalry soldiers, some of them centaurs.
• St. Dunstan, canonical, a favorite of both cavalries for making horseshoes a charm against demons. (He shoed the Devil's hoof and wouldn't take it off without the pact.) Also patron of mechanics, which has become important in the last couple of centuries.
• St. Antonippus, a folk saint and sidekick of St. Antony the desert visionary. He is the centaur that Antony briefly encountered in the canonical account, his story much expanded on in folklore. His cult is newly adopted by the Dedicated Cavalry.
• St. Joan of Arc, canonical, negatively, because she was a foe of the Plantagenets. The religiously educated argue against the view, but ordinary Grand Normans generally feel that she is not in their corner and express this by using "Joan take it!" as a mild imprecation. It's a funny feeling, trying to be a good Catholic and believing some saints are rooting against you.
• St. Thomas Becket canonical, is another negative saint, alluded to (hardly invoked) in the one-word imprecation "Becket!"

Whether the saints take any actual interest in this is not generally known, but swearing a promise by them usually activates a Grand Norman's name geas, as if they had sworn by their True Name (baptismal name).

Communications and Privacy: Grand Normans make full use of modern communications, including "Nor'Net," "Norréseau," the hidden and encrypted channels and servers used by Grand Normans and their customers.

Grand Normans also use magical methods of communication, notably astral couriers, mainly shamanistic mages and benandante. But these are expensive and can be intercepted.

Grand Normandy has three newspapers, now on-line for improved Sundering: Le Miroir Normand (most conservative of the three), The Norman Chronicle, and La Tribune du Canal (most liberal of the three). Scholarly Grand Norman mages also follow Acta Kerdeana when they can.

To keep private from magical snooping, Grand Normans often wear counter-charms and keep them around their homes. This is common enough that the presence of such a charm cannot be taken as evidence of guilt.

Styles: —

In general, Grand Normans dress and groom to blend in with the surrounding prosaic culture.
However, on formal occasions, they dress like a very good ren-fair if at all possible.
The majority Catholic Grand Normans often wear crucifixes and carry rosaries.
The majority Catholic Grand Normans, and even some of the others, reflexively cross themselves in tense or solemn situations.
Grand Normans often wear minor charms, mixed in with saints' medals.

Cuisine: Varied. "Home-style" is a mix of modern French and Victorian English, but "varied" is a better descriptor. Duck, goose, swan, and pork are not on the menu, any more than dog, cat, or horse.
Tipple: wine; watered wine is very freely distributed, including to children.

Family: —

• Marriage - Most people marry and it is expected to be for life. Divorce is virtually impossible, but anullment, generally based on a "discovered" consanguinity, is relatively easy. Legal separation, including disentangling of finances, is another alternative.
• Singles - Most people marry, but the percent who stay single, usually to pursue a career, is high. Therefore extended family and friendships become more important.
• Monks & Nuns - Careers without marriage often mean priesthood or monasticism. Oblates and tertiaries are also common. Note that, as in le monde-mineur, "life-long vows" are not as perpetual as they sound; one can discover one was mistaken in one's calling.
• Matchmaking - There are matchmaking and arranged marriages, in the form of families setting young people up on dates to see how it goes.
• Fairy-tale wedding - Perhaps due to over-exposure to fays, people see their courtships as fairy tales. Even if no fays were involved (beyond, perhaps, one saying, "I know a guy you should meet"), there is a strong tendency to pretend one's courtship is a fairy tale: difficulties are the trials of the protagonists, and imaginary or metaphorical allies and enemies are invoked.
• Fairy spouse - Marrying an Adam-Marked fay is not viewed as wrong, but as risky. Running away from an abusive fay spouse is regarded as a valid anullment (by the mortal authorities, at least). The situation with other non-humans and ex-humans, e.g. jinn and merfolk, is less clear, largely because it very seldom happens.
• Cohabiting - This is disapproved but greeted with a sigh more than with shock. One always hopes the affair will be regularized soon.
• Bastardy - Cohabiting becomes much more urgent if children appear. An honorable man acknowledges and supports his bastards, and for preference marries the mother (unless he's already a monk, celibate priest, or another's husband).
• Adultery - This is grounds for justifiable homicide or a duel, unless the injured party is legally separated, and even then it's scandalous.
• Birth-control - Grand Normandy does not condone abortion, but has no issue with contraception since it lost official contact with the Vatican long before this became an issue.
• Lotsa Kids - Grand Normans like large families. This balances the fact that many of them go into careers without marriage.
• Lotsa Relatives - Grand Norman families are not as nuclear as modern Western ones. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, and cousins count for more.
• Schooling - Grand Norman children are educated by tutors, unless their families live in one of the all-GN villages or suburbs that can support a one- or two-room schoolhouse. For higher education, there are some Sundered schools that take students from Cryptic Nations and other esoteric sources, and young adults may go to prosaic colleges under instructions, oaths, and geases to keep them inconspicuous.
• Coming of Age - Grand Norman children come of age at 14. They take their loyalty geas and name geas (and generally take a confirmation name), can marry with parental permission, can become monks or nuns or knights or soldiers (though not routinely accepted, and young soldiers are kept off combat duty until 16), be tried as adults (though this is rare in practice before 16), and drink and smoke (though this is socially discouraged).
• Bereavement - Widows and widowers are free to re-marry, though the longer the marriage was, the higher the expectation that the surviving spouse will stay true to the memory of the deceased.
• Funerals - These are by unembalmed burial.
• And After - Haunting is discouraged, but ghosts are generally treated gently.

Magic: —

• Most of the adult population works with or for mages or fays. A large fraction of the population are mages themselves.
• Only forms of magia are legal, not goetia. The demarcation between these is as much tradition as logic, but the general idea is to avoid paganism and diabolism.
• If actual diabolism, magic sponsored by evil spirits, comes to official Grand Norman attention, they kill the diabolists (carefully, after verification, extracting defectors if possible, at a carefully chosen time and place, and so on). But this is very rare.
• Grand Normans tend to consider only Thematic Magic (by "mages") and shamanism/astral projection (by "wizards") to be "real magic"; other abilities are just "gifts" or "talents."
• Virtually all Grand Normans have True and Taken Names, are ghost-sensitive, and are Fay Friends (through the Channel Fays). Those with frequent contact with the prosaic world (which is most of them) have good Sundar. Those with frequent contact with magic (which is most of them) are prana-sensitive to some degree. See Esoteric Mundanes
• At coming of age, subjects take a loose loyalty-oath geas to the Crown and a name geas so they can make binding oaths in their True Name (baptismal name). "I give my word" or "By my oath" generally works as well as "I swear by my name," triggering the same geas. So does swearing by your name-saint (taken at confirmation), or any saint to whom you have a special devotion. "By St. Hugh" or "St. Hugo" generally works for any adult Grand Norman.
• Beyond that, nobility and royalty take special fealty oaths to each other and for their offices.
• These geasa are laid by nymic mages. Bishops, priests, and senior monastics can also lay them, either because they are nymic mages themselves or because they have been deputized for it by a high-level nymic mage.
• The state of one's oaths (broken or intact, and sometimes additional details) can be read by nymic mages and sometimes by the Receptant. This reading can be blocked by any of various simple charms, developed from those against the Evil Eye. Such charms are often worn anyway, for basic privacy.
• Eating duck jams generation or expenditure of prana in a Grand Norman for about a day. Recovery can be sped up by austerities, of which the "favorite" is vomiting. See Points of Interest.

Marginal Populations:—

• Grand Normans live in close association with fays, formalized in the Pact, but the fays are not Crown subjects. Les Fées de la Manche, the Channel Fays, are Grand Normandy's principle supporters and most associated fays belong to that group.
• Some Crown subjects are Protestants or Jews; other religions are extremely rare.
• Most Grand Normans are of European extraction, but north African Arabs, Orientals, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and Maori also occur.

Points of Interest:—

• Channel Fays - Grand Norman use of magic was initiated by, and still largely depends on, their close association and Pact with their fay patrons and allies, the Channel Fays, les Fées de la Manche.
• Sign and Countersign - When Channel Fays and Grand Normans meet, the polite greeting is "Return and we return." The polite reply is "Keep faith and so do we." This is a legacy of the missionary work of St. Alice.
• Fairylands - Grand Normandy is also rapidly acquiring extradimensional territories and occupying them. Historically, when a Cryptic Nation does this, it means the Cryptic ends up moving off-world and becoming, basically, a fay realm, albeit one with a strong human component, at least initially.
• Cosmopolitan - Unlike some Cryptic Nations, Grand Normandy is a trading power that mingles with other Cryptics, other Sundered societies, and also (unrecognized, of course) with the prosaic world. They walk our streets, shop in our stores, watch our media, and are constantly exposed to our cultures. This keeps them relatively modern/mundane in outlook, or at least it means they know what that outlook is. But that doesn't mean they are "regular folks"; see also Annoying Habits below.
• The Shame of Trade - The first batch of Grand Normans were the royals and nobles and their immediate retainers. Such people have always abhorred "going into trade" and working for a living rather than fighting, governing, and owning. But they didn't have much choice in the early days, and it shaped the culture. Most Grand Norman nobles are, in fact, in trade, but they don't like to admit it, even all these centuries later:
   They trade in wine, but wine's very classy, don't you know.
   They trade in enchanted machinery, but act like they're really eccentric hobbyists.
   They deal in magical services, but act like they're arcane scholars.
   They form and lead bands of mercenaries, but that's High Adventure. (In the Sundered world, it certainly is…)
  But don't think they aren't watching the books quite closely.
• Trans-Atlantic Connection - The royal family and its extended court spent more than a decade in exile in America, in the late Eighteenth Century. This had a big impact, come the Restoration. See, for example, Student Prince.
• Gangland Style - Because of the Sundering, Grand Norman military operations on Earth are done by stealth, in small numbers, and so resemble gang warfare or espionage more than open war between prosaic nation-states. See the Vanguard/Skirmishers.
• Cavalries - Grand Normandy has two cavalries, Standard and Dedicated. See Military.
• Exploring - Grand Normandy is in the throes of an "age of exploration" that began during World War II. As the non-European world will be quick to remind you, "exploration" is a relative term. Grand Normandy is discovering extradimensional realms and worldlets that are new to it.
• Expeditions - The agents of this discovery are chiefly military: the infantry, the cavalries, and the navy. They are chiefly engaged in discovery expeditions, and secondarily in protecting trading expeditions by Grand Normandy and its allies and clients.
• Ducks - Early in Grand Norman history, someone tried to curse the whole nation (then very small), making it so they could not do any magic unless they were starving. This fell quite short of working, and almost all of the partial curse was soon removed. However, a trace remains: Grand Normans' magic is largely stymied for about a day if they eat duck. So they don't, if at all possible, even if they're not mages. (If they must, or if someone slips them some duck, they try to expel it as soon as possible. If they can't, they perform other austerities.) This has nothing to do with genetics: the curse comes upon you, whoever you are, if you become a Grand Norman subject. So ducks are safe around Grand Normans and, these days, they are popular pets.
• Four Names - Most Grand Normans have at least four names, two given at birth, plus the family name, and a fourth name they select at age fourteen, when they are confirmed and take their loyalty oath. This name may come second or third. Nobles and royals often start out with one or two more.
• Languages - Grand Normans tend to measure educational level by the number of languages you speak. Three (Chenelaise, French, and English) is basic. At least one more, or both English and French without accent, is good. Three more (total six) is quite learned.

Annoying Habits: —

• How quaint - They have rather old-fashioned values, even by the standards of other human esoterics (particularly Western ones) such as loyalty/fealty to their monarch, and a high public value on piety and chastity. They can be fairly free with letting you know about this. But they are no better at living up to these values than humans usually are.
• Très, très quelque chose - Grand Normans pride themselves on their cosmopolitanism and so often salt their speech with foreign phrases, especially English with French and vice versa (or inversement). Academic Grand Normans like Latin.
• Dueling - This has been both illegal and popular since at least the Fourth Lateran Council and has died out in the prosaic world only recently. In Grand Normandy, the Crown generally turns a blind eye as long as some decent effort is made to be discrete and the duel does not result in death. Seconds in these duels have the additional job of making sure neither side uses magic to tilt the odds, unless of course magic is the weapon of choice.

Possessions: Grand Norman holdings are informally divisible into outposts and enclaves. Outposts are areas, usually in cities, frequented by transients and traders, staffed by members of the Vanguard, plus some of the Navy for seaports, and some of the Magery as needed. (See Military.)

Enclaves are permanents residential areas, neighborhoods or entire small villages. Each is governed by a squire, often a baron, and is policed by some members of the Constabulary. (See Military.)

Grand Normandy has enclaves scattered through England, France, Sicily, Russia, Ireland, Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and northern Africa. Efforts to set up enclaves in the United States and India have been actively repelled.

Sundered enclaves include:

• Normand House, royal residence and English capital, and the neighboring village of Stoke Norry, Oxfordshire.
• Le Vignoble de Guillaume ("William's Vineyard"), royal residence and French capital, in the Normandy countryside, in the department of Manche.
• The Cottswold village of Limstow.
• The Berkshire village of Ufham, English home to the Standard and Dedicated Cavalries.
• The village of Saint-Eloi-sur-Mer on the west coast of Normandy, French home to the Standard and Dedicated Cavalries.
• Hawthorne Circle, London.
• Oakwood Street, Sterk, on the east coast of the English Midlands.
• The Norman village of Bois-de-Sainte-Alix
• The west coast Norman village of Pointe Saint-Hilaire
• Rue d'Avignon, Havre
• Calais ci-Dessous
• Lutinbourg near Avignon
• They also have extradimensional possessions, including:
  • Brequelle, connecting to the Channel and to stranger tides, home of Mer-sur-Ys and Côte d'Ys
  • Outposts in the Channelwood, La Forêt de Chenel, the main territory of the Channel Fays on the hidden island of Webney
  • New outposts along the Road to the Sun, including settlements in Yetzirah.
  • Dreamings

Government: 

• Grand Normandy is ruled by a Plantagenet monarchy with seats in Oxfordshire and Normandy. The ideal monarch is a warrior, diplomat, and mage, but real ones are good at one or two of these at most, so the cabinet features a marshal, a chamberlain, and a court wizard, to supply any royal deficiencies.
• In a reversion to very old Norse custom, the monarch is elected by the noble houses from the royal family. Therefore, which houses are noble, who the elector is in the house, and who exactly is in the royal family are matters of constitutional concern.
• Election usually happens before the end of the monarch's reign. The elected royal is then the "heir elect." If there is no heir elect, people may speak of the "heir presumptive," usually the monarch's eldest son, but that designation is only a matter of opinion and carries no legal weight.
• Since the early nineteenth century, when monarchs ascend the throne, their oath includes upholding the rights of the people, briefly enumerated in law but also including customary rights.
• In recent generations, reigns most often end when the monarch retires and abdicates. This means the current monarch can influence the choice of the next monarch by choosing when they retire. The father of the current king, His Majesty Emeritus King Robert, is still around.
• Currently, Grand Normandy is ruled by King Stephen IV and his consort, Queen Alice. Stephen is a warrior-mage, talented in martial arts, enhanced with patharchy and magic, making him something of a royal superhero. Alice excels in scrying and political analysis. The chief members of their cabinet are:
  • Lord Roland Fitzhenry, Earl Marshal, in charge of the defensive branches of the military: Vanguard, Home Guard, and Royal Guard. See Military
  • Sir Paul Aubriot, Grand Marquis, in charge of the exploratory branches of the military: Infantry, Standard Cavalry, Dedicated Cavalry. See Military
  • Lady Elizabeth Saint-Maur, Grand Admiral, in charge of the Navy. See Military
  • Lady Madeline de Moncy, Lady Chamberlain
  • Sir Laurence d'O, Court Wizard, scholar and scrying specialist, onetime teacher of Queen Alice, current teacher for Prince Thomas and Princess Matilda. Also in charge of the Magery, the magical branch of the Grand Norman military.
  • Brother Terrence Hawley, Chancellor and so head of the judiciary.
  • Sir Dennis Baudry, Prime Minister
  Several of these cabinet members and the royal couple are all expert Receptants, so they are very hard to deceive. Grand Normandy is thus ruled by a group of people who are not only hard to lie to but routinely very honest with each other and, by necessity, with themselves. This situation has obtained for several generations now, and this solid virtue is the cornerstone of Grand Normandy's stability and power.
• Other important members of the court and royal household include:
  • Prince Thomas and Princess Matilda, the children of Stephen and Alice. Prince Thomas is sometimes spoken of as the heir presumptive, but he and Matilda are both in their middle teens, and Stephen is still young, so such talk is premature.
  • Archbishop Martin Halley, head of the Grand Norman Avignese Catholic Church
  • Father Noel Postel, chaplain and confessor for the royal household
  • Punkelvie, castelan and brownie chief
  • Miko and Miro, Queen Alice's two Russian wolfhounds
  • Lady Iris Vincent, Lady in Waiting to Alice, a baroness in her own right
  • Lord Peregrin ("Perry") Petremol, private secretary to Stephen
• The basic idea of Grand Normandy is that it is both French and English. Therefore, it is important to the social cohesion of Grand Normandy that it have two seats for the Crown, one English (Normand House), one French (Le Vignoble de Guillaume), and that the monarch spend considerable time in both. To maintain a constant royal presence in both, beyond the presence of the monarch, the two seats are duchies held by the Dukes of the English and French Palaces, sometimes called the Duke of the House and the Duke of the Vinyard. The dukes or duchesses of the the palaces are members of the royal family, often princes or princesses in their own right, usually older and not likely to become monarch or want to. All the chains of command specific to the palaces, military, economic, and administrative, lead up to them.
• Like most Cryptic Nations, Grand Normandy tends to have relatively large numbers of aristocrats in relation to the number of commoners. Most of these are styled "baron" or "baroness." A Grand Norman residential enclave of any size will be ruled by a "squire baron," and there are important merchant families that are non-territorial baronies (though they would rather describe themselves as having small but high-quality territories; see "The Shame of Trade").
• Below the actual aristocrats but still elevated are the knights and dames. The main orders of knighthood are the Knights of St. Alice, the Knights of Sts. Hugh & Geoffrey (see St. Alice), and the Knights Genesta. Unlike the other orders, the Knights Genesta are not connected to religious orders; knighthoods are awarded by the Crown for services of any sort. A commoner or minor noble in charge of an enclave is usually given a Genestan knighthood. The symbol of the order is the broom flower, planta genesta, whence the name "Plantagenet."

Student Prince: Not by law, but by tradition dating back to the early 19th century, young members of the royal family do a hitch in the military like everyone else. The trick is, they do their hitch magically disguised and under false ID, so they are not recognized as royals. The young royal drops the disguise and surfaces again in three years, which usually coincides with the end of their hitch. There are several results:

• The commons like it, because they feel the royals know what normal life is like (or as normal as it gets in Grand Normandy).
• The nobility like it because they can look at the royal's performance during service, when it is revealed, for more information on which to base their decision when next they vote for monarch.
• The royals like it—eventually—because they find it helps cement their partnership with the commons against the nobility.
• Young royals may not always look forward to service (though again they may), but the senior royals take the attitude "I had to go through it, so you do too."
• Though it is public knowledge that a prince or princess has gone "into service" (yes, the same phrase as is used to mean taking a job as a servant), no one knows which new recruit is a Highness. This probably means less bullying of subordinates than might otherwise go on.

If the military seems a poor choice (e.g. because the royal family is short on heirs), the hitch might be as a postulant in a service-oriented, not contemplative, monastic order.

"Graduate student princes" and princesses are occasionally sent out for another stint living in the monde-minor, the unSundered world.

Royals are great trend-setters, so noble families sometimes send their own children "into service" too, as "student lords." But not all houses have the bureaucratic and magical resources that the Crown has, so the practice is spottier. However, Grand Normandy excels at false IDs, so it's not very hard to send a sufficiently obscure scion, undisguised, to a remote posting with a fake set of papers.

Military: Every able-bodied Grand Norman adult is expected to do a three-year hitch in the military, at a minimum, and full military careers have good status. The Infantry or Navy are the default branches. The Student Prince custom is an incognito version of this for the aristocracy.

You are generally supposed to start your hitch by age 28 at the latest. (Grand Normans come of age at 14 and like to do things in sevens; if you are eager, you might be able to volunteer at 14). You start getting letters about it at age 21, if you haven't served yet, but there are ways to put it off, including:

• Student deferment: you're off learning something useful to the nation.
• Your squire baron finds you too useful to the barony. ("He's brilliant in the vineyard.")
• You've gone and joined something at least as useful, like the Alicians or the related orders of knighthood, even if just as a squire.

After 28, if you've still done nothing, they'll want to know a good reason why. Your squire-baron will have a lot of input. ("He's still brilliant in the vineyards. You can't have him.")

After doing your initial hitch (different durations for different branches), you are free to stay or take discharge, if not in the middle of a mission and if they want to keep you.

There are eight branches of the Grand Norman military:

• The Grand Admiral, Dame Elizabeth Saint-Maur, commands the Navy
• The Grand Marquis, Sir Paul Aubriot, commands the forces that are primarily expeditionary:
    the Infantry (under a Marshal General)
    the Standard Cavalry (under a Marshal General)
    the Dedicated Cavalry (under a Marshal General)
• The Earl Marshal, Lord Roland FitzHenry, commands the forces that are primarily defensive:
    the Vanguard (under a Marshal General)
    the Home Guard (under a Constable General)
    the Palace Guard (under the French & English Palace Marshals)
• The Court Wizard, Sir Laurence d'O, commands the Magery

The Navy

The Grand Norman navy mostly escorts Grand Norman merchant vessels. Because of the strictures of the Sundering, these naval vessels are quite small and disguised. There are no Grand Norman aircraft carriers. (There are, however, merfolk.) The navy uses larger, undisguised vessels away from the Sundering, on extra-dimensional seas, but there are very few of these.

Three-year initial hitch. The navy is fairly well gender-integrated, perhaps because of the influence of the mermaids. For those of a maritime disposition who aren't suitable to the military, there are the tertiaries of St. Nicholas.

The Infantry

Most like conventional soldiers, fighting on their feet. But remember their numbers, like all Grand Norman numbers, are small, and they are little used on Earth, except in behind-the-scenes support capacity. They work in support off Earth, too, staff forts, fill out expeditions, and escort missions.

Three-year initial hitch. They are fairly lenient about letting in 14-year-olds, though these are kept away from combat. Since Grand Normandy is old-fashioned, women in the infantry are not generally trained for combat, and in fact were not in the infantry at all until the 20th century. Instead, they served their hitch as tertiaries in a religious order, doing the same support work, and some of them still do that from personal piety or because the tertiaries suffer no glass ceiling. There are also male tertiaries, though these are rarer. The available orders are of Sts. Teresa, Dunstan, and Nicholas.

The Standard Cavalry

The Standard Cavalry is what you might expect: military personnel moving by horse and vehicle. Horse cavalry is useful in exploration, far from fuel and parts. They are little used on Earth. Even long before the current Age of Exploration that started after WWII, they were a standard place for the gentry to park extraneous sons, so the tone tends to be posh.

This is also probably why the beginning hitch is 14 years; this is supposed to be a career and a permanent solution to the question of what to do with you. Fairly lenient about letting in 14-year-olds. Male-heavy, but there is a female presence because (1) some recent monarchs have been somewhat progressive, (2) Grand Normandy is not wholly immune to the surrounding mundane culture, much as they would like to be, and (3) it is an additional way of disposing of extraneous daughters. Includes a number of members of the Sundered and equestrian Order of St. Martin, but you can't be a tertiary of St. Martin as your national service.

The Dedicated Cavalry

The Dedicated Cavalry is composed of centaurs created from men, volunteers. They are the least numerous branch, but each combines a sum of human and equine strength, endurance, and agility, making them slightly "super" and useful in far, strange places. (It would be too much to say each member is a sort of inconveniently large and conspicuous Batman, but that's the dream.)

The beginning hitch is 14 years, copying the older Standard Cavalry. The DC makes volunteers wait until 16; perhaps they want most of their lads to have had practice going through a human puberty before hitting them with an equine one. Like the SC, it has a number of monks of St. Martin. It's all male because the spell doesn't work on females.

The Vanguard (or "Skirmishers")

These are what everyone else in the Sundered world thinks of when they think of the Grand Norman military. They fight stealthily, in small groups, as do most Sundered warriors. Thus they have no uniforms other than dress uniforms, unless you count dressing like cat-burglars. Any city with a sizeable and permanent Grand Norman presence will have some Skirmishers assigned to it, patroling and investigating when not fighting.

Seven-year initial hitch; most are lifers. It's very hard to get in before age 21 (though they have a fondness for employing young "Baker Street Irregulars") and they've been gender-integrated forever because sneaky and women have always gone together just fine, though there may have been some stuff like "Girls shouldn't do parkour." ("Yeah, but they're tops at lock-picking.")

The Home Guard (or "Gendarmerie")

The domestic police force for Grand Norman enclaves and settlements. Almost all of these are so small, the local Guard amounts to one person, like the village bobby, who can call on a small reserve of deputies or militia. More interesting are the detectives, called in or sent in for more complex cases, who are often forensic mages.

Theoretically, you can do a three-year hitch as a deputy for your national service, but they often don't want any. About the only way to get in before age 21 is as some kind of "cadet" doing support scut-work, but that might be a good way to get your national service out of the way. Tends to be very male-heavy and glass-ceilinged, though if your squire baron is actually a baroness, it's better.

The Royal Guard

The people, often mages and not all human, in charge of the safety of the royal family and their residences. You usually enter the Royal Guard from some other branch of the military and as a life-long career. Gender-integrated because it's good to have the queen's attendants be handy with knife, gun, and karate.

The Magery

While the other branches also include mages, the Magery is all mages, in great variety, sent in as needed, either on their own or to assist the other branches. They may call on a militia of veterans and trained reservists.

You either joined as a career move when an adult or were something of a magical wunderkind and became an official, govenmental sorceror's apprentice for a seven-year hitch. Indeed, this is how Grand Normandy likes to train its magical wunderkinder, as a general rule, so you might not get officially conscripted but it might be hard to tell the difference if your family and the squire baron are both pushing for it. The magery works closely with, and shares personnel with, the Alicians and the Knights of St. Alice. You can't serve your hitch as an Alician teritary, but entering the Order is fully acceptable as equivalent service. Was always gender-integrated.

Foreign Relations: Grand Normandy is friendly with (that is, cooperates with; there are often old grudges):

• Outer Russia (could be called a Grand Norman client)
• Micklemont (could be called a Grand Norman client)
• Old Christendom
• The Avignese Catholic Church
• The Irish Empire (since World War II; hostile before)
• The Men of Sherwood (since World War II; hostile before)
• Phos Byzantion
• The US Department of the Ulterior (so long as they don't try any settlement)
• Good customers generally

Grand Normandy is at odds with:

• The Sunset Empire
• The other British and French Cryptics
• The Eclipse Directorate
• Greenwood

Economy: Grand Normandy made and makes its fortune by ancestral "viking" methods, as traders, raiders, and mercenaries, but is also now widely known for goods and services.

Famous Grand Norman wares:

• Very good wines, some pre-enchanted for loading further enchantments.
• Wine-based potions: elixirs and potions for healing, strength, endurance, waking, sleeping, etc.
• Reconditioned Bentleys featuring:
  • multiple issues of paperwork
  • extensive armoring and puncture-proof tires
  • mad-science engines that accept any combustible liquid as fuel
  • radar-absorbent paint
  • IR-to-windscreen projection for driving in blackout mode
  • heads-up dashboard display
  • adjustable LCD license plates
  • voice-interface media center including phone, GPS, AI search service
  • enchantment for high reliability and high mileage
  • service contract for onboard gremlin, renewable annually
  • service contract for flit-capable (fay) chauffeur, renewable annually
• Stealth motorcycles, dirt-bikes, and ATVs featuring:
  • puncture-proof tires
  • mad-science engines that are silent and that accept any combustible liquid as fuel
  • IR-to-windscreen projection for driving in blackout mode
  • heads-up dashboard display
  • voice-interface media center including phone, GPS, AI search service
  • enchantment for high reliability and high mileage
  • service contract for onboard gremlin, renewable annually
• Guns featuring enchantment for not jamming, not corroding, staying clean, and aiming true.
• Other enchanted machinery.

Famous Grand Norman services:

• Use of Nor'Net, their Sundered sector of the internet, including NorWiki.
• Fake IDs.
• Mercenaries.
  Mercenary, usually as a member of a company, is a classic career move for someone leaving one of the branches of the Grand Norman military. Well-known companies include:
  • The Varangians, the largest and most famous Grand Norman mercenary company, naming themselves after the mercenaries who guarded the Byzantine emperor for generations.
  • Furore Normannorum ("Furore" for short), specializing in stealth and rapid strike.
  • Ryders' Cavalry Company ("Ryders' Riders"), run by the Ryder brothers, veterans of the Standard and Dedicated Cavalries, working the out-zones and alter-zones.
  • The Sellswords of Florimel (Les Sabres à Vendre de Florimel), presenting themselves as "heroes for hire" and taking inspiration from Princess Florimel and the Scarlet Pimpernel.
  • The Narwhal Marines, favorite company of mercenary merfolk.
  Of course, no legal mercenary band may fight against Grand Norman troops. Moreover, the reputable bands, such as the above, have codes of honor limiting what they will do and what they will put up with, e.g. no attacks on civilians and no working with those who attack civilians.

Currency: The nujar, from nuit argenté, "silver night." Symbol: η. A nujar contains ten sesteens. e.g. η12.3 or η12s3 old-style. Exchange rate: 1 nujar = £100 = 1 nx (10 psi pts). The nujar is used mostly for accounting; cash is usually foreign coinage and scrip. Nujar coins are rare enough to be worth more than their face value.

History: Grand Normandy is 560+ years old, so you must excuse historical notes containing only some early and some recent highlights.

• St. Alice lays the groundwork for the Grand-Norman/Channel-Fay alliance in the 1100s.
• The Plantagent line that will become the Grand Norman royal family starts with Robert of Contentin, a cousin of King John Lackland ("Bad King John"), who was one of the castellans abandoned by John in his retreat from Normandy late in 1203. In his personal retreat, Robert met and was befriended by some of the Channel Fays, who helped him cross to England. He became Sundered and his descendants maintained friendship with the fays, along with a settled feeling that "we could do better than that" when it came to being Plantagenet rulers.
• Grand Normandy is founded in 1453 by King Robert I, who retreats with his followers to a friendly Channel Fay elfhold rather than to Calais during the final Plantagenent (prosaic) expulsion from Normandy at the end of the Hundred Years' War.
• Two generations later, King St. Hugh & St. Jeoffrey establish the Pact with the Channel Fays.
• In 1760, fleeing a foreign assassination attempt, the Grand Norman royal family crosses to America.
• The royal family is restored to Europe in 1784, between the American and French revolutions.
• During the French revolution, the Grand Norman Princess Florimel and her court contrive the rescue of many French aristocrats, subsequently Sundered of course. Many are incorporated into the Grand Norman aristocracy. Rumors of this activity inspires the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel.
• In the following years, their observations of anti-monarchical movements lead the royals to grant various rights and make other changes to head off similar rebellion, as put forward in the Decree of Restoration of 1803, closely following the ascension of King Roland III, the first new king since the de facto restoration in 1784. The Decree's official purpose was to lay out procedures for royal and noble succession, but also included:
  • The monarch swearing, in the oath of office, to protect the people's rights, with some enumeration of those rights.
  • A number of offices becoming elective.
  • The outlawing of slavery.
  • The explicit guarantee of the right (long observed in practice) of people to move from one jurisdiction to another, enabling them to "vote with their feet" for their squires.
  The institution of the "Student Prince" custom also began at this time.
• In 1943, Grand Norman forces are attacked in the Swiss Alps during negotions with Dessalonian forces, the attack led by the Dessalonian centaur cavalry.
• Grand Normandy establishes the Dedicated Cavalry and embarks on an Age of Exploration, initially seeking Dessalonia, but branching out from there.
• In 2008, a group of Grand Norman houses try to buy up some Sundered vineyards and other real estate in Spain, in a project called the "Spanish Venture." It goes badly, leaving several Grand Norman houses much worse off finanically.
• In 2014, Grand Normandy becomes embroiled in the Breakdown, subsequently becomes a member of the Court of Harmony, and gains access to a wide range of partial realities, which they add to the portfolio for the Age of Exploration.

Proper Grand Normans
The general standards of Grand Normandy

A proper Grand Norman is loyal to the Crown, a good Catholic of some sort, cosmopolitan, and comfortable with magic. "Crown, cosmos, church, and charm."

♔

A proper Grand Norman is a fan of the royal family or at least part of it. If they can't stomach the family as a whole or the current monarch, they have some member(s) that they like. "It was better in King Robert's day." "It's a pity Eleanor didn't get the throne." "If they don't elect Prince Tom, they're a pack of fools." Of course, normally or normatively, it's "King Stephen is doing a great job. Long may he reign!" plus glowing words about the queen and kids.

A great way to activate a Grand Norman's code duello is to start dissing the royal family. And they know they won't get called on it by their authorities, unless the circumstances are particularly stupid.

This fandom does not particularly extend to the cabinet and certainly not to the nobility as a class.

♔

To be Avignese Catholic is, of course, the default. To be some other kind of Catholic is a minor eccentricity, charitably attributed to family tradition, if possible. See The Sundered Church.

Royalty and nobility are allowed a lot of such eccentricity, and it is often unclear which kind of Catholic they are. They need some church for legitimacy, but it is openly recognized that Crown and gentry play the churches off against one another. For the rest, the norm is to be officially Avignese while treating the different forms of Catholicism interchangably most of the time.

The Grand Norman Anglicans have moved up in the world since the 19th century when, following the example of other national Anglican churches in the monde-minor, they set up their own Council of Bishops (all five of them) and severed ties with the British monarchy—easily done, since the monarchy had never heard of them. They can be monastic, so they are generally wedged in as a species of Catholic, though an inferior one in the view of the others. As good Anglicans, they claim to be both Catholic and Protestant, but this is not brought up much.

To be Protestant or Jewish is decidedly eccentric and being either one clips your "Good Grand Norman" score, though you can make up for it in some other way. Military service is a good one, or of course monastic– Oops! Not monastic. See? They're an eccentric lot. Say, then, rather, that the non-military ways you can recoup your score are high professional achievement, lower or middle range government service (because that's as high as you'll get), and rather loud patriotism.

There are also some special, not-really-official patriotic high-achievers' clubs that sometimes style themselves "orders of knighthood" and are for non-Catholics to gain prestige by joining, sort of like Knights of Columbus is Masons for Catholics. They almost inevitably look at least a little lame to standard Catholic Grand Normans. "Yeah, we keep kosher, but try the soy-based fake bacon. It's good. Really."

(To join the Dedicated Cavalry is an excellent way to make up for being Protestant or Jewish. "Look! I permanently joined the nation's private species.")

♔

Because Grand Normandy is widely dispersed and mercantile, it's very Grand Norman to be cosmopolitan. It's high status to know the language, do business, and have prosaic identities in several countries. Even if your line of work doesn't facilitate that, you can still learn languages and customs, and be well-traveled for holidays. You may well criticize any customs that are counter-Grand-Norman, but you do know them.

Number of languages is a quick gauge of cosmopolitanism. Chenelaise, English, and French are a minimum for respectability, and you really ought to be able to do English and French without foreign accent. Two or three more is quite good.

♔

As for magic, any normal Grand Norman has a name geas and loyalty geas, and at least enough savoir faire with fays to be safe with them in ordinary encounters. Beyond that, they should know the ins and outs of the magics that impinge on their career. That's the bare minimum.

They get real credit for being blasé, chill, about weirdness. "Oh, look, an actual witch on a broomstick. Haven't seen one of those in a while." (This attitude is a definite help to centaurs home on leave.)

Being transformed or working daily with mages or fays easily satisfies the magic requirement. And of course if you actually do magic, you're quite safe on that score.

♔

Crown, church, and charm all meet up in the cults of the three national saints, Alice, Hugh, and Geoffrey. To have a personal devotion to one or more of these ups your score. To be disrespectful of any saints is bad for your piety score, but to be disrespectful of these saints hits your Good Grand Norman score too.

To be critical of their knightly orders raises questions, but only if you're over the top about it, since all know that the knights are only human.

To show proper respect for the saints, do not ignore (or worse, express distaste for) their feast days or make overly frivolous oaths about them. The latter depends on company. If a cavalryman wants to make up oaths about "Martin's jodhpurs" among his fellows, you have to be a real stickler to more than roll your eyes. ("Hey, the guy was a soldier. Don't tell me he didn't hear a lot worse down here." And anyway, he's the cavalry's own patron, so it's between them.) But if someone swears by "Alice's fluttery little eyelashes" or worse "Alice's underwire," dowagers, clerics, and other social arbiters will give them a Look, and you really shouldn't say such things in front of children.

Folk rituals involving abuse of these saints' images, equivalent to burying St. Joseph's statue until he gets your house sold or however that went, show disrespect and both religious and magical ignorance.

St. Alice and the Alicians

Grand Normandy gets its code of magical behavior from St. Aalis (now commonly called "St. Alice"), a 12th-century missionary to the fays. She had great success with the Channel Fays and also founded a few small religious houses (of mortals). These were, then, already in place when Grand Normandy was founded with the help of the Channel Fays in the 15th century.

Major points of the Alician code of conduct:

Have no dealings with infernal spirits. Only flee them or expel them.

Concerning fays and other such creatures, give and take only from charity on your part or theirs, or through just trade, not from claims to worship or of authority. (Contrariwise, the fays must make no claim to receiving worship.)

Concerning the dead, your first duty is to pray for them and urge them to seek Heaven; otherwise treat them gently as you would the sick. Give and take from them only in charity and justice. If they be hostile, pray against them but do not cease to pray for their salvation.

Remember that all creatures with knowledge of good and evil are your brothers in Adam.

Remember that the christened fays are your brothers in Christ. (She went about Marking and baptizing fays pretty freely.)

Remember that folk of the monde-minor are your brothers just as are the others of your nation. (The "monde-minor" or le monde-mineur is the current Grand Norman name for the unSundered world.)

She famously urged her mortal protégés and the Channel Fays to seek help from and give help to each other in charity: "Return to them, and they will return to you. Keep faith with them, and they will keep faith with you." Hence the sign-countersign.

She left plenty of room for argument. How do you tell what spirits are infernal? What are the boundaries between worship and respect? "All creatures with knowledge of good and evil" would appear to include angels and demons and djinn, along with other total non-humans; "brothers in Adam"? Really? (The often sharply-worded answer of the most revered Alician counselors has been that if you concentrate on the "justice and charity" parts and not on how near you can get to those borders without stepping over, you won't often go wrong.)

†

Window-dressing:

• St. Alice's Day: July 4th (the day Charles Dodgson took the Liddell girls boating), celebrated with picnics for mortals and fays together, and an appropriate day for Adam-Marking fays.
• Votive candles that burn blue (by glamour) or at least are in a blue shade
• Bouquets and charms of oak, ash, and (haw)thorn leaves, marked with crosses
• Fairy-circles of mushrooms with four sticks laid in a cross within as a mini-shrine (If you find a circle, do the sticks. If they find your sticks, they'll do the circle.)
  It is widely thought that one species can summon the other, or has a better chance of it, by going to such a shrine and calling out "Return and we return." Really, there is a significant chance of working only if you find a half-finished one (a sign someone wants to meet), finish it, and give the sign.
• Many young people with aspirations to a magical career take Alice as their name-saint at confirmation ("Alix" for girls using the French form, "Alex" or "Alec" for boys).
• Many Grand Norman mages have a special devotion to her and swear by her, or invoke her before undertaking more than routine or petty magic (even if it's just to cross themselves and murmur "St. Alice help us"). Common devotions include keeping a private shrine to her, wearing a blue scapular, and planting oak, ash, and hawthorne.
• Her saint's medal shows a nun flanked by oak leaves.
• Rhymes:

  Saint Alice, so the story goes,
    Seized a goblin by the nose.
  He gave out so loud a roar
    That it was heard six mile and more.

  A soul cake, a soul cake,
    Please, Saint Alice, a soul cake.
  Milk and oats and a bit of leaven,
    Anything to see a soul to heaven.
  One for Peter, two for Paul,
    Three for Him Who made us all.

  Eve's mark, Adam's mark, good St. Alice,
    Bake the cake, serve bread and chalice.
  Holy wine and holy bread,
    Oak and ash and hawthorn red.

  (According to legend, Alice generally conferred Adam's Mark by giving the fay a piece of blessed food. Currently, Alician practice for giving Adam's Mark to a fay is to feed it three blessed oat-cakes ("soul cakes") and then immediately baptize it, making it Adamite and Christian in one go. Soul cakes are traditional gifts from mortals to fays on St. Alice's Day, Hallowe'en, Christmas, and Easter.)

  I was going with St. Alice
    To see a king in a golden palace,
  A palace built on a dozen stones.
    The palace guards have a dozen thrones.
  The palace gates have a dozen locks.
    The palace walls are a golden box.
  Read the riddle of St. Alice
    To see the king in the golden palace.

  This pair of rhymes is called "Fire and Water":

  Fairy hid in the open sea,
    Hear thy sister(brother). Come help me.
  And I will help thee in my turn,
    Lest oak and ash and hawthorn burn.

  Mortal dwelling o'er the sea,
    Hear thy sister(brother). Come help me.
  And I will help thee in my turn,
    Lest oak and ash and hawthorn burn.

  The rhymes have, of course, no magic of their own, but at times they have been popular as invocations. Fay and mortal mages conversant with both nymic magic and glamour have used them in magical pacts, so that when one party of a fay/mortal partnership speaks their rhyme, the other hears it. There is no direct mention of Alice in the rhymes, but they are part of the partnership between the Channel Fays and the Grand Normans that traces back to her, and clearly echo the Alician sign and countersign, "Return and we return," "Keep faith and so do we."

†

Alice was a Roman Catholic, Sundered early in her career. The Avignese and other forms of esoteric Catholicism all recognize her, though.

Alician monks and nuns help the community in magical matters. This doesn't mean all of them are mages, though the percentage is higher than in the general population; they may simply know about this stuff, and be willing (or sent) to step in. As time has gone by, they have branched out into teaching and health care, too, starting with teaching about magic and magical cures. Their habits are blue-gray.

The Knights of St. Alice

Their basic job is to rescue people from magical dangers and to assist the Alician monastics. The head, the Commander, is an Alician abbot or abbess, or a bishop who is an Alician monk. The knights and dames of the order are either Alician monastics or have taken a vow of obedience only, not full monastic vows. Membership is by approval on application, or offered as an honor (in which case only a promise of assistance, not a vow of obedience, is required). Being recommended by, say, a monarch or bishop or such is a big help. Most members are Grand Normans, but foreign and fay members also exist.

The Knights of Sts. Hugh & Geoffrey

The Channel Fays

The Channel Fays, Grand Normandy's fairy patrons as formalized in the Channel Pact, are headquartered on a small island in the English Channel, carefully hidden by Sundering-reinforced glamour.

The hidden isle is called Webney or Tol Ened (on old maps, Moyen Île or Medio Insulam). It is heavily forested by the Channelwood, La Forêt de Chenel, though there is a place like a large hunting lodge at the shore, where Grand Normans have their embassy. The forest is liberally furnished with clearings, paths, mounds, and standing stones.

Of course there's a major portal off the home zone.

The whole place is within an ace of sliding off and becoming its own para-zone. Bad for Grand Normandy if it does. ... Isn't it? (Would their patrons be more comfortably placed for themselves? For Grand Normandy? For both? Would Grand Normandy start following them off-zone faster?)

Besides many individual fays, there are two troops, Red and White. They are owned by the Red Lord and Lady and by the White Lord and Lady, respectively.

♕ The Red Lady, Bornbereth, is preeminent in flitting and leading trooping and rades.

♕ The White Lady, Silefrodel, is preeminent as a foreteller.

♔ The Red Lord, Caranhîr, is preeminent in the Dreaming.

♔ The White Lord, Faëntûr, is the most mortal-facing lord of Webney and general diplomat.

There are also:

♛ The Wild Hunt leader is a sidhe called the Blood Lady, Agarrodel, and has a penchant for collecting heads. She leads either troop.

♘ The Errant Knight, Raïnrohir, is an ancient ex-mortal, a roving protector, knight errant, and inventor.

The White Lord and Lady are husband and wife, so some people assume the same is true of the Red Lord and Lady, or even the Blood Lady and the Errant Knight, but this is not true.

Many of the remaining fays are animal-themed. There is also a fay diaspora that is much bigger than the island population. There is a steady traffic of fays to and from the island.

The Pact

The Channel Pact, negotiated by St. Hugh, third king of Grand Normandy, with the Lords and Ladies of the Channel Fays, is at the center of mortal-fay relations in Grand Normandy, though it is certainly not comprehensive of those relations. Main points:

• The Channel Fays and Grand Normandy are allies; neither attacks the other and an attack on either is an attack on both.
• The Channel Fays will not kidnap, take changelings, launch Wild Hunts against, or otherwise abduct Grand Normans.
• The Channel Fays will not trick or force Grand Normans into taking the Fairy Mark.
• Grand Normans will not trick or force Channel Fays into taking Adam's Mark without permission of the fay's lord or lady.
• Grand Normans will not ward places against Channel Fays except for private dwellings, or exorcise them other than in self-defense.
• In disputes between Grand Normans and Channel Fays, the disputants will abide by the ruling agreed on by two (or more) judges, at least one of each kind.
• Neither kind shall use magical coercion on the other.
• Both kinds are adjured to treat each other fairly, according to the precepts of St. Alice.

That's the bare bones. Mortals should bear in mind that the mortal parties to the Pact are the Grand Norman government as a whole, but the fay parties to the Pact are the six individual Lords and Ladies of the Channel Fays: the Red Lord and Lady, the White Lord and Lady, the Blood Lady, and the Errant Knight. This means that, on the fay side, enforcement is, yes, pretty thorough, but also ... variegated. If oaths and geases don't seem to be doing the trick with a hostile fay, by all means try threats: "The White Lord wouldn't like that!" or worse, "What would the Blood Lady think?"

The actual partnership between Grand Normandy and the Channel Fays is much more than what is laid down in the Pact, and it is obvious that Grand Normandy would not be the Cryptic superpower without its fay friends.

Grand Normans get free commerce with fays, including classes and levels of magic that are beyond mortal mages. In fortunate cases:

• Households, farms, schools, and such have brownies.
• Shipping is protected by nixes.
• Speciality technology is made with the help of, and sometimes run by, gremlins.
• Churches and religious houses are protected by churchgrims.
• Many a Grand Norman has a fairy godparent.

And all of this combines to keep Grand Normandy very solidly Sundered.

The Channel Fays get access to safe areas of the mortal world. They get paid, in favors, vis (prana), sometimes even leaven, and in mortal money that can be used to buy goods you seldom get in fairylands, e.g. cell phones or airplane tickets or Havana cigars you don't have to steal. They have a ready source of Adam's Marks.

They also get interesting occupation. Although Faerie holds plenty of interest by itself, and although most fays regard the passage of any amount of time with equanimity, there is still a clear attraction to new and interesting goings-on in the mortal world, and it is nice to be able to observe or take part without worrying about glamour or shapeshifting.

The end result is that outsider Sundered often get the impression that Grand Normandy and the Channel Fays are a single polity with two main ethnic groups, mortal and fay.

Return to Cryptic Nations
Return to Inkliverse
Return to Wind Off the Hilltop

Copyright © Earl Wajenberg, 2018, 2020, 2021