Society: The World Behind the Veil

In Depth: Scene 3 of The Rising

Society: The World Behind the Veil is a companion to The Rising (by the same author). If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to do so.

Scene 3 of the Rising was titled, 808's, Heartbreak and Legion. It has it's own soundtrack/playlist to go along with it. Most of the songs are from the Kanye West LP 808's and Heartbreaks (hence the title). You may want to listen to those songs (or not). Here's the list:

Bad News
Welcome to Heartbreak (ft. Kid Cudi)
Paranoid
Heartless
Robocop
Street Lights
Stronger
POWER
Homecoming (ft. Chris Martin)

Denise Cho refers to Carlos, the main protagonist, as "Soldier". The term is used as a slang reference for Knights. This is because Knights have been the main offensive force of the Societies for a while. Where, "a while" means over a thousand years.

Like real Soldiers, Knights respond to authority and rank. They have superhuman strength, durability, senses and reflexes. Knights are said to be the easiest Path to initiate into. That fact, coupled with a large number of Knight heroes in Society lore and history, means that a lot of pre-initiates choose the 6th Society over other Paths.

Technically, Carlos' rank is a number 6 Berserker. There are 10 number ranks in the Knight Hierarchy. Numbers between 10 and 4 are basic level, acolytes. Within the 6th Society, acolytes are known as Berserkers.

Denise Cho refers to herself as both Psychic and Speaker (Master of two halves of the Psychic path). Within the 3rd Society that places her at Candidate level. In actual terms however, being at Candidate rank requires elevation. Elevation differs from Society to Society. In the 3rd Society it involves [redacted to prevent spoilers].

Trip Astor is Carlos' superior officer, by two ranks. Trip is one of the sons of an old Knight family, the Astors. The Knights don't like to say it in official terms, but blood and family honor count a lot.

The Knight Weapon Carlos uses is a Whip blade (which masquerades as his belt). A whip blade is made of an alchemical alloy called quicksilver (not the mercury type). Quicksilver is halfway between liquid and solid. The nature and reach of the weapon means that Gladiators commonly favor it. Gladiators are into lone attacks; a whip blade is definitely not a weapon to crack around your comrades.

Before anyone asks, Knights do not generally use projectile weapons. Their bodily defense means that unless you catch them by surprise, basic projectiles do not work. During Knight strikes, there is barely enough time to load munitions. In this one example, it is a bad idea to bring guns to a knife fight. There is however a Knight weapon that fires projectiles known as the [redacted to prevent spoilers].

Legion is a mid-level daemon. It is also one of the more devastating types of daemons. As one may have observed in Scene 3, Legion can bring forth an unlimited number of darklings.

The lead-in music for Spider is POWER [Parental advisory; Explicit content]. This was a slightly [in]appropriate super-hero song. Even for Societies who are trans-human by virtue of the paths, the Magi are super-human.

Magi are the equivalent of demigods, angels, warlocks and wizards from ancient human lore; they innately twist reality in unpredictable ways. Magus abilities were identified as extreme versions of the Societies Paths around the 18th century.

Magi are named for the so-called "First Magus", Simon son of Antonius. Simon is more popularly known as Simon Magus.

Magi do have a little known weakness, i.e. [redacted to prevent spoilers]

As for the Merlin's story, well that is a whole can of spoiler worms that cannot be opened yet.

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Thanks for reading. Vote if you like The Society Files or The Rising. Comment if you have any feedback and be sure to take a look at Tetrad 1 and 2 of The Rising.