The Torchlight Historical Society of Aetheria, usually shortened to the Torchlight Society, Torchlight or TLHS, is an Aetherian organization that studies the ancient ruins around the continent and the ancient magic found within. Their primary goal is to learn as much as possible about magic and how its power can be harnessed, while at the same time keeping it secret from the general public, until such a time when enough is known about magic that it can be safely kept under control in the hands of a large population.
The Society has a dubious reputation and is feared by many Aetherians due to its secretive nature and a history of legally questionable acts, but is backed by the Aetherian Government. It was originally founded in the early years of the New Era and became part of the government of the Federation of Antius. In the year 366, Torchlight manages over 30 facilities around Aetheria and neighboring countries, and employs some 10,000 people in various roles. Its headquarters is Grandpyre Hall, an office complex near the city of Mica.
Torchlight itself is not a secret society; its agents do not hide the fact of their membership, but are forbidden to discuss anything related to the nature of their work with outsiders. To the Aetherian public, the Society presents itself as a government-funded archaeological research group studying the ancient ruins of the tolgethic tribes. The Society operates at a number of different sites around Aetheria and its neighboring countries, some of which are at least partially open to the public in the form of museums or libraries, in order to further its narrative as an archaeological group.
Much of the Aetherian public is highly skeptical of Torchlight, and the true reason for its existence is a popular topic for gossip. Many Aetherians attempt to join the Society in order to solve the mysteries for themselves. Because of this, Torchlight has had to implement a very strict and selective recruitment process. This process begins with a written exam that appears to be a test of intellect, but is actually designed to assess one's loyalty and weed out those who would fail to keep its secrets. It is estimated that, at any given time, as much as ten percent of Aetheria's total population has attempted this test at least once.
Newly accepted members spend at least the first two years of their career at Unseen University where they learn to perform spells and prepare for a career researching them. Joining the Society is a lifelong career decision; once a member has been introduced to magic, they are committed to keeping the Society's secrets. Those who choose to leave Torchlight (or are expelled for violating its code) remains on the organization's watchlist for the rest of their lives and face criminal charges if caught sharing magic with outsiders. This is made abundantly clear to new members before they finally accept an offer to join.
Torchlight Agents have a wide range of career paths available to them:
The society is led by the Torchlight Council, a group of senior officials made up of five regional directors, six research directors representing the highest degree of expertise in each of the five recognized forms of magic, and the Vice President of Historical Research appointed as part of the Aetherian President's cabinet. The council is overseen by the society's top executive, the Archmage.
Each of the regional directors oversee the Torchlight bases within their respective regions, each of which is managed by a site director.
Behind closed doors, the Torchlight Society works very closely with the governments of its home country Aetheria and its neighbors to fund and manage their research into the ruins and the ancient magic. High-ranking government officials are kept informed of the Society's knowledge in order to help oversee operations to keep magic a secret to outsiders. Agents meet regularly with Aetherian government officials in Base 01 and Base 15, and with the government of Rothera in Base 21.
In addition to these government relations, the Society also conducts undercover operations in other countries. These bases of operations are classified to the highest ranks of the Society, and their very existence is top secret.
The Torchlight Society is nearly as old as the New Era itself, tracing its beginning to the early years of Antarctic settlements.
The first Society was a small group of settlers and explorers in the early days of Antius. Explorer and War of Ages veteran Goran Norgard founded the society in his own home, hoping to acquire and store as much information as he could on the ancient ruins they had just uncovered before local governments could step in. The first meeting is reported to have taken place in NE 13.
For the first few years of its existence, Torchlight was a small gathering of 20 to 30 explorers, who met regularly in a hidden chamber of the Norgard House to discuss their findings in the ruins, and share any of the ancient runes they had been able to take photos of, or artifacts with magical properties they had found. The group adopted the name Team Torchlight by the NE 30's. This happened entirely under the radar of the Antian government, while Antius created its own agency of natural history to document the ruins.
It wasn't until nearly twenty years later that Torchlight explorers would actually learn to use magic themselves. Over the years the explorers reached out to any linguistic and literary scholars they could find who had survived the war, and after years of meticulous translations and trial-and-error, they finally created the first Aetherian Rune translation guide. Finally, in NE 32, researcher Lynn Arthur became the first living person to cast a spell since the Tolgethic age.
Around this time, the Antian government became acutely aware of Torchlight's existence. Membership had grown to nearly 100 at this point, and it was impossible for them to remain under the radar. Seeing them as a threat to national security, the government tried to hunt down and arrest as many of them as they could, though with limited success. This forced the remaining members into hiding, where they continued to study the runes and learn more advanced spells. The Society remained elusive and hidden for several decades while their wealth of information grew. This period is referred to as the Blackout Period by Torchlight agents.
Government efforts to stamp out the Torchlight movement intensified over the years, eventually culminating in the Dawngarde Incident. Embroiled in another territorial dispute, the government of Antius and its natural history agency sought to protect their national treasures at all costs. Following directions from an unknown tipster, a small Antian militia uncovered a Torchlight meeting place in the fledgling town of Dawngarde on the evening of 22 Manus 63. The cornered mages fought back using Pyromancy spells they had deciphered, sending the militia into an almost immediate retreat, but not without setting fire to the building in the process. This was the first time the society revealed their magical capabilities to the government, who were forced to cover up the incident as a gas explosion. Following this incident, Torchlight eventually struck a deal with the government: in exchange for clemency and government support, they would share their knowledge with government officials and work with them to keep the country and its historic ruins safe.
By this time, Norgard himself had long since passed, and handed the leadership of Team Torchlight to his son Romulus. Romulus Norgard staunchly opposed the society becoming integrated into the government, as he was sure his father would have. Nevertheless, he was eventually overruled and ousted as leader, with Emma Hansen taking over. This began the modern Torchlight Society with the establishment of Base 01 in Hjolfrin's Hall.
From that point on, the Society was supported and funded by the governments of Antius and the Republic of Kilsyth. Over the next two centuries, their knowledge of magic grew, along with their sphere of influence. Although the society had originally agreed to operate under government regulations, this balance of power gradually shifted, and by the year 150, it was clear that the government was more under the society's influence than vice-versa. This was largely due to the continued discovery of more and larger ancient ruins, which contained more powerful and dangerous artifacts that could pose significant risks to local populations if they fell into the wrong hands. Torchlight began to catalogue and secure these most dangerous of magic items in Base 08, an underground bunker beneath Clearwater.
As their influence over the local governments grew, so did their secrecy. Torchlight strove to keep its secrets at all costs, fearing that any outsiders who knew about the ancient magic were a threat to national security which could lead to another major war. The leaders of the society had grown to fear what they had discovered, and saw magic as a threat that needed to be contained, rather than a tool to advance humanity. The Society began to exert more and more influence over local governments, and would hunt down those who had entered the ruins illegally and erase their memories.
For these reasons, Torchlight's public image dramatically declined throughout the late 2nd century N.E. Many members opposed the oppressive and inhumane nature of the society's actions, but none dared to speak against the Torchlight Council. It was also during this time that Torchlight began to turn its sights toward weaponizing magic, as a way to become a world power. The situation was made worse in 191 by an explosion at Base 08, which caused the destruction of a sizable part of Clearwater and resulted in hundreds of agent and civilian deaths. While the society worked to cover up the incident and secure its remaining cache of its most dangerous magical items, hundreds more were arrested and/or had their memories wiped - a spell that had not been perfected at the time, and was known for a high risk of brain damage.
Despite its draconian policies and severe punishment, Torchlight still failed to keep all outside knowledge of magic under control. Rogues still regularly broke into secured ruin sites, or simply stumbled upon new ruins that Torchlight had yet to discover. With their resources spread thin, many within Torchlight began speaking out against their oppressive policies around the turn of the third century.
Despite growing division over their policies, Torchlight greatly ramped up secrecy enforcement through the early 200s. When the Second Transantarctic War broke out in 198, the Antian government approached Torchlight about using magic in the war effort. This led to the Torchlight Military Crisis, with the organization heavily divided on whether it should involve itself in military affairs. Ultimately, the society refused to take part in the war on the basis that Antius was not under direct threat and getting involved would set a dangerous precedent.
However, Antius did find itself under direct threat of invasion in the Third Transantarctic War in the 230s. This time, the society agreed to take part in undercover operations against Espya, who they suspected of having a secretive magic organization of their own. When the war ended and Antius united with Kilsyth and Iniond to form Aetheria, the Society was integrated right into the new country's government.
After the unification of Aetheria, the new government mostly turned a blind eye to the society's operations as it focused on strengthening its own defenses against a possible further Espyan invasion. A few years after the country unified, Zacharias Hendriksson took over as Archmage. Taking advantage of the government's preoccupation, he massively expanded Torchlight and began imprisoning, rather than erasing the memory of, illegal magic users taken into custody. He also ordered facilities to begin a series of new experimental magic studies using the captives as test subjects. This began a period known later as the Torchlight Atrocities.
During the Atrocities period, the members of the society became increasingly divided over Hendriksson's new policies, but few dared to speak out against them, as he had the support of most of the Council. By the time Hendriksson stepped down in 269, most of the society lived and worked in a state of constant fear and its public image had fallen to its worst ever. This was made apparent when, in 270, a rogue organization carried out a coordinated bombing of multiple Torchlight bases. In response, Hendriksson's successor Mark Tobin launched Operation Closed Doors - a ruthless campaign to hunt down and imprison all outsiders with unauthorized magic knowledge, and the peak of the Atrocities.
The actions of the society under Operation Closed Doors pushed tensions to their breaking point, as several site directors openly refused to follow the order. Chief among them was Meredith Chambers, a member of the Torchlight Council and one of the most vocal opponents of the society's actions since the 240s. As the clandestine operation proceeded, opposition to it grew. Eventually, in 273, regional directors filed petitions to remove two Torchlight Councilors who supported the operation. The council shortly fired Tobin, and appointed Chambers as the new archmage.
Chambers worked quickly to reform Torchlight, stop the imprisonment of rogue mages, and return the society to its roots as a scientific research organization. She began working with President Eloise Koster to coordinate the release of thousands of nonviolent offenders, and ended the use of prisoners as forced test subjects. She also established the Curse Recovery Association, a group within Torchlight providing support to both members and former prisoners who had suffered permanent disabilities due to magical experiments, and created the Norgard Museum of Aetherian History in an effort to improve public relations. Not all Torchlight bases immediately complied with the changes.
However, the society's policies once again took a dramatic turn when Meredith Chambers died on 12 January 279. The council chose Martin Lynch as the next Archmage, who nearly immediately Chambers' plans to free prisoners and resumed human testing, albeit at a slower rate than Hendriksson or Tobin had done. This continued for several more years until President Simon Darcy's administration launched a government probe into the organization. The investigation ultimately found evidence that Lynch, along with multiple Torchlight Council directors, plotted to assassinate Chambers. Torchlight suspended operations on the day the news broke, as Lynch and three other council members were arrested and charged with accessory to murder. The remaining council members met later that night and formally dismissed Lynch as Archmage, appointing Randall Jameson in his stead.
Although Lynch's removal and arrest marked the end of the Atrocities, it would be decades before the public's opinion on Torchlight would begin to shift towards greater approval. In the wake of the archmage's arrest, the Council established new policies to limit the archmage's unilateral power. The Chambers Reformation Act was signed in 287 which, along with establishing greater government oversight of Torchlight, created the Vice President of Historical Research position as an additional voting member of the council.
Through the late 3rd and early 4th centuries NE, Torchlight released nearly all of some 3,000 prisoners it had apprehended for various degrees of illegal magic knowledge during the Atrocities. Many of them were given full pardons, while others had their memories modified under the new reform policies for responding to unauthorized magic. The Society's dedicated prison compound Base 17 was declared closed in 301.
As part of the reform act, the Society was required to move its main headquarters out of Highgate. In 309 Grandpyre Hall was opened in Mica. Although they continued to recruit new agents, the rate of expansion was slowed after the reform movement. The society continues to research magic in secret, although it no longer imprisons unauthorized mages except in extreme cases where magic was used to commit crimes. Involuntary human testing is now banned under the reform act, although a number of former rogues and active-duty agents are still separated from the society at large in the CRA's Base 36.
The Anomaly of 366 stressed Torchlight's emergency response teams, as large groups of seemingly random people began disappearing without a trace across the country.
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