Lineage is a powerful thing, it motivates people to build empires and move mountains for their descendants. It becomes a psychological bedrock on which people’s personal values are a reflection of those who came before them. Family shapes and binds us in the most formative of ways. The importance of this connection is most strongly represented in the unconscious archetypes humanity adopts. Almost always the Mother ascends as one of the first and is the least changed over the universal cycle, she is the bedrock from which all life springs and without which all life would end.
In the 1970s and 80s the concept of the matrilineal most common recent ancestor, the mother responsible for passing down all still existing mitochondrial DNA throughout human history, was first explored. In the late 1980s the term “Mitochondrial Eve” was coined in the discussion of this concept and through the allusion a raft of misconceptions were born. The Mitochondrial Eve was not the only woman alive in her time or the progenitor of the human species, she is the nearest common female ancestor with an unbroken line of daughters (it only would take having no children or only sons to take a competing line out of the running since mitochondrial DNA cannot be passed on by a male). Nevertheless the biblical reference had embedded the concept of having found humanities’ mother into the zeitgeist. It is a powerful symbol, one that this group is eager to exploit.
Funded by a legal trust and using the existing pharmaceutical research company infrastructure provided by their wealthiest member the cabal is seeking out the root of this connection. Once they have it they can control it for themselves. The Children of the Ur-Mother want to recreate the Mitochondrial Eve using a fusion of magick and modern science. This is dangerous, human cloning has never been achieved by medicine and the experiments they are conducting are illegal and unethical. To say nothing of the danger of challenging the statosphere so directly.
The cabal’s objective is to clone the Mitochondrial Eve as a perfect representation of the Mother. The cabal then seeks to usurp the Mother archetype and install their puppet into the Invisible Clergy with some careful programming. Their goals are:
- Keep the extended Vanderwal families’ legal manoeuvring for Edwin’s money at bay until the project is complete.
- Obtain or rebuild a copy of the Mitochondrial Eve’s genetic code. There is a promising archaeological dig site near St Helena Bay in South Africa that Dr. Hanrahan is keeping close tabs on.
- Successfully develop the ability to clone human beings, while keeping it a secret. Patricia has brought a ritual for creating homunculi to the group, which has helped bridge their technical limitations.
- Develop a facility for “educating” the new Eve properly, both for ascension as the Mother and for the changes the cabal intends to make to the archetype.
Edwin Vanderwal was once a respected mining magnate (which he inherited) and pharmaceutical company founder (which he did on his own). A devout Christian and family man it was his most fervent wish to pass on his values and beliefs to his eight children and dozens of grandchildren. It is his dismay to have failed, the atomized individuality of modern life has pulled them away from the traditions he feels were passed on for generations. He wishes he could change that and thinks this way he might be able to by "correcting" the roles of family.
This made him a well placed and well motivated individual to provide resources to the cabal. The legal trust is something he has engineered to keep his families angst-ridden clutching at bay (they do not understand or approve of whatever it is he is up to), if they were to seize a power of attorney over him then they would be risking the inheritance they fear he is frittering away.
A shrewd and calculating individual, Edwin is a tall, pale man in his late sixties. Swept back grey hair and roman features give him a regal countenance and he has used his articulate and well-mannered demeanour to put people at ease for his entire career. Behind this he is troubled, his beliefs are in conflict with one another. He has serious misgivings about the methods that the cabal must use to achieve their goals. This expresses itself as an uneasy fusion of rationalisation and fervent faith that has him locked on course. He’s know Sandy since he was a boy and trusts him completely, has a healthy respect for Carrie’s intellect and likes Patricia despite Sandy's misgivings.
Dr. Carrie Hanrahan isn’t really a doctor of anything. She studied broadly and spent years, decades in fact, in academia, but she never graduated with anything more than a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. Extensively educated, she’s an unacknowledged expert in genetics, astronomy, computer science, semiotics and industrial chemistry. Having never been able to stick with one thing for long enough to turn her staggering intelligence into something tangible, she is an outsider who craves acknowledgement and achievement.
This lack of acknowledgement stoked a nascent anti-authoritarian streak and wounded egotism into an all-consuming inferno. Dr. Hanrahan has become the quintessential mad scientist, alighting on projects long enough to do something destabilizing before taking off again. Introducing contamination into GMO crop species that causes them to spread like wildfire or supplying strains of virulent oil-eating bacteria to radical environmentalist groups. She doesn’t stick around long enough to see the fallout, and it often isn’t as severe as she believes, but gets a kick out of sticking it to a system that she believes has no place for her.
It’s this outsider status that brought Carrie into contact with the occult underground and more importantly made her take it seriously. The revelation of magick felt like coming home and the existence of the Invisible Clergy gave her an even bigger target to rail her alienation against. She thinks she’s finally found her calling. A squirrely blonde woman in her late thirties, Carrie seems constantly distracted and anxious. This masks a deep seated psychopathy and ruthlessness, her only concern is how big a thing she can destroy with her mind. She doesn’t care about the other cabal members at all.
Patricia Raglan is a saboteur. Or she intends to be. A Mother avatar, she belongs to a traditionalist avatar cult who “have safeguarded the secrets of motherhood for over a thousand years” (it’s actually been just shy of a hundred and fifty) with some Norse pagan trappings thrown in for a greater air of authenticity. They learned of the cabal’s intent through their statospheric connection and have sent her to scuttle their plans.
She brought the alchemical ritual for creating homunculi with her, timing her arrival to coincide with the cabal’s first cloning failures. It was suspicious but ingratiating. Dr. Hanrahan was wounded by the upstaging but mollified by Patricia’s deference to her adaptation of the ritual into her existing processes. She ingratiated herself with Edwin by half-feigning shared values, she appreciates his dedication to family and has acted as an intermediary given the current troubles but resents his religious beliefs. Sandy reminds her of her son and learning of his tragedy with his own mother, has comforted him.
Unfortunately she’s having a crisis of faith. Her connection to the Mother still runs strong but she’s received no indication that she should finally act. If anything the tensions and eddies of the statosphere are pointing her away from moving against the cabal. She feels trapped by her duties to her archetype, the connection she with Sandy and her cult. The last is particularly worrying, they have her children.
Sandy Renfrow once represented a host of wealthy clients in his inherited practice as a lawyer, today his sole responsibility is the administration of the cabal’s trust and the day to day legal obfuscation they require. It’s complicated by the interference from Edwin’s family and he’s not up to anything more strenuous anymore. It’s not that he is incompetent, he’s just bearing the brunt of the statosphere’s displeasure.
Having known Edwin since childhood he was always going to work for him, the connections of the old boy network passed on by his father ensuring his future. He never gave any thought to being anything else, perfectly content with being molded into the man his families’ expectation made of him. A little toy soldier to be wound up and play his role with a firm handshake and an easy southern drawl.
His mother died last year, she’d been sick for a long time. She’d always lamented that he’d never had time to make a family for himself and confessed as much towards the end. He made promises to her he doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep. Sandy’s homosexuality is a secret his family would never accept and he doesn’t feel like he has it in him to marry a woman and have children with her just to please them. The stress has been made worse by the fact that the photograph he keeps of her has started talking to him. The Mother archetype has taken a direct interest and the nature of his distress makes their connection ripe. Strangely, its directions have been to continue as he is for now.
Sandy is a tall, handsome man in his thirties: tanned, bleached smile and well-dressed, but his picture perfect image is slipping with the sleepless nights and heavy drinking. He looks tired and has off-loaded the bulk of his clients. People think he might be sick. He sees Edwin as a second father, regards Dr. Hanrahan as someone to be carefully managed and has a two-sided relationship with Patricia. He appreciates her concern about his situation but cannot shake his suspicions about her timing in joining the group. He’s put a private detective on her.
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