The Hidden Society Beneath the World

For most of recorded history, humanity has lived beside a civilization it does not know exists.

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Hidden beneath Greenwich, England, lies the Conglomerate Citadel, the heart of Earth’s oldest surviving organized magical society. More than an academy, government, sanctuary, or secret order, the Conglomerate is a union of magical traditions built to preserve knowledge, protect magical people, regulate dangerous practices, and defend Earth from threats that conventional society may never recognize.

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Its underground capital is home to more than 50,000 residents and supports practitioners from numerous magical disciplines, including Arcane, Alteration, Conjuration, Druidic, Nature, Charm, Divination, Spirit, and Techno-Magic. The Citadel is regarded as the longest-running secret magical society on Earth, with much of the planet’s organized magical education tracing at least part of its history back to its people.

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To nearly everyone on the surface, it does not exist.

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To those who live within it, the Conglomerate is an entire world.

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The Origins of Organized Magic

Magic in the Major Deej Universe is not merely superstition or unexplained ritual. It is a form of energy that exists throughout the universe, interacting most strongly with living worlds, consciousness, natural forces, and particular planetary energy systems.

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Earth is exceptionally rich in this energy.

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Across the planet, magical power moves through underground conduits commonly known as ley lines. These currents intersect at caves, tunnels, ruins, oceans, ancient ritual sites, and other places where magical energy can be reached or shaped. One of the most important of these intersections lies beneath the Prime Meridian at Greenwich.

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Long before modern London existed, magical practitioners recognized the significance of this location.

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Over time, separate traditions, enclaves, families, teachers, and magical communities gathered there. Some came seeking protection. Others sought knowledge, political stability, or access to the exceptional magical energy beneath the site.

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These communities did not immediately become a unified society. Their forms of magic differed, as did their languages, cultures, philosophies, and beliefs regarding how power should be used.

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What eventually united them was survival.

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Magicians had endured persecution, warfare, religious hostility, exploitation, internal conflict, dangerous supernatural beings, and the misuse of magical artifacts. No single tradition could preserve its people or defend its knowledge indefinitely.

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From that necessity arose the organization later known as the Conglomerate—a union of different magical peoples bound together without requiring them to abandon their individual schools and traditions.

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Its name reflected its purpose: many distinct magical elements gathered into one enduring whole.

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The Founding of the Citadel

The Conglomerate’s members constructed a vast settlement beneath Greenwich. What began as chambers, vaults, sanctuaries, and meeting halls eventually expanded into a subterranean city.

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The Conglomerate Citadel grew across generations.

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Its architects created towers, academies, residences, libraries, workshops, markets, gardens, ritual chambers, armories, and civic spaces. Gothic architecture became one of its defining visual traditions, although the city also incorporated designs brought by magical families from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and other parts of the world.

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The Citadel was not meant to resemble a dark underground refuge.

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Through immense and carefully maintained enchantments, its upper reaches project an illusory sky over the city. Sunlight, clouds, stars, atmospheric colors, and changing conditions give residents the psychological experience of living beneath an open heaven, even though the entire city remains concealed beneath the surface world.

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Wards protect its boundaries. Portals regulate travel. Illusions conceal access points. Defensive enchantments monitor dangerous magical activity, hostile entities, and attempts at unauthorized entry.

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Although modern conveniences and selective forms of Techno-Magic have gradually been introduced, the Citadel remains predominantly an old magical city. Enchanted lamps, message orbs, magical refrigeration, void storage, translation devices, rune-secured doors, and other practical innovations exist alongside stone towers, handwritten tomes, ceremonial robes, magical staffs, swords, and ancient ritual traditions.

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The Schools of Magic

The Conglomerate did not create every form of magic practiced on Earth, nor does it command every magical community.

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Its greatest historical achievement was organizing magical learning into recognized schools based on how practitioners interact with magical energy.

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These schools serve as academic traditions, professional communities, political constituencies, and cultural identities. Each maintains its own practices, philosophies, colors, symbols, locations, and senior representatives.

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Nearly a dozen schools of magic have existed in recognized or disputed forms within the MDU. Surface-based academies may operate independently while still maintaining historical, political, or educational relationships with the Conglomerate. The Alteration School, for example, maintains an academy in Cairo and is associated with aquamarine and teal coloration.

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Students and practitioners frequently display their school affiliation through colored tippets, robes, insignia, gemstones, or formal regalia.

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Most practitioners historically specialized in one school. Cross-school study was often discouraged because different magical systems could conflict, become unstable, or challenge the authority of existing institutions.

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That restriction has become increasingly controversial.

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Young practitioners such as Chay, Carpitma, Iron Jambiya, and others have demonstrated that broader magical education may produce unconventional but highly capable heroes. Their experiences have challenged the belief that every mage must remain confined to one traditional path.

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The Stones and the Leadership

The Conglomerate’s senior leadership is traditionally associated with gemstones.

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Important representatives carry titles such as Diamond, Topaz, Amethyst, Aquamarine, Alexandrite, Spinel, and others. These positions are more than ceremonial names. They represent offices, responsibilities, magical traditions, civic authority, or stewardship over specific portions of Conglomerate society.

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The highest leadership has historically operated through a council commonly known as the Stone leadership or Council of Elders, with Diamond occupying a central position within the governing structure.

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Stone Leaders gather around an ornate gemstone table within a heavily protected council chamber. Magical wards, spirit protections, truth enchantments, defensive seals, and ancient barriers guard the room.

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Some Stone titles are held by elder scholars and long-established leaders. Others may be assigned to field agents, scouts, custodians, or unusually promising practitioners.

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Tulum Savas, known as Carpitma, became the youngest known bearer of the Alexandrite title. His office includes responsibility for the Conglomerate’s Vault of Magical Weapons, Relics, and Tomes, including its highly restricted S-Class artifacts.

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Haitao Smithfield, known as Spinel or Cobalt Blue, serves as a Stone representative and surface-world scout despite his own doubts about his qualifications.

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These appointments illustrate that the Stone system is not exclusively based on age or raw magical power. Loyalty, lineage, judgment, specialization, political need, and service can all influence who receives a title.

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The Vaults and Magical Relics

The Conglomerate has spent centuries collecting, safeguarding, studying, and sometimes concealing magical objects.

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Its vaults contain:

• Enchanted weapons

• Dangerous spell books

• Ancient relics

• Cursed objects

• Lost historical records

• Dimensional artifacts

• Magical armor

• Spirit-bound objects

• Items connected to extinct or vanished schools

• Weapons considered too powerful for ordinary practitioners

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Some artifacts are preserved because they are historically important. Others are locked away because their use could cause mass destruction, spiritual contamination, dimensional instability, or the release of ancient beings.

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Among these relics is the Sword of Aladdin, an S-Class magical weapon entrusted to the current Alexandrite.

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The Conglomerate also possesses records concerning weapons whose public legends differ sharply from their actual histories. Samhain Knight, formerly the Conglomerate’s Master at Arms, has stated that the true Excalibur and its associated relics were once held by the Holy tradition and hidden under strict magical restrictions.

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This custodial role has made the Conglomerate one of the most important guardians of Earth’s magical heritage.

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It has also made the society a target.

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The Knights Arcanus

Throughout its history, the Conglomerate has repeatedly formed a body of magical warriors known as the Knights Arcanus.

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The Knights were created to defend magical schools, hidden communities, relics, and Earth itself from threats beyond the ability of ordinary practitioners. The present-day team is the twentieth known formation.

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The nineteenth formation operated between 1895 and 1914 under the leadership of the Celtic Knight. When the First World War began, the Celtic Knight decided that the Knights could not remain neutral while the surface world tore itself apart.

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The Conglomerate’s elders disagreed.

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They ordered the Knights to return and attempted to prevent the magical society from becoming involved in a non-magical war. The dispute demonstrated a conflict that would continue for more than a century: whether the Conglomerate’s duty extended only to magical people or to humanity as a whole.

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That argument became even more severe during the Soltan invasion of Earth in 2000.

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The Conglomerate’s leadership prioritized the defense of the Citadel and the protection of magical refugees. Samhain Knight—Sir Samuel Shane, the former Master at Arms—believed hiding was no longer enough.

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Against the council’s orders, he formed the twentieth Knights Arcanus.

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The team fought not only for the Conglomerate but for the entire planet, particularly when the Soltans attempted to exploit or tear magical energy from Earth’s core. The twentieth formation survived and continued operating after the invasion, expanding its mission to protect magical and non-magical people alike.

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The Stone leadership has never fully accepted this defiance.

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The modern Knights Arcanus remain estranged from the Conglomerate and have at times been treated as criminals, exiles, or dangerous symbols of rebellion.

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Secrecy and Isolation

The Conglomerate’s secrecy was originally a survival measure.

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For centuries, magical practitioners were hunted, exploited, enslaved, manipulated, or killed by surface societies. Hidden communities allowed magical people—particularly women and persecuted practitioners—to study and live with freedoms unavailable in many historical civilizations. The Conglomerate maintained traditions of magical equality even during eras when the surface world did not.

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Yet protection gradually became isolation.

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Generations were born inside the Citadel with little direct knowledge of humanity. Some came to regard the surface world as violent, primitive, reckless, or unworthy of magical assistance.

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Others believed magical people had a responsibility to help.

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By approximately 1400, substantial numbers of Conglomerate practitioners had begun reintegrating with Western towns and cities, hoping to use their abilities to improve ordinary life.

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These departures repeatedly created political and cultural tension. Some surface-based mages established new schools, communities, families, or secret orders. Others became the foundations of legends later misremembered as folklore, witchcraft, miracles, monsters, or divine intervention.

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A significant modern exodus occurred during the 1990s.

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Many residents had grown tired of being confined within the hidden enclave. Families such as Robert and Catherine Conway left the Citadel, travelled among surface magical schools, and established lives beyond Conglomerate authority.

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Their son, Chay, would later be brought back into the society—only to describe it as a cult from which he was not free to leave.

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Failure, Persecution, and the Cost of Control

The Conglomerate’s history is not entirely noble.

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Its leaders have sometimes responded to dissent, dangerous experimentation, or unauthorized magical movements with extraordinary severity.

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The Arcane Sisterhood emerged from women who had once benefited from the Conglomerate’s protection but later sought to intervene directly in surface civilizations. Over time, parts of the movement became hostile, extremist, or abusive.

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The Conglomerate and the Knights Arcanus responded with force.

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By the late sixteenth century, practitioners associated with the Sisterhood of the Flame were hunted, killed, or magically transformed into inanimate objects. Some were also murdered by ordinary humans during witch persecutions.

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The Sisterhood’s actions posed genuine danger, but the brutality of the response remains part of the Conglomerate’s darker legacy.

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The same pattern has appeared repeatedly:

The leadership identifies a threat.

The council imposes control.

Dissent is suppressed.

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The immediate danger may be contained, but resentment survives for generations.

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This history explains both the Conglomerate’s durability and many of its enemies.

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The Soltan Invasion and the Modern Era

The Soltan invasion was one of the most important crises in Conglomerate history.

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The invaders threatened not only nations and cities but Earth’s magical-energy systems. Magical communities were scattered, attacked, or forced into hiding. Refugees fled toward the Citadel in search of safety.

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The Conglomerate survived.

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Its wards, defenders, vaults, schools, and people endured the invasion, but the experience exposed the limitations of its isolationist policies.

Samhain Knight’s illegal Knights Arcanus fought openly.

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Surface heroes defended magical people.

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Young practitioners formed relationships beyond traditional school boundaries.

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Alien powers discovered that Earth’s magic could not remain completely hidden.

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The old secrecy had been permanently weakened.

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In the years that followed, governments and international organizations became increasingly aware that organized magic existed. The United Nations’ Super-Powered Registration Act began requiring recognized magical schools to provide registration information for practitioners who advanced beyond novice status, although the authenticity of those identities remains disputed.

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GUARD later established MYSTIGUARD, a professional division responsible for magical-threat response, artifact containment, ley-line monitoring, magical intelligence, and liaison with hidden societies. Its existence reflects a world in which governments can no longer afford to ignore magical dangers.

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The Conglomerate now faces a reality it resisted for centuries:

The surface world knows more than it once did.

And younger mages are no longer willing to accept every old restriction.

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A New Generation

The current generation may represent the greatest internal challenge the Conglomerate has faced.

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These younger practitioners are not united by a formal movement, but they share several experiences:

• They have lived or travelled in the surface world.

• They form friendships across magical schools.

• They work alongside non-magical heroes.

• They question inherited authority.

• They use unconventional combinations of magic.

• They recognize the necessity of secrecy but reject imprisonment and unquestioned control.

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Carpitma, the new Alexandrite, respects Conglomerate tradition but has seen its flaws firsthand.

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Chay openly challenges its leadership while continuing to defend its people.

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Iron Jambiya seeks disciplined training after escaping the criminal 40 Thieves.

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Remaque has chosen her own path after surviving the same guild.

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Spinel, though a Stone Leader himself, has begun viewing the council through the eyes of the younger generation.

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Their friendships may appear informal—adventures, arguments, magical disasters, and even a surprisingly successful hot dog business—but together they represent a cultural shift.

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They are proof that loyalty and criticism can coexist.

They do not necessarily wish to destroy the Conglomerate.

They want it to become worthy of the people it claims to protect.

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The Conglomerate Today

Today, the Conglomerate remains one of the most powerful, knowledgeable, and secretive institutions on Earth.

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Its Citadel continues to thrive beneath Greenwich. Its illusory sky shines above Gothic towers, academies, libraries, markets, workshops, and generations of magical families.

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Its wards remain strong.

Its vaults remain guarded.

Its schools continue teaching.

Its Stone Leaders continue governing.

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Yet beneath that appearance of permanence, the society is changing.

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The old leadership fears exposure, instability, forbidden magic, and the loss of control.

The younger generation fears stagnation, injustice, isolation, and becoming prisoners of traditions designed by people long dead.

Both sides understand that Earth’s magical energy is too important to leave undefended.

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The conflict is over who should defend it—and what sacrifices that defense should require.

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For almost two millennia, secrecy was the foundation of the Conglomerate’s survival.

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Its next era may depend on learning when secrecy protects the magical world—and when it merely prevents that world from growing.

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