Guardian Order
All proper Guardians have been sworn in by the Guardian Order. They wield an enchanted key and often a badge that signifies their status. Most Guardians go on to become Conflux Guardians, stationed in a specific community and tasked with the upholding of its laws and the Codified Traditions within its borders. It is worth noting that there is a distinction here– each conflux has its own magical laws in addition to the universal Traditions. The Traditions do not explicitly forbid killing, for example, but it is covered by local laws almost everywhere.
Some Guardians are more of the roaming sort, dispensing justice across borders and with no permanent base of operations. As a rule, most confluxes tend to severely dislike this sort of Guardian, as it challenges their autonomy. More than a few confluxes have exceedingly complicated bureaucracies just to stop these Guardians from exercising their authority. As a result, Guardians have a sort of weird double-image in the European Confluxes. On one hand they are trusted to uphold order and are considered local heroes. On the other, they are the incarnation of the “creeping centralization attempted by the Guardian Order”.
Regulators and Iron Letters
Overseeing the Guardian Order are the Regulators. History suggests that the Regulators were set up in the 16th century, although they may have existed, behind the scenes, even before then. It is the job of the Regulators to make sure that the Guardian Order does not become too powerful, and that internal coups are foiled so that it can focus on upholding the Traditions.
It is also the job of the Regulators to deal with the big-picture of the European Confluxes, and to hunt down violators of the Codified Traditions who have a penchant for Conflux-jumping and exploiting the loopholes that the European Confluxes are chock-full of. To help them in this task, the Treaty of the Iron Key also legitimised the use of the so-called “Iron Letters”, a tool that the Confluxes absolutely loathe.
The Iron Letters are nondescript, small pieces of paper, stamped with a magical wax seal by a Regulator. These arrest warrants of sort, waives all local protection for a particular violator of the Codified Traditions. In essence, while usually Conflux law takes precedence and criminals are punished by the local courts, an Iron Letter cuts through all that and places the judge and jury function squarely in the hands of the Guardian Order. Needless to say, the Confluxes kick up a huge fuss whenever Iron Letters are used.
Regulators and mundaneborn Guardians
When the first Guardian Order was formed, it was little more than a collection of small local militias funded and maintained by the more established hexborn families. After the the signing of the Peace of Phalsbourg in 1801 mundaneborns were explicitly allowed to join the Order. However all thirteen of the Regulators still come from old-blood Hexborn families. Whilst there is no official rule that makes it so, the Regulators select their own replacements and – according to tradition – they do not allow the mundaneborn.
