The Left Hand of the Clans.

  A collection of witches who have been operating secretly in the East,
particularly out of the Sweetwater Clanland, for some time, surviving by
obtaining information about law-enforcement agents for blackmail purposes,
making deals with the Right Hand, etc.  One of their number is an Clan
senator(ess), who pushed at the beginning of the Clan-Realm war to pass
an emergency act allowing gov't sponsored witchcraft to be used (a la'
Freedom Force).  It passed, but the Hand itself remained secret, working
through their senator, Rosemary.

  Iris, the current CovenQueen of the Left Hand, took over from her sister 
Seamist, who had been chosen to start a Realm splinter-group for espionage/
sabotage purposes, about 10 years ago.  About 6 years ago, Seamist was killed
by Lilith, who took over the Black Hand [see Lore/Demons/illy-belasco.txt].
The two Hands thus lost track of each other, particularly since open warfare
began soon afterwards.  The Left Hand is still trying to get ahold of the  
Black Hand, but knows nothing about it.

  Another failed attempt at magical infiltration of the Realm followed, the
eventual result of which was the Oakthorn Collective (in essence, a priest
(ess?) of Gaea ran into the crew and eventually converted them...).  After
that, the Left Hand stopped trying to sneak into the Realm, since war had
begun and they were devoting their efforts to trying to predict military
maneuvers, etc.

  When the peace treaty was proposed and the summit scheduled, Rosemary 
brought some of the Left Hand along through various alibis.   They plan to
protect the senators from witchcraft/magic, find out what happened to their 
splinter groups in the Realm, and attempt to reactivate them.  

  The Left Hand had made some dealings long ago, with a Rose Warrior
name of Soth, who betrayed his own people in exchange for power and
position.  He ended up by robbing them of some important things and taking
off for the Realm a while ago (where he joined the Thieve's Guild, becoming 
a member of the Shadow Cabinet with the aid of some of those important 
things).  (***Maybe one of the things was a recipe for a predecessor of the
Deathbath, which Soth ended up losing to the Black Hand, not knowing what 
it was?  Maybe they're still trying to recover that precious bit of 
inspiration that they just couldn't recreate--dp***)  One or two of the 
witches have long memories.

  Meanwhile, Rosemary has been having dealings with another senator, Victor
(Joy's uncle), who is secretly the head of the Right Hand, the thieves guild.
They know each other's identities and work together on occassion, but don't 
trust each other at all.  

  On top of all of this, some member of the Left Hand has recently received
disturbing visions about "the end of all there is" and equally nasty stuff,
and some indication that it has to do with the Castle, but no real data.
And then there's the fact that the Senators (and God knows that Victor and 
Rosemary lobbied against it) have decided to bring up the Circle of Steel 
for protection.  Good soldiers, but absolutely no sense of humor, and 
neither Hand has been able to dig up any dirt on any of them!!!  Besides,
these steel-brains were responsible for many of the witchhunts of early
days, no way are they going to trust each other even if the Left Hand is 
legal now.

All files in the directory /mit/abstract/Archives/Old_castles, and all files
in any subdirectories thereof, and any materials in the "abstract" locker 
pertaining to the game "Castles in the Sky" as run for the MIT Assassin's
Guild in the Spring of 1989 are copyright to Andrea Brandford and David 
Policar and are not available for public use or viewing.