Seventeenth century

The seventeenth century is a turning point in the Checquy’s perception of the Grafters. After treating them as a marginal group of researchers, the Checquy received evidence of their military capabilities and began monitoring them closely; the ensuing conflict ultimately ended with a treaty requiring the Grafters’ dissolution. The era also belongs to a longer history in which supernatural organizations adapted themselves to state power while preserving their own structures and methods.

The Checquy and the Grafters

For centuries, the Grafters used government-provided funds and a mandate to pursue their studies, while the territories around them changed rulers and borders. The Checquy was vaguely aware of their existence but did not initially regard them as important. That judgment changed when a Checquy operative witnessed the results of Grafter research and submitted a lengthy, distressed report. The account convinced the organization that the Grafters had become a serious concern.

In response, the Alabaster Lady Margaret Jones sent seven operatives to Belgium to observe the Grafters. Surveillance was difficult: the Grafters operated from several guarded estates, watched over by large chitinous creatures. The Checquy nevertheless gathered intelligence, including confirmation from an agent who observed the sites in the form of a seagull. The agent reported a regiment of augmented soldiers mounted on huge spider-like creatures. The Checquy’s view had shifted from indifference to recognition of a major international threat.

Political protection and conflict

The Grafters, too, recognized the potential of their military creations and approached the government’s head, who saw opportunities for personal advancement and encouraged them without informing his superior, the King of Spain. This arrangement exposed the political risks of a secret force operating within a state: the Grafters could offer power to a ruler, but their appearance and potential use also raised concerns about public reaction.

The conflict’s eventual end came at a moment when the Checquy’s own forces had suffered severe losses and its most capable generals were dead. Although Charles II wanted to invade Belgium, the Checquy’s leaders persuaded him that their depleted forces could not justify that course. Negotiations followed, with the Checquy concealing how precarious its position had become. A treaty was secured in the Checquy’s favor: the Belgian ruler agreed to dissolve the Grafters, withdraw their funding, end their experiments, and confiscate their estates and property.

Aftermath and historical limits

The Checquy supervised the dismantling of the Grafter project. Its records described the execution of the leaders, the killing of the scientists, the destruction of facilities, and the deaths of the altered beings. Servants and officials involved were urged to forget what they knew and take up other work. The Checquy consequently believed the Grafters had been eliminated, with no known members left unaccounted for; their research was remembered as a consequential but apparently concluded episode in supernatural history.

The century’s wider institutional context shows how such organizations maintained continuity amid political change. The Checquy described its loyalty as directed toward Britain rather than a particular ruler, and its leaders had offered their services to Oliver Cromwell. The organization’s account of its survival emphasized adapting to whoever held power, a posture that helped it remain a secret arm of the state. Its authority also extended to recruiting powered citizens, including children, through a combination of coercion, inducements, oaths, and government contracts. These practices reveal the institutional reach behind its claims to national service.

Institutions and the persistence of power

The period also belongs to the longer history of the Croatoan, whose later incorporation into the United States produced a parallel but not identical supernatural agency. The Croatoan received substantial government funding and retained a hierarchy, despite Martha Washington’s concern that a ruling Court conflicted with the new nation’s ideals. Unlike the Checquy, however, it was not permitted to take powered children from their families by force; its members instead recruited through appeals to duty and responsibility. Its remit, like the Checquy’s, was limited to supernatural affairs.

The Checquy’s own hierarchy had to accommodate the monarchy under which it operated. Its leaders’ former King and Queen titles were changed to Lord and Lady after objections that a government organization should not use the sovereign’s titles, particularly while wielding supernatural powers and commanding a private force. Taken together, these histories show the tension at the center of the Checquy’s longevity: it represented itself as an instrument of the nation, yet its authority depended on secrecy, exceptional powers, and political arrangements that ordinary institutions could not easily scrutinize.