Checquy Group

The Checquy Group is a centuries-old secret organization devoted to protecting Britain from supernatural threats, operating beyond public knowledge and with powers that reach from intelligence-gathering to the recruitment of children. Its service to the country is also a system of control: unusual abilities are studied, members are bound to the organization, and secrecy shapes both its daily work and its most consequential decisions.

Identity, history, and purpose

The organization has existed through successive regimes, working closely with the House of York, largely ignoring the Tudors, and enduring the House of Stuart. Its stated loyalty is to Britain rather than to any particular ruler. The early Checquy Brotherhood, as it was called under Oliver Cromwell, survived after its four leaders demonstrated their capabilities to the Lord Protector. Across political changes, it remained an instrument of the state: a secret arm expected to address threats that ordinary people cannot be told about.

That role gives the organization a strong internal sense of purpose. Myfanwy Alice Thomas, a senior administrator and member of the Court, takes pride in serving the public even though she does not work in the field. She regards the organization as essential to defending people from dangers beyond their awareness. At the same time, a warning that someone on the Court may turn against her strikes at the basis of that confidence: betrayal within the ruling circle would place the whole organization, and the people it protects, at risk.

Structure and the people it recruits

The Checquy comprises hundreds of people, including members with supernatural abilities and non-powered professionals selected for exceptional competence. The organization depends on both groups, though its long-standing policy bars non-powered members from the Court, its ruling circle. The Court answers to the highest authorities in the country, but not necessarily to them in every matter, a description that underscores the institution’s unusual independence.

The organization claims broad authority to recruit citizens with powers. Children may be separated from their families through pressure, deception, or financial inducements; adults may be drawn in by promises of wealth, power, and national service. Initiation combines old oaths with modern contracts and secrecy obligations. Membership is therefore not simply a job: by the time someone becomes a full member, the organization has attached that person to it through many overlapping commitments. The history of attempted departures makes the limits of those commitments stark. In the cases described, people who tried to leave were captured and subjected to severe punishment. The account establishes a coercive institutional tradition rather than a normal right of exit.

The recruitment system begins early, at the Estate, where children’s education and abilities are managed as part of their preparation for service. Myfanwy arrives there at nine and a half after the Checquy contacts her father following an incident that revealed her power. Her first day combines conventional schooling with physical and practical training, including classics, chemistry, and firearms instruction. Medical staff then subject her to extensive examination: they record identifying details, test her abilities and health, and establish physical and psychological regimens. Monthly assessments continue as staff attempt to understand pupils’ unusual powers, even when the results remain difficult to interpret. The institution treats individual difference as something to document, assess, and prepare for future use.

Intelligence, secrecy, and administration

The Checquy’s work rests on an extensive flow of information. Reports from civil servants and other sources are sifted by analysts looking for patterns among details that may initially appear ordinary. The organization is concerned not only with supernatural incidents in places already associated with danger, but also with their appearance in everyday settings. Its methods reflect that broad remit: it gathers large quantities of information and tries to identify the exceptional threat hidden within routine events.

Panic Lines connect the organization to officials across national and local government. Briefings are designed to convey enough about unnatural threats to prompt useful reports without disclosing the Checquy’s full knowledge. Calls may come from police chiefs, ministers, military officers, intelligence agents, medical professionals, and other contacts; people positioned within key organizations also relay developments. The Checquy keeps its own name off external paperwork, routes information through indirect channels, and isolates its computer network from outside systems. It is designed to discover threats while remaining difficult for outsiders to locate.

This administrative machinery is not separate from the organization’s supernatural work; it is what allows that work to be coordinated. The Checquy handles intelligence, budgets, medical records, and operational authorization alongside field action. When the organization later responds to evidence that Grafter agents have infiltrated it, it creates a screening protocol that subjects members to intrusive examinations, requires observers in examination rooms, and demands multiple medical judgments. The effort is extensive and slow, but its safeguards are meant to prevent the screening process itself from being manipulated.

Conflict with the Grafters and institutional change

The Checquy’s history with the Grafters begins in open conflict. In 1677, Grafter creations attacked the Isle of Wight, bringing a supernatural war to British soil. The Checquy deployed Pawns under the Rooks’ command; fighting continued for three weeks, with hundreds of civilians killed and substantial losses on both sides. The invasion ended only after the last surviving Rook, John Perry, linked his mind to the Grafter general and killed them both. The episode left the Checquy’s forces badly depleted, a weakness it concealed while negotiating a treaty that required the Belgian ruler to dissolve the Grafter project.

The settlement was enforced through the dismantling of the Grafters’ resources and altered creations. The Checquy believed the threat had ended, and the Grafters were treated as a closed chapter in supernatural history. That belief did not hold. Centuries later, Grafter agents were found inside the organization, and the reception attack exposed a new internal security crisis. The screening plan begins with the Court and then extends to the wider membership, applying oversight not only to those being examined but also to the doctors conducting the tests.

The renewed confrontation is not simply a return to the old invasion. Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen tells Myfanwy that the Grafters’ earlier attack was a feint and that they were not seeking to conquer Britain. Their objective is to remain concealed in a world where conquest could no longer be hidden and public discovery of their existence would be dangerous to both sides. Ernst describes the Checquy as an adversary that destroyed the Grafters, but also explains that he eventually came to see it as a flawed yet effective governing body. His long infiltration and establishment of collaborators, he claims, were intended to make the case for joining the organizations, while preserving the Grafters’ ability to survive if the Checquy refused.

Authority, alliance, and significance

The Checquy’s authority is most visible when it must authorize exceptional force. Myfanwy invokes a formal declaration to call in Harper Callahan, a ward of the Estate classified as a Force of Physical Obliteration. Only a small group of senior officials can approve such an agent’s deployment on British soil, and the decision requires notification of national leaders and the entire Court. The archaic formula makes the decision legally effective while transferring responsibility onto Myfanwy. The moment shows how the organization’s power is both procedural and personal: a prescribed chain of authority culminates in an individual’s accountable choice, with grave stakes for the young agent being summoned.

When Myfanwy considers the possibility of war with the Grafters, she frames the Checquy’s mandate as protection through secrecy. A public international conflict would endanger that mandate, while simply surrendering would not be acceptable to the organization. Her reading of Ernst’s visit is that he has come to negotiate an alliance rather than demand surrender. Their opposed histories—one organization having destroyed the other’s visible power, the other having survived and infiltrated its former enemy—make trust difficult, but also give cooperation a practical basis. The Checquy’s evolution is therefore marked by a tension it cannot resolve through secrecy alone: protecting the public requires concentrated, often coercive authority, while its survival may depend on recognizing former enemies as potential partners.