The Loom of Midford

After the dam crisis grant of legitimacy, the Circle expanded slowly by brokering marriages and settling minor disputes with 'predictive arbitration'. Their influence peaked forty years ago when the leader then engineered an election to place a sympathetic sheriff in office. That sheriff tolerated the Circle's private enforcement and kept rivals quiet. Ten years later a scandal erupted when a novice seer incorrectly predicted the death of a merchant's son; the merchant's revenge led to a violent confrontation and the death of one of the Circle's founders. The Circle survived but retreated into secrecy. In recent decades the number of active diviners declined as older members aged and public suspicion grew. Now the Circle is smaller, more insular, and more willing to take decisive, sometimes brutal action to secure its objectives. The watershed moment that defined them was the Founder's Trial, the public inquest following the fatal clash forty-two years ago. The Circle used its dossiers and blackmail to derail a full prosecution, and since then have prioritized control of records and reputations above all else.