For its first generation, the Ninth Line concentrated on identity records and discreet escorts. Its first major success came when it proved that a supposed heir raised at court was a fever orphan adopted by a grieving royal aunt. The discovery prevented a succession crisis, but the faction suppressed the evidence until the child had been safely placed outside court, earning both gratitude and a lasting reputation for meddling. The watershed moment came 63 years ago during the Bell Stair Conspiracy. A group of courtiers tried to seize three young heirs in one night and force the council to recognize a pliable cousin. The Ninth Line split: one half evacuated the children, while the other forged orders that delayed the conspirators' guards. The plan worked, but an innocent household was raided and two members died. In the aftermath, the society adopted its present rule that no child may be moved without either the child's assent, if old enough to give it, or agreement from three Linekeepers. It also divided its network into cells so a captured member could not expose the whole organization. Since then, the faction has survived two royal marriages, a border war, a famine, and one peaceful transfer of power. Its influence grew through careful favors rather than force. It helped preserve the succession after the king's only acknowledged daughter vanished at sea, but never established whether she drowned or escaped. Today, its old habits of secrecy protect the throne and threaten to turn the protectors into an unelected court of their own.

The faction has no permanent headquarters. Its principal archive occupies a pair of rented rooms above a cooper's yard in the capital, entered through a hatch disguised as a storage loft. The rooms hold copied family records, maps of old royal residences, coded correspondence, and a small shrine to no particular deity. The address changes whenever a member suspects surveillance. The original ninth-line survey mark is scratched beneath a floorboard.