The Gilded Hand

"Hold the hand for prosperity."

Overview

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Beliefs

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Goals

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Structure

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The Zealotry

The Hand's zealotry is almost impossible to fight because it does not feel like zealotry from the inside.

The true believers have backed hundreds of people over their careers. They have watched sparks become flames. They have seen what happens when potential goes unfunded, the waste, the smallness, the lives that could have been something. They have the receipts. They are not wrong that they have done good.

What they cannot see, or will not, is the slow calcification of warmth into leverage. The person they funded twenty years ago is now a city councillor, and the Hand's position on the harbor expansion is going to get a very sympathetic hearing, and no one involved will call it what it is. The fighter they backed is a legend now, and when the Hand needs a public face for a controversial deal, that fighter will show up and smile, because of course they will.

The warmest cage in Aestilon. The bars are made of gratitude.

Zealot members of the Hand genuinely believe they are owed everything in their ledger. They would be offended, genuinely and deeply offended, to hear it described as coercion. They gave. They believed. They deserve a return. That is not darkness. That is just how the world works.