The Order of the Silver Oak

Not quite a family (although it still has its share of descendants of the original founders), not quite a mercantile group (although they do run several profitable businesses in the city), and not quite a cult (although it is a tightly-knit religious group), the Silver Oak's flexibility is its strength. While most of its members think of themselves as merchants who happen to belong to an unusual religious denomination, others see themselves as priests who happen to run a business in their church's name.

Internal Structure

The Order has two major components, and all members are expected to participate in both, at least to some degree. First, the Order is a coalition of merchant families. Unlike some of the other factions, the Order does not have a single overarching business: while the Order retains its monopoly on "raw materials obtained through means other than mining," this has never been a major source of income. The Order has always supplemented this by adapting to whatever new needs are not covered by the other factions' monopolies: currently, the Order receives much of its income through a combination of schemes involving purchasing pieces of modern technology too expensive to be worth buying for an individual faction, and then renting out the use (conveniently evading the Coalition of Tradesmen's monopoly).

Second, the members of the Order all worship the God of the Silver Oak. The Order's religious side could easily be mistaken for an obscure Christian sect if not for their explicit rejection of Christianity. Services are sedate affairs held every Sunday, and members often leave the impression that they leave their religion at the church door when they leave Sunday afternoon. This isn't quite true—the Order takes its religion seriously, and expects all its members to do so as well. And in a group as close as the Order, those whose faith is lapsing are easy to spot.

The Order accepts any member willing to join their worship and contribute their share of tithes, although membership is an all or nothing thing—members are expected to worship, live, and work with the rest of the Order. Typically, about half the members are the children of members, while half are people who joined because they were disenchanted with mainstream faiths.

Children born into the faction are provisional members until sixteen, at which point they are given the choice of joining in full or leaving.

Despite their reputation, the Order does not literally worship nature; rather, they see nature as the clearest expression of God's work, and therefore something to be respected and treasured, but not necessarily to the degree that it can't also be used for resources. They do have a unique magical access to nature, which they attribute to their divine support.

The Order is run by a "council of elders," a somewhat informal body which exerts most of its power through social pressure within the faction. This means that those younger members able to gain sufficient respect from the elders and other members (either through business success or by being viewed as particularly devout—or, most likely, by enough of both) can exert a significant amount of power within the faction. This was illustrated most clearly twenty years ago when the current faction leaders took over somewhat more abruptly than usual: the previous leaders had strongly pushed the nature loving side of the religion, to the point that the business side was floundering and other factions were publicly mocking the Order as "hippies". The current leaders forced them into retirement and steered the order to its present focus on pursuing business interests in a balance with revering nature.

Relationship with Other Factions

The Order has positive relations with most of the other mercantile groups in the city, earned in large part by their willingness to cooperate with other groups and rent out their expertise. Their closest allies are their frequent business partners, the Coalition of Tradesmen and the Weaponsmiths. The only groups which actually invoke the Order's religious opprobrium are the Donnellys and Bergmanns, whose involvement with the undead offends the Order. The Order's efforts to outlaw the practice, however, have met with little support. The Order also opposes the Shawnee, presumably for religious reasons, although they tend to be tight lipped about their specific objections, only opining that the Shawnee are unworthy of a seat on the Chamber of Lords.

History

In the mid-1700's, Steven Hobbs and his family were on the verge of starving to death. Steven disappeared for a full month and returned with the wealth of the land. No one is sure what actually happened, but the Steven Hobbs' claims have found a large following in subsequent years.

Steven claims that he stumbled into a grove in which a shining silver oak stood. A spirit approached him and told him of a God more powerful than the Christian one that he and his family worshiped. In return for his faith, this God would help Steven and his family. While many believe Steven to have hallucinated, they cannot dispute that the Hobbs family prospered after this time. by the early 1800's, several other families had converted to Steven's faith, and they formed an influential block of merchants which went on to be a founding member of the Pittsburgh Trade Union.

By the 1960's, the faction had moved away from its merchant origins and become more environment-friendly. Officially, this was guided by religious visions, although many members believed that the personal preferences of the leadership had a large bearing on that. After an internal revolt, the faction took a more business-like approach, maintaining its understanding of the natural world alongside its business interests.