Families

The Families are the main groups of the Strategia. They pull the strings of history, and alter events that happen. You are either born into a Family, or adopted into one. Members typically don't change Families, arranged marriage being an exception. There are seven different families, which were formed at different times in history. Each Family has a corresponding animal, as well as three values they hold. Each Family (except the Jackals) originated in a specific region.

History
The first three Families were formed near the year 500 BCE. They were the clever advisors who influenced the rulers of powerful empires: the Persian king, the Roman emperor, and the Greek king. However, other leaders soon learned of these advisors, thus began to target them in attacks, in order to weaken the empire. As a result, the different empires hid them, thus starting the pattern of secrecy seen throughout Strategia history.

After that, the number of advisors increased, as did their power, intelligence, and skill sets. They began to take a more active role in history, assassinating enemies, collecting information, and infiltrating empires. The rulers saw the value of them, thus gave them a great degree of wealth, including land and their own crests. These crests displayed animals on them, and the animal on the crest became the name of the Family. However, the advisors didn't possess official titles, thus called themselves the ruler's Family.

Because of the wealth and power these Families had, they became less dependent on their respective rulers, and started influencing events to benefit themselves in addition to the rulers. They began building secret homes and governing themselves. The different Families also started working with other Families, which allowed them to orchestrate history even more effectively.

By the time the empires had collapsed, the Strategia had become powerful enough not to be dependent on them. They started splitting into even more sections, the English, Franks, Germans, and Spaniards forming their individual Families separate from the others. (Over time, they spread throughout the globe, so the regional differences have become less prominent.)

The Jackals formed at an unknown time, separate from the other Families. This is because they didn't want to be as organized and hierarchical as the others. They didn't originate from one specific country, instead coming from everywhere. They prefer to live in small groups, giving rise to more regional differences than the other Families.

Eventually, these Families began to official unite into the Council of Families, which serves as a sort of UN. They all agreed that they should pass down the different skill sets and knowledge they'd learned, in order to become more powerful. This was the start of the Academy Absconditi.

Over times, the Lions (the UK Family) began to grow more powerful than the others. They started by just having slightly more influence, and having allied relationships with others. However, in recent history they grew even stronger, because there was a younger head of Family than there had been. Under his leadership, they began to use their power to force other Families to bow to their will. This gave rise to yet another political issue in the Strategia world- whether you are "For, Against, or Neutral" toward the idea of breaking up the Strategia.