As a general rule, Servitors of Destiny don't consider themselves to be particularly esoteric. This sounds counterintuitive, considering that nobody else agrees with them - especially the Seraphim - but they have a certain point. From the standard Destinian's point of view, who they are and what they do seems perfectly explicable. Granted, to get to that point of view one needs to go deep into metaphysical territory and never come out again, but enlightenment looks pretty normal from the inside. That's kind of the point.
Servitors of Lightning likewise eschew
esotericism. This is generally
considered to be much less of a surprise: after all, Jean is a paragon of
reason, logic and perception - and where he goes, his servants follow, for the
most rational of reasons. They do not
generally trouble themselves with that which cannot be quantified, as there is
quite enough that can and must be.
A task for every angel, every angel to his task, and stick to what
you're good at: these are the mottoes inscribed on every Lightning Servitor's
Heart. No, really.
Given all of that, the Society of the Tamed Word is
just strange, even to Destiny and Lightning.
There's a standing reward out for anybody who can
both fully work it out and explain it to the rest of the Host in a
manner that makes some sort of sense.
Even the broad outlines are murky: those of the Tamed Word seem
dedicated to keeping bad things from happening. Yes, just 'bad things'.
It's never clear just what exactly these bad things are, or why they
shouldn't be happening. Society members
do their best to explain, should someone ask: by now the Host has learned
better than to bother.
Speculation, of course, is rife (and stays that way,
thanks to that annoying ineffable buzz that always guaranteed to make Seraphic
eyes glaze over). Time's involved
somehow, or maybe space, or maybe space-time.
The Tamed Word seems very interested in both possible futures and
possible pasts, which suggests that they've got some sort of mystical temporal
woobie going for them. Nobody's ever
caught them actually using it, though.
It's a puzzler: about the only thing that everyone can agree on is that
it might not be a bad idea to take seriously any little requests for aid that
the Tamed Word might make, provided of course that the request can be
perceived, let alone understood: more of the aforementioned woobie interfering
with things, I'm afraid.
Let's give an example, shall we? One of the most obvious and recognizable
projects of the Society of the Tamed Word is their continuing encouragement of
the writing of dystopic fiction and alternate history on the corporeal
plane. They really go all out in
that encouragement. If asked why, any
member will readily state that they do this because fiction is fictional, so
formally creating and publishing a particularly pessimistic future scenario
makes it impossible for that scenario to ever 'really' take place. Likewise, publishing an alternate past
effectively eliminates the possibility that said past could ever become the
'real' one. The holes in the logic are
visible, even on the corporeal plane - but it has the ring of Truth. It's just better not to ask, really.
And, yes, 'woobie' was both the best and the worst
word to use, two paragraphs above. You
try to explain all of this in a language even less suited for the
concepts than Angelic happens to be.
The Society of the Tamed Word - well, not exactly
'recruits'; call it 'acquires', or maybe even 'invokes' - its members pretty
exclusively from Yves' and Jean's organization. Other than that, there's no hard and fast rule: relievers, angels
and blessed souls can and are represented among the society. And that's the ones that the Host wants to
admit to: nobody likes to talk about the time that twenty-three obvious
ethereals wearing Order-sigils casually walked through the Pearly Gates (while
nodding politely at everyone, of course), entered the Library and never came
out.
Laurence's only formal response to this was to send
a polite note to Yves asking that it not happen again - or at least give him a
bit of a warning next time. It's not
very nice to cause an Archangel to spray coffee in public, after all.
Well, the Society of the Tamed Word enjoys full
funding and support from both Destiny and Lightning, so they've got that. They also presumably have access to some
sort of woobie from their esoteric research, even if nobody's ever demonstrated
an example of same. Add to that the
notable numbers of favors and influence that individual members tend to have,
and you end up with a group that can get things done.
If only one could understand why they want to
get some of the things that they want done, err, done...
Generally, the Society of the Tamed Word is on
reasonably cordial terms with the rest of Heaven: never underestimate the power
of puzzled incomprehension. As long as
the group does not seem to be acting contrary to the War or the Host, it's
better to smile, nod and hope to heck that it all works out.
Hell
Interestingly, Hell has a lot less in the way of cognitive dissonance that Heaven does when dealing with the Society. To your average demon, all angels are crazy and incomprehensible anyway: what's one more? Society members still fall down when you shoot them, after all. Just don't mention them around Servitors of Kronos or Vapula, unless of course you feel like pissing one off.