The Assembly

A keeper is one person. The Assembly is all of them: the whole body of those who keep the Code, alive and active, across the valleys and the years.

It rarely gathers as a whole. When keepers convene formally it is for a reason, and the gathering is called a sitting. Most sittings are inductions. A sponsor stands before three keepers and the one they have brought, and makes the case: why this person, what they bring, why they belong. The three listen. They may ask what they like. If they accept, the candidate is from that moment a keeper, and the last of the seven tenets is spoken once before the room rises.

Other sittings are graver, and far rarer, called to weigh whether a keeper who has broken the Code should be marked. These are not spoken of afterwards.

You will not hear the word said aloud at a dinner or on a high street. It lives inside the society and stays there. That a sitting has taken place is something you would know only by who is quieter the following week, and who is suddenly no longer asked.