Reader Question Day #55 – the origins of Sicarion and the organization of THE GHOSTS

Kaitlyn asks:

I love the Ghost series, there some of my favorite books. I do have one question, were did you get the idea for Sicarion? He reminds me of a character from a Supernatral episode.

Thanks for the kind words about the books!

The character of Sicarion originated in the GHOST MASKS short story I wrote for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress 24 anthology back in 2009. In that story, Caina faces off against an assassin planning to kill the Emperor, an assassin with gruesomely scarred face. I had first named the assassin Cross, because of the way the scars crisscrossed his face, but during editing I realized that was in fact a stupid name, and so I changed it to Sicarion. Which, of course, is not his real name, but what he chose to call himself.

Fast forward four years to when I began writing GHOST IN THE STORM. Since Caina seemed like she had met Sicarion before during GHOST MASKS, I decided to add their first meeting to GHOST IN THE STORM. Additionally, I added his necromantic powers, and his ability to harvest body parts from his victims to replace his own damaged organs, which then explained his hideous scarring. And rather than making him an independent assassin like in the short story, I turned him into a follower of the Moroaica – sort of Jadriga’s pet psychopathic killer.

So that is where I got the idea for Sicarion.

I haven’t watched much of SUPERNATURAL. I watched the show intermittently through the end of season 2, but a lightning strike fried my TV in 2008 and I never bothered to replace it, so I’m afraid I stopped paying attention after that.

Colton asks:

I read Ghost in the Storm and loved it so now I’m working my way through the rest of the series.Since the first book I’ve had a question about the ranking system for the ghosts.

Caina is a nightfighter and Halfdan is a circlemaster, but what are the other ranks and where does Caina stand in terms of authority inside the ghosts?

If this gets a reply that answers my question I thank you for your time.

Thanks for the kind words about the books!

The Ghosts are organized into “circles”, which are similar to the “cell” structure used by other clandestine organizations throughout history. Each city and large town will have its own Ghost circle, and sometimes large cities like the Imperial capital of Malarae will have multiple circles covering different areas or social classes of the city. A more sparsely populated province might have only a single Ghost circle to cover the entire province.

Every circle is headed by a circlemaster, who has considerable authority to act as he pleases, and who knows all the Ghosts of his circle. He’ll also be the only one in the circle who will know every other member of the circle.

A typical Ghost circle will have a very large number of informants among the servants of the nobles and the wealthy, the slaves, and the poorer people, and each one of those informants will have a person to whom to pass reports. These contacts are generally called “nightkeepers”, and have authority over their informants while reporting to the circlemaster. Nightkeepers also have skills the Ghosts find useful, such as lockpicking or medicine, but tend not to get involved in field work. They make the tools and collect the information, while others act upon it.

And those who act on it are the nightfighters, the elite of the Ghosts (Caina is a nightfighter). Nightfighters are generally people who have the ability to act effectively as infiltrators, spies, thieves, or assassins. A nightfighter can also issue commands to any informants or nightkeepers, even from another circle, and is subordinate only to the circlemaster. Nightfighters are rare (the Ghosts never have enough), so they tend to travel from trouble spot to trouble spot when the circlemasters report problems.

Finally, there are a number of high circlemasters – essentially circlemasters in charge of the other circlemasters. The high circlemasters answer directly to the Emperor, and tend to be very knowledgeable and extremely dangerous. Halfdan is one of the high circlemasters.

In theory, the Ghosts report to the Emperor. However, the mission of the Ghosts is to defend the people of the Empire, and if the Emperor becomes too tyrannical or allies with the nobility or the magi against the commoners, the Ghosts will turn against him, and in the past Emperors have died in “accidents” that the Ghosts arranged.

-JM