AESCULAPIANS & ZWEIDLER

Dr. Zweidler, the first vitakinetic, works in a large laboratory complex
in Switzerland. He has no input in the day to day operation of the
Aesculapians, nor does he want any, nor do the Aesculapians want him to
have any. He has more important things to do, namely, his continually
groundbreaking and astounding research.

The Aesculapians were originally a post-war medical relief organization
and to some degree that has maintained itself, although as it has expanded
its purpose to include vitakinetics and more general medical treatment,
things have changed. Like most relief organizations, it is run by a Board
of Directors, which was originally more or less a sop for "moneybags"
backers who wanted their name attached to a humanitarian organization.  
After the reorganization of the Aesculapians to accomodate Zweidler and
his discoveries, this "sale" of seats on the Board of Directors was
terminated immediately. The Board is now an Advisory Board, which reports
to Gertrude Wallenstein, a former HMO director who is well known as an
excellent organizer of human capital. She acts as the "CEO" of the
Aesculapians, though the actual term for her office is in fact "Proxy",
confusingly enough. The Board has nine members, which are selected through
an arcane and secret process. Only two or three are vitakinetics - never
less than two, since there are two significant schools of vitakinetic
thought that inform the Aesculapians, never more than three, because
vitakinetics, in general, have better things to do than sit on Advisory
Boards.

ISRA & HERZOG

I like Otha more or less as he is presented in the Trinity books, with one
significant change.  He is a starry-eyed mystic with weird ideas, who has
trouble focusing on the time and place at hand, and that's just great. I
have more trouble with the idea that his mystical ideas could have lasting
impact on A) a serious academic organization, or B) a group of psions who
are dunked _indiscriminately_, whether they have a mystical or religious
bone in their body or not. Recall that Herzog believes that the more
clairsentients there are in the world, the better a place the world will
be, and therefore he dunks any latent who comes through the door, and has
the most relaxed "exit provision"  of any of the orders. That this would
result in something even halfway as philosophically cohesive as ISRA is
presented as being is nonsensical, unless I'm supposed to say that the
universe really does have an underlying philosophical organizing principle
and Otha knows it. But that's not Trinity - that's Mage. ;)

So Herzog, while putatively in charge of ISRA, and with some very powerful
influence over particular decisions (if he comes down off his cloud and
says "sell Deltacorp stocks /now/", you can bet they will), the actual
policies of ISRA are set by individual schools, research programs,
facilities, factions, corporations and projects beneath its very loose
umbrella.  There really is no "ISRA policy" on anything, just a
conglomeration of a lot of different study, research and, yes, some
mysticism.

ORGOTEK & CASSELL

Both Orgotek and Cassell took some major work on my part, originally -
then I hit upon a really rather nice idea and switched Cassell more or
less back to how he's presented in the books, a sort of smiley-faced
Harvard MBA type.  I simply added in that he has no concept of exactly how
tied his success is to the draconian corporate FSA state, and gave him a
Board of Directors who does understand that.  Like many technical geniuses
who start companies, Cassell was very shrewd about using his unique
abilities to leverage an influential position.  However, also like many
technical geniuses, Cassell's ability does not lie in the brutal,
razor-edged realities of Federated States business practices. Those
realities fall to the Board of Directors to keep Orgotek afloat. They are
acutely aware that should Cassell's reformist tendencies be successful,
and the FSA reformed, Orgotek, and their livelihoods, will likely
disintegrate, along with most of the other particularly successful
corporations.

This means there's a schizophrenia to Orgotek. On the one hand, it's a
very liberal corporation in terms of its wages, its donations to
beleaguered areas, the advancement of technology, the pushing forward of
the acceptance of biotech, and so forth, but on the other hand it's a very
conservative company which on some organizational level fears the very
success that it has to keep searching for.

THE LEGIONS & LARSSEN

Larssen is not a General of the Legion. She's only a Major. In the Fourth
Legion - Vengeance. She sees a lot of action. That is just the way the
Legion and Larssen like it. The place for the most powerful psychokinetic
in creation is /not/ running an army. The place for her is killing
Aberrants.

The General of the Legion is Hotep-Ptah Ankhat, a 118-year-old veteran of
the first Aberrant War.  He works very closely with the UN and several
national governments, but he really is the broad-picture strategic genius
who can coordinate the seven Legions, untold numbers of mercenary and
national companies, and the UN in a war against gods. He is confined to
his bed, but doesn't let that stop him from issuing snide, crisp, and
altogether brilliant memos about how a particular Aberrant threat can be
stopped.  I model him very strongly after Winfield Scott at the beginning
of the Civil War, who once began a letter to Abraham Lincoln with "The
General regrets to say that he did not even feel well enough to go to
church today, and can barely lift his head to take food..." and went on
to, by the way, list exactly how Lincoln was going to eventually win the
war.


MINISTRY & BUE LI

While it is true that the first telepath, Rebecca Bue Li, is a Ministry
agent, her exact position and responsibilities are not known to any but a
handful. There is no "head of the Ministry". Such a concept is foreign to
the entire idea. The Ministry is the servant of the Chinese state - the
head of China is the head of the Ministry.  There are directors and
subdirectors, ordinary people with penchants for organization and the
ability to make complicated intelligence understandable to policymakers,
but these are simply faces. The Ministry's organization is invisible and
intangible - usually to Ministry agents, too. Orders simply appear, are
carried out, and disappear into the files again.  In a certain sense,
there is no Ministry leadership - the Ministry and all inside it are
simply servants.

NORCA & DEL FUEGO

I like del Fuego as written, but I did alter Norca a little bit, to make
it a little less ubiquitous and powerful. The changes which technology has
brought to organized crime are the same as those which it would bring to
Norca - lowering the entry barriers for competition, both in 'niche
markets' and overall. Particularly given the intense loyalty which del
Fuego insists on from members of 'the family', one can expect Norca to be
small and its reach, while great, to be constantly contested by other
groups, both legitimate and illegitimate. With that small change,
everything else is cool.


OTHER "ORDERS"

I also provide more competition for the psychic orders in several forms. A
small corporation hires out freelance psions - far more mercenary than
Aeon, they pick up the refuse that the Orders leave behind, repackage it
and sell it.  A "fake" order of "veterinary vitakinetics" travels the
Blight-blasted American Midwest, using ordinary veterinary medicine mixed
with psychic-looking flimflam to help people's livestock without running
afoul of the horrific FSA licensing laws.  A "vitakinetic HMO" based in
Europe provides insurance and health coverage with vitakinetic data
forming the basis for their work. Stuff like that. It has been thirty odd
years since the Orders went public, god only knows how long it's been
since they were formed. Human beings simply will not let organizations
survive that long without poking at them, bothering them, and, in the end,
competing with them and trying to steal from them. That's the only reason
they were able to beat the Aberrants, and that's the reason they're
beating them a second time - not because psions exist, but because psions
are just like other people.