Taking the mystery out of Mistery...

Just who were the real and the 1938vbcw Mistery/Array?

By way of explanation here is an excerpt from Dan Stone's excellent academic article on the real English Mistery/Array:

"THE ENGLISH MISTERY What, then, was the English Mistery? Founded in 1930 by the disaffected Freemason William Sanderson--author of the 1927 book Statecraft, which sought to recover the "lost secrets" of memory, race, and government--the group conceived of itself as a school for leadership, dedicated to retrieving the lost arts of governance. These centered on the concept of service; indeed, Sanderson claimed that the word "Mistery" actually meant nothing more nor less than service. What the group was to serve, and, in time, to educate the rest of the population to serve, was "nothing imaginary, ideal, or mystical, but the only truly real thing in the world." (9) This was the English race, defined as separate from the other races that inhabited the British Isles.Preoccupied by the concepts of service to the monarch and noblesse oblige, and obsessed with the need to revive England's emasculated hereditary aristocracy along with the medieval guild system, Sanderson devised the Mistery along strictly hierarchical lines. The group was divided into local kins, each led by a warden. Each kin comprised between ten and thirty people, "a sort of cell system designed ultimately to permeate and set the standard for districts, villages and crafts and trades." (10) Regional leaders were Stewards, and the overall head of the organization was the Marshal. Members would learn to love service, creating an organic society under the leadership and protection of the monarch. Hence, there was to be no argument over political principles: "Debate is prohibited within the kin"...."

They were in reality very extreme in their ideology but in the world of VBCW I have them as a nostalgic,back-to-the-Land, Monarchist and allotment frequenting group who form local militia units of chaps who garden and discuss whislt puffing on pipes -given to arcane rituals prior to drinking ale down the pub, who hanker back to a golden age of Merrie England and who volunteer to fight together in the world of 1838 vbcw! I represent them on the tabletop as an agricultural workers militia with the odd late medieval figure as a visually symbolic reminder of their views!