The League of Men with Fancy Gloves
From Plastic Tub
Easily the most understood of groups secreting themselves away from direct observation, the League fashions itself after Minoan Craft Ritual, Fornication Timetables and late-style arithmetical pant-fashions -- at least in so much as the latter represents a conquering fashion, a being made of spaces between fingers five -- and in that failure is a layer of experience, as the Hand too removes sensation. As such, the League has been seen as a Gnostic group, rejecting perception as tainted, untrue, a source of suffering. Fashionable group of Poets and wayward mystics seemingly gathered to harrass the establishment, the revolution, the avant-garde and especially The League of Gnomes. Famous for their Massive Dinner Send-Back of 1955 at Ryan O'Donnely's Ribhouse and Honkytonk. ExtrapolationAlthough the exact details of their origins are gloved in mystery, it is clear that the League of Men with Fancy Gloves gained legal status as a Scottish Friendly Society with the repealing of the Combinations Act of 1793. Like many of the Friendly Societies, they paraded as a gentleman’s drinking club while serving as a fund raising and recruiting front for a shadow organization. In the case of the League, the shadow organization was the “Anhinthan”, an ancient and secretive order of Gnostic Materialists associated with alchemy and ritualized murder. (In English, “Anhinthan” literally translates from the Old Goth to “not seized” or “without hands”, but the Anhinthan have been generally been labeled the Unseen Hand, the Gloved Ones, or, occasionally, the Clenched Fist.) Though the League began as a hand puppet organization--concealing and publicly acting for the Anhinthan--the League eventually seems to have pulled a Pinocchio and, like an unbidden homunculi, taken on a life of its own. (As time went on, the terms “League of Men of Fancy Gloves” and “Gloved Ones” began to be used interchangeably, eventually becoming so publicly confused that the terms are, for all practical purposes, synonymous today. Historical sticklers cringe at the confusion, pointing out that, technically, the two groups continue to function separately to this day.) The League quickly entrenched itself in various shipping and naval organizations and became a prominent player in the piratically laden seas of the days. The League rose in historical prominence with their involvement in relocation of the Portuguese royal family from Brazil in 1821 and the Cuban struggle for independence (1886 to 1898). Though largely absent in Cuba today, they remain firmly entrenched in Brazilian society. (Many of the more esoteric Carnaval ceremonies are, for example, modeled after various League rites.) By the late 1800s, the League had reached their prime, enjoying a lofty membership with considerable influence over world affairs. The League nearly collapsed in 1896 when Chief Constable Sir Melville Macshten, a Twenty-Seventh-Degree Crack Stepper, was publicly accused of squashing evidence regarding the death Mary Jane Keller in 1888. (Ms. Keller was, officially, Jack the Ripper’s fifth victim.) According to the Sir Macshten’s unnamed accuser, a bloody glove found by Mary Jane Keller body was “disappeared” by the Chief Constable. At the time, the press began to speculate that Jack the Ripper’s nickname of the “Leather Apron” was a metaphorical reference to a glove, and overeager “journalists” implicated the Chief Constable as Fancy Glove seeking to protect a fellow Thumb. It was eventually revealed that both the League and Sir Macshten were victims of a devious counterfeiting scheme. Although the Chief Constable was eventually exonerated and the press eventually offered public apologies for their shoddy smearing of his character and the character of the League, the damage was already done. Like Sir Macshten’s marriage, health, and fortune, the League floundered. A few far flung Fingers seemed to have escaped the scandal, but the hay day of Fancy Gloves had passed. Publicly, they re-established themselves as a group of esoteric anti-everything poets and far flung sailors. Despite this public turnabout and their steadily declining membership over the last century, the League does still secretly operate with an insidious cruelty and a poetic bite that continues to instill fear in the hearts of those who know. Organizational Darwinism The League has maintained various interesting intra-organizational tensions that helped the organization to adapt to changing times.
Organizational StructureThe League is composed of three grades: Greenhorn, Crack Stepper and Holy Man/Woman. Each grade involves a ritual progressively entitled "Running the Gauntlet," "Taking the Gloves Off," and "Throwing Down the Gloves." Publications
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DesiderataAside from the Massive Dinner Send-Back and the Puti-Core Scandal, the League has been linked with numerous sinister schemes and maleficient shenanigans. Michael Jackson is a member, but only honorary. The League runs an Ale House in Prague called "Ye Fingered Friend." They have long been involved in the traffic of Absinthe in Europe. Their Jack the Ripper scandal bears a curious resemblance to the O.J. Simpson trials. |