The Secretary of Magic and the Rogers Affair
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AndrewJTalon
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The Secretary of Magic and the Rogers Affair
The office of Secretary of Magic is, in formal terms, a cabinet position subject to the same political pressures and constraints as any other. In practice, the authority it confers has grown substantially as the United States expanded from a relatively insulated republic into the preeminent global power. This combination of institutional reach and limited public visibility has periodically attracted candidates whose ambitions or methods proved incompatible with the office.
The most serious case occurred in 1932 with the candidacy of Ezekiel Thomas Rogers. Rogers was of mixed German and Navajo ancestry. He publicly minimized the former while emphasizing a personal narrative of tragedy and self-advancement. His parents, a Navajo father and white mother, were killed on their Arizona farm by a group of Navajo who objected to the couple's experimentation with Dark Arts—specifically, attempts to combine Aztec blood-magic techniques with contemporary non-magical medical knowledge. Orphaned, Rogers attended Plotinus Academy on scholarship, enlisted in the United States Mage Corps, and was promoted from sergeant to lieutenant for actions against German mages in the First World War. He received the Franklin Star for valor. Throughout this period he continued private research into the Dark Arts his parents had pursued. After the war he obtained papers from an abandoned French magical residence concerning advanced Aztec and Navajo blood practices. He later joined the faculty of the Salem School of Witchcraft as a professor of Ancient Magic Rituals. His 1925 doctoral thesis on a blood-replenishment ritual earned the Galen Prize for Magical Medicine; the work was, in fact, a reconstruction of Aztec rites whose origins he did not disclose.
Around 1930 Rogers completed the Skinwalker transformation. He survived the process by means of Aztec blood-replenishment rituals. Three of the Navajo men responsible for his parents' deaths did not. Thereafter he required periodic human sacrifices to stabilize his altered state. While cultivating political alliances and standing as a candidate for Secretary of Magic—with the public support of Franklin D. Roosevelt—he grew less able to conceal the physical and mental costs of the transformation.
The disappearance of a young woman last seen in Rogers's company drew the attention of Freeman Savage, a private investigator and fellow veteran of the First World War. Savage interrupted an attempted sacrifice, extracted the intended victim, and escaped. Rogers responded by having Savage declared a kidnapper and murderer and dispatching Aurors in pursuit. Savage evaded capture, entered the MACUSA building, and, employing a Navajo spell and totem supplied by an associate, revealed Rogers's nature before the assembled Magical Congress. Rogers resisted; concentrated spellfire together with machine-gun and grenade fire brought him down.
Savage was subsequently recognized as a national hero. President Roosevelt awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and offered him the post of Secretary of Magic. Savage declined the office but accepted substantial compensation for the resolution of the case. The position then passed to Jonathan Akroyd, a wizard of established reputation who held it through the Second World War.
Savage had many more adventures before, during and after the Second World War... But that's another story.
The office of Secretary of Magic is, in formal terms, a cabinet position subject to the same political pressures and constraints as any other. In practice, the authority it confers has grown substantially as the United States expanded from a relatively insulated republic into the preeminent global power. This combination of institutional reach and limited public visibility has periodically attracted candidates whose ambitions or methods proved incompatible with the office.
The most serious case occurred in 1932 with the candidacy of Ezekiel Thomas Rogers. Rogers was of mixed German and Navajo ancestry. He publicly minimized the former while emphasizing a personal narrative of tragedy and self-advancement. His parents, a Navajo father and white mother, were killed on their Arizona farm by a group of Navajo who objected to the couple's experimentation with Dark Arts—specifically, attempts to combine Aztec blood-magic techniques with contemporary non-magical medical knowledge. Orphaned, Rogers attended Plotinus Academy on scholarship, enlisted in the United States Mage Corps, and was promoted from sergeant to lieutenant for actions against German mages in the First World War. He received the Franklin Star for valor. Throughout this period he continued private research into the Dark Arts his parents had pursued. After the war he obtained papers from an abandoned French magical residence concerning advanced Aztec and Navajo blood practices. He later joined the faculty of the Salem School of Witchcraft as a professor of Ancient Magic Rituals. His 1925 doctoral thesis on a blood-replenishment ritual earned the Galen Prize for Magical Medicine; the work was, in fact, a reconstruction of Aztec rites whose origins he did not disclose.
Around 1930 Rogers completed the Skinwalker transformation. He survived the process by means of Aztec blood-replenishment rituals. Three of the Navajo men responsible for his parents' deaths did not. Thereafter he required periodic human sacrifices to stabilize his altered state. While cultivating political alliances and standing as a candidate for Secretary of Magic—with the public support of Franklin D. Roosevelt—he grew less able to conceal the physical and mental costs of the transformation.
The disappearance of a young woman last seen in Rogers's company drew the attention of Freeman Savage, a private investigator and fellow veteran of the First World War. Savage interrupted an attempted sacrifice, extracted the intended victim, and escaped. Rogers responded by having Savage declared a kidnapper and murderer and dispatching Aurors in pursuit. Savage evaded capture, entered the MACUSA building, and, employing a Navajo spell and totem supplied by an associate, revealed Rogers's nature before the assembled Magical Congress. Rogers resisted; concentrated spellfire together with machine-gun and grenade fire brought him down.
Savage was subsequently recognized as a national hero. President Roosevelt awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and offered him the post of Secretary of Magic. Savage declined the office but accepted substantial compensation for the resolution of the case. The position then passed to Jonathan Akroyd, a wizard of established reputation who held it through the Second World War.
Savage had many more adventures before, during and after the Second World War... But that's another story.
