Queen's Tams

The organization that serves the Eldritch Empress, consisting of Tam-illee befriended by Lesandurel during Maraesa's reign.

Insignia is a horseshoe with Tam-illee ears, and livery is dark blue with silver piping with that emblem embroidered at the brest.

History

Though Maraesa Galare intended for Lesandurel Meriaen Jisiensire to be simply a spy in the Alliance, he made long-lasting connections, especially with Sydnie Unfound and, eventually, her family. Heather SecurestheFuture was Sydnie's daughter. When her mother Sydnie and her father died, she implored Lesandurel to not leave behind the Tam-illee family who had grown up around him and who loved him, and he agreed. She married a pilot, and approached Lesandurel with the proposal that they be couriers for the Eldritch. Liolesa Galare approved of this and gave them their name and emblem.

While all of the Queen's Tams are Meriaen Tam-illee (or were up until the Veil's surrender), not all of the Meriaen Tams are Queen's Tams. Lesandurel's family is much larger than the number the Queen needed for her odd jobs.

"The situation with the Queen’s Tams was more complicated than Reese had realized when she first met Malia and Taylor}. She’d assumed that all the Tam-illee hanging around the Eldritch planet were members of the Tams: that part was true, initially at least. But then Lesandurel Meriaen Jisiensire had arrived with his flotilla of foxes and she’d discovered that only the Tam-illee directly employed by Liolesa were considered members of the Queen's Tams, and while all of the Tams were members of Lesandurel’s extended, adopted family, not all his adoptees were Tams. The ones who’d been cleared to run the courier ships to and from the Eldritch homeworld actually constituted a very small number of the percentage that Lesandurel had put to work in all the enterprises he’d accidentally accrued while keeping himself busy over the centuries off-world."

Holidays

"The Tam-illee, it turned out, hadn’t celebrated a Vigil at all. They’d gone up to the ship to join Lesandurel in preparations for a Christmas ball: not a Hinichi Christmas either, but a bona fide human edition, with donkeys in the manger instead of wolves. Lesandurel had met the Tams’ ancestress, Sydnie Unfound, the day before her office holiday party, and gone to that dance with her in silver to her gold. Ever since, the Tams had celebrated that meeting and the holiday together with a dance that had only grown in size with every passing generation, until now it was an enormous affair with hundreds of Tam-illee, most of them wearing something gold or silver to honor Sydnie or their Eldritch patron."|

• Nine generations of people told to be fruitful and multiply. 'Hundreds' is several orders of magnitude too small. If the Veil is down, several people are renting sports stadiums and joining in the broadcast of that party.

The Ships of the Queen's Tams

• QTS Daughter's Promise
• QTS Sydnie Founder
• While the fast courier ships use for personal/personnel transport are known, there has to be a fleet of transports for the food.

Known Queen's Tams

• Briana KeepsFaith
• Malia Navigatrix
• Taylor GoodFix (retired)
• Theodore ChartsStars
• Thonder FirstShield
• Grace and Thad (mentioned in Laisrathera as being two of the "seven" Tams in-system--presumably they were on the moon base)