Welcome to the MDRI

The trait is heritable and can skip generations, so the Institute's work begins long before a power appears. Its discovery programme tests and identifies Metamorphs, including latent carriers. Its researchers study how powers emerge, why the trait skips generations, and why strength varies so widely within a single power type. Every identified Metamorph is assessed and assigned a Class, from 0 (Latent) to 4 (Outlier), which is the basis for what the government asks of them.

The Institute is government funded, and its oversight board includes Metamorph representatives. The government treats the Metamorph population as a continuing question of public safety and a continuing subject of study. The Institute's own position is that it exists to protect Metamorphs as much as to monitor them. Both statements are true at once, and Metamorphs rely on the Institute and distrust it in about equal measure.

The Archive

The Archive Record Office holds the recovered Tally Rolls, the Hale Ledgers and the Path of Embers material. The histories published on this site are compiled by the Archive, and the record statuses used on them (documented, disputed, contested, lost, suppressed, hidden, recovered and unverified) are its catalogue labels.

History

The Institute began in 1911 as the Bureau for the Study of Unsettled Descent, founded after the Tallow Cross Roll was found and the Hale Ledgers were recovered. The Bureau worked directly from the recovered Tally Rolls and built family registers from them. In 1974 a disclosure showed that it had kept files on families and used samples without consent. Congress forced a reorganisation, and in 1976 the Bureau was renamed and rebuilt as the Institute, with consent rules, an ethics panel with a Metamorph majority, families owning their own data, and the Archive separated from the research side.

Headquarters are in Marrowgate, Maryland, on a campus shared with the Tally House museum.