Inner Circle

The Club's highest ranking members belong to its Inner Circle, who dress in late Eighteenth Century costumes for Circle meetings and other formal occasions involving the Club. Inner Circle members hold positions named after chess places: the leaders are King end Queens, followed by Bishops, Knights, Rooks, and Pawns. It is possible for there to be two Kings (a Black King and a White King) or two Queens (Black and White) in office simultaneously. However, such situations almost invariably lead to power struggles, and so there is usually only one King and one Queen at a time. If a member of one faction of the Inner Circle displaces a member of another faction as King or Queen, he or she usually names his rank after the opposite color to his predecessor's; Hence, when Sebastian Shaw deposed the most recent former leader, a White King, he became a Black King.

Unknown to most of the Club members, the Inner Circle members are engaged in a conspiracy to dominate the world through the accumulation of economic power and political influence. The Inner Circle commands great financial resources, highly advanced technology, and a large body or mercenaries (many of whom wear red and blue uniforms with masks), all of which they use in their subversive activities.

History
The previous leader of the Inner Circle, then known as the Council of the Chosen, was a White King who threw the Council's financial and technological support behind Dr. Stephen Lang's attempts to capture superhuman mutants with Sentinel robots. Lang's endeavor ended in disaster, and Black Bishop Sebastian Shaw and White Queen Emma Frost seized the opportunity to turn the White King out of office. Shaw became the new Black King, leader of the Council, which he renamed the Inner Circle, and master of the entire Hellfire Club. A leader Shaw works closely with his ally Frost, the White Queen.

Shaw and Frost are both not only heads of major corporations but are also superhuman mutants. They have given other superhuman mutants positions of power within the Inner Circle. Moreover, Frost was also headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, a private school in New England for which she recruits adolescent superhuman mutants as well as the sons and daughters of the elite so that she might bring them under the Inner Circle's Influence. It is at the Academy that Frost trained a team of adolescent superhuman mutants known as the Hellions.

Shaw's corporation, Shaw Industries, has a secret contact to build Sentinels for the United States government's covert Project Wideawake, whose goal was to hunt down, capture, and study superhuman mutants. Shaw hopes to use his position with the project for the Inner Circle's own end as none of the Inner Circle members are known to be mutants either by the United States government or by the general public.

Recently Friedrich von Roehm, a member of the Inner Circle, sponsored the superhuman mutant and sorceress known as Selene for membership in the Circle. Selene has since become the Circle's Black Queen. Hence there are now two women holding the rank of Queen within the Inner Circle.

The identities of most of the members of the Inner Circle have yet to be revealed. A number of the individuals who have been associated with the Inner Circle are described and depicted here.

Members
 Image:SebastianShaw.jpg| Sebastian Shaw Black King Image:EmmaFrost.jpg| Emma Frost White Queen Image:Selene.jpg| Selene Black Queen Image:LadyTessa.jpg| Lady Tessa Personal Assistant

Additional Links

 * Hellfire Club