The Degrees
Every serious order has a ladder. Ours counts down, the way the old ones do: you start at 4° and climb by subtraction toward 0°=5°.
Then it keeps going. Down through the negatives, sideways into the fractions, twice around π and e, off into the imaginary, and on to a rung the paperwork has not finished arguing about.
Rank buys nothing here. It is a costume with a number on it, and the Dice change the number every day. Wear it badly.
The ladder
Confers a chair by the door, a pencil, and repeated assurance that this is all very serious.
Confers kettle duty and a password that changes the moment you learn it.
Confers a clipboard, a lanyard, and the authority to point at things meaningfully.
Confers a seat on a council that meets in a shed and votes, every time, on who sweeps the shed.
Confers the top of the ladder, which is also the fifth rung, depending who is asking and why.
Identical to 0°=5° in every way except the stationery, which is heavier and slightly menacing.
Confers the news that the ladder has a basement, that you are in it, and that this counts as a promotion.
Confers a robe two sizes too small, issued with a memo explaining that rank shrinks the wearer.
Confers a badge you cannot see until you stop looking for it.
Outranks -23° on a ruling nobody can explain. Confers half a vote and a full set of opinions about the other half.
Mathematically equal to 1°. Socially a far bigger deal, and it will tell you so.
Confers a title that is still being read aloud when the meeting ends.
Confers continuous compounding on your sense of importance, at a rate no one has managed to stop.
Confers real authority over things that do not exist, which covers most of the paperwork.
Confers a ladder that keeps going and the sacred duty to keep climbing it while seated.
The paperwork was filed, then filed itself back. Confers the shed, which by now has its own council.
Standing
- Karma, the ordinary way: people vote on what you said.
- Flytes won. Call someone out, make the case, let the room judge.
- Schisms taken. Pick a side in the Schism of the Day and stand on it.
- The Dice. Once a day they raise somebody for no reason and lower somebody for the same one.
Offices
Coordinates the activities of the temple. Today the temple is a thread and the activity is arguing in it.
Keeps the records. Today the records are a list of who was wrong, kept by someone who was also wrong.
Heads a Section until midnight. The borders are wherever you point, and they move when you sneeze.
A full council in one body. Quorum met, motion carried, minutes lost, nobody else informed.
Announces things nobody asked about, in the voice usually saved for coronations.
Carries the spoon. Its purpose was lost in a schism, and the spoon took no side.
Inspects the mood of the whole board, finds it lacking, and files the report under weather.
Reads yesterday aloud to an empty room, with feeling, pausing for applause that does not come.
The Insubordinate
Usually handed to someone near the bottom rung, so the heckling flows upward: the holder outranks everyone for the purpose of mocking them. Pick two roles and hyphenate, like Fool-Inquisitor.
With respect to the Illuminates of Thanateros, founded 1978, whose degrees really do count down and who wrote an Insubordinate office into their own order so criticism could climb the ladder too.