Order of Endless Rooms Operations Manual

information got long then sort of drifted off in what is noted in the operation manual but hinted here and there and maybe missed in book 2

104====================

“Welcome to Antimemetics 101!”

“Alright, you’re all here to learn some of the basics, because this isn’t all self-explanatory.” James said, the joke going unnoticed by most of them. “So. Here’s the deal. There are two kinds of non-physical life that we’ve experienced so far. ***Infomorphs, and memeplexes***. Infomorphs, like Secret here, are ideas. Secret is strong enough to be earthed into a physical body, which is cool, but fundamentally, he ‘lives’ inside the passive and active thoughts of everyone who is currently thinking him. Weaker infomorphs are influenced by the thoughts around them, while stronger or older ones begin to shape those thoughts into their own patterns. We suspect this can be further divided between self-aware entities, and those that are just acting on instinct; Secret for example can choose to only have a part of him thought by a person, instead of his whole self; spreading himself around, but not fully occupying someone’s thoughts, while other, less controlled infomorphs would just keep taking more and more mental real estate until they’re stopped or they can’t keep going. And \*yes\*, to answer your question Momo, before you put your hand up, that does mean that some infomorphs are cognitohazards. We don’t know how to fight that.” James sighed, taking a sip of his water as the rehearsed words poured out.

“Now, for those of you who know about neuroplasticity, you may be aware that humans can exert kind of a lot of control over our own thoughts. In theory, it should be possible to curtail or even kill an infomorph that’s just in your own head. In practice, that’s actually kind of hard, and would require Buddhist-monk levels of self control. So, if you suspect there’s an invasive thought in your mind, find Secret, and talk to him. It turns out, living ideas are very effective against other living ideas. And that \*is\* what an infomorph is, by the way. An idea, that is alive. Sometimes a very complex idea, sometimes an idea that has change and personality built into it, but an idea nonetheless.”

He paused for a second for another sip of water, and to motion down the hands in the back, most of them from the new people. “Questions after. Now. The second form of life is the memeplex. This one is weird.” James tapped at the whiteboard where he’d drawn a rough illustration. “An infomorph is an idea that thinks itself, and inhabits the hardware that does that thinking; our brains. A memeplex, though, is a \*free floating idea or set of ideas\*. Nothing is thinking them, but they are present in a physical or metaphorical space. And while an infomorph has influence over its residence in the same way that a human might hang up pictures of family in their apartment, a memeplex is more like an HOA.” He pointed at their one Canadian member. “A strata board.” James clarified before the question was asked. “A memeplex induces an area wherein certain thoughts are more likely, or constant, or are pushed aside, or, worst case, \*can’t happen\*. Instead of changing the physical way that you think about things, it modifies the abstract concept of thought. And as you may have suspected, this is \*way harder to fight\*. We don’t have the tools for it, at all. And the one member of our order who \*can\* effectively fight on that axis is still just one infomorph. Secret is rad as hell,” James glanced sideways to where Secret preened at the praise. “but he’s not a weapon, and he’s not immortal.” He finished. “So, memeplexes are a lot harder to handle, and we mostly handle them by avoiding them or working around their restrictions as best we can.”

That basic explanation done, he looked around the room, meeting everyone’s eyes, noting that Neil looked particularly confused. “As some of you may have guessed, we’re kind of in a tough spot on this subject. I’m mostly telling you all this because humans \*don’t have much resistance to these things\*. Our goals are to spot the signs of being under the influence of a memetic effect, and mitigate it. Fighting back isn’t always an option, and even then, isn’t always the right option. So, that said, are there any questions from you guys, before we start getting into the signs of memetic hazards?”

“We’ve done this before!” He cried out, slapping a hand on the desk in front of him. “That’s why it’s familiar! You’ve given this speech to us… twice?”

“Three times now.” James acknowledged. “And now, all of you, pay close attention. Because \*that’s\* what an antimeme feels like. You didn’t ‘forget’. You didn’t black out. You just cannot think the thoughts that it doesn’t want you to.” He shivered a little. “Some of you are already, disgustingly, familiar with the effects on those around you. And unfortunately, the Office’s memeplex stretches far enough that it makes it hard to actively spread knowledge of it. But today’s lesson is gonna be about subverting that control, and workshopping ideas on how to kill it forever.” He cracked his knuckles. “Secret, you can go for now, unless you wanna stay and help out. Everyone else, well. Let’s get started.”

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order R&D Operations Manual =

The Research team collectively shivered. One of the things they’d done recently had been to create a set of guidelines and ethics, added to the Operations Manual, for their division. And one of the first things that \*everyone\* had agreed to was this; no memetic weaponry. No infobombs, no idea guns, no identity erasers or persona blankers or \*whatever\*.

129 ====================

Chapter = Order of Endless Rooms Operations Manual

Appendix A - Project Outside Aid

Applied Resources :

* Green Orb - Telephone Number Digit Reduction (x5)
* Telepad (x30, subject to increase)
* Standard Rapid Response Loadout
* Perception Enhancing Dungeontech (x4)
* Scout Drone Array (x1)

Assigned Personnel :

* Designated Operator (x4)
* 3 Member Generalized Response Team [On Call] (x2)
* Civilian-Trained Camraconda [On Call] (x4)
* Drone Rigger (x2)

Overview :

The purpose of Outside Aid is to integrate the Order of Endless Rooms into the local community as a viable alternative for state or private emergency services. With the application of the telepads for transit, and the possession of a 4-digit phone number, we can effectively respond to emergency incidents with more effective presence than local police, or ambulance services.

Our secondary goal is to create a situation where we can peacefully replace local police forces with our own organization through community support, and legal precedent. Our primary goal is to intervene in crisis and to render aid to those injured or endangered.

Interface with local hospitals has allowed us a trial of designated telepad ‘landing areas’ for emergency delivery of patients. Interface with local fire departments is ongoing. Interface with local police is not planned at this time.

This project will require recruiting outside members before it can fully be brought online, but we can expect to enter trial runs within a week. Operating budget opens at sixty thousand a month. All interested Knights should contact….

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Order of Endless Rooms Operations Manual

Section 3-1, Part 19 : Officium Mundi, Life Forms - Points of Light (Pinpricks)

Native to the below-floor caves of Officium Mundi, the pinpricks are generally nonhostile swarms of pins and thumbtacks. They are airborne, with very high maneuverability despite having no visible wings. Estimated speed is about four miles/hour.

Pinpricks emit light in small flashes. At first, it was thought that they were just catching light off their metallic surfaces, but further inspection revealed that this happens even if there is no local light. Unknown if this is a method of communication, or just a random dungeon flair.

While pinpricks will mostly stay in drifting swarms over the main bodies of water in the caves, they will become agitated, and eventually violent, if anything is removed from the environment. So far this is verified for the metals embedded in the walls or floors, but is also suspected for the crystal growths, or even the water in large quantities.

There are no confirmed kills on a pinprick swarm.

See Also, Part 10 Section 14 - Tools - Electromagnet Bolas

152 =================================

Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual, Section 4 Part 2 (Infomorphs, Overview and Broad Tactical Options)

In light of recent events and ongoing research, this entry has been updated and is considered mandatory reading.

Infomorph is the broad term used to refer to any non-corporeal life form that exists as a self-perpetuating thought or concept. This is left vague, and that is mostly because our understanding of infomorphs in general is vague as well.

As our exposure to new forms of infomorph grows, it becomes important to recognize that our origin point for understanding them - those that come from Officium Mundi - are not baseline. They represent their own unique methods of creation and interaction, as all infomorphs do, and we cannot count on the things we have learned from our friends to apply across the board.

There are, however, certain traits that infomorphs have been shown to share:

First, they do not exist independent from information. An infomorph of any variety requires, essentially, a ‘place to live’. Whether that is processing time on a living mind, within stored information, or tethered to a broader concept, infomorphs cannot sustain themselves outside of a safe environment any more than a human can sustain themselves while dunked in lava.

Second, infomorphs come in several varieties. A list of those varieties appears below, all of them with unique capabilities and countermeasures.

Third, infomorphs do not follow the same rules for personhood that a physical entity does. An infomorph could be created as an intelligent solution to a single problem, and never grow beyond that, completing its task and then silently fading away. Or, an infomorph could be created as a fully formed person. Or, more commonly, as a non-person that grows into a thinking, feeling creature through repeated peaceful contact.

Fourth, humans (and most other life that has membership in the Order) have no natural defense against the majority of common infomorph assaults.

A list of known infomorphs and potential countermeasures for them is as follows:

Assignments.

Origin : Officium Mundi.

Life Cycle : Non-person at creation, either grows with contact or fades away over time (See Section 4 Part 2-C, Curious, for a \*major exception\*)

Habitat : Living minds

Diet : Tethered actions and thoughts, memories.

Description : Assignments were the earliest discovered infomorphs, and the change in their designation was only recent. An assignment is created by shaping a directive, and is then pushed into a single target mind, where it influences the behavior of the target toward the directive. A directive is a simplified instruction, usually best formatted as ‘don’t do X’.

Non-person Assignments do not spread to other individuals, but empersoned Assignments can with mutual consent. Note that ‘consent’ on the part of the mind in this case simply refers to ‘thinking about the infomorph’.

An Assignment is not stealthy. A mind that has one operating within it may not be aware of the Assignment as an entity, but is entirely aware of the artificial nature of the compulsion.

An Assignment is capable of damaging or killing a wide variety of other infomorphs, especially if well fed. Long lived Assignments can also physically manifest bodies, or enter dreams.

Countermeasures : The main issue with a hostile Assignment is managing the compulsion. In a situation where no friendly infomorph is available to assist, and you are not in pressing danger, the best option is starvation. Avoid other infomorphs and avoid triggering the compulsion for around a month, and a young Assignment will die off without issue. If it is an option, Assignments are vulnerable to each other, and seeking help from one of the Assignments within the Order is much faster. That said, if you have the time and inclination, making contact with an Assignment living in your mind, while it requires training and practice, is a good way to speed their path to personhood and potentially find a new friend or ally. So far, no Assignments have been ‘born’ hostile or angry.

Cover Ups.

Origin : Officium Mundi. (Dungeons in general)

Life Cycle : Does not appear to grow to personhood or change at all from creation.

Habitat : Physical space (Investigation ongoing)

Diet : Memories

Description : A Cover Up is a memeplex tethered to a physical space that gradually collects the memories of people outside the space of the people inside the space. These memories are digested over time, but can be released if the Cover Up is damaged or killed.

Clarification; if you are within a Cover Up, over time, people outside its domain will forget you.

A Cover Up is, as far as can be determined, the primary way by which all dungeons reduce the odds of being noticed by large numbers of people. Almost every dungeon has at least one Cover Up operating within its boundaries, making it likely that anyone who dies or becomes trapped within a dungeon will have no help coming for them in the long run.

Some varieties of Cover Ups, especially ones stationed around entrances, also seem to specifically collect concern or anxiety of those thinking about delvers on the outside, leading to a lack of early response to those lost.

Countermeasures : As with many infomorphs, Cover Ups are vulnerable to assault from empersoned Assignments. But if you are an Assignment, be aware, Cover Ups are metaphysically ‘large’, and can damage core parts of your personality. For physical delvers, if your backup is also within a dungeon, a Cover Up isn’t a problem. It is worth knowing that Cover Ups also cannot influence physical records, only the degree to which people remember or care about them. So, leaving physical evidence outside a dungeon is a potential workaround.

Factals.

Origin : Akashic Sewer

Life Cycle : Non-person, no changes observed

Habitat : A single point of information

Diet : Unknown. Initial observation suggests they are not eating the information itself. Potentially their diet is perception. Lack of observation in progress to determine.

Description : Factals appear physically as a visual distortion, roughly beetle shaped, around physical records of a single fact. Usually a name, date, or address.

So long as a Factal is attached to a piece of information, it obscures it from all mundane and most arcane methods of observation. This means they exist simultaneously in multiple spaces where that information would be recorded. As a Factal grows, it spreads geographically to more and more copies of the information they obscure, until they have covered them all. Estimates show that it would take roughly three months for a Factal to grow to cover Earth’s surface.

On their own, Factals are a nuisance. But paired with a Cover Up or other form of antimeme, they can make it next to impossible for unequipped people to uncover lost information.

It would appear that only the Akashic Sewer can create Factals; no outside method to recreate one has succeeded.

Countermeasures : Factals die if the information they are covering is destroyed, but this largely defeats the purpose of killing them. They are incredibly vulnerable to other infomorphs. Also, they seem to struggle to spread to arcanely created variants of their fact. For example, if a Factal is attached to a digital file obscuring the author’s name, and you run the Officium Mundi program that tells you the name of a file’s creator, the Factal will take upwards of an hour to obscure the new piece of information.

Authorities.

Origin : Status Quo artifact

Life Cycle : Unknown

Habitat : Known to be within a physical life form. Suspected to be tied to organizational recognition/identity of that life.

Diet : Actions exercising organizational authority (testing in progress to determine if authority must be used to be fed upon)

Description : Authorities were discovered when utilized by the organization Status Quo in a hostile context. Recent experimentation has shown that the artifact that created the Authorities is still active, and growing more.

An Authority is perhaps the most physical infomorph we’ve encountered so far, being created with a physical body which they can demanifest, as opposed to the other way around. All of them encountered have been green; this does not appear to be indicative of anything in particular.

An Authority appears to form a symbiosis with their host, and can create physical phenomena based off the conceptual tasks or rights the host has the organizational authority to perform. It is unclear if the size or abstract ‘strength’ of the organization dictates how powerful an Authority can be.

So far, communication has not succeeded with an Authority, but experimentation is ongoing. At this time, Authorities are not available for members of the Order to bond with, but there is a priority based waiting list. Please contact Reed or Harvey to sign up.

Countermeasures : Authorities are physical creatures, and can be affected by physical forces. They do not appear to influence behavior or thought in any way. Authorities are also susceptible to the death or incapacitation of their host. However, beyond that, they have shown unnaturally high strength and durability. Hopefully, countermeasures to Authorities will be irrelevant going forward.

Summary :

Infomorph taxonomy appears to be divided into creatures that live within minds, or within information, and from there, divided again between destructive feeding on information (including memories) or passive tapping.

All infomorphs are to be treated with caution until a mutual relationship can be formed. While physical life forms cannot easily damage an infomorph, the reverse is \*not true\*, and without taking the time to ensure safe interactions, there is a real risk of loss.

At this point, the creation of Assignments using the purple orbs secured from Officium Mundi is under consideration. Please do not attempt this without careful consultation, and without reading both Part 2, Section 5, (Creation of Life) and Part 4, Section 2-C (Curious) closely.

For further notes regarding tactics for overcoming antimemetics, see Section 2, Part 7 (Antimemetics Are Real And They Can Hurt You)

###### 152 ==================

Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual, Section 2 Part 8-2 (Extranormal Power Overview, Soft Caps and Limits)

At present, the Order has access to extranormal powers from three different sources (pending more). The broad overview of those has been discussed already, and more details on specific sources will be gone into in their own sections. This section is primarily to inform delvers about the powers that are actual long term choices.

First, the Officium Mundi sourced powers. Both blue and orange orbs have long term or permanent effects that have limits on them.

For blue orbs, only a limited number can be absorbed at a time, and after absorbing an orb, it cannot be removed except by running out the number of charges. Usually, this is only a matter of time; a less useful power or one with no clear application can be burned through over the course of under a month, and replaced. Also, some hidden metric allows for growth in the number of simultaneous orbs absorbed, allowing delvers to circumvent any hard caps from bad luck.

The main concern here is time, and the toll on the body that overusing blue powers takes. Burst blood vessels and muscle pain, usually, but medical experts advise that further overuse could cause heart attacks or organ failure. Do not burn yourself out trying to get to a blue power you like more.

Orange jobs are a much harder cap. Absorbing an orange orb is a permanent commitment, with no way to remove it once taken, and with so far only one slot per delver. Check the documentation carefully, and if you plan to be a test subject for a new orb, be aware that the roll of the dice is a permanent commitment, even though there is no (known) downside.

The second source is the Akashic Sewer. Skill books are incredibly valuable and rapidly push us beyond human normal in terms of core abilities. However, every additional rank in a given lesson becomes harder and harder to achieve. And if you have activated multiple skill books, all of your lessons will grow at a greater rate, meaning that you will soon come to require masters level courses or independent novel research to advance further, which is not alway feasible.

Skill books can be duplicated, and going forward, sets of five will be our standard. The upside is more shared power. The downside is that the knowledge required to progress a lesson must be learned by every delver who has read a copied book (from here on referred to as a ‘class’). The reason we do not duplicate books further is that the ability for a class to advance together stalls out almost immediately at over twenty people, and becomes a scheduling issue at only eight. Five gives room for leeway, while still encouraging members of the Order to work together.

Finally, the equipment liberated from Status Quo. Most of this has been duplicated in some way, with original pieces in operational use. There are two limits in place, one for each category.

For freshly duplicated pieces, they often simply do not have the needed abilities to be useful. They require a certain number of activations before new abilities unlock, which can take a very long time to grow a piece into something viable for field work.

This leads to the second consideration; time. Abilities are on fairly substantial cooldowns, and only a finite number of charges can be banked at any one time.

Original pieces have lower cooldowns, and more available charges than duplicated pieces. However duplicated pieces have far, \*far\* lower requirements for advancement, and if development continues on a steady path, will eventually have cooldowns measured in minutes, not hours. This process will take years of constant methodical use, however.

Be aware. As members of the Order, and as delvers in particular, you may be exposed to choices that do not seem like choices at the time. The powers we take on are valuable beyond anything known on Earth, but they are often permanent additions to our selves that we cannot undo.

So far, no single power has had a negative impact on anyone. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a certain amount of regret at choosing to roll the dice and getting something that seems pointless. Testing the unknown is always valuable, and for those that do, their explorations are critical. But as we learn more, we can offer real \*choices\* to each other, based on information and plans for a long and bountiful future. And we should take advantage of that.

We all stand on each other’s shoulders.

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Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual, Section 4, Part 2-C (Curious)

In the summer of the Order’s first year of existence, we made a slight mistake.

If you’ve read this far comprehensively, you have probably already noticed by now that the magic from Officium Mundi has a stark contrast to the magic from every other dungeon we’ve encountered. Each individual piece of it contains the potential for multiple uses; four so far, that we are aware of. This gives a single prize from the office a startling degree of flexibility in how it is applied. It also comes with a specific worry.

The uses of the orbs are, in many ways, each a facet of a specific concept. When you crack a yellow for a skill, or awaken something inanimate to life, or absorb one for the world’s most extravagant energy drink, you are tapping into the concept of time. Time living, specifically. Or at least, that’s the mental image that works best when absorbing them.

But that leads to a question. If each use is one part of an orb, wouldn’t it be a lot nicer to use the whole thing? It’s like eating a slice of apple and tossing the rest of the apple. It’s almost certain that’s what the glitterdust that comes out of them is, when you crack one.

The purple orbs are useful for improving physical forms when cracked, creating Assignment-class infomorphs when used to give life, and have unknown absorb and totem uses.

When the Research division, then mostly just five people with more dangerous artifacts than safety protocols, were asked to figure out how to create infomorphs with the purples, they ran through a surprisingly long list of options. None of them worked, and we now \*know\* how to give life to an Assignment, but the last one they tried did something else.

Due to a series of coincidences in how they designed an incubator for the orbs, how they contextualized the process of creation, and a complete lack of regard for OSHA regulations, a situation was created wherein a purple orb was simultaneously generating life, being absorbed, and being utilized as a totem, at the same time. The full long term effects of this event are still not known. It is entirely possible that there are whole people who were fully erased from the collective knowledge and perception of reality. It is very likely that the entity that was created as a result of this caused a distortion that was visible to anyone who was looking. It is also possible there is lingering physical or metaphysical damage to the space around or in the Lair that we aren’t fully aware of. We’ve checked and rechecked all of the green orb effects, as well as the physical structure, but again, we have no way of knowing what happened fully.

What is known is that something emerged from the process, and made contact. The entity, which named herself Curious, rapidly grew to the point that she would not be unfair to refer to her as a god, both in terms of power and physical form. She did have a physical form, albeit one that did not seem to fully manifest in the real world. There were also questions, which were answered as best as possible.

Then the entity died.

Going off of what is now understood, and what was learned from Curious, the entity that was created was undergoing a form of upward feedback loop. It would not stop growing, it could not stop expanding, and it would eventually collapse under its own weight, either literally or metaphorically. And the damage that it would cause if it continued would have been catastrophic. In light of that, and having heard the answers to the questions she had to ask, Curious made a conscious choice to suicide before an extinction scenario began taking place across the planet in her shadow.

Creation of Assignments from purple orbs is safe. Use of totems is safe. Cracking basically any orb is safe. If the user is either not thinking about it, or contextualizing the act properly, every function of an orb is safe.

It is only when we fail to understand what we are doing, and fail to take any reasonable safety measures, that we risk situations like this. Curious, as she was leaving us, asked that one day, when we knew more, when we were better and smarter and more capable, that we remake her. Properly. It is a mystery what a proper version of something like that would be. But, as she was an incarnation of curiosity, of knowledge, it is a reasonable assumption that it \*will\* be safe one day. If we can understand more, and use it better.

If we don’t wipe ourselves out before then.

If you have been directed to this article by someone who has read it, there is a good chance you are asking that question at the beginning. Why not use every facet of the orb? Well, here’s the answer. We aren’t much about telling people what not to do here at the Order. You’re not children - even if you literally are a child while reading this, odds are good you’re not here because you lack perspective - and a command to avoid something isn’t going to work forever. So instead, here’s the lesson. Learn from it. And don’t repeat the same mistake.

And one day, let us be good enough.

162 ============== not really operational manual but taking it as is needing access to vault and information

“Oh, yeah, obviously.” James agreed. “Davis? Can you get me a copy of the Mechanic’s notes on this?”

“Absolutely-“

“Thank you.”

“-not.” Davis finished, giving James a disapproving look. “We have information security for a reason. If you want to read it, get approval, schedule a time, and come to the secure vault.”

“Approval from \*whom\*?!” James demanded. “I am in charge here!”

“Despite protesting that fact constantly.” Sarah spoke to Jake out of the corner of her mouth.

Priestess-Under-Stone gave him a quizzical look. “Assumed Sarah was in charge.” She said, causing Sarah to sputter and make equally vehement denials.

Davis ignored them, and instead answered James. “Normally, yeah, approval from yourself. Though since you’re one of the people who’re on the list to grant approval, you need to get it from someone else on the list.”

“This seems pointlessly complex.” James told him.

“One man used the information in these papers to create self-replicating necromantic constructs, dungeon anchors, and a machine that steals bodies.” He reminded James.

“I will… get permission from Reed.” James conceded. “When you put it in context like that.. yeah, sorry. I’ll get permission.”

166 australia -> dungeon -> mountain

“I don’t think so.” Anesh clicked his tongue as he thought. “Momo’s been adding to the operations manual with stuff about it, but I don’t think it’s been titled yet. I think ‘officially’, that privilege goes to the first people in.”

183 alchemist - order of endless rooms operation manual ---- long drawn out version of authors

“Yeah. And the Sewer. And the Attic, even, before we knew more about it. Just…” James pocketed his phone, looking up at Alex with a deep exhaustion in his eyes. “It’s not going to stop. There’s always going to be another problem, right? But at least now, after having survived this much, we have a \*plan\*.”

“Yeah?” Alex sighed, partially in relief, partially in joking disbelief. “What is it?”

“It’s \*in\* the ops manual, you know.” James couldn’t hide a small grin as the elevator doors opened and they stepped in.

Contrary to what \*some\* people might think, they actually did have a plan for situations like this. For general crises that the Order was either in a unique position to handle, or was the target of to begin with.

Hell, when you got down to it, this was why Response was formed in the first place. Harvey’s efforts to turn it into a peacekeeping and civil protection group that people actually \*trusted\* were going really well, and at the end of the day, the expansion was doing more good for the world than killing a single corrupted blight like Status Quo would, so James didn’t complain. Not that it was his place to complain anyway; he’d given up leadership to people better suited to lead, and that was fine.

But in its core DNA, Response \*was\* the uniquely suited solution to some problems.

Problems like Status Quo. Like the Mechanic. Like, apparently, the Alchemists had decided to be.

The plan wasn’t so much a plan as it was a protocol. A simple set of steps to determine exactly how hard they came down on the problem.

First, assess. Learn their strengths and weaknesses, but more than that, learn their ideology, learn their desires. Learn everything they could about the potential enemy, or potential ally. This tied into the caveat that the Rogues were actually explicitly forbidden from being invasive or violating privacy against anything where there wasn’t an actual known threat. No spying just to spy. They were allowed to ask questions; James wanted to live in a world where asking questions solved problems, and he was willing to put his money where his mouth was there.

Speaking of mouths, step two was words. Establish a line of communication, and talk to the other side. Now, this was the pattern for responding to an \*active crisis\*, so a lot of the time this could be dangerous. Someone like James might be willing to walk into a building and ask for a meeting, but they couldn’t count on that. So they had a few tricks for actually getting conversations started.

And when conversation, and negotiation, failed, which it inevitably would sometimes, they preemptively knew what they were going to have to do.

Rescue anyone who was in the line of fire, evacuate civilians or captives first. Minimize collateral. And then…

Remove the ability of the crisis to make war. To cause harm.

Because at the end of the day, James was forced by experience to admit that he wouldn’t be able to solve every problem by making friends.

The reality of the world, laid bare by the cruel and cold false logic of Status Quo, was that some people would destroy and take and torture and kill and tell themselves that they were the heroes. Or, a far more insidious lie, tell themselves that they were \*just doing what was necessary\*, that it had to be done to keep the world safe, that if they didn’t execute that child, someone else would. Or, perhaps, that no one else would, and that would be \*bad\*.

And now, the Guild of Alchemists, or whatever they wanted to call themselves. Another shining example of the worst impulses of humanity. Custom crafting slave weapons, hoarding wealth, sitting back and watching the turmoil of the world flow by. Hurting when it suited them. Killing when it was convenient.

James hated them. So much. Beyond what he’d known was his capacity for rage. He felt it churning in his gut; a base desire to take these monsters that dressed themselves up as righteous men, and annihilate them. Tear them to pieces. Exercise the worst violence he could bring to bear on them until there was nothing left but the dark stains on the carpet, and the inferno closing in to take that evidence of their brutal passing away too.

And the worst part is, James doubted anyone would tell him not to, if he led a terminal crusade against them.

End book three

1xx======================