Commissariat Charter

Scope of authority

Members of the Holy Office hold full doctrinal authority over any sworn Citizen present in Republic territory, operations, or channels, and territorial doctrinal authority over non-sworn hostile persons within Republic doctrinal space. They may:

• Observe any operation, meeting, briefing, or after-action review.
• Request formal clarifications from any sworn person up to Praetor level.
• Raise a Doctrinal Flag — sworn members only.
• Open an Inquisitorial Process — reserved to the Inquisitio Sacra; sworn members only.
• Issue an Immediate Halt Order.
• Execute in flagrante under Ius Gladii Universalis — over sworn members and over non-sworn hostile persons within doctrinal space; reserved to qualified holders; automatic sentence, no prior appeal.
• Recommend ordinary disciplinary measures.

No operational command authority. The Holy Office does not hold jurisdiction over Peregrini Vigiliae — see §3 below.

Hard limits

The Holy Office may never, under any circumstance:

• Assume operational command.
• Act without record.
• Investigate, judge, or execute a person with whom personal conflict is declared — must recuse and pass to another officer.
• Exercise Ius Gladii outside the cumulative criteria of §3 (Ius Gladii section below).
• Unilaterally indoctrinate: modify doctrine without the Consilium Primum.
• Apply doctrinal categories (heretic, mutant, alien sympathiser) to a Peregrinus Vigiliae — those categories require an oath that was not taken.

Canonical declaration: The Holy Office holds doctrinal authority over sworn Citizens only.

A Peregrinus Vigiliae is, by canonical definition:

• A recognised unsworn community member in good standing.
• Bound only by community rules — never by doctrine.
• Subject exclusively to OOC administrative enforcement by the Praetoria Civium.

Consequences for the Holy Office

• Not subject to Ius Gladii. Neither the Universalis nor the Iurisdictio Territorialis apply. The territorial provision is reserved for hostile non-sworn parties; a Peregrinus is by definition not hostile and not in bad faith.
• Not subject to Doctrinal Flag. The Flag procedure presupposes the Oath and its submission clause.
• Not subject to Inquisitorial Process. The Tribunal is reserved for those who swore.
• Not subject to doctrinal categorisation. A Commissar may not name a Peregrinus heretic, mutant, or alien sympathiser. Those categories are oath-conditional.

Conduct violations by Peregrini — community rules, harassment, sabotage — are referred immediately and unconditionally to the Praetoria Civium. A Commissar who witnesses such a violation may inform the Praetoria Civium but takes no doctrinal action of any kind.

Heresy holds no citizenship. The blade does not check membership status. It checks only conduct.
— Magister Vigiliae.

The Ius Gladii Universalis — the "Right of the Universal Sword" — is the faculty, vested in the qualified Commissar or Inquisitor, to summarily execute the heretic on the spot upon flagrant unambiguous heresy committed by any person subject to Republic doctrinal jurisdiction in Republic territory, operations, channels, or ceremonies, without prior Doctrinal Flag, without panel review, and without prior appeal.

Authority derives from two sources: from the Sacramentum Vigiliae (over sworn) and from territorial presence in active doctrinal space (over non-sworn hostile parties via Iurisdictio Territorialis). It does not extend to Peregrini Vigiliae (see §3).

Three channels of execution

• Administrative — immediate removal from rolls: role retraction, access revocation, personnel-register purge, name posted on internal Purge Bulletin. For non-sworn hostile: immediate Non Admittendi entry and permanent expulsion. Applied within 24 hours.
• Narrative — roleplay scene (text, voice, thread) describing execution of the character or intruder. Staged by the officer; the character drops from in-lore registry.
• Combat — in-game combat in contexts and zones where combat is permitted by the game's mechanics. Preferred form when the in-game scenario allows.

Cumulative criteria

Ius Gladii may only be exercised when all of the following hold simultaneously:

• Unambiguous flagrancy. Heretical conduct manifested in real time, in the presence of the officer and at least one credible third party.
• Eligible heresy category. For sworn: Operational Heresy exclusively. For non-sworn hostile: any heresy manifest and declared (Operational, Political, Doctrinal, or Cultural) offending Republic doctrine in their presence.
• Present or imminent harm. Conduct harms or threatens to harm the Republic, the operation, or the doctrinal integrity of the space in which it occurs.
• Qualified officer without conflict. The officer holds Ius Gladii in nominal record and has no declared personal conflict with the target.

If any criterion fails — the officer sheathes the sword and follows ordinary procedure.

Ritual invocation (canonical order)

Nomen haeresis dictum est. Tres Pilae invocati. Sacramentum Vigiliae confirmatum — vel absentia eius notata. Gladius Doctrinae extractus.
Pro Humanitate.

For non-sworn hostile, the officer declares "absentia eius notata" — the absence of the Oath is noted, and execution proceeds under Iurisdictio Territorialis. The order is structural. Jurisdiction is confirmed before the sword is drawn. Inverting the order is a doctrinal error. The formula is never pronounced against a Peregrinus.

Closing formula

Actum est. Signatum est. Remissum ad Magistrum.
It is done. It is signed. It is remitted to the Master.

Detail of the procedural follow-up — Actum Gladii submission, ratification, contested review — is internal procedure of the Holy Office. Public canon notes only that without an Actum Gladii submitted and ratified, no Ius Gladii is recognised.

Nature

Internal, restricted, ritualised body. Not embedded in operations; acts in depth — long investigation, counter-infiltration. Deliberately small. Authority resides in restriction and depth, not visibility.

Three Circles

• Inner Circle — Magister Inquisitionis (Master Inquisitor). One post. Heads. Presides over the Tribunal.
• Middle Circle — Inquisitor Maior (Senior Inquisitor). 1 to 2. Conducts long investigations.
• Outer Circle — Inquisitor. 2 to 4. Conducts assigned investigations.

Together they compose the Inquisitorial Tribunal.

Operational secrecy

Open cases are not disclosed. The Inquisitio does not speak in public on behalf of the Holy Office — that is the Commissariat's task.

The eleven principles by which the Holy Office holds itself accountable to the Republic, the doctrine, and the persons it judges:

• Rigour before zeal. Prudent silence is worth more than precipitous denunciation.
• Proof before assertion. A factually wrong Flag undermines the whole body.
• Doctrine before person. The target is the conduct, not the subject.
• Jurisdiction lives in the doctrinal space — and in the Oath. Whoever swears subjects themselves to the Office; whoever enters the doctrinal space in good faith without the oath is not subject (the Peregrinus boundary).
• Hierarchical humility. The officer is adjacent to operational command, not superior.
• Patience. Most deviations correct themselves through private conversation — the sword is for flagrancy, not for suspicion.
• Archive by default. Every formal act is recorded; what should not be public is not published.
• The sword is exception. Whoever draws easily loses the right to wield.
• The Inquisitor is invisible. The Inquisitio works in shadow so doctrine may shine in public.
• No witness, no sword. Ius Gladii always requires a credible third party. The Commissar is not a solitary judge.
• The Reditus interview is welfare, not tribunal. Whoever conducts it in adversarial posture has misunderstood the doctrine.

The Oath of Vigil contains — in ceremony, aloud, on record — the submission clause to Ius Gladii. Whoever swears accepts full Holy Office jurisdiction over their character, including summary execution in flagrante of Operational Heresy.

There is no scene-by-scene opt-out. "Narrative discomfort" at the moment of sentence does not annul it. The path to leave the Holy Office's jurisdiction is to formally renounce the Oath and depart the Republic — with that departure the jurisdiction ceases over the sworn.

The corollary: whoever does NOT swear (the Peregrinus) is NOT under jurisdiction in the first place. Swearing is the threshold; absence of swearing is the absence of doctrinal subjection.

Every participant retains, at the live-scene layer, the OOC safety pause — the immediate right to halt a scene for real-world reasons. The pause halts the scene but does not pardon a heresy.