Being Relieved of the Watch

Standing in the Order is losable. That’s not a flaw — it’s the source of its weight. “What we earn, we can lose.”

The principle

The grounds and the process for removal are as public as the bar to get in. A member can be relieved, but never by a black box. Publicly de-listing someone with no visible due process is exactly the kind of weapon we refuse to build — it would turn removal into a tool for grudges. Specific deliberations may be private; the rules cannot be.

What you can lose, and what you can’t

Once you are a member, you are a member. Your past earned you that, and it is not taken back lightly. What rises and falls is your active standing, not your belonging:

• Charges come and go — and that’s normal. A Charge marks work you are currently doing. Set the work down and the Charge is set down with it: you lose the recognition, nothing more. It is not a punishment and not a mark against you — people are invited to the Order for who they have already been, and Charges are just ongoing examples of that. Losing one is no disgrace, and that holds for every Charge, the Charge of the Council included.
• Retired. Sometimes a member can no longer tend a Charge through no fault of their own — age, health, a disabling reason — when everyone knows they would carry on if they could. We do not quietly strip that. The Charge is marked retired on their page: it stays visible, honoring the years of work, rather than vanishing as if it never happened.
• Your fire can go dark. Every watch a member has ever held stays on their page with a status — Active, Dark, or Retired (see Charges). Your fire is dark when you hold no Active watch: every Warden has gone Dark or Retired. Because Charges are public and present-tense, this needs no tribunal — when the work behind a Warden stops, the council that granted it marks the status (with your right of reply where it’s involuntary). You remain one of us — your past earned that — and a dark fire is fully recoverable: take a watch back up and it returns to Active.
• Being cast out is the only true removal. It happens for one reason: you broke a moral. A public Decision Record is issued, and the member’s page is silently removed from the site. This is grave and final — you are no longer part of the Order.

Any decision to revoke a Charge or to cast someone out runs on published grounds and a Decision Record, and the member always has a right of reply.

The cast-out process

Casting someone out is the gravest thing the Order does, so it runs on a careful, public process:

1. Raising it. Any member may bring a claim that another has broken a moral to the relevant sect council, with grounds.
2. The hearing. The council hears it on published grounds. The accused has a full right of reply — to see the claim and answer it — before any decision.
3. The decision. Because casting out is final, it takes a two-thirds majority of the council, not a simple one.
4. Appeal. The decision can be appealed to the next tier up, and is subject to the same checks as any decision (see governance) — including the members’ and lower councils’ override.
5. The record. A public Decision Record is issued; the member’s page is quietly removed.

Revoking a Charge (rather than casting out) follows the same shape at a simple majority — grounds, right of reply, a Decision Record — but costs only that watch, never membership.