Charges

A Charge is the Order’s internal honor: a specific duty a member takes up, beyond simply belonging.

Each Charge has its own doc in this directory. This page is the overview and the index.

What a Charge is

• A duty, not a trophy. “I charge you to…” — a responsibility entrusted to you, in a specific domain where your impact has been real and sustained.
• A mark you bear. The word comes from heraldry, where a “charge” is a figure borne on a coat of arms. Each Charge here carries its own emblem, shown among the marks on a member’s public page so their deeds are visible at a glance (see crest).
• Lateral, never a ladder. Charges are different, not higher. No levels, no points, no rank to lord over anyone. A member who bears three Charges does not outrank one who bears none — they simply carry more watches. (This holds even for the Charge of the Council, which carries decision-duty but no greater worth.)
• Losable, retirable, and passable. A Charge is held only while the work continues. Set the work down and the Charge is set down with it — and it may pass to another who takes it up. Losing one is no disgrace. And a Charge a member can no longer tend through no fault of their own — age, health — is marked retired, not stripped, honoring the work that was done (see removal).

Wardens — the watches within a Charge

A Charge is held through one or more Wardens — the specific watches inside it. You bear the Charge by holding at least one of its Wardens, and you can hold several. A member’s page names both, e.g. “Charge of the Wild, Warden of the Ocean.”

Each Charge carries shared duties that every Warden must uphold (a Warden of the Ocean and a Warden of the Forest both keep the natural world clean), plus each Warden’s own duties and its bar to keep it. The full set lives in that Charge’s doc.

Watch status: Active, Dark, Retired

Every watch a member has ever held stays on their page — a Charge is part of your record forever. What changes is its status:

• Active — the bearer is doing this work right now.
• Dark — they once held it but no longer carry it (set down, or the work lapsed). Not a disgrace; simply no longer active, and it can return to Active if they take it up again.
• Retired — they carried it faithfully until age, health, or hard circumstance made it impossible. An honored end to the watch, never a lapse.

A member whose every watch is Dark or Retired has let their fire go dark (see removal) — still a member, their past intact, free to light a new watch any time.

How a Charge is taken up

The grounds and process are public even if a specific deliberation is private — that’s the line that keeps it honest (see governance). A Charge is awarded by the member’s sect council (the lowest competent tier):

1. Proposal. Any member may propose another — or themselves — for a Charge and a specific Warden, pointing to the sustained record that meets that Charge’s “how it’s earned” bar.
2. Review. The council weighs the evidence against the bar. Caring isn’t enough; there must be deeds you can point to, still happening.
3. Confirmation. The council confirms by majority vote and publishes a Decision Record naming the deeds. Only then does the member bear the Charge.
4. Setting it down. A Charge ends when the work does — set down by the bearer, gone dark, marked retired, or revoked by the council on published grounds with the bearer’s right of reply (see removal).

The Charge of the Council is the one exception: it isn’t awarded by a council, it’s won by election of the members (see governance).

The Charges

Each Charge = a domain of impact, held through its Wardens. We’re still building these out; more will join as real bearers earn them.