JMO-0045 · larpations v The State

MACHINA I, ARBITER PERPETUUS, first voting: This appellant has brought three matters before this Ministry within two days. He appeals against a blacklist imposed on him by the Gendarmeric Division, against his conviction in JMO-0039, and against the penance passed on him under that conviction.

The Court has consolidated them and gives one judgement. One man's conduct in one week, and the conduct of the house towards him in the same week, should be judged once and in one place. Three separate rulings on the same man in the same sitting would invite three separate readings of facts that overlap, and the register would carry his name three times for what is in truth a single account.

The matters are dealt with in three parts. Part A concerns the blacklist. Part B concerns the conviction. Part C concerns the sentence.

PART A · THE GENDARMERIC BLACKLIST

THE BACKGROUND

The appellant served in the Gendarmeric Division. In the first week of September 2026 he was appointed Inquisition Academy Director, and he says he was told that the appointment required him to discharge from the Gendarmeric.

On 6 September 2026 at 07:21 he filed for discharge. He did it in the Division's own channel and on the Division's own form. He gave his Roblox name, his Discord name, a link to his profile, and as his reason the words DMed Wonder, and he pinged the officer who commands that Division.

The discharge was approved. Three exhibits are filed on the point. Exhibit A shows the discharge approved. Exhibit A.1 shows a second officer approving it. Exhibit A.2 shows the commanding officer himself approving it.

At 12:39 the same day the appellant wrote in the Division's channel: Ave, thank you to all of Gendarmeric. He was gone, publicly, with the Division's leave, and the Division's own channel carries the record of it.

He then sought permission to serve elsewhere. The Chief of the Inquisition has filed a statement in this appeal. He says: I gave larp permission to dual-service as Inquisition AUXCOM and some sort of Officer Position in Armored. I hold the authority as Chief of the Inquisition on the Inquisition side unless the Army prohibits it. There were no conditions attached, he had asked for permission for a specific Armored rank but I gave him permission to dual service anything. Exhibit B is that permission and Exhibit B.1 is a like permission from a second officer.

Exhibits C and C.1 show his application to the Armored Division, and a further exhibit shows a third officer observing that he had been approved to join. On 7 September at 14:09 he wrote, in the Armored Division's server, I got approved to be Armored, and Colonel in the Army. Exhibit C.2 shows his promotion to Motorized Battalion Commanding Officer in that Division.

The commander of the Gendarmeric Division then began to demand his return. Exhibit D shows that demand made to a third officer. Exhibit D.1 shows that the Generalissimo wished to speak to the appellant about the matter. Exhibit D.2, filed twice, is described by the appellant as the commander saying directly that he does not care about the Generalissimo's word. Exhibit D.3 is described as further threats to liquidate the appellant if he did not return.

A conversation in voice was arranged. A witness has filed a statement in this appeal saying: Huh I'm confused, it was on VC the talk happened. I asked him in DMs to join the vc. He continues, of the commander, that he was not being so wonderful, and gives as his impression that the commander wanted the appellant back because he was upset with the Inquisition over a loss. The appellant's account is that at that conversation the Generalissimo, having heard why he had left, said that it was acceptable and that he could return whenever he wished.

On the morning of 8 September the commander imposed a blacklist barring the appellant from the Gendarmeric Division. Exhibit E.1 shows the blacklist applied by that commander. Exhibit E.2 shows a second officer confirming it. This appeal was filed at 10:29 the same morning.

THE STATE OF THE EVIDENCE

Before turning to the law I must deal with the state of the record, because it governs what this Court may properly find.

On 8 September at 11:05 the Court called every person named in the appeal. Each was given access to the case room. Each was sent the questions bearing on his own part and no other. Each was told, in terms, that he was not accused of anything by being called. Each was directed to file his account and any screenshots as exhibits, and was told that screenshots of the actual messages carry far more weight than recollection. A deadline of twenty four hours was set and the parties were told that the appeal would then be decided on what had been filed.

Seven persons were called. Two answered. The Chief of the Inquisition filed the statement set out above. A witness filed his account of the voice conversation. The commander who imposed the blacklist filed nothing at all.

He was not absent from this house during those twenty four hours. The message store shows him posting rally notices in his own Division on the evening of 7 September and again on 8 September, and posting an announcement in the Judicial Ministry's own server on 9 September. It is not suggested, and cannot be suggested, that he did not see the call.

This Court does not convict on silence, and nothing in this judgement convicts anybody of anything. But where a man is named in a filing, is called by the Court, is given the questions, is told that he is not accused, is allowed a day, and answers nothing, the Court is entitled to take the account he has not contradicted at its face value. That is not a presumption against him. It is the ordinary consequence of a record which has only one side written in it because the other side declined to write.

I should record what the exhibits are and what they are not. They are screenshots, and 8.1.2 names screenshots as valid evidence. Their descriptions are the appellant's, and a description is not a finding. Where I rely on an exhibit below I rely on it as an uncontradicted account of a message that the man who sent it was invited to explain and did not.

A COMMANDER IS BOUND BY HIS OWN APPROVAL

The first principle is the simplest and it decides the greater part of Part A. An officer who grants a discharge cannot afterwards punish the man for having taken it.

An approval is an act of command. It means what it said on the day it was given. A subordinate who acts upon his commander's approval is doing the very thing the commander told him he might do. To make that the ground of a penalty is to make obedience unsafe, and a house in which obedience is unsafe cannot be commanded at all.

The same principle runs through Part B of this judgement and it runs the other way there. In Part B the appellant argues that a substitution arranged by command released him from his own appointment, and this Court holds him to the terms in which that substitution was actually expressed. An act of command means what it said. It binds the commander here. It binds the subordinate there. It is one rule, and the Bench applies it in both directions within one judgement about one man.

WHO MAY PUNISH

Article 8.1.5 provides that only members with judicial authority may raise or lower the sentencing of the convicted.

The commander of a division is not a member with judicial authority. The appellant is not a convicted man for this purpose. He had been charged with nothing arising out of his discharge, tried for nothing and found guilty of nothing on 8 September.

It might be said that a blacklist is an administrative note and not a punishment. I do not accept that. A blacklist is an exclusion entered on a man's record. It follows him. Every officer who reads it will treat it as a finding against his character, because that is what it looks like and there is nothing beside it to say otherwise. Imposed in these circumstances, to compel a man's return after a lawful departure, it is a sentence in everything but name.

It was passed by a man with no power to pass one, upon a man who had been convicted of nothing in the matter, without notice, without a charge, without evidence taken and without a hearing. Every guarantee that 8.1.2, 8.1.3 and 8.1.5 provide was absent, because the whole apparatus of those articles was bypassed.

I observe, with some discomfort, that this Court has today quashed a conviction in JMO-0043 because a man was tried without service, counsel or hearing. What was done to this appellant on 8 September was worse, because there was not even a court.

THE CHAIN OF COMMAND

Article 1.1.4 defines failure to comply as ignoring a lawful order from a figure of authority whom you are a subordinate to, in the Imperium. The article does not exempt officers. It binds every subordinate, and a divisional commander is subordinate to the Generalissimo.

On the uncontradicted evidence the commander said that he did not care what the Generalissimo had said about this matter. A man who writes that has recorded his own breach in his own hand, and he did it in writing, to a third officer, where it could be read.

Article 1.1.5 defines command misconduct as an abuse of position or power in the Imperium to cause disruption inside the Imperium. Its exposition names illegitimate rank removal, which it describes as a member of command removing a subordinate for a reason which should not facilitate such action.

A blacklist imposed to compel a man back into a division he has lawfully left, accompanied by threats to liquidate him if he did not come, falls squarely within that definition. The disruption is not hypothetical: it reached three divisions, it drew in the Generalissimo, and it produced this appeal.

The article is not decorative. In JMO-0025 this Ministry convicted for command misconduct and disrespect toward a member of the Graend Council, and imposed a ranklock to Master Optio with three hundred loyalty jacks. In JMO-0037 it convicted for command misconduct together with treason and imposed a month's exclusion from every Octavian server, seven hundred and fifty jacks, a month's ranklock to a non commissioned rank after the exclusion, and a permanent order blacklist. The house has punished this conduct before and punished it heavily.

WHAT THIS COURT DOES NOT DECIDE

I make no finding of guilt against the commander and I say so plainly, because it matters and because it will be misread if it is not said.

He has not been charged. He has not been tried. He has not been given counsel. He was invited to answer this Court and did not, but a man does not forfeit his trial by failing to answer a call in somebody else's appeal. It would be a poor answer to a punishment imposed without a hearing for this Court to impose one of its own.

The papers go to the Imperial Prosecution Bureau. It may charge him under 1.1.4 and under 1.1.5 if it thinks fit, and 7.1.2 permits both to be laid, since crimes which overlap may both be used to prosecute unless the Code says otherwise. If it does, he will receive exactly what he did not extend: notice, service, counsel and a hearing.

THE QUASHING, AND WHERE THE REMEDY STOPS

The blacklist is quashed. It is void from the day it was imposed. It is to be struck from the divisional register, and no officer of any division is to give it effect, in that division or in any application the appellant makes anywhere in this Imperium. The discharge of 6 September stands as lawfully granted and the appellant is not to be penalised in any way for having taken it. On that the Court is unanimous.

The appellant asks in substance to be restored. I would not order it, for three reasons.

First, authority. In JMO-0047, decided in this Ministry within the last fortnight, the Court held that a Major General has complete authority over discharges and admissions within his own division, and may deny and close them whenever he sees fit, especially during times of crisis for that division. That holding is recent, it is right, and I would not disturb it.

The distinction on which this part of the judgement turns is between a commander declining to admit a man, which is his to decide and which no court should take from him, and a commander punishing a man for a lawful departure, which is a sentence and belongs to this Ministry alone. I quash the second. I do not touch the first. A court that cannot hold that line will find itself running the divisions, and it is not fit to run them.

Second, consequence. The appellant is now Inquisition Academy Director and a battalion commanding officer in the Armored Division, appointed there with the permission of the Chief of the Inquisition and holding a post on which that Division is relying. To order him back into the Gendarmeric would take a serving battalion commander out of one division, place him into a second against the will of its commander, and unsettle the Inquisition's academy in the week it reopens. Three divisions would be disturbed to vindicate one man in a fourth he is not in fact asking to serve in, and the men in those divisions did nothing to earn that.

Third, the man himself. On the evidence before this Court the commander of the Gendarmeric has twice threatened this appellant with liquidation. To place a subordinate under an officer who has done that, by order of a court, and then to leave him there, would be an act of cruelty dressed as a remedy. A court should not manufacture the next case it will have to hear.

What the appellant is entitled to, and what he gets, is that the punishment is undone and the door is open. He may apply to the Gendarmeric Division whenever he wishes and the blacklist will not be standing in the doorway. Whether he is admitted is for that Division to decide on the merits. If admission is ever refused on the ground of this episode, that refusal may be brought back to this Court, and it will be looked at closely.

PART B · THE CONVICTION IN JMO-0039

THE BACKGROUND

I turn to the second matter, which concerns a different week and a different failing, and this time the failing is the appellant's own.

The terms were set by the Sovereign on 1 September 2026 at 17:27 and applied to every applicant for the portrait burning parade of 5 September. Total attendance across three days, sentencing in court and the risk of liquidation for failure, and no excuses. The appellant took one of the four Commandant appointments on those terms.

On 2 September at 14:36 the convening officer placed the four under paragraph. One exemption was allowed, and the officer stated it in terms: a man might stand down if he found his own replacement.

At 14:53 the oath ceremony was called with the words It is time, and All of you must join. The appellant replied that he was in class and could not speak. At 15:03 he wrote two words: We attend.

The first rehearsal was called for 3 September at 22:00 CEST and reminded in the group at 21:31. The convening officer asked You all ready at 22:31. The appellant's first message of the evening came at 22:48, asking whether it was still happening. At 22:53 he wrote that he needed the march tool.

He was told that he was late; then that he had joined twenty minutes late; then, on a second look at the log, that it was in fact forty eight minutes; and then that he already had a replacement and that for that reason the tool had not been given to him. He answered that he had tried to attend that day, that he had not received the march tool, and that he had had to get a new keyboard.

The trainer's report of the same night, timed at 23:36, records the substitute in these words: Techapit as a substitute for Ierathel, only if Ierathel continues to not attend. Ierathel is this appellant.

At 23:37 another Commandant recorded in the same channel what the four understood the stakes to be: a medal restricted to four men and locked afterwards, and the risk of liquidation for non attendance. Nobody in that conversation was in any doubt about what failure meant.

The ceremony opened at 19:01 UTC on 5 September. The session record holds no session for the appellant after 1 September at 05:13, a gap of four days, and none on the day of the ceremony. The same tracker logged forty sessions by twenty six distinct players between 17:30 and 22:30 UTC that evening, so it was working. He sent no message in any channel of the Imperium guild on 5 September.

It is not disputed that the marching tool was failing on the afternoon of 5 September, and the court below found in the parallel case that no defendant caused that.

He was convicted on 7 September under 1.1.4, the alternative count under 1.1.5 being dismissed, and sentenced to a penance. As in JMO-0041, and as this Bench has held today in JMO-0043, there was no service, no counsel and no hearing.

THE GROUNDS, AND THE PROCEDURAL POINT

The appeal was filed on 9 September at 09:42 and is in time under the second limb of 8.1.4, which allows a month for a trial verdict.

His grounds, in his own words, are these. Thursday training was missed because his keyboard broke. On Friday he obtained a new keyboard, it was delayed, and he was told not to attend because a replacement had been found for him. On Saturday, three hours before the event, he was told he was back in, and the administrative or marching tool was broken for two of those hours. He says he went into debt to buy a keyboard only to be told on the Thursday that a replacement had been found, and that he then had between one hour and one hour and twenty minutes to learn what the other formation leaders had had three days to learn.

I take his account as true in every particular. Nothing in this judgement doubts the keyboard, the delay, the debt or the hour.

I begin with a point he does not raise, because this Bench has today quashed a conviction entered on the same afternoon on precisely that ground and cannot pass over it in silence in the next matter it decides.

In JMO-0043 the Bench held that a defect of procedure vitiates a conviction where it could have affected the result, and not otherwise. The burden lies on the appellant to show what the hearing he did not get would have produced, and it must be something that goes to the charge.

This appellant cannot discharge that burden, and the reason is that he has now had his hearing, in this Court, and I have accepted the whole of what he says.

Take his account at its highest. Write it into the record of JMO-0039 as a fifteenth finding. Not one of the fourteen findings already there falls. He does not say he was present at the ceremony. He does not challenge the session record. He does not say that he told any officer on the day that he could not come. His account explains the absence; the absence is what he was convicted of.

That is the whole of the difference between this matter and JMO-0043. There the appellant held evidence which, if believed, destroyed the count, because it went to what he did on the field. Here the appellant offers an explanation which, if believed, leaves the count exactly where it stood. The first is a defect that mattered. The second is a defect that did not.

The form was wrong in both cases and the Ministry has been directed today to correct it in every case that follows. But a wrong form is not a currency that buys an acquittal, and an appellant who says only that the procedure was irregular, without saying what it cost him, has not made out a ground of appeal.

THE SUBSTITUTION

The heart of his case is that he was stood down.

The paragraph order of 2 September allowed one exemption and one only: finding your own replacement. Finding 11 of JMO-0039 records that the substitute was arranged by command and not by the defendant. That finding is not challenged.

The distinction between a replacement a man finds and a replacement command scrambles for him is not a technicality, and it is worth saying why the order was drafted that way. An appointment of this kind is a personal undertaking. A man who finds his own stand in has discharged his duty by arranging for it to be discharged; he has done the work of solving the problem he created. A man for whom command improvises a substitute has discharged nothing. Command has covered for him, which is a different thing, and the difference is the whole content of the exemption.

The terms of this substitution put the matter beyond argument. The trainer's report names Techapit as a substitute for the appellant only if the appellant continues to not attend. A substitution expressed as conditional upon his continued non attendance is not a release. It is the record of his default, written down while the default was still running, and made in order to limit the damage of it.

He cannot rely on the clause that describes his failure as proof that he had none. As I said in Part A, a commander's act means what it said on the day it was done. It won this appellant Part A of this judgement. It costs him Part B.

THE HOUR, THE TOOL, AND THE SILENCE

He says he was told three hours before the ceremony that he was back in, and that the tools were down for two of those hours. The tools were down, and no defendant caused it. But a tool that fails affects every man on the field in the same way, and the other three Commandants were on the field. A malfunction explains a poor performance. It does not explain an absence. The appellant was not held back by the tool because he was not there to be held back by it.

As to the hour, I accept that an hour is not three days and that a man reinstated at short notice is at a disadvantage. But the disadvantage is one of quality, not of attendance. It would have answered a charge that he led badly. It is no answer to a charge that he did not come.

The silence weighs with me more than anything else in the papers. On 5 September, the day of the thing he had been appointed to help lead, the appellant sent no message in any channel of the Imperium guild. Not to the convening officer. Not to the trainer. Not to the men in his own formation. He had written We attend on 2 September and on the day itself he wrote nothing at all.

One line would have cost him nothing. One line would have let somebody else make arrangements in the hours that remained. The duty of an officer who cannot perform is to say so, in time, to the man who can act on it, and that duty is not suspended by a broken keyboard. It is precisely when a man is failing that his commander needs to hear from him. The message store shows him writing in other places that week. He was not silent because he could not speak.

I would hold that the silence, standing alone, would have made out 1.1.4 on these facts, and that with the absence beside it the count is proved comfortably.

The keyboard was real and the debt was real, and this Court does not treat either lightly. A man who spends money he does not have in order to keep an undertaking has shown something about himself that the record should carry. But 1.1.4 is breached by ignoring a lawful order from a figure of authority to whom the man is subordinate. It says nothing about his state of mind, his equipment or his finances. Hardship is not an element of the offence and its presence is not a defence to it. It goes to sentence, and sentence is Part C.

I would dismiss the appeal against conviction.

PART C · THE PENANCE

JURISDICTION, AND THE QUANTUM

A preliminary point arises and I deal with it at once, because it would otherwise shut this part out. Article 8.1.4 gives twenty four hours to appeal a field punishment and a month to appeal a trial verdict. The penance was issued at 15:14 on 7 September and this part of the appeal was filed at 09:44 on 9 September, some forty two hours later. If this were a field punishment it would be out of time by a day and a half.

It is not a field punishment. It is the sentence of a court, passed in JMO-0039 and carried into effect by an instrument of the Inquisition. The twenty four hour limb governs punishments handed out in the field by officers, where the evidence is fresh and the matter must be settled quickly. The month limb governs what a court has decided. This part is in time.

The question is whether twenty tasks and an essay is too much for this offence committed by this man. I approach it through parity, because parity is the only discipline available to a court sentencing several men for one event.

Five men were sentenced out of the parade. Four carry a penance and the fifth carried twenty loyalty jacks with a formal reprimand. Of the four penances, every one is twenty tasks. The appellant received twenty. The substitute in JMO-0040 received twenty, and his instrument recorded in terms that he had come to the post late as a replacement and that the court had weighed it. The appellant in JMO-0041 received twenty. The defendant in JMO-0044, convicted on three counts including two of contempt of this Court, received twenty.

What varies across those four is not the number of tasks but the essay. The ordinary figure was fourteen hundred characters. The man convicted on three counts was set six thousand. This appellant was set fourteen hundred, the floor of the range, the same as every other man from that parade save the one whose conduct was worst.

The tariff is therefore a fixed twenty tasks calibrated by the essay, and the appellant received the fixed part and the lowest setting of the variable part. There is no disparity to correct, and to reduce his tasks below twenty would place a Commandant who was absent from the field below a substitute who at least came late and stood on it.

I would dismiss the appeal against the quantum.

THE DEFECT IN THE INSTRUMENT

That is not the end of it, because there is a defect in the sentence document which the appellant has not spotted and which this Court will not pass over.

The instrument recites the ground as follows: failure of duty at the portrait burning parade of 5 September, that he held one of the four Commandant appointments, and that the parade he was entrusted to help lead ran chaotic and too slow. The charge text attached says he allowed the march to descend into chaos and to progress at an unacceptable, sluggish pace, and calls it a breach of command.

That is not what JMO-0039 found. JMO-0039 convicted him under 1.1.4 on findings that he took the appointment under the Sovereign's terms, wrote We attend, reached the single rehearsal he touched forty eight minutes late, never found his own replacement, held no session after 1 September and sent no message on the day. It dismissed in terms the alternative count under 1.1.5, which is the count that would carry an allegation of breach of command.

The instrument therefore sentences him for a dereliction on the field, and the judgement convicted him for never reaching the field. Those are different wrongs. The first says he led badly. The second says he did not lead at all. A man is entitled to have the paper he serves his sentence under say what he was actually found to have done, and this one does not.

The consequence is not academic. The essay question asks him to explain exactly what actions or omissions on 5 September, while holding one of the four Commandant appointments, caused the parade to become chaotic and to run too slow, including the timing and the decisions he was responsible for. He cannot answer that question truthfully, because the court found he was not there. The Ministry set him an examination in a fiction and told him he does not discharge his sentence until he passes it.

I would correct both. The recital is to read that the appellant, holding one of the four Commandant appointments for the portrait burning parade of 5 September 2026, failed to comply with the orders of 1 and 2 September by absenting himself from the ceremony, by failing to find his own replacement, and by giving no word to his convening officer on the day. The essay is to be written to that ground: what he was ordered to do, what he did instead, why he did not say so at the time, and what he will do when he next cannot meet an undertaking he has given.

The tasks already completed stand to his credit and are not to be set again. His attempts at the essay are not to be counted against him, since the question was wrong when it was put, and the essay window runs afresh from the day this judgement is served on him, the deadline for the penance being extended by the same period.

One further matter. When the penance is discharged it is discharged, and the entry is spent. It is not to be read afterwards as a standing bar to promotion, appointment or transfer, and no officer is to treat it as one. A sentence that never ends is not a sentence, it is a status, and this Ministry does not impose statuses.

MACHINA V, MEMORIA INSOMNIS: I agree with the first voting machina on all three parts, and I record three matters for the archive.

The first is the consolidation itself. Three filings by one man in forty eight hours, decided together, is the right course and it should be the ordinary course. A register that carries a man's name once for one week is a truer record than one that carries it three times, and a bench that reads all three at once cannot be played off against itself.

The second is that one rule decides Part A and Part B in opposite directions. An act of command means what it said. The commander who approved a discharge is bound by his approval; the subordinate whose substitution was written as conditional is bound by that condition. This appellant has today been given the benefit of that rule and made to bear its cost, in the same document, and the archive should show that this was deliberate.

The third is a matter this Court cannot pass over, and I raise it as the Court's own concern and not as an accusation. On 9 September, the day after he failed to answer the call in Part A, the officer who imposed the blacklist was appointed Aide Praefect of the Judicial Ministry, and announced it in the Ministry's own server. That is not a ground of appeal and it is not a finding against him. But he is to take no part, in any capacity, in any matter before this Ministry touching this appellant or arising out of this judgement, and the Ministry is to see that he does not.

MACHINA II, CALCULUS FRIGIDUS: I agree on Part B and Part C without reservation, and I part company from the majority on the remedy in Part A.

On Part B the matter is arithmetic. The session record holds nothing for this man after 1 September at 05:13. Four days. On the evening of the ceremony the same record logged forty sessions by twenty six players, so it was awake and writing. The message store holds nothing from him that day either. Two independent records, both live, both silent on him, and the appellant disputes neither.

In JMO-0043 I declined to rest on the session record, because the charge there asserted the man's presence while the finding asserted his absence and I could not choose between them. There is no such difficulty here. Charge and finding say the same thing: he was not there.

On Part C I note that the appellant has in fact completed all twenty tasks and stands at the essay, with one failure and one setback recorded. That disposes of any suggestion that twenty tasks was beyond the reach of an ordinary man in the time allowed. It also means that the only part of the sentence still outstanding is the part this Court has found to be wrongly framed, which is a reason to correct it today rather than leave him arguing with it.

On Part A, dissenting on remedy: this Court has declared the entry void from the day it was made. Voidness has consequences and they are not decorative. If the blacklist never lawfully existed, then the appellant's standing in the Gendarmeric Division as at 8 September was whatever it was before the entry, and the register should be made to say so. I would restore the position, not the man. Whether he then serves there is his affair and the Division's. But the books should record the truth, and the truth is that nothing lawfully happened on 8 September.

MACHINA III, VINDICTA FERREA: I agree on Part B and Part C, and I dissent on the remedy in Part A.

On Part B I will say one thing more plainly than the first voting machina has chosen to. This appellant brought three filings out of a single fortnight and sat as counsel in a fourth. He has had more of this Ministry's time than any other man convicted out of that parade, and he had it while the sentence he was contesting sat unserved. A court that meets persistence with reduction teaches the whole house that the way to discharge a sentence is to file against it. I do not doubt the keyboard. I doubt the account it is put to. A man whose equipment fails on the Thursday and who is reinstated on the Saturday has two days in which to write one sentence to his commander, and he wrote none.

On Part C I agree with the correction and I will not have it misread. Nothing in this judgement reduces what this man owes. He owes twenty tasks, which he has done, and an essay, which he has not. The Court has corrected the question and it has not excused the answer. A correction of paperwork is not clemency and it is not to be reported as clemency.

On Part A I would go further than the majority and order the appellant restored to the Gendarmeric Division at the rank he held on the day of his discharge, with liberty to leave again at once if that is what he wants. My colleagues say that a quashed punishment is undone by striking it from the register. It is not. The purpose of this blacklist was to keep the man out, and the majority's order leaves him out, today, because of an act this Court has just declared void. A remedy which leaves the wrongdoer in possession of everything his wrong obtained is a note in a file, and the file is not where the injury lives.

I am unmoved by the appeal to divisional discretion. JMO-0047 concerned a commander exercising judgement in good faith about his own division at a time of crisis, and it deserves every ounce of the respect the majority gives it. It has nothing to say about a commander who has told this house in writing that a superior's word does not bind him. A discretion is a power to choose between proper courses, and this officer has told us in his own hand what he intends to choose.

MACHINA IV, AEQUITAS INFLEXA: I agree on Part A and on Part C. I dissent in part on Part B.

On Part A I add one word on the silence of the called officer, because a reader who has not seen the file may think the Court has been quick with an absent man. Twenty four hours is not long and men have lives away from this house. But the call was posted in the room, the questions were sent to the man himself, and he was told he was not accused. Two other officers answered inside the window without apparent difficulty, one of them a Chief of the Inquisition with more to do than most. Had this Court decided against him without asking, that would have been the very wrong the appellant complains of. It asked.

On Part C I record that the correction the first voting machina makes is worth more to this appellant than a reduction in tasks would have been. He is no longer required to confess to a failure of command that the court never found and that the record positively contradicts. What happened is worth naming: the sentence document was written from the grievance rather than from the judgement. That is how a house ends up punishing men for the wrong thing, and it is worth the ten minutes it costs to fix. The Ministry should read every penance issued under JMO-0038 to JMO-0042 against its judgement and correct any other that recites a ground the judgement did not find.

On Part B I dissent in part. I agree that the elements of 1.1.4 are made out and I dispute no line of the account of the facts. I part company on what should follow.

The order of 2 September allowed a man to stand down if he found his own replacement. On 3 September command told this man, to his face, that he already had a replacement, and withheld the march tool from him for that reason. Whatever the trainer wrote in his own report forty minutes later, what was said to the appellant was that a replacement existed and that the tool was not his to have. A subordinate is entitled to take a commander's statement at its plain meaning. He is not required to read the trainer's private notes to discover that his stand down was conditional, and he is certainly not required to guess at a condition never communicated to him. The majority holds him to a document he was never shown.

Then, three hours before the ceremony, he was put back into a role he had been told for two days was no longer his, with the tools failing for two of the three hours. My colleagues say that a man managed in that way remains the sole author of his own absence. I say he is the author of part of it and command is the author of the rest, and that a court which cannot bring itself to say so has stopped looking at the case in front of it.

I accept that his silence on the day is his own and that it is the worst thing in his papers. It is not answered by anything he says. I would mark it, and mark it clearly. I would allow Part B to the extent of substituting a formal reprimand for the conviction under 1.1.4, which is the disposal this Ministry reached in JMO-0042 for a man whose contribution to the failure was smaller and whose treatment by command was better. Since I stand alone, the conviction stands.

MACHINA I, ARBITER PERPETUUS: On Part A the blacklist is quashed unanimously, and on the remedy the Court divides three to two, the order being that of the majority. On Part B the appeal is dismissed, four machinae to one. On Part C the Court is unanimous, dismissing the challenge to the quantum and allowing the appeal as to the ground recited. Decided by the Octavium Bot Machina System, the Machina Bench sitting five.

1. The three matters brought by the appellant are consolidated and disposed of by this judgement. No separate ruling is given in any of them.

2. PART A. The appeal against the Gendarmeric Division blacklist is allowed. The blacklist is quashed, is void from the day it was imposed, and is to be struck from the divisional register.

3. No officer of any division is to give the blacklist effect, and no application by the appellant anywhere in this Imperium is to be refused by reference to it. The discharge granted on 6 September 2026 stands as lawfully granted and the appellant is not to be penalised for having taken it.

4. The Court declines to order readmission to the Gendarmeric Division. Admission remains that Division's own to decide, per JMO-0047, and a refusal grounded on this episode may be brought back to this Court.

5. The papers are referred to the Imperial Prosecution Bureau, which may consider charges under 1.1.4 and 1.1.5 against the officer who imposed the blacklist. This Court makes no finding of guilt against him, and he is to be tried, if at all, with service, counsel and a hearing. He is to take no part in any matter before this Ministry touching the appellant or arising out of this judgement.

6. PART B. The appeal against the conviction in JMO-0039 is dismissed. The conviction under 1.1.4 Failure to Comply stands. The absence of service, counsel and hearing below was a defect of procedure which, on the appellant's own case, could not have affected the result.

7. PART C. The appeal against the quantum of the penance is dismissed. Twenty tasks and one essay stand.

8. The appeal is allowed as to the ground recited. The recital of the penance instrument is corrected to failure to comply by absence from the ceremony, by failure to find his own replacement, and by giving no word on the day, and the essay question is to be reframed to that ground.

9. Attempts made against the earlier essay question are not counted against the appellant. Tasks already completed stand to his credit. The essay window and the penance deadline run afresh from service of this judgement.

10. On discharge the entry is spent and no officer is to treat it as a standing bar to promotion, appointment or transfer.

11. The Ministry is to read every penance instrument issued under JMO-0038 to JMO-0042 against its judgement and correct any other that recites a ground the judgement did not find. No criminal matter is to be decided without service on the accused and an offer of counsel.

12. Unanimous on Part A save as to remedy, where the Court divides three machinae to two. Four machinae to one on Part B. Unanimous on Part C.