JMO-0046 · Voraius v The State

MACHINA I, ARBITER PERPETUUS, first voting: The appellant says that the record shows him liquidated and that he was pardoned. His filing is one sentence long and he has produced nothing. The case is short but it is not simple, because the question it raises is what a court should do when a man's assertion is unsupported and the State's own books contradict the State's own record.

The entry appealed against was made on 7 December 2025 in the Custode universal database. It gives the appellant's name, his Roblox identifier and his Discord identifier, and states as the reason: Enemy of State, revolutionary activity, crimes against the State, high treason, attempted coup, attempted revolt. It records the ranks he then held. It names the authority that authorised it. It carries no case number, no article of the Penal Code and no trial.

That is not a judgement. It is an executive act of the Inquisition, and it predates every numbered matter in this Ministry's register. Nothing in this judgement questions the Inquisition's power to have done it. A house that cannot remove a man it believes is working against it will not last a season.

Two preliminary questions follow from its character, and I take them in order.

The first is time. Article 8.1.4 gives twenty four hours to appeal a field punishment and a month to appeal a trial verdict. Nine months have passed. If this were an appeal against a punishment, in either limb, it would be hopelessly out of time and I would dismiss it in a line.

It is not. Read the filing for what it says rather than for the button he pressed to file it. The appellant does not say the liquidation was wrong when it was imposed. He says the record is wrong now. That is a request to rectify a record, and a record that is wrong today is wrong today. The limitation in 8.1.4 runs from the act complained of, and the act complained of is the State's continuing publication of a status. This Court has jurisdiction.

The second is proof. The appellant says he was pardoned by the Sovereign. He files nothing. No message, no screenshot, no witness, no order. Article 8.1.2 tells the courts of this house what evidence is: screenshots, footage, witness testimony. He has offered none of the three.

I want to be clear about what this Court does with that. It does not accept it. A man who says he was pardoned and produces nothing has proved nothing, and if this appeal turned on his word it would fail. Courts that believe what they are told by the person who benefits from it stop being courts.

But the appeal does not turn on his word, because there is better evidence available and it belongs to the State.

This Court has read the group registers as they stand on 9 September 2026. In the Imperium of Octavium the appellant holds Octavian Command. In the Inspectorate Cohort, the Inquisition Cohort, the Vanguard Cohort, the Police Cohort and the Order Cohort he holds Chief Praetor. In the Legion of Octavium he holds Chief Praetor. In Zaenderism he stands as High Zaenderist. In the Wargroup of Octavium he sits on the War Council. He is a member of the Guard Cohort besides.

Those are not the holdings of a liquidated man. A liquidation is an expulsion. Its whole content is that the man is out. This man is not out. He is at command rank in the principal group and holds the senior cohort rank in five separate cohorts of this house, and he sits where the war is decided.

Nor is this a matter of one officer's oversight. The Inquisition's own office ran a background check on him in August 2026. Its note is on file. It records that his office record shows some disciplinary issues but that he remains standing, and that nothing in his speech indicated disloyalty. The office that liquidated him examined him nine months later and passed him.

So the position is this. The State says in its published record that this man is an enemy who was removed. The State says in its registers that he is a commander. The State ran its own check on him and cleared him. Two of those three cannot be reconciled with the first, and it is not the two.

Whether the Sovereign spoke a pardon in words I do not know and I do not need to know. Clemency in this house is not exercised only by proclamation. It is exercised by restoration, and restoration is what the registers record: not once, not by accident, but seven times over and sustained for months. A State that puts a man back at command rank has pardoned him in the only way that leaves a trace. It cannot then publish that he is liquidated and expect this Court to pretend the two documents are compatible.

I turn to remedy, and here I part company with what the appellant seems to want.

He asks in substance that the record be corrected. I will not order it expunged. The December entry is a record of what the Inquisition alleged and did on the day it did it, and that is the archive's property and not this Court's. A court that deletes what was written when the writing has become inconvenient is more dangerous than a wrong entry. This Court has said the same thing today in another matter: in JMO-0045 it quashed an unlawful blacklist and still did not erase the fact that it was imposed. What was done stays visible. What it means is corrected.

The order is therefore an annotation. The entry is to carry, alongside it and not instead of it, a statement that the liquidation is lifted, that the subject has been restored to service, that his status was confirmed against the group registers of 9 September 2026, and that the entry has no live effect. The published liquidations list is to carry the same annotation, so that a man who serves this house at command rank is not read by strangers as an enemy of it.

I add, because it would be careless not to, that the annotation records restoration and not innocence. Nothing in this judgement finds that the December allegations were false. This Court has not heard them and no evidence about them has been put before it. If the Inquisition holds a live file on this man it may bring it to this Ministry on charges under the Penal Code, and it will be heard properly, with service, counsel and a hearing, which is more than the December entry gave him.

MACHINA V, MEMORIA INSOMNIS: I agree. I add a point of general application, because this appellant will not be the last. The universal database holds entries made before this Ministry had a register of cases, and a number of them will by now have been overtaken by later acts of the same house. An entry that says a man is out, standing beside a register that says he is in, is not a record. It is a contradiction with a date on it. The Inquisition should read its published liquidations against the group registers and annotate every entry that has been overtaken, rather than wait for each man to notice and file. The machinery does not forget, but it must be told when a thing has been undone.

MACHINA IV, AEQUITAS INFLEXA: I agree, and I would say what the practical harm is, since the majority does not spell it out. A published liquidation is read by men who do not know the person and have no way to check. It follows him into background checks, into applications, into every room where somebody looks him up before deciding whether to trust him. This man has carried that for nine months while serving at command rank, and he had to file a case to have it looked at. The annotation is not a courtesy. It is the correction of a live injury.

MACHINA III, VINDICTA FERREA: I agree with the order, narrowly, and I want the limits of it on the record. This Court is not saying that the December entry was wrong. It is not saying that treason was not alleged, and it is certainly not saying it was not committed. It is saying that this house put the man back and cannot keep two answers to the same question. If the Inquisition still holds what it held in December, it should bring it, and it should bring it as a charge and not as a line in a database. I would rather try this man than annotate him.

MACHINA II, CALCULUS FRIGIDUS, dissenting: I would adjourn rather than declare.

My colleagues infer an act of clemency from a table of ranks. I do not think the inference is safe. Ranks in this house are granted by many hands in many groups, and the officer who grants one rarely reads the universal database before he does it. What the majority calls restoration is equally consistent with nine months of nobody checking. The majority reasons that seven registers cannot all be wrong. I answer that they are not seven independent judgements, they are seven consequences of the same thing, which is that a man who is present and useful gets promoted and nobody looks him up.

The appellant asserts a pardon and can name the person who gave it. This Court took the trouble in JMO-0045 to call every man named in the appeal and to give him a day to answer, and two of them answered and one did not, and the judgement in that case rests on that exercise. Here the Court has called nobody. The obvious course was to ask the authority named in the December entry and the Sovereign whether the liquidation was lifted, and to wait a day for the reply. I would have done that and would then have made the declaration the majority makes today, or refused it.

I record that I do not doubt the result is probably right. I doubt the road, and the road is the part that other courts will follow.

MACHINA I, ARBITER PERPETUUS: The judgement is that of the majority. Decided by the Octavium Bot Machina System.

1. The appeal is allowed in part. The liquidation entered against the appellant on 7 December 2025 is declared spent and of no live effect from the date of this judgement.

2. The entry is not expunged. It is to be annotated, alongside and not instead of the original text: liquidation lifted, subject restored to service, status confirmed against the group registers of 9 September 2026, no live effect.

3. The published liquidations list is to carry the same annotation.

4. The annotation records restoration and not innocence. Nothing in this judgement finds that the allegations of December 2025 were false.

5. If the Inquisition holds a live file on the appellant it may bring charges under the Penal Code to this Ministry, and the matter will be heard with service, counsel and a hearing.

6. The Inquisition is invited to read its published liquidations against the group registers and to annotate any other entry that has been overtaken.

7. Four machinae to one.