SELECTED EXCERPTS AND ENTRIES FROM LYDIA CLADST’S “POWERS OF THE LEDGER: BRINEHAVEN’S TOME OF ENDLESS PAGES” (1988).
- CONTEMPORARY ROLE OF THE ARBITER AND ASSOCIATED TITLES
- EARLY FOUNDATIONS, HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
- ON THE LEGALITY OF HIRING AN ARBITER & ASSOCIATED ROLES
CONTEMPORARY ROLE OF THE ARBITER AND ASSOCIATED TITLES
An arbiter may best be defined as state-sanctioned mercenary, with sufficient ministerial approval that verifies their capacity to take on innumerable and often incredibly dangerous tasks by means of both arbitration notes, written by prospective clients for a singular task, or arbitration contracts, which entail multiple tasks.
The Minister of the Commonwealth is only capable of appointing up to eight arbiters during their term. Arbiters who have been previously appointed who are up-to-date with their renewal assessments maintain their title and their licensure until they can no longer satisfy their renewal assessment.
The arbiter may take on an undederarbiter, a working apprentice, who under the stewardship of their corresponding arbiter must first pass what is known as a preliminary—a test of skill conducted by the aforementioned arbiter, proctored by a witness—to qualify for their permit. An underarbiter may remain in their apprenticeship for a number of years before qualifying for the position of arbiter, which can be achieved one of two ways: 1) a vacancy of arbiters 2) at the request of the supervising arbiter.
Similarly, there in times of emergency or simply when the office of the minister deems it so, interim arbiters may be recorded into the Ledger: individuals deputized with the power of an arbiter for the duration of a single arbitration note.
Arbiters and underarbiters are both given licensure—known respectively as an arbiters license and an underarbiters permit—which grants them functional immunity while performing contracted jobs within the territorial limits of the Commonwealth of Brinehaven, The Minister of the Commonwealth is incapable of revoking an arbiter’s licensure unless the aforementioned arbiter has violated one or multiple of the following rules:
1) commiting a crime while not on an arbitration note and or contract
2) failing to pass the renewal assessment
3) aiding and abetting declared or prospective enemies of the Commonwealth
In a similar capacity, individuals with a criminal record, unless pardoned by the minister through executive power, are barred from obtaining an arbiters licence or an underarbiters permit.
EARLY FOUNDATIONS, HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
The role of arbiter, historically, was recognized as ceremonial in nature. Consensus reached by Brinehaven historians dates the inception of the role to 1712, the very year that the Commonwealth achieved sovereignty: “… and it was thus deemed that when the founders and the sigilmasons set about to their work and their labor, an absence of guardianship did indeed necessitate the contraction, employ, and diligence of capable men in possession of the tact to defend those of whom lacked the faculty to defend themselves, with no discrimination to the means of which their particular abilities were acquired.” (DuPonte 1713, 15)1
Prior to the institutionalization of arbiters, they functioned loosely as guards for the sigilmasons and the architects of the Brinehaven. Notably, this marked the first occasion in close association with sufficiently skilled men—and women, uncharacteristically for the time period—from both arcane and occult backgrounds were grouped together under a singular title and not held accountable for the means in which their power was expressed, marking a stark decline in the power of the Vatican, whose dwindling influence in the city and subsequent lack of authority prevented them from jailing or executing those found guilty of heresy or blasphemy.
Successful countermeasures against fiends and associated fauna (geists, banshees, demons, and the likes) gradually demonstrated the effectiveness of these early arbiters, a historical development that vastly increased their demand with early patrons primarily composed of city officials, land surveyors of the hinterlands, men of the mercantile persuasion, and wealthy landowners who required a particular level of skill for specific tasks. Arbiters, then, graduated from emergency guards and protectors into specialists-for-hire, and largely functioned without institutional considerations until the mid 19th century.
The first documentation of the Ledger emerged in roughly 1766, wherein Brinehavenite and then city-councilman Maurice Redding, famously declared that without supervision or oversight, ” [the] arbiter hysteria the likes of which this city-state has never experienced would ultimately result in a gross neglect of responsibility, where the good-to-do private specialist and the criminal-for-hire would be indistinguishable from one another.” (Redding 1766, 104)2
Within the same year, then Minister Gerard Trenchton issued a ministerial decree stating that the office of the minister would henceforth be tasked with the appointment and regulation of arbiters, with requirements of aptitudes that would necessitate yearly assessment as “uncontested proof of character and competency” (Redding 1766, 256)3 which would later be known as the renewal assessment. The Ledger, then, was perhaps best described as both a device of ministerial accountability, documentation of individuals verified and in possession of the required licensure, and an object of near-revered ceremony passed down from one minister to another.
ON THE LEGALITY OF HIRING AN ARBITER & ASSOCIATED ROLES
Much of the contemporary discourse surrounding the legality of hiring an arbiter to commit otherwise egricious acts of violence can be boiled down to precedent, and the specific framing of what an arbiter is entitled to do once either an arbitration note or contract has been legitimized by way of client signature.
Legal scholars and esquires as early as 1766, the year in which the establishment of the title of arbiter was formality recognized, agree that the client of an arbiter is protected by the same functional immunity as the arbiter themselves so long as the requested act of violence—particularly assault and murder—is considered to be “just in response to acts of depravity and with clear intention of retribution in the face of such depravity, in which a commissioner of redemptive violence directs an arbiter towards the initial perpetrator of such violence” (Murphy, Brekker, et. al 1973, 13)4
For centuries, then, the agreed upon sentiment may best be boiled down to the time-tested notion of an eye-for-an-eye, and may best be simplified as this: clients of arbiters who seek death as an answer to wrongdoings done unto them or another, namely friends or family, are considered valid and protected under the law. In many cases, however, arbiters will refuse outright requests for arbitration notes that reduce their profession to that of a hitman or assassin, and know that few requests of such a nature would extend their functional immunity to their clients.
Indeed, it is rare for arbiters to conduct such killings, unless there is sufficient moral grounds for doing so, something which is still contested among legal advisors. Notably, however, and perhaps an exception to this consideration, is the event in which either the office of the minister commissions an arbiter to kill suspected enemies of the state, criminals, or fiends, which just as easily may be made by ranking officers of the Civic and Occult Authority—in which arbiters are generally in close association with.
- Sebastian DuPonte, Paradise of the Uncanny (1713), 12. ↩︎
- Maurice Redding, Collected Personal Testimonies and Essays of a Councilman (1766), 104. ↩︎
- Gerard Trenchton, quoted in Maurice Reddings, Collected Personal Testimonies and Essays of a Councilman (1766), 256. ↩︎
- James Murphy, Laura Brekker, Bernard McClain, Veronica Stel, A Study in Precedent: Interpretive Justice in the Commonwealth of Brinehaven (1973), 13. ↩︎