![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Recordkeeping Inconsistencies
Jul. 11th, 2016 08:57 pmAt this point you may have gathered that Sparkspell is not a highly structured clan. Roles are loose and sometimes change unexpectedly, most of the hierarchy only exists in a crisis; there’s theft and tax evasion and unsupervised science and light espionage (coming soon!) and all kinds of other shit that the leaders don’t regulate very much if at all. The clan doesn’t even occupy the same territory from one month to the next. They have a shared goal, but it is a fairly broad one, and everyone pursues it in a different way.
On paper it’s…not like that.
The Stormcatcher is into accountability. You can do whatever unethical experiments you want, but you’d better write it all down and get a permit for that particle accelerator and don’t forget to send copies of your work to head office when you’re done, write down your expenses and we’ll think about reimbursing you but mostly we just want to make sure you’re not over budget. Please fill out this form in triplicate and we’ll get back to you in 6-20 business days about whether your project has moved on to the next level of approvals. And so on.
What this means for Sparkspell is—well, a lot of things, like Lorenz rerouting power from nearby facilities so the boss doesn’t notice the clan going over their allotted usage—but in this particular case it means Lightning Flight’s official records of Sparkspell personnel don’t quite match up to the clan in reality.
The most obvious example is Chandler, who isn’t on the books at all, but Wade is also a pretty good illustration of this. Most of Wade’s activities consist of building weird machines, often alive to an unusual extent, and occasionally dabbling in magic that he doesn’t have the background to understand and turning a friend to stone [cough]. According to the Lightning census, Wade is a mechanic who specializes in prosthetics.
And, okay, that’s not totally inaccurate—it’s what he was hired on for, he still spends some time doing related work—but while it his technically his job, he is usually doing not that. Fang has been quietly filing false work reports for him every audit season since he arrived. The boss demands that you do your job, you know?
Lightning records also demand that your clan have a purpose in mind, usually one pursued in the name of Science. You can change your official purpose, of course—stuff gets finished, or someone gets in a fight and you lose access to an essential resource, whatever—but there’s a lot of forms to fill out and a long turnaround on that. Sparkspell avoids this problem by having an extremely vague purpose, the pursuit of knowledge. There are still some minor issues with being unable to report stolen goods, since not everything can be lawyered away by looting rights, and the nebulousness of this goal puts them under extra scrutiny from the auditors, but mostly it’s fine.
The auditors also present…other problems. Sparkspell doesn’t bring in much money, especially for a clan its size. You don’t have to pay taxes on money you don’t have, of course, but someone up at head office is utterly convinced they’re committing some kind of fraud, and every year the auditors go over the records with a fine-toothed comb looking for things that don’t add up.
Of course, Sparkspell is committing several kinds of fraud, but none of them are financial in nature.
On paper it’s…not like that.
The Stormcatcher is into accountability. You can do whatever unethical experiments you want, but you’d better write it all down and get a permit for that particle accelerator and don’t forget to send copies of your work to head office when you’re done, write down your expenses and we’ll think about reimbursing you but mostly we just want to make sure you’re not over budget. Please fill out this form in triplicate and we’ll get back to you in 6-20 business days about whether your project has moved on to the next level of approvals. And so on.
What this means for Sparkspell is—well, a lot of things, like Lorenz rerouting power from nearby facilities so the boss doesn’t notice the clan going over their allotted usage—but in this particular case it means Lightning Flight’s official records of Sparkspell personnel don’t quite match up to the clan in reality.
The most obvious example is Chandler, who isn’t on the books at all, but Wade is also a pretty good illustration of this. Most of Wade’s activities consist of building weird machines, often alive to an unusual extent, and occasionally dabbling in magic that he doesn’t have the background to understand and turning a friend to stone [cough]. According to the Lightning census, Wade is a mechanic who specializes in prosthetics.
And, okay, that’s not totally inaccurate—it’s what he was hired on for, he still spends some time doing related work—but while it his technically his job, he is usually doing not that. Fang has been quietly filing false work reports for him every audit season since he arrived. The boss demands that you do your job, you know?
Lightning records also demand that your clan have a purpose in mind, usually one pursued in the name of Science. You can change your official purpose, of course—stuff gets finished, or someone gets in a fight and you lose access to an essential resource, whatever—but there’s a lot of forms to fill out and a long turnaround on that. Sparkspell avoids this problem by having an extremely vague purpose, the pursuit of knowledge. There are still some minor issues with being unable to report stolen goods, since not everything can be lawyered away by looting rights, and the nebulousness of this goal puts them under extra scrutiny from the auditors, but mostly it’s fine.
The auditors also present…other problems. Sparkspell doesn’t bring in much money, especially for a clan its size. You don’t have to pay taxes on money you don’t have, of course, but someone up at head office is utterly convinced they’re committing some kind of fraud, and every year the auditors go over the records with a fine-toothed comb looking for things that don’t add up.
Of course, Sparkspell is committing several kinds of fraud, but none of them are financial in nature.
