Guidelines from Redoubt

A metric fuckton of people have asked on here about the kind of requirements Redoubt places upon me as an operative or whatever. I can’t really tell you all of them because they came in a book that’s about the size of the Starr Report. I didn’t read the entire thing because I have to work night shift too at the diner on top of all this.

I’ll do my best to summarize as necessary but it’s all really complicated and even now, Smirk has to explain stuff to me again and again. She’s pretty fucking patient, which is good. I guess I can update this page just like all pages with new information as I get it. Anyways, here’s what’s going on with that…

My Job Description and Duties???

• Preventing the consolidation of magic in the hands of the powerful is the primary objective of Redoubt. C’mon. You have to agree with this one. Imagine if that moron who owns the bird site got magical powers. Imagine if L. Ron. Hubbard had been able to cast spells. It’d have been terrible. They explained this in long, lingering detail how magic can (and has) been abused by bad actors and people seeking power above all else. So we have to stop that at all costs.
• Redoubt also seeks to prevent the widespread proliferation of magical abilities. Apparently according to Smirk it’s a horrible idea for more than a small percentage of people to ever know magic exists, let alone be able to use it. She doesn’t want this shit to turn into some kind of giant Harry Potter wizarding world bullshit, and neither does Redoubt. That hasn’t happened yet in human history, and Redoubt wants to keep it that way.
• This includes preventing the forging of new magical currents by sorcerers who want to do things their own way. Sorcery is a complicated topic. Of course new doorways to the spirit world get opened sometimes. Every magical current began somewhere as the work of sorcerer, eventually getting passed on to their mage students. But nowadays? Redoubt doesn’t like that happening too much without their approval. I haven’t met a sorcerer yet, but we’ll see.
• It also includes obfuscating the public awareness of magic as it actually exists. It’s possible I guess that if people find out these things exist, they’d panic en masse or something and fuck shit up, I don’t know. Or maybe everyone’s going to want a piece of the pie and then we’d have a situation, again, with “ubiquitous” magic, which Smirk (well, Redoubt in general) wants to avoid…
• I got to intervene in situations where people are subject to overt harm because of magic. This doesn’t mean I have to jump in there (necessarily) when someone breaks the law, and plenty of times breaking the law with magic is perfectly okay. But screwing people over (in big, ostentatious ways) is not, I guess. I generally go by what Smirk says here, because I struggle to make it through all the papers and clarifying regulations they gave me.

Regulations I (Kinda) Follow-ish

• I have to avoid mixing magic with technology as much as humanly possibly. Technically, all human inventions count as technology, but Smirk says to try to avoid enchanting anything made much longer after the Millennium, and I’ll be fine. A dot matrix printer is acceptable; I guess a Nokia is pushing it? I try to be careful because I don’t want to get written up or anything. I guess this isn’t the kind of thing people disappear and get “kicked upstairs” over, but still.
• Without authorization from my immediate superior (Smirk herself), I’m not supposed to acknowledge the existence of magic to any party who approaches me, regardless of what they say or do. I have to hide all of my tools and the notebooks where I record (in code) what I’m learning. I can’t mention this to Dwayne, of course. I’ve technically broken this rule by making this site. Neocities itself seems like an odd blind spot for Redoubt, so hopefully things will be okay…
• Along with that, obviously, I can’t do anything actually fun or interesting with magic, as far as I can tell. In other words, I’m not supposed to do anything that will draw a bunch of attention to myself or the situations, but then again, they’ve hardly taught me anything that would make that possible anyways. I suspect that was by design because I’ve seen many freelance (non-Redoubt) mages in this area do some cool shit. Perhaps soon I’ll be doing (quiet) cool shit, but that depends on Smirk teaching me.
• A huge amount of what I do involves fucking with people’s heads in one way or another. There’s a bunch of rules I had to read about that, and I am keeping track of them, but they amount to only going as far as necessary, not putting ignorant people in danger, and avoiding freaking anyone out too badly. I kind of worry this might just be an optics thing. Do they really want to keep people safe, or just keep the whole thing under wraps?
• Sure, magic can be shared. I could, in theory, give you magical powers if we met up in person and I did a small rite to pass my current on to you. But uhh… according to Redoubt, I’m not permitted to enchant anyone else without the direct permission of my superior (Smirk, lol). I know how to do it. It’s actually ridiculously simple like some kind of hat trick or game, but I’m positive if I went that far I’d end up in trouble.

Can you really fucking blame me for struggling to keep track of some of this? The stuff I mentioned above is only a small part of it. Like I said, they gave me pages and pages of rules. A lot of it is ultimately going to be “at my ethical discretion” and there was even a seminar I had to take about how Redoubt wants all operatives to develop strong discernment or something. I do my best when I’m working alone. To be honest, at this point I just do what Smirk tells me and hope for the best most of the time, though…