Greybriar
Directorate of Standards

Particular Service · No. I
Form GB/5-2 · supersedes GB/5-1

Field Reference · Second Edition

The Greybriar Codex

On the classification, handling and recovery of persons of Charism.

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Standing issue to all Sections on qualification. This copy is registered against the holder’s name. It does not leave a Greybriar building. It is surrendered on transfer, posting or discharge, and its loss is reportable within twelve hours.

Standing Instruction

How this handbook is to be used

This handbook states what the Service is able to measure, what an officer is permitted to do with the measurement, and what the body charges for the work. It is a reference. It is not an explanation.

It does not say what a Charism is. That question has been open for the whole life of this Service and no officer is required to answer it in order to do the job. Officers who find this unsatisfactory are directed to Section Four, who will also decline to answer with more technical precision.

Terminology · mandatory in writing

CharismThe formal noun. Used in this handbook and in all reporting. Subject / APPaper terms for a person of Charism. AP: anomalous perception, retained from the 1974 forms. ExpressionOne class a subject can perform. A subject with one is a pure; with several, a mixed. Not to be usedTalent, bleeder, candle, spook, turn, trick. These are market and street words. They will not appear in a report.

Contents

§1The Instrument — what is measured, and how it is written down §2The Register — the five layers and the classes recognised on the forms §3Draw and the Clock — rates, grips, constructs, dampening §4Recovery — the sleep standard and approved induction §5Frame Assessment — the worksheet for a subject with more than one expression AAnnex A — specimen grading card BAmendment record

§1

The Instrument

Three numbers describe a subject. One is taken and trusted for life. The second annually. The third cannot be taken at all and is rated by an instructor’s opinion.

Measure	What it is	Trial	EXAMPLE
THROUGHPUT	Peak draw. How hard the subject pulls in one second. Congenital and fixed; it does not move in a lifetime. Logarithmic, 1 to 10, recorded per class.	One max-draw trial. Stamped once. Not revised on appeal.	TK-7
Capacity	The tank. Total minutes of the subject, at working pace, before the floor. Trainable over years in the way an aerobic base is trainable.	Timed sustained hold. Retested annually, and after any event in which the subject worked past the floor.	Cap 4:00
EFFICIENCY	Effect obtained per minute spent. What a working does not use, it spills, and spilled draw is what another subject feels. The efficient subject spends less and shows less. Master-grade work reads at a fraction of its true size, or not at all	None exists. Instructor-rated per class: Untrained · Qualified · Expert · Master.	Prof: Master

1.3 Throughput is the only number a posting board reads. Officers should understand that it measures the size of the engine and nothing else. A Grade 4 of long training will out-work a Grade 8 of none, and has. 1.4 Where no approved trial exists, no grade is issued. The column is struck through and the subject is carried under the nearest class for which a trial does exist. Ungraded is not ungifted, and an officer who reads it that way has misread the form. 1.5 Graders are licensed and their licences are numbered. Every graded lot carries the number of the officer who graded it. A number on a card outside Service custody is a matter for Section Three.

1.4 is the whole problem in one paragraph and they wrote it like a filing rule. There is no column for what Jo does.

§2

The Register

Classes are grouped by what they reach, shallow to deep. Depth is not difficulty. Depth is how much of a person’s consent the work requires, and the two have always been the same chart.

Layer	Class	Code	The verb
Matter force — no yes to take	Thrower/Telekinesis	TK	To move by mind.
Signal the channel and its width	Linker/Telepath	TP	To read and to send.
	Amplifier	AM	To raise another’s peak draw. Never the tank.
	Suppressor	SP	To clamp it. The same instrument, turned down.
Mind thought, want, motion	Gleaner	GL	To read what remains. Subject to the decay window.
	Phantom	PH	To show the false.
	Charmer	CH	To rewrite wanting. Takes the will, leaves the body.
	Controller	CN	To seize the motor. Takes the body, leaves the will.
Self does not refill	No class carried. No approved trial exists.
Fuel the giving and the taking	Siphon	SI	To drain another’s reserve into one’s own.
Fuel the giving and the taking	withheld	—	Entered by amendment. not for general issue

2.1 Concealment is a proficiency, not a class. Nobody is born concealing. It is signal-craft, trained, and it carries no grade because there is nothing congenital in it to measure. 2.2 Concealment hides the true; Phantom shows the false. The first fails to a watcher’s attention. The second fails to signature-sight, because a lie has no mind behind it. 2.3 Harvester is not a class and will not be graded. It is CRIME CODE 9. Suspected instances are reported to Section One directly and carry with it a death sentence.

§3

Draw and the Clock

The clock is the world’s time. The tank is yours.

Doctrine · learned verbatim before first posting

The naming rule. In writing, a subject’s reserve is always in a container — in the tank, of himself — and world time always wears clock-clothes — on the clock, in the window, at 21:46. Reports that mix the two are returned unread. The rule exists because officers who confuse their own minutes with the operation’s minutes die of the confusion.

Draw	Sustains for	Standing use
Thread	Days	Standing links, watch, long surveillance. Cheap enough to forget you are paying.
Working	Hours	The baseline unit of fieldwork. Capacity is measured against it and is standard time.
Flood	Minutes. Always minutes.	Authorised for the saving of life. The officer present notes the time it opened. This is not optional.

Grips

One imposition of will on one thing that has a tendency of its own. Priced by count, by depth, and by whether the thing is moving. Grips are dropped one at a time, and an officer under load will drop them in an order — know your own order before you need it.

Constructs

Built things: wall, sheet, lid, channel, cage, lattice. One slot, higher rate, and some require build time. Anything large anchors the caster in place. Constructs do not degrade. They fail all at once, and the officer inside one should plan on that basis.

Dampening. Service dampening material multiplies the price of anything worked through it by five. It does not reduce what a subject can do; it reduces how long they can afford to do it. Training rooms are dampened as standard, which is why the room always feels harder than the field and why officers posted from the Academy overestimate themselves in their first month.

§4

Recovery

Minutes to spend it. Nights to buy it back.

4.1 Deep sleep only, one minute for one. A natural night yields ninety to a hundred and twenty deep minutes. A drained four-hour tank is therefore two to three nights dark. 4.2 There is no refill in the field. Out is out. Officers will plan the operation against the tank they walked in with. 4.3 Conditions modify the rate. Cold, hunger and sleeplessness slow recovery. Warmth, food and the reasonable belief that one is safe accelerate it. It follows that a safehouse kitchen is refuelling infrastructure and is to be resourced as such. 4.4 The issued glucose drink is crash cover. It softens the edge of an ordinary hard day. It is not fuel, it has never been fuel, and the Directorate is tired of writing this down.

      The Hush · approved inductionHolding-family craft
    

A trained induction that drops a mind straight into slow-wave sleep. Ten minutes of hush returns ten minutes of tank; ten minutes of ordinary rest returns nothing. This is the only sanctioned method of recovering reserve inside an operational window.

RequiresSafety, and the sleeper’s consent. An unguarded mind may be hushed without it; see 5.6. CostsTwo to three minutes of the inducer’s own reserve per ten returned. WarningThe sleeper is down and defenceless for the duration. A guard is posted. Without exception.

5.6 — Forced sleep. The same craft applied without consent is sedation without a drug. It is governed by standing order nine and is not taught at the Academy.

§5 · Worksheet

Frame Assessment

A subject with several expressions does not have several gifts. They have one frame that reaches more than one layer. Complete this worksheet before assigning any class beyond the first.

Name the frame as a gesture — a noun that is doing something. Hands that grip. A needle that threads. Pipes that carry. A voice that warms. An ear that listens.

Test each class against it. Can that gesture perform this verb without becoming a different gesture? Record yes or no beside every class on the register.

The assessment is every yes. Not what the subject has done. What the frame permits.

Oppositions — police these

Radiating ↔ listening. Charm never with Gleaning.

Opening ↔ clamping. Amplification never with Suppression.

Fabricating ↔ witnessing. Phantom never with Gleaning.

Phantom with Charm is legal and is the most dangerous combination on this register. Assessors finding it will report before the subject leaves the building.

Reach

A SingleA frame with one reach. A MixedA frame with a long reach. —A frame that performs every verb on the register. No recorded instance. The tier is retained on the form because the Directorate has not agreed to remove it.

Annex A

Specimen Grading Card

Reproduced for instruction. The card below records no living person and is not a record. Officers will note the struck column: it is the ordinary appearance of a class for which the Service holds no trial, and it is not an error.

      Greybriar · Subject Grading Card · GB/5-2aSpecimen
    

        SubjectJO BYRNE
        File—— / ——
        Framehands — to grip a thing, a lead, a coming-apart self
      

Class	Grade	Proficiency	Grader lic.
Linker/Telepath	TP-9	Expert	L-0442
Thrower	TK-8	Expert	L-0442
—————————	NO APPROVED TRIAL — COLUMN STRUCK PER §1.4

        Capacity4:00 · retest due
        Standing noteself-report runs optimistic
      

Annex B

Amendment Record

This is a controlled document. Holders will enter each amendment on receipt and initial the entry. A copy whose record is incomplete is not a valid copy and will not be accepted at inspection.

No.	Date	Effect	Initials
01	—	§2 — Harvester is no longer a supported class. But what is it?	NR
02	—	§2 — Concealment reclassified from class to proficiency. Existing grades void.	NR
03	—	entry withheld from general issue — see standing order nine	—

The clock is the world’s time. The tank is yours.

Minutes to spend it, nights to buy it back.

Greybriar Codex · Particular Service No. I · Form GB/5-2 · Second Edition
Directorate of Standards, Section Five · Issued to all Sections on qualification
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