Members of the Brotherhood,

The Dark Council has decided to implement a number of fees and fines to various admin-related actions. The reason for this is three-fold:

• First, we feel this better reflects the feudal nature of the Fictional Brotherhood. Since the introduction of the possessions system, the Brotherhood has fully funded all credit awards to members and clans, effectively paying 100% of the cost of all items purchased. That is unsustainable, as the Brotherhood is now over a billion credits in debt. This new fee system will help right the ship and secure the long term financial health of the Brotherhood and its Clans.
• Second, we feel it is important to improve credit flow within the Possessions system. It has come to our attention that a lot of credits remain unused in both Member and Clan accounts. Introducing more natural credit sinks will act as a natural incentive for members to do (as our dear Master at Arms so elaborately puts it) more of the Things.
• Finally, we feel this better reflects the administrative burden that is put on the various staff members, and serves as an incentive for members to take on more administration-related staff positions.

Starting tomorrow, the following list will be implemented to the site one by one whenever James gets to them:

• Various dossier related requests (Name, Order, Tradition and Clan changes) will incur a 100 credit fee when submitted. 50 of those credits will be transferred to the person approving or remanding said request (if any), the rest will flow back into the system. Members below the rank of JM1 are exempt from this.
• Various character-related actions (submitting a character sheet or custom item aspect) will incur a 200 credit fee when submitted plus 50 credits for each Custom CS Aspect, of which half will go to the approving/remanding member. Withdrawing a submitted sheet before approval will only refund 50% of the fee. Members that do not yet have the “Remember the Name” trophy are exempt from the CS submission fee.
• Submitting a Clan Title request will incur a fee of 1 million credits taken from the submitting Clan’s account. Members who lose their Clan Titles by transferring to another Clan will have to repay 50% of that cost. Their new Clan may choose to lend them the funds to do so at a reasonable rate of interest.
• Selling back used Possessions items to a store will now return 95% of the original price, rather than the full amount. We’re looking into ways to vary that percentage based on Item Type, as some items obviously decrease in value faster once used, as well as determining the reduction based on the times an item has been sold and re-sold.
• Removing items from slots now have a chance of ‘damaging’ either item, reducing its value by a random amount.
• We will be looking into adding a tuition fee to all Shadow Academy degrees higher than Pundit
• For all gaming submissions, any number of clusters over the daily cap will incur a charge of two credits per CF and one credit per CE over the daily cap.
• Members may purchase a one time GMRG Rank Up boost for one rank in the GMRG. This boost will cost 250,000 credits.
• Clans will be able to “rent” summit position slots to supplement their regular summit (one CON, one PCON, one QUA and one AED per House) for the low price of 25,000 credits per week, plus a modifier for the “value” of the rented position. The relative position values will be determined by the Master at Arms. Salary for the rented slots will also be paid out of the Clan’s accounts.
• Whenever the MAA office needs to reopen a competition for any reason, a fine of 50 credits per competition participant will be applied to each organizer, and will be distributed amongst the MAA staff.
• Competitions that are not graded within the allotted time frame will cause a 50 credit fine per competition participant to be applied to each organizer, to be distributed to the MAA staff and the office that takes over the grading.
• Members charged by the CoJ will need to pay the Left hand of Justice for defending them. Fees will vary based on the charges and will be determined in the coming weeks.
• Members will be able to purchase Artifact-rarity items directly from the Regent for a 750,000 credit fee.
• And finally, starting now, placing a comment on a news item or report will now cost 100 credits. The first comment on any news item or report will incur an additional 500 credit fee, with another 500 credit penalty if that comment contains the word “first”.

In the interest of fairness, we will be retroactively applying the above fees for the time-frame between implementation of Possessions and the present, insofar we can reconstruct the events from sources such as dossier histories, archived character sheets, etc. Members that will end up with a negative balance due to this can either sell some items, contact the Regent for a personalized payment plan, and/or take on one of those administrative staff positions to get back into the positive numbers.