- High Command
- Pressure Groups
- Speculation
- M. Division
- Containment
- The Quills
- The Claws
- Weird Science
- War Threads
Organization
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The Board's organisation is anarchic, to say the least. Attempting to govern the Board is roughly on a par with herding cats - a very apt metaphor, considering the universally-headstrong qualities typical of the average Boardie ensures, like said felines, that they only obey any commands they feel like and complain loudly if asked to move. Even the modern era, with its drive towards efficiency and speed, falls afoul of this tendency. In an effort to bring order out of such chaos, the Board organises itself into dozens of different departments, each concerned with a single discipline. Less solid than it sounds, their areas of responsibility can range from concrete, logistical concepts, like the Armoury or Operations, to more "fuzzy" areas such as Speculation and Weird Science. At the stranger ends of the scale the departments can be almost philosophical or ethereal, like Reality Control, Fortean Zoology's weird and wacky bioscience projects, or Infernal Intelligence's dark methods of obtaining useable data on the foe that are frankly best left to the imagination. Aside from the departments is the far older method of deference to one's elders. Almost tribal in nature, Boardies exposed to the reality-warping nature of their brethren over long-term periods can quietly amass quite staggering power, usually attached to experienced wisdom in how to use it. Newbies quickly spot such icons and often form ambitious cliques around them, seeking to hitch their wagons to a proverbial star...and an oldbie can be sure of a steady stream of responsibilities and projects to assign to such underlings, along with the influence to ensure their talents are recognised. Deference by Boardies to a department or an elder is a matter of pragmatism more than anything else - when the Seven-Headed Gnawer of Ulm is attempting to bite your arm off, now is not the time to prove how independent you are by ignoring the expert's instructions. Oldbies sardonically quip that natural selection ensures these shaky chains of command stay intact, while cronyism is generally held in check by the suspicious, bloody-minded nature of the Boardies around and above a candidate for promotion, who love to pass ambitious aspirers tests or gruelling training sessions to ensure they're up to further responsibilities. Rising the ladder of rank can thus be quite hard and daunting for a newcomer. The result, which Boardies are fiercely proud of, tends to be loosely-held-together strata of small cliques, led by those who have spectacularly demonstrated their skills in a particular area. It's a flimsy system, and FLEET view it with extreme suspicion, but no other approach has ever sat quite right with these ever-independent Boardies, trained to question the world around them as much as possible. |