The Citizen’s Office

While “citizen” is a general term that refers to the denizens of the protectorate, the Citizen’s Office is also one of the major pillars of Protectorate society. High ranking officials within the office are titled as Third Citizen or Second Citizen. The head of the office is the First Citizen, and this individual is the foremost in a triumvirate leadership alongside the First Sentinel and First Architect.

There are many roles and functions within the Citizen’s Office, and joining the office is a routine job with a basic application process. The Office is a thorough bureaucracy with extensive power, and is involved in many aspects of Protectorate life.

Functions of the Citizen’s Office

The office handles several matters of license and ownership, certification for work related to heavy machinery, records of education, marriage certificates, and childbirth approval. The office also handles medical records, birth, death, and various complaints. Senior officials can be asked to resolve disputes or perform counseling. Finally, the office handles the collection of potentia dues, sending collectors to each home every month to gather potentia from the people of the Protectorate.

The government’s broad involvement also pertains to matters of news and propaganda. The Citizen’s office compiles and publishes articles about sport and games, class graduations, obituaries, and military victories over the monsters outside the wall. High ranking officials are often interviewed to share statements of their inspiration and adoration towards the community and the walls. Taking full advantage of the printing press, the Protectorate has state sponsored pulp fiction novels that satiate the needs the average citizen might have for juicy, horrifying news of the outside world. They usually feature the adventures of a brave Sentinel who has dared to go beyond the wall, assisted by his (or her) noble but savage outsider companion.

A Third Citizen manages a branch within an office, and has an additional title of function regarding their branch. A Third Citizen Coordinator is a counselor or is charged with tasks related to public affairs and communications. A Third Citizen Physician would be in charge of several less experienced doctors. A Third Citizen General is in charge of the office itself. Second Citizens handle coordination between offices within regions of the Protectorate, and offer counsel to the First Citizen for matters of great import.

Culture and Attitudes

The Citizen’s Office is an unavoidable aspect of everyone’s life. Most try to be chipper about it, but paperwork is essentially dull, so a dreary attitude is unavoidable. Advancement within the office is closely related to customer interactions, so many clerks endure the stress of forcing a smile. Many prefer clerical work to the toil of manufacturing, so work at the Citizen’s office is seen as privileged, and cushy. Educated citizens who fall short of becoming an Architect often aim for the Citizen’s Office as a second choice.

Acclimation to formality carries through in a number of trends in Protectorate culture. People of the Protectorate have distinct formal and informal language. To those except very close friends and significant others, language is very formal and constantly includes reminders of everyone doing their part for the greater good. With close friends and significant others, the reminders of doing their part are dropped (as it is safely assumed) and language takes on a more informal and casual tone. With those who are not part of the Protectorate, spoken and unspoken language become even more formal.

They tend not to use contractions while speaking. Contractions are often seen as lazy shortcuts, when communication should be precise.

Journalism in the Protectorate is a difficult but valued task. Despite an intense pressure to produce uplifting or entertaining stories, life in the Protectorate is fairly mundane. Sentinels are celebrated for victory, but the true harshness of combat is withheld. Architects profess loyalty to an eerie degree, and tend to demonstrate power beyond the norm. Tales from outside the wall are employed as needed to maintain appropriate wariness. Journalism often entails the generation of propagandist media in the Protectorate’s colors of blue, white, and dark grey.