Form D 7 Petition for Provisional Caste Assumption

Form D-7 is the primary documentary instrument by which an individual within the Tower initiates the Assumption of Merit, the formal administrative procedure for conditional elevation into a higher caste. First sealed under the authority of the Obsidian Decree and later amended by the Third Concordance, the form is filed at the precinct of the Logic-Sifters and must precede any petition for caste council review. Its current recension is the Ninth Scriptory Edition, dated Floor 4471-A, Winter of the Long Reckoning (Year 881 of the Closed Calendars).

Origins and Early Recensions

The earliest surviving copy of Form D-7 is held in the Scriptorium of Minor Elevations, stamped by the Clerk of Provisional Seals whose name is recorded only as Habeth-9. Habeth-9 is noted in the marginalia of the Manual of Final Closures to have objected, on procedural grounds, to the form's original triplicate requirement, arguing that "a petition which requires three copies of itself is a petition which doubts its own existence" (Annex Alpha of Form Noc 4a Filing Instructions, Marginal Note 12). The objection was overruled by the Obsidian Guard Caste on the grounds that doubt is a necessary solvent in matters of caste. Subsequent recensions reduced the requirement to a single folio with two attached witness seals.

By the Fourth Recension, the form had acquired Section 4, concerning the "Duration of Provisional State," which remains the most contested portion of the document. The Provisional Continuation office maintains that Section 4 implicitly permits indefinite extension through the filing of Form 44-Δ, whereas the Caste Attrition bureau holds that Section 4 expires automatically at the next concordant amendment.

Structure of the Document

Form D-7 comprises eleven sections, of which the following are routinely completed:

• Section 1: Petitioner's Floor and Caste of Origin
• Section 2: Proposed Caste of Assumption
• Section 3: Sponsor's Seal (required from a member of the target caste)
• Section 4: Duration of Provisional State
• Section 7: Declaration of Non-Contradiction with Existing Concordances

Sections 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11 are reserved for annotations by the reviewing caste council and are traditionally left blank by the petitioner. The Form P 112 7 is frequently attached as supplementary evidence of prior service, though the Menial Caste has disputed whether such attachment is permitted where the petitioner originates below Floor 2000.

Procedure and Associated Filings

The chain of petition initiation begins with obtaining a Form PA-1: Application for Petition Authorization, created as a result of the approval of the Petition for the Authorization to Petition. Only after PA-1 is sealed may Form D-7 be submitted. The Spiral-to-Aperture markings on the form's reverse must align with the petitioner's current floor aperture; misalignment of more than three spiral degrees invalidates the filing, as ruled in the dispute of Clerk Veth-2 of Floor 3390 (Form RV-9, Ruling Appendix C).

Upon acceptance, the petition enters the Assumption of Merit process detailed in Annex Delta of the Obsidian Decree, requiring unanimous caste council vote and Archon approval. The Personnel Coefficient metric for Caste Attrition is based on the "authorized complement" for a caste, as last amended by Assumptions of Merit, making the approval of a single Form D-7 a matter of archive-wide arithmetic.

"No petition for provisional caste assumption shall be counted against the authorized complement until the third winter of its provisional term, save where the petitioner has cause to murmur in the Whispering Stain."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4

Disputed Interpretations

A standing scholarly disagreement concerns whether Form D-7 may be filed by a member of the Un-Caste. The Petition for Whispering Severance office contends that the Un-Caste exists outside the concordant structure and therefore cannot assume what it does not hold. The Provisional Maps of the Lower Reaches cartographers counter that all floors are within the Tower and thus all persons are categorizable, citing the Petition of Temporary Wayfinding as precedent for nominal inclusion. The Form JOP-1 clerks have declined to adjudicate, noting only that "the form does not ask the question, and the form is therefore correct" (Form NOC-4a, Section 2, Subsection Omega).

The Petition Form OVA-7D office has additionally argued that a Volitional Name petition must precede any D-7 where the petitioner's name was assigned by the Obsidian Guard Caste under Concordance 0, a position the Guard rejects as redundant.

Incidents of Note

In the Winter of Year 904, a Form D-7 filed by Curator of Silence Mellen-14 was discovered to have been stamped with a seal belonging to the Form 44-U office in error. The resulting provisional elevation stood for nineteen winters before correction via Form N-7R, the form used to petition for a Retrospective Negation. Mellen-14 was recorded as having performed the duties of the higher caste without complaint and was subsequently included among the twelve Curators of Silence elevated by the Third Concordance to the Militant Caste during the Incident of the Whispering Stain.

A separate matter, the Petition for Expansionary Review, was once misfiled as a Form D-7 on Floor 6122, causing a temporary reassignment of the entire western stairwell to the Provisional Continuation office. Visitors to that floor are advised that the stairwell remains under nominal review and should not be ascended without a written pass from the floor's Logic-Sifter.

The current stock of Form D-7 is held in the vaults of Floor 4471-A, where it is recopied every seventh winter to prevent the ink from achieving sentience under the Manual of Final Closures, Article 9.