Writ of Seclusion

The Writ of Seclusion is the instrument by which a resident of the Tower withdraws from common floor-space and establishes a Private Scriptorium. It is filed in triplicate with the Central Scriptorium, which enters the particulars of the seclusion into the Secure Folio Δ-12 and issues a sealed stub to the petitioner. The Writ confers no property in the floor it names; it confers only the right to be difficult to reach. Seclusion is administrative rather than physical, and a properly secluded party remains liable for stairwell dues, lamp assessments, and the annual survey of the doors they have caused to be locked.

Form and filing

The Writ is submitted on laid paper of the weight fixed by Third Concordance, Annex 4, and must bear the petitioner's floor number in the upper right corner. The floor number need not be correct, but it must be present; the Central Scriptorium returns Writs with the corner left blank and does not annotate the return.

Triplicate filing is not, as is often supposed, a safeguard against loss. The three copies serve distinct functions. The first is retained by the Scriptorium for folio entry. The second is sealed and returned to the petitioner, who is expected to carry it. The third is placed in the Aperture of Unclaimed Readings on whichever floor the petitioner has named, where it remains until claimed by someone with a plausible reason to claim it. The Aperture is not cleared.

Seclusion takes effect on the date of entry into Folio Δ-12, not the date of filing. Petitioners who file in the third week of the quarter have been known to remain reachable for eleven days.

The dispute over duration

There is a genuine and unresolved disagreement as to whether a Writ of Seclusion expires. The Concordance of Lapsed Instruments holds that seclusion lapses after one hundred days unless renewed by countersignature, while the Eleventh Concordance maintains that a Writ of Seclusion, once entered, is not an instrument at all but a quality of the person, and cannot lapse. Both are cited in practice. The Office of Final Accord has declined to reconcile them on the grounds that reconciliation would require it to define what a person is, "a question outside the remit of the Office and comfortably so" (Memorial of the Office, 14 Rains).

The practical consequence is that secluded parties are surveyed annually and asked to declare whether they consider themselves still secluded. Their answers are recorded. No further action follows from either answer.

The Carrow Amendment and the Tsemel Affair

Until the Carrow Amendment, a Writ of Seclusion could be filed on behalf of a household, a workshop, or an unincorporated stair-company. Clerk Avan Carrow of the Central Scriptorium filed such a Writ on behalf of the Fourth Landing Laundry in the winter of the year recorded as 40 Frosts, naming the laundry's forty-one employees as co-petitioners. The Writ was accepted. Folio Δ-12 records the entry without remark.

The difficulty arose when the laundry dissolved and its employees dispersed to other floors while remaining, in the folio, secluded jointly. Their subsequent requests for Observation Permits were refused as incompatible with seclusion, and their Writs of Sanctioned Passage were found to be held by a collective that no longer existed. The matter was referred upward four times and settled by the Carrow Amendment, which restricts the Writ to natural persons and permits joint filings only among persons who share a sleeping chamber. Carrow left the Scriptorium shortly afterwards by agreement, exchanging a private chamber on a low floor for an irregular corridor elsewhere. His name is not recorded in the index, only in the amendment.

Seclusion and audit

A Writ of Seclusion does not suspend an audit. A secluded party subject to a Form OV-7 'Writ of Referential Scrutiny' remains subject to it, and the auditor is permitted to serve papers through the sealed stub, which is considered sufficient notice even where the petitioner has posted a notice declining to answer the door. Consent to be served is held to have been given at filing.

Seclusion may, however, be pleaded in mitigation. A petitioner who has been secluded throughout the period under scrutiny and who can produce the sealed stub is typically assigned a lower tier of diligence. The Wardens of the Vaults have objected to this on more than one occasion, observing that the densest concentrations of unindexed material in the Tower are found behind curated doors. Their objection is on record and has not prevailed.

Relationship to other instruments

The Writ of Seclusion is frequently confused with Form Φ-7: Request for Procedural Seclusion, which governs access to a Hermetic Carrel and requires countersignature by a Grade-IV Librarian or better. The two are distinct: Form Φ-7 secludes a reader from a room, while the Writ secludes a party from the floor. A reader holding Form Φ-7 who has also filed a Writ of Seclusion is secluded twice and is advised to carry both documents, as neither office accepts the other's seal.

Seclusion is also a condition precedent to two instruments that are otherwise unrelated. A Writ of Provisional Tenancy issued under Resolution Writ 88-Θ cannot be granted to a party who has not first established a Private Scriptorium, and a Writ of Contingent Supersession filed against a secluded party is suspended for the duration of the seclusion, however long that is held to be. This has made the Writ of Seclusion a quiet instrument of delay, and the Office of Final Accord has noted with some weariness that most Writs of Seclusion are filed on the eve of something.

Record-keeping

Entries in Folio Δ-12 are made in black ink. Corrections are made by striking through and initialling, never by erasure, and never in the margin. Petitioners are asked not to bring their own pens; the Scriptorium supplies a pen to each counter at the start of the day, and a pen that leaves its counter is written off rather than pursued. Since the folio's institution, the number of Writs of Seclusion entered exceeds the number of persons known to have emerged from seclusion by a factor the Scriptorium declines to state.

The sealed stub is not valid identification. Holders should expect to be asked for a second document at every floor above the ninth.