I have to admit that despite all the drama last year, Dyla Cormick is someone with whom I mesh very well, thus the reason she and I decided to be roommates this semester.

Well, we definitely share one thing in common: our contempt toward Peter Crane. We knew, along with half of the Society Membership, that he would be quite an incompetent individual as a Dungeonmaster, especially when he and Kara Martins went on that charismatic platform against Ceri Mains and the Darkfire Community, and then falsely accusing random Members of willfully assisting her in hijacking the Arturian Realm. Kara did most of the talking but Peter Crane was a supporter, not just an enabler.

So why did slightly more than half of the Caucus vote for him? Simple: the budget.

For roughly the last two decades, ever since Jon Beyon and his console model, the Third Level Society, under every successive Dungeonmaster, had been taking on project after project. That included building up the Interglobal Arturian Void and the many planets, constructing renovations on Society venues like the Chamber and the Society Library, and more recently building the "block realms," separate realms accessible through portals on certain worlds and constructed by Contributors for individuals not content with the Arturian Realm and wishing to rule through their avatars as gods over them.

These "block realm" projects, and all the other aforementioned projects cost money, of course. And admittedly, up to this point, though revenue versus expenditure had always been a concern, there was no real alarm raised or serious action taken. And during the 1281-82 school year, we overran our budget by about 17 percent. Luckily, we had reserves to float our finances, but even I agree that this was a problem.

And none of the Dungeonmasters, or Dungeonmaster candidates, made this an urgent priority along with Contributor project requests, which all hoped would ultimately draw in more revenue to balance everything out on its own.

Peter Crane was the first outspoken Society Member to highlight this issue.

That was how he won majority of Member voters. He made it very clear that we were operating on a budget deficit with more projects on the pipeline, the most expensive of which being a venue for avatar dueling. Peter made a very clear goal, in fact using a spreadsheet, to balance the Society budget by eliminating unnecessary expenses. He vowed to ax the expensive projects and then go further by doing a thorough inquiry on the budget to find and eliminate other sources of wasteful spending.

The problem I and half of the Caucus saw with his agenda was that, past the unnecessary projects mentioned, Peter did not mention concrete examples of wasteful spending sources, nor were there examples of his solutions. But with all the tense politics happening both inside and outside the Society, and also the fact that Peter is actually a finance major, just enough Members voted for Peter to gain the Dungeonmaster position.

Moreover, while the duel between Kara and Dyla last year was quite the source of amusement, it did earn both of them a reputation for being emotionally unstable. And against the relatively dry and objective personality of Peter Crane, Dyla stood no chance.

So now Peter Crane is the Third Level Society Dungeonmaster.

A lot of my friends, who hated Peter Crane last year, have come to accept the loss and have resolved that "maybe Peter will make a decent Dungeonmaster if we give him the chance." But I did not let down my wariness. Last month, he had the Bookkeeper, John Edwards, pull every employee record for every Administrator and Contributor and rank each one from highest rate of pay to lowest. At the top stood Tom Rohrbaugh, Administrator for the Galacian Realm, the Terraworld Plane, on Arturia proper. Peter mentioned at a small meeting that he would do the ranking; and I know now that Tom was the highest paid because of what Peter did next. He accused Tom of having pulled ropes in the past to get higher pay and also to do favors for Ceri Mains.

Per the motions of the Bookkeeper, the Caucus had to meet this week. But they voted Rohrbaugh innocent. So Peter's agenda there was a failure.

That is all and well because Tom Rohrbaugh is a very good Administrator and a very good person. It's only his brother, Richard Rohrbaugh, that I have a problem with. There's nothing wrong with Richard. In fact, he joined the Legalize Darkfire Movement long before Tom did. But Richard is quite inspired by Dyla and me; in fact, excessively so.

I cross my fingers and hope that it's only the common interests that spark the inspiration and not something else.

***

That is the sum of politics inside the Third Level Society. There is, of course, the situation outside the Society, primarily the strike.

Kara Martins mentioned it. And though everyone sees her as charismatic and unstable, what she said did contain a grain of truth.

So there is this franchise known as the Global Academy of North Circlaria. They have been acquiring ownership of numerous schools across various nations throughout the Circlarian Realm for quite a few years now. And since the 1270s, they have been acquiring schools here in Middle Remikra. Though Cabotton University has not been directly acquired by the Global Academy, for the University Constitution does not permit that sort of thing, it did sign a contract with the Global Academy where they hired a figure from that organization to preside over Cabotton University as a Provost-In-Lieu of the Global Academy. We pay his salary, and he writes statements for everything happening in the University from the curriculum to budget reconciliations. Though these statements, and the Provost-In-Lieu, hold no real power over Cabotton University, the Global Academy will award special Global Academy Certificates in addendum to University degrees so that Cabotton University graduates have advantage in employment in the real world. That is, the Global Academy will do this if the University and its democratic institutions fulfill the statements issued by the Provost-In-Lieu. For University leadership there is incentive because those with such degrees, or Global Academy degrees from the "directly-acquired" universities are put on a special Federal Registry that employers must consult first and give unconditional job offers to without screenings or interviews, in accordance to a federal law passed in 1276. When hired, these graduates will get higher pay, but will also see a portion of paid salary go back to Cabotton University and a portion go back to the Global Academy.

Another advantage was for the faculty, who were promised a minimum of a 7.5 pay increase each year; and that has been implemented since Cabotton University entered this agreement shortly after that federal law was signed. However, every three years or so, the Global Academy leadership has been implementing a 25 percent pay cut, stating that this was due to "economic concerns and that the Academy will seek to recover losses in pay in due time." That promise, though, was never delivered. And this has been happening repeatedly so that by the time Cabotton entered its arrangement, numerous faculty across numerous Circlarian Schools had grown frustrated.

With each acquisition came a call from the United Educators of Circlaria, UEC, to have the faculty at each school acquired collaborate and form a union, and sign to become a chapter of this labor organization. Ninety percent of schools across Circlaria have some sort of affiliation with the Global Academy, and about ninety-five percent of those schools have each a UEC chapter.

By the way, Cabotton University also has a UEC chapter.

Last summer, shortly before the Ceri Mains incident. An assembly of UEC representatives met in the Global Academy Lobby in Cenofan, and brought the Global Academy Board of Trustees to a negotiation, during which UEC Leader Roger Kline presented the pay cut issue, along with a list of numerous other grievances. These talks went very poorly, as the Board was quite stubborn, especially with the faculty pay. At the end, one Trustee was reported to have said, "We are willing to risk a general strike if it means defending the integrity of Principle Five."

Principle Five is a clause in the Global Academy's little Constitution that dictates the almost absolute power of the Trustees over faculty pay. When the Trustee said what he said, Roger reportedly snapped his book shut, said, "So be it" and exited the chamber.

So there is a real possibility of a general strike, that is, a coordinated general strike carried out by every UEC chapter across every Global Academy school across Circlaria. The Congress of Circlaria Judiciary ruled surprisingly that even UEC chapters in independently-affiliated schools, of which Cabotton University is one by the way, had a right to bargain with Global Academy leadership.

In fact, they said that "any UEC chapter in any organization affiliated with the Global Academy" had such bargaining rights. That includes the Third Level Society, which recently had its faculty union join as a UEC chapter. And they definitely had their own list of grievances against Peter Crane as well as the Academy.

News of the possibility of the general strike was not as high of a concern last year as it is now, thanks in part to the Weyne-North feud and the Ceri Mains incident. But now with no progress made in talks with the Global Academy since then, the Flagstaff is writing more and more articles on "if there is a general strike." It's being discussed more and more among us, especially at the Slack.

In fact, Dyla and I have planned for such a thing, promising to completely disengage from the Arturian Realm and help the striking educators.

Meanwhile, Peter Crane to this day denies that there will ever be a strike. I think he is completely removed from reality in that regard. True that he cared about the Society budget, but he gives off an impression of being removed from the ninety-nine percent of the outside world. After all, both of his parents are bankers and have indoctrinated him into pursuing the same lucrative vocation despite not feeling passionate about it. Or so that was what Kara Martins has been saying. I hear that she and Peter have broken up.

Nevertheless, Peter Crane keeps making this vague statement: "In the unlikely event that we strike, I will ensure as a Dungeonmaster that nothing with the Third Level Society will be disrupted." Of course, he refuses to answer what approach he would take. But based on his first month as the Dungeonmaster, I can venture a guess.