Isn't being in the army, even a magic army, the very definition of "regular work for a wage"?

"Regular" has the same etymology as "rule". And what's a military about if not following rules and enforcing the rule of their ruler?

As for the wage part... "Soldier" etymologically means "paid", it comes from the name of a coin in the Roman empire, the "solidus".

If you call Mr. Kimberly a 'Rent Seeker' your city gets buried in trauma-slime.

Its a little bad, that its the maniac in charge of training the Royal Guard, who are the one that made the reasonable suggest "add a bit of carrot" >.<

Mr. Kimberly is too familiar with we-won't-give-you-a-raise-this-year pizza parties to recognise this as anything but the exploitation that it really is.

Oh, those Elite Peon seem to be few. I guess, as I assume their housing would be more spacious.

My gut reaction? Less like a wage more like "gold star sticker" to some students. Obviously, to me, yet another lever to pull some students, like BBs, into cooperation.

If students get a wage of some kind by default, I presume peon's will be lower, Elite Peon would be higher that that, because they are soooo accomodating to them, and Upper Ring classes higher yet. Incentives and all.
I mean maybe elites agreed on basis on some more privileges, like "bribes".

Will Kimberly get eventually demoted to peon because of "excess napping"?

Soo... question. Where do the White Berets have their lodging? We were told peon's were in the lower quarters, and everyone before Elite was placed in the upper ring. Elites here in the "park". Then we were told about WB, so... I presume they live somewhere else, surely they are few, but... were do they live?

Ahhh finally the spark of rebellion appears and well its not an office Cubicle for now but I'm sure its going to be lots of paper work at some point.

Also at some point when all these comments finally get loaded up its going to make anyone reading things in the future wonder what the hell is going on I suspect with people repeating the same stuff and looking quite mad for so little and I'm loving it already!

So did Windows earn any credit by helping capture the Malhartian sproglings? Not to mention leading them all to Chernyl (although given they were communicating with Ciel, she may have had the credit there).

Mr. Kimberly should be doing pretty well for Haven related activities (if such credit was awarded) for that matter.