The Badge Catalog
A small office in the Prefect's Lounge where a clerk has finally agreed to keep cosmetic badges in one proper place instead of leaving them loose in the corridors. Badges are purely decorative marks for your profile: little icons that sit beside your name. Some you buy with Donator Points, some you earn by playing, and some arrive with a subscription. You display only the bits of vanity you can defend.
What Badges Are
A badge is a decorative profile mark and nothing more. It has a name, a single-character icon (a star, an envelope, an owl, an hourglass), and a description the clerk insists on reading aloud. Badges grant no stats, no gold, no advantage in the forest. Their entire function is to appear as an icon next to your name so other players can see what you have collected, endured, or paid for.
Each badge belongs to one of three sources: purchased (bought with Donator Points), earned (granted automatically for in-game milestones), and subscriber (tied to VIP membership). The office files all three in the same ledger but treats them very differently at the counter.
Where to Find the Catalog
The Badge Catalog lives in the Prefect's Lounge. From the Lounge, look for "Badge Catalog" under the Shop heading. The clerk's office shows your current Donator Point balance at the top, then two lists: Owned Badges (everything in your file) and Badges for Sale (everything on offer that you do not yet own).
When you have collected everything currently available, the for-sale shelf empties and the clerk notes, with some alarm, that the shelves now look tidy.
Earning Badges
Most badges are not for sale at all. They are earned badges, granted automatically the moment you cross a milestone. The clerk files them into your badge office without being asked. Examples drawn from the catalog:
- Generous Owl (owl icon) for sending 25 Owl Post Treats, Patron of the Owlery for 100, and Saint of the Owlery for 500. Generosity of frankly suspicious proportions.
- Pied Piper for referring a friend who reaches level 10, Head of Recruitment for five such referrals, and Legendary Recruiter for twenty-five. At twenty-five, you are effectively admissions.
- Returning Alumni and Legendary Alumni for finding your way back through the castle gates, plus login-streak badges Month-Long Scholar (hourglass icon) for a 30-day login streak and Hogwarts Lifer (crown icon) for a 100-day login streak, awarded automatically off your longest run of consecutive daily logins — the sort of attendance that suggests the castle now owes you rent.
- The Community Voice badges, for talking on the boards: Notice Board Regular (pin icon) for posting on five different days, Daily Prophet Correspondent (newspaper icon) for twenty-five, and Voice of the Wizarding World (megaphone icon) for seventy-five. These count approved forum replies and blog comments by the distinct days on which you posted, not the number of posts: a hundred messages in one afternoon still counts as one day, the castle being unmoved by volume. Only approved posts count — anything held for moderation never reaches the tally — and the badge files itself on your next login.
- Vanquished the Dark Lord (lightning icon) for defeating Voldemort once, Serial Vanquisher (wand icon) for defeating him ten times, and The Chosen One (skull icon) for fifty. These are awarded retroactively and automatically — the castle has been keeping a tally of your encounters with the Dark Lord whether or not you asked it to, and the clerk has simply backdated the file. They cannot be bought; the only way in is to actually defeat him, repeatedly, which he obligingly arranges by refusing to stay defeated.
Earned badges cost nothing and cannot be bought. They simply appear once the paperwork catches up with what you have already done.
Buying Badges
The purchased badges are the only ones the clerk will actually sell you, and they cost Donator Points. The current shop stock:
| Badge | Icon | Cost | For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Great Hall Regular | ✦ | 150 DP | Players who make the Great Hall look occupied on purpose. |
| Owl Post Favourite | ✉ | 200 DP | Correspondents implying a suspiciously brisk owl schedule. |
| Castle Fixture | ★ | 300 DP | The sort who appears to have signed a long lease on the corridors. |
Buying deducts the cost from your Donator Point balance and files the badge into your office immediately. The clerk enforces a few obvious rules: you cannot buy a badge you already own (it refuses to sell you identical stationery twice), you cannot buy one you cannot afford, and only badges actually marked for sale can be purchased. If a purchase fails after your points are debited, the office quietly reverts the charge.
Showing Them Off
Owning a badge is not the same as displaying it. Every badge in your file is either Displayed or Hidden, and you control which from the Owned Badges list with a Display or Hide link beside each one.
Displayed badges surface as their icons next to your name wherever your name appears, drawn in your chosen display order. Hidden badges stay in your file but show no icon to anyone. The office will only let you manage display instructions for badges you actually own; attempting to toggle a badge that is not yours earns a polite refusal.
Two badges behave specially. The VIP (lightning) and Founding VIP (star) marks are tied to subscriber status: the lightning icon only shows while your VIP membership is active, and active patronage will show the appropriate mark beside your name even before the badge has been formally filed.
Categories
The clerk sorts everything by source:
- Purchased — Great Hall Regular, Owl Post Favourite, Castle Fixture. Bought with Donator Points; priced low to high.
- Earned — the Owl-giving trio, the recruiter trio, the alumni and login-streak badges (Month-Long Scholar, Hogwarts Lifer), the Community Voice trio (Notice Board Regular, Daily Prophet Correspondent, Voice of the Wizarding World), and the Dark Lord trio (Vanquished the Dark Lord, Serial Vanquisher, The Chosen One). Granted automatically; never for sale.
- Subscriber — VIP and Founding VIP. Tied to membership rather than the counter.
The clerk hints that more insignia may appear once the paperwork breeds again.
The Badge Catalog: where a tireless clerk has reduced every triumph, kindness, and act of patronage in your career to a single small icon, neatly filed, and is quietly thrilled when your paperwork is blank.