Department of Action

The Department of Action, originally known as the Department of Exploration, was one of the original departments of the Organisation. It was ultimately broken up into the many Action departments.

Department of Exploration
The Department of Exploration was founded simultaneously with the Organisation. As one of the original three departments (alongside Infrastructure and Admin) it was created with a Deputy in charge - Captain Dandy.

The Department of Exploration was virtually synonymous with the Weeds; its only known non-Weed member is the Queen Anne's Lace, as Head of Communications. Its members were responsible for exploring the plotholes stabilised by Hornbeam's technicians.

Department of Action
Following the restructuring of the Organisation into the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, the Department of Exploration was renamed as the Department of Action. It was still headed by Captain Dandy until the Cascade led to the Weeds departing HQ in an attempt to map and constrain the plothole network. The role of Deputy for Action passed to the Poppy.

The Department of Action's purpose was to combat rogue plothole generators - Mary Sues, bad slash, implausible crossovers and the like. Since the Weeds had been the Flowers most willing to enter Word Worlds, however, their departure led to a change in the operation of the department: most of its Flowers simply stayed in HQ and used weapons of mass destruction against locations with rogue plothole generators present. This method was disapproved of by most of the other members of the PPC, but the Sunflower Official was unable to force any real change.

The solution came with the arrival of the PPC's first (or, technically, second, after Makes-Things) non-Flower agents, Elizabeth, Anya, and Osbert. They were recruited to the Department of Action, and served as a model for future agents: teams of three non-Flowers would travel directly into badfics and use small-scale weapons to take down rogue plothole generators.

Successor Departments
With the arrival of more and more non-Flower agents, the Department of Action soon followed the Department of Infrastructure's example: it broke up into an array of Action Departments, all under the leadership of the Deputy for Action. The first department to split off was the Department of Implausible Crossovers, with Elizabeth from the original trio leaving to found it as soon as three more agents were available. It was quickly followed by the Department of Bad Slash, with the remainder of the Action Department taking the name Department of Mary Sues.

For the full list of successor departments, see Action Department.