Thousand Scales

• The Humble and Honest Assessors of the Imperial Tax: Assessors and collectors of Imperial taxes, both domestically and in satrapies. Nominally under the oversight of the All-Seeing Eye and the magistrates, the Assessors have gotten very cozy with the various Great Houses since the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress.
  • Cathak Curuk, a man of great business acumen, runs the Honest Assessors.
• The Imperial Treasury: The keepers and spenders of the taxes collected by the Assessors. Its bureaucrats were some of the most loyal and best-paid of the Thousand Scales. The treasury-manses established by the Scarlet Empress remain some of the best guarded places on the Blessed Isle, guarded by elite Black Helms and demons summoned by the Empress herself.
  • Bal Keraz inherited mastery of the Treasury from his father, Bal Kesif. The Bal are a non-Great House bloodline of Dragon-Blooded who trace their lineage very closely to the Empress. In order to keep them loyal and from acquiring too much power, however, the Empress never granted them Great House status, instead installing them as practically hereditary Treasury Masters.
• The Wise and Knowledgeable Advisers of Foreign Tributaries: The Realm's satraps, their deputies and households make up this ministry. They are the most distant of the Thousand Scales, for their jobs all involve acting as diplomats and defacto rulers of other nations in the Threshold, ensuring that the flow of tribute continues to the center of Creation.
  • Ledaal Arnis oversees the Advisers. She has little to do with her House of origin, a move which once ensured the favor of the Scarlet Empress. With her gone, however, most of the satraps ignore her commands in favor of their own Houses, and her ministry is dissolving into chaos.
• The Ethical and Diligent Interpreters and Maintainers of the Imperial Codex of Law: Those responsible for recording and disseminating all Deliberative-spawned changes to the Code of Law are also the ones who must comment on it for history and the Imperial ear. They are scribes, arbiters, essayists, philosophers and legal thinkers. They not only maintain the most up-to-date version of the Code, but also make copies of it to disseminate to those responsible for following and enforcing it - that is to say, just about everyone. They are legal librarians par excellence, the ones who do the heavy lifting to make sure that no Deliberative proposals act counter to the precedence established in previous generations.
• The Honorable and Humble Caretakers of the Common Folk: Those who operate in the prefectoral governments, from the lowest prefecture bureaucrats to the prefect themselves. Just as the satraps keep the tribute flowing from the Threshold, the prefects ensure that the taxes are available to be collected by the Assessors - no easy task.
  • The chief Caretaker, Sesus Sereda was assassinated shortly after the Empress' disappearance, and no one else has managed to secure the permissions necessary to place someone else in charge of this ministry. It is currently officially without leadership, but both Baz Keral and Cathak Curuk lend their considerable influence and advice to keep it running.
• The Righteous and Accountable Ministry of Weights and Measures: A ministry responsible for not just maintaining weight standards for trade, but for also periodically testing the merchants and others who use those weights to ensure no one is cheating or falsifying the weights for their personal gain.
  • Waris Ulmar, a graduate of the Spiral Academy and scion of a very, very successful mercantile patrician family with close ties to House Mnemon.
• The Infallible Conveyors of Official Messages and Heartfelt Expressions: The Imperial Post is one of the Empires most enduring bureaucracies. Consisting primarily of post riders, the Post also includes a series of heliograph relay towers, as well as Dragon-Blooded who use Charms and Sorcery to convey truly important messages to their intended destinations.
  • Minister Nellens Junaj is one of the few Dragon-Blooded Exalts of House Nellens. He is also the head of the Imperial Post, a position he is deeply entrenched in, to the chagrin of other Great Houses who find their efforts to secure influence in the Imperial Post stymied at every turn by the paranoid minister.
• The Splendid and Just Arbiters of Purpose: A ministry dedicated to recruiting Lost Eggs and placing them in Imperial life. The Arbiters operate in small groups who travel collecting these Lost Eggs, with at least one Terrestrial in each such group.
  • Overseen by Agama Orir, the Humble and Munificent Master of Orphans, based out of the Obsidian Mirror in Juche.
• The Office of the Imperial Overseer of Airships: A tiny ministry consisting of one minister and one clerk, the Overseer's responsibility is to oversee all the licensing necessary to utilize airships in the Scarlet Empire. Because the number of such airships is absurdly small, this ministry does hardly anything at all, and is relegated to a small three-room office in the Thousand Scales district of the Imperial City, sharing a building with several other smaller ministries.
  • Overseen by Amatar Irani, a patrician with close familial ties to both House Cathak and House Ledaal.