Imperial Edicts
In the bureaucratic structure of the Celegian Empire there are many levels of governance. Laws are passed by the various local governments for various local purposes, and are all legally binding. The Imperial Bureaucracy sets most laws which are called regulations. A higher level of governance is embodied in the provincial Ordinates. These officials are Imperial appointees and serve for a decade at a time. These 35 officials rule absolutely in their provinces, overruled only by the Emperor. The Emperor controls the military, effectively countering the Ordinate's civil strength. The Ordinates form a body called the Imperial Council, along with the Generals of the Legions (currently eleven), the highest ranking officials of the ten Greater Gods, and nine appointed persons known as the Sage Advisors. Ordinate's laws are known as laws. The Imperial Council may also define laws, these having to do with the rule of larger areas or the Empire as a whole. In no case may the Imperial Council directly oppose the Emperor and have any hope of success, but at various times the relative power of the Council and the Emperor has ebbed and flowed. At the current time the balance of power is overwhelmingly in the favor of the Emperor, and is likely to remain that way for as long as the Goddess Behind the Throne favors him and the Empire is moving forward militarily. The laws passed by the Council are known as rulings. The highest form of law is that decreed by the Emperor directly. These are known as Imperial Edicts. The number of Edicts has risen and fallen over the centuries as the various Emperors have added and removed them. At the current time there are only eight Edicts in effect. These Edicts are referred to as the Principles, since they have all been in effect in one form or another for several thousands of years. The Emperor has reviewed these Edicts and concluded that if they aren't broken, don't fix them. The Edicts are listed below, in the order in which they are usually referred to.
- Breaking any Imperial Edict is punishable by death.
- All able citizens of the Empire must serve the Empire.
- All citizens of the Empire will obey the laws and dictates of the Empire.
- No citizen will work against the Empire at any time.
- All cities of the Empire must be self sufficient.
- No open flame is permitted in any form in any city of the Empire.
- All use of Magic will be properly regulated by the Empire.
- All who sincerely venerate the Emperor are Imperial Citizens
Breaking any Imperial Edict is punishable by death.
This edict is pretty self explanatory. If you break the rules the Empire will kill you for it. In actuality this edict is normally interpreted that death is the maximum punishment, and lesser punishments can be imposed for more minor infractions. The Empire's notion of lesser punishment is still pretty harsh, though. The body of the Empire that administers most of the routine law-keeping is the Watch. Watches are formed under the authority of the Ordinates to maintain civil order, and nearly every city and town has a Watch contingent. An unofficial but much more widely spread arm of the law is the Templars of Domana. Even though they often don't have any connection to the Imperial government, Templars are viewed as the Imperial equivalent of "g-men." If you really screw something up and flee, most often you end up having the Templars after you, which is an unpleasant prospect if you're guilty. If you're innocent, then the Templars are the guys to run to, since they will find that out and clear you, unless you find a corrupt one, which happens on rare occasions. Many Templars seek to become more official and petition the Watch to be named Justiciaries. A Justiciar serves as a judge, justice of the peace, sheriff, etc., and is recognized officially by the Empire. Many Contrivers become Justiciaries, and a surprising number of Philiators do as well. Contrivers are often corrupt and are usually harsh and unforgiving. Despite this, Contrivers are often the best Justiciaries, because they are the ones most familiar with being criminal as well as judging them, and will never allow a wantonly evil or dangerously out of control criminal skate, even if they have to cheat to do it. Philiators are notorious softies, but woe betide the repeat offender who fails to change their ways. A Philiator who feels you to be beyond redemption by their gentle methods can become far more harsh in their outrage than either a Templar or a Contriver. The Templars are the organization that runs the notorious punishment temples. A punishment temple is a huge, sprawling temple of Domana in which those convicted of a crime are punished for their wrongdoing and allowed a chance to atone and repay society. Whippings, hard labor, forced meditation, and supervised penitence are the order of the day. Since the majority of the Templars in the punishment temples are former prisoners who sincerely recanted their sins, the regimen is often as rough on the guards as it is on the prisoners. It is said that a sentence to a punishment temple will either kill you or cure you, and since the jailers can tell when you're lying there is no chance of tricking a parole board! On the other hand, the punishment temples have an astonishing record of redemptions, as well. Many respected, kind, and devout citizens have been produced from the gentle ministrations of a punishment temple, and many such Reformationists devote themselves to public service and bear the marks of their Reform proudly. If a local Watch apprehends a lawbreaker, the punishment will usually be fines, loss of property, flogging, or forced labor for a short time. Serious infractions will get you turned over to the Templars or the Legions.
The Legions use hardened criminals as shock troops in times of war, on the assumption that if you survive, you will have learned a different set of skills and will no longer need to be a criminal to make your way. There have been some problems with this theory.
All able citizens of the Empire must serve the Empire.
The majority of young men in the Empire fulfill this Edict by applying to the Legions. If you are turned away (as often happens) you are considered to have fulfilled this edict. If you join, then you serve that way. Most young women fulfill this edict by working for the Imperial Bureaucracy for a few years. As a result, the Empire functions quite smoothly, with all those young, idealistic, and hard-working ladies perform many routine tasks. The literacy rate among women is considerably higher than among men due to this service structure, and there are also many more female mages. The mages that go adventuring tend to be about evenly split male and female, as the Legions tend to produce fewer mages but they are rough and ready sorts who gained their experience on the battlefield. The social structure is such that a person is considered to be a child until they are nine years old, and are allowed to play and live a carefree life. From the ages of nine to eighteen you are a juvenile, and this is when you receive your life training, usually going to an Imperial Primaris or Factorium for three years, followed by three years of an apprenticeship, and then three years serving the Empire or as a journeyman if any direct Imperial service is disallowed. The enforcement of this Edict is remarkably lax, as it has become ingrained in the social structure and compliance is nearly universal. In practice, this Edict means that in time of emergency, any Imperial official can impress into service as many people as the emergency requires, no questions asked, and if you resist you are in BIG trouble.
All citizens of the Empire will obey the laws and dictates of the Empire.
This Edict is self explanatory, and is included mainly to give the Ordinates implicit power, without having to constantly refer to the Emperor to confirm their laws and rulings. The Ordinates fiercely defend this power and this Edict has stood for thousands of years.
No citizen will work against the Empire at any time.
This Edict is also self explanatory and was the cause of a great deal of the trouble in the Desolation. The social structure of the Empire broke down so thoroughly in that time that it became difficult to define what the Empire was and who was in charge. Many times, two Ordinates sought to further the cause of the Empire by going on conflicting courses of action! More importantly, this Edict is the root of the many prohibitions against Psionic powers in the Empire. After the Time of Night (many thousands of years ago) the Mad God Puellor tainted the Astral Plane where it intersects Celegia. Using psionic power points brings a steady, irreversible creeping madness. By definition, any being using mental powers within the Empire is, or soon will be, acting against the Empire as Puellor's taint drives him or her mad. This taint can be avoided by certain methods employed by the Psionic Guilds of the Empire, but there is a constant, low level trickle of rogue mind witches to be hunted down and destroyed. This Edict receives strong support from the various mage organs in the Empire as a result. No serious effort has been made to remove this Edict, since it provides a strong and clear deterrent to treasonous activities.
All cities of the Empire must be self sufficient.
This Edict is VERY old and dates from a time known as the Age of Pestilence, when every kind of horrible disease and affliction ran rampant through the Empire. These ancient plagues were highly resistant to curative magic and spread like wildfire, so the Emperor of the day, Ariclos the Ninth, made it illegal to travel more than a mile from your home! In addition, he ruled that all cities must be able to feed themselves. All cities that could not comply were razed to the ground, leading to the widely held opinion that Ariclos the Ninth was a "real mother" of an Emperor. This Age raised Lurain to ascendance for her incredible battles against the Pestilence Gods, although it is known that Karena is the one who finally defeated the Pestilence Gods by poisoning them through treachery. The Age of Pestilence was so bad that the Empire has never seriously considered lifting this Edict, although enforcement is notoriously lax. Lurain's worship and Daneth's habit of encouraging the cultivation of every square inch of a city's rooftops means that technically speaking most cities do comply, but only barely.
No open flame is permitted in any form in any city of the Empire.
This is another very old Edict, but this one is still vigorously enforced! The Primal Fundament Fire is wildly uncontrollable, and early in the Empire many cities burned completely to the ground every twenty years or so. Finally the cost in lives and property became so great that all fires were outlawed completely inside a city by another no-nonsense Emperor, Tiraeus the Ninth. Magic has replaced the use of fire for heat and light, so the extreme prevalence of magic in the Empire can be directly traced to this edict. As an unrealized side effect, the Wardens are surreptitiously expanding the borders of the Fuligin forest, as the demand for wood for fuel has been falling for thousands of years. This means that timbers for construction and other fine uses are of extremely high quality.
All use of Magic will be properly regulated by the Empire.
This Edict is also quite old, but was weakly enforced before the Nightmare Wars and the Desolation. Since then, it has been very tightly controlled indeed! Any kind of damaging magics such as magic missiles, shocking grasps, etc. which are of limited scope and of individual scale are available, but the mage must have a permit to put them into his spellbook. Large scale destructive magics, such as lightning bolts, cloudkills, and cones of cold are considered strictly military in nature and getting one is next to impossible. There exists a large array of battlefield magics as well, specialized dweomers strictly for military use which are unavailable to the general public at all. Don't even ask about fireballs, walls of fire, and other flaming dweomers, as even the Legions are careful with those. Magic items are also tightly controlled, with most wands, staves, and rods being the equivalent of owning an assault rifle, missile launcher, or heavy machine gun. These strictly military magic items are widely feared, and having one without a permit is an instant death sentence. Possessing more powerful items like a Crown of Fury, Helm of Brilliance, or Doomglow will provoke a response by the Legions. The Empire offers large rewards for returning items of military nature, as well as for turning in a wizard with illegal spells or spellbooks. The main way that the empire regulates the use of Magic is by controlling a wizard's spellbooks. ALL spellbooks in the Empire must be leased from the Imperial Bureaucracy. Every spellbook has a serial number and the Empire keeps a record of the spells in each book. If a spell requires a permit, then that permit must be attached to the page in the spellbook permanently. Any Imperial official, or any member of a Provincial or local Watch, may demand to inspect a wizard's spellbooks at any time. Having an unregistered spellbook is another reason for execution on the spot. Spell research is especially tightly watched, with all research materials being owned by the empire. These research libraries are housed in Imperial Factoriums and must be rented, and no research materials may be owned at all, with no way of obtaining permits for that sort of thing. Spells of a non-damaging but privacy ruining nature also require permits, but the penalties are less severe for that sort of thing. Spells used in construction or fabrication of useful items are widely available and lightly regulated, even though many of them can be destructive if used improperly. This Edict is also widely interpreted as one applicable to the suppression of psionic users and sorcerors, as the Empire considers all of those forms of power to be essentially magical in nature. Oddly enough, many magical weapons are not regulated at all, unless they have some sort of greater power which causes them to be capable of mass effects. Simple magically enhanced swords are quite common, even some of great potency. Magical crossbows, axes, bows, halberds, pikes, daggers, staves, and other muscle powered weapons are quite common and generally go unremarked. However, a warrior owning a sword that has an ego and intelligence had better have a permit! Intelligent weapons are a particularly thorny issue, as the Revelers of Corellan and Mothers of Lurain have a dim view of slavery and it has never been settled if these entities qualify or not.
All who sincerely venerate the Emperor are Imperial Citizens
This Edict caused massive upheavals when it was first instituted. Before this Edict, only humans were Imperial Citizens, and the only way to gain Imperial Citizenship was to serve in the Legions or the Bureaucracy. This edict grants citizenship to any sentient creature who wants to be a member of the Empire. Untold billions of unhumans took the Imperial Oath after this Edict was placed in effect by the ancient Emperor Merianna the Fourth during the Stonecrown Subsumption. As a result, Merianna is venerated and beloved to this day, twenty-six thousand years later. As an odd quirk, provincial citizenship is not conveyed by Imperial citizenship and this can cause all manner of difficulties.
This is text from an older version of this page. It is from a previous campaign which used 3.5 rules.
In the bureaucratic structure of the Celegian Empire there are many levels of governance. Laws are passed by the various local governments for various local purposes, and are all legally binding. The Imperial Bureaucracy sets most laws which are called regulations. A higher level of governance is embodied in the provincial Ordinates. These officials are Imperial appointees and serve for a decade at a time. These 35 officials rule absolutely in their provinces, overruled only by the Emperor. The Emperor controls the military, effectively countering the Ordinate's civil strength. The Ordinates form a body called the Imperial Council, along with the Generals of the Legions (currently eleven), the highest ranking officials of the ten Greater Gods, and nine appointed persons known as the Sage Advisors. Ordinate's laws are known as laws. The Imperial Council may also define laws, these having to do with the rule of larger areas or the Empire as a whole. In no case may the Imperial Council directly oppose the Emperor and have any hope of success, but at various times the relative power of the Council and the Emperor has ebbed and flowed. At the current time the balance of power is overwhelmingly in the favor of the Emperor, and is likely to remain that way for as long as Chronun is moving forward militarily. The laws passed by the Council are known as rulings. The highest form of law is that decreed by the Emperor directly. These are known as Imperial Edicts. The number of Edicts has risen and fallen over the centuries as the various Emperors have added and removed them. At the current time there are only seven Edicts in effect. These Edicts are referred to as the Principles, since they have all been in effect in one form or another for several thousands of years. Chronun has reviewed these Edicts and concluded that if they aren't broken, don't fix them. The Edicts are listed below, in the order in which they are usually referred to.
- 1) Breaking any Imperial Edict is punishable by death.
- 2) All able citizens of the Empire must serve the Empire.
- 3) All citizens of the Empire will obey the laws and dictates of the Empire.
- 4) No citizen will work against the Empire at any time.
- 5) All cities of the Empire must be self sufficient.
- 6) No open flame is permitted in any form in any city of the Empire.
- 7) All use of Magic will be properly regulated by the Empire.
Explanations of the Edicts
1) Breaking any Imperial Edict is punishable by death.
This edict is pretty self explanatory. If you break the rules the Empire will kill you for it. In actuality this edict is normally interpreted that death is the maximum punishment, and lesser punishments can be imposed for more minor infractions. The Empire's notion of lesser punishment is still pretty harsh, though. The body of the Empire that administers most of the routine law-keeping is the Watch. Watches are formed under the authority of the Ordinates to maintain civil order, and nearly every city and town has a Watch contingent. An unofficial but much more widely spread arm of the law is the Templars of Domana. Even though they often don't have any connection to the Imperial government, Templars are viewed as the Imperial equivalent of "g-men." If you really screw something up and flee, most often you end up having the Templars after you, which is an unpleasant prospect if you're guilty. If you're innocent, then the Templars are the guys to run to, since they will find that out and clear you, unless you find a corrupt one, which happens on rare occasions. Many Templars seek to become more official and petition the Watch to be named Justiciaries. A Justiciar serves as a judge, justice of the peace, sheriff, etc., and is recognized officially by the Empire. Many Contrivers become Justiciaries, and a surprising number of Philiators do as well. Contrivers are often corrupt and are usually harsh and unforgiving. Despite this, Contrivers are often the best Justiciaries, because they are the ones most familiar with being criminal as well as judging them, and will never allow a wantonly evil or dangerously out of control criminal skate, even if they have to cheat to do it. Philiators are notorious softies, but woe betide the repeat offender who fails to change their ways. A Philiator who feels you to be beyond redemption by their gentle methods can become far more harsh in their outrage than either a Templar or a Contriver. The Templars are the organization that runs the notorious punishment temples. A punishment temple is a huge, sprawling temple of Domana in which those convicted of a crime are punished for their wrongdoing and allowed a chance to atone and repay society. Whippings, hard labor, forced meditation, and supervised penitence are the order of the day. Since the majority of the Templars in the punishment temples are former prisoners who sincerely recanted their sins, the regimen is often as rough on the guards as it is on the prisoners. It is said that a sentence to a punishment temple will either kill you or cure you, and since the jailers can tell when you're lying there is no chance of tricking a parole board! On the other hand, the punishment temples have an astonishing record of redemptions, as well. Many respected, kind, and devout citizens have been produced from the gentle ministrations of a punishment temple, and many such Reformationists devote themselves to public service and bear the marks of their Reform proudly. If a local Watch apprehends a lawbreaker, the punishment will usually be fines, loss of property, flogging, or forced labor for a short time. Serious infractions will get you turned over to the Templars or the Legions. The Legions use hardened criminals as shock troops in times of war, on the assumption that if you survive, you will have learned a different set of skills and will no longer need to be a criminal to make your way. There have been some problems with this theory.
2) All able citizens of the Empire must serve the Empire.
The majority of young men in the Empire fulfill this Edict by applying to the Legions. If you are turned away (as often happens) you are considered to have fulfilled this edict. If you join, then you serve that way. Most young women fulfill this edict by working for the Imperial Bureaucracy for a few years. As a result, the Empire functions quite smoothly, with all those young, idealistic, and hard-working ladies perform many routine tasks. The literacy rate among women is considerably higher than among men due to this service structure, and there are also many more female mages. The mages that go adventuring tend to be about evenly split male and female, as the Legions tend to produce fewer mages but they are rough and ready sorts who gained their experience on the battlefield. The social structure is such that a person is considered to be a child until they are nine years old, and are allowed to play and live a carefree life. From the ages of nine to eighteen you are a juvenile, and this is when you receive your life training, usually going to an Imperial Factorium for three years, followed by three years of an apprenticeship, and then three years serving the Empire or as a journeyman if any direct Imperial service is disallowed. The enforcement of this Edict is remarkably lax, as it has become ingrained in the social structure and compliance is nearly universal. In practice, this Edict means that in time of emergency, any Imperial official can impress into service as many people as the emergency requires, no questions asked, and if you resist you are in BIG trouble.
3) All citizens of the Empire will obey the laws and dictates of the Empire.
This Edict is self explanatory, and is included mainly to give the Ordinates implicit power, without having to constantly refer to the Emperor to confirm their laws and rulings. The Ordinates fiercely defend this power and this Edict has stood for thousands of years.
4) No citizen will work against the Empire at any time.
This Edict is also self explanatory and was the cause of a great deal of the trouble in the Desolation. The social structure of the Empire broke down so thoroughly in that time that it became difficult to define what the Empire was and who was in charge. Many times, two Ordinates sought to further the cause of the Empire by going on conflicting courses of action! More importantly, this Edict is the root of the many prohibitions against Psionic powers in the Empire. After the Time of Night (many thousands of years ago) the Mad God Puellor tainted the Astral Plane where it intersects Celegia. Using psionic power points brings a steady, irreversible creeping madness. By definition, any being using mental powers within the Empire is, or soon will be, acting against the Empire as Puellor's taint drives him or her mad. This taint can be avoided by certain methods employed by the Psionic Guilds of the Empire, but there is a constant, low level trickle of rogue mind witches to be hunted down and destroyed. This Edict receives strong support from the various mage organs in the Empire as a result. No serious effort has been made to remove this Edict, since it provides a strong and clear deterrent to treasonous activities.
5) All cities of the Empire must be self sufficient.
This Edict is VERY old and dates from a time known as the Age of Pestilence, when every kind of horrible disease and affliction ran rampant through the Empire. These ancient plagues were highly resistant to curative magic and spread like wildfire, so the Emperor of the day, Ariclos the Ninth, made it illegal to travel more than a mile from your home! In addition, he ruled that all cities must be able to feed themselves. All cities that could not comply were razed to the ground, leading to the widely held opinion that Ariclos the Ninth was a "real mother" of an Emperor. This Age raised Lurain to ascendance for her incredible battles against the Pestilence Gods, although it is known that Karena is the one who finally defeated the Pestilence Gods by poisoning them through treachery. The Age of Pestilence was so bad that the Empire has never seriously considered lifting this Edict, although enforcement is notoriously lax. Lurain's worship and Daneth's habit of encouraging the cultivation of every square inch of a city's rooftops means that technically speaking most cities do comply, but only barely.
6) No open flame is permitted in any form in any city of the Empire.
This is another very old Edict, but this one is still vigorously enforced! The Primal Fundament Fire is wildly uncontrollable, and early in the Empire many cities burned completely to the ground every twenty years or so. Finally the cost in lives and property became so great that allfires were outlawed completely inside a city by another no-nonsense Emperor, Tiraeus the Ninth. Magic has replaced theuse of fire for heat and light, so the extreme prevalence of magic in the Empire can be directly traced to this edict. As an unrealized side effect, the Wardens are surreptitiously expanding the borders of the Fuligin forest, as the demand for wood for fuel has been falling for thousands of years. This means that timbers for construction and other fine uses are of extremely high quality.
7) All use of Magic will be properly regulated by the Empire.
This Edict is also quite old, but was weakly enforced before the Nightmare Wars and the Desolation. Since then, it has been very tightly controlled indeed! Any kind of damaging magics such as magic missiles, shocking grasps, etc. which are of limited scope and of individual scale are available, but the mage must have a permit to put them into his spellbook. Large scale destructive magics, such as
lightning bolts, cloudkills, and cones of cold are considered strictly military in nature and getting one is next to impossible. There exists a large array of battlefield magics as well, specialized dweomers strictly for military use which are unavailable to the general public
at all. Don't even ask about fireballs, walls of fire, and other flaming dweomers, as even the Legions are careful with those. Magic items are also tightly controlled, with most wands, staves, and rods being the equivalent of owning an assault rifle, missile launcher, or heavy machine gun. These strictly military magic items are widely feared, and having one without a permit is an instant death sentence.
Possessing more powerful items like a Crown of Fury, Helm of Brilliance, or Doomglow will provoke a response by the Legions. The Empire offers large rewards for returning items of military nature, as well as for turning in a wizard with illegal spells or spellbooks. The main way that the empire regulates the use of Magic is by controlling a wizard's spellbooks. ALL spellbooks in the Empire must be leased from the Imperial Bureaucracy. Every spellbook has a serial number and the Empire keeps a record of the spells in each book. If a spell requires a permit, then that permit must be attached to the page in the spellbook permanently. Any Imperial official, or any member of a Provincial or local Watch, may demand to inspect a wizard's spellbooks at any time. Having an unregistered spellbook is another reason for execution on the spot. Spell research is especially tightly watched, with all research materials being owned by the empire. These research libraries are housed in Imperial Factoriums and must be rented, and no research materials may be owned at all, with no way of obtaining permits for that sort of thing. Spells of a non-damaging but privacy ruining nature also require permits, but the penalties are less severe for that sort of thing. Spells used in construction or fabrication of useful items are widely available and lightly regulated, even though many of them can be destructive if used improperly. This Edict is also widely interpreted as one applicable to the suppression of psionic users and sorcerors, as the Empire considers all of those forms of power to be essentially magical in nature.
Oddly enough, many magical weapons are not regulated at all, unless they have some sort of greater power which causes them to be capable of mass effects. Simple magically enhanced swords are quite common, even some of great potency. Magical crossbows, axes, bows, halberds, pikes, daggers, staves, and other muscle powered weapons are quite common and generally go unremarked. However, a warrior owning a sword that has an ego and intelligence had better have a permit! Intelligent weapons are a particularly thorny issue, as the Revelers of Corellan and Mothers of Lurain have a dim view of slavery and it has never been settled if these entities qualify or not.