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Venture

The Deliberative

The Deliberative is the Realm’s legislative body – but only somewhat. Although the Deliberative holds fiat to draft laws in many areas that are binding unless vetoed by the Empress, they are technically only an advisory body to the Empress’ authority.

The Deliberative is a hotbed of politics, where Great Houses, patrician families, and all manner of minister meet and mingle to offer their counsel on national policy. Members of the Deliberative are known as Senators or Counselors, though the distinction of who is a Senator and who is a Counselor is unclear to most everyone that isn’t one of them.

The History of the Deliberative

The Deliberative began with the Empress’ Table, a small group of the Empress’ daughters and trusted counsel who would dine in the evening with the Empress. She would pry their minds for policy and encouraged debate among them, sifting their best ideas into early policy.

In RY 103, the Empress was facing internal pressure from critics about the failed invasions of the River Province. In order to quell their criticisms, she expanded the Empress’ Table to include several new members. As the organization grew, she modeled it more and more after the tribal assemblies of the Wàn from her youth, which gave rise to the various chamber-colleges that exist today.

The Deliberative was formally established as a fiat entity at the end of RY 103. Shortly thereafter, the Empress ordered the construction of the Palace of the Deliberative to house her advisors.

In the beginning, the Deliberative was a strictly advisory body, simply a forum by which the Empress would seek counsel from the Houses. As the Deliberative and the Realm continued to grow, the Empress gradually expanded their fiat to include the authority to pass laws on her behalf on many topics in which she held little interest, from fishery regulation to national holidays.

Nowadays, the Deliberative has expanded to include three chamber-colleges, and holds fiat on a staggering array of minutiae – all subject to imperial veto. It is the largest governmental body in all of Creation, seating thousands of Senators and Counselors from across the Realm to debate and advise.

The Chamber-Colleges

The chamber-colleges are the three constituent bodies of the Deliberative, each tasked with different areas of concern. Each chamber-college is in turn divided into benches and panels. The functions of the chamber-colleges are as confusing as they are diverse; their duties are confusing, redundant, and often contradictory, much like the members of the Deliberative themselves.

The chamber-colleges originated as rooms (hence, chambers) for colleagues (hence, college) to meet, have tea, and discuss affairs. Different groups would naturally address different topics, and drift to the same room for their meetings. Eventually, this was formalized into the chamber-colleges we know today.

The College of Matriarchs

The Most Potent Chamber-College of the Pious and Venerable Matriarchs is the modern incarnation of the original Empress’ Table, and still often referred to by that term. It represents the interests of the Great Houses to the Empress.

Technically, the College of Matriarchs consists of the ten current Matriarchs and the Mouth of Peace. Each Matriarch and the Mouth of Peace herself retain the authority to sit on the college in-person. However, the affairs of state inevitably lead to their presence being a rarity. The Matriarchs and the Mouth of Peace are usually present in the form of representatives, who sit in the college on their behalf. The Empress requires that matriarchs who send representatives send at least two – since no individual is as wise as the matriarch – so the College of Matriarchs is usually much larger than its nominal 11 members.

In addition to their meetings in the Matriarch’s Room of the Palace of the Deliberative, the College of Matriarchs still periodically meets with the Empress over formal dinners to debrief her as to the status of the Deliberative. Her Radiance attends in person often enough that it is not a surprise, but more often sends her majordomo Amon Mora in her place.

The College of Matriarchs has no votes and no subdivisions. It acts strictly as the Empress’ privy council.

The College of Dignitaries

The Great Chamber-College of Most Inspired and Noble Law-Making Among the Dignitaries of the Realm numbers hundreds of members advocating for the interests of the patriciate and dignified, assorted nobility of the Realm.

The College of Dignitaries houses over 100 votes, which are assigned to various benches, territories, and inviduals according to the chambers’ bylaws and the Empress’ will. Some individuals have a dignity that grants them a vote on their own – but most votes are assigned to benches, which are composed of many members who vote as one. Many Dignitary members sit on multiple benches. Thus a single person may have her fingers in many different votes, but no vote to herself.

The College of Dignitaries is not representative. Members have no burden to represent constituents or whatever. Membership is entirely about deliberation, discussion, status, and courtly procedure. The College of Dignitaries does not create legislation – it simply offers advice (as shown by the votes) on what it would like to see done at a national level.

Some important benches of the College of Dignitaries include:

  • The Honorable Bench of the Ancestral Blood-Right, which represents the interests of the Realm’s Princes Subservient, except for those Princes Subservient which have a voting dignity themselves. The current chair of the Blood-Right Bench is Mat Asma, who is one of V’neef’s most vocal allies in the College of Dignitaries.
  • The Holy Bench of the Eastern Conferential Synod represents the interests of the Immaculate monasteries and abbacies scattered throughout the Eastern Isle. It’s counterpart, the Western Synod, is much younger. The Eastern Synod is notoriously fractious; it is rare for a chair to retain her chair for longer than a year, and never more than a few.
  • The Most Favoured Bench of the Loyal Patriciate is supposed to represent the interests of the patrician families, except for the fact that many patrician families have their own voting dignity. The bench thus represents only the non-dignified patrician families, and often votes against the interests of the independent patrician families out of spite. The patrician bench is infamous for rampant absenteeism and a complete inability to reach an internal decision, except to screw over the “traitorous” voting families.
  • The Armipotent Bench of Her Radiance’s Marshals represents the interests of the Empress’ Crown Marshalls and Legions. The Marshal Bench has no actual vote, but must be present for the Dignitaries to vote on matters of war or Legion business. Its influence is thus unofficial, but widespread.

The College of Executives

The Revered Chamber-College of Contemplative Executives in Prudent Debate is the largest of the three college-chambers by a wide margin, seating over a thousand members and divided into over 400 voting bodies. The Executives are supposed to represent the interests of governors, ministers, satraps, prefects, magistrates, and monks.

Unlike the Dignitaries, the Executives rarely petition the Empress or attempt to influence her policy. Instead, the Executives are where the actual law that the Deliberative is afforded by fiat comes from. It votes on matters ranging from allocating infrastructure funding to the rules and regulations of commercial forestry to the national tax rate on beer.

The Empress is, of course, informed of these votes, and all are recorded and presented to Her Radiance’s Throne Chamber for her consideration. But since the Empress has little care for these minutiae, the Executive chamber-college largely runs itself – and thus, the Realm.

Some important benches and panels of the College of Executives include:

  • The Loyal Bench of the Far-Ranging Satrapies, which represents the interests of the satraps, except for the four satraps who have their own individual votes. The satrapial governments have no representation in the Deliberative at all; the Satrapy Bench represents the interests of the satrapial profession as a whole.
  • The Rigorous Bench of the Investigative Magistracy provides representation for the Empress’ magistrates, but has no formal vote. The Bench has fought for centuries to establish its right to vote – but the bylaws of voting allocation are managed by the College of Dignitaries, who have little interest in giving the magistrates even a shred of authority.
  • The Sovereign Bench of the Free City of Arjuf represents the interests of the city of Arjuf, but not Arjuf Dominion as a whole, nor of House Ledaal. The issue of whether or not the Sovereign Bench gets a vote has been adjudicated many times across the centuries of the Deliberative; currently, it can only vote in accordance with a plebiscite among the land-owning Dragon-Blooded of the city.
  • The Sacred Bench of the Pearls of Earthly Wisdom is the voice of the Isle’s networks of secondary schools. Currently, it consists of four members, each representing the Big Four schools. It is ajoined by the Honorable Bench for the Education of Lost Eggs, which represents the interests of Pasiap’s Stair, but has no formal weight on how the Sacred Bench casts its vote. This is an endless annoyance to the Stair, who is known to send her most disagreeable representatives as retribution for her inability to vote.