Year 294 AC/Year 0 IC Fourth Quarter
Part One
Each Ministry has three (3) Actions available:
Ministry of Administration
Concerned with the smooth functioning of the state and the day to day tasks of governance, the Ministry of Administration is perhaps the broadest in its remit to see the wheels of empire turn. Generally speaking, actions by the Ministry of Administration are seen well by all but the most factious local elites, as it is concerned more with the spreading of funds than with the gathering of taxes or the enforcing of norms of the state. On the other hand, the local populace might resist if the action causes economic disruption as they have less of a buffer than the wealthy and titled.
[] Organize Elections: Though it is the obligation of the local nobility to organize the elections for the Vox, that does not mean the state cannot help. This action is likely to be welcomed by lords who favor the implementation of Imperial Law and be seen more hesitantly by those lords who are liable to see it as a Imposition.
-[] Write in up to two neighboring Dukedoms
DC: 5
[] Settle Land Disputes: The bane of many a Westerosi king and far more smallfolk, land disputes are fortunately not likely to be a problem at the Ducal or county level, but the lower you go the more tangled the issue becomes, with barons waving around decisions given to their ancestors not just by the Dragon Kings, but also by the Old Crowns before Aegon first set foot on Westerosi shores. Of the knights it is best not to speak of lest we wake the quarrels of a beast with a thousand heads.
-[] The Reach
-[] The Westerlands
-[] The Riverlands
DC: 10
[] Survey of Marginal lands: In every province of the realm, even in those parts of the Reach that have been tilled for long ages beyond the span of history, there are lands that have a lord but no owner to see to them, areas that are too poor, too stony, too parched or too prone to flooding. In the case of the Vale, there are lands that were seen as too Imperiled by their endless war. A proper accounting of these lands will be of great use in deciding which can be made fertile by magic or put to some other use. While no lords will object to such a survey, there will come an expectation that something is to be done with them soon.
-[] Write in up to two neighboring Dukedoms
DC: 30/60
[] Build up colonial administration: In the Imperium there are lands where the availability of trained manpower lags behind physical infrastructure, this could be due to physical isolation, perceived physical danger, or something as simple as a lack of a widely spoken common language.
-[] Naath
-[] Stony Shore
-[] Sallosh
DC: Automatic
Ministry of Diplomacy
Concerned with the outward facing affairs of the Imperium, the Ministry of Diplomacy is everything from the open hand of friendship to the velvet glove into which the steel fist of the Inquisition can slip into. It allows one to prepare provinces for assimilation, destabilize foes, and give economic or arcane aid to allies.
[] Share Arcane Lore with the Genie Realms: While there have been many transcriptions of libraries and brief exchanges of experts with the Djinn and the Shaitan, none of them have taken a holistic approach to the lore of the Garden such as you have been able to rediscover, and by the same token your acquisition of genie lore has been just as piecemeal. All that can change with a concerted academic and diplomatic effort to spread the lore that has been deemed acceptable to do so.
-[] The Peerless Empire
-[] The Domain of the Djinn
DC: 20
[] Eyes in the South: The coronation has made a good beginning towards vassalizing one of the realms of the Summer Islands at least. Through a combination of gifts, favorable trade deals, and personal connections, you can come closer to drawing the islands into the Imperial Sphere.
DC: 50
[] Normalizing Relations: you do not have any diplomatic presence in the last two great Free Cities not under your control, Qohor and Norvos. However, given the economic and military might you can bring to bear, it should be possible to change that and prevent the situation in either city from decaying further. Given the nature of Qohor's decay, however, it has been judged to be by far the most perilous.
-[] Qohor
-[] Norvos
DC: ???/25
[] City at the Gates of the World: The Warlocks of the House of the Undying have promised you Qarth, but not all of its lands will fall simply because that ancient order wills it so. Further efforts among its secular and military elite would allow for a smoother transition.
DC: 38
Ministry to Education
Perhaps the most novel of all the arms of the Imperium, more so than even that ministry which concerns itself with arcane matters. After all, in far off Yi Ti there are yet ministers concerned with regulating the arcane, but in no earthly realm you know is there a branch of the government that is concerned with educating the populace en masse, which might say something for the state of the world.
[] Traveling Tutors: East and West the span of the Imperium is vast, and outside the cities and trade towns there is yet little change to be seen for how people learn. Magic is a thing of distant wonder or ominous rumor. The strange sages which people in the streets of Sorcerer's Deep, of Volantis, Braavos, Lys, or Mantarys, might as well be tales from the Age of Dawn. Yet the building of schools and the training of teachers will not be an easy task. So instead Minister Veda proposes setting up a stopgap of sort, a method to clear the way for wide scale schooling, traveling tutors who set up to teach in the off season, when most of the cops are in the ground and there is no need to do much work in the fields. This is different from region to region, of course, but if properly administered there should always be work for such teachers. The combination of voluntary admission and teaching skills of practical use should hopefully make the project seem more a boon than a burden to local communities.
-[] Write in up to two neighboring Duchies (Westeros is not eligible until A Common Tongue succeeds)
DC: 33 (Slight increase in the level of education in rural areas; greater acceptance for the concept of Education)
[] A Common Tongue: With the Order of Maesters monopolizing most of the learned scholars of the Seven Kingdoms and the Faith taking in the few who remained, there are actually comparatively few people who both speak the Common Tongue of Westeros and are qualified to teach worthwhile skills. It thus behooves the Ministry to Education to Teach the teachers, whether that means taking those who only speak the Valyrian Trade tongues and offer a study of Common or to offer scholarships to literate Westerosi in a simple common curriculum that would then allow them to impart these skills.
DC: 20
[] True Speech Presses: Having access to educational material that is automatically understood by speakers of any tongue, even by those who are not literate, is obviously of great use in education so the ministry proposes setting these up in many of the major cities outside the capital. While this would allow far swifter dissemination of the information, it would also make it likely that the arcane technology will fall into the hands of private actors as the number of 'mage-scribes', the technicians actually running the presses, increases exponentially.
DC: Automatic (Grants a bonus to many future Education and Public Information programs);
[] Noble Studies: Encourage the nobles of the Imperium, great and small, to send their children for some form of higher education, preferably one that would make them more skilled at their administrative tasks in the future... or which would draw them towards other fields of advancement, creating either a more competent noble administration or one that would fall into the care of the bureaucracy by default. Either outcome suits the throne.
DC: 60
[] Exra-planar Experts: It is a fact widely agreed upon that among the Spheres there are many with skills that are lacking in this world under the sun, but where making use of those skills directly will forever leave us bound to the teachings of immortals, bidding them to teach these skills will allow us to stand on the stage beside them in the fullness of time. Thus may the pinnacle of Imperial scholarship be sharpened.
DC: 75
OOC: As I was putting this together I realized that having dozens of options all dropped on you at the same time was going to be really overwhelming, and to be honest writing them all in one go would be overwhelming to me as well, so instead I am going to put these up in four, maybe five parts with debate and suggestions between and then once everything is up we can start voting. As for the DCs, yes they are straight d100, I thought it would be better to start the new system with a clean slate so you can accumulate bonuses from here on out. Not yet edited.
