Many were the tales of whole clans and towns wiped from the map by crazed individuals of high talent who had stumbled across good fortune or the sponsorship of some malign spirit.
- So many talents lost. I weep for what the Empire has missed.
-- While many began with legitimate grievance, those talents who could not restrain themselves once they had a taste of power and revenge became beasts.
--- The Ministry cannot be faulted for those who became twisted. I am proud to have been turned from the path of mindless vengeance and power seeking.
They would emerge, wreak destruction, and die with great difficulty when the provincial duke's forces came down upon them. Many even tried to set themselves up as petty warlords or proclaimed that they would usurp the Throne itself! Some, in less well run reaches of the Empire, even maintained long-standing "bandit kingdoms," avoiding being crushed by ducal forces by making themselves inconvenient to attack.
The Ministry of Integrity was the solution to this perennial trouble. They solved the problem not merely through violence, although much is whispered of Minister Sima, who, it is said, ended the greatest of the bandit kingdoms in a single night and slew the mad violet realm Lu Gong, ending his rampage for "vengeance" against the peoples of the Cao clan and freeing the women bound to him. No, the true solution to the problem was the Wise Emperor An's expansion of the Great Sect system.
Talent for cultivation cannot be fully controlled. Among the high bloodlines of the Empire, average talent is nearly guaranteed, but high talent individuals have always appeared in the strangest of places. It followed, then, that the reason for so many individuals to take a dark course in their life lay in their lack of opportunity. Find the talented and provide them with education and a place in society, and there would be no more petty bandit kings and false emperors.
It fell to the Ministry of Integrity to identify these individuals before their paths could diverge from virtue.
It is troubling to say that many opposed this decree and the opening of the Great Sects to the common born. Although it is understandable that high lords and ladies would not wish their children to mingle with potentially dangerous individuals, it is the duty of the nobility to educate and care for the common man. This duty has been oft neglected, and the problems, Emperor An reasoned, arose from this shirking.
So it fell to the Throne and the Ministry to make up for this shortfall. To reassure the nobility of the Empire, Emperor An assigned his own daughter, Princess Xiang, who had taken up duties in the Ministry, to lead and coordinate the divination teams and surveillance of the first generation of "common talents."
- Agent Xiang was truly among our best. It is a shame that she cannot be Empress and Minister both.
-- It is her efforts which saved many of my agents from the dark paths they were on before being turned and recruited into the Ministry.
--- I would approve some expansion of this portion of the text. Further support for the Empress' reforms would be a useful side effect of the document.
