The Senate and the Emperor

On the first Monday of every month, we bring you insights into the world of The Broken Hourglass. This week,we turn the spotlight on Tolmira's Imperial government.

Tolmira is governed by a law- and policy-making body known as the Senate, a 200-seat assembly of some of the most powerful and influential individuals within the Empire's reach. The Senate convenes in the Imperial capital of Azmadisha and traces its roots to the earliest governing bodies of its days as a city-state. In the official histories, the rule of the Senate has been continuous and unbroken for 600 years, since the year 148 when Primarch Urgardt re-took Azmadisha from northern barbarians who had captured the city a year earlier. At the time, Azmadisha was but the head of the much smaller Kingdom of Azmadir, consisting of the city-state's home strait and captured territory from the then-independent nations of Narimir and Aemir.

The Senate itself votes to fill its vacancies. Senate positions are ostensibly perpetual, but resignation and forced removal often "become necessary" through pressure from a majority (or extremely powerful minority) of other senators. As a result, only a minority of senators will actually serve out a lifetime appointment.

By convention, members departing (or dying) on good terms with his or her fellow senators are allowed to hand-pick a replacement, typically but not always a family member. The seat of an unpopular member is wholly up for grabs, and social climbers have been known to do anything to buy their way into the Senate through influence, pressure, and outright bribes of seated Senators. There are no strict requirements for regional representation of Tolmira's various provinces, but in practice the timely appointment of a popular local figure or war hero to the Senate can quell discontentment with Azmadisha among some of the Empire's more far-flung territories.

The members of the Senate are loosely allied into four different factions. The first represents military interests and tends to be composed of generals, admirals, and the occasional hawkish provincial landowner. They focus mainly on keeping Tolmira's considerable martial assets under Senatorial control generally and their control, particularly. Many seem to yearn for centuries past when a general of Tolmira could be a king in his own right--conquering foreign lands for the glory of Tolmira, and plundering its riches for his own coffers. With the Empire's borders so stable, they must find gratification elsewhere.

The second group tends to represent the interests of the Empire's landholders-an assortment of wealthy merchants, plantation owners, mine owners, and other wealthy provincial lords from distant provinces. The power of this mercantile faction peaked during the divisive and aggressive reign of Primarch Inmazran, from 486-503. The landholders were able to benefit from the military's insatiable demand for resources and the greed of the bureaucrats and position themselves atop a pyramid of corruption which gave them tremendous power at home. However, the populist emperor Atrus VI greatly curbed their power with a series of reforms he forced on the Imperial government during his reign from 515-537. Taxes, tribute, and accountability post-Atrus are much more strict.

Now, the landholding faction concerns itself with obtaining autonomy and insulation from the bureaucratic arm of the Empire, which it sees as counterproductive, aloof, and spiteful. In practice, the senators in this faction tend to align themselves with the militaristic group, in part because they see the Empire's security as a shared goal. Matters are complicated by the fact that the two most prominent and powerful members of the landholder faction despise one another, leaving the group rudderless and disorganized.

Tolmira's bureaucrats comprise the third senatorial faction. Their extensive and seemingly unshakable control over many of the Empire's labyrinthine system of ministries and departments has given a number of bureaucrats the leverage they need to be installed in the Senate. Broadly speaking, their primary objective is to increase the power and control of the Imperial government, and they see their own contributions to its operation as the leading source of Tolmira's overall prosperity and stability. They claim credit for carrying out and maintaining the reforms of Atrus VI, shifting Tolmira from a militaristic to a commercial nation--though this is a gross oversimplification of the truth. The current overseer of the Ministry of Records, a native Azmadishan named Zaliia Arrius Tenemad, acts as the unofficial spokesman of the bureaucrats.

The nation's temples provide senators for the final faction, often finding itself brokering peace between the others, though it is no less interested in ensuring its own priorities are met. The Temples seek to ensure the power of religion is not set by the wayside in the Tolmirans' quest for wealth and power.

The Emperor: Primarch Oluria (745-?)

The Primarch of Tolmira, informally and traditionally known as the emperor, has absolute power... in theory. Once elected by the Senate, the laws of Tolmira give the Primarch ultimate say over all matters of Imperial business and imply a great deal of control at the provincial and local level as well. In practice, the Primarch must walk a tight-rope between the four factions in the senate, pleasing them all enough that they find no reason to agitate for a replacement, while maintaining an appearance of impartiality.

The current emperor is a relatively young woman of no obvious allegiance to any one group, named Oluria Darusin Zaluris. She is descended from a long line of merchant princes from the island province of Toluz, has spent time in the Imperial Navy enforcing law on the trade routes in that region, and was a member of the Legate of Toluz's administration. All this experience has combined to give her the perspective she needs to balance their conflicting demands, and her comparative anonymity has kept pressure groups from stepping on the toes of her Senate backers. So far.