Editing Tales of Perpetual Peace/ShanlinLoresheets (section)

==The Imperial Bureaucracy==
===The Four Chambers===
*The Winter Chamber
*The Spring Chamber
*The Summer Chamber
*The Autumn Chamber
===The Astral Directorate===
On the one hand, the Astral Directorate is, in one form or another, the oldest part of the Xin bureaucracy.  From the very start of the reign of Xin Taizu, dedicated scholars have performed divinations about all matters of imperial policy, from the earth-shaking to the mundane.  On the other hand, however, the Astral Directorate in its current form is the most recent addition to the Imperial Bureaucracy (dating back to the reign of the Xin Yizong, the Eleventh Emperor), and its predominance over the Four Chambers is more recent still.  The more perspicacious observers of the bureaucracy note that the star of the Directorate has been in its ascendency just at the time when its efficacy seems to be waning.<br>
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'''Bagua Tower'''<br>
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'''The Codex Sidereal'''<br> 
The Codex regulates the practice of prediction-making across Shen Zhou.  The whole of the Codex covers eight large scrolls; perhaps a few handfuls of dedicated bureaucrats within the Directorate have read all of them, and perhaps one or two of them could be said to be really familiar with its laws as a whole.  This is not, as it might seem to outsiders, a flaw in the Codex.  To be sure, it has come over time to encompass a dizzyingly, almost impossibly wide array of specific circumstances and cases.  The proscriptions, though often preposterously narrow, are so voluminous, in fact, that almost no scholar or seer outside of the Directorate (members of which are exempted by Imperial decree) has not run afoul of at least a few of them at some point in time.  This is not accidental.  The aim of the laws of the Codex (with one exception) is not to distinguish the lawful from the unlawful, but rather to ensure that all scholars can, with a little digging, be found guilty of something.<br>
But there is one exception.  The first proscription of the Codex reads: "Make no predictions concerning the activities or nature of the Emperor and his State, neither in their essence nor in their perquisites, neither in matters domestic nor foreign, neither auspicious nor inauspicious."  To run afoul of this rule is to ensure a visit from the Guardians; to ensure a visit from the Guardians is tantamount to suicide.  Scholars must take great care to avoid rendering predictions about anything that might so much as enter the ambit of Imperial concerns; horror stories, perhaps untrue but nonetheless edifying, circulate about the poor scholars who accidentally make a prediction that bears on some obscure Imperial concern, and are never heard from again.
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'''Pan Gu's Bones'''<br> 
The Han Imperial Seal may be the direct expression of the Xin's hold on the Mandate of Heaven, but it is the set of ancient artifacts known as Pan Gu's Bones that truly embody their reign.  Said to be held in the highest floor of the Tower, the Bones remain in use by the Purple Star Sages to manipulate the destiny of the Empire.