Ever-Flowing Office of Foreign Acquisitions

The Ever-Flowing Office of Foreign Acquisitions is a department of the Thousand Scales responsible for the tracking and management of property outside the aegis of the Realm.

Ownership on the Blessed Isle under the Scarlet Empress was simple: the Empress owned all land, all manses, all businesses, and others were merely tasked with administering them on her behalf. But outside the Isle, in the satrapies and even independent Threshold states, ownership became far more complex: citizens of the Realm, the Great Houses, the government and the Empress all owned their own properties there. The Ever-Flowing Office was established in RY302 to track these holdings, with three goals: one, so the Empress could be aware of her subjects' assets outside her direct control (and exact tribute payments from those assets in lieu of taxes), two so the independent posessions of the Great Houses could be kept from shifting against the interests of the Realm as a whole, and three so that political pressure could be exerted on Threshold governments to the advantage of the personal assets of the Empress.

The Office has always had a rivalry with the Wise and Knowledgeable Advisors of Foreign Tributaries, who have long felt they ought have the Office's portfolio under their aegis. The current environment in the Realm has produced even more pressure from the Advisors attempting to take control, but has also caused the Office to try and expand its own powers... the Deliberative passed a law in RY765 allowing all businesses opened from then on to be owned by their founders, not the Empress, and the Office has exerted a claim that such independent businesses fall under their portfolio.

The Office has been insulated from the budgetary difficulties seen across the bureaucracy due to its direct administration of several properties belonging to the Realm within the Threshold. The funds earned by these (or from their sale to the Great Houses) are taken in outside the normal strictures of the Imperial Registry and thus do not always route through the Imperial Treasury.

Head: Industrious Mediator of Foreign Acquisitions, currently Ragara Lief.