Meteorological Records Commission
The Meteorological Records Commission is a relatively new development in the Bureau of Seasons, emerging during the confusion following the Usurpation and the end of the Solar Deliberative. The Commission’s purpose is to keep an archive of the weather which has been implemented in Creation, and the consequences of that weather, so that the Bureau’s gods might consult it in planning out future weather patterns.
In times past, with the Bureau following a plan set out by the Unconquered Sun and then Solar Deliberative, there was no need for such information: the policy was set and the Bureau concerned itself only with implementation, and adjudication of conflicts between various phenomena. Even today, the Shogun-Regent actively discourages subordinates who seek to see the Bureau take full control of weather planning, while key subordinates view the Bureau’s primary function as a military force and a check on the power of other Celestial departments, weather management itself a tertiary function.
But weather must be planned, and neither the Most High nor the Solars (at least, until their sudden re-emergence in recent years) are submitting instructions. The Bureau instead follows the plans requested by other bureaucratic organs such as the Convention on Natural Disasters and (pointedly without acknowledgement) the Bureau of Climatic Deliberations, and consults the last set of instructions ever submitted by the Solar Deliberative. However, when gods cannot, or do not wish to, replicate such submissions, they may engage in long-term planning of their own, in consultation with the Almanacs of the Meteorological Records Commission.
Each Almanac records the weather of Creation for a given period, noting locations and weather phenomena as well as the gods responsible and the consequences. The earlier almanacs are concerned with impacts on Creation, compiling from Bureau reports to account for changes in water levels, crop productivity, and the like, but as time has gone one the details within have shifted markedly. An almanac today is primarily filled with information on conflicts and on prayer... the former subject detailing which gods had disputes during the period and whose side won out, the latter information on which gods benefited from the weather in terms of increased prayers, and by how much. When gods seek to plan out weather phenomena in consultation with the Almanacs, this information allows them to ensure they advance the interests of their allies, and can claim due compensation from the divinities who receive greater prayer from the plan. Many gods outside the Bureau, particularly those of the Bureau of Humanity’s Ever-Fruiting Council of Grains, consider this form of planning to be extortion... but they do so quietly, and pay off the weather gods all the same.
The Daimyo of the Commission is Ocean Crimson Lotus, god of Changing Temperatures.
