Purveyors of Sweet Winds and Happy Ways
The Purveyors of Sweet Winds and Happy Ways were a minor ministry of the Thousand Scales, founded by the Scarlet Empress to ensure that the foul smoke of kilns and forges did not choke the lungs of her subjects. Troubled by such suffering, the Empress instituted a system of regulation where foundries and smithies were required to cap their flues with blockers and filters that might purify the smoke emerging. The founding of the Sweet Purveyors occurred soon thereafter, when those operating such forges complained that their facilities became clogged with Ash that required great efforts to clear and dispose of.
The responsibility of the Sweet Purveyors was, in addition to enforcing the Imperial regulations and levying related fines, to gather this furnace ash and transport it elsewhere for disposal, relieving the forges themselves of this burden. While the ministry was not large, it was able to call on the soldiers of local Imperial Legion garrisons to carry out its tasks.
Initially the Sweet Purveyors had been attached to the Honorable and Humble Caretakers of the Common Folk, but (likely due to the Empress granting it favour in allocation of funding) the ministry saw a great deal of political maneuvering, with the Incorruptible Observers of Geomantic Harmony, Bureau of Climatic Deliberations, and even the Efficient and Exemplary Manciples of the Martial Table all clamoring for jurisdiction, the Observers eventually winning out in exchange for conceding significant autonomy to the Sweet Purveyors.
During the large-scale reduction of the Thousand Scales following the disappearance of the Empress, the Purveyors of Sweet Winds were defunded and disbanded. Within the Scarlet Prefecture, some sections of the ministry were absorbed into the Eternally Vigilant Wardens of Detritus, but many of its bureaucrats were not so fortunate… memories in the Thousand Scales are long, and those who had competed for control of the ministry in decades past ensured those who had exacted concessions which could no longer be repaid did not survive their loss of power.
Status: Dissolved.
