Category:Bureau of Humanity

The Divine Witnesses of Human Works and Deeds (the Bureau of Humanity) is the section of the Celestial Bureaucracy responsible for mortal affairs and related concepts. It is divided into the Department of Human Habitations and the Department of Universal Human Affairs, each headed by a Director. The head of the former has long been considered senior of the two, and with the recent lessening of the latter (and the absence of its own Director) this has become official within the Bureau hierarchy.

The Bureau of Humanity was once a puissant force in divine politics, but since the Usurpation has seen itself outmaneuvered at nearly every turn by rival Bureaus. The Bureau of Heaven’s Department of Abstract Matters in particular has drawn away numerous gods and sometimes entire offices, an effort which showed the weakness of the Bureau of Humanity and thus precipitated the flight of further gods to other Bureaus, and the encroachment of gods within those Bureaus into matters within the purview of Humanity (particularly in seizing the positions of City Gods). The Bureau has responded to these attacks with maneuvering of its own, of particular note restructuring to blur the lines between Celestial and Terrestrial divinities… clarification of the ambiguous status of City Fathers and City Mothers to make them definitively members of the Celestial Court (cities, Wun Ja argued, persist long after their Terrestrial structures and populations have scattered) and doing the same with major gods of highways, nations, and the like. Even the various gods of specific villages and bandit groups, while too minor for even a weakened Bureau of Humanity to elevate, have found their superiors in Yu Shan more accommodating (if no less arrogant) than in times before, and some in the Terrestrial Bureaucracy now whisper in anger about the imperiousness of the Bureau of Heaven rather than the Celestial Bureaucracy as a whole.

Chief Executive: Wun Ja, the Shining Metropolis, god of Cities, Director of the Department of Human Habitations.