Nine Jade Bureau for the Preservation of Immortal Works

The Nine Jade Bureau for the Preservation of Immortal Works is a small department of the Thousand Scales, charged with the acquisition and maintenance of the vast number of artworks, sculptures, tapestries, and collections held by the Realm, and by its ruler the Scarlet Empress.

The Realm has extensive collections of artwork, decorating the offices within which its bureaucrats conduct their labours, conveying the Realm's magnificence in embassies and outposts throughout the Threshold, but the bulk of the Nine Jade Bureau's work is as caretaker rather than controller, for the most splendid and most valuable of artworks in their charge are the personal possessions of the Empress Herself, loaned to Her bureaucracy until she might have need of them again.

This fact has protected the Bureau from dissolution as the Great Houses seek to divvy up the Realm... while Bal Keraz and the Imperial Treasury lay plans for the auction of the works owned by the Realm, no one has yet laid claim to the Empress' own property. The Nine Jade Bureau has seen facilities shuttered and staff dismissed across the Blessed Isle, but its core remains, with the Empress’ treasures remanded to their remaining depository in the House of Bamboo and Chrysanthemum, while a number of works and caretakers in the Imperial City were transferred to the control of the Ministry of the Imperial Gardens.

Long a sponsor of Dynastic art and performance, though not officially a bureaucrat of the Nine Jade Ministry, Princess V’neef Mahara also stepped in to provide personal sponsorship for the Pavilion of Painting and Song in the Imperial Palace, allowing the Bureau to keep it and its treasures open and displayed rather than shuttering its galleries and transferring its riches to the House of Bamboo and Chrysanthemum.