Let's be prescriptive about this instead of purely critical. How do you think it should work?

Ground rules: nothing changes about how Empire powers and promotion work. Staff retains the right to nerf emperors who refuse to appoint a council.

Open questions:

1. What should be the criteria for promotion to Maran?
2. How many Maran should be allowed to exist at any given time?

Should it matter if some number of existing Maran are dormant and play very infrequently?

Should the cap on # of Maran be "floating" in some way, e.g. based off the # of characters "council or above" (or possibly "elite or above") in Empire?

In terms of Maran promotion, if I had to make up criteria I'd do something like: 10+ ePKs, rank 35+, 7
+ RL days as a squire, 20+ game-hours as a squire, 50+ total game hours. I'd be open to tweaking some of those numbers up or down.

Here are stats on some prominent recent Fortress characters at the point they were promoted to Maran. The only one that sticks out as having been promoted "too quickly" is Hunsodin.

Thaedan: 8 PK, rank 43, 16 days as a squire, 64 hours as a squire, 96 total hours
Hunsodin: 3 PK, rank 37, 3 days as squire, 9 hours as squire, 52 total hours.
Talimor: 11 PK, rank 31, 7 days as squire, 29 hours as squire, 46 total hours.
Koidel: 15 PK, rank 51, 9 days as squire, 92 hours as squire, 106 total hours.
Zurra: 35 PK, rank 33, 43 days as a squire, 63 hours as a squire, 111 total hours.
Lithodora: 23 PK, rank 42, 23 days as a squire, 100 hours as a squire, 134 total hours.

Out of curiosity I checked some Empire characters to see how many RL days it took for them to go from Bloodoath to Elite. Unfortunately it's not possible to pull stuff like hours, etc. from the data in the PBF posts.

Glikhardiz: 7 days
Arbrarn: 23 days
Hetherian: 5 days
Hokrur: 12 days
Vasidi: 10 days
Bakrmarr: 7 days
Kijar: 20 days
Kirohn: 3 days
Glaunm: 15 days
Tchakabum: 23 days
Kotu: 14 days
Faldeikso: 8 days