Just a thought when I am playing my Imperial. There is supposed to be inherant distrust and jostling for favour of the Emperor, between the different sects but they really come together when rerieving.

This is not a bad thing but given the way the Imperial inners chastise and demand the retrieval I think it would be quite cool, and fitting in with the politicing between sects, that the sect/s (max two) gain a boost to their Imperial powers if they are the one/ones who regain the codex for the Emperor. Linked in to the morale boost you get but an added inentive for blades not to ask along divines if they can do it themselves.

thoughts?

I see the empire itself as one of those wierd enigmas. A tyranical institution that is more or less based on democracy. The only thing is that you have to wait for a leader to die or be removed to see any real politics start to play out. While elite powers are pretty cool you are basically garunteed to get them just by reaching hero and sticking it out a bit given the number of elite slots vs the number of active people.


The big flaw with the system you proposed is that as it was said before empire powers are very significant as is. Any kind of boost to them would have to come with pretty big drawbacks to maintain balance. The blade sect would also dominate the empire forever and always under this framework because most of the other sects are not nearly as proficient in retrieving on their own or tend to have low membership numbers. In fact all of them other then the blades I doubt have more than a handful of active members at any given time.


I think one way to improve imperial politicing would be to shake up the top of the leadership more often and somehow make inter-sect competition more potent. Perhaps give the leader of whatever the best sect currently is 2 votes for the emperor instead of 1. That would give sect leaders looking to become emperor a lot of incentive to monitor intersect relationships as it gives them a direct benifit to advancing their own selfish cause.

I like the spirit of your idea, but Empire (along with Battle) really don't need any more juice in their powers.

#### even your respective councilmember saying "Leet skilled blade has retrieved the Codex and received the favor of the council!" or something

Nothing massive.