Thus Spake Zargrabowski/EmpireBuilding

g_c_grabowski - 09-27-2003 - raindog@white-wolf.com

The British had a functonal empire that stretched from their concessions in China through the lands they ruled in India, Egypt, the Americas and countless coaling stations and maritime possessions. All without steamships, wireless or the telegraph. Exalted has all three and air travel too.

The Persians, the Chinese, the Byzantines and various Caliphates all managed large empires successfully. The Incans did so with such prize picks from the domesticable animals pot as the llama, guinea pig and mexican hairless dog. Organized civilization did not spring into existence with the computerized database of citizens and the centralized welfare state. As long as there have been land to squabble over, there's been organized government, and it is much more effective than anyone gives it credit for. We have extensive bureaucratic paperwork from the erection of the pyramids. I've read an interminably long book about transnational Ismaili espionage netowrks across the maghreb and Egypt that are no different than what we'd expect to see today.

Mostly the last few centuries have brought stable succession through democratic election in the core states and improved matters so that bulk trade is economically reasonable and the *average person* can do many different things like travel and communicate that used to be so hard or expensive that only the rich or powerful did it. I suggest you read Jonathan Spence's "Treason By the Book" to get an idea of just how organized a society you can get without laptops and jet planes.

I think you can manage any size nation with the tech of Exalted. You can't run it like modern West Germany or America, but then, you can't run a country like that in the real world either -- both have structural budget defecits and will have to undergo fundamental changes to survive for more than the historical eyeblink of the next ten or so years. However, you can keep the local rulers from hosting their own flags and get the tax remittances to the treasury every time they're due, conscript the locals as fodder in your armies with the regular degree of mixed success, and even impose justice in all but the most peripheral of areas. You don't need to look further than the first guy with a bridge or gate tax who needs to make sure he gets a fair cut of the proceeds to find a bureaucracy.

Geoffrey C. Grabowski\\ Exalted Developer, WWGS\\ raindog@white-wolf.com