Empire History

This is a short bit about how the Empire came to rule the surface. It's background and mostly unimportant.
Spoiler
Show
History: Around 400 years ago a smarter than average king realized that whenever he fought his neighbors, invading barbarians, whatever, whomever brought more magical power to the conflict almost always won. So he made peace with his neighbors, secured his borders, ans started a pogrom of attracting and retaining magical power to his kingdom.
He cut a deal with the churches of the Triumvirate of Light-bringer Gods, making them the official religions of of the state and exempting them from taxation and magic laws. In return the churches would provide acolytes and young priests to be trained as army officers. The king also courted several powerful mages with promises of titles, lands, and universities with libraries and laboratories. In exchange the mages would freely educate any worthy apprentices, and when those students graduated they would enter the army, civil service, or become teachers themselves.
The king's grandson inherited the most magically powerful nation in the world at that time. The rest is (mostly) history.

Politics: The unprecedented representation of magical power in the army officer corps and imperial nobility has led to some interesting laws, policies, and traditions. The army has developed tactics both to deal with magic-using creatures and to deal with magic in it's own ranks. For example they have battlefield commands for archers to cluster on the mage-officer for Flame Arrow, or for wounded to cluster on the priest-officer for healing. On a strategic level the access to scrying, concealment, and communication magics has massively improved scouting and the coordination of military operations on all levels.
The improved tactics and communications have sharply reduced the need for bands of adventurers to deal with large monsters and magical threats. Of course unemployed adventurers are not a positive force for peace and quiet in society. The occasional drunken army officer with a Fireball up his sleeve doesn't help public opinion either. These sorts of things led to a reform of the laws governing the use of magic in public. The results are harsh, unforgiving, and expensive to enforce. In order to offset the high costs of the laws are structured in a "pay as you go" format that requires magic using people to be either very wealthy, very weak, or employed by the army or civil service.

Inquisitor Chairs (caster level 6, DC 15, 20,000 gp)
One magic item important to the empire is it's Inquisitor Chairs. They are large ebony thrones with inlaid silver runes and three globes at the crown of the back. They are found in every Temple of Zin, some businesses, and rather too many government offices. The chairs are enchanted with Detect Lies and Zone of Truth spells that will light up either the left hand red globe (for lies) or the right hand green globe (for truth). The central milky white globe is actually not magical. This globe becomes crystal clear whenever it is within ten feet of a magical or psychic field that is not a purely divination or clairvoyance effect. This property is achieved by enchanting a mixture of pure white sand and powdered silver with powerful detection spells and then using a combination of alchemy and glassblowing to form it into a ball inside a powerful anti-magic field. The resulting orb is then attuned by subjecting it to constant divination spells for several weeks. Many apprentices are forced to spend a great deal of time casting Detect spells on bunches of boring non-magical globes. However the utility and importance of these globes is such that extra are made every year.
It is a well known fact the the Inquisitor chair is not terribly hard to resist. It is also very well advertised that repeated resistance to the effect of the Inquisitor Chair is a capitol offense that always requires lengthy imprisonment and painfully enhanced interrogation techniques.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...wLF2KcXw4/edit

Empire Licenses for Adventuring

This is a good part of why the PCs are in Exile. It's not astonishingly interesting or important, it exists to make people feel better about starting the game as condemned criminals.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...eckMowmKM/edit