The Divine Kingdom of Theanill
At the very top of the Divine Kingdom’s hierarchy is of course Theanill herself, the Divine Half-Dragon. Second only to her in authority are her Oracles, a set of people selected by Theanill herself who have dedicated their lives to serving her directly.
Far below the Oracles are 7 clades of 7 Cardinals, who are directly managed by the Chief Priestess. The cardinals are responsible for passing laws, electing officials, and judging crime. Bishops are those selected to manage the logistics and planning of individual regions, acting as governors.
At once the least authoritative and most important members of the Church are the great many priests and deacons distributed across Theanill, who are assigned either specific villages or areas to steward. These people often act as elders, doctors, and counselors for their communities, and as a point-of-contact for the rest of the Church to a given area.
Cirrhonian Provinces
The selection process for a duke in any given dukedom in the Provinces varies wildly: some dukes inherit their power from a family line, while other are closer to elected officials, and others still act merely as the extension of a larger faction. But all dukedoms keep in common one thing, if they are to be recognized by the Grand Counsel—a single duke, who themselves represent the entirety of their territory. If a duke dies and power is not passed a successor, it is perfectly possible for the dukedom to disappear overnight.
The Grand Counsel, a committee of seven of the most powerful dukes in the Provinces, acts as the arbiter of what dukedoms do and do not exist, and is the ultimate mediator of inter-ducal disputes. Each member of the Grand Counsel is responsible for hearing and resolving such disputes within a certain geographic region, but if any given dispute is significant enough to concern other regions of the Provinces (or if a strong enough appeal is made to the other members of the Counsel), the case may be added to the docket of cases to be tried at the yearly Grand Trials, usually held in Nimbarre of the Carta Dukedom. There, the Grand Counsel meets as one to hear and judge the highest-profile cases of the year.
Taguzen Shogunate
The Shogunate governs by a single metric—strength. Every citizen is considered a member of the Imperial Army, even if they are not a soldier by trade, and is thus assigned a ranking. At the very bottom of the ranking are those who either cannot or will not fight, who are treated with the minimum human dignity but granted no privilege. In addition to the duty to command and organize lower-ranked forces, those of higher rank are granted increasing privilege, such as property, access to education, and expendable income.
Within the Shogunate, it is possible to raise one’s rank by dueling someone of higher rank than you in a process known as a “ranking battle.” If one of lower rank wins against one of higher rank, their positions are swapped: the winner is promoted, and the loser demoted.
This process continues up the ranks, with fewer and fewer people able to lay claim to the highest echelons of the Shogunate. At the top of the ranking sits the single strongest individual in the Shogunate, the Tag Shogun, who holds direct control of the entire Imperial Army.
Khyne Technocracy
The Khyne Technocracy merits itself on selecting only the best possible people for its jobs—and how else would one determine the candidate with the most relevant skills but with a series of exams?
Every government job in Khyne has an accompanying set of scored exams, which every prospective candidate is required to take. The content of the exams varies by the job—an ambassador may be required to recite three generations of lineage of several randomly selected ducal families, demonstrate public speaking ability, and be proficient in at least twelve Cirrhonian dance styles, while a dockworker may be required to lift at least twenty fifty-pound crates in the span of a minute, tie sixteen Khyne-standard mooring knots blindfolded, and be able to tell the approximate passenger-load of a ship only from its angle of approach and water-depth.
The management of any large-scale project or concern in Khyne is usually accomplished via committee, which the most important of all is of course the Testing Committee, responsible for drafting, administering, and scoring all Khynean examinations.