The Bureau of Records and Warrants

The Bureau of Records and Warrants possesses a well-known dual identity in the Celetine Empire. It is simultaneously an efficient government public records office—a relative rarity in the byzantine Celetine bureaucracy—and the feared secret police force that has, on occasion, been turned against political dissenters.
According to its public charter, the Bureau functions as the Celetine Empire's chief repository of official and public documents. Any non-classified records, both public (minutes of a city council meeting, court dates, text of active and inactive statutes) and private (birth and death announcements, wedding filings, name changes, etc.), can be obtained from the Bureau for a nominal administrative fee.
Its police power was originally derived from a postscript in the charge, granting the bureau exclusive authority to issue arrest and detention warrants against members of the nobility and high merchant classes. For efficiency, to this was eventually added the authority to enact the warrants authorized by the Bureau.
From there, it was a short and slippery slope to extrajudicial detention and secret trials.
This postscript also provided the Bureau with its far more infamous nickname—the Salacinate. In the bureaucratic language of the empire a salacin is literally a footnote. Beneath the Imperial Records Complex exists a warren of basements and subbasements where the Bureau carries out its police functions. In the common speech, salacin has another meaning: a “basement or cellar for the aging of expensive wines”.
There have been periods of enlightened reform that have improved the Bureau’s public image, for a time. At the beginning of the Oskana Dynasty, Emperor Julan the Pious famously threw open the doors of the Salacinate and invited the public to tour its lowermost levels. As a PR stunt, this was incredibly effective. As an actual tool of reformation, it left much to be desired because, at the end of the day, the doors closed again, and work resumed.
Even at its worst, it is said that the existence of the Salacinate is the only check on the power of the Celetine Emperors. In reality, this is a myth convenient to both the Bureau and the Imperial Family.

Assets

• The Imperial Records Complex in Celetta
• Regional Salacinate Offices
• 250,000 Celetine Marks in gold coinage
• Direct line of credit from the Celetine Central Bank
• Salacin Warrant Officers

"From Darkness, Light"

Type

Governmental, Department

Alternative Names

The Salacinate

Demonym

Salacin

Leader

Jaka Pretoral

Leader Title

Director of Records & Warrants [DRW]

Parent Organization

Ministry of Internal Security

Location

Celetta

Notable Members

• Jaka Pretoral