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A common image conjured of the Imperium is that of the failing or inept bureaucracy that can lose worlds for centuries, resulting in the deaths of billions in an Imperium where human lives don't matter. And so on. You can probably drawn oodles of examples from the background materials that work with this type of imagery. Yet I say, "Au contraire". The Imperium of Man actually has a fantastic bureaucracy and, to have survived for over ten millennia, would have to. The details are, however, in the gaps and where one finds the information. * * * The premise is simple and not too stretch of the imagination from the established background materials on the structure of the Imperium. It was also something that was initially borne out of the consideration of something called the "Universal World Profile" (UWP) from a TTRPG called Traveller. These can be simple, but Googling around revealed a more complex version (that is tongue-in-cheek but includes the real version) that looks about perfect for something stored in the central archive of Terra: IMTU tc+ t5++(LBB#000016) tp ge-() 3i(+) jt a ls+ Eneri Dinshaa 0609 A588865-B S 323 If this looks like gibberish, you're spot on. And that's the point. The kind of thing that is archived on Terra is going to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kind of data footprint that, say, an industrial world could generate over a given period of time. Yet where would more detailed information be found? In that answer you have the structure of the Imperium, which is oft-noted as being feudal and, herein, inherently hierarchical when it comes to data: Terra / Mars. Segmentum Fortress World. < Units of astrographic measure not described> Sector Capital. Subsector Capital. Individual world. For the purposes of, say, Inquisitorial acolytes running around looking for information (ala Dark Heresy 2e---not 1e as that is a terrible system!), where do you go for information. For obvious reasons you're not going to hike your way to Holy Terra (or Mars) to get the high-order information for anything except the most abstract of data investigations looking at patterns over huge swathes of the Imperium on a periodicity of when data is sent back*. No, you're going to go further down the data chain. There are some wonderful implications to this that does a lot of heavy-lifting as to how the Imperium operates in the various background materials. The big decision-makers of the Imperium are dealing with the most abstract data archives that is always going to be outdated (though not due to incompetence) and will rely heavily on "field reports" transmitted over the Astropathic Network. Hmmn. Actually, I'm going to leave it at that as "food for thought". * For those that hark back to the times of Portent / Warseer, can you remember "The Imperial Pony Express"!? ;) * * * As always, DISCUSS.