Changes: Adeptus Administratum

Revision as of 08:19, 14 August 2015

"To know one’s place is the greatest comfort, to excel within it is the greatest solace, and a master’s contentment is the greatest reward."

— Codex Administratum Edition XXIIVC

The Adeptus Administratum is the administrative and bureaucratic division of the Adeptus Terra, the heart of the gigantic bureaucracy that controls the government of the Imperium of Man, consisting of untold billions of clerks, scribes and administrative staff constantly working to manage the Imperium at every level, from assembling war fleets to levying taxes. It is the largest of the departments comprising the Adeptus Terra, and ten billion Administratum adepts work in the Imperial Palace on Terra alone. Its billions of officials on Terra and throughout the galaxy are constantly carrying out population censuses, working out tithes, recording and archiving information, and the million other things that are necessary for the running of the Imperium. Such is its immense size, that whole departments of the Administratum have been submerged by a sea of complex bureaucracy, becoming lost in loops of paper trails. Other departments have continued to dogmatically operate and carry out their founding function, even if the intent and requirement behind them no longer exists.

History

A Scribe of the Imperial Administration maintaining meticulous records of an Imperial Expeditionary Fleet during the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium

The Adeptus Administratum was originally created by the Emperor of Mankind as the Imperial Administration, the first bureaucracy for the newborn Imperium of Man, during the closing days of the Great Crusade, following the Ullanor Crusade of the 31st Millennium. The Imperial Administration was placed under the control of the Regent of Terra, Malcador the Sigillite, who was titled with the esteem rank of Chief of the Imperial Administration, and is recognised today as the first Master of the Administratum. As the single largest part of the Adeptus Terra, the bureaucrats of the Imperial Administration were to be responsible for the assessment of tithes, the distribution of resources, and essentially every administrative function the Imperium required to operate. Today, uncountable and ever-changing quantities of offices, departments and divisions deal with almost every facet of maintaining a galaxy-spanning empire of a million worlds, and every sector, world and citizen is subject to their scrutiny and intervention.

Within the Imperium, the agents of the Administratum are an innumerable and ever-present facet of interstellar commerce and politics, with the largest concentrations found on worlds with a particularly high military presence, high tithe requirements, or large-scale commerce. In particular, extensive Administratum offices on more developed worlds house hundreds of thousands of archivists, ordinates and prefects, who scrutinise sector-level operations with a keen eye and unwavering adherence to ancient doctrine. Typically, the Administratum takes little direct action in regards to matters of law or violations of it within the Adeptus Terra, as such matters are the concern of the Adeptus Arbites. However, the attention to detail that characterises much of the work of the Administratum often discovers criminal acts where they would otherwise go unnoticed, detecting pirates from reports of missing ships and locating smugglers from incongruous audits and tithe manifests. In situations such as these, the Administratum tends to hand matters over to another Imperial Adepta so that appropriate action can be taken. Even once others are involved, the Administratum continues to observe, ensuring that everything happens by the book and as efficiently as possible.

By virtue of wider necessity, even at the sector scale, the Administratum enacts collective decisions that will affect millions, even billions every day. Such actions are arrived at by a simple and utterly impersonal process of procedure, precedent, tradition, and cold calculation based on long-established criteria -- heedless of the level of suffering or upheaval that they will cause at a local level. Likewise, the absolute importance the Administratum places on the minutiae of its nightmarishly complex bureaucratic system and the strict adherence to regulations, forms, protocols, and due process, can itself be the source of great friction and dissatisfaction at all levels of Imperial society.

Worse still can occur when error creeps into the system, such as when the consequences of inaccuracy, lost data, or simple incompetence manifest themselves. Though exceedingly rare, it is quite possible for the Administratum to simply "lose a world" thanks to administrative error, condemning it to isolation and privation, or wrongly apply a tithe grade and thus render a world an asset-stripped wasteland. It might even misfile a request for emergency aid, which consequently arrives years, even centuries, too late. The trouble that such errors can inflict on a personal level are not hard to imagine; indeed, many individuals have had their records mangled, lost, or misregistered. For such unfortunates, unless very powerful, the consequences can be as shattering as they are impossible to rectify.

Of course, the lack of personal enmity involved in the Administratum's actions means little to those who may find their lives turned upside down, their families suddenly displaced or shunted wholesale to a strange world, their protections removed, their property seized, or themselves simply left to starve. As a result, the Administratum is both hated and feared by all strata of Imperial society. Many, even in the other Imperial Adepta, find them hidebound, petty, and obstructive. It is quite possible that through its work, the Administratum will breed bitterness and discontent that can explode into outright rebellion or provide an opening for darker forces to gain purchase.

The Administratum is also a shockingly parochial organisation, its Adepts blindly ignorant of the nature of the world around them and naive of its many pitfalls and dangers. This naivete in itself can leave the Administratum's myriad local offices and workers vulnerable to individual canker, deception, and infiltration, and in any organisation where human greed, ambition, vanity, and hubris may be found, worse still can bloom. Ironically, the organisation's greatest defence against corruption is its own vast complexity and inertia. This makes it woefully difficult to derail or subvert in any widespread or meaningful way. If a thousand Adepts have to be purged simply to ensure the accuracy of a particular tithe-repository's records, so be it. For the Administratum, nothing, not even the lives of its servants, is personal.

Factionalism and Internal Strife in the Administratum

Any complex system that relies heavily on dogma and protocol is subject to interpretation, and differences in such interpretation can lead to schism and discord. The Administratum is no exception to this. Petty bickering, internal politics, and departmental rivalries can all cause problems within the Administratum, both on the larger and local scales, although the organisation is often at pains to never let such disputes show to outsiders. While these minor disputes rarely amount to much in the grand scheme of things, their aftereffects can have wider ramifications, like the ripples spreading from a stone dropped into a still pool.

Purpose

Ordinate-Major Mordechai Lorik — Ordinate-Major of the Adeptus Administratum

Of all the Imperium's governmental divisions within the Adeptus Terra, the Administratum is regarded as the least prestigious, but its high-ranking members are among the most powerful people in the galaxy. If the Adeptus Terra is the machinery that drives the Imperium, the Administratum is the grease and oil that ensures this machinery operates. Without the Administratum, the machine would splutter to a halt and the Imperium would fail. As a result, the Master of the Administratum is in actuality the most politically powerful member of the High Lords of Terra.

Many Administratum positions are considered hereditary. Typical Administratum Adepts labour within gargantuan vaults, sitting at logic-engines and Cogitator workstations. They can be considered quite learned by Imperial standards. Like other non-combatant servants of the Adeptus Terra, the members of the Administratum wear a monastic style of dress, their habits varying in colour according to their rank within the Adepta and their area of responsibility. The basic colour for the lowliest scribe is black; higher-ranking members have increasingly lighter shades of grey, and eventually pure white.

While the Administratum is primarily responsible for all logistical operations related to the civil aspects of the Imperium, the division of the Administratum known as the Departmento Munitorum is responsible for the logistics of the Imperial Guard, organising military tithes, materiel supplies, troop movements and troop deployment. The Departmento is far more decentralised than the other divisions of the Administratum, establishing a presence on any world with a significant tithe-grade. Distress calls from an invaded world are processed by the Departmento, and will be passed up the ladder of bureaucratic command: star system to Sub-sector Command to Sector Command to Segmentum Command to the Senatorum Imperialis itself until one of them with enough resources and responsibility can deploy the needed reinforcements.

Divisions of the Administratum

The largest organisation in the Adeptus Terra, the Adeptus Administratum is itself divided into many branches. The greater majority of its constituents have no concept of how their work fits into any overall scheme, or even that they are part of the same bureaucracy. Comprised of innumerable divisions and offices it is unlikely that any one man, even the Master of the Administratum himself, has an idea of how many divisions exist within the monstrous Administratum. Their work is an end in itself and the single most important factor in the lives of Administratum Adepts. It is enough to perform the task; understanding is neither required, nor welcome. It is said by the soldiers of the Imperial Guard that for each fighting man there are a dozen scribes and at least two minor officials toiling, recording petty details that no one will use or consider. Most of the divisions are petty and of little interest. Known divisions of the Administratum include:

Departmento Munitorum - The Departmento Munitorum, also called the Adeptus Munitorum, is a department or sub-division of the Adeptus Administratum devoted to the general administration, personnel assignment, supply and logistics of the Imperial Guard. The Munitorum has ultimate responsibility for the raising of new Imperial Guard regiments, the training of new Imperial Guard troops, the provision of equipment and supplies to all regiments in the field, and the transportation of troops and equipment to and from theatres of war using the vessels of the Imperial Navy. It is primarily a logistical organisation, like the larger Administratum of which it is a part, but while the Administratum deals with the civilian logistics of running the entire Imperium of Man, the Munitorum deals solely with the military logistics necessary to fight and win the Imperium's wars on behalf of all branches of the Imperial armed forces.
The Estate Imperium - The Estate Imperium is a division of the Administratum described as, "..the million-strong records office of the Administratum." Presumably its purpose is to keep the records of Imperial Adepta and furnish them when they are called for by the relevant arms of the Adeptus Terra. The division's head carries the title of Chancellor of the Estate Imperium. The Estate Imperium's importance is such that its leader sometimes holds a position in the Senatorum Imperialis of the High Lords of Terra.
Historical Revision Unit - The Historical Revision Unit is another one of the myriad bureaucratic departments of the Administratum, whose Adepts are the indentured servants and Servitors known as Historitors who work within the Imperial Palace. Their job is to revise subversive records of Imperial history into versions that are more reverent towards the Emperor and the version of Imperial history that most glorifies His name. The Historicus is the title of the unit's chief Adept. One of the important duties of the Historical Revision Unit is seeking out historical records and, if need be, destroying them when ordered to do so by their superiors in the Administratum. Specially designated units of the Historical Revision Unit known as Deletions Teams carry out this function. Their most common duty is performing the vital task known as an Edict of Obliteration -- the deliberate destruction of any vital records or historical documents pertaining to an individual or organisation that has been declared Excommunicate Traitoris by the Emperor of Mankind, the High Lords of Terra or the Inquisition.
Officio Medicae - The Officio Medicae is the primary arm of the Administratum that deals with public health and medical-related issues in the Imperium, operating government-run medical facilities throughout the galaxy and on many Imperial worlds. In addition, they seem to oversee the management and quarantine of worlds or groups afflicted by plagues, such as those created and spread by Nurgle, the Chaos God of Plague. Like much of the Administratum, it is plagued by bureaucracy and procedure.
Logis Strategos - The Logis Strategos is the primary intelligence gathering and analysis agency of the Administratum. Its primary function is to analyze the myriad of threats to the Imperium presented by xenos and the Forces of Chaos and devise suitable strategies to counteract them.
Munitorum Strategic Intelligence Collective - The Munitorum Strategic Intelligence Collective is a secret arm of the Administratum that is composed of senior Ordo Xenos Inquisitors and Magos Biologis Genetors and Xenobiologists of the Adeptus Mechanicus. It is their primary mission to compile biological and logistical data on the Tyranids to determine their weaknesses and devise suitable counter-measures to future Hive Fleet invasions. These secretive reports are sent directly to the High Lords of Terra themselves. Their analysis of all the details of the Tyranid invasions thus far has seen them draw a startling conclusion as stark as it is terrifying: the Hive Fleets faced by the Imperium to date are but parts of a far greater whole, and this whole will be arriving at the Imperium's borders within less than a standard century. They estimate that Imperial mobilisation levels will need to be increased by a minimum of 500% -- which would effectively include every able-bodied man, woman and child on every world in Segmentums Solar, Obscurus and Tempestus -- to have even a hope of stopping this dire threat.
Tithes Chamber Notaries, sub. Planetary Census (Abhumans) - The Tithes Chamber Notaries, sub. Planetary Census (Abhuman) is a sub-division of the Adeptus Administratum that oversees the classification and recognition of stable and sanctioned Abhuman strains within the Imperium. Of these, forty-six types are now listed as extinct, and no records have been received of a further twelve strains for over a generation, suggesting that they too have died out or been assimilated back into the general population of Mankind. The status of the remaining fifteen Abhuman races is quite varied and there is permanent disagreement about their specific classification amongst the Adepts of the Tithes Chamber Notaries. The most noteworthy and contentious matter concerning the Adepts is the Ogryn (Homo sapiens gigantus) matrix of Abhuman strains.
Divisio Auditae - Unique to the Calixis Sector is the Divisio Auditae, which oversees matters of significant interest to the Administratum from incorrect tithes to the adjudication of Warrants of Trade granted to Imperial merchants in the sector. The Divisio Auditae was established in the early 8th century of the 41st Millennium, created as one of the first acts of the Lord Calixis Marius Hax, and it reports directly to Hax himself and to its superiors in the Administratum.
- Questors - Known more commonly (but unofficially) as Quaestors, these Auditors are empowered to travel the Calixis Sector and demand access to all records of any planetary government or organisation they come across; only the most powerful of individuals can deny a Quaestor’s demands, though even these few exceptions try Lord Hax’s patience. Anything they discover that seems worthy of attention is reported, to be acted upon by other agents of Lord Hax or other Imperial agents as deemed appropriate. Under the command of Prefect Salassar Aoghan Annovestes, a minor functionary from the Sephris Secundus elevated through the ranks of the Administratum, the ranks of the Divisio Auditae have swollen to include over 6,000 separate Questors. Each possesses the freedom to move and investigate whatever and wherever they see fit, much to the consternation of the Inquisition, Planetary Governors, and Rogue Traders who see such freedom of remit for an official who is essentially a bureaucrat as dangerous and intrusive into matters better left in other hands.

Ranks and Titles of the Administratum

There are countless ranks and titles used within the Administratum; this system of nomenclature is also used within the Adeptus Terra as a whole. Some examples include:

Master of the Administratum - The Master of the Administration is the titular head of the Adepta, who sits on the Senatorum Imperialis as one of the High Lords of Terra.
Adeptus (or Adept) - An Adept is the title of all members of the Adeptus Terra, from the highest-ranking to the most petty of functionaries.
Prefectus (or Prefect) - Prefect is a title used by Administratum officers and officials.
Master - Master is a title used by Administratum departmental heads.
Ordinate - Ordinate is a title used by minor administrative officials.
Curator - Curator is a title used by Administratum Adepts who maintain the ancient records of the Imperium; the rank also requires associated historical and linguistic knowledge and is therefore considered somewhat prestigious.
Scribe - Scribe is a title used by the lowly functionaries of the Administratum responsible for keeping records.
Cipher - Cipher is a title used by a special form of Imperial messengers; they memorise dictation with a single scan, repeating it verbatim when they reach their destination; they have no knowledge of the messages they carry.
Menial - Menial is a title used by lowly, non-specialized but free workers recruited from the non-Adept population, essentially the Administratum's janitors and mechanics.
Subordinate - Subordinate is a title used by the hereditary slaves of the Adeptus Terra who serve as engineers and craftsmen, as well as in other unskilled occupations.

Sources

Codex Imperialis, pp. 12-14
Codex: Eye of Terror (3rd Edition), pg. 13
Codex: Tyranids (3rd Edition), pg. 41
Dark Heresy: Core Rulebook (RPG), pg. 44
Dark Heresy: Disciples of the Dark Gods (RPG), pp. 165-166
Imperial Armour Volume Eight - Raid on Kastorel-Novem, pg.7
Imperial Munitorum Manual, pp. 3, 8
Rogue Trader: Hostile Acquisition, pp. 88-90
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, pg. 140
Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (Digital Edition) (7th Edition), pp. 271, 275, 281, 283, 286, 298, 301, 304, 321, 339, 374, 386, 464, 540-541, 544, 546, 550
Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (6th Edition), pp. 139, 404-405
Deliverance Lost (Novel) by Gav Thorpe

@@ Line 46: / Line 46: @@
 The largest organisation in the Adeptus Terra, the Adeptus Administratum is itself divided into many branches. The greater majority of its constituents have no concept of how their work fits into any overall scheme, or even that they are part of the same bureaucracy. Comprised of innumerable divisions and offices it is unlikely that any one man, even the Master of the Administratum himself, has an idea of how many divisions exist within the monstrous Administratum. Their work is an end in itself and the single most important factor in the lives of Administratum Adepts. It is enough to perform the task; understanding is neither required, nor welcome. It is said by the soldiers of the [[Imperial Guard]] that for each fighting man there are a dozen scribes and at least two minor officials toiling, recording petty details that no one will use or consider. Most of the divisions are petty and of little interest. Known divisions of the Administratum include:
 *'''[[Departmento Munitorum]]''' - The Departmento Munitorum, also called the Adeptus Munitorum, is a department or sub-division of the Adeptus Administratum devoted to the general administration, personnel assignment, supply and logistics of the [[Imperial Guard]]. The Munitorum has ultimate responsibility for the raising of new Imperial Guard regiments, the training of new Imperial Guard troops, the provision of equipment and supplies to all regiments in the field, and the transportation of troops and equipment to and from theatres of war using the vessels of the [[Imperial Navy]]. It is primarily a logistical organisation, like the larger Administratum of which it is a part, but while the Administratum deals with the civilian logistics of running the entire Imperium of Man, the Munitorum deals solely with the military logistics necessary to fight and win the Imperium's wars on behalf of all branches of the Imperial armed forces.
-*'''[[The Estate Imperium]]''' - The Estate Imperium is a division of the Administratum described as, "..the million-strong records office of the Administratum." Presumably its purpose is to keep and furnish records of Imperial Adepta when they are called for by the relevant arms of the [[Adeptus Terra]]. The division's head carries the title of Chancellor of the Estate Imperium. The Estate Imperium's importance is such that its leader sometimes holds a position in the [[Senatorum Imperialis]] of the [[High Lords of Terra]].
+*'''[[The Estate Imperium]]''' - The Estate Imperium is a division of the Administratum described as, "..the million-strong records office of the Administratum." Presumably its purpose is to keep the records of Imperial Adepta and furnish them when they are called for by the relevant arms of the [[Adeptus Terra]]. The division's head carries the title of Chancellor of the Estate Imperium. The Estate Imperium's importance is such that its leader sometimes holds a position in the [[Senatorum Imperialis]] of the [[High Lords of Terra]].
 *'''[[Historical Revision Unit]]''' - The Historical Revision Unit is another one of the myriad bureaucratic departments of the Administratum, whose Adepts are the indentured servants and [[Servitors]] known as Historitors who work within the [[Imperial Palace]]. Their job is to revise subversive records of Imperial history into versions that are more reverent towards the Emperor and the version of Imperial history that most glorifies His name. The Historicus is the title of the unit's chief Adept. One of the important duties of the Historical Revision Unit is seeking out historical records and, if need be, destroying them when ordered to do so by their superiors in the Administratum. Specially designated units of the Historical Revision Unit known as Deletions Teams carry out this function. Their most common duty is performing the vital task known as an [[Edict of Obliteration]] -- the deliberate destruction of any vital records or historical documents pertaining to an individual or organisation that has been declared ''[[Excommunicate Traitoris]]'' by the [[Emperor of Mankind]], the [[High Lords of Terra]] or the [[Inquisition]].
 *'''Officio Medicae''' - The Officio Medicae is the primary arm of the Administratum that deals with public health and medical-related issues in the Imperium, operating government-run medical facilities throughout the galaxy and on many Imperial worlds. In addition, they seem to oversee the management and quarantine of worlds or groups afflicted by plagues, such as those created and spread by [[Nurgle]], the [[Chaos God]] of Plague. Like much of the Administratum, it is plagued by bureaucracy and procedure.