Warhammer: Beginning with Planetary Governors

Chapter 6 The Tithe of the Empire

What is the most important responsibility of a Planetary Governor?
When someone asks this question, all planetary governors have one and only one standard answer.

That means paying taxes for the empire!

The human empire spanning the galaxy is surrounded by many enemies.

Fighting on multiple fronts led to tremendous war pressure, which in turn gave rise to an extremely strict tax system.

This tax system was called the Imperial Tithe, also known as the Great Harvest Tax.

Refers to the various resources that must be paid by each world within the empire's territory.

There are two most important taxes:

Military tithe is the payment of a reasonable amount of the planet's population as logistical labor or new recruits for the empire.

Accurate tithe tax means accurate payment of the planet’s unique resources and wealth.

The tithe paid depends on the type of world it applies to, and can be any form of resource: food, weapons, minerals, population, etc.

Although a huge internal affairs department was established on Holy Terra, the central empire, to oversee the payment of the tithe.

However, due to the vast territory and the instability of subspace navigation, the tax payment process is often chaotic and inefficient.

As the planetary governor, Ron's most important responsibility is to ensure that the tithes of his world are paid.

After paying the taxes, he can rule the planet in any way and do whatever he wants.

Even if all the people were turned into slaves and exploited in the most extreme ways, with corpses piled up like mountains, the empire would not interfere.

Paying taxes on time is the greatest loyalty to the Divine Emperor!

On the contrary, any world that dares to refuse to pay taxes will suffer the most brutal blow from the empire. If the resistance escalates, it is very likely to receive a planetary extermination order.

If there are any violations or omissions in the tax payment process, imperial officials will often order law enforcement officers from the local Ministry of Justice to execute the planetary governor immediately!

The empire's rule was extremely authoritarian and cruel.

This means that no matter how well Ron governs the planet, if there is a problem with taxes, he may lose his head!

Hiss~ Ron felt a chill on his neck. This was too scary.

Linda noticed that Ron was acting strange, and came over and asked gently, "Are you feeling unwell?"

"It's okay, it's a bit cold all of a sudden, um——"

Before Ron could react, he fell into Linda's arms, which were so warm and soft.

"Are you feeling better?" Linda asked softly.

It’s good, but it’s a bit suffocating…

You can't stay here for long!

Ron stood up and walked out. He was going to check if there were any problems with the taxes in recent quarters. If there were any problems, they had to be dealt with as soon as possible.

If you wait until the law enforcement officer arrives and puts the grenade launcher to your head, it will be too late.

This concerns your own life, so you can't joke about it.

"Tell Butler Bayev to come to the Ministry of Government Affairs to find me!"

Ron said this and walked out of the restaurant, but he turned back and looked at Linda after a few steps: "Where is the Ministry of Government Affairs?"

This damn memory fog, I even forgot the way!

After Ron figured out the direction, he headed to the Ministry of Government Affairs.

Administrative staff greeted him from time to time on the road, but their looks were somewhat surprised.

For some reason, Ron felt that the Administration Department was a little different from what he remembered.

Many departments disappeared and it became much quieter.

Something must have happened in the middle...

Ron wanted to find someone to ask, but after thinking it over, he decided not to do it.

I'll find a chance to learn more about it later.

The top priority now is to clarify the tax situation.
-
Ministry of Government Affairs document library.

The entire document library is nearly six meters high and about the size of ten football fields. Thousands of large bookshelves are stacked with densely packed paper documents.

Ron sat at the wooden table, flipping through a thick book with a look of despair.

Next to it was a mountain of paper documents, enough to bury a person if they fell down.

He is so confused. This is just the tax information for this quarter. He cannot finish reading it in a year!
"What era is this? At least get a computer!" Ron couldn't help but complain. He searched for a long time and confirmed that there was no Internet-connected device in this damn place.

That’s right, in this age when technology has advanced to the point where interstellar travel is possible, the Empire prohibits the use of smart devices, and artificial intelligence is absolutely prohibited!
Anyone who dares to break taboos and use artificial intelligence will most likely be tried as a heretic!

Some people may ask, isn’t it stupid for the empire to go backwards like this?

Young, still too young.

It can be said that behind every strange rule of the unit, there is often a lesson learned through blood and tears.

The reason why the Empire does not use Internet smart devices is because the electronic demons in the subspace will attack the smart devices and tamper with the data.

During the war, these erroneous data caused serious accidents and caused heavy losses to the empire.

Only the Tech-Priests of the Mechanicus can use electronic equipment on a small scale, and they can use rune codes to fight electronic demons.

The reason why artificial intelligence is taboo is that humans have experienced a catastrophe called the "Machine Rebellion."

The rebellion of intelligent machines almost led to the extinction of mankind.

Humanity ultimately won the war and was able to continue its race, but from then on, artificial intelligence was called "abominable intelligence" and its use was completely banned.

Of course, humans are not without alternatives.

Ron glanced at the "human" standing motionless in the corner, with tubes all over his body and various auxiliary robotic arms and tracks installed.

That's a robot servant, a lower-level substitute for artificial intelligence.

The material is usually the flesh of criminals or those grown in incubators.

After simple surgical modifications and brain programming, they are transformed into mindless "robots" to perform simple, high-intensity repetitive tasks.

For example, the document handling work in this archive is performed by robot servants, but mental work still needs to be done by humans.

The empire's complex political issues were almost entirely solved by human brainpower and paper documents.

You have to know that the empire spans the galaxy and has millions of planets under its jurisdiction!

This also led to the empire having a huge internal system and personnel.

The Holy Terra, the center of the Empire, has a population of hundreds of billions, and administrative personnel account for a considerable portion of it, responsible for managing the affairs of the Empire's millions of planets.

Their management is so chaotic and inefficient that it makes people's scalps numb.

An executive order may take decades to reach a specific planet.

That planet was invaded by Chaos Demons hundreds of years ago, and all the people on the planet were wiped out.

What's even more outrageous is that there are some unknown departments within the empire that are still calculating the supplies needed for a certain battle.

But that war happened hundreds of years ago, and we don’t know whether they did it on purpose or by accident.

So, it’s really amazing that this broken car of the Empire has not disintegrated until now.

Joking aside, it is difficult to survive in such a domestic system.

Those incompetent imperial officials occasionally made mistakes, such as overestimating the carrying capacity of a planet or miscalculating tax data.

The consequences of these mistakes are often borne by the planetary governor and the world he belongs to.

Every miscalculation almost always leads to tragedy.

Taxes that far exceed the planet's ability to bear often plunge tens of billions of people into extreme suffering.

Even if we hold the officials accountable afterwards and turn them into mechanical servants to atone for the God-Emperor and the Empire forever, it will be of no avail.

Because by that time, countless people would have died in agony, and even the entire planet would have withered into an uninhabited Jedi!
The truth is so cruel.

Ron had to first plunder the planet's resources and population and hand them over to the empire before he could consider how to develop the planet, let the people live a good life, and absorb the power of hope.

But how can we develop if all the resources and population have been handed over?

He cannot give up yet, otherwise the law enforcement officers sent by the Ministry of the Interior will send him to see the God-Emperor, and then a new planetary governor will be appointed to continue collecting taxes.

Because taxes must be collected. If taxes cannot be collected, the empire will fall apart, and humanity throughout the galaxy will face a more cruel fate.

There is a bug!
"It's not easy to be a planetary governor..." Ron couldn't help but sigh.

It seems that in the cruel Warhammer 40K, the power of hope is really difficult to obtain. He is lucky enough to be able to keep his life.

After searching for a long time, Ron finally found the latest assessment report on the 11th tax on the planet Ers.

The moment he saw the evaluation report, his heart sank.

"After evaluation by the Holy Terra Ministry of the Interior, the tax level of the planet Ers was adjusted from the second-class special level to the first-class superior level?!"

(End of this chapter)