Chapter 6: The Imperial Tithe

What is the most important duty of a Planetary Governor?

When asked this question, every Planetary Governor has only one standard answer.

That is to pay taxes to the Imperium!

The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man is surrounded by countless enemies.

The multi-front wars place immense pressure on the Imperium, resulting in an extremely strict taxation system.

This system is known as the Imperial Tithe, also referred to as the Great Harvest Tax.

It involves various resources that each world within the Imperium must provide.

The two most important types of taxes are:

The Military Tithe, where the planet must provide a certain percentage of its population as labor for the Imperium's logistics or as new recruits.

The Precision Tithe, which involves paying a precise amount of the planet's natural resources and wealth.

The exact nature of the tithe depends on the type of world it applies to and can include any form of resource: food, weapons, minerals, or even people.

Though the massive Administratum on Holy Terra oversees the collection of the tithes, the sheer size of the Imperium and the instability of Warp travel often make the process chaotic and inefficient.

For Eden, the most important responsibility as Planetary Governor was to ensure that the tithes from Urth were paid in full.

Once the tithes were paid, he could rule the planet however he wanted.

Even if he turned the entire population into slaves and exploited them in the most extreme ways, piling up mountains of corpses, the Imperium would not intervene.

Paying taxes on time was the greatest loyalty one could show to the Emperor!

On the contrary, any world that refused to pay its tithes would face the harshest reprisals from the Imperium. If the resistance escalated, it could lead to an Exterminatus.

If any violations or shortfalls occurred in the tithe process, Imperial officials would order local Arbites to immediately execute the Planetary Governor.

The Imperium's rule was nothing if not a harsh and cold dictatorship.

This meant that no matter how well Eden governed the planet, if there were problems with the taxes, he could lose his head!

Chills ran down Eden's spine as he thought about it. This was terrifying!

Linda noticed Eden's discomfort and softly asked, "Are you alright, my lord?"

"I'm fine, just a bit cold, uhh—"

Before Eden could react, he found himself enveloped in Linda's warm and soft embrace.

"Feeling better?" she asked gently.

Better, yes… just a bit hard to breathe…

I need to get out of here!

Eden stood up and began walking out. He needed to check the planet's tax records for the past few quarters. If there were any problems, they had to be dealt with immediately.

If the Arbites came knocking with boltguns pointed at his head, it would be too late.

This is a matter of life and death; there's no room for jokes.

"Send for Steward Bayev to meet me at the Administratum!" Eden ordered, walking out of the dining hall. After taking a few steps, he turned back to Linda. "By the way, where is the Administratum again?"

Damn this memory fog, I can't even remember the way!

After getting his bearings, Eden made his way to the Administratum.

Along the way, several administrative staff greeted him, though their looks were a bit strange.

Eden couldn't help but feel that something was off; the Administratum seemed different from what he remembered.

Many departments were missing, and the place felt much emptier.

Something must have happened…

Eden thought about asking someone but decided against it. He'd figure it out later.

For now, the priority is checking the taxes.

The Administratum Archive.

The entire archive was nearly six meters high and the size of several football fields, with thousands of shelves crammed with paper documents.

Eden sat at a wooden table, flipping through a thick report, feeling utterly hopeless.

Piles of documents surrounded him, stacked so high they could bury a person if they fell over.

I'm losing it… This is just the tax records for this quarter. I'll never finish reading this in a year!

"What era is this? At least use a computer!"

Eden couldn't help but complain. After searching for a while, he confirmed that there was no connected technology in this place.

Indeed, despite being in an era where interstellar travel was commonplace, the Imperium banned the use of intelligent devices, and artificial intelligence was strictly forbidden!

Anyone daring to break this taboo and use AI would likely be declared a heretic and executed.

Some might wonder, Isn't the Imperium being absurd by banning this technology?

You're young, still too young.

It could be said that every strange regulation in the Imperium had a bloody lesson behind it.

The Imperium banned internet-connected intelligent devices because of the threat of Warp-dwelling data-daemons that could corrupt these systems, altering crucial data.

During wartime, such corrupted data caused severe accidents that cost the Imperium dearly.

Only the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus were allowed to use technology on a small scale, as they could counteract these data-daemons with sacred codes and sigils.

As for AI, it was banned entirely due to the horrors of the Men of Iron Rebellion, a catastrophe where intelligent machines nearly wiped out humanity.

Though humanity ultimately won the war, ensuring the survival of the species, they now referred to AI as Abominable Intelligence and completely banned its use.

But humanity wasn't left without alternatives.

Eden glanced at a corner of the room, where a motionless figure stood — a Servitor, its body full of wires and mechanical limbs.

Servitors were the Imperium's replacement for AI, typically made from criminals or vat-grown bodies.

After simple surgical modifications and brain programming, they became mindless "robots" used for repetitive labor.

For example, in this massive archive, the Servitors handled the document-moving work, but any task requiring actual thought was still done by humans.

The Imperium's vast bureaucracy was entirely run by human brains and relied on paper documents.

Remember, the Imperium spanned the galaxy, ruling over millions of worlds!

This led to the existence of a bloated administrative system with countless personnel.

On Holy Terra alone, there were tens of billions of people, with a significant portion employed as bureaucrats, managing the affairs of millions of planets.

Their inefficiency and disorganization were staggering.

A single administrative order could take decades to reach a specific planet.

By that time, the planet might have been invaded by Chaos daemons a century earlier, and its entire population wiped out.

Even more absurdly, there were still departments within the Imperium calculating supplies for battles that had ended over a hundred years ago — whether intentionally or by accident, no one could say.

So, the fact that the Imperium hadn't collapsed yet was quite impressive.

Jokes aside, survival in this system was tough.

Sometimes, those bumbling bureaucrats made mistakes, like overestimating a planet's capacity or miscalculating the tithe data.

And who paid for these mistakes? The Planetary Governors and their worlds.

Every calculation error led to tragedy.

Excessive tithes far beyond a planet's capacity could plunge tens or even hundreds of billions of people into extreme suffering.

Even if the officials responsible were punished and turned into servitors, forced to atone for their sins for eternity, it was too late.

By then, countless citizens would have already died in agony, and entire planets might become barren wastelands!

Such was the brutal reality.

Eden would have to first extract resources and population to pay the tithes, then consider how to develop the planet and improve the lives of its people to generate hope.

But once all the resources and people were taken, how could he develop anything?

And he couldn't simply refuse — if he did, the Arbites would send him to meet the Emperor and replace him with a new governor to continue collecting the tithes.

Because taxes must be paid. If the Imperium couldn't collect its taxes, it would fall apart, and all of humanity would face an even crueler fate.

Stuck in a catch-22!

"Being a Planetary Governor isn't easy…" Eden sighed.

It seemed that in the grim darkness of Warhammer 40K, generating the power of hope wouldn't be so simple. Surviving would be an achievement in itself.

After searching for a while, Eden finally found the latest tax evaluation report for Urth.

The moment he saw the report, his heart sank.

"By decree of the Administratum of Holy Terra, Urth's tax rating has been upgraded from Second-Class Special to First-Class Supreme?!"

(End of Chapter)