First Minister: Virginia Steyr
First among equals. Delegates tasks to other Ministers, dictates policy to Supreme Assembly, oversees major policy decisions and Inclusion concerns. The current First Minister is quite young, having inherited the position from her father less than five years ago. The Steyr family has provided eight of the last ten First Ministers, and the two others had a combined term in office of less than a year, combined.
Second Minister: Frost Walther
Minister of Security. Oversees internal security of Taas and Taas-controlled territories. Head of the STASI and responsible for occupation of Included areas. There has been a bitter power struggle for years between the Second and Third Minister for control of overall policy. Second Minister Walther is an old man and currently on the losing side of this struggle now that his old rival Kipling Colt has been replaced by his son Keating.
Third Minister: Keating Colt
Minister of the Army. Commander-in-chief of all Taasian armed forces (subject in practice to the First Minister), directs military campaigns, devises strategies, and oversees the production of armaments. The Third Minister is currently the second most important person in Taas after the First Minister herself, and rumor has it that he and First Minister Steyr are actually lovers. There is also a rumor that Keating murdered his father, the traditional but doddering Kipling Colt. That he has soundly beaten Second Minister Walther in the long-running dispute between the two offices is beyond doubt.
Fourth Minister: Maya Ruger
Minister of Sustenance. Responsible for all food and other amenities in Taas and Included territories. Oversees production, distribution, and rationing of food, medicine, and other like materials. Due to the harsh climate of Taas itself, most agriculture requires intensive labor and irrigation. Unincluded are used for this purpose, but in actuality Taas is completely dependent on food imports–imports that are escorted by army patrols. For this reason, the Fourth Minister is almost completely subordinate to the Third Minister. Minister Ruger deeply resents this, as well as Minister Colt’s perceived warmongering, but is powerless to do anything about it.
Fifth Minister: Whitman Winchester
Minister of Inclusion. Charged with preserving Taasian customs, laws, and language and recruiting “suitable” outsiders for Inclusion into greater Taasian society. With the power to strip any Taasian of their citizenship, as well as the power to bestow citizenship at a whim, Minister Winchester is a much-feared wild card in the Taasian government. Closely resembling his late father, Minister Winchester also holds similarly guarded views and no one is sure where his ultimate loyalty lies.
Sixth Minister: Elizabeth Emerson
Minister of Consumption. Responsible for inorganic consumer products, heavy industry, and construction (except for arms manufacturing, which is controlled by the Minister of the Army). Minister Emerson is a close ally of Frost Walther, and finds herself similarly on the outs, with the military dictating policy and favoring guns over butter. For reasons that are unclear, she and Minister Winchester have bitter enmity for one another despite being nominally close allies.
Seventh Minister: Hugo Lebel
Minister of Materials. Is in charge of public works projects, buildings, and raw materials extraction in Taas as well as Included territories. Easily the wealthiest and most decadent of the ministers despite being last in precedence. Minister Lebel is a well-known hedonist who nevertheless manages to discharge his duty with a semblance of aplomb. Despite the great contrast between his freewheeling style and Minister Steyr’s austerity, he is one of her closest allies, and the final leg of the First-Third-Fourth-Seventh ministerial alliance that dominates the council against the Second-Fifth-Sixth coalition.
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 