> When the Emperess promisses Morollan a bunch of land - > doesn't that land > now become Dragon land? Do its vassals now become > Dragonian? Keeping in mind that anything we write about this topic is guesswork, my guess is "no". Land belongs to Empire or to one of the Houses. What changes hands is the right to exploit that land. Other than social standing, that's what titles are about. Imperial titles give you the right to exploit "federal land", as it were. Now, no story (to my knowledge) had directly implied the existence of this "federal land" but it just about has to exist. Any time the borders expand, new land will come under the jurisdiction of the Empire. Someone has to be responsible for it. Not to mention that the beauracracy probably requires a certain amount of income that arrives independently of any House machinations. Now, that's not to say that the Empress can't give the actual land rights to a House whose council then awards House titles to her chosen recipient. Just that the normal course is to hand over an Imperial Title and keep the actual land in the control of the Empress. The empire is an interesting case, because the government changes hands on a semi-predicatable basis. There are likely to be a lot of laws and rules in place that govern how land is handled and especially how "federal land" changes hands. If there weren't, then the first thing a new Emporer would do is give all of the "federal land" to his friends in his own House. I'd imagine that the exchange of land rights between the Imperial Beauracracy and the Houses is a political tool that gives the Emporer some power when it comes to dealing with (or making deals with) uncooperative Houses. The real problem we have here is that Zerika is an atypical Empress. In the normal course of things, the sitting Empress (Norathar, for example) would have the power and prestige of the House behind her. With no House to turn to for help, Zerika is completely dependant upon the Imperial beauracracy. As a House of one, she doesn't give us much insight as to how the Houses normally operate when one of their own is on the throne. In any case, we can assume that running the Empire requires more resources than any one House has available, hence the neccesity for there to be Imperial land and titles (along with their trade and mineral rights) that can be brokered with the other Houses as required. The usage of Imperial land/titles as a kind of currency among the houses is probably not too far-fetched, and would be a good enough reason to preserve a certain amount of "federal land" so that the Emporer has an income in addition to his House backing and so that a House doesn't find itself being raided and losing all of its lands when the next House takes power, wanting its own piece of the pie. > >> From the sound of things, Vlad's county has been running > things just > >> fine without a Count for quite a while. > > What have you heard? Nothing more than a remark by Vlad to Noish-Pa while convincing him to move out to his new county. Basically, Noish-pa won't have to worry about managing the place because the people living there have been managing just fine without a sitting Count around.