At the height of Iam's reign, Tympania was divided into eight provinces, each of them (with the exception of Ventria) ruled by a military governor and possessed of a certain degree of administrative autonomy. Iam built the city of Evasendia in Tyr to serve as his administrative capital. He himself took up residence in the citadel of Pandrell, leaving Vestra in the hands of his mother Isdanor, and Quintillica under the control of the defeated Varus, who was now bound utterly to Iam's will and served as little more than Iam's magical puppet.
Much to the disappointment of Isdanor, who had hoped that her son would bring about the reinstatement of the Theocracy, Iam proved once in power to have completely different ambitions. He refused to claim the title of Priest King, calling himself instead the "First Speaker of the Cholaeic Council, Protector of the Tympanian People," and he did not permit any of his underlings to adopt Theocratic titles. Although he instituted a watered-down form of Tyrulean spirit worship as his state religion, Iam never curtailed Tympanian religious freedom, allowing even the worship of Love and Reason in his lands. He was particularly hostile to the idea of allowing himself or any of his subordinates to be worshipped: he absolutely forbade it, and when this caused friction with the few remaining Vestran Stewards in 58, Iam executed the lot of them and repopulated the Council with non-theocratic followers. In the year 72, his differences with his mother had grown so serious that he was forced to have her imprisoned.
If Iam's rule was not theocratic, however, it was certainly a vicious despotism. His regional governors were notorious for corruption and license, and the atrocities committed against the citizenry by Iam's underlings were nearly as commonplace in the Tympanian home provinces as they were in the occupied puppet-states of Ulderlinden and Chalycidice. The Tympanian government was suspicious of any dissent; the slightest hint of sedition was grounds for execution, and informers were everywhere. Even Tympania's religious toleration was not quite as it seemed: while religious worship was permitted, political movements were outlawed, and Iam's judiciary was adept at seeing political undertones in nearly any expression of religious devotion Those who rose to power in Iam's Tympania were invariably devious, cruel, treacherous and greedy, and they ruled by fear alone.
