Note: "Prime Tangent" may sound like something from mathematics, but in this context it's more along the lines of "Prime Minister," only instead of describing a primacy of authority, it's a primacy of adjacency. The House of Tangents is a little bit like a gaggle of official lobbyists. They don't vote in any of the assemblies of which they're variously members. They move between them, taking bills, proposals, amendments, and sub-clauses from the Sophonate to the Plutorliament, from the Proletariament to the Congress Pro Rata, shepherding legislation back and forth in a nigh Sisyphean effort to get the polycameral U.N.S. legislature to actually accomplish something.

They can also prevent work from getting done. One definition of the word "tangent" is "distraction."