The Protectorate

The Protectorate governs several worlds and outposts in the Galaxy of Exiles and is generally held in ill regard by all other factions, having a history of war with both The Hegemony and The Stewardship of Rythe. It is home to the Keepers, and its capital is Hesperex.

Governance

• Proctor

  • Proctorate Committee

• Chair

  • Primary Committee

    • Secondary Committee

      • Tertiary Committee

        • Representatives

    • Board of the Fist

      • Administrative Admiralty

        • Landers

        • Shipbound

    • Board of the Thousand Ears

      • External Security Force

        • Envisagers

          • Enforcers

            • Free Agents

      • Internal Security Lodge

      • Reiart

Protectorate politics is a convoluted mess. At the top of the structure is the Chair, who presides over every decision and has the power of veto, but is ultimately answerable to the Keepers.

Primary and Proctorate committees

The Chair is shadowed by the Proctor, whose job it is to keep the Chair's decisions in check and act for the Chair in the case that they are unavailable. This does not extend to convenient deaths – upon the death of a Chair, a new Chair must be immediately decided upon by unanimous vote of the Primary and Proctorate committees. The Proctor also has the power to veto the Chair's vetoes and has control of the Proctorate committee. That committee's purpose is to check the work of the Primary Committee for foul play and adherence to the tenets of the Protectorate's foundation.
Members of the Primary Committee as of the end of The Empyrean

The Chair: Arkeddi
The Proctor: Vannis Proglimen
Representing the Board of the Fist: Force Commander Taliss (landers) and Planetary Commander Hell Progmoda (shipbound)
Representing the Internal Security Lodge: Administrator Machek
Representing the External Security Force Administrator Etsorren
Representing food: Administrator Dovretssen
Representing water: Administrator Latince
Representing physical infrastructure: Administrator Belaea Progaeryon
Representing digital infrastructure: Administrator Salislan
Representing the vats: Administrator Movren

Beneath the Primary Committee, the civil services split into three branches:

The Board of the Fist

This board governs the Protectorate's military forces. Beneath it is the Administration, jokingly known as the Administrative Admiralty and known by somewhat more colourful names in other circumstances. Beneath this level, control of military forces splits into planetary and space forces, known as Landers and Shipbound respectively. The Shipbound are further split into intra- and inter-stellar groups.

The Board of the Thousand Ears

This is the long-winded name for the Protectorate's intelligence agency. They have two main divisions: the Internal Security Lodge (ISL) and the External Security Force (ESF). The ISL and ESF are self-explanatory, though it's worth noting that the first acts as an inwardly-paranoid, thought-police kind of organisation and the second acts more as a military with cells of free agents. The board is also rumoured to have a third division called the Reiart, although whether this actually exists and where it falls in the hierarchy is unknown. Despite the question of their existence, the Reiart are feared throughout the Protectorate on rumour alone, even by the other two divisions.

The External Security Force

The ESF works mostly through the following hierarchy of roles: Envisagers, who envisage threats to the Protectorate (based on real or imagined data Enforcers, who enforce the actions of the Evisagers based on these envisioned threats; and free agents, who usually operate in groups of two or three.
The ESF frequently comes under ridicule from the ISL due to the number of free agents that defect to other factions. They don't even decide work as double agents, they just straight-up defect, even to the annoyance of the factions that wanted them to continue working under cover. As a result of this, the ESF has recently implemented a crackdown on its free agents. They must check in regularly, undergo surprise inspections and agree to partake in psychological evaluations to determine their emotional state. The downside to this is that assessing emotional states shortly after a mission often flags up false positives, since agents need to express emotions to fit into other cultures.

Military

• Board of the Fist

  • Chair of the Fist

    • Board representatives

  • Martial Proctor

    • Proctorate administration

  • Admiralty

    • Triumvirate Council

      • Landers

        • Land Marshall

          • Force Commander

            • Battle Group Commander

              • Division Commander

                • Section Commander

                  • Section assistant

                  • Squad Leader

                  • Senior Observer

                    • Observer

                      • Junior Observer

      • Shipbound

        • Void Marshall

          • Defence Group Commander

          • Attack Group Commander

            • System Commander

              • Cloud Commander

                • Formation Leader

                • Support Director

        • Star Marshall

          • System Commander

            • Planetary Commander

              • Wing Commander

                • Formation Leader

              • Support Director

            • Relay Group Overseer

The Protectorate's military is overseen by the Board of the Fist, ruled by the Chair of the Fist. Much like the political committees, the Chair is shadowed by a Martial Proctor responsible for maintaining discpline at all levels of the military. Representatives from the top few levels below that make up the board, with the faces changing each week. Once again, the Proctor has their own 'committee', the Proctorate Administration, made up of other ranks (observers, here Proctorate Observers).

The Admiralty and Triumvirate Council

Below that you get to the Admiralty, which is full of administrative roles. There is a strangely 'thin' layer underneath this, consisting of the Triumvirate Council, who technically hold equal rank to everyone in the Admiralty. Everyone in the Admiralty is answerable to each other (and a mound of paperwork). Each person on the Triumvirate council oversees one branch of the military, which is split into the following branches:

Landers

Land-boand forces (Landers) have the following rank hierarchy: Land Marshall; Force Commander; Battle Group Commander; Division Commander; Section Commander (with Section Assistants assigned to them). Non-commissioned ranks are known as observers (senior, junior or otherwise).

Star Shipbound

Intra-stellar forces (star shipbound) are led by a Star Marshall. Under that, a System Commander governs both Relay Group Commanders (in charge of movements between planets) and Planetary Commanders. Planetary Commanders in turn have command of Support Directors (captains of large support ships who also have to coordinate the other ships around them) and Wing Commanders. Formation Leaders sit under this.

Void Shipbound

Inter-stellar forces (void shipbound) are similar, led by a Void Marshall. Both Defense Group Commanders and Attack Group Commanders preside over the following hierarchy: System Commander; Cloud Commander; Formation Leaders and Support Directors.
If fighting in a Protectorate-owned system, it is the Star Fleets that take charge of the situation. Anywhere else, the Void Fleet takes control and may draft nearby Star Fleets if absolutely required.

Misc.

It's beauracracy all the way up in the Protectorate, with governers and officials at every level and a mountain of paperwork. This is obviously quite corrupt. Theoretically, everyone is equal (they are not) and all positions of authority are rotated through often (they are not).

Family

The only concept of family in the Protectorate is in empyrric bloodlines. Anyone outside those bloodlines is vatborn (empyrrics cannot be born with powers unnaturally). Only those who become empyrric may take the name of their line. The vatborn only gets one name and a genetic identification tag. Unsanctioned children are taken from their parents and sent to the Keepers to use as slaves.

Emotions

The Protectorate does not allow the harbouring of emotions amongst its populace. Whether this command initially came from the Keepers or the Protectorate itself is unknown, though the Keepers are naturally best able to enforce it given they can see emotions.
There are two main reasons for the ban:

1. What you don't feel can't hurt you. Empyrrics can convert any felt emotion into energy, which they may then use as a weapon. Feeling nothing denies all but background energy to empyrrics, and this is harder to draw upon as well as less fruitful.
2. If the majority of the population feels nothing, detecting anything out of the ordinary/anyone with bad intentions is much easier.

Drugs called inhibitors can help suppress emotions, and in some situations they are added to the water supply.

Religion and movements

Religion is technically outlawed and punishable by death, as it is considered a product of emotion, but there are many small group religions, particularly among pockets of resistance in out-of-the-way places such as the lower levels of Hesperex and the Munabi Wilds.

The Observers of Strageith

The Observers – led by a vatter called Son who used to research for the Keepers – are an illegal religious group within the Protectorate.
They believe that the Empyrean acts as a blanket across the universe, encompassing everyone, and fate is woven into its threads. They practice prophecy and foresee a time when the Protectorate will fall.
Some would argue that 'prophecy' isn't the right word for it, and that 'prediction' is more accurate. Strageith, the founder of the organisation, took this more mathematical perspective, but he is long dead.

The People's Commune

This religious movement is actually allowed by some planetary governors on out-of-the-way planets, as it brings people together in a way where they are still encouraged to remain dutiful to the Protectorate. The exact beliefs vary from commune to commune, with much being left up to participants' imaginations.

The Technocracy

A group of machine worshippers. They want to bring about a melding of man and machine, eventually, but their main goal under the Protectorate is to see its beauracracy replaced at all levels with AI so that everyone is truly equal. They are governed by a group called the Nocturne.

The Kept

The Kept are a resistance group within the Protectorate, and are the remnants of one of two factions previously involved in a civil war with the Keepers.
They exist with one purpose in mind: to rid the galaxy of empyrrics. This seems ironic to many, as most Kept are empyrric themselves. In fact, their founder was an empyrric who chose to sterilise himself rather than pass his empyrric nature through his bloodline.
Their name originates in the belief that all are 'kept' by the Empyrean so long as it exists.

Resources

The Protectorate has low resources and massive overcrowding. Ships tend to be ramshackle constructions unless they have 'liberated' them from elsewhere, and even then, fuel is hard to come by. They are recovering from a failed attempt to build an agri-sphere around Hesperex's sun.

Currency and quotas

Workers must meet annual quotas to maintain their job level (poor performance can to some extent be mediated by good performance from the wider work group, so a low-performing individual may still be deemed beneficial enough for group efficiency that missed quotas are ignored). If they fail to meet their quotas, they get demoted to something requiring less competence until they reach the bottom. Then they are 'retired'.
Work groups, city blocks and similar levels of society each have a committee, and committees can send requests to resources to other committees. No one owns resources – they ask for them and are given them if there is cause. People are moved between accommodations as needed. People's social circles are limited so they can't contact many others or get too big a picture of the whole beyond official news. (Protectorate bureaucracy is such that groups staying together for long periods of time can slip under the radar, however.)
There is no official currency, though there is a points system that exists solely for material exchanges between committees.
Sometimes committees just grab people from their current place of employment to fulfill a newly required committee position.

Clothing

People tend to overcompensate for the misery of their lives by wearing bright-coloured clothes, often patchwork in appearance. The higher echelons wear muted colours so they don't seem ostentatious.