Imperial Census

Imperial Census was born - like many other things - during the Twilight War. It was never meant to exist for long, instead being a purely temporary and improvised arrangement, being born from what amount to a group of bureucrats send to search through the remaining datastacks that nobody was interested in before the war started.
Census remained to this day purely because it is useful in what it does. It's little more than a group of bureaucrats doing bureaucratic work, with absolutely no power over anything. Most of its activity is providing mediation between groups that aren't even technically part of it - it is the only of the major power groups of the Empire that don't even get to govern anything.
What grants Census its status and influence is the fact it's good in what it does - and in not ordering anyone around. This earned it a loyalty (even if not an unquestionable one) from millions of martial artists throughout the Grand Empire. It mediates between the martial arts schools, organizes tournaments, runs registration and authentication services to prevent counterfeit martial arts (and those stolen from established schools) from circulating on the market and maintains backups of all martial arts ever designed by all schools. But it doesn't ask for anything in exchange.
It lacks political ambitions primarily because the martial artists have universally accepted the Census as their representatives due to lack of said ambitions. It offers vital services without demanding obedience and maintains strict policy of impartiality, which is enough to have said martial artists be willing to stand up for the Census if someone tries to bully it. But Census asking them to run errands for it or help it achieve political gains would have shattered that support.
The end result is organization whose power comes from its powerlessness.

Structure

The Census has a very limited presence in Karadia, and its membership is something rather rare. It has approximately one thousand regular members, most of them either bureaucrats or diplomats. This group is further supported by a few thousand librarians, clerks and menials, often slaves.
It doesn't even have a permanent presence throughout the Grand Empire, instead majority of Census operations are located in Falonia. There it maintains its vast database of martial arts, recognized martial schools and their members and graduates. The recognized schools do most of the paperwork on their own, regularly sending updates to the Census. The Census will, however, send investigators when the records are irregular or something in them doesn't add up. In some extreme cases, failing the inspection will result in the school losing its legal recognition - or even having to flee into the Lost Lands for some major violation of the imperial law.
Beneath the Census itself lie the schools. Each of them has their own set of martial arts, created from a combination of magic and anatomical knowledge of the Second Empire (although some of them predate the Empire). Each of them has a bit different internal culture, history and training methods. Each school is independent, but many of them have branched off another school (typically by the virtue of an innovator showing up among its practitioners) and maintain close relationship to this day.
The Census categorizes the school into several categories. Of course, there are many ways to divide the schools - for example by the species for whose anatomy they are tailored for. However there is one most prominent division.
White Schools are martial schools typically with expansive connections to the Imperial Cult. They often train prospective templars (and have their members become one), they are also the schools with the most pressure on teaching their trainees some basics ethics alongside the combat skills. They also have tendency to send death squads against those of their graduates that start doing bad things.
Red Schools are schools are only care about power. They maintain basic degree of loyalty towards the Empire, but also an extremely strict training methods (with the largest mortality rate from all schools), with a lot of ways to stimulate the rivalry between the trainees (that occasionallys goes out of hand). They have a tendency for the 'might makes right' approach, and most of their elders end up deposed via death in a duel.
Gray Schools are operated under purely profit-driven mindset. They either train those that pay to be trained or pick up orphans/offer contract slavery to children of the poor and then have them pay back their training costs. They are almost utterly uninterested in what their graduates are doing, and are often berated by more power or ideology driven schools for not being 'serious' enough.
Purple Schools are just as ideologically-driven as the white schools, but instead of being attached to the gods of the Empire they are attached to the Empire itself. They tend to have links to the Imperial Army and consider themselves to be servants of the Empire first and foremost. Naturally, other groups see them as stuck-up for being constantly looked-down upon for any perceived slights in loyalty.
Black Schools are schools that were either developed in the Fallen-worshipping petty countries of the Lost Lands or had their practitioners banished from the Empire for some extremely serious crime. They aren't recognized as 'memberschools' of the Census, and instead operate outside of the Empire and are activelly persecuted if not killed-on-sight by loyal imperial servants.
The internal organization structure of the schools varies, but most follow the relatively similar (and simple) structure of a handful of elders (typically retired martial artists - who are still quite deadly when someone irritates them enough) overseeing up to 30-40 'regular' warriors (that double as trainers and guards).

History

The Second Era

The Census used to be a part of the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs as department dedicated to population censuses and demographic data gathering and analysis. In short, it existed to tell the Empire how much taxes it can reap and to maintain the list of potential conscripts in case of some disastrous war that forced the Grand Empire to once again rely on the non-Warforged soldiers.
Naturally, nobody has seriously expected the latter part of its work to ever be actually important. After all, the Empire wasn't in a serious war for hundreds of years, and the idea that it would be attacked by someone too strong for its Warforged legionnaires was, frankly, hilarious. But then the Twilight War started.

Twilight War

The Ministry of Internal Affairs' Department of Censues and Social Data has become important when the Twilight War started. Of course, its databases were lost when Hexmachina went rogue and its leadership was massacred when the headquarters of the MIA were captured at the start of the war. But not all of the bureaucrats were killed.
When the war started 'properly', it quickly become apparent that the Warforged simply aren't enough. The surviving members of the Department were then tasked with combing through the surviving civilians to find anyone with any degree of combat skills - with mages all but wiped out and theurgists not yet being a thing, this could mean only martial artists.
By the end of the Twilight War, the Census was practically an independent group. Its 'grip' on the martial artists has only expanded in the aftermath of the Descent with all the ancient martial artists temporarily coming back to life.

Military

Combat Units

Mortals

Martial Artist - Technically the Census doesn't have a right to order the graduates of the martial schools around - in fact, if it tried doing that, it would start a road towards its eventual dissolution. It is, however, surprisingly popular among them. As a result, while the Census doesn't order anyone, there are people that will act in its stead without being told to. The result is the local martial schools taking for example the assasination of Census' representative VERY personally.
Martial artists themselves are greatly varied. Every school is unique - some are individualistic while other have a focus on teamwork, some are offensive while others are defensive, some are strength-based while others prefer agility and speed. And that's without mentioning the fact that are martial arts that are oriented towards the ranged warfare. Because of that it is hard to properly summed the entire profession up.
What is certain is that martial artists are what passes for 'proper' warriors in the Empire. Mundane warriors can be used to guard a wall against moderately strong attack, but without being proper martial artists they will die instantly when forced to face something truly supernatural without the wall to equalize the chances. As a result, the martial arts are extremely widespread in the society - in fact enough for said 'mundane' warriors to be almost extinct.
Some of the most dangerous martial artists reach truly inhuman level of strength. They can also use the magic cycling through their body to partially rejuvenate themselves and prolong their lives to have even more time to hone their abilities. The result can veer into the One Man Army level.

Type: Faction.
Allegiance: Grand Empire of Karadia
Imperial Council: Yes.
Organization Ranks:
N/A

Combat Strength
Martial Artists: Aprox. 3 000 000.