Velconi Inquisition

The Velconum Empire Inquisition Agency, often simplified to the Velconi Inquisition, the Imperial Inquisition or just the Inquisition, is the domestic intelligence and security service of the Velconum Empire. They are responsible for counterintelligence and law enforcement, with a focus on preventing insurrections, dismantling criminal organizations and weeding out government corruption.
== Operations ==
Unlike Velconi Intelligence, which deals with naval and foreign intelligence, the Inquisition's duties are solely domestic. Inquisitors are largely unheard of outside Velconi territories, but within their name is as feared as the Plaghans, if not more so. The Inquisition is infamous for their continued attempts to prevent crime before it starts by monitoring and collecting vast amounts of data from the Velconi population, which they then use to identify potential future threats. These threats are usually captured, interrogated and either sent to indoctrination programs, arrested as full criminals or exiled to Fringe colonies.
Inquisitors are formally members of the Velconi military, but they fall outside the regular rank structure. Instead, Inquisitors have the authority to arrest any member of the Velconi military or government, including admirals, generals and governors. This ensures that they can deal with corruption without needing to go through any legal bureaucracy. Only the leadership of the Inquisition and the Emperor himself (and his Hands) can give orders to Inquisitors. While such power does bring scope for misuse, corruption is very rare among the Inquisitors due to the heavy brainwashing and loyalty testing one must go through to become an Inquisitor. Those within the Inquisition who do fall to temptation are swiftly and brutally dealt with by their peers.
Inquisitors rarely work with other fully-fledged Inquisitors, but many mentor Lieutenant Inquisitors. Like Plaghans, Inquisitors can be supported by a team, usually consisting of members from other branches of the military. As Inquisitors possess authority above other members of the military, some prefer to command units from whatever detachment is local to their area, while others maintain their own personal group of specialists. Inquisitors are allowed a great deal of freedom in how they operate, and though their every action is scrutinized by their superiors, the Senior Inquisitors rarely tells an Inquisitor how to approach a particular situation and only usually intervene when serious mistakes are being made.
== Training ==
Inquisitors are selected from intelligence trainees and given a different training program from members of Velconi Intelligence. Inquisitor training emphasizes interrogation, evidence interpretation, data analysis and criminal psychology. Genetic augmentation is also given to Inquisitors, though less extreme than what SpecOps or even Stalkers receive and result in no physical disfiguration.
Following the completion of their training, the trainees are given the rank of Lieutenant Inquisitor. They are then expected to work under the wing of a full Inquisitor until their mentor declares them ready for promotion.
== Ranks ==
The following is a list of Inquisition ranks in ascending order:
Rank 	Description
Inquisitor Trainee 	Trainees are equivalent to trainees of other military branches and possess no authority.
Inquisitor Analyst 	Inquisitor Analysts are trainees who have failed field training or in rare cases, undergone but survived complications in the augmentation process. They work desk jobs analyzing the large amounts of information the Inquisition must process every day with assistance from AIs.
Lieutenant Inquisitor	Lieutenant Inquisitors have most of the authority of an Inquisitor but cannot make arrests on flag officers or high ranking government officials.
Inquisitor 	Inquisitor is the rank held by members of the Inquisition working actively in the field.
Senior Inquisitor 	Senior Inquisitors make up the Inquisition's leadership. They are experienced Inquisitors who have largely retired from field work and primarily supervise other Inquisitors.
Inquisitor General 	The Inquisitor General is the leader of the Inquisitors and the highest rank in the Inquisition.
== Trivia ==
* The Irin Republic does not have an equivalent to the Inquisition. The Irini Departments serve as both domestic and foreign intelligence, with the duties of some Departments focused on foreign affairs such as Department 1 (Velconi Affairs) while others like Department 42 (Organized Crime) deals with more domestic issues.
Category:Imperial Military