Fel Empire

# The Fel Empire

The smaller splinter faction of the Imperial Remnant, the Fel Empire comprised those worlds which remained loyal to the Fels following Grand Moff Paulsta's seizure of Bastion in 47ABY. A bitter civil war would develop between the two Imperial factions, with the Fel Empire subsuming the Empire of the Hand after being largely pushed out of the known galaxy.

## Astrography

Primarily located in Wild Space, the Fel Empire takes up much the same space the Empire of the Hand once occupied with demilitarised extensions coreward to their border at Dorin and heavily militarised extensions east to Comra and Fornax. Because of the limited history of hyperspace travel in Wild Space this territory has few stable hyperspace routes, despite recent efforts at blazing routes from Nirauan to Ansion and Comra.

## Ideology

The Fel Empire considers itself a liberal autocracy, providing member worlds wide-ranging domestic and freedoms in exchange for manpower, natural resources and industrial power being regularly levied by Imperial authorities. This system does work to maintain much more cordial relationships with the largely nonhuman membership of the Fel Empire, but also sharply separates planetary and sector governance; moffs and other decision-makers are almost exclusively Human, with a sizeable minority of Chiss.

## Factions

The internal politics of the Fel Empire is dominated by four major factions: the Loyalists, Reformists, Anti-Imperials and Expansionists. Loyalists are the most simple, simply believing that the Imperial Line deserves loyalty above all else and supporting the increased elevation of the Imperial Office. Reformists are those who supported Pellaeon's liberalising reforms and seek to go further, often advocating for removing Star Destroyers and AT-ATs, arguing that weapons of fear have no place in the Fel Empire, or even removing the Imperial Office and having a head of state elected by the Senate. Anti-Imperials are largely indiginous species within the Empire, who use their positions within the Senate to agitate for lessening of taxes and the withdrawal of the Empire from their own worlds, or the dissolution of the Empire entirely. Conversely, Expansionists are largely Chiss who see the Fel Empire as inheriting the Empire of the Hand's mission to colonise and civilise the Unknown Regions.

Each faction weighs in on each decision made by the Emperor, and each one reacts in their own way to it - and Jag Fel is never going to be able to keep all of them happy.

## Military

Over the course of three years bitter struggle against the True Empire, the Fel Imperial military has evolved quite considerably away from their common roots, adopting many of the tactics of the Rebel Alliance to bleed out their enemy's advances. Lacking the industrial bases of Bastion or Yaga Minor the Fels have adapted to lower-tech tactics, smaller fleets of cruisers and frigates relying on speed and surprise and smaller units of well-trained infantry relying on quick-thinking and aggressive tactics to overwhelm their enemies.

### Imperial Navy

Suffering the most from the diminished industrial capacity of the Fel Empire's new borders, the Fel-Imperial Navy has been forced to move its focus from the expensive and valuable Star Destroyer to Cruiser/Frigate squadrons lead by *Victories* or *Procursators* when capital ship support was needed. Heavier units would be concentrated together to punish True Imperial capital squadrons if they dispersed to catch strike-and-fade operations, or used in tightly-choreographed ambushes with minimal risk of retaliation.

The Imperial Navy also required an extended ground-attack arm to make planeside hit-and-run attacks before overwhelming enemy force could arrive on the scene; lacking the resources to expand the Navy Commandos the Stormtrooper Corps was instead folded into the Navy as a subordinate arm. Joint operations had many teething issues, but by 51 ABY the Fel Imperial Navy is fully capable of luring a planet's defenders away, destroying its orbital defences and landing assault battalions with full orbital support in a matter of hours.

The Imperial Navy also manages a number of guerilla and insurgency operations as far afield as Ord Cantrell. These operations make the most of the tenacity and resourcefulness of Stormtroopers, as well as the speed of the Navy's own operations, to interfere with True Imperial supply lines, spread them out across dozens of star systems and bleed away their supplies of men and materiel; with luck, these minor operations could even set the conditions for the enemy to be defeated in detail as they rush to put out every bushfire.

### Imperial Army

Much of the challenge the Fel-Imperal Army has struggled with has been how to use its deeply limited resources to match the much more straightforward True Imperial Army. Shortening and de-escalating planetary occupations has helped to free up resources, but under-funded and over-matched as they were they could not stand head-to-head with the massed heavy firepower their foe would bring to bear. Several costly experiments saw efforts at matching armour for heavy armour, or simply drawing enemies into urban environments, but none proved a true solution.

Current Imperial Army doctrine emphasises aggressive reconnaissance, attacks from unexpected angles and infantry-on-infantry engagements, with Fel infantry being both better-trained and -disciplined than their counterparts and also more likely to be augmented with light walkers or mobile artillery. Heavy walkers are to be avoided at all times, left to air or artillery support to destroy or drawn into ambushes if necessary. It is a doctrine which suffers in set-piece battles or when hemmed in by terrain or enemy superiority, but which has managed to keep the Fel Empire standing even after three years being pounded by a stronger enemy.

## Organisation

The Fel Empire itself is run as something of a patchwork, with the defection of the Moff Council causing initial bureacratic postings to be assigned to the friends and personal confidants of the Fels and organisational structures to form around these ad-hoc decisions later. One result of this is that bureacratic channels tend to funnel directly into the military - something which the Reformists have rallied against - and the other is that the two branches of government are military and sectoral, each of which maintains both executive, legislative and judicial elements.

### Military Branch

The preeminent branch of government, the military branch is headed by the Imperial War Cabinet which brings together the Chairs of the Imperial Board of Industry & Requisition, any available High Generals of the Imperial Army and Grand Admirals of the Imperial Navy and Their Imperial Majesties Jag and Jaina Fel. Other officers and officials may be present as aides, requested guests and observers. The Imperial War Cabinet exists to present, debate and confirm procurement, shipping and deployment plans. The Cabinet then hands directives down to the Imperial Army, Navy and BoI&E, with one service in command of each given directive and elements of other services attatched.

Notably absent from the Cabinet is the Stormtrooper Corps which has been subsumed into the Navy as a rapid-response shock-assault force, with the Imperial Army set aside for long-term occupations, peacekeeping actions and longer campaigns where speed and violence are less important than siege engineers, theatre shields and heavy artillery. While the Corps has complained about the loss of independence loudly and persistently, being freed from counter-insurgency and occupation duties has been a (privately) welcome relief.

An adjunct organisation to the Cabinet is the Imperial Disciplinary Courts, which nominally drafts and enforces Imperial military law for the armed forces. In practice, it enforces Alliance military law and documents any and all breaches of that law along with the resulting investigations and disciplinary actions; no-one wants to upset the Fel Empire'scoreward neighbour.

Similarly to the IDC, Imperial Intelligence serves as an adjunct to the main Cabinet, presenting the results of internal and comissioned studies and advising the three main bodies as to the progress of Alliance, True Imperial and Chiss efforts. As of 51 ABY, Imperial Intelligence has limited intelligence regarding the Keshiri. Imperial Intelligence also maintains diplomatic relations with both the Chiss Ascendancy and the Galactic Alliance, although there have been calls for an independant Diplomatic Corps from within and withou.

### Sectoral Branch

While strictly junior to the military branch, the sectoral branch is far larger and contains much more bureaucratic complexity. At the head of this complexity is the Oversector Council, consisting of their Imperial Highnesses Jag and Jaina Fel, the President of the Imperial Senate, Judicator of the Imperial High Court, the Grand Moff of the Nirauan Oversector and any further Grand Moffs who may be promoted when the Fel Empire reclaims its former posessions. As with the Imperial War Cabinet, the Oversector Council can have more attendees as observers, aides and requested guests.

The Senate, High Court and Oversectors act as the legislative, judicial and executive branches of the Fel Empire respectively. The senate is made up of representatives from each planet whose votes are weighted by the population of their constitutents - with some planets sending multiple senators to represent separate constitutencies - and senators are free to both propose and vote on legislation. Because the Senate is an extension of the politics of individual planets, it has the most species diversity of the entire Empire and sees a groundswell of both Reformist and anti-Imperial sentiment; proposals condemning the office of Emperor and the firm grip of humans on positions of power outside the Senate are yearly events.

The High Court is the judicial body of the Fel Empire, responsible for ensuring that Moffs, Senators and planetary governments operate in accordance with the Senate's laws. In this capacity the High Court is responsible for looking into resonable charges, with Judges acting as investigators and arbiters, and as such Judges must be selected by the Emperor personally.

Oversectors form the admistrative structure of the executive branch, although only one exists as of 51 ABY. Under each Grand Moff is a council of sectoral Moffs, each one managing a dozen or so planetary governments, and Moffs running ancillary sectoral programmes. For the Nirauan Oversector, these ancilliary projects range from planetary infrastructure efforts to bureacratic retraining. This branch is the most human-centric, and holds much of the actual power of the sectoral branch simply as a holdover from previous generations of Moff.

### Independant

The Imperial Knights serve directly under the Emperor, often being assigned as tokens of Imperial favour or political officers to keep an eye on those whose loyalties might be wavering. At other times they function as elite shock troops, deployed as squads to rout enemy formations in urban or forested environments where they can close easily.