True Empire

# The True Empire

The largest of the imperial splinter factions, the True Empire proclaims itself as a return to the height of imperial glory found before the Battle of Yavin. Casting aside the reforms of the Pellaeon era, they return to deep and far-reaching humanocentrism in a self-described crusade to retake Imperial Center and the galactic dominance which comes with that. While their progress in that goal was initially spectacular, in recent years overextension and stiffening resistance has slowed their advance, and the threat of stalemate looms large.

## Astrography

The core of the True Empire is the single sector which the imperial remnant has occupied since the end of formal hostilities between the Empire and New Republic, centred on the throneworld of Bastion. Beyond this lies predominantly occupied territories stretching down to Ord Mantell in the west and Thalassia in the east, a wedge driven towards the Slice and stopped for now at the Hydian itself.

## Ideology

In the broadest strokes, the True Empire is an Imperial revanchist organisation aiming to recreate its own perception of Palpatine's New Order through the reconstitution of racialised classification systems in imperial policy, active efforts to more thoroughly direct corporate actions and a decisive shift of power away from the few democratic institutions which had been constructed to the Moffs and Lilafel in particular. This perception of the past which Lilafel seeks to return to is not the only one within the True Empire, however, and other visions jostle with hers for their grip on the future.

## Factions

Despite the consolidated power within the Moff Council, the True Empire is still beholden to its own internal factions and the networks of power which bind it together. Often these factions present competing demands, and just as often Lilafel attempts to play them off against each other to keep her own position secure.

### Revanchists

Headed up by Grand Moff Paulstra, the Revanchists are tenuously in control of the True Empire and rolling back Pellaeon's reforms to return to Palpatine's vision of the New Order. Many of the smaller financial and industrial groups in the True Empire have been nationalised in order to suborn them to the Empire's will, and the long-dead COMPNOR has been tentatively revived to roll back much of the post-Endor slip into liberalism; human high culture is once more an official point of Imperial policy.

Militarily, the Revanchists maintain the importance of the psychological; seeking to overawe enemies into states of shock before battle is even met. This has manifested as a step-up in the production of capital ships and an effort to design new and more powerful classes, as well as attempting reestablishing the TIE line as the only line used in the True Imperial Navy.

### Conservatives

Primarily made up of ex-pentastar and sienar executives, the Conservatives present themselves as being strong, stable and sane leadership. Because of their more corporate makeup they tend to advocate for the conglomerates which retreated with the empire to Bastion, encouraging deregulation and denationalisation even when this clashes with Revanchist policy. Conservatives also tend to support the loosening of anti-droid laws, aiming to reactivate the droid foundries of Ord Cestus and sell their products back to the Empire.

Militarily, the Conservatives favour limited drives into the Slice by mixed fleets of smaller units - especially since Sienar largely sells frigates and cruisers - as well as funding dissidents against the GA and buying out businesses whose values drop as a result of targetted attacks. Espionage also features heavily in Conservative plans, both as a means of acquiring assets and exposing weaknesses.

### House Escati

A kuati noble house which fled when the New Republic breached the core and has since taken up residence on Yaga Minor and Ord Trasi along with numerous smaller and less prestigious houses which rally around Escati. The house directly runs much of the True Empire's capital ship production, and has been delighted by the Revanchists' willingness to both increase production and comission new ship classes.

With experience of both the Vong technology and the current state of the Yaga, Escati has become obsessed with the use of biotechnology, in public to improve the empire's war machine but in private to adapt each species in the Empire into a cog in its machine. Testbed ships with limited biotech components have been permitted, but as of present genetic engineering tests on populations have been blocked by both human-purist and Conservative angles.

### Inquisitorious

Strictly subordinate to Paulstra, the Inquisitorious in practice is too disparate to be tightly controlled. The branch founded by those Knights the Grand Moff took with her as she defected maintains its discipline, training Inquisitors in a balanced mix of combat, leadership and meditative practices which only brush against the Dark Side, but a separate branch has emerged as the Inquisitorious grows where some wild shit happens. Where the Inquisitorial Knights consider themselves a military organisation, their growing counterweight of dark side sorcerors, accolytes and cultists have goals ranging from petty power to the resurrection of Palpatine and his Dark Empire, and often seek to insert the Sith as an official state religion with its own bureaucratic and military power.

### Stormtrooper Corps

Since Endor the Stormtrooper Corps has lost much of its prestige and nearly found itself subsumed into the Imperial Army. With the new outbreak of war, they have thrown themselves behind the Revanchists in an effort to prove themselves on the battlefield, requesting their own planetary assault ships in the style of the *Acclamator* or *Doomgiver* for use in independant, violent planetary assult. While they have been given free reign to do so in the west, in the north they have found themselves split into smaller units and used as tactical shock troops supplementing and subordinated to the Army - something which the Corps has protested vigorously.

## Military

### Imperial Navy

Once the greatest navy in the galaxy, the Imperial Navy is now a decidedly second-rate navy and still dealing with the consequences of this fall from grace. Imperial doctrine is still caught in transition, having barely learned the costly lessons of fighting an enemy with interior lines and superior industry before the cessation of fighting, and the war with the Vong taught many lessons specific to the extragalactic invaders. Imperial fleets are a motley mix of ships ranging from Clone Wars-era *Veators* to cutting-edge battlecruisers like the *Redemption*, and would be unweildy even with well-cohered doctrines.

Despite this, the Imperial Navy is far from toothless; even in its weakened state it is proportionally the heaviest fleet in the known galaxy, and makes the most regular use of Battlecruisers to stiffen its frontline fleets. This has fed in with the Revanchists' desire for psychological warfare to produce a fixation on campaigns leading to decisive capital engagements where enemy forces and morale can be crushed in one blow, a technique which both the Alliance and Fel Empire have steadily learned to counter over the years following Lilafel's initial assaults.

Despite the prominence of the Imperial Navy, in the west it has been subordinated to the Stormtrooper Corps and used primarily for orbital bombardment and troop escort missions. In the south, where there is a much weaker Stormtrooper presence, the Navy has been much more empowered, expanding its Navy Commandos to take over the first-drop planetary assault role and having much greater call on Imperial Army forces to secure and hold its conquests.

### Imperial Army

Caught politically between the more powerful Stormtrooper Corps and Navy, the True Imperial Army has been forced to adapt itself to the niche the two have left it - full-spectrum high-intensity warfare and planetary occupations. With this, what few spec ops and plantary assault units the Army maintained have withered; replaced instead by artillery regiments, heavy armour platoons, engineer battalions and airspeeder squadrons. Imperial Army battlegroups have intensified in specialisation and firepower, slabs of armour sweeping the battlefield behind curtains of artillery-fire and knots of screening infantry.

In terms of doctrine, the Imperial Army has changed least of all three branches of the military, still seeking out set-piece engagements on open terrain where concentrated armour and artillery can blast away any opposition with minimal retaliation. What has changed is the acknowledgement of the Alliance and Fel Empire as peers, with a shift from units comprised of three constituents instead of four to free armour and artillery for reserves and decisive clashes.

Freeing units up is also a focus of Imperial Army occupation forces, looking to co-opt or train up local forces capable of supressing instability and otherwise providing specialist or *in extremis* support. Where full occupations are undertaken they are treated as an exercise in siegeworks, with semi-modular fortifications and checkpoints being thrown up across major cities and transportation links to both control movement and also to provide bases for patrols and rapid-response teams.

### Stormtrooper Corps

The Stormtrooper Corps has taken the renewel of hostilities as a chance to justify its existence, becoming ever-more aggressive in its efforts to estroy the Empire's enemies - starting with those stormtroopers who sided with the Fels. The war in the west has largely been run by the Corps, pushing themselves almost to the point of logistical collapse to drive those proclaimed traitor into the unknown regions and beyond. For the purposes of this, the Corps has amassed itself a small fleet of assault carriers and logistics vessels, and has used them in a series of vicious raids on Fel Imperial space.

In the south the Corps is on a much tighter leash, used to supplement the Imperial Army in close-quarters assaults and special-environment operations for which the Army lacks training and equipment - none of the Corps' own vessels operate in this theatre. This has largely seen the southern theatre be considered a secondary theatre, a place where underperforming units and less-talented commanders would be sent while the brunt of Corps' power would be concentrated in the west.

## Organisation

Unlike its Fel equivalent, the True Empire has a strong bureaucratic continuity with the Imperial Remnant, only modified by degrees as Paulstra and the Moff Council have tightened their grip on the upper echelons of power. While, in theory, the office of Emperor still exists within the True Empire, the Council has taken the role of Imperial Regent in order to place itself in direct charge of all three branches of government - though rumours abound that Paulstra wishes to take up the mantle of Empress personally.

### Legislative Branch

Comprised of the Council of Moffs, this branch has regained much of its power since Endor and now actually manages much of the politics of the True Empire. The Council meets in monthly and emergency sessions to create and ammend committees and vote on their reccomendations; these committees are formed for specific purposes and are the only bodies allowed to make proposals to the Council. As such, committee selection is the site of some of the most vicious factional fighting in the True Empire, since dominance within specific committees allows the dominant faction to shape its agenda to their liking.

The Council is presently made up of seven Grand Moffs; Director of Imperial Intelligence, Chair of the Joint Chiefs, Chair of the Select Committee, Procurator of Justice, Imperial Economic Coordinator, and the Grand Moffs of Oversector Bastion and Oversector Axxila, with Lilafel acting as Council Chair and having the deciding vote in case of ties. As Imperial reconquest of the outer rim continues, it is expected that further Oversectors will be created and added to the Council.

Despite its far-reaching power, the Council does not have any directly subordinate organisations.

### Executive Branch

The executive branch is split in two: on one hand the sectoral and oversectoral governance, and on the other overarching governmental departments. The first is a simple chain of authority, from the Emperor (or Regent) to the Grand Moffs to the sectoral Moffs and finally planetary Governors who have authority over whatever planetary government exists. At each step, these governors have authority over limited military forces for use in peacekeeping and stability operations - largely crushing planetary opposition.

Governmental departments include Imperial Intelligence, the Imperial Navy, Army and Stormtrooper Corps, Imperial Economic Coordination Office, and the Commission for the Preservation of the True Order - large-scale governmental organisations with specific remits and jurisdictions. Most of these also maintain a seat on the Council of Moffs, although the three branches of military have only a single seat between them.

COMPTOR is the exception. A resurrection of the long-dead COMPNOR in Lilafel's image, COMPTOR is less a single government department and more a state within a state. Encompassing everything from cultural review to hardline anti-insurgency operations, COMPTOR largely exists to increase Lilafel's personal power base and as such has wide-ranging powers and jurisdiction even to the point of overlapping with other departments. This suits Lilafel just fine, and she regularly expands and contracts COMPTOR's role as punishment and reward for other departments.

### Judicial Branch

The smallest and weakest of the three branches, the judicial branch makes up the Department of Imperial Justice and the Supreme Court. These have limited jurisdiction, mostly called in when a Moff needs precendent for their plans, but are responsible for assisting the Imperial Navy with anti-smuggling duties.

### Independant

The Inquisitorious lies outside the overall structure of the True Empire. In theory they report directly to the Regent, in practice they maintain secrecy from much of the rest of the Empire - what little they do let slip they do to Lilafel over the other Grand Moffs. Whether this is some deliberate snub from the darksiders or Lilafel maintaining her control over them is ambiguous, and in all likelihood elements of both are present, but either way they are largely left to their own devices.