The Royals

Controlling a dozen systems and claiming a half dozen more within the Outback, **The Royals** were first encountered in OB-232 during military drills being conducted by Theirr Galae Temaeshim Drihaen. Initially divided due to their isolation, the current government of the Royals is friendly towards the Alliance and a founding member of the Triparty Pact which opposes the dominance of the Futara Union.

# Territory

The following systems are currently controlled by the Royals:

* OB-232 The Desolace
* OB-237 Pact Homeworld
* OB-239 Pact Colony
* OB-242 Crossway
* OB-243 Gardinia
* OB-244 Blackend
* OB-277 Greentoth
* OB-331 Royals Homeworld
* OB-337 New World
* OB-339 White Holding
* OB-615 Royal Guardian
* OB-652 Holiday Home
* OB-666 Hellscape

# Government

The Royals are ruled by a self described "Corporate Monarchy". It is a variant on classical monarchism, with the monarch (only ever referred to as "Majesty") being the supreme ruler and holding all governing power. The Monarch then grants that power to various Ministers, either Ministers that govern over specific regions of the Royal's territory, or over certain aspects of the government's responsibilities. The corporate aspect comes from the fact that the Monarch is also the head of the corporation that controls Hellscape and subspace based technology, giving the government a monopoly on interstellar transit, communications, and fuel.

The present ruler, a woman, has been in power for approximately ten years and is reform minded and outwardly focused. She recognizes certain rights of her subjects and has managed to bring the dissenting Pact Worlds back under her rule due to a combination of reforms and external dangers. Her position as head of the Royal Corporation has served her well and allowed her to make favorable trade deals with Alpha Quadrant and local Outback powers.

## Ministries of the Royals

The Ministries of the Royals are divided into two types, Regional Ministries that oversee the governing of regions of their space and worlds, and Executive Ministries that oversee certain aspects of governmental responsibilities. A Minister who heads a Regional Minister are titled "Minister-Governor", while those who head a Executive Ministry are titled as "Minister-Executor". These ministers all form the formal Board of Ministers that aid the monarch in ruling and governing.

### Politics of the Ministers

The Ministers, broadly speaking, fall into one of four main political camps. These camps vie for influence with the Monarch and for power within the government.

#### Conservatives

The Conservative faction of the Royals, lead by the Minister of State, Giorj, dislikes the rapid change the Royals have undergone as a result of recent events. They would prefer not having entangling alliances, less weakening of the Monarch's power and control as the recent Monarch has done in order to maintain internal cohesion, and slower technological and social change with fewer foreign influences.

#### Isolationists

Also known as the Clerical faction due to their highly religious nature, and natural allies of the present Conservative faction, the Isolationists do not mind as much of the social and technological changes, but do not like foreign entanglements and greatly fear outside influences in their society. The Isolationists have been marginalized in the government in recent years, as their concerns were previously not heeded due to the previous coalition of the Conservatives and Militarist, and the present domination by the Progressives and Militarists.

#### Progressives

Also known as the Loyalist faction, the Progressive faction in the present government is made up of ministers who were directly appointed by Her Majesty (as opposed to holdovers from the previous Monarch) and who agree with her efforts at government reform and international engagement. Previously in a poor position overall in the council, the Progressives managed a major coup by driving a wedge between the Conservatives and Militarists after the Royals first encounter with the Jenola Alliance.

#### Militarist

The Militarists are just that, those mostly concerned with military strength and state security, while also being strongly loyal to the Monarch, with little regard to the exact economic or social policies they pursued. Formally aligned with the Conservative faction, they broke with them when the Jenola Alliance encountered the Royals and it became clear that the technology of the Royals and their isolation put them at a sever military disadvantage. Following that, they made common cause with the Progressive faction to bring in new technology and military security to the Royals.

### Regional Ministries

Most of these position govern an entire system, though their home system is divided into three positions due to its much greater development and population. Those systems that do not fall under the purview of one of the regional ministers are generally small enough that they do not require an entire Ministry to govern them.

* Ministry of the Northern Hemisphere - Conservative
* Ministry of the Southern Hemisphere - Conservative
* Ministry of the Solar System - Progressive
* Ministry of Crossway - Progressive
* Ministry of Gardinia - Conservative
* Ministry of Blackend - Isolationist
* Ministry of Greentoth - Isolationist
* Ministry of New World - Conservative
* Ministry of White Holding - Isolationist

### Executive Ministries

* Ministry of Monopoly - Minister Maejory, Militarist
* Ministry of the Interior - Militarist
* Ministry of the Treasury - Militarist
* Ministry of Trade and Industry - Minister Ricktus, Progressive
* Ministry of Justice - Progressive
* Ministry of Arms - Minister Alloya, Militarist (Deceased)
* Ministry of State - Minister Giorj, Conservative
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Minister Stirn, Progressive

# Culture

The Royal's primary culture is highly ordered though also self determining. Most citizen's are free to pursue their own interests receiving a small stipend from the government to cover their expenses, though anything beyond the most very basics require the citizens to work at some profession. The power of the government and monarch is only checked by the powerful religious aspects of their society, the primary faith being the worship of a Council of Gods that set forth the natural order of the world.

# Technology

The technology of the Royals was initially unusual in two main areas. The first was their lack of Mass Lightening technology or graviton manipulation technology, a gap in their knowledge that has been systemically remedied via trade and importing of technical expertise from the Alpha Quadrant. The second, which is still unique to them, is the sheer amount of anti-matter they use due to the access to the anti-matter solar system of Hellscape. Not only do their ships and weapons, even modernized designed, utilize high density elemental anti-matter, they also use anti-matter in art and jewelry contained in highly secure magnetic fields.

## Ship Design

### Initial Design Philosophy

When first encountered, Royals ships were brute affairs, and lack any Structural Integrity Fields or energy shielding. This meant their vessels were dependent on heavy and thick armor for protection both against weapons and against debris. Further, they did not make any considerations towards aesthetics as most Alpha and Beta quadrant races do, with ships that are blocky and compact.

In the rear of the ship are the primary sublight propulsion system, sets of large, and very powerful, fusion torch thrusters that are powered by their matter/anti-matter reactors. These thrusters provide impressive thrust given their lack of subspace mass lightening, with a potential up to 20 Standard Gravities (200 meter second) acceleration linearly. However, based on my analysis, these ships are comparatively unmaneuverable, as their maneuvering thrusters are significantly smaller and less capable than their primary drives. In the core of the ship are a series of matter/anti-matter reactors, initial scans made these appear to be relatively primitive systems due to their lack of dilithium and the brute force method they were using; however, debris found in the system from later surveys have found disturbing facts concerning their reactor systems. See the section below on their matter/anti-matter technology.

The hull is made of a high density ceramic reinforced with carbon nanotubes. It is highly resistant to radiation, matter/anti-matter explosives, and coherent light weapons, as it appears to be designed specifically against the weapons utilized by the Royals. In a brief engagement, Plasma Disruptors and Phaser weapons appeared effective. It is unknown how effective Plasma or Quantum torpedoes would be, but given the design paradigm, Photon Torpedoes are likely to be less than optimal due to their significantly lower yield than the Anti-Matter missiles the ships are armored against.

Multiple missile launchers are placed along the hull under armored doors, with small armored laser turrets placed regularly along the hull and a few larger lasers forward mounted. The non-combat ship designed lacked the missile tubes, but had both types of lasers, presumably for point defense and navigational hazard clearing.

Scans showed no windows in the hulls, and the bridge was placed deep in the core of the vessels.

Most ships lacked warp nacelles of any kind, and are not capable of independent warp speed. However, they did have a subspace field sustainer unit, which ties into their method of warp travel. See the section on their FTL systems below.

Overall crew numbers of their ships appears to be low for their size, as the majority of the ship’s volume is dedicated to drive and armor, leaving only a smaller habitable core.

### Initial Design Philosophy

Modernized designs have been forthcoming as the Royals integrate imported technology into their designs. Still relatively blocky, they have begun being more concerned with some basic aesthetics. Further, the modern technology they have imported puts them, technically, ahead of many other Outback powers in technology; however, deployment and implementation of the technology will take years, if not decades, to replace their old fleets and fully modernize. Of note are the modern torpedo systems and energy weapons bringing their firepower up to par with most Alliance ships, though their FTL still lags behind.

## Matter/Anti-Matter Technology

The single most unusual thing about the Royals M/AM system is the fact they, unlike all other major races that utilize the technology, do not appear to utilize a hydrogen (usually deuterium) or even a helium plasma system. Where typical M/AM reactors take a plasma stream of deuterium and anti-deuterium and react them to generate warp plasma, the Royals appear to use a Uranium and anti-Uranium (specifically U-238, aka “Depleted Uranium”, a stable and non-reactive Uranium isotope) plasma stream. This is one of the reasons their reactors produce significantly more energy for scale, due the much higher density of the materials involved. The reactants in their weapon systems is also unusual, where instead of using a deuterium/anti-deuterium warhead like Starfleet does, they instead reacts Iridium 193 with anti-Iridium 193. This gives them a payload significantly greater than a comparably sized Federation torpedo, and with their modernization program, these weapons are considered highly dangerous.

## FTL Systems

The Royal’s original FTL is interesting, though limited. It is linked to a satellite placed on the edge of a system that will generate a warp bubble around the ship that is then sustained by the subspace sustainer while the ship’s normal drives add thrust. Due to this system the subspace field is not very stable, and so cannot sustain higher warp than Warp 5, to 6. Further, they cannot maneuver at warp while within this bubble, and so can only travel along a line from the satellite towards the destination system. Maximum range appears to be limited by the power generation reserves of the ship sustaining the warp bubble.

These satellites, dubbed “Subspace Accelerators”, also house subspace radios. They are linked with other such devices in other nearby Royals systems, and form a interconnected network to relay ships through their space.

The reason for this system was due to the fact that the Royals did not actually invent warp drive, but rather, harvested and adapted the Purrgil's naturally developed warp organs. In order to preserve the numbers of the Purrgils and prevent mass hunting, the Royal Corporation carefully controlled hunting and harvesting of Purrgils, limiting the number of independently warp-capable ships to a small number in their control while using the Subspace Accelerators to allow civilian traffic without the need for mass harvesting. Both these system are expected to be quietly phased out over time, as the technological trade with the Alpha Quadrant has allowed the Royals to develop and construct more traditional warp drives that still run on their preferred U238/Anti-U238 mix.

## Subspace and Sensor

Initially the Royals have limited mastery of subspace. None of their sensors appear to function via subspace, limiting their visibility to only realspace sensors. One of the technologies quickly deployed to most of their ships has been upgraded sensor suites, and as such, their ships now possess sensor technology only slightly inferior to the Ferengi's most advanced systems.

## Weapons Systems

As has been noted, originally the surveyed ships used two main weapon systems: matter/anti-matter reaction warheads and coherent light (LASER) turrets. These missile weapons are only slightly larger than a Federation Photon Torpedo; however, their yield, as noted, is over 60 times that of a comparable Federation warhead. This appears due to the choice of reactants. Where Federation Photon Torpedoes function on a Deuterium/Anti-Deuterium reaction, they appear to use an Iridium-193/Anti-Iridium-193 reaction, which allows them a much greater payload for the same volume. However, despite the sheer power of the weapons, their delivery system was of limited threat, as they are only capable of acceleration at 2000 m/s, which allows ample time for evasive maneuvers or point defense fire. The newer delivery systems, which have been deployed to many of their older ships, are in line with normal Photon Torpedo speeds, making these warheads a highly potent weapon.

The LASER weapons appear not to be designed as anti-ship weapons, despite the power levels their ships show, the LASERs are relatively low power, but are mounted in highly nimble turrets that are clearly for point defense. These point defense LASERS pose no threat to any shielded target, though an unshielded fighter or shuttle may be able to be damaged or destroyed by these weapons. Forward mounted larger LASER arrays exist, but these have limited arcs of fire, and appear more for clearing debris too small for missile fire, but still larger than a ship would wish to impact. Most of their old ships still carry these point defense weapons, but their newest ships do not, having moved towards more advanced navigation deflector/shields/tractor beam arrangement to deal with debris.

Further, preliminary scans of the latest Royals warships launched show evidence of them combining their knowledge of magnetics and anti-matter with the the basics of particle beam weaponry to develop some sort of anti-matter particle beam. It is unknown if these use anti-protons, positrons, or some other form of anti-matter.

# References

* Reports on "Royals"
* AAR: OB-232 Incident Report