Vidona

> "*Through blood we prevail.*"
> ― Vidona motto
>
>

The **Vidona** are one of the six factions governing the hexarchate in the Machineries of Empire universe.

Notable Vidona include Hexarch Vidona Psa, Vidona Ekesra, and the legendary Vidona Oressa.

## Role

The Vidona are a low faction; their corresponding high faction is the Andan. They disseminate Doctrine; punish, execute, or reeducate dissidents and heretics; ritually torture traitors and heretics on remembrance days; and are responsible for educating the hexarchate's children up to age seventeen. Every Vidona is capable of rendering a remembrance; some are also trained to keep heretics alive for more torture.

The Vidona are routinely sent to conquered or scoured areas to reeducate any survivors according to Doctrine and to repopulate with enough loyal citizens to return the calendrical terrain to acceptable values. Their reeducation procedures are more thorough after rebellions in strategically sensitive areas, such as nexus fortresses.

The Vidona tend to be insular and conservative. As they are feared by the populace and are not regarded highly by the other factions, they tend to be extremely loyal to one another and to marry within their faction.

They respect the Rahal as the source of Doctrine and value the loyalty of the Kel. They consider the friction between the Andan and Shuos borderline disloyal. Their medical branch associates closely with the Nirai, whose immortal hexarch, Nirai Kujen, created the remembrances in their modern form. Meanwhile, they are grudgingly respected by the Rahal and Kel; considered rigid but necessary by the Nirai and an unsubtle but necessary tool by the Andan; and regarded by the Shuos as a blunt instrument and long-term liability.

## Government

The Vidona center of government was the Greentide Fortress. Their emblem is the stingray, and their colors are green and bronze.

The most recent Vidona hexarch was Vidona Psa.

## Technology

The Vidona deathtouch is used ceremonially in remembrances, or, rarely, to summarily execute heretics.

## Recruitment

Appropriate Vidona candidates are inflexibly loyal and strong of stomach. All Vidona, no matter their intended role in the faction, are required to train in the blood arts. People who apply to the faction tend to either be devoted to the system or to gain enjoyment from their fearful activities and reputation.

## Culture

The art of paper-folding is specific to the Vidona due to its elaborate use on corpses after application of the Vidona deathtouch. For this reason, it is one of the few fine arts disdained by the Andan, and even small children in the hexarchte recognize paper sculptures as ominous.

## History

Hexarch Nirai Kujen lived in a Vidona orphanage for a while as a youth, and did not like the experience. As a Nirai cadet, his feelings about Vidona orphanages prevented him from bringing a starving street child to one for food and safety, resulting in her death.

Lieutenant General Kel Sumaarzaav and her lover spent a good deal of time volunteering at Vidona orphanages. A change in the realm's policy after the purging of the Liozh, making prisoners of war potential remembrance fodder for the convenience of the Vidona, spurred her to secede from the hexarchate; some traditionally-minded Vidona were among her supporters.

Petty squabbles with the Vidona were partially responsible for weakening the Shuos before the hexarch's seat fell to Shuos Mikodez.

Vahenz afrir dai Noum despised the Vidona and insisted on "no blunt methods" being used in the heretical takeover of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. She advised that the Vidona detained in the takeover of the fortress be processed for release as a propaganda gambit. Simulators were provided for Fortress residents eager to try Vidona methods on others. After the Fortress was recaptured, Brevet General Kel Cheris requested Andan or Vidona backup, preferably both.

In a rare successful effort to reduce the number of local people handed over to the Vidona, the planetary governor of Krauwer 5 invited a coalition of endangered workers to tea for negotiations, and sat in the Vidona overseer's office and stared at her every day for four months until the invitation was accepted.

After remembrance tortures were abolished under the revised calendar, the role of the Vidona in the Compact became unclear, though the citizens' reflexive fear of them was slow to ebb. The faction and its supporters were among the least accepting of the new social order. A year later, in the city of Tauvit, medical doctors trained by the Vidona went on strike, despite negotiations by the Compact's head of state. Teachers also retained Vidona sympathies despite renouncing their faction allegiance and frequently protested curriculum changes.

When the Protectorate finally adopted the revised calendar nine years later, the Vidona were again the most reluctant to accept the change. Their old role in rendering heretics for remembrances was confined to the last polity left under the high calendar, Terebeg 4, until ceasing on the anniversary of the massacre at Hellspin Fortress.

## Trivia

* A certain Vidona museum contains the purported skin of a Liozh cadet, tattooed with the holy days of a heretical group the cadet had approached with information about the heptarchate's high calendar. The Liozh failure to retaliate for the group's execution of their cadet was later seen as a sign of their unfitness.
* Despite his fondness for remembrances, Kujen did not bring any Vidona to Tefos Base, leaving Hemiola with only a vague idea of their role in remembrances.
* Although shape-folding was a distinctly Vidona art for hundreds of years, Kujen knew how to make folded paper moths.
* A dispute between groundside Andan and Vidona governors led to Kel infantry, including junior lieutenant Kel Muyyed, being loaned to the Andan for police work as a substitute for local Vidona.
* Kel Niaad felt that musical instruments found in homes in the Anemone Ward resembled Vidona torture implements, "especially the ones with the hungry wires."
* Shuos Jedao did not speculate on what the Vidona might be authorized to say about the purpose of games.
* The threshold winnowers on the *Revenant* were guarded by Kel-seconded Vidona officers.
* While studying for the Rahal entrance exam, Lirit Mistrikor remarked that her grandparents might send the Vidona after her if her upcoming essay turned out under par.
* Concerned that a news bulletin would cause citizens to "play Vidona," Mikodez suggested revealing Kujen's existence by making a bad drama instead.
* The flimsy-looking folding dinghy used by Ajewen Cheris in Cheris and the Sea reminded her of Vidona paper-folding art.

## Links

* The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
* Author's website

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3, 6
3. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
4. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
5. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20
6. ↑ Author's website
7. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 6
8. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
9. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
10. ↑ Author's website
11. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
12. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
13. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
14. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 2
15. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
16. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 2
17. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Vidona
18. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 6
19. ↑ Seven Views of a Kel Secession
20. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 2
21. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 11
22. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
23. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20
24. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 5
25. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 2
26. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 21
27. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 8
28. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 21
29. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 12
30. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 21
31. ↑ Seven Views of the Liozh Entrance Exam
32. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 15
33. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 4
34. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 25
35. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 13
36. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 13
37. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 22
38. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 10
39. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 19
40. ↑ Cheris and the Sea