Coutelier: The Enginepedia; Factions

Factions

Star Engine Battle

There are of course a great many political entities, nations, tribes, corporations, organisations, etcetera, all across the known universe. Far too many to list them all here.

Here are just some of the largest and most important.

The Institution

Based on Lepiterra, The Institution is responsible for overseeing the buying and selling and the activities of all ELFs.

They have representatives in every major city in the galaxy. Knowing that people can become quite attached to their ELFs, they also train many doctors who specialise in looking after the health of the creatures, as well as their own officers who search for any who go missing and look out for stray ELFs wandering around without a master.

Any ELF under contract will periodically be visited by someone from The Institution to check on her physical and psychological well being.

Should any ELF rebel against her masters and go 'rogue', then The Institution will dispatch the Artemi; a select group of Enyon ELFs who will track down and, in most cases, destroy the rogue ELF.

There are many illegal activities involving ELFs, such as making them face each other in gladiatorial style contests. Whilst some members of the Institution try to put a stop to this, most in fact view the ELFs as a product and so little actually gets done about it.

The Silver Republic

The largest and most powerful political body in the known Galaxy, although in Galactic terms its actually very small spanning just about a hundred star systems. Although it calls itself a Republic, very few people actually have a right to vote on anything. It was really run more like a company than a government, with the President acting as a chairman of the board (The Senate).

The Republic is able to project its power across space through the Star Engines; Epis is the only known world that can produce the vehicles, thus almost all interstellar trade, communication and transportation happens through the Republic. The Republic goes from world to world looking for new trade opportunities as well as for ancient tech which they will typically take back to Epis to study, reproduce and then sell back to the people they stole it from. Any physicists or engineers on other worlds that show promise The Republic will offer large amounts to in order to come and join them. And if they refuse, well... they will go to great lengths to maintain their monopolies for as long as possible.

There about a hundred worlds that are currently members of The Republic, with just a few that remain independent. Those that join are rarely conquered, but convinced to join voluntarily. The promise of being able to trade with other worlds is often enough to do so; the only other means to traverse and communicate through interstellar space is through untrustworthy space pirates. The Republic can offer protection from those as well as from other threats from space, such as comets and meteors. The Republic also does not try to impose its own laws and culture on planets since all it cares about is trade and profits. So it seems to be win-win.

The most it does is appoint a Governor to every new world and maybe a small military force to protect their interests there. There is a tax of course, and usually a condition of joining is that any planets own military swears loyalty to them.

If a world joins then later tries to secede, it will of course have to face the might of the Republic's Armada. Since any orbital defences a planet has are likely owned and controlled by the Republic, most of these rebels will face death at the hands of an enemy they never get to see. If the Star Engines don't finish them off, then the Republics Army, the best human fighters from a hundred worlds as well as the fearsome Enyon ELFs, almost certainly will.

Apart from pirates, who are little more than a nuisance, The Silver Republic has no enemy that can really challenge them... for now.

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