Igni Irae
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on Tephrike. NPC antagonist.
Image Credit: Here. Here. Here.
Canon: N/A.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: The Valkyrie's Diary, Kyriaki, Prosperity Quarter, Hope Falls, The Valkyrie's Diary, Adlerberg, Dominion of Light, Republican Guard, Into Darkness, After Darkness, Glorious Conflict, Castle Maysaf, Tephrike, Firemane, Darth Vader, Amidala Corps, Sith'ari, Bothans, Yuuzhan Vong, Humanity's Blade, Rattataki, Sith'ari, City of Humanist Destiny, Sentinel's Rest.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Organization Name: Knights of the Ebon Claw. Commonly abbreviated as KEC.
Classification: Paramilitary Organisation.
Affiliation: Humanist People's Party, Disciples of the Vader, Darth Lachesis, Tephrike, Darth Eisen, KEC Stormtrooper Corps, Government of the Greater Sith Imperium.
Organization Symbol: Here.
Description: It is common for totalitarian and authoritarian regimes to create parallel militaries as a counterweight to the regular armed forces. The most serious threat to a dictator is a coup by his own followers, and in order to coup-proof his regime, he needs to maintain control of the armed forces and constantly monitor the key players. The purpose of a parallel military force is to protect the regime, and thus it is bound to it through a special relationship with the tyrant. The KEC started as a parallel army, but by now have extended their tendrilsi nto every sphere of Imperial society. The regular police is part of their dominion, as is the secret police; they run the concentration camps and a sprawling network of business enterprises. The origins of these 'Knights' are humble, as they were conceived as a bodyguard force for Darth Malitia, founder of the Disciples of the Vader and supposed messianic saviour of mankind.
However, over time they have evolved into a state within the state. It regards itself as the vanguard of Humanism, charged with purifying Tephrike from 'alien' and 'inferior' elements. Keeping the KEC loyal or contained is important for any Supreme Leader. Their - predominantly male - leaders regard themselves as the racial elite of mankind and the vanguard of Humanism, destined to lead the charge to destroy the Jedi and the Republican Guard and rebuild Tephrike as a Humanist utopia - no matter how many millions of 'inferiors' must perish along the way.
Within the framework of the Humanist state, the KEC have their fingers in many ways. They are responsible for security, controlling both the regular police force and the secret police, but their remit does not end there. They are responsible for racial categorisation, formulate and implement policies for the 'containment' and exploitation of 'lesser beings' - aliens and humans who do not meet the Vaderites' racial standards - carry out settlement programmes to colonise newly-conquered territories with human settlers and run the concentration camps. The KEC have conceived and implemented grandiose and xenocidal plans to change the ethnic makeup on Tephrike. The group has been responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The KEC have a broad remit to use force to implement the Supreme Leader's vision. KEC personnel do not fall under the jurisdiction of civilian or military courts. Instead they answer to their own court system. In effect, this places them above the law. The KEC has been responsible for mass executions prisoners of war and alien civilians, deportations, torture, slavery, ethnic cleansings and brutal medical experiments on sentient beings. The Knights have broad authority to imprison supposed enemies of the state indefinitely in the camps, which is called 'protective custody'. These camps are not subject to judicial review. The Humanists justify these extra-legal measures on the basis of there being a permanent state of emergency until all 'enemies of mankind' have been overcome. Control over all police agencies is centralised in the KEC on both the local and national level. Both have been merged into a state protection corps in order to forge them into an effective weapon of Humanism to crush perceived political, racial and ideological enemies of the Humanist state.
The world view of the KEC is apocalyptic. In keeping with Humanist ideology, the Gulag Virus is blamed on a conspiracy of alien Jedi and bankers who wanted to cow mankind. This conspiracy is supposed to be embodied in both the Dominion of Light and the Republican Guard, even though both hate each other. But under Humanist 'logic', both are controlled by xenos. The Knights have a particular animus for Twi'leks, Mon Calamari and Bothans, who are seen as particularly devious and dangerous. Twi'leks are seen as the driving force behind the supposed conspiracy, while Mon Calamari and Bothans engineered the downfall of the benevolent Galactic Empire. Yuuzhan Vong are especially vilified as demons whose very existence is unnaturla because they stand outside the force. Humankind, it is postulated, will either prevail in this apocalyptic struggle for existence or go under. In order to flourish, humans must acquire 'living space' at the expense of the 'xenos'.
Ideological indoctrination is a constant in the life of a Knight. He is educated to be ruthless and without mercy to the 'xenos'. At the same time, he is supposed to be decent, honest and chivalrous in his dealings with fellow members of the Humanist People's Community. He is supposed to kill the 'enemy' without mercy, but feel no enjoyment and not personally enrich himself. The reality is that the KEC is extremely corrupt. This is particularly apparent in the camps, where embezzlement and theft are endemic. While the KEC have a powerful position in the Humanist state, they are not all-powerful. Instead they compete with the Party, and the military to win the Supreme Leader's favour. The Humanist state is characterised by overlapping, contradictory jurisdictions, leading to a lot of administrative in-fighting.
This is not necessarily seen as a bug because under Humanist logic, the strongest must rule. KEC members do not swear an oath of allegiance to the constitution, the people or the state, but to the Supreme Leader. The Humanists preach that all humans are equal in the sense that they are superior to the xenos. However, even in this ostensibly egalitarian People's Community that claims to have broken down class barriers and eliminated class struggle, there is a high degree of stratification because Force-Users are superior to Non-Force-Users. The rank and file and most of the KEC's officers are Non-Force-Users, though many Force-Users can be found in the upper ranks. Some KEC leaders have managed to attain the position of Supreme Leader, but the group has also been occasionally purged to keep it in line. The last KEC Grand Commander to rise to the top was Darth Furcht, a long-time leader of the secret police.
GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Headquarters: Mantinea, a 'garrison city' located between Adlerberg and the 'City of Benevolent Providence', located on Tephrike. They have a larger tower in Adlerberg's 'Promise City', which serves as a secondary headquarters.
Domain: The Knights are present throughout Vaderite territory on Tephrike. They control their own economic assets, the concentration camps and even some settlements. Moreover, the police force is part of the KEC. This gives them a lot of influence on society. The KEC recruit their members from the human population in the Vaderite sphere. They strive to present the image of being chivalrous knights who are ruthless against the Jedi and aliens, but honourable and chivalrous when dealing with fellow humans. The face they present towards alien is that of a reign of terror. The KEC has a lot of influence in the 'xenos reservations' and in provinces that still have a high alien population, and often takes the lead in 'population policy' and colonisations - including mass murder, theft and deportation.
Moreover, the KEC draws a considerable and highly secretive income from its sprawling business interests. It owns business enterprises that are in almost every sector of the national economy and produce an extremely wide area of services and goods. The portfolio is administered by a holding company called the Grand Knights Commissariat Exchange of the Ebon Claw (GKCEEC). It even has its own bank, the very misleadingly named Chivalry Bank & Lending Society (CBLS). The bank's slogan is: 'Honour. Trust. Certainty. Chivalry Bank & Lending Society - Your Future Assured'. All KEC members get shares in the holding company and are supposed to be paid annual dividends. The more high-ranking a member, the more shares he has.
KEC members are required to purchase and maintain a stake in the conglomerate. The payout is based on revenue generated annually. The required ownership of shares in the GKCEEC is determined by a KEC member's rank. The conglomerate has acquired a wide range of enterprises. The portfolio is quite bloated. For example, it doesn't make much sense to make cement, beer, glass and granite, have mines, rubber plantations and hotels, produce ceramic products, sell houses, and mineral water. Many of their enterprises are characterised by inefficiency and poor management. For example, the paper made by them is of such poor quality that people can always tell KEC paper from the good stuff because it is coarse and irritating.
GKCEEC enjoys a wide range of tax exemptions, including exemptions on corporate taxes, value-added taxes on fund revenues, taxes on fees collected from and disbursements to GKCEEC members, the stamp tax on GKCEEC fund transactions, and income and inheritance taxes on donations to the fund. GKCEEC companies pay regular taxes, but the GKCEEC has no qualms about leveraging the KEC's power to transfer bankrupt companies to public enterprises or persuade the public sector to become a shareholder in said bankrupt powers, as well as build partnerships with public sector enterprises to secure contracts. Several of the enterprises and properties in question have been acquired by expropriating the rightful owners.
An example for a company controlled by it are the Tephriki Earth and Stone Works, which were set up to procure and manufacture building materials for government construction projects. To that end they exploit slave labour for quarry operations, but have also expanded into armaments. The conglomerate enjoys a wide range of tax exemptions. The KEC has long sought to establish an independent armaments industry in the camps, but success in these efforts has been minuscule. Its biggest contribution to the Imperial economy is providing slave labourers for public works projects, factories, agriculture etc.
Some senior Knights are simultaneously Imperial government ministers, senior civil servants, governors or high-ranking Disciples. The KEC have a lot of influence on the so-called National Political Educational Institutes, a network of boarding schools that are supposed to indoctrinate the youth into becoming the next generation of Humanists. The inspector of the schools is a KEC general. These schools are in competition with the Darth Malitia Schools. These serve a similar purpose, but are Party schools run by the Imperial Youth Corps and the Imperial Labour Front.
Notable Assets: The KEC run the penal colonies and detention camps of the Vaderites. They also have their own economic enterprises, owning factories, stone quarries, farms, mines and similar within the Vaderite sphere on Tephrike. An example for a forced labour camp that doubles as a mass killing site would be the ironically named Camp Progress. Most of their economic enterprises have a low productivity, which is always blamed on the slaves - who are worked to death - being 'lazy'. They have a lot of power in alien ghettos such as Prosperity Quarter. Furthermore, they have outposts, barracks etc. Sentinel's Rest is a colony founded for KEC veterans and their families. The location used to be a Togruta town, but the KEC razed it when the natives rebelled against oppressive Imperial rule. They built an extermination camp on the ruins of the town, then dismantled it when its 'job was done'. The fortune of anyone in the KEC is built on the blood of the innocent.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Hierarchy: The KEC have an extremely elaborate hierarchy. On the surface it looks well-organised, but scratch the surface and one finds overlapping jurisdictions. The table of ranks is modelled on that of the army, but uses ranks that sound 'knightly'.
- Squire - Private
- Errant - Corporal
- Banneret - Sergeant
- Crusader - Lieutenant
- Captain - Captain
- Cavalier - Major
- Paladin - Colonel
- Commander - Brigade Commander
- Knight Commander - Division Commander
- Paladin Commander - Corps Commander
- Lord Commander - General
- Grand Commander - Marshal equivalent, overall leader.
Each military district in Vaderite territory has a Higher KEC and Police Commander. This officer is supposed to represent the fusion of the KEC and police, but is also the representative of the KEC's various sub-organisations, including the Stormtroopers and the camps. He usually holds a KEC and a police or military rank, such as KEC Lord Commander and General of the Police. Their powers are limited in the Vaderite heartland, where the Party and the civil service still have a lot of authority. However, they are powerful players in frontier regions, especially those that are in the process of being 'reclaimed' for colonisation. The men holding these positions have often been motors of radicalisation, organising massacres and ethnic cleansings. However, a Higher KEC and Police Commander has to contend with the influence of the KEC's Head Offices, as well as the civic administration. They tend to be at their most powerful the further they are from the Imperial heartland.
Each of the KEC main departments oversees a broad portfolio. The KEC has deliberately duplicated practically every ministerial portfolio. It is not uncommon for a powerful Head Office boss to simply ignore the local commander and transmit his orders directly to his local subordinates. The stormtroopers, the economic and administrative head office of the KEC, the concentration camp inspectorate, the head office for race and settlement, and the office of the Imperial Commissioner for for the Strengthening of Humanism have grown from small institutions with limited functions into powerful organisations. The KEC is concerned not just with usurping the authority of state authorities as with becoming a state itself. The Economic and Administrative Head Office manages the finances, supplies and business enterprises of the KEC. Moreover, it runs the concentration camps. The Cerberus Legion - the camp guards - and the camp inspectorate are subordinate to it, but retain a significant degree of autonomy.
The Race and Settlement Head Office is the guardian of 'racial purity'. It vets candidates, organises racial selections and is the department Knights turn to when they want to marry. It is the law that a marriage can only be authorised once this office has conducted a detailed investigation to determine the racial fitness of both spouses. Moreover, it handles adoptions and, as the name implies, plans the creation of KEC settler colonies. The Central Head Office is the central administrative organ, overseeing logistics, education and recruitment. The KEC Court Head Office is the legal department. KEC personnel are accountable to its courts, which in effect places them above the law. The Order Police headquarters administrates the entire uniformed police force, including the municipal, city and rural police. It also fields police battalions that are composed of reservists and often serve in rear echelon security roles during the wartime. Many of them have been responsible for massacres against alien civilians and other 'inferiors'.
The Security Police is comprised of the Imperial Office of Criminal Investigations, the criminal investigations department, and the State Protection Police, the secret police. It is pertinent note that while the police force is controlled by the KEC, not every police officer is a Knight or even a Party member. KEC membership is higher in the Security Police than in the Order Police since the former is viewed as a more elite formation. However, policemen who are not Knights still fall under the jurisdiction of the KEC and Police Courts.
One feature of KEC security warfare is the deployment of 'Special Task Forces'. These ad hoc formations operate as death squads supervised by the Security Police and the intelligence service. They have been heavily involved in the murder of the alien intelligentsia and cultural elite, alleged partisans and Republican Guard or Dominion officials. The army aids them by providing logistical support, helping them identify targets and participating in mass executions. Because these teams are quite small, they are rely heavily on the army, the stormtroopers or the Order Police to provide muscle. A Special Task Force answers to its superiors in the centre, but also to the local Higher KEC and Police Commander.
The Stormtroopers form a branch separate from the regular KEC, acting as their combat arm. However, personnel rotations are frequent. For instance, there is a stormtrooper division composed of concentration camp guards and the local KEC and Police Commander has authority over the stormtroopers in his district. Wounded stormtroopers may also serve in camp guard detachments on a rotational basis, while regular camp guards may be assigned to combat units if there is a manpower shortage.
The Grand Commander may award honorary KEC ranks to non-members. These tend to be important Party officials, ministers or industrialists the KEC wants on its side - though some of them are actual bitter rivals of the organisation. Many old-time KEC members are uncomfortable with this, viewing it as a dilution of the order's principles since these honorary leaders get to strut around in a general's uniform without having gone through the conventional selection process. But it has benefited the KEC because it has helped make membership prestigious in high society. A captain of industry who is not a Force-User cannot join the Disciples since they are a Sith order, but he can become an honorary KEC commander, which gives him additional clout, helps him network and demonstrates how serious he is about being a good Humanist.
Membership: Must be of 'pure' human ancestry and swear an oath of allegiance to the Supreme Leader. Clones, including human ones, are banned from membership because they are viewed as 'soulless flesh droids'. An applicant must be declared physically and racially fit and prove his 'pure' ancestry by providing a family tree that goes back about two centuries. He should measure at least 170 centimetres and have no physical defects. A recruit must be registered with the police and have two Party members vouch for him. The KEC makes a concerted effort to recruit young academics and graduates. Indeed, contrary to the belief that only uneducated, primitive people could subscribe to such a barbaric ideology, several high-ranking officials - especially in the secret police - hold doctorates.
In practice, the strict admission criteria are often ignored or softened. This applies in particular to the combat formations, as they always have need of fresh bodies. It is worth noting that the spouse of a KEC member is also treated as belonging to the order. This means that a Knight needs permission to marry and will be expected to break off relations with an 'unsuitable' partner. As mentioned above, there are also a number of honorary KEC leaders. These people are exempt from duties such as training and emergency call-ups, but obviously have no command roles.
Broadly speaking, membership is divided into the Universal KEC, the Stormtroopers and the Cerberus Legion guard units. The Universal KEC is composed of full-time officers and staffers in the head offices of the order, part-time volunteers of local KEC formations, security forces such as KEC members in the secret police, camp staff and reserve or honorary Knights. While numbers fluctuate, usually about one third of the members of the Universal KEC are full-time employees. Most of the Universal KEC's formations are part-time. They are organised locally and come together for drills, marches and to provide security at Vaderite propaganda events or assist in maintaining 'public order'.
The bosses of KEC head offices and their staff are exempt from conscription, though this does not apply to the rank and file among the Universal KEC. The KEC regards itself as a military institution and so staffers and departments heads are heavily encouraged to join the stormtroopers and see active combat. It is not uncommon for a staffer in the secret police to exchange his desk job for a 'frontline' posting as a death squad commander. Contrary to popular belief, Knights who balk at obeying immoral orders such as murdering women and children are not purged. However, they face stigma since they are seen as 'weak'.
Climate: On the surface, life in the KEC is defined by comradeship, honour and loyalty. A KEC member is supposed to be a chivalrous knight who is unconditionally loyal to the Humanist People's Community, kind and honourable in dealing with his fellow humans and completely merciless against the enemies of the human species. Their motto is 'my honour is loyalty'. The Knights insist that they are a meritocracy. Any 'pure' human who believes in Humanism can join their ranks and reach a prominent position, regardless of family or class background. Indeed, even among the Stormtroopers relations between officers and common troopers are more relaxed. It is forbidden to address a superior as 'sir'. Even someone as prominent as Lachesis is addressed by their KEC rank. Columns of goose-stepping Stormtroopers are a prominent sight in Vaderite propaganda movies and rallies, projecting an image of unity and uniformity.
In truth, there is a lot of intrigue behind the scenes. KEC commanders vie for promotions and access to the Leader. The incumbent Supreme Leader has refused to appoint an overall commander and taken the job himself, but is neglectful. This has caused a lot of infighting. It is deliberate on Eisen's part, as it presently keeps all the senior commanders too busy to think about staging a coup. The 'Leadership Principles' pushes the Knights' leaders to anticipate Leader's orders and agenda and take actions that will further it in return for power. Many war crimes committed by the KEC and other organisations like the regular army have not been the result of a written Leader order, but conform perfectly with his wishes. The Knights portray themselves as meritocratic, but promotion is strongly linked to having the 'correct' family background. There are individuals who buck the trend, but these are exceptions and they often tend to be Force-Users.
Political indoctrination plays an important role during training. Moreover, KEC candidates must meet strict criteria. Recruits should be physically fit and be able to prove their 'pure' Human ancestry. Even with proof of their genealogy going back more than one hundred years, candidates might still be subject to a 'racial-biological' examination if their appearance arouses suspicion of alien heritage. There is a strong culture of romanticising mass murder in the service of an 'idea'. The ideal KEC man embodies ethical principles like honesty, decency, courage, politeness and loyalty. He does not kill out of greed or sadism, but because the 'cause' demands it. Compassion must be reserved for humans of good blood. To silently, mercilessly and obediently kill the 'racial enemies of mankind' is just, but to enrich oneself by stealing a fur coat, a watch or even a cigarette from their corpse instead of submitting it to the authorities is wrong.
This is an utterly barbaric mentality, but one the KEC takes seriously. It goes without saying that living conditions are appalling for concentration camp inmates, as they are seen as commodities at best and as vermin at worst. The order idealises 'hardness' and 'toughness'. A Knight must be in a permanent state of readiness to do his duty to the state, and cast aside conventional morality when it gets in the way. Life, the KEC postulates, is a never-ending Social Darwinist struggle in which only the 'strong' can prevail. Pacifism is regarded as abhorrent. To the Vaderites, an artwork that shows soldiers as wounded or war cripples is defeatist. War is not hell or an unfortunate necessity, but virtuous. Indeed, it is not only without limits, but also without end. It is also waged for its own sake as a means of perpetual struggle and perpetual racial renewal because without conflict humanity will grow effete and stagnant. This is obviously absurd. The Knights provide patronage to artists, poets and writers who portray combat in an unambiguously positive light and glorify the heroic human soldier.
An example is the novel 'Storm of Steel', which conveys the 'excitement' of war and the elan of the brave soldier. It is a relentless narration of combat portrays war as a heroic adventure that separates the strong from the weak. The Knights like to embed artists in combat units. They are chosen for their admiration of combat and their endorsement of Humanist values. They paint only very positive, optimistic scenes and heroic deeds. They do not paint a single death of a human soldier - not even a wound or a drop of blood. However, glorification of war extend beyond the arts and permeates all forms of education in the order. A good Knight is expected to raise his sons to admire military courage and view a soldier's death for the Leader as heroic and indeed preferrable to living the 'mundane' life of a civilian and dying peacefully in bed.
Jedism and democracy are enemies of the 'natural order' because they promote 'weakness' and result in the 'strong' being shackled by the 'weak'. While human Jedi can become good Humanists if they renounce Jedism, alien ones must be wiped out because they 'stole' their powers from mankind to usurp it. The KEC plays an important role in the Disciples' eugenics programme. In the rather absurd mythology of the Vaderites, the primordial humans were all Force-Users, but they lost their divine spark when they interbred with aliens. Thus it is the mission of the Disciples to breed a superior form of human. In keeping with this, every member of the KEC is expected to marry and procreate. Naturally, the prospective bride must meet the Order's racial criteria, which means that a KEC member must request permission from above to wed. The Race and Settlement Head Office is responsible for vetting these applications. It keeps track of all bloodlines in the order.
Marriage is not seen as a personal or familial matter, but as a matter of state. Thus marriages that remain childless for an extended period are supposed to be dissolved, as the purpose of such a union is the procreation of as many children as possible. It is expected that the son of a Knight will join the KEC once he is of age, while a daughter will support the order in an auxiliary capacity and become the wife of a worthy Knight. Particularly meritorious KEC members, such as generals and war heroes, are encouraged to take a second wife so that they can pass on their 'superior' genes. The reverse is not allowed. The KEC has cooperated with the Amidala Corps and the Padme Vader League of Humanist Women to found maternity homes for women who will give birth out of wedlock.
This seems progressive at first, but the lack of discrimination against 'bastards' has nothing to do with epiphany and simply the belief that the state needs as many 'racially' valuable citizens as possible. Relationships between humans and aliens are banned and those who transgress against this rule are considered to have 'betrayed their blood'. Medical journals written by KEC intellectuals empathise the importance of 'racial hygiene', using seemingly scientific arguments to provide a 'rational' basis for hatred, bigotry and murder. It argues that it was humans who created modern civilisation and have been responsible for all innovations, from musics to mathematics to the invention of the first hyperdrive. But these achievements were stolen by the vile Twi'leks, Mon Calamari and others. While the KEC does have female members, many of them serve in auxiliary roles. Its institutional culture is quite sexist and male-dominated. This does not stop women from rising to important positions, but it is more difficult, and many of those who do tend to be Force-Users since it is obviously incredibly difficult to tell a Sith Lady she should be content with a menial position as a nurse or secretary.
Torchlight ceremonies and quasi-religious rituals play an important role in the daily life of a Knight. A prospective groom and a bride - for alternate relationships are prohibited - is supposed to be wed in a Vaderite temple, receiving their blessings before a statue of the Vader. The same applies to naming ceremonies for new-born children. Like the rest of the Disciples, the KEC has fostered a cult of personality around Darth Vader, the true Sith'ari and Dark Father of mankind, and Darth Malitia, the founder of the Disciples. However, certain prominent KEC leaders have their own cults of personality, such as Darth Lachesis. The KEC spends a lot of time with conducting excavations to 'prove' its often bizarre theories about the ancient past of mankind in general and Tephrike in particular. When the evidence does not match the theory, the results are faked. Many of these archaeological ventures are sponsored by the Ancestral Heritage Society, a KEC think tank that is supposed to promote Humanist ideals by conducting pseudo-historical studies.
The KEC has romantic ideas about humans 'returning to the soil' and leading a simple, pastoral life. Retired soldiers and police officers are encouraged to accept a land grant and live in settler colonies on the frontier. The KEC's planners envision colonists living in a neo-feudal system on farms and model villages interspersed with KEC outposts and castles. Within this framework, the Knights are supposed to play the role of warrior farmers. As much as possible of the colossal cost of these absurd endeavours is supposed to be borne by slave labourers. The land the colonists occupy has been taken from 'lesser beings'. When the natives are not deported into 'reservations' or camps or murdered outright, they are forced to serve the new farmers as slave labourers.
As mentioned, the KEC pursues its own business interests and has set up a conglomerate to manage them. The GKCEEC is run by active-duty and retired KEC members. The sprawling conglomerate has an incredibly diverse portfolio and operates through partnerships with both private and public sector companies in the Imperium. Its shareholders are both serving and retired KEC personnel and so-called institutional shareholders. The latter comprise regional KEC commands, major KEC departments, veterans' associations, military and security units. One example for an institutional shareholder is the notorious 23rd KEC Mechanised Infantry Division Humanity's Blade, which was responsible for crimes against sentience and war crimes during the Chios genocide, as well the Cerberus Corps. The KEC and the GKCEEC are intextricably linked.
The entire board is composed of high-level KEC figures and the KEC uses the revenue generated by the conglomerate to cover its operational costs. The conglomerate relies on compulsory pension deductions to facilitate long-term strategy. GKCEEC claims that its purpose is to support the "welfare" of active and retired military personnel. But their shareholder reports contradict this. Only a tiny proportion of dividend payments is paid to individual shareholders. The overwhelming majority goes to the component parts of the KEC. In doing so it provides financial support to war crimes and crimes against sentience.
Reputation: Widely fearedand utterly hated by the people of the Dominion of Light and the Republican Guard. Both of their societies are pollar opposites and bitter enemies, but are united in hating the Disciples and the KEC. This is not a surprise since both are multispecies societies, whereas the Vaderites are xenocidal human supremacists. KEC members captured by either group are likely to be shot out of hand or used for penal labour. Within Vaderite society, the KEC are feared, but also respected. No one likes the secret police, but no totalitarian dictatorship can do without it. Being a member of the KEC is quite prestigious, and they are part of the social elite. Indeed, small communities of KEC families have sprung up near the concentration camps. The Knights depict themselves as a meritocracy where any pure human can rise, regardless of their origins. Nonetheless, they also have a high proportion of academics and members of the upper classes. The privileges of the Knights have been the cause of resentment.
Vaderite propaganda emphathises the courage, obedience and skill of the Stormtroopers, portraying them as superhuman fanatics. This is an exaggeration. While some of their formations are unquestionably elite units, their quality varies greatly. Moreover, stormtrooper officer training stresses daring and courage, to the point of portraying an officer who leads from the front as the most masculine, even in situations where it would be more sensible to lead from the rear. This has led to mocking comments from officers in the Humanist Protection Army (HPA), the regular army of the Imperium, who often view their counterparts among the Knights as less capable and ill-disciplined.
The KEC has a strong rivalry with the HPA. However, this rivalry has more to do with power as well as access to resources and next to nothing with morals. Indeed, several massacres conducted by KEC death squads were carried out at the request of the military. Successive Supreme Leaders have encouraged rivalry between the KEC's stormtrooper corps and the regular army because it makes sure that both pander to them. The Knights also compete with the Humanist People's Party for influence. Party bigwigs often correctly suspect that the Knights use their intelligence service to spy on them. At the same time, both entities have had a cooperative relationship. In the end, it depends a lot on the conditions on the ground and the relationship between the individual power players. Vaderite politics are a mess of ever-shifting alliances, so it is far from uncommon for two bigwigs to be close allies on one question, but bitter enemies on another.
Curios: Each member is issued a dark grey and a black uniform. The first is the on-duty uniform, the second is worn on ceremonial occasions such as parades. It comes with a cap bearing the Imperial eagle and an ebon claw. The KEC has its own set of elaborate insignia to display the rank of the wearer. Upon being formally inducted into the KEC, a new member is awarded a dagger in a special ceremony. It is called the KEC honour dagger. Select officers from the Stormtroopers and the Cerberus Corps, as well as officers who graduate from the KEC's training schools, receive a ceremonial dress sword.
The Grand Commander may award an alchemised ring at his discretion. This 'honour ring' is quite popular and so some Knights have used local jewellers to design replicas so that they seem more important than they actually are. Officially, the rings of dead Knights are supposed to be returned to the Grand Commander so that they can be stored in a chest at headquarters. Knights who are also Disciples, in other words Sith, carry a Force-Imbued Blade or Sith Sword as a mark of their rank. A Knight who has been given a job that officially has nothing to do with the KEC, such as in a government bureau or private enterprise, is still required to wear his uniform. Vaderite society is a world of uniforms.
Certain combat formations wear masks that are the image of Commander Appo, since he was the commander during Operation Knightfall. This meant Appo was present when Darth Vader took up his destiny and brought balance to the Force and aided him in doing so. The Knights honour him as a martyr who gave his life for the Empire.
Rules: Every Knight must swear an oath of loyalty to the Supreme Leader - not the nation, the people or the constitution. The oath says: 'I swear to you, [insert name of the Supreme Leader], as Supreme Leader of the Imperium and the human species, that I will be loyal and brave. I pledge obedience unto death to you and those you appoint to lead. So help me the Sith'ari.'
In addition, those with the rank of Knight Commander and above swear a supplementary oath to adhere to the specifications for recruits even if "it means rejecting my own children or the children of my clan ... I swear by [insert name of the Supreme Leader] and by the honour of my ancestors — so help me the Sith'ari.'
Knights must be unconditionally loyal to the Vaderite system and carry out orders from above without question, no matter how barbaric. Compassion for aliens, non-believers etc. is derided as weakness. Relations with aliens are forbidden because they 'pollute the bloodline' and represent the 'original sin'. Furthermore, a Knight is required to marry and have children, but his spouse must be approved by the KEC. It is worth noting that the marriage order is often flaunted. Moreover, as every marriage has to in theory be approved from above, there is often a huge backlog. A KEC member whose marriage is regarded as 'undesirable' must dissolve it if ordered to do so by the Grand Commander. An example would be a union that is expected to remain childless. By contrast, cloning is banned because the KEC views 'tankborn' as unnatural.
Ruthlessness against the 'enemies of mankind' is a virtue, but a Knight should not enjoy killing. Nor should he personally profit from it. This is, of course, absurd, and in truth corruption is particularly pervasive in the camps run by the Knights. But it is part of the self-image of the Knights as being chivalrous defenders of mankind. A Knight is required to attend the political education sessions of his order and to regularly attend services in a Vaderite temple to honour both his ancestors and the Sith'ari Darth Vader. He must treat Glorious Conflict, the ideological manifesto of the Vaderites, as his holy book. By contrast, owning or reading 'heretical literature' is a capital crime. Training stresses cohesion and mutual respect between officers and the common rank and file. Moreover, it is forbidde to address a superior as 'sir'. Even someone as high-up as Darth Lachesis is addressed by her rank alone. Saluting is optional in the Stormtroopers.
Goals: Serve the Disciples, crush their 'racial' and political enemies and eclipse the light. Also expand their own power and influence in order to become the dominant political, economic and social force in Vaderite society. 'Purify' Tephrike and secure the Humanist state.
MEMBERS
Darth Lachesis (NPC) - Holds the rank of Lord Commander. Lachesis is one of the few women in the senior leadership of the KEC - and particularly feared. Born into an impoverished junker family with little prestige, she was its first Force-Sensitives in generations. This earned her a spot in the Sith academy, where she got a reputation for deceit. Upon graduation, she was put in charge of managing the estates of a more successful branch of the sprawling clan. When alien slaves rebelled, she brutally crushed the uprising. So vicious was her suppression that it unnerved her clan, but it gained the attention of the KEC's stormtrooper corps.
Joining their ranks, she became a daring and popular commander. After helping her cousin Darth Hyperion seize power, she spearheaded the extermination of the alien population of Chios, her home island. In their place, she settled discharged veterans and poor humans. To them she is 'Auntie Lachesis', and they have built a cult of personality around her. She favours natives of her home and is effectively a general and a governor on the move. Lachesis is a Humanist fanatic, but not afraid to disobey orders. When Hyperion ordered her to hold a city at all cost against a Dominion army, she recognised this was a futile waste of human lives personally led a breakout.
Lachesis has allied herself with Eisen, though she views him as a corrupt sloth. But one Supreme Leader was better than chaos. She finds the Imperium stagnant and has cultivated a following among the regime's war hawks and social populists. Unlike many Disciples, she does not look down on Non-Force-Users, provided they are loyal, capable and 'racially pure'. She is positioning herself to eventually take over, either directly or through a puppet.
Rhesus Halkias (NPC) - The commandant of Camp Progress. This makes him the manager of one of the Vaderite's most notorious forced labour camps and mass killing sites. He holds the rank of KEC Paladin. The commandant is an ideological bureaucrat who combines commitment to Humanism with managerial talent. He is an old hand at running camps and has been put in charge of Camp Progress to ensure productivity and security. He is scrupulously dedicated to his ‘calling’. However, certain trends dissatisfy him. The new Supreme Leader is a corrupt sybarite whose commitment to the finer points of Humanism is superficial. Eisen has proclaimed himself Grand Commander of the KEC, but he is not one of them.
Halkias views this as an affront; for he has dedicated his life to the sworn community of sword-brethren the order purports to be. It has only made him more radical and more receptive to certain scientific schemes proposed by Doctor Menkales. He looks at the ‘soft civilians’ in Adlerberg and sees complacency. He remembers the revolt during the Netherworld raptures and he fears the ‘xenos’ will rise again, backed by hordes of ‘sub-human degenerates’. The only solution is to be a political soldier who is ‘as hard as durasteel’. In his world view, there is only black and white. He is not murdering sentient beings; he is performing pest control. Struggle between worthy and unworthy species is the immutable law of nature. He considers himself a soldier, and resents being seen as a jailer or pen-pusher.
When he comes home, the stench of blood and charred corpses clings to him. His wife Mariana is fully aware of what he does for a living. She is the ‘good wife’ who stands by her husband and makes sure he can play the role of the benevolent patriarch in their beautiful villa. She often organises get-togethers for the wives of the camp officials. He has no affairs and a perfectly ordinary family life. Their life style is luxurious and his wife gets to pick inmates as servants. His children know him as strict, but loving father who helps them with their homework and always has nice gifts for them. He gets mad when they play ‘xenos and stormtroopers’.
Anastasius Mexates (NPC) - A Knight Commander in the stormtroopers and the commanding general of the elite Humanity's Blade division. He serves under Darth Lachesis, organising and leading the division for her. He is popularly known as Ironfist Mexates for the powerful prothesis he had his maimed right hand replaced with after killing a Jedi Master in battle or so the legend goes. In reality he was assisted by a a group of his soldiers and some now dead apprentices but still. The tall, bearded 'scholar-general' is a fervent believer in the Sith cause and a deeply spiritual man. He is liable to quote passages of Glorious Conflict both in dispatches and in battle. His catchphrase is: "The only good xenos is a dead xenos, unless it's a dying xenos who can tell you where his friends are."
Behind the scenes and propaganda though he is considered stubborn, unlikable, hard to work with, elitist and socially awkward. Moreover, he is a bit of an eccentric hypochondriac obsessed with bizarre physical ailments. This is the reason why, despite the clamouring of the papers, he has not been promoted higher. It has been judged that he is a good general of division size and probably not fit for higher command. His views of Lachesis is complicated. On the one hand he is from Chios and believes in her righteous mission and the glory of the Sith.
On the other he is unhappy to be put under the command of a woman, though he keeps it to himself. He feels it emasculates himself and his men to be under the command of 'female energy', no matter her skills and successes. This only confirms with exception rather than exclusion of the belief he has about women. Mexates is married, but does not take a lot of interest in his wife. Lachesis is well aware of his opinion and likes to mock his sexism, but finds him competent. Not only is he meticulous in enforcing discipline, he has an intuitive grasp for understanding her goals. Thus he does not require micromanagement.
Dr Jonas Menkales - A medical doctor and biologist with the rank of Cavalier. He is notorious for performing vicious medical experiments at Camp Progress, where he is also the chief authority when it comes to selecting prisoners to be murdered. Menkales dislikes getting his hands dirty and often presents a friendly facade to the prisoners he has selected for tests in order to get them to trust him. Rather than behave like a raving lunatic, he is a calm, erudite and outwardly charming character. He has been responsible for the deaths of countless innocents via his experiments, beatings, shootings and lethal injections.
He started out trying to 'prove' the Twi'lek blood libel theory. This absurd 'theory postulates that Twi'leks start out white, but change colour by drinking the blood and eating the meat of humans who have been ensnared by them. The more they eat, the redder they become. To this end, he has conducted barbaric tests to see if he could change a Twi'lek's skin colour. When reality did not match his theories, Menkales faked the rest results. Many Twi'leks were killed by these tests. He has also tested infectious diseases and pathogen-releasing bombs on prisoners under the guise of creating 'cures'.
Another project consisted of using a mutated form of rabies against Dominion soldiers who had trapped Vaderite troops in a the Chazowa cauldron. He employed rabies as a vector for a pathogen that would make the victim bite and eat the flesh of the uninfected. This helped the Vaderites stage a breakout, but the infected attacked them too. Menkales has published many of his findings in peer-reviewed journals. His articles give the impression that the tests were performed on non-sentient animals, not people. Menkales is an alchemist, but not high-up among the Disciples, but his influence in the camps means he will never run out of test subjects.
Privately, Menkales is obsessed with using science, especially genetics, to restore mankind to the state of the original 'god-men' who are said to have dominated the galaxy in primordial times. To this end he carries out cruel medical experiments on prisoners, especially Twi'leks. However, he is not viewed as a crank by his colleagues, but respected and very much part of the scientific mainstream, which says a lot. KEC soldiers respect him for his actions at Chazowa and because early in his career he risked his life to recover a comrade from a burning tank.
Aspasia Koukoura (NPC) - Aspasia is an agent of the the State Protection Police. She is a self-made woman - in a twisted way. She is neither descended from junkers nor the product of the Imperial eugenics programme. Rather she came from very humble circumstances and rose to the top. She was active in the Imperial youth movement. Aspasia began her career as a warden at the killing site in Camp Progress. Aspasia was soon made the overseer of a prisoner barracks, supervising work details, distribution of rations and punishment. After being appointed to adjutant, she took a leading role in determining which prisoners should be kept alive to work as slave labour and which should be murdered. She displayed a talent for administration and interrogation, which gave her a job in the camp's interrogation centre. After unmasking a prisoners' escape plot, she was able to get the commandant sacked. This was when her rise began.
When Aspasia took over the camp, she had the paths paved and flowers planted along the side of a street near the camp headquarters and the guards' living quarters because she found its old look unaesthetic. She had a guard punished for bullying the prisoners who were assigned to, under pain of death, to dispose of the bodies of murdered inmates. She did this because it was inefficient, not immoral. The members of this unit received better treatment than the other inmates - and were eliminated and replaced at regular intervals.
She often wore a white uniform and carried a whip. Aspasia perceived the prisoners as cargo to be destroyed or used. She made a group of female prisoners form an orchestra to provide entertainment, serve as a propaganda tool for visitors and boost morale. When she got a transfer, she took her favourite musicians with her. The threat of being sent back hung over their heads. The musicians she did not like were left to die. Later she took charge of an operation to hide evidence of mass murders at various killing sites. Prisoners had to exhume mass graves and incinerate the corpses. Aspasia has had to put up with sexism in the KEC, since woman face a glass ceiling. This only fuels her...enthusiasm.
Presently she serves as a cleaner type. Sometimes the police gets annoyed by her habit of making 'examples'. She has made a career out of 'breaking' enemies of the state. To this end, she was involved in the suppression of the Prosperity Quarter uprising and led a task force dedicated to hunting down the Light Sith heresy. Aspasia has exquisite taste in hair, her uniform is perfect and she has a fine collection of art and books taken from 'degenerates'. She is a cruel and vindictive person who sometimes gives live tutorials on the finer points of interrogation to her students.
Dr. Aristides Lymakos (NPC) - the head of the secret police. He's liked by his staff, firm but fair, and gives generous bonuses to those who get results. Of course, those are usually organising people to be arrested, tortured and murdered. He likes filing, reports and secrecy. He is capable of choosing good underlings, though when less capable ones are foisted on him he is adept at shuffling them to important sounding positions out of harm's way. Throughout his career, he has orchestrated mass crackdowns on political, ideological and cultural dissent.
Lymakos is one of the intellectuals among the secret police. He holds degrees in law and psychology. He often employs biological metaphors, referring to secret policemen as 'doctors' to the nation in the struggle against 'pathogens' and 'diseases'. The supposed sicknesses include liberals, socialists, aliens, Jedi, pacifists and criminals. In contrast to Humanist doctrine, he doesn't regard these forces as a monolithic block controlled by one shadowy puppet master. He has observed that they pursue divergent aims and that the Humanist State can and must exploit this to divide its enemies.
He prides himself on his 'cool rationality' and has a low opinion of Vaderite mysticism. But at the same time he is the exact opposite of an apolitical technocrat or civil servant. He is not merely a two-dimensional careerist driven by ambition alone. Great ambition and an inner drive to excel has played an important role in his rise, but his embrace of the Humanist world view is genuine. It's not that his ideological fervor is any less fierce, but he wraps it in a veneer of polite formality that he thinks elevates him over the crude, thick-necked Party thugs and casually murderous, infantile Sith. Moral quandaries do not trouble him and he views ethical misgivings as a sign of weakness to be brushed aside in pursuit of a higher goal. Lymakos is a supporter of eugenics, believing that 'antisocial' and criminal traits are inherited.
This, in his view, justifies the sterilisation or murder of 'hereditary asocials' to cleanse Tephrike of genetic inferiors. He is a strong proponent of criminal-biology. As befitting his educational background, Lymakos has been involved in the political abuse of psychiatry in the Imperium. The persecution and murder of the supposedly 'physically and socially unfit' is standard practice in the Imperium. Psychiatrists have actively collaborated in orchestrating a campaign of sterilising or murdering the mentally disabled. However, Lymakos takes things a step further because he is fond of labelling political and ideological dissenters as 'insane' and 'schizophrenic' and incarcerating them in psychiatric institutions. This is supposed to damage their credibility by portraying them as 'mentally deranged'. Their eventual execution is not only carried out outside of the public's eye, but can be portrayed as a 'mercy'. The State is not executing brave rebels fighting oppression, but granting 'hapless creatures who cannot take care of themselves a merciful death'.
Lymakos has encouraged the production of shows and movies that misrepresent people with mental health conditions, stereotyping them as 'violent, psychotic, anti-social freaks.' One show he is particularly proud of follows the adventures of a masked vigilante during the 'time of the system' - in other words pre-collapse, democratic Tephrike. It depicts Tephrike's capital as a cesspool of crime and corruption, where innocent human citizens are menaced by 'freaks'. Most policemen are crooks, and the few honest cops are powerless. Frustrated with a police shackled by red tape and tangled in greed, the protagonist of the story decides to take the law into his own hands after his parents are murdered before his eyes by a deranged xenos. After travelling across the world to get the best of training in combat and psychology, he starts a one-man 'war on crime'. To this end the 'overman' employs brawn, sophisticated technology and a genius level intellects that allows him to outwit his foes.
Anton Ioannidis (NPC) - Ioannidis serves as Inspector of the Concentration Camps and commander of the Cerberus Corps, the paramilitary force responsible for administrating and guarding the KEC's sprawling empire of concentration camps and killing centres. Slight of stature and wearing glasses, he looks more like a bookkeeper than a manager of death. But with a stroke of a pen, he condemns countless souls every day to torture, starvation, disease and death. Blood flows from his fingertips. After elementary school, Ioannidis completed a commercial apprenticeship and then worked as an accountant in the company where he had received his training, a fire insurance agency owned by his father. When he heard the call to arms, he joined the Stormtroopers as a volunteer. He soon began a career in the administrative service, and was employed as a paymaster and accounting officer.
He left the Stormtroopers with the rank of administrative sergeant. After spending some time employed at a local bank, he pursued a full-time career in the KEC. At first he was assigned an administrative position in the Cerberus Corps and later the Cerberus Division, a unit that drew its members from the concentration camp guards and was notorious for committing atrocities. He soon transferred to the administrative department of the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps, where he served as a department head. His next post was as commandant of one of the concentration camps. Such transfers are quite common in the Cerberus Corps. It gives 'desk-bound pen-pushers' a chance to 'bloody themselves'. Ioannidis did not disappoint.
Ioannidis was a newcomer who was seen as a bureaucrat, but he more than proved his pitiless brutality and utter indifference to the wellbeing of the inmates. His two kath hounds were trained to tear inmates to death. Far being a well-kept secret, his camp was located not far from a Vaderite town. The chimney of the crematorium stank and stank, day and night. But none of the 'innocent Imperial civilians' tried to do anything. There were no innocent bystanders. Despite the mass murder, Ioannidis was fastidious about listing a 'reasonable' cause on death certificates, sometimes picking diseases randomly from medical textbooks and jotting them down.
However, he also displayed his adaptability when orders from above emphathised that commandants were supposed to exploit the economic potential of the inmates for the purpose of slave labour. Taking the hint, Ioannidis initiated measures to lower the death rate in the camp. At the same time, inmates were forced to work continuously. Their right to live was measured in their ability to meet production quotas. Taking the initiative, he began to deal directly with businessmen who wanted to procure camp inmates as forced labourers, bypassing the at times cumbersome KEC bureaucracy. To make it easier for a corpo to exploit the camp inmates, he established a satellite camp in close proximity to one of their aero-engine plants.
His wheeling and dealing made him enemies, but also valuable allies. It has helped propel him to the position of operating inspector of all the camps, with the rank of Knight Commander. Ioannidis seeks to embody the ideal of the soldierly bureaucrat. Rather than being a passive desk officer, he routinely inspects the camps and often makes major decisions on the spot. His face is well-known in the camps, from minor satellite camps to gigantic camp complexes such as Camp Progress. Local KEC commanders fear his visits, for he sometimes appears unnannounced, and is sparing with praise but lavish with rebukes. His memory is impressive, his zeal unmatched.
As is typical for a man in his position, Ioannidis has created his own network of trusted camp commandants. They are, essentially, a mafia. Corruption is omnipresent in the camps. The KEC likes to issue threats of unforgiving punishment for crooked Camp KEC men, but these are usually just rhetoric. Occasionally, a commandant or a less senior camp official who has taken things too far is executed. More often than not, they are simply demoted or transferred to the frontlines. Corruption is the glue that holds the Cerberus Corps together. A systematic investigation into KEC sleaze would cause the whole thing to fall apart. Ioannidis and his comrades rely on theft and fraud as a second income. He has a knack for obstructing anti-corruption commissions.
Dr. Conrad Mallas (NPC) - Conrad Mallas is, in his own words, a fanatic for justice. He is greatly feared by many camp commandants and local KEC chiefs. He defines himself as an indefatigable crusader for law and order. Should the Vaderites fall, he will say that he was a good man trapped in an system full of corruption and abuse, and a zealous protector of the innocent who fought against abuses in the camps. He may actually get away with it because he is an educated, well-spoken man. In short, he seems like the total opposite of a coarse fascist thug. The truth is very different.
He is feared by the camp commandants not because he combats the abuse and murder of prisoners, but for his dedication to root out corruption, and violations of the racial laws or the Knights' honour code. He is fully aware of the murders and medical experiments that occur in the camps, having personally witnessed mass killings. But he is not bothered by them. However, the stolen property of the Twi'leks and other Vaderite victims is the property of the Imperium. Therefore, a Vaderite who embezzles it is stealing directly from the Imperium. Anyone who does this is his foe. The same applies to KEC officials who are misusing KEC funds and slave labourers for their personal projects. Mallas has a doctorate in law and worked at a regular court before transferring to the KEC's in-house court system.
His first big case was against a high-ranking officer in the Stormtrooper Corps' logistics department, who was selling confiscated goods on the black market. Mallas had the officer and several of his comrades hanged, but was unable to prosecute one of their partners because he had powerful patrons. He also prosecuted a Knight for having an alien lover. After falling out of favour for stepping on too many toes, he served on the front line before being transferred to the criminal police, where he specialised in economic crimes. Several embarrassing corruption scandals compelled the Grand Commander at the time to put Mallas in charge of a commission to root out corruption in the camps. This was, of course, a Sisyphean task because corruption in the camps had reached staggering levels and was inherent in the system. But it was one he undertook with gusto.
He was not bothered by the mass killings - provided they were being done 'correctly' and 'cleanly' and in accordance with the 'Supreme Leader's order's. But he was a fierce enemy of camp officials who appropriated the prisoners' possessions for their own use, took bribes or illegally employed inmates for personal profit. He had several commandants hanged, demoted or sent to penal units, though some of his sentences were later overturned. He is nicknamed the 'Bloodhound Judge'. He knows about Eisen gifting landed estates to his favourites, the obscene corruption of the Imperial Labour Front and how Lord Skaer has used his position to embezzle and procure luxurious houses. To him, this is all wrong. But Humanism is right.
Professor Ptolemais Lyander (NPC) - A famous historian from the University of Adlerberg with the rank of Commander. He is the head of the Ancestral Heritage Society, an institution that uses archaeology and pseudo-scientific research to promote Humanist dogma. While the bespectacled Lyander has a professorial air, he is very insistent on being a soldier, who is leading the campaign to purge Tephriki history of all falsehoods. Lyander has earned doctorates in history and archaeology and has been associated with the KEC since his youth. He started writing reports for the Imperial Intelligence Service while he was a university student. As a professor and later a dean, he waged a relentless crusade against academics and poets whose work he considered at variance with true Humanism. Not content with giving lectures and writing reports, he volunteered to lead a death squad to prove his manliness.
His fervency for the cause cannot be doubted, but his conclusions make even the hierarchy a little leery. One of his obsessions is his conviction that human life existed on Tephrike for far longer than is commonly assumed. Indeed, he is convinced that Tephrike is humanity's homeworld. According to his theory, Tephriki humans were the engine of galactic civilisation. However, an alien species called the Vuuzhan Vong grew jealous of the Tephriki's divine spark. Moreover, the Vong spawned the Twi'leks and Zeltrons to corrupt mankind.
Thus the primordial civilisation was destroyed in a great apocalyptic battle. Humanity had fallen from grace when it intermixed with lesser beings. However, a few pure humans had remained true to the old ways and spread to the stars, seeing worlds such as Coruscant, Naboo and Tatooine. Darth Vader, whose mother was a descendant of the last true king of man, travelled to Tephrike before fighting the rebellion and personally constructed a citadel, which was supposed to be the heart of the Empire's new capital. It was later destroyed by the cursed Jedi, but he's definitely found the ruins of it.
These theories are absurd, but it is a bad idea to tell Lyander that. Under his leadership, the Ancestral Heritage Society has carried out various expeditions and excavations to 'prove' the validity of Humanist beliefs. As he says it, the goal of the society is to work towards a pre-history that will prove the supremacy of the Tephriki and of humanity. When sceptical Vaderites ask him why he has yet to find evidence for theories that even they consider fringe, he states that the xenos Jedi liberals attempted to carry out a campaign of cultural genocide to wipe out the memory of the old ways. The Jedi have hidden the evidence, so all he needs are more resources to find it.
While his day job does not involve mass repression, Lyander has been responsible for atrocities. Not only have academics lost their jobs or been subjected to re-education, entire communities have been forcibly 'resettled' to allow him to conduct excavations, which often rely on slave labour. His minions have also facilitated cultural genocides by burning 'heretical' literature and historical artefacts. Moreover, he is an extremely prolific author and his theories provide a rationale for the Vaderites to justify their barbaric actions. He is one of the few Vaderites who does not just quote Glorious Conflict, but develops his own ideas. Lyander owns a Jaynor of Bith original of the 501st, but insists it is not an alien's work because an alien cannot create true art, only imitiate it poorly.
Darth Agamemnon (NPC) - His birth name is Leontias Tzimakes. A high ranking Lord Commander in the KEC of low origins and birth, and lets everyone know it too. He served as the mayor of a small town for a while, before he was forced to resign due to being blamed for the murder of a Party comrade who had spoken out against him. He claims that he was framed by jealous reactionaries who did not want a man of the people in power. Agamemnon was stripped of his party honours and sent to the frontlines. There he proved himself and his superiors recognised the value of this ruthless, energetic brawler. He rose to command his own stormtrooper division and later an armoured corps.
He has no time for the refined manners of his peers, instead he endears himself to his soldiers with his profane swearing, unadorned uniform and relentless drive for perfection. While crude, he has a paternal attitude towards them. Essentially he doesn't care if the shoes of his soldiers are not polished if they obey orders instantly and ruthlessly. He claims to know every man under his command by name. This is probably an exaggeration, but he always seems to know it whenever he shows up to have a chat with common soldiers. He has also been responsible for massacres of prisoners of war.
He is flamboyant, aggressive and has a well-publicised image as a hard-driving frontline general. The press portrays him as a superman who has killed Jedi with his bare hands. Detractors call him arrogant, crude and publicity-obsessed. He has a strong desire to obtain martial glory and is not the least shy about it because in his view a good general should strive to inscribe his name and that of his troops in the history books. He has no time for "women, whiners and worriers". He feels that female Sith 'Lords' are an affront to his martial lineage and feels that they should be using their 'feeble bodies and skills' away from the front line. Naturally there is a simmering rivalry with Lachesis. Like her, Agamemnon is a powerful Force-User and a high-ranking Disciple. He focuses mainly on powers that amplify his martial strength and combat prowess.
Moreover, he is convinced that he is the reincarnation of the legendary General Veers who crushed the rebel forces at Hoth. Fittingly, he likes to lead his men into battle commanding a tank or heavy walker. When several army officer had lost confidence in Hyperion's erratic, paranoid leadership after several defeats against the Dominion, a general who was flirting with the idea of a coup sounded Agamemnon out. He asked the KEC commander, who was beneath him at the time, if he would follow his orders even if they contradicted the Supreme Leader's. Agamemnon answered in the affirmative, leading the general to believe that the swashbuckler was on their side. However, when Agamemnon heard of the assassination attempt, he called it cowardly and treasonous.
Dr. Argus Xeniakis (NPC) - Lord Commander and head of the economic and administrative head office, which puts him in charge of both the camps and the KEC's business enterprises. Considered the KEC's leading economist and manager. He is committed to the Humanist cause, and sees no contradiction between their belief in blood and soil and modern organisational methods and technology. He regards himself as a professional manager, who is also a fanatical Vaderite. To him, the concepts of modern technology, organization, and human supremacy are intertwined. One of his ancestors participated in Malitia's Arduous March. He is a brutal, ambitious henchman and the overlord of the slave camps. In this capacity, he has instructed the commandants that work for the inmates must be exhausting in order to obtain maximum output. As he himself said, the hours of work are not limited. He is responsible for utilising countless sentient beings as slaves and killing them when they are no longer capable of work. He displays utter indifference to the prisoners' wellbeing.
He ensures that the valuables taken from inmates are returned to the Imperium, even supervising the melting down of gold teeth. However, some of these valuables end up in his villa or are sold for profit. Xeniakas has a quasi-feudal life style. He has a background as an engineer. Xeniakis worked with Lachesis to build roads and 'model' communities for colonists. Later he made his mark by supervising the construction of factories for the production of war materials in caves and underground tunnels in the mountains in order to protect them from Dominion bombing raids or Republican Guard terrorist attacks. Xenialis has been involved several secret weapons' programmes. To protect missile production sites against Dominion bombing and rebel attacks, he was given the task of building underground facilities and transfer production underground. He was well-suited for this role as KEC construction chief, since he had a vast pool of slave labour at his disposal. Eager to meet the deadline, he displayed immense brutality and energy.
The tunnels and weapons were built in horrendous conditions by the slave laborers. He has been involved in a similar capacity to build a new headquarters for the Disciples following the destruction of Castle Maysaf. All major building programmes and corporate ventures in the KEC require his approval. Xeniakis works closely with Lord Skaer, the powerful Minister of Armaments and Munitions. However, Skaer considers him a rival. Eisen is aware of this and encourages rivalry between the two. Xenialis holds formal rank in the stormtroopers and has close ties to certain commanders. It helps that members of a camp staff or guard unit can be transferred to a stormtrooper unit at the front or a stormtrooper can be assigned to the camp staff due to ill health or injury.
Makis Rodinelis - a KEC general and the head of their legal department. His office is responsible for formulating the laws and legal codes for the KEC-police empire, carrying out trials and investigations, and supervising the KEC's courts and penal system. KEC and police units have been effectively removed from the jurisdiction of civilian courts. Rodinelis justifies their privileged status with the argument that a KEC man inherently occupies a special place because he has a sacred duty to protect the Humanist movement, the Church and the Supreme Leader, if need be by giving his own life.
Ironically, Rodinelis, a career military man, has no legal training. He sees his primary responsibility as protecting the 'honour' of the KEC and prosecuting those who have 'sullied' it. He also believes that the past 'achievements' of KEC men must be taken into account when determining the severity of their punishment. A KEC man who has served 'honourably' and 'sacrificed much for the cause' deserves special treatment. Old comrades deserve leniency - even more so if they are married, and have 'genetically valuable' children, and come from a family with a long history of supporting the KEC.
One example for Rodinelis' peculiar understanding of justice is the case of an Imperial air force officer called Iason Anastou, who was having an affair with the wife of the Cytheran KEC leader Vyrnnus Kystaran. One night Anastou was found in an alley with a bullet in his heart. Shortly thereafter Kystaran called the local police station, and reported that Anastou intended to commit suicide. Rodinelis believed this story was dubious, but closed the case because in his opinion Kystaran had had the 'moral right' on his side, which took precedence over the legal right.
Rodinelis is contemptuous of written law, believing that the law should be applied in accordance with the 'healthy race consciousness' of mankind. Rather than establishing a written canon of rules, sanctions and punishments that could guide disciplinary proceedings, he prefers vague principles such as upholding 'soldiery virtue and honour'. According to his guidelines, 'justice should result from a human sense of justice and the Humanist world view'. He views himself as a teacher, doing his part to educate KEC men so that they abide by Humanist standards of 'decency'.
Rodinelis has repeatedly threatened KEC men with harsh punishments for taking a watch or a cigarette from a murder victim, but has only launched token investigations into the large-scale corruption in the camp system. And, of course, he sanctifies the mass murders perpetrated the KEC as a righteous deed that could only be carried out by 'strong, noble men'. Because genocide is difficult, it is good, and justified. At the same time, he is incredibly homophobic and obsessed with the absurd idea that there is a xenos Jedi conspiracy to 'emasculate' the KEC by infiltrating it with 'deviants'. He is obsessive in prosecuting what he believes is 'abnormal' behaviour.
Kleander Panagelis - born the son of a butter manufacturer, Panagelis is a KEC general who stands at the top of the Order Police. He is an enthusiastic soldier-policeman and a strong proponent of a 'soldiery' police force incoulated with Humanist values. Rather than don KEC regalia, he wears the green uniform of an Order Police, adding KEC badges to denote his membership in the order. Though his job is hardly the most glamorous, Panagelis has demonstrated a knack for intrigue, networking and public relations.
His remit encompasses the municipal police, riot police, factory protection police, and rural gendarmerie, coastguard, air-raid services, traffic police, railway police, the postal protection service, fire brigades, the emergency technical service, the broadcasting police, factory protection police, building regulations enforcement, and the commercial police. Simultaneously, he is Deputy Chief of the Imperial Police. Moreover, he commands the reserve police battalions, which carry out 'pacification' operations in occupied territories.
This is an euphemism for genocidal actions against so-called racial undesirables. One of the reasons for his murderous zeal is his obsession with restoring his family's honour after the disgraceful death of an uncle, who led his unit right into an ambush by Cathar tribespeople. His militarised police force has access to military-style training, grenade launchers, machine guns, drone technology and armoured vehicles. Just as policemen are deployed on 'pacification duties' before returning home to apply their new 'knowledge', military veterans are recruited in large numbers. Police responses to public disturbances such as riots and protests are modelled after battlefield tactics. Police academy education is patterned after military boot camps. One of his greatest accomplishments is the foundation of a mock city, where young police officers are trained in military-style tactics to respond to a 'breakdown of law and order' by achieving 'full-spectrum dominance over the forces of chaos'.
Panagelis is responsible for all police training, and raising of recruits. He is an enthusiastic student of 'modern crime-fighting methods'. To him ideological education and police training must converge. A policeman must always be a racial warrior, and young police trainees should prove their mettle through a tour of duty fighting 'inferior beings'. He urges policemen deployed to pacification missions to 'take the most drastic measures to suppress banditry', including the hanging of alleged partisans from light poles, the taking of hostages and the eradication of entire villages. The general combines a genial nature, total loyalty to the regime and utter lack of scruples in carrying out his orders. At the same time, he displays a paternal attitude in his interactions with his men.
His enthusiasm has been rewarded with medals and promotions. Moreover, he's become a major shareholder in the KEC's business conglomerate. One of the conglomerate's companies runs numerous irrigation schemes and leases out plots of land to private investors. His family has obtained valuable land plots. Yet there are cracks in his soldierly image. Lately, the general has been afflicted by a rash of sudden absences causd by bouts of mysterious illness. There are rumours that he has contracted syphilis, which would be anathema to the Vaderites.
Lavrentios Tasseas - a senior KEC official who has carved out a niche in racial profiling, safeguarding the 'racial purity' of the KEC. He is also the co-editor of a pseudo-scientific journal called the Biologist. Tasseas is heavily involved in the implementation of colonisation policies in occupied territories, resettling human families and expelling native non-humans from those areas.
His department racially vets the population of colonial territories in order to determine whether they are worthy of being granted Imperial citizenship. In that capacity, he also takes responsibility for the welfare of human refugees in KEC-run refugee camps. His agency promotes Humanist beliefs among the 'lost flock'. Moreover, his department is heavily involved in the abduction of 'genetically valuable' children whose parents have been murdered by the KEC. He is a strong proponent of employing eugenics to regulate every aspect of family life, from getting married to having and raising children. It has been a perennial source of frustration for him that many human groups outside of the Imperium lack a 'healthy racial consciousness'. Some do not even speak 'proper Basic' or hate aliens.
Tasseas has facilitated mass abductions of 'half-blood' children in order to indoctrinate them as janissaries. He considers this a 'mercy' because he is 'giving them a chance to rise above their savage nature'. His methods are particularly insidious because it is a silent genocide. Half-bloods - that is to say, aliens believed to have some human blood - are to be forever separated from their families and native communities, and indoctrinated into loyal servitors of mankind. In his perverse world view, he is 'saving' them. Abuse is rampant in the homes. A 'half-blood' child may be beaten or starved simply for speaking the native language of its people. Kidnapped children deemed genetically undesirable are taken to prison camps to serve as slave labour or killed. In addition, he has been involved in a programme of forced sterilisation of Twi'leks so that they can be exploited as slave labour until they 'naturally die off'.
A strong proponent of eugenics, Tasseas believes traits such as judgement, imagination and intelligence are passed on from parent to child. Thus the state must shape its biological destiny by encouraging those whom it considers to be the superior elements of the population to reproduce, and preventing the reproduction of those judged 'inferior' or 'degenerate'. He corresponds regularly with leading eugenicists, and serves on government commissions related to eugenics and public health. These boards serve as think tanks that bring scientists together with like-minded Party and military officials. Tasseas often seeks advice from experts in the scientific field in order to determine who is worthy of life and who is not.
Born the son of a farmer, Tasseas proudly displays the family coat of arms. He is a charming personality who feels right at home in the upper echelons of society. This is important because his job requires him to liase with all manners of agencies. Hunting is a passion for Tasseas, who has received several reminders that the personal use of official vehicles for hunting is prohibited. Fortunately, the supreme master of the hunt is none other than Darth Eisen. Tasseas enjoys being in the papers. The newspapers depict him as a kind man who helps gives refugees a home, and orphans a family. Truly a guardian of the family community.
Zaharias Toccides - Toccides is not a Stormtrooper, a secret policeman, a camp commandant or a 'racial specialist'. Nonetheless, he is a KEC hero. Rather than be a full employee of the KEC, he is a member of the Universal KEC. Like many of its members, he is a part-time volunteer who has a KEC rank and wears the uniform. Once a month the members of his unit meet in uniform, and participate in KEC activities and various Humanist Party or Church functions.
They participate in drills and undergo ideological instruction, march in Vaderite parades, and perform security duties at various Vaderite rallies and civil emergencies. This also seems fairly mundane, but the Universal KEC is the link between the professional KEC and civil society. It anchors the murderers in normal society, and provides a pool of recruits. Evil is thus normalised, and indeed glamourised, for every effort is made to recruit the great and good.
Celebrities such as Toccides are particularly attractive, for he is a competitive swimmer who has won numerous swimming championships. The KEC values him so highly that they fast-tracked his request to be issued a marriage permit after vetting his bride in the most cursory fashion, even though he only handed in his request a few days bebfore the wedding. Many ordinary KEC members have to wait for months before they get a response. In some cases it takes even longer. The KEC's official newspaper heaps praise on him. Toccides wears his KEC uniform with pride, and has been steady promoted. He doesn't lose any sleep about what the uniform stands for or the vile deeds of his murderous comrades.
Naturally, the Vaderites ignore that numerous alien races are naturally better at swimming. Once a Vaderite propagandist pit Toccides against a Nautolan slave in a swimming contest to 'prove that the indomatible human spirit can overcome the primal advantage of the xenos'. Naturally, Toccides won. Presumably because the Nautolan had been warned what the consequences of winning would be.
Stepahnos Stavrou - Cavalier Stavrou is an ordinary man. He is a Party member who pays his fees, but not a zealous one. He is a KEC member, but joined late and prefers to use his police rank and wear the uniform of a general of the police. He is mildly xenophobic, but not fanatical. Nor does he have sadistic inclinations. His copy of Glorious Conflict has been gathering dust on a book shelf since it was gifted to him. The son of a retailer, he did a commercial apprenticeship, then joined the Order Police as an officer candidate. He did not expect to be involved in mass murder. Commissioned with the rank of lieutenant, he was given command of a company in Police Reserve Battalion 201. This was a militarised police formation that was deployed for policing and rear echelon security.
Such units provided a lot of the manpower for the death squads and routinely carried out deportations and mass executions. Its members were normal, middle-aged men largely of working class background who had been conscripted, but found ineligible for regular military service. When charged with supporting a Vaderite 'resettlement programme', he and his men endeavoured to fetch all aliens out of their houses, regardless of whether they were old, sick, or children. But the supervisors criticised this procedure. They objected that the old and sick were slowing things down. They did not directly give the order to shoot them on the spot, but contended themselves with making it clear to him that nothing could be done with such people. Stavrou learned his lesson.
His unit terrorised Twi'leks, Cathar and Mon Calamari in the ghettos and carried out massacres. They also targeted near-humans like Zeltrons and Rattataki. Sometimes they were ordered to kill a certain number of Twi'leks in an area, take the rest prisoner so that they could be exploited as forced labourers, and burn down their villages. This was called anti-partisan warfare. Yuuzhan Vong were shot out of hand, regardless of age or gender. Sometimes the police unit was supported by alien auxiliaries pressed into service.
At first, Stavrou was hesitant. He gave his men the option of opting out if they found it too hard - and actually meant it. Only a small number took him up on it. He made sure a father who claimed he could not kill women and children was excused from the firing squads and instead assigned to stand guard. Stavrou kept his word to his men, but got over his vestigial scruples. His obedience was rewarded with promotions and medals, but like his men he drank heavily. He still drinks more than is healthy, especially when he remembers locking civilians in sheds and setting them on fire.
Adriannos Vorakes (NPC) - A skilled administrator, loyal KEC man and self-important mass murderer. Should he ever be put on trial for his crimes, Vorakes will depict himself as a state functionary who was only following orders from above. The actions of the KEC were terrible, but no different from unfortunate acts that occur in every war. Besides, he was just a minor cog in a great machine. In short, he is the epitome of bureaucratic banality. The Vaderite state never tried to commit genocide, but only issued general liquidation orders to pacify its territory and deal with bandits. Vorakes is a bit atypical in the ranks of the State Protection Police because he is not an academic with a university degree. Nor does he have a background as a police detective.
But far from being a faceless bureaucrat who mindlessly obeys orders, Vorakes is a passionate, ideologically convinced Humanist. Quite unlike a plodding functionary, he boasts of his 'creative' work. Indeed, he likes to empathise the pivotal role he plays, seeing himself as a great mover and shaper behind xenos policy. He describes a mass deportation he organised as an innovative masterpiece. Vorakes possesses a uncanny ability to tailor his narrative to the desires and fantasies of his listeners. Born outside the Imperium, he has more than overcome any doubts about his ideological zeal. He started small by expropriating, tyrannisng and deporting the Twi'leks and other undesirable 'xenos' of his homeland.
Vorakes has never fired a shot in anger, but he has managed the logistics of logging, and categorising 'undesirable' xenos, especially Twi'leks, seizing their property, cataloguing them, and organising transports to 'reservations' or death camps. Forced to board crowded cattle cars without ventilation, water or food, they are sealed in the cars for days until arrival. Many of the deportees die en route. None of this bothers him. He derives his moral code, if it can be called that, from Humanist beliefs he tenaciously upholds. He considers himself an idealist. Vorakes is married, but has many affairs.
Sibylla Laskaris - Lachesis' apprentice. Her KEC rank of Crusader is mostly a matter of courtesy and to give her some heft, but she is involved with them on the research side of things. Sibylla is a reformer, but not in the way it is commonly understood. She criticises the present system not because it is evil, but inefficient. Slave labour is wasteful. Far better to utilise machines powered by the Force and the souls of undesirables. Sibylla is contemptuous of Humanist ideology due to its rampant misogyny, wastefulness and lack of logic. But morality doesn't enter into the equation for her.
Born to a rich family headed by a greedy, sexist banker who profited from slave labour, she was discovered to be Force-Sensitive and started to be trained, but then was severely injured in a bombing at a training site. Her family forked out the money to get the 'best' medical care. She is required to permanently wear a mask and a proto-Vader style breathing apparatus. This makes her look like a devoted Vaderite which is something which gets respect. It also does not make her a desirable 'mate'. So despite everything it is in many ways a good thing for her autonomy. Sibylla is asexual. If they/them were acceptable pronouns to the Vaderites she'd use them. But she feels she's freed herself from the weakness of organic desires.
Sibylla has been trying to design an entechment knockoff to harvest the souls of the condemned to power machinery. She is with the Vaderites for the power and expedience rather than any great adherence to 'Righteous Humanity'. She is still harsh even devastating to xenos because they are enemies. Sibylla maintains an unlikely friendship with Menkales, who saved her life when he noticed the doctors were botching her surgery. She returned the favour when she saved him from Light Sith assassins.
Her relationship with her father is...very poor. Angela, one of her older sisters, was rebellious and wanted to pursue a career in academia. She even had an affair with a near-human servant. When she kept 'acting out', Sibylla's father had Angela lobotomised and locked away. Sibylla was able to rescue her and she's now living under her protection, with Lachesis' blessing. She hasn't yet been able to settle the score because her father is a major player...for now.
Pavlos Phygios (NPC) - Eisen has appointed himself Grand Commander of the KEC...in order to keep anyone else from taking over the powerful organisation and turning it against him. The KEC is virtually a state within the state with its fingers in many pies, ranging from armed forces to the police to its own business empire. However, Eisen has neither the the time nor the desire to actually deal with the minutiae or put much effort into running the group directly. Bad work ethic aside, it is simply too large for someone who is already busy being a dictator. Thus he has put appointed someone he considers reliable as Chief of Staff of the Grand Commander of the KEC. This is a lesser role Eisen invented for this specific purpose. Keeping the KEC loyal is the big trick here, which rules out promoting a commoner.
Phygios used to serve under Eisen in the Skyhammer Fleet, serving in numerous senior staff roles. Later he transferred to the KEC, where he held staff roles in the Stormtrooper Corps. Around the time of his transfer, the KEC conceived the ambition to set up its own aerospace force. But they lacked trained pilots. Phygios helped organise one. He was a quiet, unassuming man and thus not viewed as a threat. However, this helped Eisen later on because his former minion was conducting subtle sabotage and manipulaitng personnel appointments.
In the aftermath of Castle Maysaf's destruction, he defected back to Eisen when his patron claimed the throne. Phygios used his access to ensure vital supplies got to Eisen's troops. This got him his new job. The KEC would want a soldier, not a pencil pusher overseeing them, and Eisen wants someone with some military staffing experience. Nonetheless, he is viewed as an intruder by many. KEC veterans grumble about his lack of loyalty, especially since some suspect Eisen had a hand in Furcht's demise. Phygios has a reputation as a very conscientious, hard-working and gifted staff officer. He is known to be quiet and withdrawn, a man who looks more like a schoolteacher than an officer of the Leader.
In that regard he differs from the officer type that is usually cultivated by the Stormtroopers. This is not a bad thing per se, since their academies place an undue emphasis on death charging to show elan that leads to disproportionatey high officer casualties. He is someone who is competent at doing the organisation side so Eisen can give the 'big picture' orders, but lacks the charisma to leverage matters against him. There are doubts about his lack of direct command experience as a front-line commander though. Like his boss, he enjoys hunting and has called it a good school for 'anti-partisan- warfare'. Phygios is a man who enjoys the intellectual aspects of warfare. He has never questioned Humanism and is willing to do almost anything ordered by Eisen.
Pausanias Kasadares (NPC) - A Paladin Commander and a former Republican Guard officer. He defected to the Vaderites after witnessing the atomic bombing of Malagdan. When faced with the choice between continuing the struggle and joining the Humanist regime, he chose the latter. In the process, he abandoned one of his former comrades in arms - an alien - to execution. He aligned himself with what he considered the winning side for safety, comfort and a bit of power. At first, he was used as propaganda symbol to demonstrate the 'degeneracy' of the Imperium's enemies. However, he wanted more. He made himself a name during 'bandit suppression campaigns'. His methods included collective punishment for villages accused of supporting partisans, automatic death penalty for immediate families of suspected partisans, deportation of women and children, and confiscation of property for the state. When fighting partisans, his units often slaughter civilians in order to inflate the number of enemy losses.
Pausanias claims to be an 'expert on the xenos'. He has written a (mostly manufactured) book on the strategies of the 'xenos' from his time with the Republican Guard. He claims to have studied their 'art' and psychology to gain 'insights'. In truth, he uses more mundane means such as intelligence gathering, analysis and psyops. Then he fluffs it up with racialist jargon to pander to Humanist stereotypes. Privately Pausanias likes to claim that everything he has done has been for his family, but this is a self-serving rationalisation. He is a genocidal, traitorous collaborator. Should he end up in charge, he would not enact any meaningful changes.
His new-found commitment to Humanism allowed him to rise through the ranks very quickly. At first he led a collaborationist 'volunteer force' mostly composed of former prisoners of war, but then he became a senior officer in the KEC. His bosses made him a Higher KEC and Police Commander. At home, he was a family man who had proper breakfast with his three kids and homemaker wife each morning. At work, he was a brutal enforcer. Charming, handsome and articulate, he was the ideal poster boy for the regime.
However, there was one thing that marred his 'redemption arc'. His son was a dedicated member of the Imperial Youth Corps who strove to make his father proud. However, he was afflicted with a congenital disease. Having taken his father's lessons to heart, Jason reported himself to the authorities, knowing he would be killed. Publicly, Jason was praised for his devotion to the Humanist ideal and was the subject of a propaganda film, which glorified his father. Ironically, Pausanias had tried to keep his son's medical condition a secret. His son's suicide drove a wedge between Pausanias and his wife. But he remained an obedient soldier who continued persecuting other parents for trying to do the same thing he had.
However, Pausanias had gained the enmity of Furcht. The Supreme Leader decided to purge him, but was unable to give the order because Firemane bombed Castle Maysaf. Pausanias made the opportunistic move of swearing fealty to Darth Eisen and 'delivering' Adlerberg to him. This gave Eisen an advantage in the power struggle that followed Furcht's demise, and he rewarded his new ally handsomely. Now Pausanias is highly-placed in the intelligence apparatus. He has a crack unit of KEC troopers under him who specialise in hunting and killing partisans and holds the cumbersome title of Plenipotentiary of the Grand Commander for the Suppression of Banditry. The Republican Guard has put a bounty on his head.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
"For the Supreme Leader, this corps of the KEC and the police represents his struggle for a greater Tephrike and a greater mankind. Its task is the annihilation of the eternal enemies of all Humanist, racially conscious nations."
"The wealth which the Twi'leks had, we have taken from them. We ourselves have taken none of it. Individuals who have offended against this principle will be punished according to an order which I issued at the beginning and which threatens: He who takes so much as a credit shall die. A certain number of KEC men — not very many — disobeyed this order and they will die, without mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty to our own people, to kill this people that wanted to kill us. But we have no right to enrich ourselves by so much as a fur, a watch, a credit, or a cigarette or any thing else."
- Grand Commander Aristides Apollyon
"At one moment—it was just getting dark, we were driving past a long ravine. I noticed strange movements of the earth. Clumps of earth rose into the air as if by their own propulsion—and there was smoke; it was like a low-toned volcano; as if there was burning lava just beneath the earth. Koukoura laughed, made a gesture with her arm pointing back along the road and ahead, all along the ravine and said, 'Here lie my thirty-thousand xenos."
- A KEC officer
"Least of all we do not want to see hundreds of thousands of impoverished Twi'leks as a breeding-ground for Jedism and a recruiting base for the criminal Xenos Guard. Should such a development occur, we would face the harsh necessity of wiping out the Twi'lek underworld just as we are used to wiping out criminals in our orderly state: with fire and sword."
- Quote from an article in the Iron Corps, the official magazine of the KEC.
"I believe, gentlemen, that you know me well enough to know that I am not a bloodthirsty person; I am not a woman who takes pleasure or joy when something rough must be done. However on the other hand, I have such good nerves and such a developed sense of duty – I can say that much for myself – that when I recognise something as necessary I can implement it without compromise. For the protection of future generations, the matter of the xenos of Chios has been resolved. I did not consider myself entitled to allow future generations of xenos to become the murderers of our children and grandchildren. That would have been cowardly. Consequently, the matter was resolved without compromise."
- Darth Lachesis
When the outbreak of the Gulag Virus sent Tephrike spiralling into chaos, the Jedi assumed a protective stance. The endemic strafe, the collapse of the rule of law and the massive death toll of the pandemic compelled them to take in an attempt to restore order. However, they were corrupted by their absolute power. Their government became a totalitarian theocracy, the Dominion of Light. One of the Jedi who served it was a man called Cade Seward. He fell sick while fighting rebels in the jungles. Supposedly he received a vision of Darth Vader. It was likely a fever dream. Regardless, he became convinced that the 'Great Old One' had charged him with purging Tephrike of lesser beings and restoring it to greatness. He renamed himself Darth Malitia, though his enemies would dub him Darth Menace.
It says a lot about the state of Tephrike that he was able to amass legions of followers. Malitia did not invent human supremacist belief and magically seduce an unwilling populace. Tephrike had a history of racial tensions and the outbreak of the Gulag Virus had provided fodder for all manners of conspiracy theories. Even his claim that the pandemic had been engineered by a cabal of alien bankers was not new. But he was the first Humanist leader who had the means and the will to wage a total war of annihilation. The beginnings of the Knights of the Ebon Claw were humble. Initially, they were less a professional fighting force and more a group of terrorists, militias and thugs. A detachment of them served as the personal bodyguard of Malitia. They called themselves the Stormtroopers.
The Knights were fanatical fighters, kept 'order' in conquered settlements and cultivated a reputation for fearlessness in battle. However, discipline was low and their officers often mistook revolutionary elan for leadership, which led to a poor performance when fighting a serious foe on the battlefield. They also became infamous for conducting terrorist attacks as well as massacring and torturing alien civilians. The Knights ran several 'wild' concentration camps to detain supposed traitors and criminals. Conditions for the inmates were appalling, but commandants also used the camps to settle old scores with rivals within the movement.
The first Grand Commander of the Knights was Xenophon Aratesis, a Humanist terrorist leader and militia commander. He was the founder of the somewhat egotistically named Frikorps Aratesis, which joined Malitia's army en bloc. Having originally fought the remnants of Tephrike's old democratic government and then the Jedi, he hitched his wagons to Malitia. Xenophon was charismatic and a fanatic, but rash and not much of a thinker. He liked to release videos and holopics of the beheadings of 'blood traitors' and 'xenos'. The Knights participated in the Palmyra campaign. Moreover, they took the lead in a uprising in Vortanstad, a major Tephriki industrial centre controlled by the Dominion. Aratesis had instigated it. The Knights and militants allied to them carried out savage pogroms against non-humans and alleged race traitors while battling Dominion troops in the streets.
However, the revolt was doomed because the upcoming battle of Palmyra meant that Vaderite reinforcements never reached the city. Moreover, the conduct of the Knights was so savage that it even turned many humans against the Vaderites. It had the lasting effect of instilling a strong feeling of paranoia in the Dominion. The Knights would later propagandise the battle as having been a heroic last stand and spread stories about brave human stormtroopers nobly saving innocent human women and children from the clutches of evil alien Jedi. The truth is quite different. Poor planning had doomed the revolt.
Malitia's dark crusade was eventually halted at the cataclysmic Battle of Palmyra, which ended with the city being turned into a dark side nexus when the Dominion nuked it to prevent a dark ritual from coming to fruition. The battle was a Pyrrhic victory for the Dominion. It came at a staggering cost, but Malitia's ambitions had been thwarted. The broken remnants of his army were forced to retreat, going on the melodramatically named Arduous March. However, although he was subsequently challenged and defeated by a rival, his twisted ideals lived on and formed the basis for the state the Vaderites created after the Arduous March. Darth Vengeance, his successor, was just as much as a speciecist, but wanted to actually build a state. He was also less enamoured with mysticism than his mentor. His accession to leadership prompted a transformation of the Vaderite movement. Established humanist groups were coopted and unified into a totalitarian one-party state. For the time being the Vaderites would exist on the fringes of Tephrike, but declare perpetual war on the Dominion of Light and the revolutionary Republican Guard, which preached equality for all species and opposed the reign of Force-Users.
Castle Maysaf became the new headquarters of the Vaderite movement, which soon established control over some urban centres such as Almopia, which was renamed Adlerberg. The Knights also changed. The war with the Dominion had exposed their deficencies. Reforms were initiated to not only make them a more effective military force by recruiting professional officers, but also to transform them into an effective internal security force that could guard the regime against a coup or a slave rebellion.
The new commander was Aristides Apollyon, the son of a banker, and destined for this career before being swept up in the fervour at his university by the Vaderite uprising. He was fanatical about the cause, but cautious, pedantic and cunning where Aratesis was aggressive, flamboyant and brash. He initially served as Aratesis' aide and chief of staff, trying to interpret his commander's wild dictates. However, he endeared himself with Vengeance by organising a successful defence after the initial KEC disaster and was the only real choice for promotion after his predecessor died.
Taking over a Dominion prison facility, the Knights set up a concentration camp called Camp Progress. Concentration camps were nothing new, but this was a prototype for a new model. The old camps had been ad hoc creations. There had been no national authority to manage them. Instead the Humanist militia, the KEC and the police had set up their own camps. These 'wild camps' were highly heterogenous and thus conditions varied wildly. Some local commanders simply used them to intern people they wanted to extort favours from. Camp Progress was supposed to bring order to the chaos and put the murder, torture and exploitation of prisoners on a 'rational' basis.
The first commandant was Theodore Eliades, a KEC officer and war veteran. His men held him in awe, calling him 'Papa Eliades'. To the prisoners he was a brutal, petty tyrant. It was he who designed the striped prisoner uniforms and wrote the guarding provisions. On the one hand they mandated rigid discipline, on the other they defined the prisoners as semi-sentient scum that possessed no rights. Eliades replaced haphazard brutality with a clearly defined system of terror. Indeed, abusing prisoners became an initiation rite for new guards. Brutal punishments were instituted for the most trivial offences. Eliades despised weakness and once said that a soft guard should retire to a monastery and let the 'real men' do their job.
At this point in time, the camps were focused on punishment and detention. Prisoners were abused and given redundant, back-breaking work that was designed to break them. Vaderite propaganda mouthpieces hailed the camp as progressive, claiming that its guards and wardens were heroes who protected innocent people from hordes of criminals. In these early days, some officials in the ministries of justice and the interior tried to restore a modicrum of accountability.
All of them supported a human supremacist dictatorship, but they wanted to maintain a face of legal norms and to rule by law. They argued that the camps were not needed since the courts had been thoroughly Humanised and so the judges would pass sentences in accordance with a 'healthy folk sentiment'. Thus any convict could be locked up in a normal prison. Minister of Justice Pattakos, by no means a proponent of civil liberties, argued that only the courts could judge criminals and enemies of the regime, and protested against prisoners being abused and murdered.
However, the KEC had powerful allies and successfully argued in favour of a permanent state of emergency. While socially awkward, Apollyon showed a remarkable ability to read inner-party alliances and rivalries and use them to his advantage. The Knights solidified their position in the new order when they did the regime's dirty work during the Blood Purges. This was a two-pronged attack against the cultist and secularist strands in the Humanist movement. The first argued that the Force was the great leveller and thus Non-Force-Users, including humans, were lesser beings, while the other wanted a secular, imperialist state controlled and organised by the Party. The Night of the Long Knives ensured that the will of the Supreme Leader would reign supreme.
From this moment on, the Knights were seen as the loyal vanguard of the movement, answerable only to the Leader. Through cunning and intrigue, their leaders secured control over the police force, unifying the disparate agencies. It was not enough to put criminals who had already committed a crime behind bars; the security forces had to prophylactically eliminate all 'racial and spiritual enemies of mankind'. 'Hidebound' lawyers and bureaucrats did not have the 'stomach' to ruthlessly combat the legions of 'vermin'.
Thus the camps and the guards' treatment of prisoners would not be subject to judicial review. Indeed, the KEC were soon removed from the jurisidiction of civilian courts. The influence of the Camp Progress model increased when Eliades was made inspector-general of all the camps. The Knights were heavily involved in the regime's genocidal campaign against the Yuuzhan Vong, many of whom had long given up the brutal ways of their ancestors. They also spearheaded the deportation of Adlerberg's alien population into the Prosperity Quarter, establishing a reign of terror.
Twi'leks, Mon Calamari and others were 'resettled' so that human colonists could claim their land, homes and possessions. Others remained in their homelands to be slaves to their new masters. Many aspects of KEC terror emerged not from top-down management, but from an escalation driven by the eagerness of subordinate leaders to adopt more and more radical measures. Men got used to reading between the lines of written orders and taking the initiative to further their own career. Individual KEC and police commanders often tried to outdo their colleagues in murderousness. Even the Republican Guard's decoders observed that the KEC Commanders 'stand somewhat in competition with each other as to their 'scores'.'
Despite their rivalry, the KEC and the regular army cooperated well when it came to massacres and exploitation, working together like two peas in a pod. The army registered how many Twi'leks, Mon Calamari, Bothans and other 'dangerous xenos' were present in a newly-occupied town. The KEC, police and army then debated how many of them were needed for forced labour and how many could be killed. The KEC's special task forces then murdered the required amount or the army locked them up in a ghetto, which might later be 'cleared' by the Order Police. Few of these men 'just followed orders'. The mass killings only halted because the Vaderites needed more forced labourers to keep the war machine running and do menial jobs humans did not want to do.
The Vaderite press depicted the KEC as chivalrous heroes without peer. Inevitably, war resumed with the Dominion. The stormtroopers managed to wipe away their earlier shame when they took heavy losses in battle, but managed to make a key breakthrough to trap and destroy a Dominion army. While their influence in the military grew, the Vaderites sought to extend their tendrils into every part of society. It was an aggressive campaign of empire-building. In effect, they became a parallel state, though one that remained beholden to the Disciples. They courted the wealthy and powerful of society with privileges and honours to bind them to them. The emphasis of the concentration camps shifted from punishment to economic exploitation of the inmates. Needless to say the KEC became a frequent target of Dominion and Republican Guard attacks.
However, the role of the KEC was not limited to purges, genocide and battle. Indeed, the group was at pains to empathise its 'positive role', such as spearheading the foundation of settler colonies for veterans and 'worthy' humans. Of course, this went hand in hand with dispossessing, deportating and enslaving the 'xenos'. But the propaganda showed model villages populated by content farmers and their families. It goes without saying that the Knights' private empire grew bloated and corrupt, like every Vaderite institution. But it lost none of its viciousness.
Apollyon saw himself not just as a secret police chief, but also as the patriarch and teacher of his men. He also had a strong fascination for the occult and was a control freak with an obsessive attention to detail. To preserve the 'purity' of the KEC, he created new standards for recruitment to ensure that only 'racially worthy' candidates would be accepted into the order, though he was pragmatic enough to relax them when needed to broaden his recruitment base. Moreover, he proved extremely adaptable and was able to anticipate his Leader's wishes and position the KEC to take advantage. He also issued the so-called Engagement and Marriage Order, which instructed the Knights to marry and procreate with 'pure' women to advance the biological "up-breeding" of the KEC. His goal was to take the lead in the Vaderite eugenics programme. It is worth noting that this order was very unpopular, since for obvious reasons many Knights resented being told who they could and could not marry. Moreover, it produced a bloated bureaucracy. Vengeance once asked Apollyon half-seriously whether the goal was to prevent young people from getting married.
He exhorted his men to be utterly pitiless against the xenos, the rebels and the Jedi. In his perverted world view, genocide was not a crime, but a sacrifice that only 'hard men' could make. At the same time, he was concerned about the mental distress mowing down civilians, including women and children, would cause his men. Reports of suicides and soldiers drinking copious amounts of alcohol to drown out their nightmares of their victims' screams troubled him. For this reason he started to promote using poison or gas because it was more humane...for the killers. The concern he expressed for the killers' mental health stood in horrible contrast to the lack of empathy for the victims Humanism had condemned to death for no reason other than their species.
Apollyon was not flashy like other prominent Vaderites or personally charismatic. Socially awkward, he had a deeply conspiratorial view of the world and had a meticulous attention to detail. The stormtroopers in particular mocked the Grand Commander behind their back, since he had never been a soldier, though he pretended to have been one. But they Knights feared his rigorous inspections and cruelty. His enormous power and access to the Leader caused ambitious men to flock to him. He had a knack for identifying highly capable, driven individuals who would prove ruthless in pursuit of their goals.
The KEC became the proving ground for his romantic, occult and ultra-nationalist ideals. His rigid sense of duty and obedience turned him into a zealot. By the time Apollyon died in a plane crash under suspicious circumstances, he had become the second most powerful man in the regime. Grand Commander Darth Lykurgos, born Heroides Phokas, was no less ruthless than his former boss, but took things a step further. Apollyon saw life as a racial struggle that could only end in total victory or annihilation. But he expected the final confrontation to happen far off in the future. By contrast, Lykurgos was an accelerationist.
He was influenced by a series of setbacks the Vaderites had endured. The great offensive of the Republican Guard marshal Sinya Kairn culminated in a battle at Synorostad. It ended with a Vaderite victory, but at a very high cost. Even with the Guard beaten in conventional battle, the resistance did not die. Indeed, the fallen marshal was turned into a martyr, spurring on resistance. Moreover, the Dominion was hitting back. The Vaderite's bloated economy suffered under corruption. There were still enough people who remembered another time, leading to protests and domestic unrest. Lykurgus came to the conclusion that his compatriots were not radical enough. They had grown complacent and effete. The Vaderites should not shirk from all-out ar, for if properly prepared, the 'master race' could survive an atomic firestorm in underground cities while the 'inferior' perished.
The Supreme Leader at the time was a weak character who needed Lykurgos' support and so the Grand Commander was bought off by being given his own fiefdom, which would be ruled exclusively by the KEC. Lykurgos accepted and set about creating a totalitarian nightmare, which slaughtered the alien population and demolished their culture. At the same time control of the KEC in the Imperial heartland passed to one of his subordinates. However, the Vaderite government soon realised that Lykurgos had not abandoned his plans. He dreamt of purifying the whole world and he was willing to to push it towards doomsday to accomplish it. Thus he was set up to be assassinated by Jedi Shadows. His dysfunctional state collapsed upon itself, as the alien auxiliaries rebelled, whereupon the Vaderite regime deployed regular troops to 'restore order'. Following this episode, there was an unofficial rule that the Grand Commander could not be a Sith Lord of Darth rank. This rule remained in place for many decades.
But the KEC's influence did not remain diminished forever, especially after the nation was rocked by several slave revolts. When Darth Hyperion came to power, he did so with the support of his distant cousin Isidora Manatos, the future Darth Lachesis. The stormtrooper general had made herself a name winning several daring victories against the Dominion. She brought tanks to Skywalker House to help the regime's grandees pick the next Supreme Leader, who happened to be Hyperion. Coincidentally, the Grand Knights Commissariat Exchange of the Ebon Claw had failed to make dividend payments from its businesses. The regime was several months in arreas in paying dividends from the military-owned conglomerate. It had been mandatory for a long time for all KEC members to buy GKCEEC shares with the amount rising as they progressed in the ranks. Many commanders had spent the profits elsewhere and not paid the dividends to the soldiers. As a result, it was easy for Lachesis to persuade soldiers to support what amounted to a coup.
It was Lachesis who led the 'cleansing' of Chios, wiping out or deporting the alien population to 'make room' for military veterans and low class humans. Gungans, Nautolans, Togruta and frog people, among others, had once dwelt on the island. Life had been oppressive for them, as they were confined to 'reservations' and forced to provide forced labourers, but they had a modicrum of autonomy. Some alien groups such as Togruta were even slightly privileged to make them cooperate. This changed when Lachesis imposed her new order. For a while the regime used deception, proclaiming that the aliens were being 'resettled'. But the transports took the victims to execution sites. Inevitably, the natives fought back, leading to partisan struggle. The Guard provided support to the rebels, as it had aided earleir slave revolts. But the regime had no qualms about using chemical weapons and aerial bombings. A Togruta town was devastated by relentless shelling, turned into a massive concentration camp and finally an extermination site.
Clashes among the myriad bureaucracies and special interests in the Imperium and self-imposed deadlines to meet targets for evictions and resettlement, and the growing radicalisation of the settlers created a situation where the Vaderites reached for ever more radical 'solutions' to the problem. At the start, there was no master plan behind Lachesis' measures. Many of them were improvised on the spot or initiated by local subordinates, though she was the driving force that rewarded the most radical. But the result was the annihilation or deportation of those the Vaderites placed at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. To the press and to her soldiers she was 'Auntie Lachesis', who cared about the wellbeing of the 'common man'. 'Remember Chios' became a rallying cry for the Dominion and the Republican Guard.
When open war resumed with the Dominion, Lachesis' troops managed to take a strategically important city called Chazowa with her tank corps. However, then the situation turned critical because a Dominion counter-offensive threatened cut them off. The Dominion sought to envelope the city, with the ultimate objective of pinning the Vaderite troops against the sea. Hyperion ordered that the city be held at all costs. However, Lachesis feared her troops being encircled and cut off. She had no qualms about butchering the 'impure' and 'undesirables' without mercy, but saw little purpose in pointlessly sacrificing 'pure' human blood.
Air support and airdrops that had been promised did not materialise due to a combination of a lack of transport capabilities, hazardous weather conditions and Dominion airpower. Supplies of food, ammunition etc. were running low. Lachesis ate the same rations as the common soldiers. Indeed, sometimes she went without sustenance entirely, using the Force to sustain herself. Lachesis contacted army group command to ask to evacuate. However, the marshal backed up Hyperion, before finally giving Lachesis a noncommittal response that passed the buck to her, but gave no guarantees that they would receive support during a breakout. So Lachesis ordered the breakout herself, defying the Leader. There was a heavy fog and the Dominion was shelling the streets. But Lachesis used her powers to guide lost soldiers to safety. Dominion troops kept harassing the Vaderites until they reached friendly lines.
Lachesis took charge of the rearguard during the fighting retreat. Her actions made her very popular among her troops. Hyperion was angry when he heard the news. The KEC and the regular army later conquered the city. However, the subsequent Operation Citadel ended in defeat and the Dominion devastated Vaderite cities through a strategic bombing campaign. The bombings did not break Vaderite morale, but hyperbolic stories of 'dangerous criminals' escaping and wreaking havoc caused panic, giving the security forces the excuse to tighten repression. Moreover, the KEC got a new job by taking charge of the relocation of armaments factories underground. Naturally they accomplished this by utiliising forced labourers, many of whom perished. When troops were pushed back by Dominion forces, they tried to evacuate 'productive xenos labourers' from the territory they had to give up. Those not considered capable of labour were to be murdered or left behind the starve after all the food had been seized by the Vaderites.
As the war ground on and losses mounted, a group of disgruntled officers tried to assassinate Hyperion. However, the Leader survived the attempt on his life. It made him even more paranoid. The KEC had failed to anticipate the coup - or perhaps allowed it to happen. In any event, it played a prominent role in its suppression. The conspirators were hung on piano wires. The executions were filmed for the Leader's personal enjoyment. Darth Furcht, the Grand Commander, fed the Leader's paranoia to gain more power and undermine rivals like Darth Eisen, the powerful and decadent head of the air force and economic supremo. Secretive, hyper-suspicious and irascible, Furcht had climbed the ranks of the secret police until he reached the top. His ruthlessness endeared him to Hyperion. Furcht could organise mass purges on an unimaginable scale, but he could also administrate and knew when to use the carrot, while always keeping the stick in his other hand. However, rumours abounded of him supposedly having alien blood.
This drove him to become more and more radical to squash any such notions. When the frontline moved closer to the Imperial heartland, the security services initiated Special Operation 1005, also called the Exhumation Action. The purpose of it was to hide any evidence of the mass killings perpetrated by the Vaderites. Prisoner work crews were forced to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies. Then the workers themselves were executed. Some camps set up new crematoria so that they could do without prison labour. The operation was carried out by Order Police and Security Police units. Aspasia Koukoura was in charge of it.
Then the Netherworld Event turned the world upside down. Like virtually every world, Tephrike was affected by the mass raptures. The result was chaos. It triggered a serious crisis. Impaler reacted with purges, believing it was the end of days. The KEC's leaders found their forces depleted. Moreover, two heretical movements arose. A group of cultists had discovered what they believed to be 'a sacred text' from the Jedi, which told the true story of Darth Vader. Said text was actually a 'Galactic Civil War for Dummies' sort of book, which told the story of Vader's redemption. Thus one group proclaimed that since Vader had embraced the Light, it was their duty to do so as well as the true disciples of the Chosen One. In doing so, they would finish what he started by restoring the balance of the Force. They promised emancipation to the slaves.
The other group claimed that since Vader had fallen to the light side, Palpatine was the true Dark Lord and it was their duty to destroy the false Sith. Civil war ensued. Hyperion hoped to pit both factions against the other, but the leader of the 'Light Sith', Darth Krieg, was able to rally a number of rebellious slaves to his cause and took control. The new leader called himself Salus. Eisen had been aware of the Light Sith and tried to use them before they escaped his grasp.
Defeated in battle, Lachesis and her loyalists continued to fight the Light Sith. The latter soon got embroiled in a war with the Dominion, becoming unofficial co-belligerents of the Republican Guard. But after many successes, the offensive faltered and the accord broke apart. Some KEC forces had just bid their time and done their part to sabotage the unofficial accord that neither side had liked. Salus was murdered and the exiled Eisen returned. However, Lachesis and Darth Furcht made a pact. Both led the savage reclamation of Adlerberg, which had been seized by alien rebels from the ghetto their kind had been forced in centuries ago.
The great slave rebellion was crushed with extreme brutality. Eisen had committed troops and indeed arranged for Salus' death, but he had been outplayed. Furcht blackmailed Eisen about his past contacts with the heretics, forcing him to bend the knee. Lachesis wanted him executed, but Furcht deemed him useful. Eisen ground his teeth and bent the knee to him. The new Supreme Leader unleashed a wave of purges against so-called deviants and unbelievers. However, the Imperium needed time to consolidate before it could launch serious offensives.
The KEC found a role carrying out mass deportations to 'Hope Falls', an 'autonomous xenos region' set up by Eisen to counter enemy propaganda about the Vaderites committing genocide. In truth it was an oppressive hell hole. Moreover, it took charge of resettling - and vetting - millions of human refugees who had been displaced by the Netherworld War. Some were former Dominion or Republican Guard citizens or had been in contact with them. They needed to be 'handled' especially thoroughly to prevent 'contamination'. The office of the Imperial Commissioner for the Strengthening of Humanism was founded to carry out these measures. Deportation and mass murder were linked to a broader agenda of colonisation. Lachesis took charge of this office.
KEC commander Leontias Tzimakes led a 'pacification' campaign where they were brought in for 'anti-terrorist' work in a newly conquered region. However, they were attacked by Republican Guard miltias and partisans and had to hold out in a siege. They did, supplied with actual efficiency by the air and were relieved after a long siege. Again heavy casualties, but a big win. However, it is worth noting that it was over confidence and underestimating the enemy which got them into the position and that despite inflicting more casualties the Vaderites retreated soon after. So aside from propaganda it was not a 'great triumph'.
The Vaderites' methods for combating partisans were savage and counterproductive. In the process of annihilating their so-called political and biological enemies, often called bandits, the Vaderites made no effort to distinguish between real rebel fighters, political suspects, and 'dangerous xenos' like Twi'leks and Mon Calamari. Indeed, the murderous policies carried out by Vaderite institutions like the regular army, the KEC and the Party left the victims little choice. A Twi'lek knew that they would be worked to death in a forced labour camp or a reservation, or arrested in a random round-up and shot outright or sent to a concentration camp. And when the Vaderites declared an area to be bandit-infested, all who lived in it, whether involved with partisans or not, were treated as enemy combatants that only deserved to live if they could be exploited. The army and the KEC classified Twi'leks, Mon Calamari, Vong and Bothans as partisans and thereby made them legitimate military targets. To retaliate against the killings of their own soldiers by partisans, they wiped out whole villages. Even children were not spared, save for those who could be exploited as forced labour or indoctrinated.
Many fugitives fleeing Vaderite terror were forced to coalesce in small groups in the wilderness, and could only survive by foraging and stealing. In short, the Vaderites created their own partisan problem through their barbaric policies. Vaderite army and KEC units worked hand in hand. Anti-partisan units often slaughtered civilians to inflate the number of enemies they had supposedly killed. Indeed, the fatalities reported were usually higher than the number of weapons captured. Many partisan units were wiped out, but the Vaderites' savagery allowed them to replenish their numbers with civilians enraged by their homes being destroyed and their loved ones being massacred. Relations between the army and the KEC's killing squads were generally good and even when both institutions feuded on the macro-level, the army earned the praise of Humanist ideologues. Army soldiers often cordoned off killing sites or were among the crowds of spectators who watched the gruesome massacres carried out by the KEC - or actively participated in them. Both groups created literal dead zones.
When the star people arrived, the Vaderites saw the starships appear in orbit, but were unsure what to make of them. When they learned that the outsiders were bombing the Dominion's capital and that the Jedi Temple had been destroyed, they were jubilant. Furcht declared it a sign of the Dark God. The outsiders and the Republican Guard proceeded to take Fortress Purity. Word spread that the Dominion's Grandmaster was dead and that part of the army was in open revolt. The Sith leaders were in the midst of planning a great offensive to take advantage of the turmoil, when suddenly the outsiders bombarded Castle Maysaf. Lachesis was not at the castle at the time and thus survived. So did Eisen, who had had the presence of mind to slip out unnoticed once the bombardment began. The 'Fat One' could be surprisingly quiet and stealthy due to his prowess as an illusionist.
Furcht ordered the Council members and sorcerers present to conduct a ritual with him. They struck back by summoning demons aboard the Firemane flagship. While the Sith's ritual was successful and Firemane had to fight to take its warship back from the eldritch entities, Castle Maysaf was levelled. Furcht died in the bombardment. When Lachesis learned of what had happened, she knew civil war would be the result.
Eisen claimed the throne, but he was challenged by Furcht's son Achilles, a petty boy-king, and Darth Erlösung, an esoteric Sith. The KEC was divided, as major leaders threw their weight behind different claimants. Kasadares delivered Adlerberg into Eisen's hands and Lachesis reluctantly allied herself with the Grand Marshal. After a short but fierce battle against the Boy-King's troops, Eisen prevailed, though Erlösung's followers continued to resist. Barring these rogue elements, the KEC has sworn allegiance to the new Supreme Leader.
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