Empire

Introduction
This document contains general information about the Holy Empire, explaining things like its society, law, culture and military doctrine.

Not everything in this document is straight fact, some of it is word-of-mouth rumors without much base to it, since the empire itself is rather strict on its security and a bit secluded from the rest of the world. Therefore, the finer details and inner workings aren't available for public knowledge.

Society
The social structure within the empire is class-based with certain similarities to an ants nest.

There's the worker class, consisting of common men, who fill necessary roles in everyday positions. Construction work, service, production and basic education. Your living in the empire is paid for, as long as you're willing to work in any field you're qualified for albeit at minimum pay if you're without work.

Then there's the soldier class, which consists of families who since old have performed admirably in military and security related matters. Promising children from the worker class are routinely adopted into the soldier class families. There are much fewer soldiers than workers, and they take care of all work ranging from police-work to outright warfare.

Standing over the worker and soldier classes is the priesthood. The priests are families of scientist, and about as close as the empire gets to noble families. They do extensive R&D with great results, as well as all stately management. Each family has its own field of science, and priests who prove excellent at science not relating to their house are typically married or adopted into a family that will better suit them. At the top of the priesthood are five families; Baht, Keth, Atapel, Eganti and Sapkut. These five are the leading houses, and their individual leaders are the high priests of the empire, with a single leader among them appointed by the imperial family.

Atop of all others is the imperial family. The emperor always inherits the name of Tep'hel, after the first emperor who brought the people together in the name of man's advancement. The emperor is a rather elusive person and not much of a public figure, the same holds true for the rest of the imperial family and nobody really knows how many family members exist, this is due to security reasons, say the societal managers.

Cultural Influences
The empire as a fictional element draws inspiration from nations such as ancient Egypt and Rome, but also various police-states and the 'Big Brother' and cyberpunk concepts.

Architecture is definitely inspired by Egyptian temples, with sleek black obelisks as the decoration of choice. Public building typically have large rectangular gates and various scientific scribbles as wall art. Housing complexes and commercial districts are typically minimalistic and toned down. Polished dark metals with well-defined edges are all the rage both in architectural design, interior design, and art.

Information is kept under lock and key, the people are unknowing of most anything, and the higher class you are the more you know both about your own nation and the world around it. Propaganda is daily practice and the people, not knowing better, swallow most of it completely.

The empire strives to unite all humans on the planet under one banner, their own, in the name of human advancement through science.

Law
The law of the empire is strict to the lower classes and not so much on the higher classes. Most people won't get in trouble, but if they do the consequences can be dire.

Stealing of any kind will get you sent to dangerous jobs, such as mines or deep sea fishing in dangerous waters. Any sort of blasphemy or disrespect towards the imperial family will likely get you removed by the soldier class. Murder and rape will get you an instant death sentence, violence is punished differently depending n social class. For example, a worker hitting a worker might get sent to confinement for a period of time, however a worker hitting a priest is likely to be permanently removed from the surface of the earth and in contrast, a priest hitting a worker gets a 'firm reprimand' (or sometimes a pat on the back, depends on their superiors).

Cuisine
Spicy foods are all about in the empire. There are spices in abundance of different kinds like curry, chili peppers and just plain old peppers. Chicken is a nation-wide favorite, and 'Chep hat Niyak' is the national specialty with its perfect balance of sweet and spicy on pieces of grilled chicken with a bowl of rice to it.

The Priesthood
More in detail, the priesthood consists of lots of families, called houses. Some are smaller and some larger. Each family has its own niche that it fills, any science really, even study of the occult even though nobody really takes that family seriously.

Most prominent among the houses, are the five great families. Baht, Keth, Eganti, Atapel and Sapkut. Their sciences are Technology, Medicine, Chemistry, Physics and Biology, in order. All of the five great houses have several sub-families. At the head of each family stands the Hemet, or high priest, and he leads the workings of the house.

There are several houses important to society that stand right under the emperor, but they're mostly bureaucrats. These include sociology, social psychology, infrastructure as well as logistics and many more.

The Soldiers
The soldier class isn't really a good name to describe what this class actually does. The police, military and secret service all consist of members of the soldier class.

Children born as soldiers are kept in active exercise from their early years, typically kept on strict diets and in addition to the typical high-school education they undergo basic military training for at least a year.

After the basic training they are free to choose whatever branch they'd prefer serving on; police, army, navy or air force. Secret service agents and special operatives are recruited from soldiers that show certain qualities, such as a talent for sneaking around and spying on people.

Music and Art
The most common form of music in the empire is, funnily enough, trance. It plays in all the government sanctioned clubs throughout the cities, typically loaded with propaganda. Music would be more diverse if making music was actually a common practice among the workers, but there's really nowhere for a worker to get decent studio equipment, however getting a hold of an acoustic guitar or a piano isn't all that difficult. Most music that plays on the radio or in the clubs is made by the priests, specifically the houses dealing with cultural studies.

The preferred form of art within the empire is sculptures. Form and proportion is close to the heart of the cultural study houses, and they in turn influence the few people who are artists as a hobby. Paintings aren't particularly rare, however, and there are art galleries sprinkled loosely in some cities where even workers can have their work up for display.

Of course all art, music and literature undergoes rather heavy censoring, just to make sure nobody is speaking ill of the imperial family or the priesthood.

Common Physical Traits and Fashion
The people of the empire are generally somewhere in the median, not too tall and not too short, not too thin and not too wide. They mostly have dark hair colors such as black, dark brown, bark blue and varying shades of medium to light brown. Their hair is more likely to be wavy than curly, however in most cases is perfectly straight. Blonde imperials aren't unheard of, but very rare.

Imperials typically have thin almond-shaped eyes with irises ranging from almost black to nutty browns, as well as green on rare occasions. They're often rather deep set under strong eyebrows. Roughly three out of ten imperials have a characteristically large nose, like a hawks beak.

Their skin tones naturally go in light chocolaty tans, exposure to sunlight will tan them more and keeping out of the sun will make them paler.

Fashion in the empire goes mostly in black and white, with accents of stronger colors such a red, yellow and magenta. Sleeveless shirts and t-shirts are popular, scarves usually account for most of the color accents and crop jackets are all the rage.

Military uniforms go in black and pale gray, with yellow rank markings and adorned in various medals. The navy has double-breasted wool coats as standard issue, and the air force has a hat loosely resembling ancient Egyptian head ornaments.

Priests wear lab coats in all the colors of the rainbow. Each house has its own house colors and emblem, and all priests wear a coat in their houses colors with the emblem visible somewhere. High priests also carry jewelry with stones in their house colors.

Organized Resistance, 'Heretics'
A 'Heretic' is the name given by priests to any man, woman or child who would dare stand against the holy emperor. Be they inside the empires borders or simply an enemy from a different nation, 'Heretic' is the brand they're given.

Inside the borders, the workers are suspicious of their fellow men, and anyone who dares speak ill of the emperor has a tendency to simply disappear. The same goes for attempts at organized resistance, though there are elusive resistance cells that the secret service kill teams haven't gotten a hold of.

'Heretics' are a subject brought up often in propaganda, real or fictional, to unite the peoples will against the heretics under the empires banner. Partly to scare people into not taking their protection lightly, and partly so they won't question the will and ways of the empire.

Military Doctrine
Imperial military works heavily on the concept of stealth. Submarines, stealth bombers and small teams of highly-trained individuals are to replace the massive armies of old. While they do have the numbers to field an army for occupation, this typically doesn't happen often, since extermination is a more practical solution.

Of course this isn't something commonly known among the workers, all the know is that there are people outside the borders who want to hurt them and take what's theirs, but the soldiers are preventing that.

When the soldiers go to war, the first thing they do is weaken enemy logistics. Production, supply lines, and important personnel are all subject to precision strikes, infiltration, sabotage and assassination. When the enemy is broken, cities are carpet bombed and then cleared out by kill teams.

This information is not available to the workers, and is usually covered up from the rest of the world as well. If anyone were to ask "Hey, whatever happened to this and that country?", the probable response would be "They have united with our empire under the flag of science".

Cuélebre
The Cuélebre is the secret weapon of the empire. A mecha, unlike all others in that it can be partly organic and uses technology more advanced.

They range in size from 16 to 30 meters, typically with gaunt, lithe bodies and few ornaments. Cuélebres are almost always humanoid, for the sake of simplicity when dealing with the control system. They're amazingly agile and brutally strong, and initial testing has proved them capable of ripping opponents to pieces with just their hands.

The control system of all Cuélebres is Xana. Xana are half-organic AIs set within the core of the Cuélebre, who typically have the form of a humans upper body. The Xana relays information from your nervous system to the Cuélebre and vice versa through a neural link called the 'bond'.

To bond with a Xana, you seat yourself in the Cuélebre and lean back against the chest and open arms of the Xana, at which point it will embrace you to hold you very steadily in place and then inject a needle from its mouth into your spine. The immediate effect is blacking out, possibly coupled with a sharp pain surging through your body the first few times.

As you regain your senses, opening your eyes will reveal that your sight is no longer from your eyes but from the optical receptors of the Cuélebre. Any attempts to move will, instead of moving you, move the Cuélebre. If the Xana feels you are uncertain of yourself in your new situation, it will provide you with a slight calming anesthetic and whisper instructions right into your mind. This sort of control, albeit invasive in personal space, is incredibly intuitive.