No political drama is complete without a litany of organizations which are trying to subvert or destroy the status quo for their own gain. Here you'll find primers on all of the factions that will be present in the universe of Against Her Word.
The Volnic Academy of Applied Theoretics was at one point the most prestigious institute of technology within the whole of the Empire. Founded by the most brilliant scientists from the Volnic Research Directorate under the authority of former emperor Akren Trell, they served the public interest for many years creating the first prototypes of some of those most advanced technologies in Imperial society in the modern day.
Transferential energy shields, early iterations of the Governance AI that fuels the bureaucracy of the Volnic culture, the first antigravity systems with an early form of acclivity technology. Some of their brightest even lent a hand in forging the darkest hour in Imperial history: Constructing the planet-cracking Cascade Bomb that broke the surface of the planet Exos and killed nearly its entire population.
In the wake of such events, the horrified members of the Academy brought their grief and trauma for having participated in genocide to their founder. Unsure of how to progress, he turned to his own pet project: a prediction engine capable of aggregating massive amounts of data to accurately foretell the future.
The machine predicted with one-hundred percent certainty that if the members of the Academy of Applied Theoretics remained within the Empire, that they would be called upon to inflict greater trauma upon the peoples in the Imperial Dominion. They would be reduced from social visionaries to horrific armorers. Part of the ever-growing, ever-turning Imperial war machine.
The board voted unanimously to secede the Academy from the Empire following this prediction. To avoid reprisal from a possessive regime, they deployed a first-generation transposition technology to warp the campus of their Academy far away from the Volnic homeworld. No one knows for certain if the great minds who disappeared that day survived the trip.
Notable characters:
None
“Where you are, we will be too.”
The CLF was borne out of the need to stand and fight for your culture. As the Volnic Empire expanded unchecked and out of control, they attempted to establish a fortress world on the planet Calador. Known for its relatively soft composition, the planet was easy to dig down into and establish vast networks of factories and military complexes underneath the surface, while above gargantuan defense cannons were erected to protect the planet from external invasion.
What the Volnics didn’t expect, however, was an uprising from within. After the ascension of former Volnic Emperor Velan Trell, Caladoran Representative Heras Calanthe identified his weak policies and lax attitude toward governance as the vulnerability they needed to break themselves free. After an impassioned speech by Calanthe, defying the Emperor in the middle of the Open Council, the Caladorans rose up in a coordinated series of strikes against the occupying Volnics. Running them off-planet before the work of fortification could be completed.
In the time between then and now, they’ve finished the work the Volnics started years ago. Using their own weapons, their own production facilities, and fortified subterranean cities against them. Withstanding and pushing back attack after attack by the Volnics. Organizing an underground resistance all throughout the Dominance to bring down the Volnic Empire one world at a time, starting with their nearest neighbor: the planet Enda.
Today the CLF stands as an aspirational symbol for throwing off the yoke of Volnic assimilation. Defying the ever-crushing grip that would squeeze all that is useful to them out of a people and leave what remains twisted and broken. Everywhere the Volnics are, so they shall be too.
Notable characters:
None
“By the right of our ancestors, we lay claim to our future.”
The Volnic Empire is a belligerent interstellar constitutional monarchy originating from the planet Inos. A hostile and inhospitable place with a highly radioactive surface and deep cavern systems below where the Inii native to this planet originally lived in the centuries before surface construction was viable.
Several generations ago, the planet-locked Volnics made contact with an interstellar republic known as the Auriat who granted them interstellar spaceflight technology and incorporated them into their body of peoples. Unsatisfied with the democratic methods of the Auriat, the monarchic Volnics turned on them in a surprise attack that resulted in a years-long war which saw the Auriat crushed and the Volnics elevated to the status of being the eminent force in their galactic neighborhood.
After deposing her father, the current Empress Yonatevari Trell finds herself split between two necessary imperatives: socialist reforms to pull the power of government away from cabals and corporations within the Open and Closed Councils–even those which helped put her into power–and trudging wars stretching further and further out into the frontier of the Imperial Dominance in the name of bringing more resources into the Empire to fuel their expansive social welfare systems.
Notable characters:
Kitlia Steele
Tacyn Ornala