The Great Convention and Trantorian Imperium Structure

 The Great Convention and Trantorian Imperium Structure

THE GREAT CONVENTION

The universal legal code created by the original Imperial Council of Twelve, and then expanded during the Great Synod which would later become expanded to become the Imperial Council, the Great Convention provided codification and a source of final authority for tenets which had been accepted for tens of thousands of years.

The history and ascendancy of The Imperial House of An is well known.

608,400 years before Concordance, The Great Battle of Trantor overthrew the last of the Chaoskampf overlords from the Kingu Dynasty of the so-called Nebiru Imperium which had ruled for over three million years, but had been in decline for nearly 200,000 years.

Following the defeat of the Kingu Tyrants, the earliest records of Trantor speak of the results of the factional civil war over who would rule the new Trantorian Imperium. An, the first Emperor of united Trantor declared Agade as the new capitol on Trantor and imposed hierarchical patrilineal rule by decree. One of Emperor An’s first decrees is known as the Laws of Succession.

Trantorian Emperor An was followed by Trantorian Emperor Anki, then Trantorian Emperor Anib, Trantorian Emperor Anshargal, Trantorian Emperor AnShar, Trantorian Emperor EnShar, Trantorian Emperor DuUru, Trantorian Emperor Lahma, Trantorian Emperor Alalu, then Trantorian Emperor Anu.

For nearly over half a million years, the Trantorian Emperors ruled by Imperial Decree without constitution or major codification of laws. The precedence set by these decrees evolved to be considered the customary laws, known as 'The Forms'. The Forms Must Be Obeyed.

49,426 years ago, Anu’s son Enlil ascended the Lion Throne and founded the Concordat Dynasty. The innovation made by The Concordance was the formal codification of laws and treaties and in particular 'The Great Convention'.

The Council of Twelve who first drafted The Great Convention, had the great foresight to foresee the needs of future Emperors and those who would rule on their behalf as The Imperium grew.

The Great Convention worked well, with only minor amendments. One such amendment in 44,876 years after the founding of the Concordance, when Enlil conceded to Marduk The Imperium Supremacy and right to decree who is the Trantorian Sovereign.

Another major amendment, was the splitting up of The Imperium Astronaut Corps, known the Igigi, to be operated as two separate entities, known as the Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement and Imperial Scouts.

44,900 years after the Concordat Dynasty. Marduk’s New Age greatly empowered the Sinisterhood to guide the policies of holdings through signs and omens. Celestial omens–planetary conjunctions, eclipses, lunar halo, stellar backgrounds were to be sufficient by themselves and godlike interventions or participation were not allowed; the heavens alone would foretell their fates.

Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement, also known as merely The Combine, was to create opportunities for increased and more efficient commerce within The Imperium. It gave Emperor, Imperial Council, Corpus and the Sinisterhood a means of controlling and profiting from the new trade from the liberalization of the Igigi.

Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement and Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus provided a secondary unifying force for The Imperium as a whole. The balance between the Imperial House and the Great Houses of the Imperial Council had relied only on military strength. Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement and Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus bound the various groups and individuals to one another financially as well as militarily, thus providing increased stability.

The upsurge of prosperity which followed for most of the worlds in The Imperium served to pacify as well as unify. Fractious planetary governments or ambitious but frustrated individuals were placated by the rapidly expanding economy the founding of Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement had launched.

THE GREAT SYNOD.

During the prosperous millennia, the social structure of The Imperium — particularly the faufreluches, the code which preserved the rigid social classes — had passed from custom into customary law. The most powerful Houses who had the most to gain from the status quo, sought to put those traditions into written law. The movement gained momentum over several years, but it was not until The Emperor threw in his own support that a decision was reached and delegates chosen for the Great Synod.

Each Great House sent a representative (not the family head, but generally a trusted relation) to the Synod. A smaller group of delegates represented the Houses Minor. The Emperor presided over the Synod personally, showing the royal house's interest in the project. Representatives from The Corpus, Combine and Sinisterhood also attended.

The first years the Synod studied in detail legal codes already in existence: the Laws of Succession, the laws of several hundred worlds, The original Great Convention, the terms of the Pax Concordance. Next, the delegates' draft proposals for the Convention were recorded, and at the end of a year, more than 7,000 agenda items had been listed and the debate was underway.

Seven years later a final draft of the Second Great Convention was ready. Its ratification was relatively simple — those whose approval was needed were already in attendance — and the remaining three years of the Synod were spent in bringing the codes of individual worlds into conformity with the new law of The Imperium.

All was not completely smooth, of course; that could not be expected from a group with such diverse interests. The Synod possessed an advantage unique among parliamentary bodies: it could expel recalcitrant delegates. During the ten years of The Synod, only five individuals were dismissed from the Synod, One of these dismissals had nothing to do with the negotiating skills of the person dismissed, a member of the House Minor delegation who was discovered to be fronting for the exiled Family.

The final document, 317 sections filling five volumes, was a masterwork of balance and careful wording. The Convention was intended to control, in most instances, but not to prohibit whenever possible. It had been criticized for excessive emphasis on proper appearances — suggesting the primacy of form over substance — is pointed throughout by the words which begin every section: "The forms must be obeyed.”

Nowhere is propriety more evident man in the Convention's most famous clause, which regulated the use of weapons of mass destruction against sentient beings. The circumstances for employment of family nuclear weapons were so minutely detailed that they took up nearly half of one volume, Acceptable means for obtaining such weaponry, for storing them, for rigging them for automatic retaliation should one House be utterly destroyed by another, were drawn out in scrupulous detail.

According to Synod records the assembled delegates took over four months to settle the issue. On its face, the rule appears humanitarian, insuring that even in time of war, people should be protected from the horrors of slow death by radiation poisoning and worlds safeguarded from the desolation of lingering contamination.

If this were the Convention's true intent, it could have been achieved very simply: An absolute ban on all family nuclear weapons — backed by both Imperial and Great House force — could have rendered such items more dangerous to keep than their worth to the Houses justified. The family nuclear weapons clause was so minutely detailed, however, because the delegates had no inclination toward nuclear disarmament; they simply wished to be certain that no less powerful House could overcome one of its betters by use of nuclear power alone. The same attitude enabled the Great Houses to wink at the existence of nuclear weapons which clearly violated the spirit, if not the all important letter, of the law.

The acceptable means of attaining victory in House-to-House combat were also carefully laid down.

Open, declared warfare was severely discouraged as a means of settling differences. It was far too wasteful and destructive of the civilian workforce, shipping, and trade that were the lifeblood of every planetary economy. And of what use to the victor was a world made unprofitable?

No, the accepted methods were far more economical. A House could challenge its enemy to a War of Assassins, which involved sending an exact number, agreed upon in advance of professional killers out to murder by stealth or various other means to be agreed upon by the participating houses. The permitted weapons were listed in the Book of Assassins, a text appended to the Convention. Once declared, a War of Assassins could have only one of two conclusions: Surrender, which left the defeated nobles alive but stripped of the contested holdings and titles, or the extermination of the House. The assassins were permitted to kill only the approved targets — no outsiders — and a Judge of the Change, appointed by the Imperial Council and The Emperor, insured that the forms were indeed obeyed.

The penalties for not obeying them were quite severe. Offenders could be fined, imprisoned, exiled, or killed, depending on their rank and the seriousness of the offense; the House responsible for the offense could be officially declared the loser of the War.

Wars of Assassins were generally declared by Houses wishing to expand their interests and not especially concerned about who they defeated to do so. For those with more personal reasons for fighting, the Convention devoted twenty-five pages to kanly, or vendetta; A Judge was appointed and rigid rules regarding procedures and choices of weaponry were given. But in kanly, the head of the House met another personally.

Such rules as those for Wars of Assassins and kanly affected only the nobility, but protected the rest of the population by keeping them uninvolved. Other sections protected the nobility from itself. There were clauses which forbade assassination of one family member by another (a time-honoured means of gaining advancement) or of any noble by one of inferior rank not recognized as an assassin. While the penalties attached could not completely deter such killings, they were at least severe enough to minimize them.

The faufreluches, the class system, was very carefully preserved.

Under extraordinary circumstances could a House Minor achieve the status of a House Major, or an individual rise above the class into which he or she was born. The age-old route of marrying upward was always available, of course. Upward mobility usually was possible only for those who could achieve exceptional success in business, war, or politics, but it was far from assured. The consent of The Emperor was needed to elevate an individual, and that of both The Emperor and the Imperial Council to elevate a House. The framers of the Convention did not wish to spark discontent by making advancement impossible, but it was vital to their social system that the process be kept difficult.

Many other areas were also carefully drawn out: regulations dealing with kidnapping and ransoms (scaled according to ranks of the hostage and the kidnapper); permissible levels of import and export; the procedures followed when a fief was transferred from one House to another.

No matter of consequence in the eyes of the delegates was neglected. There was even a clause, admittedly a brief one, which gave instructions for the proper ranking of concubines within a nobleman's house.

The Convention was by far the most comprehensive body of laws in a single document ever written.

With very minor changes, the Convention remained in effect for almost fifty millennia, enforced and supported by the elements which maintained the balance of power in The Imperium: The Imperial House, Imperial Council, Sinisterhood, The Corpus, and Combine. A House which flouted the terms of the convention openly (secret crime continued as it always had) ran the risk of being declared outlaw, stripped of its holdings, and unable to book passage on any but illegal spaceflights. "The forms must be obeyed" could as well preface the Great Convention as a whole as any of its individual parts.

THE GREAT HOUSES

Officially, the "Recognized Houses," those Houses accorded individual voting status in the Imperial Council, the so-called legislature of The Imperium. Although all of the noble houses technically belonged to the Imperial Council, a practice developed at an early date in the history of the Imperium of according only certain of the more influential houses separate voting privileges; all other, lesser houses belonged to "Circles of The Imperium,” each Circle being accorded a certain number of votes representing each sector or system in the known universe.

These circles elected representatives to sit at each session of the Imperial Council, representation being rotated on a regular basis. Different circles had differing methods of electing representatives.

Admission of houses to full voting status was by a vote of the assembled houses in session, a majority of the entire membership (not just those sitting or voting at any one session) being required for admission, voting in three successive sessions. Candidate houses must have demonstrated a minimum level of wealth (generally, grants of one planet of moderate value, or several planets of lesser status), an understanding of political processes and power and a desire to participate in the governance of The Imperium, historical growth of their houses as evidenced by grants of land or titles, and a certain eclat which is difficult to define, but which nonetheless remained the hallmark of all the houses attaining this status.

Candidate houses required sponsorship by at least three other Great Houses.

Houses Minor tend to vote for Great House status indiscriminately, the outcome of such voting rested with the Imperial Bloc, the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus, and the Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement. giving them an inordinate amount of power on this particular issue. Huge sums of money could exchange hands to enroll one new member of the Great Houses.

Expulsion from the Imperial Council required a simple majority of the members. Movement in or out of the Imperial Council was generally slow, and changed little over centuries. While the political feuding between the Houses Major had always been great, all of the Houses seemed to recognize the necessity for the Imperial Council as a civilizing element of galactic society, and as an outlet for the political frustrations which would otherwise doom the unity of the worlds. Few, therefore, were willing to carry their animosities to the point of expulsion.

The total number of votes accorded to all Imperial Council members was 1,000, divided as follows: 400 to the Imperial House, 200 to the Great Houses, 200 to the Minor Houses, 100 to the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus and 100 to the Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement. The Imperial House sat both as representatives of The Imperium and as representatives of the ruling family's House, and received in addition to the Imperial Vote the votes accorded its clan. Many of the Houses Major obtained proxies for the votes of lesser houses, or even of circles of Houses Minor; these alignments changed quickly and frequently, depending upon the issues at hand. In general, the Imperial Council acted in most matters as a counterbalance to the Imperial power, providing a check upon the tendency toward autocratic centralization despite the Imperial House directly controlling 40% of the votes.

The votes accorded each Major House depended upon its status, power, wealth, and influence in the galactic community. The maximum number of votes given any one house was ten, the least was one.

Houses might accrue more votes than the maximum allowed by obtaining proxies from other houses or circles.

Houses sometimes avoid the responsibility of voting on certain issues of controversy by granting limited proxies affecting one vote only, or all votes on a particular issue.

There was no fixed number of Great Houses; they varied in history with political and economic fortunes, and depended to some degree on the strength of the Imperium's basic institutions. At any one time, there might be as few as 35, and as many as 400 Houses Major sitting in the Imperial Council, currently there are 200.

These 200 or so Great Houses of Mutters Spiral control the votes of the Imperial Council

These Great Houses are composed of about 660,000 Duchies and about 4.2 million Marches of various sizes.

The 4.2 million Marches of various sizes make what is known as the Houses Minor.

Out of 200 billion star systems, there are about a million star systems which have more than a billion sentient beings.

About 500 Duchies have more than a trillion sentient beings, about 1300 Duchies have the trade or consumption equivalent of a trillion sentient beings.

Although definitions of sentience varies, it is estimated that there is approximately 6 quadrillion (6 million billion sentient beings) sentient beings in Mutter’s Spiral.

Mutter’s Spiral is broken down into nearly 2 billion stellar-sectors roughly 20 light-years on a side.

While Duchies and Marches vary considerably in size, the average Duchy is approximately 300 light-years in diameter. Duchies vary in size between one and 34,000 developed systems with populations between 750 million and 32 trillion sentient beings. The smallest sized Marche is 100 million sentient beings.

The official representative of each House was the Head of the Household, generally a hereditary position, although some families elected their Heads from among the family membership at large, or from certain specific lines; other clans practiced variant forms of succession.

Although many family heads attended sessions of the Imperial Council regularly, others appointed official Representatives to act in their stead; under Imperial Council law, these Representatives had the same legal status as their masters, and thus could act unilaterally in their behalf; for this reason, the practice was not widespread except in those Houses where the Head of the House was ill or suffered some other diminished capacity. Legally, the Head of the House was the House; under certain circumstances, the Head and his House could be tried by the Imperial Council for treasonous acts against the Imperium or the Imperial Council, and the Head or his House or both exiled, deprived of their titles and lands, or exterminated. There were nine such trials in the history of The Imperium; only one resulted in the execution of all family members. By Imperial Decree, the Archive Lord Protector ordered the name of this House expunged from all Imperial histories and records, although he was not successful in obliterating its memory; curiously, however, no record remains, and no trace has been found in official archives, of the crime of said House.

The Great Houses function in surprisingly similar ways, despite the diversity of their cultural backgrounds, political heritage, and philosophies of government. Most had private armies or guardsmen constituting a permanent protective force for both the noble families and their private and House properties; these standing armies sometimes rivalled the best that The Imperium had to offer. Many of the Houses had long-term transportation agreements with the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus that ensured priority shipment of goods or troops during periods of high competition or crises. Such agreements could be overridden only by The Imperium during times of supreme interstellar stress. At the heart of each House, large or small, old or new, was the economic machine that financed the private troops, interstellar commerce, luxurious living, and aspirations to power.

Most Houses use a highly centralized form of governance, based on the hereditary or elected leader, a council consisting of economic and political advisors and the commanders of the private armies, and a regular series of audiences with the populations they governed. For all practical purposes, despite the claims of The Imperium and local traditions, the Houses ruled unchallenged in their local fiefdoms, which often consisted of one or more planetary systems.

The Houses used sophisticated long range economic planning to diversify their holdings; most Houses learned from the early examples of one-market clans going bankrupt that diversity generally meant higher profits and greater stability, and followed a practice of reinvesting their money into as many different commodities as possible. Only a few Houses still rely solely upon one particular drug, product, or service as their principal means of support.

At their worst, the Great Houses represented arrogance, privilege, selfishness, greed, lust for power, repression, military adventurism, political machination, and a blatant disregard for the rights or the desires of the populations they governed. At their best, the Great Houses were a workable form of government, providing guidance for the populace, economic welfare, justice, protection from bullying, security, the promise of lifetime service with fair wages and a comfortable retirement, selflessness, and a sense of community.

Given the penchant for misusing power of all kinds, the long-term historical picture of the entire government system of which the Great Houses only represented a part is certain to show the problems inherent in the Imperial structure. The centralization of power in the hands of one man was simultaneously the greatest boon and largest flaw to the governance of the Houses. The fact that certain men or families managed to overcome the deficiencies of the system is a tribute more to their personalities or training than it is to the structure itself.

HOUSES MINOR

The popular name for the planetary gentry, those landowners, politicians, entrepreneurs, and performers who were confined by economic circumstance to one planet or planetary system. The Houses Minor were far more numerous (Combine estimates are in excess of four million) and far more diverse than the Houses Major; they cannot be described except in the broadest of terms. In general, however, they consisted of those persons or families who had reached an economic status of relative luxury compared to those around them, or who had entrenched themselves as a persistent political power in the lives of the citizens of at least a planetary continent, but who had not yet transcended planetary status. Most Houses Minor were employed by the Houses Major of the Imperial House. None of the Houses Major served others except in transitory political alliances.

The Houses Minor were represented in the Imperial Council through forty "Circles," blocks of votes representing forty arbitrarily defined sectors of Imperial space; each Circle was allocated a certain number of votes, ranging from five to twenty, based upon population, relative wealth, political status, and growth potential; and votes given each Circle were apportioned a year before each Imperial Council session.

Representatives to the Circles were elected by the Houses Minor in each sector through an elaborate system of proportional voting; each Circle determined which Houses were eligible to vote, and each circle sent to the Imperial Council three representatives, who consulted among themselves before casting that sector's vote in the Imperial Council sessions; two of the three determined the Circle's vote in a dispute. Although the Circles never organized their votes into a bloc, they tended to support the policies of the anti-Imperial faction of the Great Houses, except in those instances where their own aspirations might be jeopardized. They supported, for example, reduced qualifications for Great House status, thereby backing Imperial moves to dilute the power of the Great Houses. Hence, in a roll call vote on admittance of a new House to Great-House status, the Houses Minor would vote aye virtually unanimously.

Similarly, the Houses Minor generally voted against a blatant attempt to increase Imperial power at the expense of the high middle class which they were a member, but supported moves against the Houses Major. Since issues of this kind required lengthy examination, and passage of laws affecting the Great Houses or the Imperial power required consideration and approval in three successive Imperial Councils, few passed muster. The Imperial Council did provide a forum, however, for the airing of grievances of all kinds, and many of the Houses Minor gained a wider audience for their views through Imperial Council speeches or publications.

The Houses Minor possessed certain legal rights under Imperial law not granted to ordinary citizens, although their privileges did not approach those of the Houses Major.

The Head of a Minor House and his immediate family could not be jailed, exiled, or executed without a dial conducted by their peers; when capital charges were brought against a House Minor or its official members, three Imperial Council representatives from Circles other than that of the House being tried were selected by lot, and sat in judgment as a court of last resort, subject to the final veto of The Emperor.

The Emperor could summarily convict a House Minor when he had proof of treason, but in no other circumstances; he could also overturn a conviction of a Imperial Council court or suspend its findings, in each case malting a report to the next session of the Imperial Council concerning his rationale. Houses Minor could be convicted of misdemeanours by local courts, and fined; these fines had to be paid before the next Imperial Council session, or charges might be brought by the planetary administrators to strip the errant House of its status. As with the Great Houses, under Imperial law the Head of the House was the House under certain circumstances, and might be forced to suffer the ultimate penalty of death or exile if members of his House transgressed.

The numbers of the Houses Minor fluctuated greatly throughout history, depending primarily on economic conditions and political gamesmanship. During the Succession Civil War, many of the Great Houses were demoted to Minor House status, and many existing Minor Houses lost their economic bases, becoming ordinary citizenry. Under the strongly feudalized conditions of the Trantorian Imperium could this structure maintain itself; if the Houses Minor does not support that structure, the props (the Houses Minor) supporting it would disappear; as they saw, they would be the first to go.

FEUDAL PATTERNS OF THE IMPERIUM

While precise details of the relationships among the Imperium's most powerful forces, The Emperor, the Houses Major and Houses Minor, the Imperial Council, The Sinisterhood of Saint Bernice and the Seven Secular Saints for the Advancement of Humanity, The Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement and the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus, will always remain unknown, the fundamental feudalism of the Imperium has been established beyond all doubt.

Feudalism — a political system often regarded as primitive — was feasible in that past as a way to most efficiently govern such a widely dispersed Imperium of established planets — each with the capability to be self-sustaining while retaining unique characteristics — and a constantly expanding frontier of new planets. For an Imperium that lacked the technological developments necessary to efficiently offset the distances and differences between such planets, feudalism alone had the proper combination of stability and flexibility, centralization and decentralization, to make accommodation under one system possible. Even so, the feudal Imperium required the most delicate balance of forces, of interlocking loyalties and responsibilities, to maintain itself.

Political power, civilization itself, rested upon a tripod made up of The Emperor, his vassals, and their primary means of communication and contact — the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus.

All power was centralized in the person of The Emperor, who, in name at least, owned the Imperium. In practice, the term "Emperor" means the head of Trantorian Imperial House Anu, which established the ascendancy of the Imperial House. Although The Imperial House could be said to have reigned over the entire galaxy, it ruled only a portion of that galaxy directly. The rest of the galaxy was held in fief by individual Houses Major, any one of which could hold a large number of planetary systems in precaria from The Emperor.

Such fiefs were normally granted in perpetuity to a Great House, yet they could escheat to The Emperor in default of an heir to a House (a circumstance resulting more often from a House being forced into exile than from the failure of a genetic fine), or The Emperor could declare a fief forfeit owing to the failure of a House to fulfil its feudal obligations. Although many Great Houses predate The Imperium, and are exempt from escheat to The Emperor. Such reversions of a fief to direct Imperial control were comparatively rare, except in the case of those fiefs that carried with them exceptional wealth and/or political power.

The granting of a fief to the ruler of a House Major carried with it Imperial protection against violations of the Great Convention in House-to-House disputes, and against the threat of invasion by extra-galactic, non-human adversaries. An Imperial fief also guarantees the holder status as a House Major and thus representation in the Imperial Council, membership (although not necessarily a directorship) in HCMA, Corpus shipping privileges (contingent upon Corpus approval), and immunity from direct Imperial Interference in many cases outside of terms of the Great Convention and individual treaty.

Indirect interference, in the form of spies, official "visits" by dignitaries, and even sabotage, was constant and expected.

The granting of planetary tenure without such nominal "immunity" gave the holder a "quasi-fief" in which governmental power was shared with at least an Orta of the Imperial Janissaries — an arrangement held to be eminently unsatisfactory by most Houses Major.

In return, the recipient of a planetary fief agreed to accept the title of "vassal," swore perpetual homage and fealty to The Emperor and his descendants, and pledged yearly tithes from profits accruing to the fief, including supporting levies for the Imperial forces amounting to no fewer than one-tenth of all military conscripts for planetary armies. In addition, various feudal "aids and incidents" had gotten attached to the system over the years and were regarded as inviolable through long custom. These included "relief," basically an inheritance tax payable upon the death of a vassal and the assumption of a fief by that vassal's legal heir; the "incident" of marriage, to be paid by an heiress for the right to choose her own husband (in practice merely a wedding tax, but taken very seriously by The Imperium, as evidenced in the legal precedent when the High Council of the Imperial Council ruled that "marriage among the members of Houses Major cannot be construed otherwise than as a political and economic merger, and as such is under the direct jurisdiction of our Sublime Emperor himself"); and — most expensive of all — the right of "hospitality" or droit de gite, dreaded by all Houses Major, since to entertain The Emperor in the style to which he was accustomed could break all but the wealthiest of Houses. Fortunately, few Emperors made injudicious use of this right because of resultant food riots, Bills of Particulars laid before the Imperial Council, and successful local planetary revolutions.

Imperial feudalism differed from historical feudal systems in one very important respect: The Emperor did not rely on his feudal vassals for his soldiery. The Emperor accepted supporting levies for minor tasks such as the defence of the system and its sphere of influence and occasionally as rumoured to be cannon fodder in the training of the Imperial legions. The Emperor relied on his Janissaries who at their prime were said to each Orta was rated a match for any ten ordinary Imperial Council conscripts Legions. Combined with the knowledge that the Imperial House’s weaponry and atomics could be matched only by the combined forces of all the Houses Major, and that The Imperial House had, by virtue of its spice stockpiles, almost unlimited wealth, gave The Emperor the power to enforce his decisions if necessary, and, more importantly, the authority to expect his decisions to be carried out without enforcement.

Such authority and wealth also gave rise to an Imperial Court and bureaucracy that grew in splendour and in Solaris spent. The Imperial Palace housed not only The Emperor and his immediate relatives of the Imperial House, their servants, bodyguards, and, on a higher level, quarters for the generally ignored- but-tolerated string of aristocratic visitors with suits, petitions, diplomatic errands, and the like.

Lesser supplicants and sycophants waited out of doors. All, however, craved permission to pass beyond the plasteel and marble doors, under the sculptured arches with the Imperial legend, "Law is the Ultimate Science,” past the captive banners of defeated Great Houses, to stand within ten meters of the Golden Lion Throne, in the presence, finally, of Power itself.

The great audience hall would be crowded with Imperial bodyguards, courtiers, pages, hangers-on, but still with only a fraction of those who clamoured to get in; the audiences would seem endless, but would accommodate only a few petitioners out of the many who waited.

The Emperor, dressed in a gray Janissaries uniform with only the Imperial crest on the helm to indicate his position — to indicate, if such a blatant reminder were necessary, exactly where the Imperial power lay — would listen as each petitioner stated his name and case in almost identical words, the formulae having been established through ancient usage: "I, a Duke of a Great House, an Imperial kinsman, give my word of bond under The Great Convention....The Forms Must Be Obeyed…."

With few exceptions, members of the Imperial family did not attend the myriad social functions which gave the Court its reputation for glittering splendour. Nor is it true that behind-the scenes life consisted of perpetual orgies, feasts, and drinking bouts. The private diaries and journals of the Imperial Royal Household, still undergoing translation, indicate that Imperial duties, not privilege, held sway on Trantor.

These duties included not only the administration of the Imperial planets and the management of feudal dues, obligations, and tithes, but also the day-to-day workings of various departments and ministries. There was the Imperial Census to be attended to every ten years (requiring quite a bureaucracy of its own: no one outside its offices claimed to know the exact number of worlds under Imperial sway); the Imperial Dictionary; the Ecological, Botanical, and Zoological Research Centres; not to mention the Imperial Intelligence Agency, whose records, though available, have as of this writing still resisted translation, and innumerable other ministries and missions. The Emperor's day, excluding audiences, was a round of reports and conferences, requiring the services of a battery of secretaries and aides.

Regional and planetary courts of the Houses Major tended to ape the customs and fashions of the Imperial House. Dukes and Barons grandly held audiences, heard suits, and granted petitions all over the galaxy in imitation of their sublime overlord.

Most Great Houses granted subfiefs to vassals of their own, lords of the Houses Minor, to increase their own prestige by creating personal vassals, and to reduce the personal work and expenditure necessary to govern a system or group of systems. This process of subinfeudation could continue, with Houses Minor granting subfiefs to other Houses Minor or even private individuals (or even, in some extraordinary cases, to impoverished Houses Major), until a huge bureaucracy became necessary just to sort out who owed what obligations to whom. The fall of certain Great Houses to the status of House Minor, entailing loss of Imperial Council representation, Corpus shipping privileges, and membership in HCMA, can be traced directly to the House becoming entangled in a coil of conflicting loyalties and obligations.

Astute and unscrupulous House Minors often attempted to exploit the subinfeudation process to advance itself to the status of House Major, and many of the minor planetary intrigues and plots were designs of this nature.

The lord and lady of a planet were expected to be more than just political figures. As planetary governors, they were considered father and mother-surrogates to their people.

In addition to ensuring peace and prosperity, they set and enforced certain social standards, patterns of courtesy as it were, among their populations. In practice, this duty came down to a velvet-gloved but iron-fisted enforcement of the faufreluches class system: "A place for every man and every man in his place."

A strict hierarchy of social privilege and rank prevailed throughout the Imperium, and each member of society took care to maintain his pride of place against the lower orders, from The Emperor himself down through the Houses, the merchants, artisans, and freedmen, to peons, servants, and slaves. Mobility within the ranks was theoretically impossible, as one's status was determined at birth by the rank of the one's family and the educational opportunities open to the offspring of such a family. Official policy discouraged aspirations of upward mobility. Yet roads were open to those bold or foolish enough to try them.

Evidence of potential conditioned ability, or intelligence plus a willingness to allow one's Pyretic Conscience to be tampered with, could be a passport out of middle-class life, either legitimately through Physician School Conditioning, or not so legitimately nor so safely through some mental condition thru some renegade schools.

Psychologically safer, but physically dangerous, the most common route out of the lower classes lay through the military. Rumour would have it, that an enterprising young man could, through prowess and bravery, make his way into the elite corps of Janissaries, many have tried by means of The Emperor's supporting levies. Yet a man could rise through the ranks of many a planetary army to become a commander, a general, even a Master of Assassins.

The third way around the hierarchy of the faufreluches was financial. As new planets with new products and exports opened up, it was possible for legitimate businessmen, and their illegitimate cousins the smugglers, to make fortunes in trade: such wealth could be used to buy titles or House Minor and even House Major status through discreet negotiations in the proper quarters. The accusation of purse-nobility — that one's titles came out of one's pocketbook — was one of the deadliest insults in The Imperium, yet sources show that it was quite common origin of most noble house origins.

Whole populations have lived outside the faufreluches system, such as the Desertborn of Araxes in Mu Draconis. Another example, although possibly a legendary one (the records are fragmentary), is the planet(s?) of Tupile and the population, certainly great rumour if not in fact, that sought sanctuary there over the centuries.

The Imperial government, of course, consciously blocks all efforts to circumvent the faufreluches system.

The Imperial House had not maintained its ascendancy for so many generations by encouraging change, or even the hope of change. The feudal pyramid must appear to all members of The Imperium as if carved in stone: no movement was easy, no revolt possible. Imperial agents cultivated a persistent pessimism among the population to bolster their power base. This pessimism acted as a psychological deterrent (in addition to religious restrictions) against technological and political innovation, keeping the Imperium safely feudalist for over hundreds of thousands of years.

Those forces which could oppose The Emperor — the Imperial Council, Combine and the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus — were absorbed into the feudal pyramid, indeed, were indispensable to its stability. The Federated Great Houses of the Imperial Council had been formed, initially, to constitute a defence against The Imperium, as each Great House lived in fear of finding the Janissaries on its doorstep, perhaps disguised in another House's livery, and the Houses could fight the Janissaries only in combination.

In practice, however, the Imperial Council acted as a self-policing agency, keeping House-to-House disputes from getting out of hand, supervising changes of fief, kanly vendettas, and Wars of Assassins, enforcing the rules of the Great Convention, so The Emperor would have no need of using the Janissaries. In any emergency, the Imperial Council would act to safeguard profits, not rights, and for many thousands years the profits had gone with the Imperial House. The Regional Councils, formed by the Houses Minor in imitation of the Imperial Council, performed essentially the same function in miniature with regard to individual Houses Major.

The third leg of the political tripod was the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus, with its tremendous influence on interstellar travel and transport owed formal allegiance to the Imperial House, from whom it received its charter. Communication, travel, trade, and military operations were highly enhanced from Corpus cooperation. No Great House, dared endanger its Corpus shipping privileges through ill-advised infringements of the Pax Concordance.

The Corpus itself was a fundamentally conservative organization. To perpetuate itself, The Corpus was willing to allow rubber-stamp control over its charter by The Emperor, and to balance its power against that of the Imperial Council and any other threat to the established Imperial order.

SPATIUM TEMPUS NAVIGATIUM CORPUS

The Spatium-Tempus Navigantium Corpus is also known as the Space Navigator Corpus, NavCorp, Navigators, or merely as The Corpus. The term "Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus" was a name offered for convenience to those who it provided service for; among its members it was known as The Corpus Luminis Praenuntiantis, which may be translated "The Union of the Foreseeing Light"; its motto was Quilibet, Quolibet, Quandolibet: "Anything, anytime, anyplace."

The Corpus does not possess a monopoly on interstellar transport, however it possesses unique space-time metric engineering expertise. Other's navigate thru space, the Spatium-Tempus Navigantium Corpus navigates the essence of space-time itself; it is said that they steer the continuum itself.

The primary limitation of folding the space-time metric engineering is that quantum uncertainty makes it fatally dangerous to operate without The Corpus Navigators’ unique awareness spectrum capabilities. The innately unstable dynamic disequilibrium of the space-time metric engineering requires a special kind of transapient mind to operate and maintain.

Mere computer processing power is insufficient to handle the sheer number, variety and extent of the complex adjustments required to maintain the innately unstable dynamic disequilibrium of space-time metric engineering; it must be controlled by a transapient mind specially created and trained for the purpose of operating the space-time metric engineering.

The Navigator’s abilities derive from an inborn talent, specialized training and the consumption of massive quantities of the Araxes Nano-Crystal Cinnamaldehyde Spice (ANCCS) in a long series of near fatal overdoses under certain proprietary controlled conditions. Certain organics substances in additions to the Araxes Nano-Crystal Cinnamaldehyde Spice (ANCCS) is utilized by The Corpus for various purposes. here are methods which predate the Araxes Nano-Crystal Cinnamaldehyde Spice (ANCCS), which are more expensive and requires specialized equipment only found on Tupile and Junction.

The Wormhole Nexus run throughout The Imperium’s known space. Some are mere communications gauge wormholes; nanometres wide mouth permits communications between wormholes for near instantaneous communications. The word ‘cybernetic’ derives from the ancient Greek word for ‘steersman’. Some of Steersmen travel from node to node, transmitting their programs via the communications gauge wormholes. Other Steersmen are ‘distributed’ and are literally in more than one place at the same time, connected in real time via the communications gauge wormholes.

The Alcubierre Drive is a form of reactionless drive which creates a fold of highly curved space. By expanding the space-time metric behind the fold and contracting the space-time metric in front, the fold can be made to move without expelling propellant. The Natario version contracts space-time in the radial direction while expanding it in the axial direction, with the important difference that there is no perceptible folding of space-time.

The Alcubierre Drive can also fold the space-time metric so that is completely enclosed fold of space-time, thus allowing safe passage thru the traversable wormhole. Otherwise the shearing stress of the wormhole caustic would completely destroy any physical matter or the Visser or Hawkings radiation would reduce any matter to an ultrafine plasma of subatomic particles. There are specially made stasis chambers that would allow travel thru the wormhole caustic without the damaging effects of the gravitic shearing or the Visser or Hawkings radiation, but the travel time is substantially slower.

Like wormholes, Alcubierre Drive require negative stress energy tensor fields to maintain the fold, thus certain exotic particles and energies are required.

Certain exotic materials are required for the construction of these devices, such as magnetic monopoles, strangelet nuggets, elements with hyperdeformed nucleus and primordial micro-singularities left over from the creation of the universe. The exotic materials are only available in a few obscure locations or thru difficult creation or extraction environments. Some slightly less rare exotic materials such as nanoclusters are available in some areas.

The early history of the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus predates the Trantorian Imperium and some consider the members of The Corpus to predate even the Pre-Trantorian Imperium Chaoskampfs of the Nebiru Imperium, and even the Great Lyran Terraformers who came before the Nebiru. The earliest known records of the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus, coincides with the earliest records of the Trantorian Imperium.

Prior to the Trantorian Age, The Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus possessed a network of traversable wormholes the spanned thru most sectors of the Mutter’s Spiral Galaxy.

The motives of The Corpus remain unclear, thought to be related to their eternal conflict with some nebulous rivals which are typically spoken of in mythical terms. Others consider the motives to be more mundane, that The Corpus wished to expand its range and needed the resource potential which the Trantorians now inherited with their victory over the Nebiru Chaoskampfs. There are no recorded specifics.

The Imperium House of Anu saw that to convert from a mere interstellar Empire to a true Galactic Imperium, on a more stable and long lasting basis, they needed more than just the skill of their soldiers and the might of their ships. The Corpus represented the means to expand the reach of The Imperium.

The advantage to the Trantorian Imperium was clear. The Mutter’s Spiral Traversable Wormhole Network allowed the fastest and least expensive way to move cargo and passengers throughout the galaxy without having to traverse the actual space in between the two nodes. The Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus possessed the singular space-time metric engineering skills required to build, operate and maintain said Traversable Wormhole Network.

The Mutter’s Spiral Traversable Wormhole Network maintained and operated by The Corpus had many advantages over the smaller scale Alterian Stargate Network, primary being that The Corpus could move its enormous highliners which are over 4 kilometres long and over 250 metres in diameter.

The Corpus would not interfere with the affairs of the Trantorians and made every possible effort to keep their Eternal Conflict from flowing over into Trantorian affairs. The Corpus would maintain its extraordinary secrecy.

Originally operating out of Tupile, The Corpus recruited gifted citizens of The Imperium to work in their lower ranks.

To be of The Corpus is to transcend your humanity, leaving behind the petty attachments and appetites of the flesh. Those who still seek sentimental attachments will never be able to transcend the self and become true navigators of the continuum.

The non-humanoid bodies of The Corpus is said to be a side effect of the final transformation, although some claim the higher level navigators were originally non-humanoid in nature.

The Corpus is run by Transcendent Navigators and Steersmen, but most of its affairs are conducted by pre-transcended beings.

Not all members of The Corpus are transformed into Navigators, legions of pre-transcended beings and mechanized drones and synthetic thralls carry out tasks on behalf of The Corpus.

The Alcubierre Drive and the Wormhole Termini Nodes can only be navigated by a fully transcended Corpus Navigator, but normal frigates and ships are used within the systems and piloted by pre-transcended beings.

The Corpus often contracts people outside of The Corpus to perform various tasks.

As more Imperium citizens joined their ranks as adepts, The Corpus increased its involvement in the affairs of The Imperium, but mostly it remained aloof and conducted itself neutrally concerning the affairs of Great and Minor Houses, except when those affairs came into conflict in relation to The Imperium itself.

Despite several great Cellarion tragedies, The Corpus continues to employ legions of semi-autonomous drones to insulate the actual steersmens and upper stage navigators from the day to day affairs of dealing with outsiders and to operate in hazardous conditions..

The Corpus's hundreds of billions of reconnaissance missions represented an unparalleled knowledge of the Galaxy. Yet it was limited, as The Corpus rarely left the confines of their highliners or frigates.

Seeing this limitation, the Trantorian Imperium created the Great Financial Synod which decided to divide The Imperium’s ancient Igigi Astronaut Corp into two separate organizations, the Imperial Scout Service and the Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement.

The few years following the close of the Great Financial Synod, which had given rise to HCMA and the Trantorian Imperium bargaining sessions in which a host of details — commercial areas, product rights, monetary exchange, tariffs, schedules, transport costs and priorities — were haggled over until Pax Trantoria Agreement was achieved. These sessions involved the newly created HCMA directors and the growing number of off-world Corpus agents.

THE COMBINE

The Honourable Combine for the Mercantile Advancement (HCMA) is usually thought of as merely an economic entity. But the degree to which it was created by political and military forces, sustained by them, and in turn maintained those powers, is a far more important side of HCMA. HCMA was a creation of The Imperium. Some people consider HCMA's creation to marked the beginning of the modern Imperium, and became one of its chief elements. HCMA and The Imperium were as inseparable as the Imperium and the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus, or The Imperium and the Great Houses.

Before there was a single ruling power among the inhabited worlds, there was no single economic organization, such an organization would not have been possible. As virtually every state had access to interplanetary trade and limited interstellar travel, none could be excluded from trade at any level. Trade between the planets, systems and the stars was essentially anarchic and space piracy was common.

Unable to compete with the ultra low cost Imperium Wormhole Nexus, trade without The Corpus at interstellar or intersystem levels was comparatively slow and extremely expensive. The economic forces governing trade of this sort resembled the ancient great caravan routes which had sprung up on various planets with rich, widely separated cultures.

While many of these routes dealt with different commodities, they had certain aspects in common. They dealt only in the most expensive and least bulky items available. Luxury goods such as spices, jewellery, luxury clothing materials became the stuff of the caravan trading which was all that connected many worlds before the coming of the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus and subsequently the Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement.

The Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus’ construction, maintenance & operation of The Trantorian Imperium Traversable Wormhole Nexus and The Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement’s management of commerce were both chartered for mutual benefit. A Financial Synod was convened including representatives of the proposed Combine and Corpus. The Imperial Council and the Imperial House concluded that The Imperium had much to gain from the formal creation of The Corpus and HCMA to take full advantage of the advent of swift, easy interstellar travel and trade created by The Imperium Wormhole Nexus.

The news of the age-controlling substances controlled by The Imperium served only to enhance the feelings of the feudal states of the Imperial Council toward The Corpus and HCMA and the return of extensive trade. They were aware of their vulnerability to the effects of trade; now they had an added reason to wish to control both HCMA and The Corpus. It gradually became apparent that The Corpus,, HCMA, and the feudal houses had interests that ran in tandem. All wanted the increased trade, but only in a HCMA fashion which would permit each of the institutions to survive. As long as The Corpus itself remained a secretive, closed group, in control of the primary lanes of commerce, it cared little what political systems survived on the worlds they served. The feudal houses, on the other hand, cared about the economic benefits of trade, and just as deeply about the possible socio-political effects of cultural interaction.

They wished to enjoy the former, without suffering from the latter. For years neither The Corpus nor the feudal powers could find a way to accomplish all their aims.

One of the problems was the ambitions of the most powerful Great Houses that still harboured such ambitions saw in The Corpus an opportunity to elevate themselves if they could seize control of this new means of trade. Thus threatened, The Corpus refused to deal with many of the said Great Houses, and compromise between the feudal powers in general and The Corpus proved impossible for years. Both The Corpus and The Emperor proved themselves skilled negotiators. While the Financial Synod remained unable to resolve its problems, matters were never permitted to deteriorate so that the gathering broke up.

The deadlock was broken only after two and a half years by the brilliant stroke of Emperor and his chief financial officer. During the latter half of the third year when it began to appear that the deadlock might destroy the Financial Synod, The Emperor called the delegates into full session and presented to them the plan for the formation of HCMA.

Neither the surviving records of HCMA, nor what has now been discovered and translated of the Imperial histories, permit a full understanding of the structure of HCMA, but some outline is possible.

It seems certain that the plan proposed to the delegates envisioned the creation of a development corporation which would have control a great deal or interstellar trade. One percent of the gross profits from these trades would be collected each year and placed in a fund to be distributed to the members of HCMA on the basis of the shares they held in the corporation. Such distributions would occur only after deductions from the fund for any projects for the advancement of existing trade or the development of new markets. Membership in HCMA was limited to the feudal governments.

The question of the distribution of shares naturally became one of great moment. Perhaps the master HCMA stroke in this arrangement was assigning The Emperor originally had only 25% of the shares. In granting The Emperor only two-fifths of the shares of HCMA, he placed the Imperial House in a position where it would have to depend on many other of the feudal powers if it were to control the corporation.

It was viewed to all at the time that this percentage was far less than The Emperor had every right to, as His military power was the equal of the combined forces of the Imperial Council in some respects, particularly atomics, and the benefits which flowed to him from levy funds and other taxes made him an economic power more than equal to half of the Imperial Council's states at that time.

30% to the Imperial House, 25% to the Great Houses, 25% to the Minor Houses, 10% to the Spatium Tempus Navigatium Corpus and 10% retained by the management of The Honourable Combine for Mercantile Advancement.

Originally, the directors of HCMA were the members of the Imperial Council High Council. After the first few centuries of operation, however, the composition of the board was changed to reflect the distribution of economic power among the Great Houses. Sometime toward the end of the first millennium after The Corpus formation, membership on the board of directors of HCMA was offered to any house which did more than a certain level of trade through The Corpus in a Standard year. Directors naturally voted their own shares in the meetings of the board, and also those of any house that wished to grant them a proxy.

The plan seemed more than fair with respect to the participation of The Emperor and had the great advantage to the Emperor of cementing the power of the feudal powers vis-a-vis the remaining non-feudal states in the galaxy. In closing interstellar trade to non-feudal states, The Emperor offered an unequalled opportunity to the feudal powers to remove one of their most persistent worry.

Not only did such an agreement offer the chance of restriction of these governments to their own worlds, it also, as The Emperor's plan was organized, strengthened the very states that were most threatened by nonfeudal powers. The weakest feudal states were generally those that were closest geographically to non-feudal governments, those that had to compete on an almost daily basis with differing societies.

As brilliant as the structure of the proposal was, it would have failed if the participants had not been able to convince themselves that their shares in the corporation were fair. The shares were based on their trade without their systems over the past ten years. Such a sharing arrangement had some obvious advantages, one of the most compelling being the stipulation that once a government achieved membership, it could never fall below one share in fee corporation. Thus, though shares in HCMA were to be redistributed, on the basis of trade done, once every 125 years, participants would enjoy some benefit from off-planet trade even if they could no longer participate. The governments were all aware that natural resources were not permanent.

It was in this connection that the Imperial financial intelligence system proved its worth to The Emperor and demonstrated its abilities to the governments. The fiscal information for each of the participants was so accurate and so complete that it was clear to many of the states that The Emperor had been aware for many years of extensive tax fraud on their part. Others discovered to their surprise that internal corruption or inefficiency had been robbing them of a proper return on their own resources. The figures shocked some more than others, some pleasantly and others unpleasantly, but few escaped unscathed. When the time came for debate on the disposition of shares, many negative arguments were instantly ended.

Since The Emperor was indeed as brilliant and cunning as he was now suspected of being, he had not depended on the unprepared reaction of The Financial Synod to his proposal, He has tilled the soil of The Financial Synod as the most assiduous of husbandmen. For months before the proposal was made to the whole Financial Synod, a series of meetings had made clear to various of the feudal powers the advantages accruing to them. The most powerful of the Great Houses had been approached, first individually, and then in concert. The weaker of the feudal powers, which would become agents for the nonfeudal states, had been dealt with in regional groups. After several months of arguments concerning matters of detail, the charter was accepted. Once the approval of the Financial Synod had been secured for the charter, the vote of the Imperial Council was a foregone conclusion, since the membership in the two bodies so overlapped. A meeting of The Imperial Council was necessary for the formality of a vote, however; this was accomplished in a matter of months after the Financial Synod disbanded.

The creation of HCMA, which limited membership to feudal states which controlled at least a planet, created the connection between Great Houses and virtual complete control of off-world trade.

Heretofore there had been several possible ways in which one might have defined a Great House; now one constant factor could be used. This new factor not only served to define the Great Houses, it also vastly strengthened them. The resources now available to a Great House through its shares in HCMA produced, within a century, such a substantial increase in the income of most of the participating houses that the possibility of a successful revolt all but disappeared.

More than this, the entire economy of the Imperium entered a period of rapid growth that lasted more than ten centuries. This commercial expansion naturally was accompanied by conquest; the Imperium expanded until it controlled all the habitable planets available to the navigation abilities of The Corpus.

The nature of the trade of these early centuries is not easy for us to grasp. Living as we do in a universe from which so many of the commodities in which our ancestors dealt daily have vanished, the normal commerce of this period seems the wildest extravagance.

Such trade was supported with ease by the expanding economy of the Imperium after the formation of HCMA.

The rapacity of the exploitative economic practices of the time could be overlooked since the steady acquisition of new worlds not only replaced the losses but added to the available resources of the system.

But as trade began to penetrate to the limits of travel, and the expansion of the economy began to slow, the commercially weaker members of the Imperium began to suffer.

Naturally, the first difficulties came in the financial aspects of their societies, but in the end this spread to the political sphere as well. Thus, some seven centuries after the formation of HCMA, and two centuries after the economy's rate of expansion began to slow, we can discern the first substantial changes in the membership of the participating partners of HCMA.

But a far more important indication of internal unrest in the political systems of the members of HCMA can be inferred from the percentages of the vote exercised by The Emperor. Having begun with only 25% of the votes of the corporation, within the proceeding twenty centuries The Imperium had increased its share to 30%, and with the votes of those members whom they controlled, The Emperors commands in fact closer to 40% of the partners' votes, While still short of an outright majority, the Great Houses could not fail to see the meaning of the trend. Since The Emperor could almost always persuade at least 15% more of the partners to his arguments, in almost all instances the partners affirmed the position of The Imperial House.

What we have of the records of the meetings of HCMA are a testimony to the stability of the worlds of the Imperium.

There is a Steady growth in the power of The Emperor in the meetings of the Directorate, The majority of shares of all defeated houses are taken over by the Imperial House by escheat. The Emperor and his supporters never controlled more man 60% of the vote, and The Emperor himself never more than 40%. In addition, while there was a continuing turnover in the membership from century to century, the change was never more than 10%,.