- Home system: Ankielos (Sector B96)
- Homeworld: Shadir (866AACC)
“Service to the State. Embrace the great Shadari destiny to control the fate of humanity.”
Imperial Principle
Of all the Great Kingdoms in the Array, currently the Shadar Empire has the most territory, the most citizens, and the largest fleet. At the core of their power is the Golden Braid, a dense and resource-rich area within Shadari space. The Empire administers thousands of worlds in a large region of the Array, 7 levels deep. The Shadari are strongly against psionics, having banned them within their borders.
Founding
The Shadari originated in another part of the Array, the world of Asha’ad, before setting out in a colony ship to escape their dying sun. Thousands of years ago, they arrived in the Golden Braid, and settled on Shadir in 1912 a.r. They established their new home quickly, taming the ferocious wilds of Shadir, which supported both indigenous and outsider life. From the beginning, the new kingdom of Shadar was ruled with an iron hand. The dangerous nature of their new home planet required discipline and determination just to survive.
Ambition was always part of their cultural DNA. The kingdom of Shadar became the Shadar Empire soon after they acquired jump 2.5, and began their centuries-long wars of expansion. This would put them in direct conflict with the Ushanti, and lead to a strong cultural antipathy towards psions.
The Golden Braid
The Golden Braid is a dense part of the Array, once contested by as many as 21 smaller kingdoms. Before their collapse, the First Dominion saw the Braid as dangerous, with multiple kingdoms of TL-11 and higher that posed threats, and so they sought other routes around the Braid. Within are seven smaller groupings, jump-1.5 networks, each of ten or more stars. These are distributed roughly evenly along the length of the Golden Braid, winding down through four levels, touching on 20 sectors. Between these groupings, the Braid has a more typical density of stars, but still with jump routes that allow easy traffic for jump-2.5 and higher. In a sense, the Golden Braid is a sub-cluster within the Array, but this is an oversimplification. The boundary between Braid and the surrounding space is very fuzzy, with debate about which systems should be included.
Just in the Golden Braid alone are hundreds of star systems, and Wars within it were frequent until the Shadari unified the region in 5662, first repulsing an invasion from a nearby kingdom, then launching a thousand year expansion that has only in the last few hundred years begun to slow, concurrently with their admission to the Compact.
During their rise, the Shadar Empire fought many wars, even before they faced the Ushanti. The Golden Braid had more than 20 kingdoms at one point, and not every war was an easy one. So, while the Morathi have the best soldiers, the Shadar have the most experience in interstellar war of all the Great Kingdoms.
Psionics and the Purge
There had been informal psions and psionic traditions throughout the Golden Braid, even in the early kingdom of Shadar. One of the Braid kingdoms in particular was Vicitatus, home of the Vicitat, who used psionics extensively in their culture.
When the Shadar declared the Empire in 5368, the Ushanti had already been destabilizing the Golden Braid for generations, preparing it to be subsumed, and this activity was exposed in a very public way by early Com-Int operatives. This led to most kingdoms throughout the Braid viewing the Ushanti with distrust, even while some still faced a military threat from the Empire.
Eventually, an attempt by the Union to foster a psionic coup in the Empire in 5486 led to the Great Purge (still celebrated as a national holiday), in which thousands of psions were rounded up and either surgically neutralized or executed. Ever since, the Shadari have had a strong antipathy towards psionics, even going so far as to push for a fourth Edict (with no chance of adoption) that bans psionics within the Compact.
The Shadari persecution of psions would eventually drive several cultures, who were not willing to abandon psionics, out of the Golden Braid, to other parts of the Array.
Along with Shadari antipathy towards psionics has come a major commitment in resources and scientific talent to developing the most advanced anti-psionic measures in the Array. In addition to more dedicated devices, they have innovated the feather, a technology incorporated into ship design that can direct ship’s power to anti-psionic defences.
Shadar Intelligence
The Shadar Empire has the best funded and largest intelligence services in the Array, and they are actually embedded in the control structure of the Empire, along with the military. They have three branches of intelligence, and the three don’t always cooperate effectively.
- MIS – The Ministry of Imperial Security is the intelligence organization that gathers information acquired by the other services, analyzes it, processes it, and offers it in usable form to the leadership. The Minister is a cabinet-level position, always held by a duke or archduke. Currently, Archduke Ahadas Namond heads the MIS, and has instituted reforms aimed at more effectively coordinating the efforts of the ISB and Com-Int with those of the Compact.
- ISB – The Imperial Security Bureau is responsible for keeping the largest kingdom in the Array secure, and for enforcing the interplanetary laws within the Empire. They have three divisions: Amber (law enforcement), Onyx (internal security) and Sapphire (intelligence gathering). These agents are better coordinated with other divisions than they are with Com-Int, or with Ministry agents.
- Com-Int – The Combined Military Intelligence Service is a branch of the military, with their own funding and command structure. Com-Int predates the founding of the Empire, and its operatives are likely to see action in the field, unlike ISB agents. A few elite Com-Int personnel are drawn to careers as Sokun.
In the Present
Not every corner of Imperial space is content. From time to time an actual uprising must be put down. But of course the Throne has the real power, with their intelligence services, and their control along the Golden Braid.
In the last hundred years, partly in response to the Empire’s moderation and membership in the Compact, a movement has risen up in Shadar space, called the New Road. They want to restore the Empire’s ‘greatness’, when they were pre-eminent in the Array militarily. The New Road seeks to supplant the Emperor with one who will militarize the State, assert Shadar’s primacy over all other nations, and extend their reach to the farthest corners of the Array. This vision attracts a small but zealous group of adherents. Some Senators are sympathetic to the cause, though they would never claim the identity of the New Road publicly. Extreme members of the movement have even resorted to terrorism.