Lothriad

The Grand Conclave is the ruling body, with thirty-four Chairs seated on the great Bench in a Conclave arena within the palace ziggurat of Vedatharad on Padmurak. Each Chair has a high granite back, arranged to either side of the Lothriad on its great throne. Each of the hundred thousand colony worlds is ruled by its own local conclave, which nominates one member to represent it to the Grand Conclave. Party officials are nominally elected by the people but in practice appointed from on high. Decisions are made by "unanimous consent." Chairs must request the Voice by majority vote before making any unsanctioned statement. The Conclave's stated long-term purpose is to dissolve itself once the Lothriad is perfected.

The Conclave formally abolished individual identity, replacing personal pronouns with functional descriptions -- "the delegate," "a worker," "a man" -- retaining only the archaic second-person pronoun "dya" (you) as a legal form for singling out the accused. The word "vinatva" means guilty; "panacca" means confess. The state maxim is "the good of all is the good of each." All sanctioned speech consists of quotations from the Lothriad, a single permitted codex governing all speech and conduct, with only one permitted way to express hunger, pain, or requests.

The ruling class are the pitrasnuks, who wear identical gray clothing with a black star of government service. Below them are the zuk workers, who wear gray coveralls and live in blockhouse hives called vuli around the perimeters of the domed cities. Zuks are denied personal names and are collectively referred to as the People. Officials communicate through earpieces that feed them approved phrases from the Lothriad in real time. The Lothriad's stated goal is a world without masters or gods, though in practice the pitrasnuks govern by different rules than the zuks.

The Grand Conclave attempted to introduce engineered gender-neutral humans into the population as part of its ideological program, but the zuk population rejected them. The Navkaburo serves as the science ministry, suspected of studying sensory mechanisms for telepathy and psychokinesis.

The Conclave Guard operates as both city security and secret police, staging false rebel attacks attributed to "liberalists" or "bahovni" to generate popular support for the Party. Guards operate in matte-black armor and armored vans. A separate formal service wears decorated gray and red. The Commonwealth maintains a substantial fleet and ground forces, with sufficient military hardware to survive a war with the Sollan Empire if Imperial attention is divided. Military freighters under Lothrian control deliver approximately two thousand human bodies per ship to the Cielcin near Padmurak's moon. The Commonwealth has blocked Imperial expansion westward, pushing Imperial settlers into the Centaurine by way of Gododdin. The Rasan Belt -- a hundred-light-year-wide no-man's-land along the Sagittarius -- formerly served as a neutral zone between the two powers since the Persean Wars.

The Commonwealth's armies have swept across the Rasan Belt in force, opening a second front against the Sollan Empire and besieging Imperial colonies in the Upper Sagittarius and Jaddian territories. At Numara, the Lothrians deployed approximately 1.2 million soldiers -- primarily nowoyukni clone soldiers, hermaphroditic new-men built using stolen Jaddian genetic praxis. Among the nine hundred captured or killed, one hundred seventeen distinct genotypes were identified, the rest being copies. The Lothrian clone soldiers have wide hips, broad shoulders, modified anatomy, and gray skin. They employ Cielcin boarding tactics, including breaching fuel containment on enemy ships.

The Jaddian ambassador to the Grand Council accuses the Commonwealth of obtaining access to Cielcin-style interfleet communication via Extrasolarian telegraphs. Hadrian fears the Lothrian armies could force the Jaddians to recall their clone armies from the eastern front to defend their home. The Lothrians are burning Jadd itself, lighting whole worlds ablaze. Hadrian gives Olorin the Darklight weapon in hopes it will turn the tide against the Lothrian assault.

The Commonwealth spread across the upper Sagittarius Arm, establishing more than a hundred thousand settled worlds and blocking Imperial expansion westward.

The Persean Wars led to a trade embargo between the Commonwealth and the Sollan Empire that persists to the present day. The Rasan Belt was established as a neutral zone between the two powers.

The Commonwealth's broadcasts blame liberalist revolutionaries or the Empire for domestic shortages, though Imperial intelligence suspects the liberalists may be fabricated propaganda used to justify repression. The Commonwealth practiced mass disappearances: families, entire hives, and individuals taken by the Conclave Guard -- some to reeducation camps such as Everfrost Station, some to offworld labor colonies.

Three generations ago, under the influence of Iovan, the Grand Conclave agreed to sell its own citizens off-world to the Cielcin in exchange for protection from being consumed. The Commonwealth effectively became a suzerain of a Cielcin Prince. Argyris served as the Conclave's agent in facilitating this arrangement.

Emperor William XXIII sent Hadrian as apostol to Padmurak to secure military support. Hadrian uncovered the Conclave's secret. The Conclave Guard attacked Hadrian disguised as revolutionaries. The Sollan embassy on Padmurak was liquidated and the Tamerlane claimed to have been captured. Hadrian publicly accused the Conclave Chairs of complicity.

The Lothrian alliance with the Cielcin was confirmed: the Commonwealth supplied ships and human captives to the Cielcin near Padmurak. Governor-General Dorr observed that the Cielcin lie to the east in Norma while the Lothrians encircle from the north and west, with ready food supplies.

The Jaddians reported Lothrian attacks on their border worlds over the preceding half century.

The Commonwealth declared openly for the Cielcin and crossed the Rasan Belt in force, assailing Jaddian and Imperial territories. At Numara, approximately 1.2 million Lothrian clone soldiers engaged allied forces. The Monarch of Latarra sought peace with the Sollan Empire partly to resist the Lothrian threat.

The Lothrians are burning Jadd itself, lighting whole worlds ablaze. Hadrian gives Olorin the Darklight weapon in hopes it will turn the tide against the Lothrian assault, but fears the Jaddians will soon be caught between hammer and anvil if it is not.

Iovan -- the figure who brokered the original deal with the Cielcin three generations prior.

Argyris -- agent of the Conclave who facilitated the trafficking of citizens to the Cielcin.