Teyan Dominion

"Our galaxy is harsh. Our struggle has been great. But we have built an empire that will never fall! For the Dominion, and for the Triangulum Galaxy!"

- Empress Vaera Faendras II

The Teyan Dominion is the Triangulum Galaxy’s foremost political, military and economic power. Forged in the crucible of war against its xenophobic, alien predecessor, the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate, the Teyan Dominion rose from the ashes of conflict to quickly amass power, technology, and influence across the galaxy, becoming the overlord and protector of several other interstellar powers.

Characterised by an imperialistic outlook toward the rest of the galaxy, an omnipresent military, and a highly pervasive intelligence agency, the Teyan Dominion nonetheless affords its citizens, and the citizens of the client states under its rule, plenty of personal freedoms. An abundance of essential goods motivated by a free market capitalist system can be found deep within the Dominion’s inner-workings, providing for the needs of its immense populace.

Pelx-Cradonian Oppression
The first seeds of the Teyan Dominion were planted during the times of the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate. The Mandate actively worked to disenfranchise and enslave xenos populations, including the then disunited teyan populations. Attacks of teyan colonies and vessels laid the groundwork for unifying the teyan species under the Dominion, as noble families joined together to consolidate their power and reinforce their defences against the threat of the Mandate.

The early feudal alliance began to form around the teyan homeworld and modern Dominion capital, Taylos. Under the leadership of Royal House of Aelordas, the teyan began to strike back against the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate, causing several severe blows to the galactic tyrant.

Invasion of Taylos
Threatened by the potential of the teyan to stand against them, the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate responded with force to the forming Dominion, clamping down on the potential for a unified xenos population to fight against them. An immense fleet of battleships appeared above Taylos, supported by a fleet of carriers, launching a heavy bombardment of the surface.

After hours of indiscriminate bombardment on the surface, the Mandate launched its ground invasion, using brutal aggression and overwhelming force to route the local defensive armies and crush all opposition. The teyan quickly abandoned traditional warfare and took to using guerrilla tactics against the occupation force, now flying the colours of the House of Aelordas under the banner of the fully consolidated but occupied Teyan Dominion.

Teyan Uprising
The fledgeling Dominion government-in-exile began to organise a rebellion against the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate almost as soon as Taylos was set under occupation. Encouraging civilians to harass Mandate authorities, and supplying the civilian population of Taylos with weaponry, the government-in-exile soon began guerrilla raids on Mandate military bases, stealing weaponry, supplies, and vehicles. After thirteen months of raids and revolts, a full-blown rebellion occurred in response to Mandate death-squads beginning to massacre civilians in the streets, beginning an attempted purge of the teyan people.

The rebellion was quick to overwhelm the Mandate's occupation force, who had only been dealing with guerrillas and minor outbreaks of anti-mandate violence. The teyan, now united in their rebellion by the Mandate's attempt to exterminate them, quickly overwhelmed the Mandate's forces, capturing the planet over the course of a single planetary rotation.

Rise of the Dominion
Proclaiming Emperor Hulthas Aelordas I the First Emperor of the Teyan Dominion with the end of the Teyan Uprising on Taylos, the Teyan Dominion was quick to consolidate its power and move to secure its borders. Lacking the industrial might of the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate, who now loomed over Taylos as an ever-present threat the early Dominion claimed the wrecks of several Mandate battleships lost in the Invasion of Taylos, refurbishing and repainting them to the now-iconic red and grey colours used by all Dominion vessels in the Local Group.

Despite the threat represented by the Mandate to the young Teyan Dominion, the people of Taylos were able to take advantage of much of the abandoned Mandate infrastructure left behind after the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate was forced to pull out of Taylos due to rising casualties. Much of this technology was able to be repurposed by the Dominion, providing immense boosts to the economic growth of Taylos.

Early Expansion
Under the Aeldoras Dynasty, the Teyan Dominion began to quickly grab new space and territory using repurposed Mandate battleships to extend its influence and bring old teyan colonies back into its fold. Despite the colonies and settlements that shared the Akuri System with Taylos being eager to reunite with the teyan mother-world for both economic and military benefits, those lost colonies further from the fledgeling Dominion's capital were less willing to give up their independence, forcing the Aeldoras Dynasty to engage in a series of invasions and combat engagements to bring rebellious teyan nation-states in line for integration into the Dominion's rapidly expanding territories. This conflict of reunification was later known as the Reconquest of the Colonies.

Collapse of House Aeldoras
Although house Aeldoras under Emperor Hulthas was successful in reclaiming teyan-colonised worlds for his fledgeling Dominion, the Dominion's aggressive expansion and increasing territories brought with it significant problems of management that the royal family was unable to cope with. As the government grew in size and scope, the more bureaucracy it accreted, the easier it became for things to slip between the cracks and the difficulty of accomplishing basic tasks increased.

As the growing mass of the teyan government weighed down the efforts of the royal house, it eventually collapsed outright, the Emperor being found dead on the morning of December 6th, 5362 BC. With the Emperor's death and no known heirs to the throne, a several-month long power struggle, later known as the Great House War began between the noble houses, leading to a seven-year period in which the Teyan Dominion lacked a head of state, its government running only on inertia.

Rule of House Faendras
As the inter-house conflict between noble families came to an end, the survivors climbed from the rubble of the power struggle to find House Faendras has come to the throne, with Emperor Aergiir Faendras I taking to the throne in 5361 BC.

Although there was still conflict and rebellion for some time from the noble houses from the colonies, crackdowns against rebellious governors and nobles soon ended the conflict permanently, leading to the continued rule of House Faendras, which has remained unbroken since.

Fall of the Mandate
In 5222 BC, the Teyan Dominion allied with the other victims of the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate to fight another war, the Pelx-Cradonian Rebellion - this conflict, motivated by revenge against the xenophobic and genocidal empire was primarily led by the Teyan Dominion, who acted as not only its largest military contributor but its most technologically advanced and strategically competent as well.

Territory
The Teyan Dominion’s direct territorial reach is considerably vast; so massive that even the Dominion’s own government is unsure how many stars lie within the limits of its space. What is known is that over 300 habitable planets lie within the direct control of the Dominion, and another 560 lay within indirect control through the many vassals and protectorates of the galactic superpower.

Inner Dominion Space
The homogenous heartland of the Teyan Dominion, Inner Dominion Space is ironically not its deepest region of control, being bordered by several of the Dominion’s client states. It is, however, the wealthiest, and most expensive of all the Dominion’s vast reaches, home to the most expensive planets to live on in all of the Triangulum Galaxy.

The four-dozen habitable worlds that inhabit Inner Dominion Space are home to an almost exclusively teyan population, with an estimated 97.5% of all Dominion citizens within the region being of the teyan species. Nobility has flocked to Inner Dominion Space, most noticeably on Taylos, in which it comprises 15% of the regional population, as opposed to 2% in Outer Dominion Space, and 0.5% within the vassal territories.

Inner Dominion Space receives the most attention from the imperial authorities, with its noble governors under close scrutiny from Taylos' intelligence agencies. Due to its homogeneous nature, Inner Dominion Space is culturally and ethnically stagnant, with only minimal cultural shift induced by Outer Dominion Space and the client states.

Outer Dominion Space
Far more cosmopolitan and significantly more politically independent than the coreward worlds, Outer Dominion Space is comprised of several semi-autonomous regions under the Dominion banner. Divided between eight regional sectors, Outer Dominion Space remains bound by Dominion law, and remains loyal to the throne, but is distanced too far from the capital for effective non-local governance.

The governing nobles of Outer Dominion Space are given a wide range of freedoms to manage their domains as they see fit, enacting local laws sector-wide and enforcing through a feudal hierarchy. Due to the more diverse range of species and cultures found within Outer Dominion Space, it is considerably more unstable and less wealthy than the worlds of Inner Dominion Space thanks to its distance from the dominion’s seat of power, though has a significantly less stagnant society.

Dominion of Andromeda
The Dominion of Andromeda is the Teyan Dominion’s colonial, extragalactic territory. Although overseen by the Department of Colonial affairs from the Triangulum Galaxy, the Dominion of Andromeda is nonetheless largely autonomous and self-governing, under the leadership of the Empress’ cousin Lord-General Aristole Faendras.

Primarily generating wealth through the export of materials and military hardware to the Sulsuan Protectorate and other minor alien states, it has become the military juggernaut of the Andromedan colonial space. Despite this, the region is taxed laxly, its primary purpose being for political relations with the Draknid Imperium rather than a source of wealth for the Dominion.

Client States
The Teyan Dominion holds several client states under its hegemonic rule, economically, politically, or militarily subordinate to its power. These client states act as indirectly-controlled Dominion territory and are recognised by many polities as an extension of the Teyan Dominion itself.

As a form of indirect rule, these client states are normally overseen and governed by native, pre-existing power structures with teyan nobility acting as an advisory or ruling body. Despite this, certain vassal-states have had their original governments removed and replaced by Dominion-friendly alternatives, as is the case with the Othenia Accord, an oligarchic power that the Dominion invaded and instituted a democratic government in, aiding a large rebel faction in the Othenian Civil War.

Vassals and protectorates must accept specified obligations to the Teyan Dominion, typically military subservience and the requirement to fight in the Dominion’s wars.

Society
Being an empire of such a massive, intergalactic scale, Dominion society is at best a nebulous concept, and at its most realistic an outright falsehood perpetuated by the need for unifying concepts and identity. The sheer number of worlds disconnected by hundreds of lightyears has born a thousand cultures and identities loyal to the Dominion, but distinct from the collective. Just as every person is unique, so is every world, leaving it outright impossible to truly understand what it is to be a citizen of the Dominion.

Demographics
What is, thankfully, possible for the Dominion to manage with somewhat reasonable accuracy is its demographics, although such immense numbers of citizens nonetheless lave large margins of error in the overall estimates of who and what, and how many claim Dominion citizenship.

Given the impossibility of documenting every citizen of the Dominion, instead, planets offer Identity Cards, a form of identification used for travel between administrative districts, planets, and star systems. These cards contain all the relevant data Dominion authorities need to provide for citizens of the Dominion and to prevent minors or others with restricted rights gaining access to specific substances and content or making binding decisions they're restricted from.

Species & Population
The Teyan Dominion is host to 16 sapient species recognised as citizens of the Dominion, though the exact numbers of each species are entirely unknown. Dominion authorities estimate roughly 1.1 trillion citizens of each race live within Dominion space.

The following species live within the Teyan Dominion:

Such large diversity in species has become a major issue for dominion authorities, especially on the largest and most cosmopolitan worlds. Tensions between species have known to flare up on several planets, necessitating heavier policing on some worlds, and has led to countless accusations of racial profiling amongst certain species groups.

Religion and Faiths
Without a unifying religious body to dominate the spiritual scene of the Dominion, its vast size has allowed countless religious orders, sects, and denominations to arise and fall across its long history. Ranging from monotheistic, pantheistic, and death-cults to the worship of the imperial monarch his or herself, the sheer size and scope of the Teyan Dominion has made it nigh-impossible to catalogue and monitor the hundreds of religions that have risen and fallen across its history.

The current dominant faiths of the Teyan Dominion are the Hakai denomination, Ayanna faith, and Maerius doctrines, a monotheistic religion, pantheistic religion and polytheistic religion. Though these religions are practised on nearly every world within Dominion space, and that of the Dominion’s client states, they rarely dominate the otherwise secular planets, though li’mai colonies almost always found to be Ayanna-dominated.

Languages
Teykata is the official lingua franca of the Teyan Dominion and its most-spoken language. An amalgamation of older, long-extinct languages from Taylos prior to the invasion of the Pelx-Cradonian Mandate at the beginning of its history, although linguistic drift and additional loanwords from the languages of the Dominion’s client states has left Teykata unrecognisable from its roots. Linguistic historians refer to Teykata as New Teykata, and its original, extinct form as Old Teykata.

Teykata is mandatory education in schools across the Dominion, although local languages are not barred from practice. It is typical that Teykata will be taught as a secondary language to a local one, although many Inner Dominion worlds only speak Teykata, lacking a local language of their own.

Of the secondary languages spoken in the Dominion, the languages of the li’mai and xel-miran people are the most spoken, with 20% comprehension across the Dominion, as opposed to the 85% comprehension of Teykata.

Politics
An empire in the truest sense of the word, the Teyan Dominion is a hegemonic aggregate of nations, ruled over as a coercive empire of indirect conquest and control of power.

Formed from diverse ethnic, national, cultural, and religious components, the Teyan Dominion in nonetheless ruled over specifically by the Teyan from Taylos, with the client states and the Outer Territories existing merely extensions of their hegemon. Despite this, the indirect method of control that the Dominion primarily operates through has allowed significant parts of pre-existing governments and cultures to survive the Dominion’s imperialistic ambitions, and even thrive with the economic prosperity the Dominion has brought its subjects.

The pre-existing governments of Dominion vassals may not, however, always survive vassalisation, as in the case of the oligarchic Othenia Accord. The Dominion-Accord conflict saw the Teyan Dominion aiding a large rebellion within the Accord to overthrow the local oligarchy, installed a parliamentary democracy in its place. Though some question the logic of an empire installing a democratic government in its vassal territories, the subject has since been fervently pro-Dominion.

Monarchy
The Teyan Dominion is a hereditary, absolute monarchy: a form of government which the emperor or empress holds supreme autocratic authority, principally not being restricted by written laws, legislature, or customs.

Originally ruled by Royal House Aeldoras, the status of the royal family of the Teyan Dominion shifted during the Great House War to that of Royal House Faendras; one of House Aeldoras’ supporters during the war when House Aeldoras collapsed from the death of all its heirs, and the death of the then-Emperor Dolath Aeldoras III. The current ruler of the Teyan Dominion is Empress Vaera Faendras II, a populist monarch who has achieved a vast cult of personality as a celebrated and adored empress.

The current heir to the throne of the Teyan Dominion is Crown Prince Ulthus Faendras, a considerably independent and xenophilic individual who has raised concerns within the Dominion’s courts as to his fitness to act as Emperor should his mother pass away. Ulthus has earned the scorn of his peers and parentage for his lustful behaviour and disdain for duty, though none dare to speak out and risk the ire of the Emperor-to-be.

Nobility & Government
A deeply entrenched nobility has formed within the upper echelons of the Teyan Dominion’s society. This noble class, formed from the leading figures of regional governments and highest military offices has existed for almost the entire 8000-year period of the Teyan Dominion’s existence, having become a simple fact of politics within Dominion society.

The nature of the Teyan Dominion’s decentralisation has allowed the nobility to continue to hold great sway over the political sphere of the Dominion, with nobility acting as planetary governors, sector administration, and military command. This faux-feudal decentralisation of power has resulted in some considering the Dominion to be a feudal empire rather than the absolute monarchy it styles itself as, supported by the significant number of client states the Dominion acts as the overlord of.

Law
Dominion law is separated into three distinct branches, each with their own courts and procedures; criminal, civil, and military law. In all branches of law, legal authority is said to descend from the Emperor or Empress him or herself; thusly, Empress Vaera Faendras II is the ultimate legal authority, and deciding judge in the highest of the Dominion’s legal courts. Additionally, this means that the imperial monarch is legally exempt from prosecution, for the crown cannot bring charges against itself.

The three main courts of the Teyan Dominion are the Court of Law (for civil cases), Court of Justice (for criminal cases) and the Military Judicial Court (for military case). Above each of these courts sits the Royal Court, which the monarch resides over, acting as the Dominion’s supreme court, the highest court in the Dominion for all criminal, civil and military cases. The Royal Court has been known to overrule lower courts without an appeal being made to it.

Foreign Policy and Relations
Foreign policy in the Teyan Dominion is predominantly characterised by its interventionist and imperialist attitudes and the Dominion’s stance on armed conflict within the Triangulum Galaxy.

The heart of the Teyan Dominion’s political efforts is its hegemonic domination of its subordinate client states, and the slow integration of these vassals into the Dominion’s economic-industrial complex. Many of the prior-independent empires that now bend the knee to the Dominion’s empress have been totally consumed by the Dominion, so heavily integrated that ideas of declaring independence would be suicidal even without military response; the vassals of the Dominion have become so economically and culturally integrated - a fact few can deny the benefits of - that the resultant backlash would risk ripping the client nation apart at the seams.

Despite the apparent loss of self-determination, the imperialistic ambitions of the Teyan Dominion are, contrary to the propaganda of the empire’s rivals, benevolent in motivation; a genuine desire to foster economic, cultural, and military developments across the galaxy, and to protect and empower stellar powers unable to hold their own against a hostile universe. These policies -and the rapid interventionism- have nonetheless earned the ire of many of the Triangulum Galaxy’s secondary major powers.

Military
The Teyan Dominion is most famous for its vast military-industrial complex, and the capabilities of its soldiers. It is said that once teyan boots have touched the ground, the battle has already been won and that a single teyan soldier or marine could single-handedly defeat entire squads in battle. Whether this statement is truth or hearsay has become a somewhat debated point by generals from across the Triangulum Galaxy, but there is no debate that the Dominion Armed Forces are the most potent fighting force in the galaxy.

The Teyan Dominion relies instead on a mixture of brute-force tactics and formidable discipline, placing focus on developing a clean, overwhelming economy of motion that exploits the Dominion’s superior strength to incapacitate enemies with a swift single blow of overwhelming power.

The Teyan Dominion’s military is known to take preference to kinetic weaponry over plasma or laser weapons.

Royal Dominion Army
The Royal Dominion Army, abbreviated as the RDA, is the primary planetary warfare force of the Teyan Dominion. Having seen combat in a great number of conflicts, victories in these decisive wars allowed the Dominion to influence world events and establish itself as one of the galaxy's leading military and economic powers. Since the end of the Covenant-Dominion War, the Royal Dominion Army has been deployed to a number of conflict zones, often as part of an expeditionary force, a coalition force or part of a Dominion peacekeeping operation.

Planetary Guard
The Planetary Guard is the RDA service branch responsible for maintaining defensive garrisons for each and every Dominion planet. Vastly varied in culture and history, Planetary Guard regiments are all nonetheless highly disciplined, trained and standardised across Teyan Dominion.

Planetary Guard regiments effectively act as a reserve force for the Teyan Dominion, only to be deployed off-world should the national government determine a low risk of their planet being invaded.

Royal Dominion Navy
As the Teyan Dominion’s stellar naval force, the Royal Dominion Navy, abbreviated as the RDN, is the primary military service branch responsible for projecting the Dominion’s political power and has played a key part in establishing the Teyan Dominion as the unmatched galactic power during the early history of the intergalactic empire.

After the end of the Covenant-Dominion War, a significant number of Dominion warships were sold to the Dominion’s political vassals as part of a demilitarisation agreement as part of the Teyan Dominion’s peace offering. Despite this, it still remains the largest naval power in the Triangulum Galaxy, vastly outstripping the size and power of all other galactic navies within the galactic halo.

The RDN is divided into 28 battlefleets, comprised of 5 flotillas. The leading ship in a fleet will always be the Lord or Lady-Admiral’s personal ship, and head of the fleet’s lead flotilla, known as the Headship. Battlefleets will typically be split into their component flotillas during peacetime for patrol, and only lead as a full group during wartime.

RDN navy vessels will typically be named after Dominion planets or cities.

Royal Marines
Throughout the history of the Royal Marines, the specialised naval infantry branch has fought through and impacted several major of the Triangulum Galaxy’s galactic conflicts. The Fall of the Mandate, Campaign in Xel Mirus, Dominion-Accord Conflict and Covenant-Dominion War have all been shaped by the actions of the Royal Marines alongside the Royal Dominion Army. The Royal Marines and RDA have close ties, and many consider the Royal Marines and Army to be the same organisation under different management.

Primarily acting as a rapid-reaction force, the Dominion Marines are often sent in small kill-teams to eliminate enemy fortifications, establish ambushes, and to disorient and demoralise their enemy via guerrilla tactics.

Every naval vessel in the RDN is supplied with a continent of Royal Marines; the Teyan Dominion’s specialised and adaptable light infantry force. The Dominion’s Royal Marines are trained for rapid deployment galaxy-wide and capable of dealing with a wide range of threats and combat scenarios.