Imperial Judges
Supposedly an impartial ruling body of law, the Imperial Judges are meant to negotiate conflicts between imperial worlds, mostly in regards trade and taxation, as well as fees. Judges also exert a modicum of control of crimes happening within Imperial Space, but outside the law of a local planetary governorship. They exert this will through The Judicars , their Psi Trained warriors of mysterious origin.
However, it is rumored that the courts are corrupt, and judges are easily bought by favors, bribes, or political power. Most of the judges weigh in favor of which ever way the Emperor seems to sway, and has since lost its power at the inception of the Republic years and years ago.
Many of the judges maintain some kind of Psionic ability, however ineffectual it might be. Judges are selected by both the Imperial Senate and the Imperial Court, and to become a Judge usually means the favor has been garnered by the Emperor or some powerful house within the Senate.
The judges also maintain control of the various prison worlds and colonies throughout the Colonial Earth Empire, making the wardens who oversee them wealthy and powerful members of the imperial oligarchy. They are manned and maintained by a combination of the Judicars and the Imperial Army forces. Those army officers seeking the favor of their local sector judge might be willing to extend the use of their forces to help maintain a nearby prison station, or by pumping up the numbers of arrested heading to the local prison planets.
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The Imperial Judges have a lineage of history that they can trace back to the age of the Republic. Judges were once considered the mediators and the peacekeepers of the Republican Age. In a time where civil war always loomed in the distance, and planets were so far a part, kept together by the filmsy Senate, the Judges flew out into space to take the problem on their own.
Part negotiator, part enforcer and part sheriff, the Judges ruled in the far reaches of republic space. For some, they kept the order in the peace in a supposedly lawless Mid and Outer Rim. For many more, they enforced the will of whatever local entity paid them the most money. As time went on, the Judges saw several attempts at reform. The inclusion of Psionics proved to be the most influential in the long term.
As more and more Psionics joined, the Judges became more mystified, and tied up in prophecy and finding crimes before they were comitted. They were spread thin, and a rogue minority of them were able to sieze power during the rise of the Third Column and the subsequent creation of the Colonial Earth Empire.
The shift of the Republic to the empire saw the transition of the Judges from esoteric peacekeepers, to the cult of enforcement. The Judges became an exclusively Psionic force. They established their base of operations on Dol Amoth, shackled by a strict constitution that has been in place since before the silence. The Judges formed the Judicars, a formal enforcement arm of their power with a cult-like devotion to the instutions of the empire, as set out by the first emperor. Time has twisted the organization, and it remains a mystical cult tied closely to Psionics. Each of the Judges is a powerful entity within the empire, with vast control over a network of psionics. The Judges gained the right over all Psionically gifted Imperial subjects, after the War in Heaven.
While the Judicars are purely psionics, and the Judges themselves are also psionics, there is still a vast bueracracy that is maintained by the average Imperial Citizen. This includes one of the most feared entities of imperial aggression, Colonial Security Bureau. Following the war in heaven, the Judges could no longer bear any claim to their former imperial loyalties, and instead chose to serve the empire as a whole.
Structure
The Imperial Judges structure was established thousands of years ago, and since has become a web of complicated appointments, arrangements and various departments all working together at a painfully slow pace. At the top of this complicated hierarchy lies the Grand Magistrates, who are tasked with overseeing the entire structure and appointing the Sector Judges, who in turn manage their local systems and smaller regions. These Sector Judges have all manner of appointment, some coming from local elections, others by appoint from the higher place judges due to their status in an Imperial House, and others coming from the Psionic Academies. All of this combined makes for a complicated and hard to track system of where and how judges are appointed. It is rumored that both the Senate and the Court have also began to stack the courts with their own favorites, trying to take power out from underneath the Grand Magistrates.
Within the structure, the judges, like all organizations in the empire, constantly infight and jockey with each other over power. With the powerful psionics using their skills and abilities to get one advantage onto another, often using The Judicars as their own personal attack squads. The Grand Magistrates only step in when a rivalry escalates out of hand, and makes the overall organization look bad. This has made the various judges master of intrigue, and skullduggery.
Type
Court System
Alternative Names
Imperial Mediators, The Courts, The Justice
Parent Organization
Subsidiary Organizations
Location
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