Polities — Sun Chronicles compendium¶
The Phene Empire¶
The Phene Empire began as a persecuted gene-engineering syndicate exiled from Mishirru¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 8
The Phene originated as a labor-and-science syndicate inside Mishirru that used genengineering to adapt humans to varied environments — protective exoskeletons, extreme-temperature tolerance, four arms. Persecuted and outlawed by Mishirru's religious authorities, they fled in waves into the local belt and founded their own union of worlds, which became the Phene Empire. Their map glyph is a double helix.
The imperial heartland is the Triple A — three founding capital systems, Anchor,
Auger, and Axiom, whose Unity Halls jointly seat the Rider Council (FH ch. 8;
US ch. 24). Anchor is the eleven-beacon capital (see Anchor System in
systems.md). Note: Destiny — separately the "heart of the old
queendom of Mishirru, now a provincial seat under the empire" (FH ch. 60) — is not the
Phene capital; that earlier ambiguity is resolved in open-questions.md.
Mishirru¶
Mishirru — ancient theocratic queendom, cradle of the local belt¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 8
The oldest polity: an autocratic theocracy / hierocracy ("queendom") founded from the Landfall haven, from which humanity expanded across the local belt. It claims to be the "true inheritors of the Celestial Empire." A long janus beacon line runs from its capital to the Landfall terminus (US ch. 42). Both the Phene and later powers trace back to it.
Now a Phene province (confirmed). ~143 Destiny-years before FH the Phene "returned
with their Riders and their ships," forced the Great Mother Queen to Anchor and held
her there permanently — decapitating the queendom and yoking it as Mishirru Province
(FH ch. 71), now fourteen star systems (FH ch. 78) with Destiny as its provincial seat
(see systems.md). The Divine Worship of the Great Mother Queen persisted
under occupation; in FH, Chaonia liberates it and Sun is hailed "Imperishable of Mishirru."
The Triple A capitals share three Unity Halls and the Rider Council¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 30
Each of the three founding capitals — Anchor, Auger, Axiom — has a Prime planet
(billions strong) and one of the three Unity Halls in which the Rider Council meets
in simultaneous synod, linked by lagged broadcast and courier ships running "down the
beacon routes." All three are seven/eleven-beacon hubs (Anchor eleven; Auger and Axiom
seven — see systems.md).
The Yele League¶
The Yele League — a fractious confederation led by an elected strategos¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 4
— FH ch. 93
Not a unitary state but a confederation of "collectively associated" systems (map
glyph: a lotus, against Chaonia's sunburst and the Phene's double helix). Its supreme
office is an elected strategos / military leader — and by treaty Chaonia's
queen-marshal (Eirene, then Sun) holds it: an outsider leading the League. The League is
repeatedly characterised as fractious and faction-ridden — the seers of Iros, exiled
admirals like Manu, and envoys like Baron Voy all pull in different directions. Its
cohesion and its vulnerability rest on hub geography: members must transit Yele
(see Yele System, systems.md).
Yele relations — from regional hegemon to treaty-bound, marriage-sealed Chaonian ally¶
Tier: canon
— US ch. 3
For generations the Yele League was the dominant local power — it had defeated a Phene imperial fleet at Eel Gulf, forcing a Phene withdrawal and leaving the League "the big boss" of the local region (US ch. 4). Queen-Marshal Eirene reversed this, forcing the League to terms and sealing the peace by marrying its envoy Baron Aloysius Voy (~4 years before US). The alliance is unequal and fragile: Chaonia holds the League "under her boot," and by FH the Phene court the League (via Voy, the seers of Iros, and the exiled Admiral Manu) to flip it — exploiting the short "three-beacons hop from Yele System to Chaonia" (FH ch. 58). Baron Voy later turns toward the Phene.
The Order of Iros — religious order of surgically blinded seers¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 8
— FH ch. 8
A Yele-cultural religious order whose seers cannot see the visible spectrum but perceive heat and lies. Officially "the Order of Iros" (FH ch. 8). "Iros" is the order name only — never a system, planet, person, founder, or oracle on-page; the etymology is left silent. The order's only on-page origin claim is descent from the ancient Argosies (the pre-beacon ship-clans, FH ch. 8) — pre-Apsaras lineage, "the long view" as their stated working principle. Monotheistic in framing — "obliged by his oath to the god to tell the truth" (US ch. 13) — but the god is unnamed.
Biology (correction to earlier framing). Seer eyes are surgically implanted, not congenital — FH ch. 9 is explicit ("a sheen-like screen of artificially implanted eyes hooked to a brain's neurons, like the eyes of a seer"). Persephone's "Born with eyes blind to the visible spectrum" (US ch. 14) is the order's own framing, not biology. The implant trades visible-light sight for heat + lie-detection; the eyes have a recognisable silvery "sheen" that outsiders pick up at a glance (FH ch. 48, "the telltale eyes of a seer of Iros"), and seers operate undercover via cosmetic lenses (FH ch. 12). Seer perception is more than thermal — infrared lenses are "not as effective as an Iros seer's vision" (FH ch. 90) — but the books don't specify the full sensory modality.
Hierarchy. Attested ranks: novice (head shaved short, doorkeeper duties) → seer (full implants) → prime (head of a single hermitage, distinctive collar, addressed "Your Wisdom") → Prime of the whole order (capital P). Honorifics "Eminence" and "Holiness" appear in formal address. Robes: layered off-white with a cream sash, sandals (FH ch. 82); the order's wayfinding glyph is a mediation Eye painted on hermitage doors (FH ch. 88, 90). The Yele palms-pressed-together greeting (FH ch. 8). Seers can leave the order to marry without formal expulsion and may return to a hermitage in retirement (US ch. 43 / US ch. 41 — Hetty's father).
Hermitages. Architecture is standardised across sites for blind navigation —
identical floor plans, no windows, infrared floor-strips, all-hinge doors, an apothecary
cabinet, a medicinal garden under ribbed glass (US ch. 43; FH ch. 90). Known locations:
- Yele Prime — the cardinal hermitage, the "fatherhouse" (gendered term;
US ch. 41). Plus a separate Timoteo Hermitage in the Glorious City (FH ch. 15),
and at least one "old hermitage repurposed as an administrative center" (FH ch. 15).
- Congress Moon — "shuttered thirty years ago after a shocking bribery scandal
that rocked the League and soured the local reputation of the seers" (FH ch. 15).
The scandal hit their core role of paid mediator (FH ch. 19).
- Tjeker (Repose District religious-tolerance zone) — destroyed by Sun in US ch.
43–44; the catastrophic loss (see below and history.md).
- Kanesh Prime — closed after the failed Esplanade assassination on Sun (FH ch. 11/12).
- Anchor Prime (Phene capital) — "hermitage hostel on Yele Central on the
Antikythera Terrace" (FH ch. 95), expatriate Yele seers, where Kiran sheltered before
capture.
- Sena habitat Repose District (FH ch. 88).
- Explicitly none in Mishirru (FH ch. 76 — only the local religion is permitted).
Tjeker decapitated the order. The elderly man Sun cornered at the Tjeker hermitage, Prime Deo, was the head of the entire order — not just the local hermitage — revealed in FH ch. 16 ("A big enough faction that the head of the order was involved and killed himself rather than be captured by me"). He swallowed a vial of "late bloomer" as Sun closed in (US ch. 44). After Tjeker the League disowned them — "The seers have fallen out of favor with the leading factions in the League. They're seen as militant, uncooperative, and untrustworthy" (FH ch. 18) — and the surviving militant faction became operational clients of the Phene Rider Council.
Three internal factions (sharpened from canon contrasts):
- Militant — anti-Chaonia, Phene-tilted; the Tjeker leadership, the Kanesh attacker,
Kiran Seth de Lee (see characters.md). Phene-trained leash-baton
operators of banner soldiers (FH ch. 66).
- Apolitical mediators — the public face that the order claims (US ch. 35, "The
seers of Iros belong to a religious order. They are apolitical."); the bribery
scandal corrupted this role.
- Scholarly retirees — "head-in-the-clouds scholars like the Honorable Hestia's
father" (US ch. 39, US ch. 41).
Late bloomer. A signature Iros-produced toxin; hermitage apothecaries are the supply chain. The same poison kills Octavian (US, Kiran's shot at Manea's wedding), takes Prime Deo at Tjeker, and reaches Eirene through Aisa Lee (FH ch. 49). Sun executes Kiran by incineration rather than serving him his own poison (FH ch. 96).
The Oculi — the order's female sister branch¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 48
— FH ch. 19
The Oculi ("eyes") are the female-coded sister branch to the male-coded seers of Iros. The naming convention (Iros / Oculi; fatherhouse for the cardinal seat / "sisters" for the Oculi) and the shared hermitage infrastructure (FH ch. 15: a "clerk of the Oculi" signs off on hermitage employment licences) read as one order in two sex-segregated wings, not two orders. Distinct cybernetic implant — rumoured single cyclops eye, never directly observed on-page.
Operational role. The Oculi run HUMINT and wet-work: Navah — placed as Hetty's
cee-cee in the Chaonian palace, the assassin who killed Sun's brother Perseus and
Duke Guī Alargos in the tender sabotage — "Hetty's cee-cee Navah was hired by the order
of the Oculi" (FH ch. 59). Their broader project, per Kiran's account to Apama, was to
place a Yele-beholden ruler on Chaonia's throne (Prince Jiàn — see
characters.md). The Oculi function broadly enough as covert operatives
that being suspected of working for them is a credible accusation against any skilled
cee-cee in the Yele orbit (Tiana was so accused, falsely — FH ch. 86/88).
Yele culture — prestige scholarship and a reputation for arrogance¶
Tier: canon
— US ch. 12
The Yele are coded as a high-prestige scholarly culture — keepers of "the forgotten languages of the Celestial Empire," philosophers, and seers; the Yele accent is the prestige standard every Chaonian imitates. From the Chaonian side they read as arrogant and long-winded (US ch. 35). Titles seen: Baron (Voy), the honorific "Honorable," and "Prime"/"Eminence" for the seers. Language registers: Common Yele (lingua franca of scholars and traders, US ch. 42), High Yele (prestige register, FH ch. 64), and regional dialects including Larissan Yele (FH ch. 84). Greeting: palms pressed together (FH ch. 15). Physical type: gracile and taller than Chaonians (FH ch. 64). Military dress: slate-gray fleet and forest-green army (FH ch. 7); rank "marshal" rather than the Phene "admiral" (FH ch. 95). Note: the four-armed genengineered physiology belongs to the Phene, not the Yele — Baron Voy is explicitly remarked on as having "only two arms" (FH ch. 7). Don't conflate the two.
The League Congress — deliberative body on Congress Moon¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 58
The League's deliberative body, seated on Yele Prime's governmental Congress Moon. Treaty status with Chaonia is a recurring Congress vote — through FH the pro-Chaonia majority held even under Phene+Voy+Iros pressure (Baron Voy's resolution for neutrality failed, FH ch. 19, "Voy's resolution failed. Too many in Congress fear Eirene's displeasure."). The elected strategos / military leader is the visible alliance office (currently Chaonia's queen-marshal); separate civil offices are not enumerated.
Member systems of the Yele League (named in canon)¶
Tier: canon
Confirmed by direct attribution in the books:
- Yele (capital, 11-beacon hub)
- Nalanda, Sankore — each a 3-beacon chain from Yele Prime (FH ch. 60)
- Takshashila, Al-Quaraouiyine, Gondishapur, Padua — surfaced via merchant-freighter registries (US ch. 48, "in-system merchant freighters bearing the various external markers of member systems of the Yele League"); beacon connectivity to Yele not asserted
- Larissa — Yele-origin, Chaonia-assimilated; retains its own Larissan Senate
(FH ch. 31), the Larissan Yele dialect (FH ch. 84), and fields the Larissan
Centaur Division as part of "allied Yele League ships" (FH ch. 4); see Larissa entry
in
systems.md
Eight named member systems; full membership is not enumerated. The four named via
merchant registries are candidates for some of Yele's 5 unmapped working beacons (see
Yele System entry in systems.md, and open-questions.md).
Yele continuity is at least ~1,800 years¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 15
A heritage temple on Congress Moon is explicitly 1,800 years old — pushing Yele
continuous habitation of Yele Prime / Congress Moon well past the Apsaras collapse
(~800 yrs ago). Reinforced by Yele's thousand-year-old badge tradition tied to "the
height of the power of the Apsaras Convergence" (FH ch. 15). Yele self-identifies as
direct cultural heir of the Apsaras-era civilization; whether the Yele people descend
from Mishirru/Argosy stock like the Phene is not stated (see
open-questions.md).
The Trinity Coalition¶
The Trinity Coalition — an authoritarian triumvirate holding the Phene↔Yele back door¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 55
A small but pivotal polity built on the Meli–Kumbala–Tsurru convergence (see
systems.md). Its three systems each face a different power, so the
Coalition controls the only back door by which the Phene can move fleets and trade
into the Yele League without crossing Chaonia — the strategic prize that drives FH's
Trinity Campaign. It claims ~600 years of unbroken control and a reputation as
unconquerable (reaching any Trinity system requires a slow, costly knnu crossing). Governed
by a triumvirate that "rule[s] by threes" (next entry).
The Vestal Trinity — rule by threes: the Karsh, the Matrone, and the Magava¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 62
The triumvirate has three offices, each tied to a solar aspect and a sacred seat on a
different Trinity world: the Karsh (eldest; a life appointment — wisdom/institutional
memory; the Grand Sanctuary on Tsurru Prime), the Matrone (stability; term-limited;
the Matrone's Hive in Meli), and the Magava (youth/vigor; term-limited; the Magava's
Grove on Kumbala Prime). All three rulers were killed when Chaonia took the Coalition;
Sun installed replacements and the Trinity passed to a Chaonian governor (see
history.md).
The Trinity runs on the Ousoos Argosy and an indentured-labour economy¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 55
The Coalition's operating arm is the Ousoos Argosy, the tow-chain operator commanded by the triumvirate; it sells passage on the three knnu crossings (plus a "services and insurance tariff") to anyone who pays — including Phene military fleets — while claiming political neutrality, a framing Chaonia treats as a de-facto Phene alliance (FH ch. 58). Its economy also rests on indentured "drones," a debt-bound labour class "banned elsewhere" (FH ch. 64).
The Argosies¶
A people older than the local belt — the original refugee fleets that carried humanity
out of the Celestial Empire (see history.md for the deep-history
chronology). Surviving today as a federation of ship-clan guilds bound by a
written Argosy charter, operating the knnu-drive and Navigator monopoly
that crosses where beacons don't. Not a state; not a polity in the Yele/Chaonia/Phene
sense. A guild civilisation.
Argosy guilds, ranks, and customs¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 14
Named guilds: Wayfinders (Navigators — rhombus implant in the forehead, neural enhancement, artificial irises; "highest status. Even a humble apprentice was like to royalty", FH ch. 14); Communicators (diplomats; silver vests; tow-chain earrings, FH ch. 13). Guild placement is decided by aptitude in childhood. No Wayfinder may pilot warships under any circumstance (FH ch. 14 — charter restriction).
Governance. Consensus of Elders + Sterling Senate (Alabaster Argosy; FH ch. 13). The Alabaster Argosy is a diplomatic peer of Chaonia (Treaty 31.7.2.14 Injunction 5.31, from ~25 yrs pre-FH).
Customs. Palms-pressed-together mirror of trust bonding (FH ch. 14); profuse greetings as a custom (FH ch. 22); the cant "Loose ropes!" (FH ch. 61). Tall slender ship-born phenotype with gravity braces; Argosy term for planet folk is "dirt-siders". They use a standard ideographic script across all Argosies that Chaonia later adopted as its writing system (FH ch. 86).
Charter ideal: safe passage. "An Argosy pledges safe passage. The Ousoos Argosy has betrayed the Argosies' most treasured traditions and ideals" (FH ch. 62, Sun to the Karsh). Knnu drives and Navigator services are interdicted from sale to non-Argosy parties (FH ch. 68) — the Ousoos sale of 10 knnu drives to the Phene was charter violation.
Beacon-sickness immunity. Argosies avoid beacons, and so are immune to the hereditary condition that afflicts (e.g.) Lee House: "The Argosies avoid beacon sickness by avoiding beacons" (FH ch. 80).
Named modern Argosies¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 12
| Argosy | role | notes |
|---|---|---|
| Alabaster | Chaonia treaty | Soaring's home; Consensus + Sterling Senate; runs Titan motherships; named after Alabaster System (one of the five marginally habitable Mishirru-frontier planets — see systems.md) |
| Ousoos | Trinity knnu-hop operator | Runs Tsurru↔Hellion, Meli↔Nalanda/Sankore, Kumbala↔Harahuvati; loyal to the Karsh of Trinity; flagship Titan Bountiful; suspected source of the Phene's illegally acquired knnu drives (FH ch. 76) |
| Mopsos | historical / dissolved | Past tense in canon; the seven inhabited moons of Colophon (Troia System) are named after its seven auxiliary ships — Ekwesh, Peleset, Shardana, Shekelesh, Tjeker, Teresh, Weshesh (US ch. 41) |
| Solomon's clan ("knnu lineage") | Crow-ship Argosy | Stranded planet-side after Hesjan pirate raids ~25 yrs pre-US (US ch. 22); given a mini-Titan, the Keoe, by Sun in FH ch. 15 — "go back to the space-faring knnu life that pirates kicked them out of" |
| Odrysa anchor-layers | last visit ~94 yrs pre-FH | Their knnu-anchor buoy still sits in Odrysa System, found by Sunbird in FH ch. 12 |
Full Argosy count is not enumerated in canon. The fleets that left the Celestial Empire numbered "hundreds of millions" of refugees across an unknown number of Titan-mothership convoys; many were lost in transit or scattered out of contact.
Argosy descent claims — Iros, banner soldiers, and Sun's "argonauts"¶
Tier: canon / inference
The seers of Iros explicitly claim "descendants of the ancient Argosies" (FH ch. 8). Their surgically implanted sheen-eyes (see Iros entry above) closely parallel the Wayfinders' rhombus-implant + neural augmentation — suggesting the Iros "heritage" claim has operational technical content: the order inherited Argosy sensory-modification tradition. The sister Oculi, with their rumoured single "cyclops eye" (FH ch. 48), fit the same pattern.
The banner soldiers (and through them the Phene Riders and the Gatoi wheelship clans) have their own Apsaras-flight descent claim (US ch. 47) — not the same as Argosy descent. Two separate ancestry threads.
Sun titles herself "descendant of the argonauts who founded this realm" (US ch. 22) in formal self-presentation — "argonauts" echoing but distinct from "Argosies"; the Chaonian foundation myth has an Argosy-adjacent register without claiming the identity directly.
Frontier peoples¶
The local-belt enumeration (FH ch. 70: "Mishirru, Yele, the empire, Chaonia, the Hesjan and the Skuda Reach and Gatoi") groups three peer outer-rim peoples — Hesjan, Skuda, Gatoi — alongside the four major powers. They are not a single bloc: each is its own people with its own territory, culture, and ships.
The Hesjan — fractious cartels of bonded-symbiont people¶
Tier: canon
— US ch. 2
— FH ch. 31
The Hesjan are a people organised politically as cartels — plural, fractious, with no
named central state. The in-world title for a cartel boss is honcho (gender-neutral;
"head honcho" the highest). Cartels conduct cross-cartel marriage alliances as a
diplomatic instrument; "killing a bonded symbiont breaches cartel protocol" (FH ch. 81,
which grants symbionts "courtesy sapient" status). Cartels also operate a protection /
escort economy on the outer-rim caravan route — "The cartels protect shipping. As long
as you pay them" (FH ch. 11). No individual cartel is named on-page; nor is any Hesjan
home system. Their territory begins at Rosetta System outbound from Chaonia (FH ch.
53, "Once we reach Rosetta System we'll enter cartel-controlled space") and stretches
along the partly-collapsed outer-rim corridor toward Tranquility on the Phene side
(see systems.md).
Cycle of alignment with Chaonia. Hesjan loyalties oscillate with the local balance of power: Sun's grandfather "made a treaty with the Hesjan because he needed their support" (FH ch. 96); the Yele then "contracted secret alliances with the Hesjan to make trouble for us" pre-Eirene (US ch. 4), culminating in the Hesjan ambush at the sixth Battle of Kanesh that killed Queen-Marshal Nézhā (US ch. 12); Eirene reconquered Kanesh from "the Phene and the Hesjan cartels" jointly (FH ch. 4) and "defeated the Hesjan cartels" politically (US ch. 4); by mid-FH about half the cartels are allied with the Republic and the other half are independent corsairs (FH ch. 53). They are courted by both sides, not expanding, not unified.
Religion. Hesjan religion is organised enough to export a recognisable sacred-place type: the "Hesjan henge", a paved stone-circle "split into three sections," appears on Tjeker (US ch. 41) and on a Phene-built habitat (FH ch. 87) — listed in religious-tolerance districts alongside Bel temples, Mishirruvian theatra, basilicas.
Note on "Hesjan corsairs." The standard outer-rim raider triad (FH ch. 47, "Skuda raiders, Gatoi brigands, and Hesjan corsairs") is three distinct ship-and-people combinations. The Yele-class hull used by Skuda and Gatoi (FH ch. 11) is not the Hesjan corsair hull; the Hesjan type is unnamed in canon. Visually distinctive at dock — "the corsairs with their motley crews and wild symbionts" (FH ch. 47).
Hesjan symbionts — engineered "bees" bonded at one thousand days¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 13
— FH ch. 13
Bees = bionic enhanced escorts. Every Hesjan-descent child is sealed to one at 1,000 days of age — a life-stage rite of the whole people, not a class privilege. Bonds are lifelong; each bee has its own name and individual personality ("among Hesjan it's considered discourteous to use 'it' for symbionts. My grandmother's clan uses 'ou' for theirs" — FH ch. 13; pronoun usage varies by clan).
Models seen on-page. Decapod — common ship/habitat model, eight arms + two tentacles, mood-colour mottled skin (pink = excitement, yellow = joy, orange = anxiety, grey = distress, FH ch. 13). War bee and cargo bee (specialised function, FH ch. 13). Wasps and hornets — smaller, FH ch. 11 / ch. 55. Ribbon symbiont — meter-long hundred-legged, classified by Chaonia as a class-four military-grade weapon, and "generally reserved for high-level cartel honchos, especially family members intended for cross-cartel alliances" (FH ch. 74). The symbiont species at sealing-age signals rank-and-purpose in cartel hierarchy: decapods are everyday, ribbon-bonded are the alliance-marriage dynastic class.
Capabilities. Symbionts can spit killing toxins (FH ch. 74), extrude comms / recording tendrils, fold and conceal in pockets, communicate with their bonded human via subvocal channels (FH ch. 55, "ZAP THE FUCKER… subvocalized to Dozer"). Chaonia registers them as low-mind AI (FH ch. 13); cartel protocol treats them as courtesy sapients (FH ch. 81) — a legal/cultural divergence. A Yele bystander identifies a Hesjan symbiont on sight in a casual setting (FH ch. 55) — the symbiont, not the carrier's body, is the recognisable Hesjan marker.
Note: Hesjan bodies themselves are not modified. Half-Hesjan characters (see
characters.md, Makinde Bō; Prince Jiàn) pass as Chaonian unmarked.
The "body-modifying culture" framing is bonded engineered companion organisms, not
somatic engineering — explicitly distinct from Phene gene-engineering.
The Skuda — peoples at the terminus end of beacon space¶
Tier: canon
— US ch. 32
— FH ch. 31
The Skuda hold the Skuda Reach at the outermost edge of the surviving beacon network — past Hesjan space along the caravan-route axis, "in the shadow of Jade Skirt System." They have their own language (FH ch. 76: a Trinity multilingual learns "hundreds of words" of it), their own diplomatic delegation style — "peaked hats and spangled waistcoats" at Sun's accession (FH ch. 31) — and named sub-tribes including the Skew-Neck Skuda at Flood Terminus (FH ch. 50). They overlap with the Hesjan in the standard outer-rim raider triad (Skuda raiders / Gatoi brigands / Hesjan corsairs, FH ch. 47), but are a distinct people, not the same as the Hesjan ("through the Hesjan territories and along the Skuda Reach", FH ch. 47).
The Gatoi — knnu-wheelship clan nomads¶
Tier: canon (briefly recorded; needs its own dedicated mining)
— US ch. 2
The third of the outer-rim triad. Clan-structured nomads on knnu-drive wheelships; eleven clan wheelships in total. Have a Royal caste (Sun's father is a Gatoi Royal, US ch. 1). "90 percent of Gatoi banner soldiers fight for the Phene" (US ch. 1) — Phene-aligned mercenaries, fundamentally different from Hesjan cartel-corsair culture. The ship class "Gatoi arrows" (FH ch. 11) is the Yele-class hull flown by Gatoi raiders. The Gatoi warrant their own mining pass when prioritised.
The Hatti region¶
The Hatti region — a former independent confederation, then a Phene province, now Chaonian-held¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 48
— FH ch. 69
A frontier of multiple star systems (Hatti, Maras Shantiya, Kaska, Tarsa, Na Iri, plus
the inner gateway Kanesh and the newly-surfaced Samuha) — not a single polity. It
was an independent confederation of city-states akin to neighbouring Karnos, absorbed
as a Phene province in the same expansion era, and conquered piecemeal by Chaonia
under Eirene (Kanesh ~20 yrs pre-FH; Na Iri last, at the close of Unconquerable Sun). On the
Phene war-map it shows as "contested" — Chaonian-controlled, Phene-claimed. The model tags
the controlled systems chaonia (control); the contested/claimed status lives in their notes.
The Hatti-folk — a distinct two-armed people, kin to Karnos, never imperial Phene¶
Tier: canon
— FH ch. 50
A named ethnocultural group — two-armed (vs. the four-armed gene-engineered imperial
Phene), Common-Yele-speaking, sharing temples and ancestor-veneration with Karnos and
Chaonia. The Phene were "disliked outsiders" there (FH ch. 82), which Chaonia exploits to
frame its conquest as liberation of kin — though Persephone notes "we're about to be
occupiers, too" (FH ch. 48). Governance is Chaonian military administration under Tiger
Marshal Tomyris Vata, who holds oversight of "Kanesh and the Hatti territories with their
crucial resource and transport concerns" (FH ch. 58). The pro-Phene Evergreen is an
"interdicted Kanesh faction calling for return to Phene rule" (FH ch. 11) — evidence the
conquest is contested on the ground. (Kanesh's indigenous parliament: see
systems.md.)
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