The Imperial Decree was a piece of legislation the Emperor could issue unilaterally and do literally anything with. All of the normal rules and regulations of the Empire that the Emperor would usually respect to allow for the stable functioning of the state could be overturned, every norm could be ignored, and all contracts violated. With this extreme power, they were meant as an extraordinary measure in the case of emergency. Any attempt to use it otherwise would undermine the Emperor’s (and hence the Empire’s) legitimacy and could provoke resistance. Because of this, the decrees were only used incredibly rarely throughout the Empire’s history.
A total of four Imperial Decrees were issued over the entire lifespan of the Empire. The cause of the first is largely lost to the Imperial Dark Age, although historians of that period suspect it has to do with a crop of rebellions that occurred near the darkening event. Imperial Decree #2 was sent in response to the somewhat obscure False Signaling in which transmissions were thought to have been found from non-Earthborn life. The decree authorized extreme emergency measures to be taken suspending the normal contracts of all planets, with a special emphasis on the sectors near the signal location. This turned out to be a false alarm as the signal was simply an abnormal expression of background radiation, but it showed the power the decrees could have if they needed to. Imperial Decree #3 was a response to the already well documented (and very complex) Serpentine Affair. Its exact details are too technical to explain for the purposes of this book, but suffice to say it gave the Imperium near total control over all planetary computers in a way it had never done before. The fourth decree is possibly even more discussed than the third. As rare and powerful as they are, Imperial Decrees are always going to be massive news and have far reaching ramifications, but it’s unlikely that when this decree was issued anybody in the galaxy could have predicted just how far reaching its effects would turn out to be.
There were five major articles in Imperial Decree #4, issued on the first day of that fateful year of 11247.
First: an immediate and unprecedented in scale reorganization of the Imperial bureaucracy. The Emperor had obviously been unhappy since the failure of the Great Shift and this was the most expected part of the anticipated reforms. Nobody had quite predicted how the Emperor planned to reshape the Imperium though. The reorganization put into effect an immediate hiring freeze at all levels of the Imperial government; from the Minister of Colonies down the lowest Imperial courier no open positions were to be filled. Instead, a symposium had been called. One representative from every planet was invited to the Vaird for a discussion on how the Imperial state should be administered in the future. This had the effect of immediately weakening the bureaucracy, cutting off its ability to reproduce itself. What was the most shocking element of this article though was not what it did, but what it didn’t do. The entire structure of the new administration was left undefined, to be decided at some as yet obscure “symposium.” For the article that would ironically become the most effective at its explicit purpose of reorganizing the Empire, its contemporaries considered it bizarrely incomplete for the Emperor’s style.
Second: a massive clamp down on esotericist sects. Any group that was founded for the express purpose of spreading and/or supporting esoteric knowledge had to be immediately registered with the Imperial state. Failing to do this would result in an organization being immediately outlawed and an organization’s approval to operate could be revoked at any time, without warning. While less anticipated than the administrative reforms, this section was also expected. It was widely known that the Emperor was unhappy with the inconclusive result of the still relatively recent Esotericist Wars, the Morroth Rebellion was simply the final straw that made it inevitable that there would be an attempt to reorganize the relationship between the esoteric sects and the state.
Third: an assurance that in the new Imperial administration, all unions would be controlled by the Imperial state. This was the first of the articles that was totally unexpected. The Coronation Strike had apparently left a much larger impression on the Emperor than most observers had anticipated. Unions had been allowed significant power for the entire history of the Imperium with several other strikes that had forced concessions out of the Emperor prior to the Coronation Strike, so there was no reason for anybody to expect retaliation for them. Previously, the Emperor had always understood that even if the unions were inconvenient, their power helped keep in check the ambitions of the largest corporations and planetary governments. In many ways, union power had served as one of the tools upholding Imperial legitimacy, keeping many of the potential rivals too marred in labor fights to attempt to usurp power. All of that is why a significant minority (a minority most common among those union rivals) read this article as not an attempt to weaken labor, but to fuse it and the government to oppress free enterprise and wealthy planets.
Fourth: Queen was being immediately disbanded. This article was an immediate shock and by far the most discussed, especially in popular circles. Queen had been the Imperium’s secret police since before the Dark Age and rumors about its power and influence suffused all aspects of society (rumors that are still trying to be deciphered by historians today). The fact that no reason for this disbandment was given in the decree meant speculation went wild (speculation that historians still continue to engage in to this day and I’ll do myself in a future chapter). The idea that such a pivotal state apparatus could be immediately cut off in this way was unheard of, it would be like disbanding the army on a whim.
Fifth, and most surprising of all: upon the completion of the reforms, the Emperor was finally going to die. What they would be replaced with was to be decided at the symposium, but the moment they felt the new system was up and running, they would voluntarily resign and end the longest life in human history. This was explosive news. Barely any records exist of humanity prior to the Empire. Not only was there no personal conception of what rule without the Emperor would look like, there was no historical idea of what rule without the Emperor would look like. It was this final and most unexpected reform that gave the whole package its colloquial name: the Necrotic Reforms.
As with previous attempts at reform, Imperial Decree #4 provoked opposition. In line with it being the most expansive effort to reform the Imperium, it provoked the most expansive opposition along with it. To start with, it was totally unclear how the mechanisms of the reform that were supposed to take effect immediately were supposed to work. The Imperial bureaucracy, while bloated and lethargic, was necessary for everyday life. Positions within it, some of which were now officially forbidden from being filled, had to be filled. Without it production would stop, trade would cease, and civilization would fall into anarchy. There was no way out of it, the bureaucracy would have to continue to function and reproduce, even if only until the elections were able to be held (which would have to be organized by the very bureaucrats whose power they were threatening). And so it was. Even as it was technically treason to fill open administrative positions, across the Empire those positions were filled and nobody lifted a finger to stop them. The Empire could decree it, but they could not make it so.
There were similar effects with the other aspects of the decree that took effect immediately. The esoteric organizations that allegedly had to be approved continued to exist outside the Imperial state. If there even was a desire within the bureaucracy to tackle them, they were too busy dealing with their own problems to put a focus on it. The effort to disband Queen was probably the most successful because it was the decree with the most popular support, but even that was only half so. The elements of the military that had not been penetrated by Queen quickly confiscated its headquarters and the organization officially appeared to dissolve, but it’s evident to historians that its agents clearly kept in contact and maintained an informal intelligence structure even after the agency’s dismantlement. In many ways, the dissolution of Queen made it stronger, allowing it to operate more completely in the shadows without any records of its existence, membership, or objectives.
In fact, it seemed the only thing the Necrotic Reforms had succeeded in immediately doing was rousing massive opposition to them. Nearly all sections of society stood to lose and none were able to see a clear benefit with the promise of a vague “symposium” that could result in anything. Across the Empire, in fact across the lines that typically divided parties, mass organizations began to spring up. With names like the “Loyal Citizens for Good Governance” and the “Advisory Coucnil for the Friends of Authority and Justice,” they wrote incessant letters to the Vaird demanding revisions or at least delayed implementation of the reforms, they staged sit-ins at administrative buildings and esoteric realms to kindly demonstrate the folly such reforms would bring, and they spread the word of their resistance to all who would listen.
Their complaints fell on deaf ears. After releasing Imperial Decree #4, the Emperor had shut themself back into the Vaird and ignored all pleas for mercy. As with all reports from the Vaird pre-revolution, it’s impossible to say what was actually happening within it, but it can be said with certainty that there was nothing coming out of it. Total radio silence, no further directives, no addendums, not even any attempts to explain what was happening. There was a whole week of the loudest silence in the galaxy, a week in which all of those opposition organizations were being formed and expanding, before an addendum was released: elections were scheduled for 2 weeks from that date.
The opposition organizations immediately set out to compete in those elections, nominating as many candidates as they could who would go to the symposium and tell the Emperor to reverse all “progress” made by the Necrotic Reforms. It’s worth dwelling for a moment on why. Why not resort to armed resistance? Why bother attempting to reason with the Emperor who had already shown that they were unwilling to listen to criticisms of the reforms? Because of the diverse nature of these groups it’s impossible to give a single answer that fits them all. Part of it was simply that none of them thought they could win an armed revolt. The Morroth Rebellion was fresh in everyone’s minds and nobody wanted to be on the receiving end of it. Discontent within the military was fairly high, but it wasn’t something anyone wanted to risk. Perhaps even more importantly though is that the people making up these organizations could not conceive of themselves outside of the Empire. Analysis done on the opposition groups by the excellent chronicler McClellan Yuzo found that a quarter of the membership of the organizations was in the top 5% wealth bracket. Over two-thirds of the leadership roles of the opposition were that wealthy. These were people who benefited from the system as it existed and because of that they could not imagine attacking it in that way even if it produced results they found unpleasant (at least, they could not imagine it yet).
Potentially the most important factor of all was that they lacked vision. Not simply the inability to see themselves attacking the Imperial structures they cherished, but the inability to imagine a better, or at least different, world. The Imperium had stood for ten thousand years. It had its ups and its downs and over the course of its existence had produced great and inspiring thinkers, including in politics. There had not been one in a thousand years. Those few with an interest in political theory and philosophy were purely academic; they had an almost solely historical appreciation for the history of human ideas rather than seeing them as something that could or should be put into practice. And they had no great figures. I cannot mention any names of their leaders because they are all irrelevant. Planet to planet, system to system, organizations sprung up on nearly every world with more than a single settlement and throughout all of them they were led by people lacking a single shred of creativity, insight, or political vision. It is not without reason that on the planets where the candidate supported by the opposition won without challenge, not a single one of those representatives is remembered today. In most instances, we barely have a name, a picture, and a voting record. In a couple, not even that.
Prior to moving on and discussing the elections that the opposition was turning to, one of the central questions of the Necrotic Reforms has to be addressed, if not answered conclusively: why did the Emperor think they would be a good idea to begin with?
The traditional narrative is that the Emperor simply massively misjudged their ability to force through unpopular policies and underestimated the organized resistance that would arise from them. A slightly more complex version of this idea is that while the Emperor knew resistance would exist, they did not believe that a mass opposition composed of the disparate and often feuding interest groups would be able to cohere. In that reading, the Emperor is broadly correct in their analysis of the situation (the feuding of those interest groups is one of the major stories of the revolution), but they erred in how long it would take for those fissures to emerge.
While that remains the viewpoint held by a majority of historians, it is not the only one. A minority of historians, albeit a minority growing in number and proportion, hold that the Emperor knew exactly the sort of opposition the decree would provoke – which is exactly why they decreed it. The originator of the theory, Hope Callisthenes, described the argument as such:
“The idea that the Emperor, a political actor with ten thousand years of experience manipulating circumstances to their benefit could have made an error this grievous is absurd on its face and the fact that this theory remains so popular is proof only of the debased position of the historical profession. The Emperor was a figure known for meticulous plans and dense instructions, none of which are seen [in Imperial Decree #4]. Anyone who claims otherwise is showing their own ignorance and unwillingness to delve into the Imperial archives, where regularly can be found thousand page tomes dictated by the Emperor themself on the minutiae of an obscure branch of the Imperial bureaucracy. That the Emperor would release such a short decree without any conception of the firestorm it would raise is so stupid it shouldn’t even be considered. Rather, every article of the Necrotic Reforms was written to aggravate a major section of society. The mass opposition was not an unexpected side effect, it was the whole purpose of the decree to begin with. The only policy in the decree the Emperor wanted to carry out as it was written was the death clause, a clause specifically put there to open the minds of the galaxy to that possibility. The fact that the oppositionists could not see this as the Emperor’s intention is only further proof of their self-interested myopia. The fact that the descendents of those oppositionists who claim the mantle of historian cannot see it is only further proof of their incompetence.”
Obviously, Callisthenes was not attempting to write an unbiased history, but her theory in its broad strokes convinced many, even if her pro-Imperial bias remains unpopular. There are many versions of this theory, ranging from believing that the Emperor orchestrated the decree to provoke an opposition that would actually seek radical reform (rather than moderate reform which may have been inadequate) after which the Emperor lost control of events, to claims that the Empror was such a political genius that they had planned every aspect of the revolution, including after they had their ability to directly influence events removed. If this theory holds water, the truth is probably closer to the former than the latter, but historians will continue to argue over it for millenia to come. I will allow the reader to decide what they believe regarding the Emperor’s role in events. For now, we must turn to elections. And most especially, that election which would improbably result in the Great Conciliator making his way into the Vaird.