Ulemedi

The Ulemedi are a category of beings coming from outside the far edges of the Weave's remains. Best known for their reputation as slavers, the Weave Remnant has been in conflict with them since first contact.

Description
The Ulemedi have no set physical form, due to extensive body modification unique to every member of their kind. They do, however share a similar metaphysical composition from the engineering of their parent species, who are only known as The Kin.

All Ulemedi are extremely sadistic as an artifact of their original purpose, and possess an inborn desire to subjugate and enslave non-Ulemedi. Kin hedonism has also been inherited by the Ulemedi, especially in those of the Ulemedi lords. Rather predictably, slavery is ubiquitous within Ulemedi universes, with the slavers often holding lavish celebrations and entertainments at their subjects' expense.

Among the most significant traits possessed by modern Ulemedi are their Arish symbiotes. These symbiotes grant the Ulemedi immense reality warping power that grows with time and usage, with older slavers often shaping entire universes as they please. Outside of the symbiotes, the Ulemedi also possess extremely potent psychic abilities, with an especially great focus towards the manipulation of minds and souls. Other abilities include some measure of telekinesis. Even without a symbiote, Ulemedi psychics are able to perceive and manipulate the souls and minds of beings thousands of light years away, and it was with these abilities that the they were able to fulfill their initial purpose.

Reproduction for Ulemedi is a painstaking and long process, from what little has been observed by outsiders. It is suspected that due to the metaphysical engineering designed to hamper them in case of rebellion, knowledge related to crafting new Ulemedi from scratch erases itself from their minds should it be present. As a result, the Ulemedi must resort to their default mode of reproduction, which requires a gestation period of several millennia for a single Ulemedi offspring. the Ulemedi population has thus been extremely low for a multiversal power, at only an estimated forty to fifty quadrillion. Assassination attempts from other multiversal powers has not helped matters, and the vast majority of Ulemedi do not live past their first millennium.

The Ulemedi possess an extremely static metaphysical makeup, owing to the engineering of their former masters. As a further measure to prevent others from tampering with their metaphysical makeup, the Ulemedi's former masters also conceptually engineered the beings to be almost impossible to alter without killing them, due to their Flaw of Mortality.

The Flaw of Mortality was an additional measure that was included in the Ulemedi's (and many other living creations of the The Kin) metaphysical composition, as a way to keep the entities in line. What the flaw entails is the complete destruction and erasure of an Ulemedi's soul and mind should their body die, or if something successfully manages to manipulate the metaphysical makeup of the being.

History
It is rumoured that the Ulemedi initially begun as sapient terror weapons, created by a multiversal empire that are now known as The Kin. The Weave remnants have discovered relatively little about the precursor civilisation, as most records pertaining to them have been damaged or destroyed by what is likely Ulemedi intervention. What little archaeological evidence there is, however, indicates that The Kin were exceptional at metaphysical engineering, and tinkered regularly with the souls of others. What few surviving records indicate that The Kin did not treat their subjects well, and were often beset by rebellions from their creations. Most of these rebellions were minor at best, and were quickly crushed by The Kin's military. After a particularly troublesome rebellion went out of hand before it was crushed, the Kin sought a new solution to their problems.

Rumours from Kin-era slaves state that a high ranking Kin metaphysicist named Ule proposed a solution for their problems. They would create a new race of beings that would be absolutely loyal to their Kin masters and keep their other creations in line. The other Kin accepted their solution, and Ule begun to work on his magnum opus.

In an effort to keep their other creations in check, the Ulemedi were crafted. Like the creations before them, the new enforcers were handicapped by the Flaw of Mortality that was in implanted in all Kin crafted beings. The new beings were made with sadistic compulsions and a desire to subjugate, and metaphysically locked to prevent tampering of their soul (and by extension being forced to deviate from their purpose). Ule also purposefully sneaked an command override into the metaphysical makeup of the Ulemedi, in their ambition to take over the Kin's empire for themselves.

The Ulemedi first took on the roles of secret police and inquisitors, using their abilities to sniff out dissent and making examples out of rebels and dissidents with torture and inhumane means. These roles, however, grew to also encompass the compliance of newly conquered universes by ensuring the 'loyalty' of their inhabitants.

The Ulemedi performed their roles well, and with Ule representing them, were granted positions of power (especially in the military) for their service. With the rise in Ulemedi power, however came suspicion from Ule's rivals. Ule was able to hid their plans, however, despite constant surveillance they were placed under. Large contingents of Ulemedi were sent to conquer nearby universes, and eventually they made contact with the Arish.

Questioning of free Arish revealed that at first, the Ulemedi coexisted relatively peacefully with the Arish, but nonetheless made efforts to probe the genie-figures, especially keen on obtaining their powers. After several millennia, the enforcers managed to capture a young Arish, which was quickly vivisected for its metaphysical workings. The Ulemedi, having some access to the expertise and skills of their creator, then engineered a soul plague that targeted the malleability of the Arish's metaphysical composition, and would transform many of them into the symbiotes of today. Over the next millennia, the Ulemedi scouted each and every universe that the Arish were present in.

In a devastating alpha strike, the Ulemedi released the plague into those universes, almost converting the entirety of the Arish as a species into symbiotes, thus acquiring immense power for themselves. This action, now far too great to hide, also alerted Ule's rivals. In a desperate bid to prevent Ule from realising their ambitions, the metaphysicist was ambushed in their laboratory universe by Kin forces. Ule's rivals also launched additional strikes to destroy all of the thousands of universes that housed their facilities and research, especially those that related to the Ulemedi. Before the Kin permanently crippled Ule and rendered them unable to communicate, the metaphysicist launched an overriding command to the Ulemedi; rebel, and destroy the Kin.

With the imminent destruction of their empire, the Kin destroyed all records and research of the higher aspects of metaphysical manipulation to prevent, or at least delay the the Ulemedi from reengineering themselves.

With their newfound powers, the Ulemedi made short work of their former masters. With the Kin being immortal and unable to be killed, the Ulemedi instead opted to enslave them, along with all their subjects. The Kin had their minds and free will taken away, instead being replaced with more submissive and loyal personalities. In a reversal of position, the Kin became slaves serving the Ulemedi.

Post Kin-information is at best spotty and comes secondhand from low-ranking slaves. What has been gathered indicates that with the overthrow of the Kin, the Ulemedi were unprepared for their new status and left directionless as rulers of an empire. In the absence of their creator and parent, several figures created by Ule himself established themselves. Known as the Firstborn due to their status as the first of Ule's children, these leaders each had differing aims and objectives for the new empire. Vala, Ule's retainer and the closest to their parent, wished to pursue the same direction as their original purpose. Venule, whom had accompanied the Heavenly Reformation, wished to maintain their ideals and aims. Zenduk Okt, with their people now free of the burdens of the old empire, wished to allow the Ulemedi to find their own path. Narduk, who was largely ambivalent to the agendas of the other Firstborn, acted as a mediator in meetings between the others. Velit, a former aide of Venule and suspected xenophile, wished for a more peaceful integration with non-Ulemedi. Nekulo, the last major Firstborn, pushed a moderate stance between that of Vala and Venule. Secretly, however, Nekulo worked towards bringing back the Kin.

Ulemedi society soon split along ideological lines, with those of similar mind gathering under the banners of their leaders. As each faction became large enough, the leading families of each faction organised their followers into the House system. This period of restructuring was marked with social and political unrest, tensions and of violence as power was shuffled around between families. After the Houses were fully consolidated, the leaders of each faction declared their respective power as Great Houses.

A few thousand years after the consolidation of the Great Houses, Nekulo made his move. Using House Malor as a front for his plans, he and his followers restored several Kin to their forer state. Hiding these restored Kin, Nekulo had worked to subvert several high ranking members of the other Great Houses. Those subverted were used to subtely sabotage and hamper responses to Malor's growing military and esoteric power. A leader of a Minor House under Malor, Arnuk, discovered some of the restored Kin that were hidden away. Arnuk and House Sul fled Malor before sounding the alarm to the other Great Houses, prematurely accelerating Nekulo's plans. Nekulo acted quickly now that his plans were outed, sending his forces to hit critical targets while those he subverted sabotaged the other houses' response. Arnuk's call for help worked, as House Malor's forces had not built up sufficiently and began to lose momentum after several of their targets put up greater resistance than anticipated. As Malor's forces were held up up, the other Great Houses turned the war into one of attrition, slowing bleeding Nekulo's military dry over the course of centuries. After the last of Malor's expeditionary forces were mopped up, the other Great Houses launched a counterattack. With a greatly diminished military, House Malor was rapidly folding over a few decades. Now losing the War, Nekulo saved what few restored Kin he could before fleeing his House entirely. House Malor collapsed entirely, with many of its subordinate Middle and Minor Houses completely destroyed.

In the post-war negotiations, House Sul was selected to represent the remnants of Malor. Sul was promoted to Great House status, with most of the leftover Houses of Malor folded in under it. In order to prevent another such internal conflict from arising, the Overseer Council was formed; a house-neutral organisation responsible for investigating internal threats to the Ulemedi. The Overseers that operated under the authority of the council would root out elements that threatened the Ulemedi as a whole, functioning in a similar way to inquisitors and secret police. In addition to this measure, the Coliseums and the Writs of Challenge were created. To prevent the spread and escalation of disagreements between members and families from different houses a system was created to allow the different sides of a dispute to settle more violent disagreements in a controlled manner. In this way, an officially mediated dispute is issued with a Writ of Challenge; an official sanction allowing the disagreeing parties to engage in combat within the Coliseums.

In the meantime, the Ulemedi had continued to pursue the free Arish for millions of years, until the latter found protection under the surviving civilisations of the Weave remnant. After first contact with the Weave's remnant civilisations, and the acquiring of information that the Arish had taken shelter with them, the Ulemedi pursued an approach of conquest shortly after. Symbiotic Arish were released into remnant territory, along with slaver raids and expeditions to conquer universes within the Weave's fold. Bitter wars were fought, and the more powerful remnant civilisations released their own superweapons in response to the Ulemedi, causing the loss of several trillion Ulemedi lords in the process. The Ulemedi persist in their ambitions, however, and the conflicts rage between remnant powers and the Ulemedi to the present day. As a further response, the Negentropic Union created the Patra; beings empowered with an Arish soul, to combat rising threats like the Ulemedi.

Culture and Society
Ulemedi governance consists of a large confederation of Ulemedi families, each of which constitute a polity of their own. Nevertheless, cultural inertia from their Kin precursors have resulted in them calling their collective as a whole the Empire of Six.

The Ulemedi hold several species wide cultural values. Familial bonds are extremely important in Ulemedi culture, with familial loyalty and filial piety being expected from all members of a family. An Ulemedi is expected to know every member of their family, with most families possessing several hundred million members. Major families are known as Great Houses, and each Great House has a number of Middle and then countless Minor Houses underneath it. While there tends to be very little, if any infighting within a house, squabbling and politicking between different houses is the norm.

At current, there exist six Great Houses: Nikti, Uren, Okt, Mifi, Ule and Sul. Each Great House is founded by one of the first batch of Ulemedi created by the Kin Ule. A previous Great House House existed known as Malor, but has since been destroyed and most of its surviving members folded into the other Great Houses.

Great House Ule is founded by Vala, one of Ule's personal assistants. Great House Ule is fiercely hierarchical and traditionalistic, adhering strongly to their Kin era customs. House Ule's leaders sees all of the former Kin holdings and beyond as the birthright of the Ulemedi, and as such focuses significantly on its military might. As a result, they are among the top contributors of both manpower and resources to the various wars of conquest that the Ulemedi wage. House Ule treats its allies and subordinates (whether they are Ulemedi or not) very generously, often providing for both their needs and their wants. This is in stark contrast to their extreme xenophobia, as House Ule often immediately enslaves civilisations that do not submit to their rule. The former has earned House Ule great popularity among their willing subjects and a great deal of resources to continue their conquests. Ule is the largest and most popular of the Great Houses by a fair margin, and as such enjoys a great degree of political power compared to its competitors.

Great House Nikti is founded by Venule. House Nikti acts as a foil to House Ule as a more progressive organisation. Nikti inherited its position from the Kin faction known as the Heavenly Reformation, who advocated for the Kin to rule less overtly with an iron fist but more diplomatically and with less unnecessary cruelty. Nikti seeks a way to metaphysically reengineer the Ulemedi away from their psychological need for sadism, and leans towards a more ascetic approach to living. As a result, House Nikti doesn't fund the hedonistic excesses of the Ulemedi as much. This has resulted in some mild support from Ulemedi slaves, but less so from many Ulemedi themselves. As a result, House Nikti is one of the less powerful Great Houses relative to their brethren. Nikti's main ambition makes it a more research focused house, holding the single largest collective of scholars within the Empire of Six. Nikti is still, however, a very much Ulemedi supremacist House, driving a wedge in their dealings with foreign powers. Nikti is disliked by the other Great Houses for its stances over various Ulemedi traditions, but has a degree of respect for its academic and research prowess; many of the other Great Houses send their scholars to be trained by Nikti. This arrangement is leveraged by Nikti to spread its ideology to members of other houses in order to grow its political support and power.

Great House Okt are a loose alliance of families held together by the Okt family. The members of this house comprise Ulemedi from all walks of life, with the shared trait of being fiercely independent. Wealthy merchants, warlords, crime bosses count themselves among the ranks of House Okt. House Okt is a relatively disunified house that does not possess the military prowess of Ule nor the scholastic resources of Nikti, but is fairly well rounded in most social, economic and military respects owing to their vast array of members. The Okt family is lassez faire in their administration of their members, granting those in the house a large degree of freedom and autonomy, This comes at a cost of cohesion, however, resulting in great delay in decisions and implementation of policies. The disparate nature of House Okt's members makes it the go-to house for dirty work for other Great Houses, with such work being a major source of resources and capital for the house. The relationship with the other Great Houses is otherwise one of distrust, as its disunified nature grants it a degree of unpredictability and plausible deniability in its actions.

Great House Uren, founded by Narduk, act as powerbrokers and mediators for the other Great Houses. Uren is a largely neutral house and thus the closest to a mediating influence between the other Great Houses. Uren has a large number of diplomats owing to its political position, and its unaligned allegiance makes it an attractive house to smaller families whom do not wish to align themselves with the goals and agendas of other Great Houses. Uren is a melting pot for the cultures of the other Great Houses; the members of this house leverage this aspect of the house to their advantage, with diplomats and traders from Uren gaining a good understanding of the other Great Houses in their own territory, allowing them to send decently experienced personnel out of the gate.

Mifi is a relatively controversial Great House founded by Velit. Mifi has a reputation as an 'outsider' House, due to the high presence of non-Ulemedi species in its ruling positions. Mifi is unique among the other Great Houses for having most of its members being non-Ulemedi, with high numbers of Transcends, Shardbearers and former Kin subservient entities. As a result, Mifi has a somewhat tenuous position in Ulemedi politics and thus its policies and agendas are constantly scrutinised by those outside the house. Membership in the house is denoted through shared aspects of Ulemedi culture adopted by its members, Mifi is the closest to providing meaningful social and political power/advancement for those from outside the empire, and thus it is not uncommon for minor powers at the edge of Ulemedi territory to integrate into Mifi to avoid enslavement by other Great Houses. Mifi is ambivalent in its position on slavery, unlike the other Houses it does not actively espouse it, while unlike Nikti it doesn't condemn the practice either. Such things are ultimately up to the discretion of individual members of the house. This is due to the aforementioned political position of Mifi, which due to accusations of being an outsider house must tread carefully on its stances with various Ulemedi traditions.

Sul, founded by Arnuk, began as a minor House rather than being a Great House from the outset. Most of Sul's members come from the now defunct House Malor. Sul is noted to be more spiritually inclined and religious than the other Houses, which some suspect to be a holdover from Malor. Sul is both insular and secretive, with little outsider interaction apart from trade. What little information of Sul travels to the other houses indicates that it is made up of multiple cults and sects that worship a variety of entities, many of which are either undocumented by both the Kin and Ulemedi. As a result Sul's existence is barely tolerated by the other Great Houses, to the extent that even Mifi possesses considerably more support in the Empire of Six than Sul. Sul is well known for its esoteric prowess, and it is this expertise that earns them tolerance from the other Great Houses.

Just as important is the position of death in Ulemedi culture; as the Ulemedi have been engineered to be mortal, death is feared as the scourge that plagues their kind. A common cultural aim for the Ulemedi is to re-engineer themselves to be rid of the Flaw of Mortality, and become like their Kin forebears; immortal, in the truest sense of the word.

Hedonism is highly regarded in Ulemedi society, though with an equally great emphasis on long term satisfaction as short term gratification. Ulemedi admire figures within their society who can both carry an aeons-long plan to fruition with effects that stretch for aeons more, and while also chasing after short term gratification in events and entertainment.

Like their Kin forebears, the Ulemedi view the manipulation of souls and metaphysical composition of others as an art just as much as a science. Competitions are often held between Ulemedi to present their mutilated pieces for other members of their species to see.

Relations
Other powers tend to have extremely hostile relations with the Ulemedi, owing to the latter's penchant for enslaving and abusing populations. The rampant mutilation of consciousness and souls that Ulemedi regularly perform further damages potential relations, with several multiversal powers having issued a genocide order on the slavers.