When the Order was conceived in 11,418, its founders promised a noble ideal:
a single court above kingdoms, crowns, bloodlines, and borders— a court governed only by law.
Viora led the movement, publicly championing unity while privately fearing the rise of unsanctioned weaponry and frontier technologists operating beyond their control. Historians praised the idea. Generals distrusted it. Merchants quietly anticipated profit.
And the galaxy—exhausted by border wars, resource conflicts, and assassinations—accepted it.
Thus, the Quartern Order was born.
Structure of the Order
Six officials—one from each kingdom—were chosen for neutrality, not prestige.
Judges, scholars, ministers, bureaucrats—people without armies or thrones.
Their mandate was simple: protect the galaxy from threats greater than any single realm.
They met aboard the Basilica Quartern, a drifting judicial citadel whose chiming halls were said to resonate with the frequencies of the laws themselves.
Each official's seat was carved from their homeland's stone and inlaid with Vioran silver, symbolizing unity through shared metal.
At the heart of the Order were the Ten Galactic Laws, written in dark-blue oath-ink and meant to govern only those crimes capable of destabilizing the galaxy.
The Ten Galactic Laws
1. Authority of Sanction — No kingdom, faction, or individual may conduct large-scale military or enforcement operations without Order recognition.
2. Technological Armaments — No weapon or technological innovation may be constructed or deployed that possesses the capacity to cause irreversible planetary or systemic destruction.
3. Mandated Transparency — All governing bodies must provide public access to official records, decisions, and operations, with exemptions permitted only for matters of verified security or protected intellectual interest.
4. Sentient Trafficking — No sentient life may be bought, sold, transferred, or exploited as property under any system.
5. Prohibition of Unregulated Exchange — No restricted asset—technological, biological, or sentient—may exist, circulate, or be concealed outside the visibility of the Order.
6. Sovereign Accountability — All governing bodies must disclose existential threats, weapon capabilities, and destabilizing anomalies to the Order without omission or delay.
7. Resource Stewardship — No kingdom may monopolize, weaponize, or irreparably damage resources essential to multi-kingdom survival.
8. Dominion Boundaries — All territorial borders are binding unless renegotiated through the Order.
9. Controlled Substances Regulation — No substance capable of mass dependency, cognitive destabilization, or biological harm may be produced, distributed, or weaponized.
10. Sentient Integrity — No sentient being may be forcibly altered in mind, memory, or biological structure.
Everything outside these laws—civil disputes, local crimes, cultural conflicts—remained under kingdom jurisdiction.
The dream was unity. The system was structure.
Whether either could endure was another matter entirely.