House Volkert Meritocratic Board

“They call it a meritocracy, but what earns you merit here is… unusual. You build a bridge, you get a nod. You mediate a famine, you get a seat. But if you shake hands with something from the beyond and survive? That’ll make you someone important on Ixion.”

— Anonymous journo, before disappearing from the Ixion circuit

Origins and Legitimacy

The House Volkert’s Meritocratic Board (HVMB) was conceived as a planetary governing body to bring Ixion in line with the Pan-Solar Consortium’s Technocrat Registry. To casual observers, it looks like a familiar system: governance by those who have proven their talents, usefulness, or social contributions. In practice, the HVMB is an uncanny mirror.

House Volkert added two new, discreet measures of “merit” that raise eyebrows among those who hear whispers of them:

• Interactions with subspace entities (whether surviving, harnessing, or even understanding them).
• Actions that directly benefit House Volkert.

Neither addition is illegal outright, but the omission of these criteria from reports back to the PSC may well be. This ambiguity is Volkert’s specialty—the art of living in the “may be” of legality. For now, regulators treat Ixion’s governance as a necessary anomaly rather than a scandal worth pursuing.

Structure and Authority

The HVMB consists of seven members:

• Three appointees of House Volkert.
• Four appointees drawn from Ixion’s largest city-states.

In theory, this gives locals the majority. In practice, if the vote ever splits 3–4, the Volkert position carries. Through careful control of the rules of order, agenda-setting, and veto powers, House Volkert ensures their supremacy.

The board has sweeping powers:

• Recognition of merit → formally inducting new technocrats into the registry.
• Appointments → assigning technocrats to leadership posts or specialized committees.
• Resource allocation → directing Ixion’s industrial and agricultural output.
• Military contracts → holding the purse strings for hiring mercenaries, overwhelmingly defaulting to the Damned Company as “local talent.”
• Civil oversight → wielding veto power over Constance, the Ixion Constable Mainframe, the AI lawmaker-enforcer of the planet.

Tensions and Priorities

Most of the HVMB’s business is mundane: certifying new engineers, resource managers, or agricultural planners. These appointments pass quietly and rarely cause friction. The storm breaks in resource allocation, where House Volkert’s unyielding pragmatism collides with local expectations. Volkert views Ixion as both an investment and an experiment. They extract wealth while keeping just enough stability to avoid revolt, and they are perfectly willing to cut city-states off from subsidies to achieve long-term goals no one outside Castle Otiose understands.

Despite this, Ixion’s populace does not revolt. The presence of the Damned Company as Volkert’s enforcers—and the quiet dread surrounding the Hollow Quintessence—has cultivated an atmosphere where dissent rarely dares grow beyond whispers.

Castle Otiose and the Unknown

The true heart of the HVMB’s influence lies in Castle Otiose, a black spire-complex that dominates Ixion’s capital horizon. What happens within its walls is unknown even to most of the Board’s local members. Journalists who attempt to investigate tend to receive subtle, chilling warnings: a note, a stranger’s word, a story too close to their private fears. No one has disappeared, at least not publicly—but the absence of reports is its own kind of silence.

Rumors abound: that Castle Otiose hosts negotiations with subspace beings, that it is a shrine to House Volkert’s true patrons, or that it is nothing more than a psychological gambit designed to keep Ixion in awe. Whatever the truth, Volkert has ensured that it remains both feared and untouchable.

The Current Board

Volkert Appointees

• Uncle Unending – A ghoulishly charismatic elder whose speeches blend nostalgia with nihilism. Believed to be centuries old, though how he maintains his health is a matter of conjecture.
• Broken Echo – A pale, reflective figure said to have survived contact with subspace intelligence. Speaks rarely, but every word is recorded.
• The Curator – Oversees Volkert’s cultural and informational projects on Ixion. Holds a vast private archive whose contents may include records predating the PSC.

Local Appointees

• Amina Satokowalska – A pragmatic bureaucrat known for steering resource disputes into compromises, though many wonder what concessions she has made to Volkert behind closed doors.
• Jiří Yamamotodubois – A Technocrat Engineer with populist leanings, constantly at odds with Volkert’s faction yet never quite able to outmaneuver them.
• Lucienne Novák-Mensah – An economic planner, well-connected to offworld markets, whose loyalties may shift depending on who funds her projects.
• Marek Kobayashadom – A former civic leader turned board member, seen by many as a figurehead manipulated by Volkert but tolerated for his symbolic presence.