The Aslan Hierate

The Hierate in the Trojan Reach is quite unlike the Hierate on the far side of the Rift. The old Hierate is a near-monoculture following the Cultural Purge, which forced a single set of beliefs on all the clans. Here on the fringe of Aslan space there are clans driven out by the Cultural Purge, clans who settled the trans-Rift sectors millennia ago, and newly arrived trade and militant clans. The Trojan Reach Aslan are a wild and heterogeneous group compared to their cousins.   Aslan politics are opaque to outside observers. Attempts to paint the Tlaukhu as a unified organisation are futile – the Tlaukhu and the Ya’soisthea have no real power, and individual clans are capable of independent action. Further, clan leaders usually only make short-term decisions, and have little influence over either clan trade (run by the corporations) or migrations and conquest (which are largely in the claws of the ihatei). Population pressure, not politics, dictates much of Aslan military policy. As a new generation of landless males reaches maturity, the Aslan clans must either fight amongst themselves or push out to new systems.   Officially, the Hierate respects the Peace of Fthair, which states that the Aslan will not encroach upon Imperial territory. Their primary goals in the Reach are guarding their own borders (mainly against the Glorious Empire), protecting the trade route with the Imperum, and ‘gathering’ any unsettled worlds they can. In practice, the Aslan protect their own – if the ihatei migrations trigger conflict with the Imperium, the Hierate will commit military assets to the ensuing war. The Peace of Fthair is a very weak brake on Aslan expansion anyway – it only applies to the clans who fought in the Border Wars and their vassals, and those clans make up less than 40% of the Trojan Reach clans.   Many Aslan see the Trojan Reach as a region of opportunity. There are territories to be conquered here that offer little challenge to a true warrior, but are close enough to the Imperium and even the Zhodani Consulate to be wealthy trade hubs in years to come.