Contrafactional Board

The Contrafactional Board is a government agency in Terophan that regulates the formation of social and political organisations. Officially, it is charged with the enforcement of the provision of the 1617 Eternal Treaty of Nardash banning in perpetuity the formation of factions that may challenge the authority of the imperial court. It is subject to the Council of Eight Chancellors, generally falling under the purview of one particular Chancellor at any given time, and has the authority to proclaim restrictions and bans against unapproved associations. Its remit also includes the suppression of unauthorised labour activism and of organised crime, though the surveillance and prevention of higher-level conspiracies against the state and outright treason have tended to be restricted to the Private Imperial Chancellery. The Board itself comprises a committee of ranking Scholars overseeing an extensive bureaucracy of analysts and field inspectors that reaches throughout the Empire. Its headquarters is located within the Terophatic Court at Axopol.

The Board was established by the Protector over the Throne, Mstislav Lazarov, immediately following the Consistence War in 1891 to investigate and dissolve the revolutionary societies among the Terophatic Scholarchate that had carried out the Monsoon Revolution of 1888. Its purview was soon expanded to encompass the suppression of other public political associations and also of labour activism, especially the growing rabtat fraternities. Over the course of the Second Restoration that followed the seizure of power by Prince Vsevolod in 1911, the Board was redirected to supervise a purge of the Terophatic Court itself and of Lazarov's supporers among the Scholarchate, especially the High Nobility. From the late 1920s, as the political situation began to settle, the Board's attention turned increasingly towards broader social issues, including the regulation of workers and rabtat, and agents of the Board were made responsible for breaking strikes and other forms of industrial unrest. The Long War (1932–58) saw a drastic increase in the Board's remit as it was charged with maintaining order on the home front and suppressing domestic unrest. This became increasingly coercive as the War ground on, with only a minor remission during the lull of 1943–1949; during the 1950s Board inspectors were effectively given a carte blanche to dispense summary justice against Terophites engaged in 'factionalist' activity.

In the hard times of the years without summers that followed the Long War, the Contrafactional Board, despite considerable restraining of its activities, came to function as a vehicle for the mounting official paranoia of Vsevolod's final decade. In the 1960s, many Terophites, including Scholars, found themselves forcibly retired, imprisoned, deported, or even executed as a result of the Board's decisions. Its operations were also extended across the Terophatic Banner, especially into the newly acquired Marshalate of Dekoral, where many Dekoralese who had either opposed or shown inconstancy in their fealty towards Terophan during the War were placed under investigation by the Board, often on quite spurious pretexts. The situation improved considerably after Vsevolod's death in 1970, as the government of Spytihnev VII implemented a general relaxation of political controls throughout the Empire, notwithstanding the purge of the military that followed the Bes Sakoov incident of 1970–71. The Board's interventions have since been considerably curtailed, and its activities are now largely limited to impeding or preventing the formation of potentially threatening political associations, supervising the operation of the Investigative Societies—effectively middle-class pressure groups constituted with Scholarly approval—and its long-held responsibility of surveilling labour activism.

See also

• Machine Board (Azophin)