IMPERIAL EDUCATION PROGRAM
The Imperial Education Program, more frequently known as the IEP, is a government-sponsored project with the goal of producing work-ready conscripts upon Ascension. Rather than having to train up new recruits for high-skill and high turn-over jobs, the fresh members of the Fleet are able to be integrated immediately into the work-force, and thus of immediate use.
The program is headed by The Shepherd, and has various divisions, the three largest of which are the helmsmen, paingineering and legislacerative departments. Each department has its own head, its own hierarchy and its own funding. With the exception of the Department of Helming, which is led by the Shepherd and funded directly by the Church of the Mirthful, money is always tight for the IEP, and the wars for who will get what grant tend to be fierce.
Each department has its own rules and regulations, dictated by the head of department, and the proctors underneath them. Interaction and collaboration between the branches is fairly common: the Mudskip line is the result of a century of combined effort between the legislative and paingineering branches, to create a bloodline capable of enforcing the Empressâs law on both violet and indigo ships.
The Imperial Education Program is rarely heard of outside of the global south, but has a broad online presence and has an office in almost every metropolitan districtâs capitol. Any troll can enter the offices and undergo testing for their preferred branch.
While the IEP primarily targets children seven and under for conscription, the better to encourage the preferred mentalities, they draw in a large number of older trolls each sweep due to their careful advertising. For a troll worried about being culled for a minor mutation, the IEP grants exemptions. For trolls worried about not having partners for drone day, the IEP will assign them quadrants. Students are granted hives, and given a bonus to their stipends, and enter the Fleet at a higher rank than their peers.
And theyâll find themselves exempt from many common laws, which draws in a great number of trolls keen on escaping imperial punishment.
What few realise until they join is that this all comes with a heavy toll. Trolls who enlist in the program gain these benefits at the loss of their freedom. Signing on with the IEP is signing over oneâs freedom, and leaving - regardless of the reasons - is not tolerated.
The paingineering division of the IEP often works with the helmsmen division in the cultivation of psionic bloodlines. The HARLEY psionic line, known for its high output of energy and low rates of burnout, is the most well-known of these projects.
For most students, the issue of leaving never comes up. This appears mostly with the helmsmen, where the less complacent trolls can get tagged with identification tags to track them, and the less competent trolls can find themselves sold under the table to THE QUEENPINâS SOCIETY to serve as ship engines and batteries for the memberâs ships.
The legislative department is primarily divided up into four categories - indigos to enforce the law among the highest land-dwelling nobility, violets to bring it to the aristocracy, jades to bring it to the caverns, and the tealbloods, left to enforce it among everyone else. While there are other castes involved, theyâre often the quadrants of other students, or theyâve been sponsored by one of the proctors, by virtue of a personal relationship or their bloodline.
