A metachor (pronounced: meta-khor) represents the largest and most significant tier of administrative subdivision within the vast territorial expanse of the Endless Unity. The concept itself was born from necessity during the critical Reformations of Aximor, a period where the sheer scale of the growing empire had outstripped the ability of a single central government on @Andarus to effectively manage interstellar affairs. The initial division created the foundational @Central Metachor (Andaran Metachor) Metachor and the @Crux Metachor, establishing a template for decentralized, regional governance that would enable the Unity to continue its expansion without collapsing under its own bureaucratic weight.
Prior to the cataclysmic War of the Chosen, the Endless Unity was comprised of 17 such metachors, each a sprawling domain administrated from a designated regional capital world. However, the second half of the war, marked by the Unity's relentless counter-offensives and reclamation of lost territories, triggered an unprecedented phase of administrative expansion. As the Unity pushed into and around formerly @Altaran-controlled space, four new metachors were rapidly established to manage these vast, newly secured frontiers, bringing the total to 21 metachors by the empire's zenith in 999 AF.
The scale of a metachor is intentionally arbitrary, designed to encompass culturally, economically, or strategically linked regions of space rather than conform to a rigid geometric shape. In practice, each metachor typically spans tens of thousands of light-years, containing billions of star systems within its borders. Below this highest echelon of authority exists a nested, standardized hierarchy of smaller administrative divisions. The supersector, a cube of space measuring 1,000 light-years on each side, forms the next tier of management. These are further subdivided into sectors (100x100x100 light-years), and then into subsectors (10x10x10 light-years), creating a logical and scalable framework for governance that culminates at the most fundamental level: the individual star system.
This intricate administrative structure, however, would not survive the Great Schism. With the shattering of the Central Authority, the metachor system became the political fault line along which the empire fractured. Almost every single metachor fell under the nominal control of an independent successor state, such as the @Sagetton Contingency or the @Novel Industrial Directorate , with only the @Mandate of Light having majority control over more than a single metachor. Yet in all cases, this control is fragmented and contested, as these new polities rarely exert dominion over the absolute majority of their metachor's territory. Instead, hundreds of smaller sector-level, subsector-level, and system-level authorities—warlords, corporate entities, and isolated planetary governments—now vie for power, transforming the once-orderly metachors into patchworks of micro-states and contested zones within the post-Unity political landscape.
Each metachor contained several thousand supersectors—standardized cubes measuring one thousand light years per side. The supersector served as the highest level of appointed governance, with its capital world housing an administration accountable to the metachor capital. The supersector's rigid cubic geometry reflected Unity's procedural standardization: regardless of stellar density, each received identical administrative structures, funding, and personnel. This created inefficiencies—empty space received equal attention as dense clusters—but allowed @Iolus to issue directives that propagated through predictable channels.
Each supersector subdivided into exactly one thousand sectors—cubes of one hundred light years per side. The sector represented where interstellar policy became practical governance. Sector Governors managed day-to-day operations: coordinating stellar energy distribution, resolving inter-system trade disputes, maintaining manifold routes for FTL travel.
At the sector level, Unity's preference for thinking in star-systems rather than planets became explicit doctrine. A star system was the fundamental administrative unit—a complete stellar environment containing all planets, moons, and orbital infrastructure. Individual planets were treated as subdivisions, not independent entities. This reflected technological reality: Dyson clouds harvesting stellar energy, orbital manufactories, and continuous cities spanning multiple planetary surfaces made the "world" versus "void" distinction meaningless.
Each sector contained one thousand subsectors—cubes of ten light years per side. This was the final standard unit of Imperial administration, where Subsector Governors maintained direct contact with individual star systems through system administrators. Subsector capitals served as regional hubs for the manifold network, maintaining trade stations and security outposts that ensured system-level governors remained loyal to Unity authority.
Beneath subsector level, individual star systems operated under system-wide governors who reported to subsector authority. Each received standardized directives: maintain stellar energy collection efficiency, ensure population productivity, regulate trade flows, enforce Unity protocols. Unity's system-centric governance reflected technological capabilities—a star system was a complete economic unit: its star provided energy, planets provided materials, orbital space provided manufacturing, and manifold connections provided galactic integration.
When the Great Schism shattered central authority, this elegant administrative machine became vulnerability. The formal hierarchy collapsed into competing power structures, but the underlying framework persisted. Regional authorities and successor states continued using identical terminologies, administrative boundaries, and system-centric approaches, even as control fragmented into micro-states.
The metachor system, designed to enable galactic governance, became the map of Unity's disintegration. Each metachor turned into a political battleground where successor states competed for legitimacy, all claiming to be the true continuation of Unity's administrative vision. The standardized hierarchy that once enabled efficient control now serves as framework for endless conflict over which successor rightfully inherits each administrative level.
The irony: the system succeeded too well. By creating scalable bureaucracy, Unity built a framework that survived its central authority's death, providing ready-made template for warlords, corporations, and would-be emperors to claim legitimacy by occupying the same administrative positions that once served a unified empire.