A/N: The salarian government has always struck me as requiring a great deal of byzantine complexity, but I was not sure how to model it. I hope the below makes sense, as I had to rewrite it several times and it's so try most of Trellani's voice is missing.

The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space

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Dearest Jack, clever Richard, and lovely Rachel,

We are in transit to the Black Rim colonies, to meet with my last few contacts, and while I am on this boring vessel, it is a good time to cover the salarian government, that most byzantine of topics.

I have done my best to provide a good overview of what the government is like, although I fear that I have only scratched the surface. The strange mix of hyper-aggressive guilds, ancient noble rulers, and the interplay of relationships between the Ministries of the government is enough to make an elcor weep of boredom, but once past the surface the tangle becomes one of, unsurprisingly, yet more layers of misdirection.

Cerberus Thought for the Day: When the alien becomes familiar, the alien becomes dangerous. Distrust is both your watchword and your salvation.

Salarian Government Structures:

At it's most basic, the salarian government is three polymorphic bodies of power operating in three different arenas of influence. As with every other part of salarian society, there are very ancient political structures mixed in with more modern concepts, and without the photographic memory all salarians posses, keeping it all straight would be a hopeless task.

From what I grasp of your own government, it is organized around strict hierarchical lines, formed around a central group of powerful institutions and delegating lesser responsibilities to less powerful organs of the government. The salarians are entirely different. Each piece of the government has it's own tasking, over which it is supreme. These governmental departments negotiate with one another to arrive at the required tasks.

The Court of the High Circle

The highest form of government in the Salarian union is known as the Court of the High Circle. This is comprised of the Sur'kesh High Dalatrass, the dalatrasses of the Six Families, the High Lord of the Reach Research Compound, the highest ranking savant of the Wheel Religion, and the STG Master.

Officially, the Court of the High Circle exists to 'advise' the Salarian Union. This is blatant fantasy, the Court is the most potent concentration of power and secrets in the entire salarian race. That being said, it is true that they do not issue laws, do not make public appearances, and are rarely seen acting openly.

From my understanding, the Court provides the vision and guidance for where the Salarian Union should be headed – in broad strokes. The actual government does all the detail work, passing laws, raising taxes, conducting diplomacy. There is very little communication between the Union proper and the Council. A single guild is responsible for all public communication between the Court and the general population, and most of them have been cybernetically altered to prevent them from being compromised by torture. And the rest of the government must go through the Ministry of the Union to communicate with them.

That being said, each one of the Six Families has rough oversight over one of the Ministries (see below), and usually over some aspect of salarian society or industry. In that aspect they do communicate frequently, but often through long chains of intermediaries.

It is easier to have a meeting with the Council of Matriarchs than it is to even send a message to the Court.

Government : Salarian Union

The Union itself is a model of clean efficiency. The government on Sur'kesh is based out of Reach, and meets in the old fortress of the ancient salarian lords, now upgraded to modern architecture on the inside. There is a three person committee formed from each of the nations of Sur'kesh that acts as an executive branch. This committee votes yay or nay on laws and bills proposed by the Seating, the gathering of delegates from across the Salarian Union.

The Seating is never a fixed number. Colonies and member worlds send a number of delegates based on a confusing number of factors, including prosperity, the amount of holdings on the world, and political influence of the leaders of the world and of the Seating. The Seating is divided into three groups. The Lower Seating is comprised of the representatives of planetary populations, and proposes laws that affect the salarian people. The Middle Seating is comprised of representatives from the Guilds and Clans, and work on legislature that affects the Guilds and Clans, as well as trade relations. The Upper Seating is composed of representatives from the various holdings on the worlds, and votes on taxes, spending, and military matters.

There is no court or legal framework – all such questions of law are handled at the holding level by the noble or dalatrass in question, and at the highest level by the Court of the High Circle informally. Salarian law is extremely flexible, but they borrowed the word for 'lawyer' from we asari, as the idea of a being who exists only to work on the law did not occur to them until later. There are now various Guilds that do nothing but act as lawyers, each guild specializing in a different kind of law,but these cases take place in foreign settings.

Below the Seating and the Committee, there are six broad ministries that allow the Union to function. Five of them are headed by a male, but the sixth (the Ministry of Union) is headed by a female who summarizes the activity of the various ministries and provides reporting to the Committee.

Below the ministries, literally all government is handled through the holdings.

Government : Venoths, Tanoths, Jenoths, and Seroths

Salarian society retains its feudal flavor once you descend from the heights of galactic governance. While Sur'kesh has nations, these nations are basically place-names at this point in history. Much like the Union itself, they impose a thin shell of organization over a morass of what are called Holdings.

A holding is the amount of land and property commanded and owned by a single Family. Holdings start out as Seroths, which are small, and proceed up to Venoths, which can be entire colonial groups.

A Holding is composed of four elements – the Family who holds the property, the lesser and associated Families who have lesser Holdings within or around it, the Families who reside on it, and the actual, physical properties. Since your AIS uses historical terms from Earth's own feudal period to describe these, I shall as well.

The smallest level of Holding is the Seroth, or the march. It is typically either a small town and the surrounding lands, or a small station (mining, HE3, etc) that is self-contained. It can also be a subdivision of a larger Holding, with rights granted to a lesser Family to aid in administering the area. The Seroth is ruled by what you would call a marquis, who is typically the family dalatrass of the largest Family in the area. Seroths are nearly ubiquitous throughout salarian space. You can think of them as the equivalent of your administrative districts in the colonies, or counties on your Earth. Seroths maintain local taxes, local police forces, local utilities, and basically act to handle all the small-segment needs of a population. They also provide the smallest discrete bloc of salarian political power. A Seroth is important...but not highly important.

Between five and fifteen Seroths form a Jenoth, or county. These are often smaller colonies, very large space stations, or political subgroups in a nation. The Seroths within a Jenoth's sphere of influence do not answer directly to the Jenoth, but often meet informally to coordinate events. Power generation, medical care, large-scale transportation networks, and industrial regulations are the focus of the Jenoth's leadership. Jenoths are ruled by what you would call a count, who has a court of advisers.

Several (between three and six, but never more than seven) Jenoths form a Tanoth, or a barony. Tanoths are almost always entire large colonies, or in some cases the entire solar system including all lesser colonies. On Sur'kesh, each nation is comprised of three Tanoths. Tanoths are so large scale that they manage private militias and each one has an STG adviser. They manage equally large-scale elements of government, such as disaster response, tax collection, education, commercial regulation, and provide what legal framework exists in a region. Jenoths within a Tanoth meet quarterly in a grand council with the Tanoth's dalatrasses, and the ruler of the Jenoth

The highest level of organization, the Venoth, bears special mention. There are only six Venoths, and each one is ruled (unsurprisingly) by the Six Families. The first two, Manno and Ergii, focus all their efforts on Sur'kesh itself. Manno tends towards financial regulations and banking, while Ergii spends more time works more on fostering the arts, culture, and smoothing communications between the elements on Sur'kesh. While I am sure they are involved in more than that, details on both families are incredibly difficult to obtain.

I do know (from an old friend of mine) that Manno's estates are within the Reach itself, and that they own most of the territory around it. Ergii is so utterly paranoid that I am not sure they have a central place of organization at all, instead the family tends to live (or hide) inside fortified bolt-holes built into the museums and cultural centers they sponsor.

Shuel and Daaso, while also based on Sur'kesh, incorporate the surrounding 'core' colonies in their Venoth. They also are in control of maintenance of the planetary defense networks, for planning further colonial expansion, and providing coordination of the space – lanes in the system proper.

Shuel also manages the mercantile markets and provides regulations for merchants and trading. They operate from a heavily fortified ziggurat-complex dug into the mountains just south of the Reach, accessible only by a severely fortified skylane – there is no ground route to reach the complex. They also operate three 'merchant relations' guilds, and are the central registrar for most merchant guilds and corporations to interact with. Shuel government officials are the most visible on Sur'kesh, and the current High Dalatrass, Linron, is a member of the Family.

Daaso is the STG's informal sponsors and provides them with additional political muscle. It has, in the past century or two, become increasingly difficult to separate the facilities and personnel of Daaso from that of the STG. Daaso's family complex, a sprawling estate covering over three thousand square kilometers, directly abuts the STG Core Tower and the STG Proving Grounds. Something like sixty-five percent of the STG is either of the Family, in an associated family, or has links to the Family through breeding contracts. Daaso's time, when not spent on the STG, is usually spent on the industrial machine that feeds them equipment and strike vessels.

The last two Families are, in my view, the most interesting in terms of governance. Between the two of them, Yaan and Solus are responsible for the rest of the salarian colony worlds, and the salarian population on the Citadel. Yaan operates from the Citadel directly, owning most of Tayseri Ward, as well as the Bright Rim colonies spreading from the Citadel to the 'Citadel half' of Union space. Yaan tends to take the leading hand in interactions with other alien races – not surprising, as they are the only one of the Six truly interested in other aliens in any aspect beyond viewing them as threats.

Solus owns the Black Rim colonies, a collection of eccentric worlds and broken clans, bits and pieces of the Free Clans, scientific guilds doing strange or dangerous research, and militant STG training facilities. Of all the Six Families, Solus has the lightest grip on governance, it's Tanoths operating only with the very lightest of oversight. Solus is almost entirely focused on the salarian military, and on the military forces of other alien races. Of the Salarian Union's six shipyards, five of them are owned by Solus and in their space.

Government : STG Command

I do hope, dearest Richard, that you are not expecting some treasure trove of secrets regarding the STG from this jaunt of mine. Attempting to infiltrate and investigate the Special Tasks Group is beyond suicidal, verging on comical.

That being said, one often finds the hunt need not be completed with the spear if the bow will suffice.

It took me some time to find a … pliable … member of the STG. Every member of the group wishes to excel, and while that makes them intensely competitive and resistant to bribery or corruption, it also makes them vulnerable to information offered. In this case, I gave them all the operational details on the Cerberus cell that was set up to act as a honey pot on Tallia II, and in return got a great deal of disorganized insight into the STG itself.

No one, not even the STG, is sure of the identity of the STG Master. He is the top operator of the organization, the interface between it and the government (and by extension, the Court of the High Circle.) He (or she?) wears a climate controlled, scan-proof suit with a total face mask at all times, speaks with a cybernetically altered mechanical voice, has all limbs replaced with very high grade cyberware, and does not have a name. Rumors suggest the next Master is picked when the current one takes office, and is mind-wiped and reprogrammed to be the perfect operative. Other, darker rumors whisper of genetic alteration and experimentation, or cloning.

All we do know is that the STG Master assigns tasks to the Group as a whole. And if the information I have is correct, the Master decides what tasks the Group will or will not perform. The STG does not answer to the Circle, or even to the Citadel in this regard. They consider themselves apolitical, and their only priority is the preservation of the Salarian Union.

I have never heard of an intelligence service that does not answer to anyone, and it is very possible this is just tides against the shore. After all, the influence of the Daaso Family in STG is enormous, and cannot be discounted that they are the secret masters. Then again, these are salarians – the entire structure and the Master may all be lies and some other party controls the Group's actions.

This is why salarians induce headaches.

What little can be taken from what I gathered is this: the STG is broken down into operational cells, each of which reports to a cell leader. A cell is between three and five teams of ten members each. The cells coordinate through the cell leaders, who report to division leaders, who report to the Master.

Each alien race is assigned a division. So is the Citadel, the Geth, the Mass Relays, and so are many criminal groups. You will be honored (or upset) to know that there are three entire divisions assigned to Humanity – one for the SA itself, one for the SA fleet, and one for the Corporate Court. Oh, and Cerberus rates an entire cell.

I did find out one piece of information you will probably wish to act on. There are two cells devoted to attempting to breach the security around your 'Black Zone'.

Government : The Ministries

As I mentioned earlier, there are six ministries that administrate the rest of the governmental functions. These are the Ministry of the Union (executive oversight), the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Science, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Guilds, and the Ministry of the Interior.

The Ministry of the Union is fairly small, perhaps a few dozen highly placed information managers and a few dalatrasses, who coordinate the information and requests from the other ministries and interface with the Court of the High Circle. Dominated by the Manno Family, the Ministry's basic job is to process all communications to and from the Court, and to pass along instructions as needed.

The Ministry of Defense is in charge of the non-STG portion of the military, and is the largest of the Ministries. Every military force has a Ministry adviser, and all of the ordering, disbursement, logistics and non-combat duties are managed by the Ministry. Unsurprisingly, the leadership of this Ministry is mostly composed of hard-core Solus military types, half of them former soldiers themselves. What passes for strategic command coordinates it's efforts through the Ministry. The bulk of the personnel are War Clans members, mostly from Sur'kesh.

The Ministry of Science is the official government research body, and is in charge of all universities, education, training camps, and of course, research facilities. It works very closely with the Reach Research Compound at the Sparak, and is in charge of all of the various uloi academies on both the homeworld and the colonies. The Ministry sets out research goals, provides and organizes grants, procures and distributes research equipment, sets the testing standards for both standard education and the entry requirements for the uloi, and acts to back-up and safeguard salarian knowledge. Overseen by the Ergii, the Ministry is also loosely in charge of fostering salarian art and culture.

The Ministry of Intelligence is not related to the STG, but instead to the government and military intelligence forces. Amusingly, this is the ministry that deals the most with diplomatic events, and thus the old adage that every salarian diplomat is a spy is very accurate. While intelligence is usually a Daaso thing, it is the Yaan – with their fixation on aliens – that run the Ministry of Intelligence. The tasks of the Ministry are not only in training spy-diplomats, but in psychological analysis, coordinating efforts with the STG, collecting economic and demographic data inside and outside of the Union, and providing counter-intelligence operatives for the public sector.

The Ministry of Guilds, operating out of the Reach Guildhall, oversees the process of incorporating, shifting, altering and registering guilds and guild interests. It also provides a central location for guilds and corporations to work with one another, provides some economic controls and regulation of banks, and the like. The ministry is run by the Shuel family, which is a natural fit given their focus on mercantile interests and business.

The Ministry of the Interior is the strangest of the ministries. On paper, it is in charge of regulating interactions between the holdings, overseeing public works, managing currency and public safety, and land management. In practice, the ministry, loosely overseen by the Daaso when they can bother, is the largest gathering of salarians in the government not directly connected with the Six Families. Much of the ministry is run by members of the Home Clans, with strong leavenings of the Service Guilds also involved.

Government Services: Police and Disaster Response

All salarian worlds have their own police forces, usually mustered by the ruling Jenoth or Tanoth. The quality of said services varies widely, based on the expense paid for them and the goals of the rulers of the area, but almost all of them are roughly on par with C-SEC Special Response units.

The typical city will boast a police force of at least five hundred, usually with a single STG adviser and a few personnel from the Ministry of the Interior acting as supervisors. Special police forces are set up in industrial areas and other areas of interest, called the Union Sentinels, which are a mix of police and intelligence units.

The salarians, much like you humans, also have a class of political police, although at least they are more subtle than Commissars. They operate out of the larger cities, mostly in against gang and/or terrorist activity, and are equipped and trained by the military. These special police are called Dhalash (the Guard of Service) and take orders directly from the Ministry of the Union, oddly enough. The distinction is interesting, especially when they have authority to act directly from the one Ministry directly connected to the Court of the High Circle.

The emergency services of the salarian government is organized on a guild level, with public sponsorship by various towns, cities, and stations. Most cities will have between three and five such volunteer response services. There is a better equipped, more professional force, assigned to deal with haz-mat fires or other serious accidents, which is maintained and trained by the Ministry of the Interior.

Government Services: Public Information Bureau

Another mark of the strange nature of the salarian government can be found in the Public Information Bureau. This strange group of guilds is directly commissioned by the government to provide visitors (usually traveling businessmen or diplomats, but on occasion soldiers cross-training with the salarian military, and the rare tourist) with information and guidance.

These are well-adjusted, calmly speaking salarians with a deep familiarity with aliens. Well spoken, demurely dressed, and exquisitely polite, they are found in every star-port and fueling station, every hotel and public building, and maintain offices and facilities on every single planet salarians control.

They are also – hardly a shock – spies and infiltrators. Designed to place people at ease and to figure out what a person is on Sur'kesh or other salarian worlds to do, they are primarily an early tripwire to allow more professional assessments by the STG of any possible infiltration attempts. They are almost always armed, usually with a slim pistol and some form of close-in melee weapon – typically omniblades, but knives and even mono-filament whips have been seen.

The Bureau employs mostly poorer salarians, rather than recruit from the well-to-do, and thus they are seen as somewhat dispensable. They are, however, very useful for traveling through salarian space, as they genuinely try to help those travelers who are just traveling.

Government Services: The Reach Research Compound and the Sparak

The last component of the government is perhaps the most dangerous.

Until about five hundred years ago, the Sparak – the huge citadel of salarian learning and science – was notably apolitical. Part of this was due to the fact that the uloi academies were places where violence was forbidden, and part of it was that scientists felt politics got in the way of pure science.

That ended when the government put billions of credits worth of cash into renovating and upgrading the Sparak, building a 140-story tower on it's northern edge. An entirely new guild was set up to administer the research inside, and it was dubbed the Reach Research compound.

The guild that runs it is called, ominously enough, the Hand That Seeks. (I wonder sometimes if melodrama is a sort of infection that strikes at random. All they need to do at this point is paint the tower black with red haptic graphics and a sign saying "evil research within".) The Hand gets it's funding and orders directly from the Six Families, that much is known.

What isn't known – and may never be known until too late – is what is being researched within the tower. Only guild members can get in – the salarians have the entire tower hermetically sealed, and the only entrance is through some form of airlock. According to rumors, the guild members have been vaccinated against some form of bionetic plague that circulates within the tower, one that kills in less than eighteen hours. I have not been able tot determine if this is true or not, but the guard around the tower is extremely heavy, and it's structure incorporates six GTS batteries and multiple GARDIAN laser arrays.

The rumors about the research going on inside are even wilder. I believe that the RRC is the salarian answer to the SA's 'Black Zone' and the turian Darkline Territory. Without some way to get inside – and I can think of none – the only truth in the matter is the salarians do not like to throw money away for nothing. Whatever is inside is very important to the Six Families.

The RRC sponsors thousands of scholarships, not just for salarians but for all races, in the fields of biology, cybernetics, genetics, math, and physics. These scholarships are fought over fiercely because they allow one to study full time at the Sparak, which is a high honor. The winners must conduct various lines of research for the RRC to repay such largesse, but the research being undertaken that I have been able to confirm makes little sense.

Much of the research is into a series of archeological digs being conducted by the RRC on a world known as Makana. Among other oddities – the salarians are shipping vorcha in large numbers to the planet. Salarians are buying up lots of UV irradiation panels. Salarians are researching statical discharge systems, and so on and so forth, unknowable streams of information that seem to lead to no clear purpose.

Much like the rest of their government, it remains a mystery to me.