Hedion University

Hedion University is one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the Amarr Empire, famous for its long-standing progressive methods, liberal ideals, and for being one of three schools in the Empire supporting a capsuleer programme.

Despite the school’s name, the current main campus is located in the Sehmy system. The Sehmy campus has a long history with the University, and has been home to the Lord Rector’s office since AD 21341. The original campus at Hedion V has been declared a holy heritage site by the Theology Council, and currently serves as a museum to the Hedion University and science in the Empire. The current Lord Rector of the Hedion University is Enam Sahdop, a Ni-Kunni former priestess and economic advisor to previous Imperial Chancellor Serude Sakekoo.

Hedion University is currently comprised of 14 space-bound campuses, 25 planetary campuses, and 64 associated schools throughout the Empire. Roughly six million students graduate from Hedion schools every year, many of whom go on to serve in the imperial bureaucracy or are employed by the private sector. The business and economics graduates of Hedion University are regarded as the best in the Empire, and are also widely sought-after in the Gallente Federation and Caldari State.

History

Foundation

Hedion University was founded over 2000 years ago in AD 21290, following the successful creation of the first stargate linking the Amarr and Hedion systems. As a reward to the scientists responsible for the development and completion of the stargate, Emperor Heideran III granted the scientists land on the planet Apha (Hedion V) and issued them a charter to found a university there.

Uniquely, this charter granted new freedoms to Hedion University that older institutions such as the Imperial Academy and Royal Amarr Institute did not enjoy - including self-governance. Due to the immense distance between Apha and Amarr Prime the university’s founders had argued that they could not be expected to obey the same kind of oversight as the traditional schools. The University would be one of the first settlers in the Hedion system and as such they argued that they had to be trusted to oversee themselves. Thus, where older schools in the Empire were traditionally extensions of the clergy, Hedion University effectively existed under the laws of nobility.

Despite Hedion University’s special freedoms, it was still ultimately subservient to the Apostle Council, and the vast majority of scientists in the Empire were also clergymen so the staff of the school looked little different from that of the established academies. Even so, it attracted liberal thinkers and scholars who found the traditional academic structure of the Empire stifling, creating a very concentrated enclave of progressive thought.

The primary function of Hedion University in the early years was to distribute the knowledge of how to create stargates. The effective monopoly the university maintained on artificial wormhole physics allowed it to generate considerable revenue and influence, and garnered it extensive contacts in the first colonial waves of the Empire. Those affiliations would almost destroy Hedion University half a century after its founding.

Heresy

The third Lord Rector of Hedion University - Nebuchad Takos Khanid - was not only a famed physicist who had been involved in the last stages of the stargate project, he was also a liberal theologian.

This was not something unusual at Hedion, as the school distinguished itself by welcoming reformists and radical thinkers to provide breakthroughs in science. Takos believed that men could never adequately convey the wisdom of God, and advocated that his students should seek a ‘personal relationship’ with God to find inspiration in their work. This in itself was nothing groundbreaking or threatening, but soon the theological faculty of the university began to consist of more and more radical philosophers.

Religious teachers at Hedion began preaching that closeness to God ran strong in certain families, that a pure relationship with God should not require intermediaries, and that God would only grant gifts to those prepared to take them. Even after his death, Takos’ own personal sect continued to develop a sizable following - especially among the Holders and nobility. It was also gaining the attention of the Council of Apostles, who were set on destroying the many heresies that had cropped up during the Empire’s phase of expansion.

When the Empire started rooting out the Sani Sabik sect across its colonies, allegations were also made that secret societies at Hedion University were practicing blood rituals, orchestrated by Takos’ disciples. An Inquisition was launched, and the university was stripped of its land in Hedion. The original campus was placed under the administration of the Imperial Academy as clergy agents brutally interrogated all students at the school, and the majority of the school’s faculty were stripped of their titles.

Despite the loss of its central campus, Hedion University still existed. It had schools in several Holder domains, and with countless Holders flaunting a Hedion education the university’s sponsors had a vested interest in ensuring the school’s name returned to good standing. A new Lord Rector was appointed and an academy in Sehmy was made the new main campus of the university, but it would take centuries for Hedion University to return to the prestige it enjoyed before the fall.

The Mad Emperor’s Patronage

During the reign of Emperor Zaragram II, Hedion University regained some of its status. The emperor had many great projects in mind, and needed progressive thinkers to realize them. As a token of his patronage, Zaragram had the original school in Hedion returned to the university, but at that point the Sehmy school had grown to be far larger than the original campus.

Throughout Zaragram II’s reign, Hedion University received significant funding from the emperor in exchange for providing experts to assist in projects such as the City of God. Enrollment increased rapidly, spurring foundation of new campuses throughout the Empire - primarily on land purchased from or granted by Holders.

Once Zaragram was assassinated and the Council of Apostles resumed control of the throne, Hedion’s royal sponsorship was ended. The school yet again dwindled into obscurity.

Moral Reforms

Although Hedion University did not explicitly take a side during the civil war sparked by Emperor Heideran V, most of its land had been granted by noble families who were now loyal to Heideran. In addition, elements of both the Royal Amarr Institute and the Imperial Academy - the two largest educational institutions in the Empire - were in open rebellion against the throne. These circumstances meant that Hedion University was quickly elevated to a prestigious position by the simple virtue of never having opposed the winning side.

When organizations such as the Theology Council, Royal Houses, and Imperial Chancellery were founded, Hedion graduates were in great demand to fill countless new positions of influence. The university’s graduates would soon be at the forefront of Imperial expansion: cataloging stars, building stargates, surveying worlds, and keeping tally of the Empire’s industries and conquests.

Human Endurance Program

After the subjugation of the Minmatar, Holders in the imperial frontier saw a dramatic influx of labor slaves. Many of these Holders had previously enjoyed great benefits from employing Hedion University researchers to improve their industries, and with this new source of labor there was again an interest in maximizing efficiency.

At Holder requests, Hedion University employed hundreds of researchers to study the physiological and genetic traits of the Minmatar tribes, with the purpose of determining what individuals and bloodlines had the best natural inclinations for various aptitudes.

Under influence from their Holder sponsors, the university’s research soon turned to focus almost exclusively on physical prowess and traits associated with hard manual labor. After attracting interest from the Royal Houses, Ministry of War, and the emperor himself, the many researchers were organized into a single unified project - the Human Endurance Program.

Joined by researchers from numerous schools and organizations, and operating with the sponsorship and authority of some of the highest offices in the Empire, the H.E.P. started to put its theories into practice. A vast program of eugenics and genetic enhancement was put in motion, designed to turn the Minmatar people into the perfect living tools to serve Amarr.

While initial efforts showed great promise, their effects - producing slaves with greatly enhanced strength - often caused more problems for the Holders that owned these slaves. Uprisings started to become more and more frequent. Certain members of the program’s leadership - particularly those researchers from the original Hedion projects - were starting to question the purpose of the project and how it aligned with the supposed religious basis for slavery. Most notably the program’s director of genetic research, Cardinal Danel, had grown disillusioned with the research the H.E.P. was conducting, and went so far as to personally petition the emperor to shut down the program.

"If the purpose of slavery is to educate the wayward to accept God, then slavery is never meant to be perpetual, and every opportunity to make a slave a better man must be taken before the opportunity to make him a better slave."

—excerpt from Cardinal Geneticist Asonaf Danel’s speech at the court of Emperor Velenus IV.

These protests would fall mostly on deaf ears, and a few years later the entire H.E.P. project was placed under the authority of the Imperial Navy. The majority of the original researchers were made to leave the program, and its purpose shifted from enhancing laborers to producing superior soldiers. This path would eventually lead to the creation of the Kameiras.

Modern History

International Relations

When the Amarr Empire and Gallente Federation opened their borders in AD 23210, Hedion University was the first imperial school to set up a system for exchange students. Gallente history, science, economics, and culture were all subjects that intrigued the empire’s liberals. Emperor Heideran VII himself lauded these efforts, and even personally oversaw the first exchange of teachers between Hedion University and the University of Caille.

Economics

While Hedion’s economics program was widely considered to be the most progressive in the Empire, studying the complex capitalist systems of the Gallente and Caldari made it clear that even the most advanced Amarrian models of economics were woefully outdated. The Gallente and Caldari systems would put the Empire at a significant disadvantage in international trade, unless something could be done to rejuvenate imperial economics.

Under sponsorship from Emperor Heideran VII and several Holder families - most notably house Tash-Murkon - Hedion researchers spent years developing new economic models that would make the Empire’s trade far more lucrative.

The resulting research succeeded in earning great wealth for the Empire and opening up the imperial markets for foreign investments. It also allowed Amarrian Holders and corporations to establish strong economic ties and relations with counterparts in the other empires, a contributing factor to the stability of the peace after the Yoiul Conference all the way to the Empyrean War.

The university’s research also established its economics faculty as one of the most diverse and well-regarded in the entire cluster. Hedion economists are famous not only for their excellent grasp of international trade, but also how the economic systems of the empires differ and how they interact. Today, economics graduates from Hedion University are in high demand everywhere in the cluster as every major corporation needs experts in interstellar trade and international economics.

It has become popular for economics students from across the cluster to pursue postgraduate studies at Hedion University to complement their more specialized education with Hedion’s internationalist theories.

Archaeology

Although Hedion University’s position as the foremost place to study cutting-edge applied sciences has long since been abdicated to the Royal Amarr Institute and more advanced international schools, the university does still maintain its heritage in the form of a 2000 year-old archaeology department. The Hedion Department of Archaeology is larger than all other university archaeology departments combined, and is itself older than many of the things that other archaeologists study.

Technically, Hedion University’s archaeology heritage is older than the university itself. The project to develop the interstellar stargate to Hedion had its origin in the archaeological study of an ancient stargate in the Amarr system. This knowledge - that ancient remains could hold secrets for new science - has remained a core philosophy of the university since its founding.

The university’s early forays into archaeology were mainly focused on the ruins of a lost colony on Oris in the Amarr system, but as the Empire expanded into new frontiers there was often a wealth of lost technology and dead societies to study. As Hedion researchers were at the forefront of the exploratory fleets, this also meant they tended to be the first to catalog the newest discoveries.

The university’s passion for archaeology remains even today. Though the Empire’s age of expansion has ended, there is still plenty of work for archaeologists in Amarr and the rest of the cluster. The Empire has such a long history that a vast amount of its heritage has been lost to the passage of time. Holder families can be centuries or thousands of years old, with estates whose locations have been forgotten, and significant artifacts that warrant research.

The Amarr government itself also often has use for archaeologists to study traces of lost civilizations, find the resting places of saints, and to validate the authenticity and history of holy relics and temples.

See Also

• Amarr Empire
• Unchallenged Era of the Amarr Empire
• Amarr corporations
• Amarr schools