Casual reminder to lore police that âloyal to the Dominionâ is extremely abstract and can be worked around, both in-universe and out:
There is at least one Mechari serving House Chaul, the secret seventh Luminai house that (for reasons yet undisclosed) is so disgraced that no one ever talks about it and the history books were essentially re-written to exclude it (this is assuming that House Chaul is a âtrueâ house, descended from one of Dominusâ children. Itâs implied that it is, but that would mean Dominus had seven children rather than six, and the whole Vigilant Church is built around the six Scions. That would be in keeping with the game-wide theme of âsix important things, but then it turns out thereâs a secret/forgotten seventh thingâ, but it would still be pretty extreme. I digress.) Mechari arenât supposed to be associated with House Chaul at all, and the one that is implies that heâd be in a huge amount of trouble if heâs found out. This is treasonous, but he does it anyway. This sub plot can be seen in Deradune, in the Firewalker area.
Agent Lex is unique in many ways, one of which is implied to be the ability to go against the wishes of the Dominion as a whole. Specifically, he is loyal to Axis Pheydra. His story implies that Mechari may have a sort of Three Laws thing going on that prevents them from killing the Luminai, but Lex is capable (and has done so at least once) because of the modifications Pheydra did. Granted Lex is uniqueâŠbut Pheydra is not, and sheâs the one that started the whole thing. Pheydra is âjustâ a Millennial, the same as every other Millennial in terms of being loyal to the Eldan, and yet she has no problem following her own path, including making sure no one, not even a Cassian or Luminai, gets in the way. This implies that whatever safeguards the Eldan may have designed, they arenât absolute (which actually would be in line with the earlier Three Laws concept - Isaac Asimov wrote at length about how even absolute restrictions donât remain so in real situations!) See the above mentioned Deradune questline, and the TFBTF story âA Test of Loyalty.â
Everyone points at C.o.G.S., but thatâs because it is relevant: Technically, by the Dominionâs usual reckoning, C.o.G.S. is an enemy faction simply because they arenât specifically allied with the Dominion and they are on friendly terms with the Exiles. Yet there are many Mechari in it, because they can âget aroundâ the loyalty thing by reasoning that their discoveries and work, which are shared evenly with everyone, will benefit the Dominion. I cite this because it means Mechari âloyaltyâ isnât that hard coded.
Mechari are loyal to the Dominion, but what does that mean? Is it upholding the word of the emperor? Is it insuring the welfare of the people as a whole regardless of anything else? Is it following the path of the Eldan?
Thereâs also this side point:
Technically the Cassians were simply allowed to live, they donât actually have any claim to anything of the Eldanâs. Even the Luminai are more like stewards, meant to extend the Eldanâs power and influence once the Nexus Project was completed. Things just didnât quite get to that pointâŠIf we ever get the Coralus zone this will be expanded upon a bit, but if youâre a Scientist you can get some really interesting information about how the Eldan learned about Cassians in the first place from a scannable data node in Wilderrun (which can be seen here, though bear in mind the post itself contains speculation). The Millennials probably know that, and even the Initiates tend to think of themselves as being the real superior ones. In line with the above mentioned vague nature of what âloyal to the Dominionâ means, it wouldnât be a big leap for a Mechari to take the reins in a more forceful manner than usual. After all, the Eldan predicted that the Luminai would become mentally unstable over the generations (see datacube in Auroria) and theyâve certainly made a royal mess of things in the last few hundred yearsâŠ
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