RELIC
| Religious and Ecclesiastical Liberties Intelligence Center | |
 "Evil will slay the wicked; those who hate the righteous are condemned." (Psalms 34:21) | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 1955 |
| Headquarters | Urceopolis, Urcea |
| Employees | Classified |
| Annual budget | Classified |
| Agency executive |
|
| Parent agency | Department for Analysis |
The Religious and Ecclesiastical Liberties Intelligence Center (RELIC) is a Urcean intelligence gathering service that is a component of the Office for Foreign and Domestic Intelligence Service's Department for Analysis. RELIC is a number of specific region-or-topic based intelligence centers under the Department for Analysis. RELIC's specific mission is to identify threats to religious liberty of the Catholic Church in general, minority Catholic groups, or individual prominent Catholics within its geographic mission area. Under its official mission, RELIC identifies such threats and identifies them either for local law enforcement, allied intelligence services, Urcea's own Department for Operations, or in some specific instances to local non-state actors such as the Audonian Democratic Traditionalist Front.
Beyond its official responsibilities, RELIC has been credibly described, though never acknowledged, as a clandestine covert operations agency. Various intelligence agencies around the world, as well as domestic leaks of classified documents, have described RELIC as the primary operator against targets it identifies. RELIC has been accused of assassinations, kidnappings, providing direct operative support to pro-Catholic rebel organizations, operating black sites in areas under which it operates among other types of covert actions. For these activities, RELIC has been criticized by the League of Nations, many individual nations, and the Urcean Conference of Catholic Bishops, though its alleged operations are continually denied by the Government of Urcea.
History
RELIC was established in 1955 as part of a broadening of the Urcean intelligence services under the Office for Foreign and Domestic Intelligence Service within the context of the Occidental Cold War. As such, for the first two decades of its existence, RELIC operated primarily with a focus in Sarpedon in support of Catholics resisting Caphiria and its state church. It is generally not known when RELIC transitioned from an intelligence gathering to covert operations organization, though Caphirian documents declassified in 2012 suggest that RELIC was operating within the country as early as 1962.
Operation Kipling significantly broadened RELIC's mission. Threats to Occidental influence in Audonia necessitated the creation of a new RELIC component dedicated to protecting religious liberties there. In 1976 RELIC was divided into RELIC-WEST (comprising the Sarpedon area and based in Lariana) and RELIC-EAST (comprising the Audonia area and based in Antilles). RELIC-EAST was very active in the later stages of Operation Kipling, gathering intelligence from Audonian Catholics on communist insurgent activities and allegedly associating important insurgent leaders.
The Assumption Accords and end of the Occidental Cold War shifted RELIC's priorities again. RELIC-WEST operations and personnel were scaled down significantly between 1985 and 1995, shifting most personnel and assets to RELIC-EAST. RELIC-WEST by 1998 existed largely on paper only. The inauguration of The Deluge with the War of the Northern Confederation sparked significant need for RELIC operations in northern Crona, and as such in 2011 RELIC-WEST's headquarters in Lariana was closed and relocated to New Harren. RELIC-WEST became significantly involved with the Deluge in both official and unofficial capacities, most notably in providing material and organization for the establishment of the Unnuaq Mission State as part of Operation Mission Shield. RELIC-WEST was massively scaled up during the Final War of the Deluge as part of a de facto global intelligence effort against Varshan. Following Urcea's victory in that war, RELIC-WEST expanded again and relocated to Quetzenkel. RELIC-WEST had a very heavy presence in League-occupied Varshan and was relied upon by the government and occupation forces to help eliminate threats to the growing Catholic minority in the country. RELIC-WEST remains allegedly heavily present in Zy'ita and has been referred to in popular media as the "hammer of the Varshani Catholic ascendancy".
In 2014, RELIC created a venture capital fund, RELIC-INVEST, to aid with acquisition of technology assets.
Structure
RELIC has four primary components, called CENTER, WEST, EAST, and INVEST. Of these, CENTER and INVEST are headquartered in or around Urceopolis and serve primarily administrative roles, while WEST and EAST are headquartered abroad and serve in operational capacities under the leadership of Resident Agents who answer nominally to the Director of RELIC. Beneath Resident Agents and their headquarters operations, a large and indeterminate number of regional "branch offices" and field teams operate within the operations areas.
Per leaked information, RELIC's alleged covert operations are decentralized; the Resident Agents in charge of RELIC-WEST and RELIC-EAST are given full autonomy to conduct operations, informing RELIC-CENTER after the fact. Some sources allege the Resident Agents are actually responsible directly to the Minister of State or even the Procurator, though this information is sometimes conflicted by other sources.
RELIC-CENTER
RELIC-CENTER is the administrative portion of RELIC which includes the Director's office, government liaison offices, as well as basic human resources and payroll divisions for all of RELIC. As a component of the Director's office, RELIC-CENTER also serves as the hub of all intelligence gathered by RELIC-WEST and RELIC-EAST, which it provides to foreign governments, other Urcean agencies, or law enforcement as the need presents. RELIC-CENTER has offices in both the borough of Crescent as well as outside Urceopolis in Aguntum.
RELIC-WEST
RELIC-WEST is responsible for intelligence and alleged covert operations in the north Crona area, defined as Varshan and all territories north of it. It is headquartered in Akwesasne, Quetzenkel. RELIC-WEST is known to generally operate within Varshan itself as of the late 2030s. Most of the sources and leaked documents about RELIC operations originate with RELIC-WEST, which is considered the more "open" of the two operational branches. RELIC-WEST is headquartered in Antilles, an overseas possession of Burgundie.
RELIC-EAST
RELIC-EAST is responsible for intelligence and alleged covert operations for the entire continent of Audonia. RELIC-EAST is the larger of the two operational components in terms of both funding and personnel.
RELIC-INVEST
RELIC maintains a venture capital fund, established in 2014, which it uses to invest in technology startups. While the types of businesses invested in have never been disclosed, various leaks indicate that RELIC invests heavily in both surveillance software as well as anti-surveillance software, and many technology sector analysts have speculated that RELIC has access to backdoors in several major encryption services that have become widely used since the 2010s. RELIC-INVEST is based in Kingswood, Urceopolis's central business district.
Activities
RELIC in its official capacity is responsible for intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination for threats to Catholic religious liberty in northern Crona and Audonia. In this function, it has a large number of informants, surveillance teams, and liaisons with other on-the-ground intelligence sources including government intelligence and law enforcement. Through this it identifies threats to Catholic religious liberty both in terms of state actors, private groups, and even specific individuals inside the operations area. RELIC's official public-facing response to this information is disseminating it to relevant actors who have legal authority to function. This happens most publicly and frequently in Varshan, where neo-Arzalist threats to Catholic communities are referred to local law enforcement and arrested usually under charges of terrorism.
Alleged operations
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RELIC has been accused of a large number of extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and kidnappings.
RELIC is believed to have played a significant role in undermining the insurgents in the Pachoy Rebellion, through both official (use of informants, spreading of disinformation) and unofficial (kidnapping or killing key leaders, sabotaging insurgent equipment) means.
Alleged black sites
RELIC allegedly operates black sites - unofficial prisons for detainment and interrogation - in three countries. RELIC-WEST is supposed to operate a facility in New Veltorina, while RELIC-EAST is alleged to operate these facilities in both Bulkh and Mehristan. RELIC-EAST's facility in Bulkh was revealed accidentally as an unredacted reference in a declassified Burgoignesc intelligence file indicating joint interrogations between RELIC and Burgundie occuring at the site. More spurious and poorly sourced claims of black sites exist in at least four other countries. To date, the Urcean government has not acknowledged the existence or affiliation of any of these facilities, and the number of individuals detained at them is unknown.
International response
RELIC has been broadly condemned both for its official and unofficial operations. Objections to its official operations are loudest in both Daxia and Ardmore, which characterize RELIC as a "Urcean interior ministry for other nations' sovereign territory" and as a spy organization. As such, in both countries, Urcean nationals are regularly targeted and searched to find connections to RELIC, real or imagined. Its unofficial activities have drawn more wide condemnation worldwide, including by the League of Nations.
Cooperation
While RELIC's alleged activities have been highly condemned by some actors, leaked documents indicate a general widespread cooperation with RELIC by a variety of states. Most prominently, sources and documents have indicated a close working relationship between RELIC and Burgundie's intelligence agencies due to an overlap of anti-Catholic, anti-Occidental organizations in Audonia. Due to the presence of alleged black sites in their countries, Bulkh, Mehristan, and New Veltorina are understood to have at least some cooperation with RELIC.