Demarchists (Revelation Space)
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The Demarchists are a faction of humanity in the science fiction Revelation Space series written by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds.
The Demarchists are a faction of humanity who have a political system of democratic anarchy, or Demarchy. According to Reynolds' short story A Spy in Europa, the Demarchy functions by means of a neural implant that constantly seeks the user's opinion on aspects of Demarchist life. This constant prompting eventually fades away into the user's neural background, much like the ticking of a clock might fade away into background noise for most people. It is unknown whether the Yellowstone Demarchy, which is the main Demarchy in human space by the time of the events in Revelation Space, uses such a technique.
Until the time of the Melding Plague, there were several powerful families within the Demarchy, one of the most influential being House Sylveste, which controlled the SISS or Sylveste Institute for Shrouder Studies, and which also later organized the Resurgam expedition. They were also immensely wealthy. Notable characters from House Sylveste include Dan Sylveste, who led the Resurgam expedition; Calvin Sylveste, who is known for the Eighty, and Lorean Sylveste.
The Demarchy also used to have expertise in nanotechnology, life-extension, and biological alterations, among other things. The height of Demarchist society, the Belle Epoqué, was only brought low by the Melding Plague, which pushed the Chasm City, the main city of the Yellowstone Demarchy, into a dark age lasting forty years.
Later, after the Conjoiners stepped in to help revive Chasm City, the Demarchists, unhappy with their new role as second fiddle, declared war on the Conjoiners, a war which first went well as the Conjoiners, thanks to their hive-mind nature, became predictable on the battlefield. The return of the war-hero Clavain ended that, and by the time of the events in the book Redemption Ark only the most partisan of Demarchists would even deny an eventual Conjoiner victory.
Demarchist weaponry, among other things, consists of antimatter (or "pinhead") munitions - typically antilithium - and massive rail guns that accelerate foam-phase metallic hydrogen to a massive speed using a series of timed detonations along a barrel.
The Demarchy is presumably destroyed by the time of Absolution Gap.
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