World Government

More than 170 member nations answer to this federation, which holds sway over the greater share of the Blue Planet. Its origins trace back some eight hundred years to an alliance of twenty kingdoms, and from that beginning its influence has steadily widened. The capital sits at Mary Geoise, perched high on the Red Line where the two stretches of the Grand Line intersect, yet the regime keeps bases and facilities scattered across the globe.

Outwardly the body resembles an oligarchy commanded by the deified heirs of its founders, the World Nobles, with the Five Elders at their front and a council of member rulers gathering every four years at the Levely. The reality is hidden: from the throne long believed empty, the founder Nerona Imu wields absolute authority as King of the World, a truth that reaches no one beyond the Elders and their Knights of God.

Enforcement runs through the government's arms, namely the Marines, Cipher Pol, and the Pacifista, and its ranks once included those pirates titled Seven Warlords of the Sea until that arrangement was scrapped. Under the banner of "Absolute Justice," the regime licenses drastic measures, the island-erasing Buster Call chief among them. Its severest law bars any inquiry into the erased Void Century that surrounds its founding, a crime met with extermination, as the scholars of Ohara learned.

Three of its fortresses link together beneath the seas behind the Gates of Justice: the courthouse island of Enies Lobby, the towering prison Impel Down, and the former headquarters at Marineford. In return for protection and the heavy Heavenly Tribute, member nations keep their own thrones, while the government also asserts dominion over independent lands and treats their people as beneath the law. It handles the Four Emperors cautiously and commits to open war only in extremity, the clash with Whitebeard's crew at Marineford being one such case.

Rot pervades the institution, most glaringly among the World Nobles, whose cruelty routinely eclipses that of the criminals the regime pursues. It bends the press, buries damaging news, and has wiped out member nations for weapons trials, obliterating the Lulusia Kingdom at Imu's command. Abuses of that kind feed the Revolutionary Army under Monkey D. Dragon, which aims less to dismantle the system than to topple the Nobles who steer it.

Imu presides from concealment as the immortal Creator at the summit of everything. Beneath him, the current Five Elders stand as the public's supreme authorities: Topman Warcury and Marcus Mars, together with Shepherd Ju Peter, Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro, and Figarland Garling, the last of whom took the seat left by Jaygarcia Saturn. Commander-in-Chief Kong, once a Marine Fleet Admiral, holds direct sway over much of the military below them. Drawn largely from combat-ready Nobles and strengthened by Imu's Covenants, the elite Knights of God police the Holy Land and spearhead drives to absorb outside nations.

The regime's fighting power rests on the Marines, who muster roughly a hundred thousand troops, and on Cipher Pol, whose covert CP9 and CP0 divisions raise assassins from childhood. Decades of weapons work by the scientist Vegapunk and his SSG yielded the Pacifista and later the Seraphim, judged strong enough to succeed the disbanded Warlords as one of the world's Three Great Powers.