National Unity Party

The National Unity Party occupies the far right of Ostanian politics and builds its identity around hostility toward Westalis. It held the reins of government throughout the second East-West war, then lost power when Donovan Desmond stepped down as Prime Minister near the conflict's end. More than a decade in opposition has not erased its reach: party figures sit throughout the State Security Service and the Justice Department, and the agency suspects Donovan of quietly nudging the nation toward a fresh war through his continued grip on the organization.

Chapman held both the chairmanship and the office of Prime Minister when the second war opened, with Donovan succeeding him partway through. In power, the party broadcast its ideology openly, using tabloids like the Weekly Unify as mouthpieces, and it oversaw Project Apple, a research program that experimented on animals in hopes of engineering highly intelligent creatures for military use. The administration that replaced it shut the project down, though WISE holds intelligence hinting that some research teams never actually stopped. Melinda Desmond, active in party affairs during its ruling years, withdrew from politics after the defeat and now chairs the Lady Patriots Society.

In the present day the party stays busy with seminars and political events while its chairman lives as a recluse. When a Westalian diplomat dies in a car crash while traveling toward an embassy, WISE reads the incident as a party-orchestrated killing meant to inflame tensions and responds by launching Operation Strix, sending its top agent Twilight to get close to Donovan. Meeting him at the Imperial Scholars mixer, Twilight concludes that Donovan, and the party behind him, wants to dominate other nations by holding military force over their heads. The party's fingerprints later surface on a smear campaign against opera singer Jonas Wellman ahead of a goodwill visit to Westalis; another newspaper publishes photographs tying one of the alleged mistresses to a party official, exposing the scandal as manufactured.

Donovan Desmond chairs the party and remains WISE's central person of interest. His wife Melinda once worked within it before retreating to civic life, and Chapman preceded Donovan as both chairman and wartime Prime Minister. Real-world parallels often drawn include East Germany's Socialist Unity Party and other ruling parties of divided Cold War states.