Oct 30, 2015 2:51 pm
Domarian Legion
An unmatched military power headed by Command, governed by the Colonial Council and advised by the Supercomputer (itself the most powerful Paleon mainframe known of to date). The Domarian Territories are a massive alliance of systems but they are entirely nationalised: there is no such thing as a Domarian supercorporation.
The Legion is expected to intervene whenever the heads of Alpha Sector, through the Colonial Council, decree that it is necessary. Sometimes the mere mention of the Legion is enough to re-open negotiations between quarrelling outworlds. The Legion fields, by far, the largest army and armada in known space with unmatched training and equipment. They are proud, disciplined, and not entirely understanding of how the real world works.
Much of the Legion’s success is attributed to their early discovery of both the Supercomputer and Ucelsia: a gargantuan superstructure, thousands of miles wide, that now serves as their surrogate homeworld. Ucelsia is itself capable of phaseshifting, and regularly travels through other parts of space, having a major impact on commerce and trade routes.
The Legion was once the Domarian Trade Organisation, but discovering the Supercomputer set in motion the events that would lead to their reinvention as a superpower. Instrumental in defeating the Ploror Conglomerate, they were once hailed as galactic saviours... but now governments question the centuries-old laws that led to the demilitarisation of other nations, with even the Legion's closest allies resenting the limits on their own armies and armadas.
High Council
The High Council are an elitist, mostly-hereditary cabal of psions. Fantastically wealthy and influential, ostensibly a meritocracy with only the wisest and most potent of their number holding office.
Psi was once all but unknown, even dismissed as a myth during the First Expansion. Now as much as 1% of the population shows signs of some kind of psi-potential (only one percent of this one percent can actually manifest abilities, such as visible telekinetic prep or telecasting). Of these 33% are psychokinetic: capable of manipulating the physical as well as the mental, with the most common manifestation being telekinesis.
The High Council thinks of psychics (although "psi-practitioner" is preferred, often shortened to psion) as the next step in human evolution. Other groups consider psi to be a genetically engineered trait, first developed before the Schism… and then rediscovered and reintroduced by the Ploror Conglomerate and their then-peerless research department.
Regardless of the truth, psi is big money. The Highs treat every psion as a lucrative cash cow: trained, monitored, and then sent off to work for some supercorp or government. With the Highs getting a percentage of all their earnings, naturally. And this is the law. All psions must be registered and trained by a High Council-approved body.
Attitudes towards psi-practitioners vary wildly between nations or even worlds. The Domarian Legion was instrumental in the foundation of the Extrasensory Protection Society but this respect for the plight of psions grew into revulsion at what the EPS became. Nowadays the Legion guards their psions closely and refuses to grant the High Council access. Sadly, this leads to a culture where Domarian psions are corralled into set roles and careers, commonly in the military or Security Service. Some even get surgery to neuter or entirely nullify their psi abilities.
Telekinetics are sometimes seen as uncouth, or blue collar, or violent— even by the High Council itself. Tragically an untrained telekinetic can often be a threat to themselves and others around them, but the Highs have weaponised fear of telekinetics for their own purposes.
Technically the High Council holds no sway over the Forum, but in practise anything they say will be heard by and acted upon by sympathetic (or sufficiently bribed) Councilmembers.
The Forum (Colonial Council)
The Colonial Council is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to mutual aid, security, peace and economic stability. Whereas "Councillor" is reserved for those in the High Council, "Councilmember" is used to refer to the elected officials with seats on the Forum: the Ucelsia-based headquarters of the Colonial Council. Some Highs refer to the Colonial Council as the "Low Council", and this goes some way to explaining why the two groups often don't get along.
Individual worlds have their own modes of governance, but the vast majority of Alpha Sector's planetary systems vote to place a representative in the Forum. While it's true that bureaucracy and corruption are an issue in an organisation of such size, the Forum is usually considered to be an essential part of the modern democratic Sector.
The recent decades of peace and prosperity (in the places that matter) have led to talk of reneging on emergency powers: demilitarising the bloated Legion and dismantling the High Council's stranglehold on psions. This poses a quandry for the Forum, as their individual member states could return to fielding large armies but they'd no longer have a legal right to direct and deploy the Legion's forces, and retracting the High Council's right to train and register all psions would cost them in every sense of the word.
Mercenary League
The First Colonial war ended with the fall of the Ploror Conglomerate and resulted in long-lasting anti-corporate sentiment. Military contractors fell into disfavour: once seen as pioneers and explorers, the association with corporate expansionism and imperialism meant they were all but outlawed. But this did little to dissuade the practise. There were always hired guns, legal or otherwise.
Some centuries later the Mercenary League was founded with the signing of the Vursoun Treaty, a famous piece of legislation drafted following an incredibly vicious war fought between two different private military companies. Originally a licencing registry to enforce accountability, the League is something akin to a sports table now, a ranking of all the most successful units. After the Second Colonial War resulted in widespread disarmament and the decommissioning of WMDs, the League prospered: it became common practise for nation and supercorp alike to partake of their services. For many being a Leaguer is fiercely competitive and lucrative, with even downtime filled with training and planning, but some Merc units are content to subsist off cushy escort contracts.
The Vursoun Treaty means that no Merc will ever fight another Merc outside of a simulation. When clashing contracts would, for example, lead units to fight each other over a new planet, the Myrmidon (the Mercenary flagship) calculates the winner based off various factors, including which unit has the superior track record and which client paid the greater fee. The "fight" ends with the loser withdrawing their claim, but there are still isolated incidents of Merc-on-Merc violence.
Vigilance Movement
Vigilantes are to bounty hunters and private investigators as the Mercenary League is to soldiers. There is some crossover between the two, and understandably rivalry and competition results from this, but generally the Vigil focuses on individual hirelings rather than teams or entire regiments. When multiple Vigilantes band together it's usually because they've agreed to split the client's fee between them in order to expedite a contract or reduce personal risk.
To some they're assassins no better than those they're hired to hunt, but Vigilantes will accept contracts on lawbreakers regardless of their status: from High Councillors to the CEOs of supercorporations. The Vigil's extra-judicial nature leads to clashes with law enforcement, but even sanctioned police forces have been known to bring in Vigilantes to track down particularly dangerous quarry. Despite the stereotype of constant gunfights some Vigilantes never see combat, instead making a living doing specialised tasks such as monitoring endangered species or scouring the infranet for data.
The Movement has roots in anti-corporate resistance during the Conglomerate's reign, but the modern Vigil is more a staffing agency than a shadowy underground of dedicated volunteers. Monetising justice has proved very lucrative, but some would argue that the Vigil has lost its way, degenerating into glorified rent-a-cops happy to accept payment from the very hegemony they once opposed.
The Orders
Orders are communities and organisations, often (but not always) religious or spiritual, characterised by a shared world view. The best known Orders are massive agglomerations made up of many different factions that strive to achieve a common purpose through dedicating their lives (either fully or partially) to a particular concept or tenet; merging and analogising traditions and theologies in order to be more inclusive.
The modern Orders began as a Domarian-led initiative to unite like-minded faithful despite interplanetary distances and the differences of language and culture. By focusing on common ground and not their disparities, the logic employed was that a fluorescent-skinned nomadic envoy would feel more at home in the metropolis of hirsute dwarves when he learns that they, too, subscribe to the worldview of the Awed Order. Gradually this shifted from mere classifications to an active effort by these communities to document and support each other. While they do have shared beliefs, there is still variety. Order members accept that deists, theists, agnostics and atheists can still find commonality.
There are hundreds of Orders, often the result of charities and foundations seeking further validation and tax assistance. The Vigilance Movement is sometimes considered to be an Order, but with the exception of a few academic theories this is largely meant in a derogatory sense. While it's true that the Vigil was born of mergers similar to those that formed the Orders, its nature as an organisation designed to legitimise bounty hunting is at odds with the philosophical, spiritual, and philanthropic aims of true Orders.
An Order's popularity varies greatly from nation to nation and even from planet to planet, depending on what appeals to the culture's mindset. The Wary Order is popular in the Domarian Territories (at least by comparison with others) whereas the Glowing Order and Contented Order are dominant in Lodori space, where the High Council originated. In some nations Orders are all but absent, in others they are a way of life and inextricably tied to government.
All Orders have their own extremes and fundamentalists. The best of the Glowing Order will make the last wishes of the incurably ill come true; their worst will squander fortunes on sex and drugs and pleasure sims and excess. The Bloodied Order supplies legal guardians and demands investigation into unjust arrests and persecution… but in their name, zealous mobs have tortured petty criminals to death.
Some Orders are defunct or outlawed, most notably those dedicated to death and nihilism. These tend to be branded cults, separated and alienated from others. The infamous End cult was never recognised as an Order.
Controversially, the High Council itself began life as an Order; the Extrasensory Protection Society.
An unmatched military power headed by Command, governed by the Colonial Council and advised by the Supercomputer (itself the most powerful Paleon mainframe known of to date). The Domarian Territories are a massive alliance of systems but they are entirely nationalised: there is no such thing as a Domarian supercorporation.
The Legion is expected to intervene whenever the heads of Alpha Sector, through the Colonial Council, decree that it is necessary. Sometimes the mere mention of the Legion is enough to re-open negotiations between quarrelling outworlds. The Legion fields, by far, the largest army and armada in known space with unmatched training and equipment. They are proud, disciplined, and not entirely understanding of how the real world works.
Much of the Legion’s success is attributed to their early discovery of both the Supercomputer and Ucelsia: a gargantuan superstructure, thousands of miles wide, that now serves as their surrogate homeworld. Ucelsia is itself capable of phaseshifting, and regularly travels through other parts of space, having a major impact on commerce and trade routes.
The Legion was once the Domarian Trade Organisation, but discovering the Supercomputer set in motion the events that would lead to their reinvention as a superpower. Instrumental in defeating the Ploror Conglomerate, they were once hailed as galactic saviours... but now governments question the centuries-old laws that led to the demilitarisation of other nations, with even the Legion's closest allies resenting the limits on their own armies and armadas.
High Council
The High Council are an elitist, mostly-hereditary cabal of psions. Fantastically wealthy and influential, ostensibly a meritocracy with only the wisest and most potent of their number holding office.
Psi was once all but unknown, even dismissed as a myth during the First Expansion. Now as much as 1% of the population shows signs of some kind of psi-potential (only one percent of this one percent can actually manifest abilities, such as visible telekinetic prep or telecasting). Of these 33% are psychokinetic: capable of manipulating the physical as well as the mental, with the most common manifestation being telekinesis.
The High Council thinks of psychics (although "psi-practitioner" is preferred, often shortened to psion) as the next step in human evolution. Other groups consider psi to be a genetically engineered trait, first developed before the Schism… and then rediscovered and reintroduced by the Ploror Conglomerate and their then-peerless research department.
Regardless of the truth, psi is big money. The Highs treat every psion as a lucrative cash cow: trained, monitored, and then sent off to work for some supercorp or government. With the Highs getting a percentage of all their earnings, naturally. And this is the law. All psions must be registered and trained by a High Council-approved body.
Attitudes towards psi-practitioners vary wildly between nations or even worlds. The Domarian Legion was instrumental in the foundation of the Extrasensory Protection Society but this respect for the plight of psions grew into revulsion at what the EPS became. Nowadays the Legion guards their psions closely and refuses to grant the High Council access. Sadly, this leads to a culture where Domarian psions are corralled into set roles and careers, commonly in the military or Security Service. Some even get surgery to neuter or entirely nullify their psi abilities.
Telekinetics are sometimes seen as uncouth, or blue collar, or violent— even by the High Council itself. Tragically an untrained telekinetic can often be a threat to themselves and others around them, but the Highs have weaponised fear of telekinetics for their own purposes.
Technically the High Council holds no sway over the Forum, but in practise anything they say will be heard by and acted upon by sympathetic (or sufficiently bribed) Councilmembers.
The Forum (Colonial Council)
The Colonial Council is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to mutual aid, security, peace and economic stability. Whereas "Councillor" is reserved for those in the High Council, "Councilmember" is used to refer to the elected officials with seats on the Forum: the Ucelsia-based headquarters of the Colonial Council. Some Highs refer to the Colonial Council as the "Low Council", and this goes some way to explaining why the two groups often don't get along.
Individual worlds have their own modes of governance, but the vast majority of Alpha Sector's planetary systems vote to place a representative in the Forum. While it's true that bureaucracy and corruption are an issue in an organisation of such size, the Forum is usually considered to be an essential part of the modern democratic Sector.
The recent decades of peace and prosperity (in the places that matter) have led to talk of reneging on emergency powers: demilitarising the bloated Legion and dismantling the High Council's stranglehold on psions. This poses a quandry for the Forum, as their individual member states could return to fielding large armies but they'd no longer have a legal right to direct and deploy the Legion's forces, and retracting the High Council's right to train and register all psions would cost them in every sense of the word.
Mercenary League
The First Colonial war ended with the fall of the Ploror Conglomerate and resulted in long-lasting anti-corporate sentiment. Military contractors fell into disfavour: once seen as pioneers and explorers, the association with corporate expansionism and imperialism meant they were all but outlawed. But this did little to dissuade the practise. There were always hired guns, legal or otherwise.
Some centuries later the Mercenary League was founded with the signing of the Vursoun Treaty, a famous piece of legislation drafted following an incredibly vicious war fought between two different private military companies. Originally a licencing registry to enforce accountability, the League is something akin to a sports table now, a ranking of all the most successful units. After the Second Colonial War resulted in widespread disarmament and the decommissioning of WMDs, the League prospered: it became common practise for nation and supercorp alike to partake of their services. For many being a Leaguer is fiercely competitive and lucrative, with even downtime filled with training and planning, but some Merc units are content to subsist off cushy escort contracts.
The Vursoun Treaty means that no Merc will ever fight another Merc outside of a simulation. When clashing contracts would, for example, lead units to fight each other over a new planet, the Myrmidon (the Mercenary flagship) calculates the winner based off various factors, including which unit has the superior track record and which client paid the greater fee. The "fight" ends with the loser withdrawing their claim, but there are still isolated incidents of Merc-on-Merc violence.
Vigilance Movement
Vigilantes are to bounty hunters and private investigators as the Mercenary League is to soldiers. There is some crossover between the two, and understandably rivalry and competition results from this, but generally the Vigil focuses on individual hirelings rather than teams or entire regiments. When multiple Vigilantes band together it's usually because they've agreed to split the client's fee between them in order to expedite a contract or reduce personal risk.
To some they're assassins no better than those they're hired to hunt, but Vigilantes will accept contracts on lawbreakers regardless of their status: from High Councillors to the CEOs of supercorporations. The Vigil's extra-judicial nature leads to clashes with law enforcement, but even sanctioned police forces have been known to bring in Vigilantes to track down particularly dangerous quarry. Despite the stereotype of constant gunfights some Vigilantes never see combat, instead making a living doing specialised tasks such as monitoring endangered species or scouring the infranet for data.
The Movement has roots in anti-corporate resistance during the Conglomerate's reign, but the modern Vigil is more a staffing agency than a shadowy underground of dedicated volunteers. Monetising justice has proved very lucrative, but some would argue that the Vigil has lost its way, degenerating into glorified rent-a-cops happy to accept payment from the very hegemony they once opposed.
The Orders
Orders are communities and organisations, often (but not always) religious or spiritual, characterised by a shared world view. The best known Orders are massive agglomerations made up of many different factions that strive to achieve a common purpose through dedicating their lives (either fully or partially) to a particular concept or tenet; merging and analogising traditions and theologies in order to be more inclusive.
The modern Orders began as a Domarian-led initiative to unite like-minded faithful despite interplanetary distances and the differences of language and culture. By focusing on common ground and not their disparities, the logic employed was that a fluorescent-skinned nomadic envoy would feel more at home in the metropolis of hirsute dwarves when he learns that they, too, subscribe to the worldview of the Awed Order. Gradually this shifted from mere classifications to an active effort by these communities to document and support each other. While they do have shared beliefs, there is still variety. Order members accept that deists, theists, agnostics and atheists can still find commonality.
There are hundreds of Orders, often the result of charities and foundations seeking further validation and tax assistance. The Vigilance Movement is sometimes considered to be an Order, but with the exception of a few academic theories this is largely meant in a derogatory sense. While it's true that the Vigil was born of mergers similar to those that formed the Orders, its nature as an organisation designed to legitimise bounty hunting is at odds with the philosophical, spiritual, and philanthropic aims of true Orders.
An Order's popularity varies greatly from nation to nation and even from planet to planet, depending on what appeals to the culture's mindset. The Wary Order is popular in the Domarian Territories (at least by comparison with others) whereas the Glowing Order and Contented Order are dominant in Lodori space, where the High Council originated. In some nations Orders are all but absent, in others they are a way of life and inextricably tied to government.
All Orders have their own extremes and fundamentalists. The best of the Glowing Order will make the last wishes of the incurably ill come true; their worst will squander fortunes on sex and drugs and pleasure sims and excess. The Bloodied Order supplies legal guardians and demands investigation into unjust arrests and persecution… but in their name, zealous mobs have tortured petty criminals to death.
Some Orders are defunct or outlawed, most notably those dedicated to death and nihilism. These tend to be branded cults, separated and alienated from others. The infamous End cult was never recognised as an Order.
Controversially, the High Council itself began life as an Order; the Extrasensory Protection Society.