[Future Perfect] Kokoran Union

The Kokoran Union
Kokora

Age: Roughly 500 years, confirmed.
Planets:
Kokora (6.75 Billion)

Other Populations:
Moon (250 Million)
Arashi Station (1 Million)
Ryoku Station (500 Thousand)

Allies:
None

Enemies:
Pirate Clans (minor; Many Clans have set themselves up in the periphery of Kokoran space without permission or consent).

Attitudes:
Far better to worry about what has yet to be done, than to wonder why others did what they did. Why waste time seeking to know what is unknowable when there is so much more that may be learned so readily? For our Enclave; For our People; For ourselves.

Citizens:
Tend to be calm, even placid. Very practical and pragmatic, they can be quite innovative when they need to be, provided they have a quantifiable hurdle that must be overcome. Are often very much defined by their local communities.

History:
Five hundred and forty seven years ago, the people of Kokora woke up. A thousand enclaves, each containing two-hundred thousand persons locked in cryostasis, suddenly activated and resuscitated their population. No one is certain how long they were in the freeze, since much of their memories were missing. The population was a diverse one, with persons ranging from early adolescence to middle age. Only young children and the elderly seemed to missing. Each individual’s stasis pod was marked with a name and a number/letter sequence – a unique identifier code – that would prove important later, when accessing enclave computer systems. Amnesia was not complete, persons retained a knowledge of language and of many basic motor skills. What seemed lacking was a knowledge of personal identity and personal history and the recollection of how they’d come to be present in cryostasis.

With the awakening of the thousand enclaves, a series of prerecorded messages began to play. It was a first step toward building a civilization – or perhaps, rebuilding, since someone had placed the enclaves and its people. Strange voices and lights directed the populace of each enclave along preprogrammed paths, rotating between four cycles -- exercise and physical conditioning, food and hygiene, rest and rejuvenation, and socialization and reeducation. The unique alphanumeric coding for each individual determined the precise method of each cycle, with different persons having different regimens.

The system was not particularly adaptive; accidents, deaths, and minor mishaps were managed, even anticipated. However, major deviations from “Core Planning” went unnoticed and unaccounted for. Some people even discerned a fundamental truth – the voices and core programming routines were not being guided by any kind of directed consciousness. Quite the contrary, they were like a voice from the past. In short order people began learning to adapt. Utilizing skills acquired through their core programming regimens, individuals slowly drifted certain vague social niches. After twenty years of core programming, suddenly everything changed.

For the first two decades after reawakening, enclaves were locked down and kept in isolation. No one enclave even knew of the existence of the others until the Core programming system re-established the communication network between enclaves. And in one moment, the world became a whole lot larger. Core routines altered to include the addition of inter-enclave communication; socialization modes were adjusted to expand the nature of created social identities. First, enclaves were encouraged to name themselves. Once each enclave had a name, training records became compared, encouraging competition between enclaves, with each one becoming ranked in a variety of different skills. All this time, though, the Core Programming system was assessing individual performances. After ten more years came the major change – People were placed formally specific task functions. Where, previously, persons had congregated into general training cliques, these groups split further into a series of job positions based upon the aptitudes and abilities identified by the Core Programming system.

Most job tasks placed individuals into one of the following groups:

Administrators: Trained in managing resources, social interaction, and decision making.
Technicians: Trained in the design, repair, and maintenance of technology.
Craftsmen: Trained in design, creation, and repair of low technology objects.
Entertainers: Trained in assorted methods of entertaining other people.
Theorists: Philosophers and Scientists whose task is to raise questions, identify new problems, and come up with possible solutions.
Educators: Trained in the operation of Core Programming modules and to assist others in learning.
Healers: Trained in repair and maintenance of living things.
Untouchables: Trained in no Core Programs, the untouchables began as peoples somehow damaged during cryostasis. They emerged knowing a different language, and had considerable difficulty understanding the training regimens

The Core Programming system had obviously been designed to train these individuals in the skills necessary to forge a civilization, yet offered no information about who created the system or the enclaves. Though an incredibly complex computer program, Core Programming was not an AI in its own right, and had no capacity to expand beyond its own preset functions. When training had reached its end, fifty years after releasing the enclave populations from the freeze, it shut itself down and unlocked the enclaves themselves. Upon the entering the outside world, the emerging people noticed that upon every enclave was printed a single word – KOKORA – alongside a numerical enclave designation (from 000-999). The word means, roughly, “The heart of it all”.

The enclaves were themselves vaguely egg-shaped, and each of which was, to some extent, embedded in the ground – leaving, in many cases, only a dome-like structure exposed. The planet itself was of mixed climates, with enclaves placed in all but the most inhospitable of regions. A vast ocean of salt water covered somewhat more than half the area of the world, showing signs of having once been significantly larger. Some wildlife inhabited the area, most prominently insect life. Plants, in some regions, thrived, while in others, there were much harder to find. However, it was their new home.

In time, communities arose around the enclaves, sprawling fields and towns often built in concentric rings around the vast, exposed domes. Even as people left the security of the enclaves, their own particular enclaves remained with them as a clan identity. Indeed, this clan structure would, in short order, come to define Korkoran culture. Enclave inhabitants invariably met one another in person, and not all encounters were peaceful: contention became conflict; conflict became fighting; fighting became battle; and battle became war.

The advent of inter-enclave conflict lead to the creation of a new vocation group among the Kokoran peoples, the Warrior. The trained soldiers of the Kokoran peoples, the Warriors draw their numbers from the other Core Vocations. Thus, each warrior brings with him his own skill base to better serve the military of his enclave. The Warrior vocation trains from the competitive games originally played between enclaves, allowing people to master several skills learned during cycles of physical conditioning and re-education.

From a period of about 150 years after the end of cryostasis until nearly 320 years after cryostasis, the enclaves warred amongst themselves. And war was quite devastating – equipped with the technology gleaned from the teachings of Core Programming, they fought with both blades and plasma rifles. Those clans who adapted first, evolving their technology to meet the needs of battlefield security, survived. Those who were too slow – whether less inventive or less aggressive – were decimated. Stronger clans overran weaker clans; smarter clans tossed in their lot with larger or more battle-hardened clans. In time, the surviving clans banded together; some merged together, while others simply banded together for their mutual benefit. What began as 1000 clans became less than 400 by the time wars ceased. These 400 could be further subdivided into twenty or so “meta-clans”, called “Yamaji” who reflected assorted regional authorities. Persons of the administrative vocation within the clans most prominent in the Yamaji were appointed to serve as “Nobles”. The Nobles of each Yamaji met to discuss the advantages of scaling back their conflicts. Disagreements, they decided, could be settled by a series of games – much like the old competitions put forth by Core Programming. If one factor refused to yield to the outcome of a challenge, then they would risk repercussions from all the other factors. In short, each factor was accountable to the remaining whole. Of course, large conflicts arose again from time to time, but they were always short lived and never flared to the scale which they had known before.

350 years after being freed from cryostasis, the peoples of Kokora began experimenting with space flight, after first noticing dozens of satellites placed in orbit around their world. Within a year, they had seized on of the satellites (also bearing the label KOKORA). Within five years they reached their moon. Within twenty years, they had probes surveying nearby planets within their solar system. Within thirty years, they had a lunar colony and the framework of an orbital station. And within forty years, they detected the presence of the Gateway. Immobile in space, though seemingly connected to nothing, it was an impossible novelty that immediately seized the attention of Technicians and Theorists alike.

By 400 years after Cryostasis, the Kokora knew they were not alone in the universe. Some of the Theorists had devised some ideas regarding “subspace”, a paradimensional stratum mentioned briefly in the teachings of Core Programming. Working with the technicians, they devised a means of tapping into subspace – first to measure, and then, later, to receive and transmit. Strange modulations – waveform packets of identical frequency but differing amplitudes – were the first oddity to be detected. Further investigation revealed that these waveforms were emanating from the Gateway itself. Muted and garbled, it took nearly a year for the Theorists to figure out that the waveforms were language – transmitted communications, actually. Unwittingly, the Kokorans had tapped into the edges of the subnet, though not enough so to decode the language. Amplifying and recording the subspace signals became a priority. The constant, continued chatter worried some of the Administrators enough that a meeting of the Yamaji was called for the first time because of a possible danger from outside themselves. The Yamaji decided that the Kokoran peoples had to present a unified front against anyone who might come to their world; furthermore, the seemed sure that any assault on their region would come from that strange object in space just as the signals did. They outfitted several spacefaring craft with guns, bombs, and other assorted weapons with a plan of destroying it. Even after more than ten years of assaults and rapidly improving weapon technologies, their attempts failed.

Strangely enough, it was not from the Gateway that their first contact would occur. A Collective cruiser malfunctioned when entering Hyperspace and emerged – five years after it entered it's hyperspace window, though less than a month had seemed to pass for the crew of the ship – in the busy space lane between Kokora and its Gateway. The people of Kokora attacked immediately, their potent weapons seriously damaging the Collective vessel. Sensing the nearby Gateway, the Collective transmitted every known gateway code, and luckily for them, managed a link to Nexus Gate One, positioned close to the planet Dust – a world only recently seized by an unaligned militia broken away from the Unified Independence Coalition. The Collective cruiser passed though the gate, followed by a handful of Kokoran gunships, and was destroyed before it could even finish hailing the planet for assistance.

The Kokora Gateway was now illuminated, but the Theorists and Technicians had no luck reopening it after the umbra of light swallowed their gunboats and the alien craft they pursued. What they did not realize was that the Gateways required time between uses proportional to the amount of mass pushed through in its previous use. A Cruiser and a few gunships meant it was not going to stay closed for long. The Yamaji ordered a dozen more gunboats to stand ready in case the gateway opened again, ready to fire upon any additional alien ships that could pass through it.

On the other side of the gate, the ragtag cluster of military vessels under the control of UIC breakaway militia leader (and former Regency officer) Ozkar Rheingold assembled to confront these strange, new ships that had so effortlessly savaged a Collective vessel several times larger than themselves. Commodore Rheingold himself was confused, if these strange ships were not from the the Collective, then they must be from either the UIC or the Enpire itself. Only those two other factions had links to Nexus Gate One. The fledgling Coalition had nothing even remotely similar to this level of military cohesion in small units; Rheingold assumed the aggressors to be experimental Imperial vessels.

The Kokorans manning the gunships were confused – suddenly they were in a different place, near a strange world, with hundreds of alien craft approaching them. The Kokoran war-commander noted the lack of an immediately hostile posture, and instead decided to hold back by the gateway until communications could be attempted. No success was immediately forthcoming. It was a Theorist-turned-Warrior who presented the idea that subspace communication could be more fruitful, since it was from this side of the gate that they'd been detecting the bleedoff of other transmissions. Given a free hand to make the attempt, simple communications was established through subspace – overriding the local SubNet. It was just what Rheingold needed. He met the hail in kind, though he had anticipated hearing Imperial Standard, and not some alien tongue. However, before the palaver could continue, the Gateway opened. Back at the Kokoran Gateway, they'd managed to send the proper signal even as the time:mass delay ended. The Kokoran gunships took their opportunity to return home and report on what they had found. Meanwhile, Ozkar Rheingold spoke with some of his contacts in Imperial space, allowing them to handle the next contact with the Kokora.

Subsequent meetings between the Kokora and the remainder of faction space were tentative at best. The Empire sent a diplomatic envoy to Kokora, who in time (once the language was decoded), met with representatives of the Yamaji. A lot of unanswered questions were found on both sides – each wondering where the other had come from, for example. The Empire offered to train the Kokoran people in the use of the gates (indeed, where those came from was also a mystery, since the Imperial peoples claimed that the Enclaves were not the same technology as the Gateways), in return for diplomatic favor.

Though the Kokoran Union has since become a player in Faction space, it still remains at least partially on the outside. Most factions hail from the reaches of the old Empire, except for the Collective, who the Kokora eye with some measure of distrust. No good answer for how and why an exploratory vessel ended up in Kokoran space was ever given. Nor did the Collective’s government ever push very hard about the assault on their ship. Regardless, Kokora is very different culturally from the other Factions. First and foremost, it lacks any formal religions – indeed, such a concept is too abstract an idea for the self-reliant Kokorans. About the closest one may find among the Kokora are the philosophers among the Theorists and their questions about their own Progenitors. Certainly many Kokorans have wondered who made the Enclaves in which their people awoke, however, few obsess on the question. Most people simply accept it as a mystery, shrugging it off and moving to a topic about which they have information and control.

The Kokoran Union of today maintains the general Vocation groups of the past. Indeed, modern Vocation Groups have changed little; aside from adding the warriors, and expanding the roles of administrators, they had only to provide for the oddness of another. While most of the original Untouchables either died in time, or found their way into other groups at the lowest job levels, a few managed to breed and survive, teaching their language to their children. Modern untouchables often train at low levels of more than one discipline group, or join the Warriors, where their strange history means nothing. They are “untouchable” because they are free to pursue any Core regimen at its lower training levels. However, they have somewhat limited social rights, as they do not fit neatly into the social structure. The Kokoran government’s official stance is an expressed desire to assimilate untouchables into the Warrior vocation, so as to eliminate any new generation of the classless.

Core Programming was the most powerful computer system ever regularly utilized by the people of Kokora, and it is far from a fully functioning Artificial Intelligence. It is not that they could not have gone and created true AI, rather, it never seemed like an important or necessary thing to do. The Kokorans are self reliant, industrious, and so prefer to handle even the most menial task on their own, that using an intelligent machine is an almost insulting proposition. Why use a droid when a technician is more than capable of making any needed repairs on his own. Certainly, the Kokorans have machines as tools, but again, the key point is that they all lack true AI. They gladly use machines to aid their efforts, but no machine should do the work for them. Lastly, unlike the other Factions, only the Kokora lack ship-based AI and thinking droids.

General Reactions to Other Factions:

[Regency]
“Are they conquerors? Are they concerned parents? The Regency must decide, because they cannot be both at once.”

[Alliance]
“Pointless wheedlers and petty politicians, the Alliance plays silly games with the lives of its people.”

[Frontier]
“Let others waste resources on finding new shores in the far frontiers of space. We will be only too happy to take what they leave unguarded or abandoned.”

[Collective]
“Soulless, without harmony – The Collective forgets that what began whole was differentiated for a reason.”

[Coalition]
“Others find them weak, a broken people. However, we understand the virtues of patience and subterfuge. We will be ready when the Coalition acts. Unlike the others, we will not be taken unaware.”

[Interzone]
“Methodical, Innovative, Ruthless, Dangerous.”

[Freespace]
“Calling it a Freespace is a misnomer. The petty fiefdom of a local warlord is no less a government than the bureaucratic labyrinth of Alliance or Regency space.”

[Future Perfect] Languages

Just posting this now so I do not lose the document later. I have what are pretty much the most common languages; not much more will be needed unless someone builds a character tied to a very specific world point or is making an Archeologist type Academic. Among these nine languages are the few that are available as Native Languages for new characters.

FUTURE PERFECT - Languages

Standard – Short for Imperial Standard, it is the basic language for most regions of known space. All territories formerly or currently controlled by the Empire/Regency have this as an official language. Most regions outside those territories have a sizable percentage of the population that speak it, at least where tourists and travelers would tend to go. Characters hailing from the Regency, the Alliance, the Coalition, and the Corporate Interzone are almost certain to have Standard as their native language. Characters from the Freespace are quite likely to, as well. Well educated characters from the Frontier space may also know Standard as their native tongue.

IO – A play on both Input/Output and the one/zero of binary code, IO is essentially the latter, converted into blips of sound or flashes of light. Used primarily by un-networked robots and for communicating with robots lacking vocal components. It is also an incredibly easy language to mask during transmissions of other languages or data, since any fluctuating quantity may be used to express a communication in IO. All robots start with IO as their Native Language.

Jargon – A mishmash of other languages evolved into its own tongue, Jargon is most commonly spoken within the unclaimed territories of the Frontier. Characters from that region are quite likely to know Jargon as their Native language.

Gujar – The common language spoken by citizens of the Collective. Characters hailing from that region should know Gujar as their native language.

Kokoran – The common name for the dominant language in the Kokoran Union, its more properly called Niheigo by native speakers. Most people from the Kokoran Union know this language as their native tongue.

Ranti – A fairly common language used by older families in the merchant (pirate) clans of the space lanes, one can often find speakers of Ranti in the Freespace or on periphery of any system abutting the Freespace along the Gate Networks. If a character from the Freespace does not speak Standard as their native tongue, odds are good that they grew up speaking Ranti.

Farsign – A fairly common visual sign language originally developed for use in military operations which found widespread adoption for use by persons with uncorrected hearing loss (and those for whom silence was their vocation). Farsign is not an option for a Native Language, although a GM may opt to allow it for Characters who were born deaf.

Aroistetch – An old language spoken only by a few very old noble families (the Aroi) in the Regency, it is mostly a language understood by academics interested in History and Archeology.

Angrich – A ancient language among the Kokorans, spoken only by a few surviving members of the “untouchable” caste. It has some vague similarities to Aroistetch, a matter that has drawn the attention of more than one Regency linguist in the past few years.

[Future Perfect] Coalition of Autonomous States

The Coalition of Autonomous States
THE COALITION



Age: Approximately 250 Years

Planets:
Rakhan Prime (12 Billion)
Rakhan Secundus (3.5 Billion)
Harlinn's World (20 Million)

Other Populations:
Blackwatch Station (3.5 Million)
Assorted Asteroid Colonies, Space Stations, and Frontier Settlements

Allies:
Regency (Good Relations; Many Coalition organizations are employed by the Regency)
Freespace (Weakly aligned; Coalition has open travel policy with the Freespace)

Enemies:
Pirate Clans (Hostile; Pirate Clans are a major burden on the Coalition economy, stealing resources, raiding prosperous developments, and ultimately jeopardizing Coalition business contracts).

Attitudes:
We are defined through the struggle. Freedom, autonomy, and liberty must be earned through perseverance and personal responsibility during troubled times. Governments are just groups people; Governments over see the affairs of people; Any group of people can oversee themselves, right?

Citizens:
Are marked by extreme differences in educational and economic strata. Most folk are poor, working class with little chance to escape the drudgery. Many turn to gangs -- both legal and illegal -- in hopes of finding support and survival. People tend to be cautious, even distrustful, and generally seem to accept that life is a constant struggle.

History:
A little over 250 years ago, a populist secessionist movement within the New Terran Empire was formed by an assortment of several colonies that included planets, trade space, star ports, stations, and numerous semi-nomadic merchant colonies. Calling themselves the Unified Independence Coalition, they began a campaign to wrest its independence from the Empire. After demonstrating the seriousness of their intentions, through a series of what amounted to terrorist actions, the Empire was forced to listen to the UIC, the voice of the people. Knowing it was the only way to avert the bloody civil war that would follow this marked upsurge in terror attacks on the inner planets of the Empire, the Emperor agreed to grant limited autonomy to the UIC interests. But there were conditions. Under a provisional transition period that lasted a century, the assorted Coalition states could determine for themselves if independence suited them. After that period of transition, the UIC states could formalize their independence, or return to the arms of the Empire. Those constituent states opting for permanent independence would further agree to a non-expansion treaty in which UIC member interests would engage in no colonial expansion in the unclaimed territories for an additional century.

While nearly a third of the UIC states returned to the Empire within the century long transition, those who remained formalized their independence, organizing themselves as the Coalition of Allied States. However, multitudes of people have multitudes of dreams. While a majority of the Independent states remained unified, others, lead most vocally by a former Regency soldier named Ozkar Rheingold, decided to strike out on their own after Rheingold himself took control of the planet Dust in a swift military action. The provisional Coalition government met with Rheingold and others of similar temperament, and agreed that without a single unifying goal, the Coalition would always be plagued by factionalism and infighting. Since no unified vision could ever occur, these rogue states were encouraged to strike forth, traveling along the gate network and settling on the more sparse population centers, or carving out portions of space for themselves. The Coalition was born from those principles, and could not in good faith not honor its members rights to continue expressing them.

These independent groups resented the imposition of any formal, extra-regional authority and declared the region under their control a Freespace. Those who remained in the Coalition of Allied States set about strengthening their infrastructure, assessing their resources, and securing their own military might. Resource allocation proved to be the most trouble issue, as their growing population required more and more consumption of products and natural resources. A debate ensued over solving these problems by managing them on a local level, or by seeking to push beyond their borders to securing new, usable resources. One vocally expansionist faction claimed that resources would become strained to the breaking point – enough so that within two or three generations, said resources could be depleted critically. Unfortunately, people's fears too often color their decision making.

Thus, two ideologies formed a great schism in the Coalition – those who wanted to break the treaty with Empire, expanding to seize new resources, and those who steadfastly insisted that with proper management, the resource crisis could be averted, and a plan for sustainable, reusable resources could be implemented. In short order, a compromise was reached – Exploration, without Colonization. However, as initial reports from exploratory expeditions into the unclaimed territories seemed more and more promising, more and more people began adopting a pro-expansionist mentality. Everything changed when Imperial politics were tossed askew when the Emperor declared he was heading into protracted seclusion... for the first time in over two thousand years. The colonial minded expansionists saw their opportunity to violate the terms of their non-expansion treaty with the Empire while they were struggling with internal issues during the transition into the Regency authority.
Backed by several corporate interests (mostly the Media and Medical interests), the pro-expansionists were elected into majority control of the Coalition government. Their first action was to use new terraforming technologies on an old, failed colony world. Since this planet was not technically in the unclaimed territories, the government claimed boldly that they were not in violation of any prearranged accords. The re-terraforming of Twilight, abandoned after being considered too inhospitable for civilized life, took barely five years to complete. This striking success was just the beginning, spurring on a whole new colonial drive. When colony ships were outfitted, crewed, and set to be launched into the heart of the Frontier, the government’s minority factions were in an uproar. Enough was too much!

Only too willing to learn from the lessons of the past, the Coalition government split into two distinct political entities; the ruling government declared itself the Alliance of Colonial Nations, and the minority faction was given the name Coalition of Autonomous States. The new Alliance government retained control of four planets, unfortunately, the seats of most technological innovation as well as government and education – Core Alpha, its sister planet, Core Beta, newly re-terraformed Twilight, and the water-rich Oceana. The Coalition government was granted the sister planets of the Rakhan system (one strip-mined so badly half the planet was uninhabitable) , along with the criminal haven known as Harlinn’s World.

The Coalition government knew it was handed the short end of the stick, but resolved itself to make due with what it had. Instead of continuing to fight against the assorted criminal ventures -- indeed, some of the few profit generating organizations remaining in Coalition space -- the government granted them conditional amnesty. These criminal groups were to use their resources to oversee smaller localities, in short, acting as regional governors. Of course, this experiment met with mixed success, but the Coalition government saw little alternative to avoid total economic collapse. The government adopted a similar tactic with the remaining corporate interests, which proved disastrous when compared to the criminal ventures. With the rise of the Corporate Interzone within the bounds of the Freespace, many politically enfranchised Coalition corporate entities seized what they could from their localities and relocated into the Interzone. Thus, whole expanses of Coalition space were left lawless, and there was little the strained and struggling Coalition government could do in the short term. Their plan was a generational one, and what few resources they had were already allocated. Now was a time simply to wait.

The people of the Coalition are not without hope, though they have resigned themselves to the struggle and adversity of day to day life. Many people leave the Coalition for the Freespace, and from there, head to several other civilized (and less civilized) regions of space. The government has maintained an open gate travel policy with the Freespace gateways, despite their regular use by the pirate clans who prey on Coalition interests. Less harm is done with an open door; at least hiring armed escorts provides jobs to aid the Coalition economy.

General Reaction to other Factions:

[Alliance]
“The Alliance called us brothers. The Alliance called us friends. Then the Alliance stopped calling us at all. Why? Because they’d already taken from us everything they had wanted.”

[The Regency]
“The Regency still supports us, like the Empire of old. Too bad it has taken trauma to teach the value of self control. We had much more to learn from them than we realized.”

[The Collective]
“Though they are as unified as we are fractured, The Collective still seems to miss the big picture. The pieces of a puzzle seem random, chaotic, yet each is integral to fashioning something wondrous and complete. Each small mote can be re-assimilated into a greater whole.”

[Freespace]
“The Freespace is too much like us at times. Except that while they have even less, they appear all the more content.”

[Corporate Interzone]
“Many of our most innovative spirits have found their way into the Interzone. Perhaps too many…”

[The Frontier]
“A competitive playground for the desperate and hopeful (of which we are both), we have many colonists facing their futures in the Frontier. If only we could support them better.”

[Kokoran Union]
“The Kokorans have a strange perspective on the universe, once that is at once both so much simpler and infinitely more baroque than our own. We can’t help but admire their capacity to ignore anything that doesn’t suit them, but wonder how long such tactical blindness can be effective…”

[Future Perfect] Alliance of Colonial Nations

The Alliance of Colonial Nations
a.k.a. THE ALLIANCE


Age: Roughly 80 years

Planets:
Core Alpha (11 Billion)
Core Beta (4.5 Billion)
Oceana (1.5 Billion)
Twilight (350 Million)

Other Populations:
Matterhorn Station (6 Million)
Assorted Asteroid Colonies, Space Stations, and Colonial Frontier Settlements

Allies: Corporate Interzone (weakly aligned)
Enemies: Regency (a few open hostilities abroad, more of a cold-war in faction space)

Attitude:
Nothing gets in the way of progress. Open and friendly to outsiders, so long as you are willing to pay your way. Dissidents tend to just disappear. What the Government wants, the government gets.

Citizens:
Generally educated, and often tracked to certain specialties (Labor, Science, Technology, Academics, Administration, etc), citizens tend to be well cared for and happy. Of course, those who seem to express a protracted unhappiness are apprehended for evaluation, and sometimes, re-education.

History:
The political entity known as the Alliance was created in the same era of social turmoil that spawned the Coalition almost 250 years ago. Indeed, for nearly two hundred of those years, the Alliance and the Coalition were a single sovereignty, the Unified Independence Coalition. Originally one of several colonies that included planets, trade space, star ports, stations, and numerous resources, the UIC began a campaign to wrest its independence from the New Terran Empire. Hoping to avert the bloody civil war that could only follow a marked upsurge in various terror attacks on the inner planets of the Empire, the Emperor agreed to grant limited autonomy to the UIC interests under a provisional transition period that lasted a century. After that period of transition, the UIC states would formalize their independence, or return to the arms of the Empire. Independent states would further agree to a non-expansion treaty in which UIC member interests would forego colonial expansion in the unclaimed territories for an additional century.

While nearly a third of the UIC states returned to the Empire within the century long transition, those who remained formalized their independence, organizing themselves as the Coalition of Allied States. However, without a single unifying goal, the Coalition was plagued by factionalism and infighting. The most militant and vociferous of these factions seized the planet Dust, controlled its nearby gateway, and from their seized two more gateways adjacent on the gatemap. These independent groups declared the region under their control a Freespace, devoid of any larger, organized central authority, and they were more than willing to fight to emphasize that point. Without a significant military of its own to challenge these breakaway factions, the Coalition was powerless to stop them.

Those who remained in the Coalition of Allied States set about strengthening their infrastructure and securing their own military might. A growing, educated population noticed that without expansion, resources would become strained – enough so that within two or three generations, said resources could be depleted critically. Almost a century and a half after gaining independence, the Coalition realized why the Empire let them go so easily. Imperial projections must have noticed the increased resource depletion and the increasing costs of development and sustainability. The non-expansion treaty simply offered enough time for the Coalition states to realize their own folly and be damned by it.

Two ideologies formed the newest schism in the Coalition – those who wanted to break the treaty with Empire, and those who steadfastly insisted upon honoring it. In short order, a compromise was reached – Exploration, without Colonization. However, as initial reports of exploratory expeditions into the unclaimed territories seemed more and more promising, the debates began anew. But everything changed when quite suddenly the Emperor declared that at the decade’s end, he was placing himself into a period of protracted seclusion and setting up a Regency government to rule in his absence.

Backed by potent corporate interests, the pro-expansionists were elected into majority control of the Coalition government. Their first action was to use new terraforming technologies on an old, failed colony world. Since this planet was not technically in the unclaimed territories, the government claimed boldly that they were not in violation of any prearranged accords. The re-terraforming of Twilight, abandoned after being considered too inhospitable for civilized life, was a striking success. And this was just the beginning. When colony ships were outfitted, crewed, and set to be launched into the heart of the Frontier, the government’s minority factions were in an uproar. Likely spurred on Imperial agitators, armed insurgencies peppered the worlds of the Coalition.

Only too willing to learn from the lessons of the past, the Coalition government split into two distinct political entities; the ruling government declared itself the Alliance of Colonial Nations, and the minority faction was given the name Coalition of Autonomous States. The new Alliance government retained control of four planets – the seat of Government at Core Alpha, its sister planet, Core Beta, newly re-terraformed Twilight, and the water-rich Oceana. The Coalition government was granted the sister planets of the Rakhan system, along with the asteroid colony of Harlinn’s World.

That was all barely 80 years ago. Since then, the Alliance has relentless sought to improve itself. Militarily, academically, and culturally, the Alliance has made a game of competing with the Imperial Regency, and uses its knowledge of the past to build a stronger, better future. With by far the most prolific presence in Frontier space, the Alliance shuttles resources back and forth, entrenching itself into the minds of new and emerging colonies through relief and diplomacy. Impressively, the Alliance has proven itself an innovator of new technologies, modernizing Core Alpha into what it considers a “stellar jewel in the cosmos”.

General Reaction to Other Factions:
[Regency]
“At least in the past we fought the Imperium over territory and ideology. Now, though, the Regency fights us out of sheer spite and nothing more. What is it they hope to gain?”

[Collective]
“With ruthless efficiency even the Corporate agenda has to admire, the Collective are going to be trouble.”

[Coalition]
“A fading power, the Coalition is all that remains of our allies from long ago. Once the pinnacle of both technological and social innovation, they’ve since lapsed behind due to petty infighting, political corruption, and a criminal element that has bought itself into the highest echelons of the ruling elite. They should have joined us when we still wanted them…”

[Kokoran Union]
“Strange ones, those Kokorans.”

[Corporate Interzone]
“An unregulated economy without external controls invites not only corruption, but – potentially – a malevolent pursuit of profit. Perhaps that is why anything goes in the Interzone?”

[Freespace]
“Anarchists, Criminals, and Visionaries of the highest order. Let them have their day, because we are their future…”

[The Frontier]
“The boundary must be pushed, incessantly. The Frontier represents an undiscovered country that must grow, develop, and ultimately seek its place among the Alliance community… and in turn, a new Frontier as yet unknown to us invariably will reveal itself.”