ZOCU: Upsetting the Applecart
Overview
The Zodiac Outworld Colonies Union is a political and military alliance established in the wake of the Breakdown. Unlike the great powers of the homeworld, ZOCU exists entirely in the Expanse. During the Breakdown years, ZOCU provided security and support, picking up as much slack as possible where Earth had left off. After recontact, tensions between the forcibly autonomous colonies and the Core sparked into a major interstellar war in which the alliance gained independence from the homeworld.
Zodiac Combined Militia
The Zodiac Combined Militia is a joint military force of ZOCU sometimes seen on both sides as the counterpart to the UN ARROWs. Firstly the Combined Militia exists to provide the alliance with a group of soldiers and associated administrative structure that will be available for tasks deemed important to the Union as a whole. Secondly, it exists to provide a place for ZOCU crews and officers to work together at all levels in order to propagate best practices and keep Union solidarity. Unlike ARROWs however, they do not have their own units; all personnel and equipment are ultimately assigned from the various national militaries.
Member States
- The de facto capital of ZOCU, where much of the bureaucracy resides. Relatively well populated, with a strong and multifaced economic base.
- Primary population origin: English-speaking world; both Commonwealth and USA.
- Although one of the more lightly populated ZOCU worlds, Kanon has come to wield significant influence within the alliance owing to a wealthy high-tech economy, significant theta dust reserves and most recently, a relatively successful wartime military record. A century after its foundation by a coalition of powerful transgene dynasties originating mostly from Japan and Europe, Kanon's society remains centralised and stratified, with the layers at the top unsurprisingly considered a stronghold of transgenic conservatism. Nevertheless, Kanon as a whole is a center of political and ideologicla discussion of ZOCU's future and has emerged as a primary binding force in the post-war years.
- Primary population origin: Japan and Europe
- Lokarian weirdness!
- Primary population origin: USA
- FBHian weirdness!
- Primary population origin: Nonspecific
- OPian weirdness!
- Primary population origin: ?
- Screwballian weirdness!
- Primary population origin: Commonwealth
- Transbaal was originally settled by predominantly white Africans who made the choice to depart a continent damaged by both natural and man-made catastrophes, trading insecurity for the frontier. Far from Earth, they embraced the genetic modification technology that had matured in the decades since the infamous 'Mad Augment' tragedies. The defining period came in the late 2130s, when a small brushfire conflict between several settler groups forced the deployment of UN peacekeepers and the creation of a more substantial local military, one of the first in the Expanse. Isolated far from any catapult during the Breakdown and sharing a general heritage with Londenium, Transbaal was an early member of ZOCU.
- Situated comfortably behind the front lines, Transbaal's genetic expertise made it a center for fundamental research. Most of the ZOCU mobile armor designs were designed here and a preponderance of ZOCU's heavily-augmented aces including the #2 scorer Y.G. Kruger called Transbaal home. Unfortunately the crash demilitarization at the end of the war damaged Transbaal's economy and its scandal-ridden government has struggled to reposition the world as a center for civilian learning and high-tech industry.
- Primary population origin: Sub-Saharan Africa
- One of the more distant EU outposts before the Breakdown, Vrijheid was and remains thinly populated.
- Primary population origin: North-Western Europe
-
- Primary population origin: Korea
-
- Primary population origin: Southern USA
-
- Primary population origin: UN Patchwork, emphasis on small states
-
- Primary population origin: UN Patchwork, emphasis on stateless minorities