Alien Sky:Organizations

Factional Governments

Centauri League

Type: Representative Democracy
Population: 25.7 Million
Languages: English, Hindi, French
Aesthetic Paradigm: White and light blue. Rounded and boxy.

The Centauri League inherited the strongly humanistic and liberal values of the old Earth United Nations, pushing for the recreation of a standing charter of human rights and bans on weapons of mass destruction. Initially formed as a mutual pact between a number of colonies founded by forward-thinking 1st world countries, the Centauri League is progressive and cosmopolitan. It possesses the largest population on the planet, largely because of its ability to create thriving communities from disparate groups and skill at brokering deals with breakaways from other factions. Although New Sargasso is far wealthier and the Community are much more advanced, the Centauri League is the most powerful of the seven nations on Gaia.

In the intervening era since the emergence of the Vectors and the destruction of the Tannhauser Gate, the Centauri League has found itself straddling the line between necessary peacekeeping and self-interested interventionism more and more. Their UN-style bureaucracy is inefficient, but their idealism and free speech allow for a happier and more motivated populace.

Their weaponry is mostly composed of solid and sturdy mass production A-Fractals that utilize environmentally-safe linear rifles and lasers, and make use of the powerful oscillating blade system, but eschew the use of rocketry. Their forces have strong morale and esprit de corps, but most League forces on Gaia are raw and inexperienced.

Play a Centauri League unit if you want be a peacekeeping force that exists to prevent war and create a unified Gaia. CL units start with better than average starting equipment and high morale.

New Sargasso City-States

Type: Representative Democracy
Population: 6.1 Million
Languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Afrikaans, French
Aesthetic Paradigm: Red, black and gold. Sharp edges and slender outlines.

The New Sargasso City States is a politico-economic union of wealthy city-states that settled the small islands of the New Sargasso Sea on Chiron. The NSCS is an economic powerhouse that seems to have based its political makeup off a combination of secular corporate republicanism and reformist religious doctrines. The NSCS are largely democratic, but also plays host to the conservative clerics of Sunni Neo-Confucianism. The faith, often abbreviated to SunCon, is a belief in the submission to the best members of a meritocratic society as agents of an infallible God. SunCon believers tend to be socially conservative in terms of the AC Era, but economically liberal.

While the League concerns itself with its own morality and idealism, the NSCS is interested in advancing the new faith and bringing themselves wealth and power by taking control of Gaia's resources and exploiting them. Their wealth has attracted many brilliant scientists, but have the smallest population among the Gaia venture states.

The NSCS military is composed of mid-weight mass-production A-Fractals with high-end laser and missile weaponry, and make use of advanced non-combustive rocketry to improve the agility of their units in the air. Their forces are almost exclusively composed of well-trained and well equipped mercenaries, but tend to be less motivated as a consequence.

Play a NSCS unit if you want to play a morally ambiguous mercenary, perhaps hoping that his actions might earn him a place in the new economic and social order that the City-States and their SunCon ideology might create or simply there to make a quick buck. NSCS units are smaller and more elite in terms of training, begin with advanced starting gear and funds, but have poor morale because of their mercenary origins.

Tsiolkovsky Community

Type: Digital Democracy
Population: 12.4 Million
Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, English
Aesthetic Paradigm: Orange and light gray. Monolithic and based on hexagons, with sharp lines and exotic thruster shapes.

The Tsiolkovsky Community is a national body founded by a number of independent research laboratories who banded together in order to keep their innovations from being abused by NSCS corporates or Earthbound anarchists. Although one of the least populous factions on Chiron, they have one of the largest populations on Gaia for a simple reason: every Community colonist on Gaia was originally a mindstate copy sent through the Tannhauser Gate, and nearly their entire population consented to being uploaded.

All political, economic and social aspects of the Community are decided democratically. All corporations are owned by the employees, with pay and planning dictated by popular vote, laws are voted by every individual of their twelve million-strong electorate and wars are planned by committees of veterans assisted by powerful AI. Although the structure seems inefficient, the Community has effectively eliminated bureaucracy and corruption by automating and streamlining the means of gathering and processing consensus.

The TC military is easily one of smallest on Gaia, comprised mostly of A-Fractals piloted by AI patterned after the mindstates of ace pilots, and backed by elite test units who pilot experimental AN-Fractals. Unlike the Grove, who use Natural Fractals recovered from the Vectors, the Community is one of the only units capable of creating artificial units comparable to the N-Fractal archetype. Their weapons are mirrored after the bizarre Vector energy weapons such as the powerful 'scattering beam' and unusual 'homing beam'.

Play a TC unit if you want to be an ace pilot in a bleeding edge AN-Fractal. TC forces are extremely small and have lower starting money, but automatically begin with at least one ace pilot character and one AN-Fractal and acquire more much more easily than other factions.

Messian Concordat

Type: Theocracy
Population: 14.7 Million
Languages: English, Irish, Latin
Aesthetic Paradigm: Dark blue and gold. Bulky and rounded, with squarish weapons and armor overlays.

The Messians are adherents to Chironian Messianism, a form of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity based around messianic culture heroes that arose during the early colonization of Chiron. These figures are essentially considered to be the Second Coming of Jesus among the Messians, who destroyed the corrupt 'machine voices' that united all the first founding settlements of Chiron and allowed them to follow the teachings of the Lord uninhibited by the voices of the profane and unbelieving.

The Concordat is a theocracy, operated by a council of religious elders who base decisions on scripture and precedents in interpretation. The government is in many ways slow and inflexible, unable to adopt new technologies or ideologies as quickly as the other factions. However, their citizens are motivated, pious and unfailingly loyal, and their society is notoriously difficulty to subvert.

The Messian military is composed of seasoned veterans and motivated raw recruits, but has some of the crudest Fractal technology possible. Their unwillingness to dabble in the life sciences means that they make use exclusively of ponderous first-generation A-Fractal technology stolen from the Tsiolkovsky. These units are often heavily armored and heavily armed with bulky railguns and high-velocity ion rockets.

Play a Messian Concordat unit if you want to have a unit of skilled and motivated fighters stuck in a gritty conflict against technologically superior enemies. Messian forces are veterans with high morale, but worse than average starting equipment and no access to anything more advanced than mechanical variations on their basic A-Fractal.

Parabolic Grove

Type: Representative Democracy
Population: 10.2 Million
Languages: Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, English
Aesthetic Paradigm: Dark green and pale gray. Emphasis on the human form and comfortable ergonomic designs.

The Parabolic Grove was a commune started by remnants of Earth ecological engineering firms and environmental lobbies with the purpose of creating sustainable and environmentally sensitive communities on Chiron. Their green spires rose from the ocre badlands, bringing with with terraformed forests and new hybrids species that enriched the barren world that became humanity's new home. By assisting the other factions with terraforming projects and distributing much of their technology as open source, they gained legitimacy and support. Within two centuries, the Parabolic Grove had become a recognized nation with a standing self-defense force and many settlements claiming membership.

Arriving on Gaia, the Grove recognized the immense biodiversity and wealth the world offered. Many fell in love with the nostalgic natural green hills and shallow seas, so similar to the myths about the homeworld. While most other factions are willing to exploit the planet and use its resources to wage war, the Parabolic Grove have taken a stand for the planet itself, and have sworn to defend it against abuses by the greedy or ignorant.

The Parabolic Grove is one of the few nations to not have a professional military of any sort, and depend on a network of volunteer militias and guerillas. Their affinity for excavating and fielding N-Fractal biomecha is unmatched, making use extremely unconventional Vector weapons such as the wide arc 'Crisis' field and scattering homing beams, in addition to robust laser cannons.

Play a Grove unit if you want to play a raw force of guerrillas focused around a handful of unique characters, armed with rare and exotic N-Fractal mecha. Parabolic Grove units consist entirely of small units of N-Fractal mecha with better than average pilots, but have a bad logistics train and poor morale.

Galina Society

Type: Autocracy
Population: 3.8 Million
Languages: Spanish, Creole, English
Aesthetic Paradigm: Burnt red and dark brown. Recolors of comparable Messian or Grove units.

The Galina Society is a group of survivalist nomads who were formed by the remnants of the Spanish "Galina" colony ship, which crashed deep in the Chironian desert. The survivors lived on scavenged technology until contact with the other colony ships was reestablished, and had to make a number of necessary adaptations in order to survive. Scarcity of resource deposits in the desert pushed many into nomadism, either surviving on ad-hoc rovers or riding the mysterious native 'centaurs' of Chiron, quadrupedal with bird-like heads and long, stilt-like legs. Their superior navigational abilities and widespread dominance of the central continental regions of Chiron led them to become a powerful, if dispersed society.

In many ways, the Galina are in direct opposition to the Parabolic Grove. They see taking control of an environment as needless and crass and support a joining of the environment similar to the anarcho-primitivist ideologies that became extremely popular in the third millennium of Earth's common era. On Gaia, they continued old habits, but managed to secure the resources and technology to create large landships to move their mobile populations across the surface without falling prey to the isolation and dispersion inherent in a colonial environment.

The Galina are highly militarized. Every member of the Society is effectively a military reservist and extensively trained in the use of conventional weaponry and even powerful Fractal machines. Their Fractal forces consist heavily of 'the Marked', individuals who have had Vector biomass implant itself into their bodies accidentally or on purpose, granting superior piloting skills at the cost of becoming violently allergic to certain kinds of refined metal. Their Fractals consist of A-Fractal technology purchased from the Messians and N-Fractals that the Marked have a natural affinity towards reclaiming.

Play a Galina Society unit if you want to play a mysterious nomad or landship dweller. GS troops combine low-end Messian A-Fractals with rare and powerful N-Fractals gathered by their 'Marked' kin.

Heng Sha Collective

Type: Enlightened Despotism
Population: 12.3 Million
Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin
Aesthetic Paradigm: Black and gold. Squarish, but aerodynamic with a preference for multipedal units.

Heng Sha was one of three mainline colonial bodies founded by the PRC's colony ships on Chiron, alongside the New Hong Kong Commonwealth and Beijing Authority. Heng Sha is in many ways a direct reflection of the China that existed shortly before the collapse of the Earth's environment and the subsequent colonial migration to Alpha Centauri. Founded as a techno-progressive state capitalist society ruled by enlightened despots, Heng Sha represents many of the best and worst qualities of the mid-21st century China.

Heng Sha was the only Chinese power on Chiron to agree to the Centauri League's conditions of economic cooperation, minimal human rights and responsible exploitation, and as a consequence, the only power of its kind to settle on Gaia. While the Tsiolkovsky advanced their open-source cause, the Heng Sha elites opposed it strongly as it would undermine their power base, and settled into a cold war of sorts with the Community.

The HSC's military consists of large masses of A-Fractals pilotted by raw recruits, supported and led by distinguished officers in powerful AN-Fractals. These units are generally less maneuverable than their Tsiolkovsky counterparts, but have better firing arcs and more weaponry, and use a combination of homing beams and remote Vector-based beam drones.

Play a Heng Sha Collective unit if you want to play a force of motivated neofeudal conscripts led by a seasoned and prestigious officer in 'banner army' style. HSC forces start off with a solid base of manpower, equipment and talented individuals to flesh units out, but cannot take airships as home bases and have poor logistics support as a consequence.

Other

Independants

Population: 9.8 Million
Languages: English is the most common.
Aesthetic Paradigm: Whatever they can get. Surfer, hippy and beatnick culture abounds.

Centauri League hegemony on Gaia allowed for many niceties not normally possible on Chiron or the space colonies of Alpha Centauri. Groups of unaligned people who did not declare allegiance to any one state or faction were able to come together and form their own agencies. Some pulled away from mainline human society in order to avoid the war, while others sought to profit from the border skirmishes and proxy fighting, maintaining the status quo by generating conditions where no group could ever win out over the other.

Most independents are generally citizens of one faction or another who simply struck out on their own, while a good number of them are second-stage colonists, individuals who came from Chironian factions that didn't make landfall that had to sign non-preferential agreements to ship colonists through the Tannhauser gate. With the collapse of the gate and contact limited, many of these people are less inclined to serve the seven nations who rule Gaia. This can be attributed in part to the oppression and discrimination of these people saw when arriving on a well-established colony world full of former rivals.

Regardless of their origins, the independent factions of Gaia represent a significant portion of the military and paramilitary power on the planet. Bounty hunters, mercenaries and rebels are a common sight in many busy skyports and seaside towns, and the pockmarked border regions and contested territories are often strewn with the remains of Fractals and armored fighting vehicles operated by private military contractors.