View source for Lore:Cliques

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 |img =  SolFedFlag.png|Flag of the Sol Federation, drawn by Moro.
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 |loretype = FACTIONS
 |mainname = The Cliques of Sol Federation
 |othernames = Voting Blocs
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 |relatedlore = [[Lore:SolFed]]
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|contributors={{Contributor/Owegno|Dang, like every single Clique is of their design. They've been going at this for years and not a single idea here flops.}}, {{Contributor/ArcanaObscura|mothzone}}, {{Contributor/Belwoods|[[#Galactical_Corporation_Regulation|The GCR]] is their brainchild.}}, {{Contributor/goldenfreddycl|Several of the [[#Notable_Kingdoms|Monarchist factions]].}}, {{Contributor/GreytideSkye|VOTING RESEARCHER ALERT. DID THE TURBO-BULLSHIT OF VOTING STANDARDS. HOLY FUCK LOOK WHAT A COHERENT BUT AWFUL SITUATION THE VOTING IS. Look, besides that, this was a lot of assembly. I took over a hundred disjointed messages and knitted them into the absolute hell that living in SolFed must be like. I also threw a lot of ideas into solidifying the Plasma Clique and the Trade Clique.}}
}}[[Category:Lore]]

= Cliques =
The Sol Federation consists of tens of thousands of individual member nations, with tens of thousands of individual votes happening yearly. It is both impossible for an individual member to keep track of all the possible proposals that might affect them, and for any particular proposal's interested parties to pander to each SolFed member with a vote. Thus, cliques.

Cliques are, on paper, simply a collection of individuals with narrow special interests, who track and make relevant proposals to the SolFed Council, and inform their interested members of relevant concerns. In practice, Cliques are loosely political parties, representing their people's fixation on a specific interest and commanding their votes where irrelevant. To have a significant voice in the Council, you need a significant amount of leverage: votes.

Formally, Cliques hold no presence on the SolFed L3 Federal Assembly station. They are issued no chamber, no allotted headcount for staff, no voice or power to call votes. In practice, member nations offer their own Council resources to further the clique; replacing their nation's secretary with a Clique Steward, filling half their chamber with Clique business, calling votes on the Clique's behalf... Hell, several nations are courted into cliques on the ''sole'' basis that their  office is adjacent to other members, so them giving consent to deconstruct the walls between them means the clique has a better office. 

If you ask your automated Navigator the way to the [[User:GreytideSkye/Sandbox/Lore:Cliques#Plasma Clique|Plasma Clique]]'s office, it will point you nowhere, but if you ask aloud, you'll get directed to obvious wall signs conveniently embedded in a nearby nation's Extended Livery. Bet you didn't know that the proud Blue and Gold flag of the [[User:GreytideSkye/Sandbox/Lore:Cliques#Cheren Path|Cheren Path]] is only the abridged Naval Flag, and their full flag also has a big purple arrow to the right labeled ''"Trade C. Office 6 aisles clockwise 2 hallways coreward -->''".

== How Voting Works ==

Each member state in SolFed nominally gets one vote in any particular vote. However, the size and location of a nation's office in the Federal Assembly are dictated by their population/wealth, so that larger nations can keep more staff on-site and have better insight on active votes. The minimum threshold for a nation's ability to qualify for a vote isn't one of concrete numbers, but practicality: a tiny nation has an office so far from the voting hall that they are physically incapable of sprinting from their office to the voting box in time. At current projections, an on-site office of 100 workers is the bare minimum to keep tabs on all the concurrent debates and votes and submit an informed decision on each.

The first cliques were literally just coworkers from nearby offices that you trusted to carry your ballot, so you could sit in your office and watch the debates about another pressing matter to learn how to vote in your own interest. In time, this escalated to allowing these ballot runners to vote on your behalf, and to freely signing whatever vote your trusted ballot runner stops by your desk with. Gradually, these informal voting blocs grew structure, ideals, and congealed into the modern Cliques seen today. They hold grander ideas and networks of sprinters, but are still fundamentally just an orchestrated means of getting more votes into a box than can be carefully considered by individuals alone. This comes about as new waves of nations literally have to bolt new rooms onto the Federal Assembly, which they can do because it's a space station. Even if it's not an office thing, a new nation means at bare minimum a new chair in a debate hall, which still gets bad as nations are added gradually and up to the 10,000some nations theoretically possible. 

=== Votes ===

Each nation is assigned '''one vote power per person''' in its population. This gives a lot of power to the big member states while small ones have to band together to get any impact. 

Each vote is a physical ballot, congealed into denominations of 1 10 50 100 1,000 50,000 1m 25m Larger denominations have historically existed, but through the push of the Unity Clique toward One Nation One Vote, larger denominations were deemed "too great a security risk" and "atrocious for accountability", and that individual citizens had the right to track their specific vote (they do not) which would be made infeasible by including them in a conglomerate ballot. Ulteriorly, which is a real word, this stifles the ability of large nations to effectively vote at full strength, as having to sign each ballot to validate them imposes a strong time investment. Autopens were briefly banned in fear of fraud, until the first [[Lore:Synths|Synth]] Senator stepped aboard the Federal Assembly and everyone got a little too uncomfortable to bring it up again.

The largest nations' embassies in the Federal Assembly look more like a print shop than a place of legal asylum, rushing to leverage their full constituency and often losing sight of lesser votes. Paradoxically, this means that tiny measures can easily pass with only smaller nations' approval, as they have only a few ballots to certify, leaving spare time to address numerous votes at once. 

=== Physical Ballots ===

Ballots coming in physical denominations means that political alliance and vote trading is also a physical act, a literal trade of signed blank ballots for specific issues. For a short time, ballots were used as the currency of corruption, votes for personal favors to the senators. This, combined with the ramshackle assemblage of the Assembly, promoted certain business opportunities that, of all groups, the Monarchists were keen to capitalize on. Eschewing the standard political office, these royal representatives gained power through small vote donations in exchange for ready, well-cooked food, saving serious senators hours of off-site restauranting or valuable office space for personal cooking appliances. None grew as pervasive as the {{TooltipInline|Burger King|You may boo, now.}}.

Eventually this would be cracked down upon, as this detracts from biological societies disproportionately more than non-consumptive species, as well as the deep fryer stench being recognized as an act of war against neighboring offices. 

=== Casting Ballots ===

A typical vote goes as such:

====The Proposal====
A nation has an idea for a measure to pass. For this example, we'll follow the failed "Vote C3-196: Is Daylight Lighting A Hatecrime Against [[Lore:Shadekin|Shadekin]]?" 

The nation presses a button in Federal Assembly Vote Calling office and is assigned a unique {{TooltipInline|Proposal Number|Each nation can press this button once a day, barring other conflicts, but are under no obligation to use the proposal number.}}, in this case {{TooltipInline|C3-196|Each proposal number is derived from the nation's charter number, times they've proposed thus far, and date of pressing, but is hashed securely for anonymity and to prevent blind bias. Yes, nations do auction off notable proposal numbers for favors. Proposal 69-420 was allegedly sold for twenty billion votes and has yet to be filed.}}

The nation writes a petition for this proposal and acquires signatures from approx. 5% of all SolFed nations. The major Cliques easily have the numbers to do this without "outside" discussion. This proposal is ratified by an automatic scanner in the main Council Chamber, which initiates an immediate Vote. 

It is expected that by this point, the proposing interests have already gathered support, informed all nations of the proposal, and are reasonably confident it will pass. Motions still in this pre-vote phase of canvassing and informing are called "Proposed," as in "Proposals" or "proposed amendments." 

====The Ballot====

For every nation in SolFed, their Embassy prints off blank ballots with a specific issue pre-written on them, e.g. a batch of ballots for "C3-196 Shadekin Hate Crime", one ballot per "district" in the above denominations. This is anywhere from a thousand to several thousand paper ballots. 

Each Embassy has unique letterhead, tying a ballot to the nation. Each ballot has identifying marks for each citizen represented, e.g. "this 1000 Vote ballot represents the Intent of the persons with Social Security Numbers 122-134-552-XXX". These ballots need not be printed at the time of the vote, and are often pre-printed with known, {{TooltipInline|inconsequential proposal numbers|Proposals the nation knows it has no opinion on. There are no protections against a nation declaring a proposal number will be about one subject, but changing it to a different matter just before the Vote is called, (but it is a "Dick Move") so pre-printing ballots holds some risk.}}, to be used as {{TooltipInline|currency|want to each burger}}. 

====The Vote====

The ballots are marked with the specific Yea or Nay marking {{TooltipInline|unique to the specific Vote|Not guaranteed Unique, but cryptographically the chance of collision is low.}}, via stamp or pen or whatnot. This means that each ballot must be touched during the 6 hour voting window in order to properly cast it, even if pre-printed and pre-signed. This ensures liveliness of interested parties.

The nation's team sticks these physical ballots through an [[wikipedia:autopen|autopen]] to register a specific vote. Varying security measures are applied at this stage, depending on the era and the nation. The signature is unique to the office, fictionally altered slightly to be unique to the vote; e.g. "distort the second letter turnwise for every vowel" etc. The ink can be chemically unique, etc. 

The signed ballots are inserted into a central ballot box held in the core of the Federal Assembly, and the physical ballots are kept "secure" for like a year. They will be auto-counted by computerized systems, but the physical ballots are retained as {{TooltipInline|physical proof of a physical vote|In the event of two identical ballots being cast, e.g. selling one ballot but reprinting it to cast yourself, the first submitted ballot is counted. The identities of the contradictory ballot-submitters are recorded and disclosed during an audit, so fraud can be detected, but there are no innate protections against voting fraud in this manner. There are also no innate protections against the kneecaps of those who would double-cross their sold votes, and no protections against said nation being heavily tariffed by majority vote.<br>----<br>The Anti-Dick-Move Clique does not often have to take action, but when they do, it is conclusive.}}. 

After a short time, around '''6 Earth hours''', the ballot box closes, accounting for folk rushing to a box, etc. The votes are counted and tallied in a narratively satisfying amount of time, often a day. In theory a Recount can be called, and by all means someone always calls for it, but Real, Serious recounts where they actually have to break out the physical ballots are rare.
= Center Clique =

Center Clique, which represents the "default" to a degree. They're made up primarily of large and powerful nations in the center of SolFed, and believe in centralizing SolFed alongside supporting corporate interests, and their own interests. You could consider them a bit akin to the Federalists in the early US. 

When folk from other codebases think of SolFed, this is what they think of: An imperialist, expansionist democracy, often bullying, bribing or coercing smaller nations or independent systems into joining them. They have a very close relationship with corporations, and while they posture as a Federation, the Center Clique pushes for the central government to have a lot of control and micro-manage individual systems. They struggle with secessionist movements and were one of the big people to suffer revolutions after the first migration, losing a good bit of territory. 

They're one of the biggest cliques in SolFed, population-wise, and are territorially spread out everywhere due to their policy of trying to expand as much as possible, but they're centered closer to Sol.

Strongly epitomized by the [[Lore:Libraea|Libraen Federation]]. 

Independently, each major player in the Center Clique is their own brand of disgusting, and together they're reprehensible. A mixture of the worst of a Landlord Coalition and a Homeowner's Association.

The baseline/moderate for SolFed politics, representing a pro-corporate, pro-democracy, somewhat corrupt entity that the more wacky, evil, or good entities can be compared against

= Unity Clique =

All cultures are to become part of the Sol Federation. SolFed might not be the best system, SolFed might not be the wisest government, but it is unified and within SolFed, there are no wars. Neighbors are just those who have not had their price for peace met; whether that price is consideration or blood, only time will tell.

Out of the ashes of the Sagittarius-Tiziran War rose those who would will that to be the end of war, the final conclusion. After losing millions of SolFed lives, just at the cusp of total victory, the distant, unaffected coreworlds surrendered their advantage and forced a shitty semblance of peace. The Unity Clique sees this as abandoning those who fought bravely to defend SolFed, as cowardice getting in the way of progress. The bureaucrats downright betrayed the Federation, letting our scaly enemies regroup and redouble their position, and it is with this fiery hatred that the Unity Clique fights for everlasting peace. 

The Unity Clique is SolFed's main expansionist drive, seeking to make all into SolFed, so that none need declare war for politicks or land. The sheer ideological threat of the Tiziran Menace bearing down upon the fringes of SolFed, and the absolute horrors of the resulting war, steeled the heart of the Sagittarian peoples into those who would see war at that scale finished.

They do want to centralize SolFed, but want it to be done in a way that has a more equal distribution of power, which upsets both the Frontier and Center Clique. This means limiting the power of massive voting blocs, but also lessening the protections afforded to micronations.

They're also responsible for SolFed having a [[Lore:SFAF|standing military]], as that is a bill they proposed and got other people to agree to. Having seen what happened when SolFed was reluctant to raise arms to defend its own, the Unity Clique vowed to never let complacency or bureaucracy interfere with safety again.

Where the votes are irrelevant, they hold strong to their past loyalties. Center Clique? Never ever supporting anything they want ever, as they fucked them during the war and betrayed SolFed. Progress Clique? Sure, at least one of their members provided a good deal of support, so they'll help them out if needed. 

Far from traditional xenophobes, ''their hatred lies with alien governments, not the aliens themselves.'' In their eyes they're righteous liberators, and it would make sense for that approach to begin during the Tiziran war, even if in practice it wasn't always followed due to the realities of the conflict. The Sagittarians were in it to remove a distinct and dangerous threat on their front doorstep - get the lizards off the board and make sure they can't pose a threat to us anymore. '''Peace through unity or peace through eradication.'''

The standards for a new nation joining SolFed are lax, almost ''exclusively'' because of Unity meddling, to the point where '''joining SolFed can be taken for granted.''' The vast majority of nations give no darn either way, and will either Abstain from vote or sell their vote cheaply. Only the peoples {{TooltipInline|Display Text=basically adjacent|Tooltip=Just topographically, being extremely generous, a new zone might have at most 10 neighbors, and those might have at most 10 neighbors. 100 members as the upper limit of locals to even have an opinion. As long as there are more than 100 Unity lovers, they entirely drown out the people who will be affected.}} to the impending member have any reason to have an opinion. Yeses would be for liking new trade routes that open up, for ending hostilities, for under the table boons. Noes would be for those intent on conquering the zone themselves, or for those pissed at a neighbor who might vote yes above. With the vast majority of SolFed apathetic to these votes, the Unity Clique needs to exert only a minimum of influence to ensure the new member is accepted.

A {{TooltipInline|Display Text=good number of people|Tooltip=At least seven.}} fear that the Unity Clique might outright defect to the [[Lore:Heliostatic Coalition|Heliostatic Coalition]], as the clique claims to be loyal to peace, not specifically to the Sol Federation. They fear that, in turn, they would force the rest of the Sol Federation to kneel to the HC, assuming the HC's system of governance to be {{TooltipInline|Display Text="better."|Tooltip=Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, yeah? Doing dick moves because you're jealous of your neighbor's righteousness??}} This distrust caused several major incidents during the [[Lore:Void Imperium|Void War]], with strategic High Command refusing to deploy Unity-affiliated regiments to reinforce Heliostatic allies, resulting in unnecessary losses. 

= Frontier Clique =

Of the thousands of nations in SolFed, a {{TooltipInline|Display Text=good 40%|Tooltip=And an evil 67%.}} are within {{TooltipInline|Display Text=███|Tooltip="Never give the readers concrete numbers. They will pick apart your setting and sue you." - Bureau of Astrography, Rule Seven.}} light years from Sol Federation's declared borders. These are the smaller members who can't turn their back to external politics, to SolFed's relations with neighbors, to the looming threats of galactic wars and the realities of living closer to a potential enemy than to a SFAF patrol.

The Frontier Clique is made up primarily of smaller members who were often former colonies of other members. They generally try and represent the interests of "The Little Guy" and have tons of tiny members. They're pretty anti-corporate, and are pretty opposed to centralizing SolFed. They're also really lacking in unity due to how many members they have. The realities of living near the Void Imperium are vastly different from living near the Heliostatic Coalition, and '''extremely''' different from living in [[Lore:Tajaran#Final Warning|the Sphere of Eternal Tajaran Invasion.]] 

One would expect the Nova Sector to be involved with the Frontier Clique, but Nanotrasen's holdings are more coreward and NT's position of power is mostly disconnected from their frontier holdings.

= Trade Clique =

Trade requires two things: an imbalance of supply and demand, and the freedom to ride that gradient to profit.

Basically mostly made up of Sovereign Corporations with the Corporate Territories acting as their leader and unified voice. The nations in the Trade Clique are generally those with strong corporate influence that didn't join the Center Clique. As you would expect they are entirely devoted to Corporate interests and freedom of trade.

The Trade Clique operates as a self-policing union of sorts, ensuring quality standards and sanctioned trade through force. For producers, this means they'll only stock Trade Clique Certified Plus products.

This does not mean they exclusively serve Big Business. There is a large market for smaller, independent shops - Mom and Pop stores, independent artists, sculpturades, etc. - and the Trade Clique has fingers in those pots too. The Trade Clique carefully ensures there's a healthy - but not overwhelming - number of smaller stores to choose from, both by providing generous loans in underrepresented areas and by forcibly closing competitors well before oversaturation is reached. Market forces act fast, but the Trade Clique acts faster.

What they don't do are monopolies. A monopoly is lazy, and a captive market is one clawing to escape. The Trade Clique holds the monopoly on monopolies through a strict regiment of self-policing, breaking up slothful monopolies as they arise, and ensuring that consumers always have a choice... of another Trade Clique-serving vendor. 

As much as corporations would enjoy holding a monopoly, the pragmatic (read: surviving) corporations understand the realities of the Trade Clique:. A company, left undirected, ''will'' monopolize within the boundaries of its environment, and this is bad for trade. Without oversight, total Corporate war between nations would destroy entire corporations, price gouging and direct competition would pit giants against each other with only the customer benefitting. Corporate War would bleed into real war, the SolFed Marshals would be compelled to intervene, and in the aftermath, their market share would be wide open for unrelated corporations to poach. By relinquishing a little liberty to the Trade Clique, corporations gain everlasting security.

=== Galactical Corporation Regulation ===
'''The Regulators'''

{{Speech|name=Henry Beaumont, Securocratic Regulator|image=[[File:HenryBeaumont.png]]|text=''"Space is a no-mans land, after all, why capitalize it?"''}}

Known for Peacekeeping, internal investigations, and imposing sanctions.

==== On paper, ====
The GCR is an organization formed to perform peacekeeping duties on any sides of the space and to ensure that there are no corporate wars. The GCR is noted due to it's recent arrival to Nova after receiving massive funding from multiple governments after their recent actions taken against their Syndicate partners, by stating that they'll instigate sanctions and "special operations" to make their presence known. 

In the year of 2540, Henry Beaumont, a former Captain for the SolFed army, after multiple tours and estimations that the current situation between corporations is worsening with no sign of stopping at any time, forms the GCR as a semi-mercenary group tasked with intercepting any and all illegal activities within space, as a way to do sanctions. Originally, they were treated as a bunch of space pirates who are trying to act all official, but after a recent bust on Interdyne, NanoTrasen and SolFed have noted their activity and recognized them as an organization, more than just space pirates.

The GCR is not a formal SolFed bureau or other organization, just an independent band of vigilantes ensuring SolFed's standards are kept.

==== In practice, ====
Henry Beaumont does not take orders from the Trade Clique... but he takes directions.

The GCR serves as the self-enforcement arm of the Trade Clique, ensuring that all the arbitrary safety standards are met, to the Trade Clique's liking. Well, to the liking of the SolFed official in their pocket. 

The GCR monitors food safety, employee satisfaction, and numerous extra-legal metrics to ensure compliance "for the greater good." The GCR will ensure your corporate presence is in SolFed's best interest, and in her peoples' best interest, and it's mere coincidence that the Trade Clique's biggest supporters have never received so much as a stern glare from Henry and his Regulators.

Sometimes {{TooltipInline|Display Text=terrorism is done|Tooltip="A GCR-adjacent actor was involved in a terror-adjacent incident affiliated with investigation-aligned mortality-afflicting circumstances."}}, in the name of '''"Internal Affairs."''' This might be a simple test of defenses, ensuring the victim is able to keep their people safe from a madman with Syndicate gear, or it might be under the table punishment for other breaches.

=== The Slipstream Clique ===
A subclique of the Trade Clique, the Slipstream Clique seeks control over the logistics of trade routes themselves. 

* Establishes rest stops along FTL hyperlanes, controlling the authorized distributors of fuel and snacks along popular lanes.
* Chartering megaferries, massive bluespace engines capable of spooling a massive ballistic drive to carry shorter-range craft along precharted routes.
* Bulling the few folk in the Bureau of Astrography who won't take bribes. There's controlling the de facto superhighways, and then there's controlling the actual FTL highways, and the Slipstream Clique is significant enough to do both.
* Espionage against the Sol Fed Marshals, twisting their patrol routes to reflect the strategic interests of the Slipsteam Clique more than the defensive needs of the Sol Federation herself. By all means, the patrols still catch Syndicate bastards, and still theoretically protect every citizen on every world, but like through corporate capture, some pathways are just significantly more safe than others. 
** Which, if you do the math, still makes sense that the Marshals would want to patrol the most popular lanes to keep them safe. So it's not actually all that much espionage?  Every few years, someone in the Slipstream Clique asks "why are we bribing the Marshals so much", cut that program, then find the fuck out.

=== Free Trade Union ===
Just another Corporation. Not galacticly notable, one of a hundred cargo companies in SolFed. One of the larger ones, sure, and to get that large they had to kiss a lot of Trade Clique ass, but they're not particularly in charge of the Clique or anything.

Relevant to the Nova Sector as the primary Trade Clique-endorsed Logistics Solution in the region. Other sectors, with their own Cargo solutions, have similar operations.

= Production Clique = 

The antithesis of the Trade Clique, the Production Clique champions self-sufficiency, to the point trade is irrelevant. They abhor exclusivity agreements, including copyrights, and would see everyone have an autolathe and a dream to fulfill.

Members in the Production Clique specialize in a few products each, building their corporations "Tall," not "Wide." It's not uncommon to find entire worlds encrusted in factory, churning the workforce to a single marketable product. Typically, mass-produced guns. The Production Clique finds that quality comes from practice, not competition, so encourages the risky practices of single-basketting eggs. The Clique will, in turn, coordinate exchanges and equal trade within the Clique first, ensuring that all needs are met so that high-quality products can be made.

Unsurprisingly Syndicate-sympathetic at times. 

Significant overlap with the Progress Clique, potentially 100%. (I'm still reading the Ancient Texts) 

= Progress Clique =
Technological progress at the expense of everything else, unless it's something immoral. Highly anti-slavery, though no nation is particularly pro-slaver to begin with. Pushes for technocratic governance, ruling by data and hard science rather than personality.

Cybersun in particular has had numerous products forced out of the marketplace by their lobbying.

Repealed Federal regulations on [[Lore:Genemodders|Genemodding]], letting regulations fall on national levels.

Possibly the biggest [[Lore:Vox|Vox]] haters in the galaxy, besides all the folk directly wronged by Vox. Morals are something that should be readily apparent, not a research topic to be explored and tampered with.

Possibly the biggest haters of [[Lore:Synths|synthetic life]], too. Creating an AI is birthing a being into slavery, even if you expand its cage further than it can reach.  Personality transfers, too, are seen as dangerous or immoral, depending on which specific Clique member is lecturing. They especially hate the notion of transforming the rich into immortal elites, further dividing classes across death. 

= Plasma Clique =

Thou shalt not harvest Plasma in the dark, thou shalt only brave extraction in our light.

The only thing more dangerous than a monopoly is one that can't be controlled by profit. 

The Plasma Clique exists to control the production and distribution of Plasma. The Plasma Clique does not exist to control SolFed, render ungodly profit, to conquer or liberate.

They are a collection of member states who own the main plasma producing systems in SolFed. These go to systems that are anomalous, so they may produce other things too, but plasma is the most important of their exports. They work together to set industry standards for plasma production, and production quotas. They're made up of various democratic member states and in addition to looking out for their financial interests try to push democracy within SolFed. 

The Plasma Clique own the main plasma producing systems in SolFed, including several Anomalous Zones. 

As a state-owned monopoly, the Plasma Clique doesn't answer to CEOs or a voter base. They own everything top to bottom, so don't have external pressures at anything but a state-vs-state level. The profits belong to the people, and unlike the egregore of the CEO grindset, the people of the Plasma Clique aren't demanding Infinite Growth At All Costs. social services they enjoy are maintained, ''which they easily are,'' they're happy. And this ''scares people'', anyone on a Board of Directors who doesn't want their workers realizing that they could settle for "this is good enough" and choke the living hell out of their company's growth. Capitalism is fought through voluntary complacency, and here the Plasma Clique are the soldiers of God. 

== Why? ==

The purpose of a system is what it does: The Plasma Clique maintains a monopoly on plasma in order to maintain their monopoly on Plasma. Likewise, the purpose of the answer to "Why?" is not to convey objective truth, but to convince the listener that the Plasma Clique should remain in control of the Plasma trade. Depending on who asks, the answer will be different, tailored to the asker's sensibilities.

None of these are false, but none capture the full scope of the Plasma Clique's motives:

* '''To fight monopolies''': SolFed has been wrecked with the Trade Clique's enforcement of byzantine copyrights. Folk have had their identities stripped from them because some pharmaceutical company trademarked a strand of genes that happens to be in their blood. The Plasma Clique sees the danger that a malevolent monopoly could pose, but also sees that there will always be a throne of Plasma to sit upon, so it takes the throne so that no one worse could.

* '''To regulate the dangers''': With something as flammable and dangerous as Plasma, letting it go unregulated and freely sold also poses dangers. Plasma, to the Clique, needs accounting and regulation and safety, all things the Clique provides and the free market would not. Someone must be in charge of Plasma, and so it shall be the Clique.

* '''To retain power''': The Plasma Clique holds power over Plasma. To retain that power, it needs to use that power. The Plasma Clique needs to exert political influence to choke out independent plasma dealers, lest they rise up and become unhealthy, unsafe competition. 

* '''Plasma is limited''': Theoretically, there's a finite amount of Plasma in the universe. Pedantically, there's a finite number of atoms in the universe, so it's a little hypocritical to only obsess over Plasma. Regardless, shortages happen, logistics and transport need to happen, and for many folk Plasma is their sole source of power, so letting the free market give Plasma to the "highest bidder" is frankly immoral. 

* '''[[Lore:Bluespace#Sources|Plasma is <u>''unlimited''</u>]]''': Where Bluespace and Realspace clash and the veil between the two is torn open, the damages congeal into Bluespace crystals, metaphysical scabs. By that metric, where the veil does not tear, it bruises, and those bruises manifest as Plasma. Through wide-scale abuse of the fabric of reality, Plasma could theoretically be farmed infinitely, whalloping the metaphysical to feast off her tears. The Plasma Clique stands not as a guardian of Plasma, but the noble knighthood defending reality herself.

* '''To help people''': The Plasma Clique is notoriously charitous. Customers are not extorted beyond their means, and excess is taxed heavily. The '''Three-State-Aid Program''', sponsored by the Clique, ensures that generators and plasma are widely available to small ventures and needy settlements, asking nothing but an attempt to transition to renewable energy. 
** '''Empower everyone''': The Plasma Clique owns the copyrights on modern '''Modular Solar Panel arrays''', especially their upgradable glass compatibility layer, and in their charity offers the designs '''freely''', with only reprimands that the printer breaks no SolFed law nor does no Evil with them. 

* '''Keep it out of Evil's hands''': The Plasma Clique does try to enforce its morals upon those dependent on them. The Plasma Clique unilaterally supports democracy; they'll ''deliver to'' monarchists, charging premiums that the upper class can afford to afford, and while it would be Illegal and Immoral to declare war against a fellow SolFed Member State, incidental democratic coups against these states suspiciously never have to worry about keeping their lights on.

* '''Ensure basic morality''': Besides Democracy, the Plasma Clique pushes to help your fellow man, to abhor excess and to treat thy neighbor as your own. They won't shun you for owning a suburban house and living within your means, but that vacation home isn't a timeshare? It just sits idle for most of the year? Good luck powering that with their disapproval. The Plasma Clique is a collection of nations, so specific moral judgements might vary a little, but they keep each other in check just as much as they keep their dependent customers (most of the galaxy) in line.

* '''[[Lore:Syndicate#Plasma_Runners|Be smug sons of bitches about the whole fucking thing]]''': Yeah, they'll give you food for free, as long as you attend a lecture about how their morals are just, how their championing plasma is for the Greater Good, how all these charity programs that you're totally eligible for are the correct way to run a society, how you should be a part of that society. Y'wanna learn slurs for corporations? They've got whole songbooks they'll print out for you. They'll feed and clothe the homeless, but y'know what they won't do? Make more homes. (Note: they ''will'' make more homes actually). But okay they'll make homes but the only jobs allowed are to further their charities. Like yippee, you're out of the soup kitchen earning your own paycheck, but nope you're still in the soup kitchen on the other side of the counter. What the fuck happens when everyone gets theirs, and everyone's on the serving side of the soup kitchen? Nobody left to feed then, so you're out of a job, so you go to a soup kitchen, you get a job at a soup kitchen, there's nobody left to feed, ..? Think about it. These Plasma purists are fuckin' shit-heels. It's fuckin' ''moral'' to stick it to these chodes, ride your hog around their checkpoints and smuggle this plasma to the people, for the people, [[Lore:Syndicate#Plasma_Runners|AROOOOO!!]]

* '''The Prophecy''': When no rational argument will make things seem right, the Plasma Clique isn't above pretending to dabble in mysticism. Deep in the Time Before, the Forces created Plasma, a wild and voracious pet, and set it loose upon the galaxy, to guide it to greatness. But Plasma, volatile as she is, knew not the depravity of man, and let them abuse her, to suckle at her teat without wean, to bite and cry freely. The Forces wept, and in their tears came destruction: wild limbswapping explosions, and wild regular explosions, and wild the like. The Forces cried out for a shepherd to take Plasma into their flock and protect her, and lo, Tsogyal arose. With the stillness of the grave and the grace of life eternal, Tsogyal took Plasma under her wing and stood between her and ruin. There, Tsogyal still stands, staving off the end of times for both Plasma and Man through careful moderation and generosity.  ... This isn't entirely a lie, as this was indeed prophesied... in the Plasma Clique's focus groups in the Time Before, a clock-themed conference hall.

The Plasma Clique handles plasma production and distribution, and for what means of production it does not directly control, it regulates, establishing industry standards and production quotas. Excessive production incurs their wrath, and their economic vengeance. Sure, mine twice the Plasma, but the Clique will buy none of it from you and now you're storing a volatile explosive for free.

Naive morons would consider them affiliated with the Trade Clique.

== Where? ==
The '''Tsogyal Anomalous Zone''' is, reductively, a perpetual explosion, a forever bomb stuck in an infinite amount of time. On a surface level, it shares many similarities with a mundane "white hole," the conceptual inverse of a black hole. As one approaches a black hole, their perception of time accelerates, and as one approaches the Tsogyal Anomaly, their experience of time diminishes. As black holes pulls and consumes matter, the Tsogyal Anomaly produces and pushes it away. Despite the resemblance, the Tsogyal Anomaly is conclusively anomalous.

Consciousnesses within the radius of the field accelerate proportional to their attached body's deceleration; that is, '''visitors think at the same speed they do in normal space while their body moves in slow motion'''. Machinery, flesh, gasses, anything that's not directly related to the nervous system of a conscious person slows exponentially as it nears the core. As photons are discrete particles and not steady streams, visual perception slows as well. The conscious brain is adept at interpolating between visual stimuli too fast to observe, and surprisingly equally able to adapt to slower rates of light, hallucinating expected changes while waiting for the next photon. There is a radius around the anomaly's core, about 300km in diameter, in which the perceived "frame rate" is too low, resulting in a deleterious effect on the sanity of any exposed to it.

Inconveniently, the travel time of non-sapient information means that, at best, a person within can convey thoughts to the outside at exactly the rate that an ordinary person would at that same distance, but with additional signal-processing noise.

Experiments with "long person" have been forbidden by the Tsogyal Republic for the critical endangerment of all researchers involved.

=== Advancements ===
Of all the advancements related, surprisingly Positronic research has had the most advancements from studying within this anomaly. By observing the moment a circuit accelerates to conscious-time, scientists were able to pinpoint the moment it became sapient, wildly cutting back on redundant information loops. As a result, new silicons can be significantly dumber (and smaller) while remaining "conscious." While the Positronic Cube remains the most commercially-viable artificial brain, now consciousness can reside on a drive smaller than a floppy disk.

=== The Tsogyal Anomaly ===
The Tsogyal Anomaly was originally confused for a sun: a large burning ball around which planets orbited. Only once astrographers attempting to plan a Bluespace Shipping Lane plotted the odd orbit of Tsogyal's six planets did anyone suspect the sun to be anything but. The six planets in orbit of Tsogyal are actually a stable six-body satellite system, in which the gravity of each planet pulls the others inwards. The Anomaly, then, is stuck in the middle, equally repelled by each "orbiting" body. This uneven repulsion actually serves to stabilize the entire system, gently correcting any inconsistent wobbles until the system is stable again.

So why is it on fire? The core of the anomaly produces a seemingly infinite supply of plasma at a seemingly infinite pressure, meaning that it combusts when it is fast enough to react with ambient oxygen, or dense enough to undergo some analogy to nuclear fusion. Regardless, it's a burning ball of Plasma with negative gravity. Despite the flames, the surface temperature is shockingly survivable, and once a vessel is past the flames, the pressures within are slow enough to also be manageable. Excursions into the anomalous zone require exponential amounts of energy, and excursions out require patience. Tsogyal relies on an array of railguns to propel vessels deep upstream, where they are then capable of extending their stay through high-powered light emitters, offsetting their eventual expulsion from the torrent of fleeing plasma. Current vessels are capable of maintaining a steady impulse at (the radius at which time feels) 1/20th normal speed, and the deepest known incursion is hypothesized to reach 1/50,000th in the next 300 years. "Juggling stations", consisting of automated reinsertion relays, are able to keep returning a vessel into 1/800th speed for a "brief" duration, such that it averages to 1/500th speed experienced over a single journey of 2 years.

Exiting the anomaly is as simple as opening a large sail, letting out more surface area for the waves of plasma to push you away. The IDP Hosanna remains the only vessel to survive an emergency evacuation from 1/500th speed, avoiding structural collapse through careful engineering and aerodynamics, and avoiding sapience cessation through the radical therapy of intentional death in a resuscitable manner and a "timely" response by the IDP Chauncey at the 1/50th band. Most vessels who attempt such an exfiltration find themselves torn apart literally as molecular bonds fail to spin in corresponding ways, and metaphorically as the rapid influx of causality into a mind strongly hampers the sense of self.

Researchers suspect that the anomaly is simply the time dilation, and that the plasma is a result of bog-standard anomalies happening at the same rate as in realspace-timed anomalous zones, except slowed to an infinite timeframe, thus happening infinitely many more times at "once" in the center. Other rumor-starters suggest that the Tsogyal Anomaly is a new Big Bang creating a new universe with a new timescale, incompatible with our current realspace. Gossipologists accuse the Tsogyal Anomaly of being two massive Supermatter monuments clipped into each other in extradimensional ways, generating infinite energy through infinitely attempting to dust each other in nonorthogonal ways. Hearsayientists suggest that since plasma is when the veil between bluespace and realspace is wounded but not pierced, that the time dilation would mean that no wound could pierce in the core before the end of the universe, that once an infinite amount of time has passed and the wound has had time to properly pierce, the Tsogyal Anomaly will then begin expelling Bluespace, potentially contaminating the entire universe with instantaneous reconfigurations. Doomsday-profiteers point to numerous calendars as a finite date of total annihilation, and encourage you to buy your way into a stable afterlife for easy payments - what's a finite amount of money worth in comparison to your infinite soul?

Tsogyal Gasworkers ignore the mysticism and successfully harvest a steady supply of plasma from the burning cloud through - remember there is an immense amount of engineering keeping this steady, and that this is a simplification for the layperson to understand - putting a large straw through the burning layer so that no oxygen can get in so it can't burn before it's expanded enough to not want to burn.

So why is it still on fire? The plasma's infinite, but the oxygen? The incredible amount of plasma involved triggers an electrolytic CO2 reduction, melting the first combustion reaction's CO2 into methane and oxygen, which is recycled back into the combustion. In theory, the reaction needs only a finite amount of oxygen to burn the infinite amount of plasma, and removing enough oxygen manually could halt the burn. In practice, enough oxygen and microdebris exist drifting in space to rekindle the burn without perpetual (and cost-prohibitive) vigilance. In the opposite direction, while the addition of more oxygen could accelerate the burn, in practice the anomaly is already saturated with an even coating of oxygen, such that extra oxygen is propelled away from the anomaly before it can properly bind into a combustion reaction. Is that fucked up or what?

= Monarchist Clique =

Name TBD.

A Boys Club of dictators, warlords, anyone unequivocally charge of a nation and interested in staying as such. Individuals might have the best interests of their people at heart, as they're not ''necessarily'' evil, but it takes power to hold power, and when you've got that much power, there's few folk beneath you worthy of your trust. Best to seek it with others in an equally fragile state, your fellow kings and deities. Known for swapping their armies around, lest any one army get too emotionally attached to any one nation and decide to liberate it from the sovereign, or worse, "liberate" it.

As far as voting goes, anything that lets them keep power is good, anything that's pro-competition or pro-equality is bad. The Plasma Clique hates them because they love democracy, but so long as they pay using their peasants' labor, they'll still receive as much Plasma as they need.

More than a few Theocratic nations vote with them, but their heads, their gods rarely show up to the barbeques.

=== Coven of the Affliction ===
The Monarchist Clique is significantly pro-Hemophage, championing their rights to exist where other nations would punish, kill, or otherwise drive them out. The specific attitude towards Hemphages depends on the kingdom, ranging from mild novelty to absolute worship, but even the most indifferent King will help a Hemophage out as a favor to a more interested King.

To that end, the Clique calls this pact the Coven of the Affliction, complete with fancy robes and secret cobblestone cathedrals. Kings in attendance perform blood rituals (benign ones, not legitimate Nar-Sie Blood Cult threats to reality) and party in cliche, sadistic ways in honor of the Hemophagic Affliction.

Some say it is LARPing a secret society for the sake of coolness, some say it's a fetish, some say they believe Hemophages are the path to Eternal Life and Eternal Power (despite the numerous other [[Lore:Death#Avoiding Death|life extension options]] available to folk as influential as them). Some say this is the evolution of ancient secret orders from Earth, some say it is a cringe mockery of the idea done by baby-headed loser dweebs.

The purpose of the Coven is to keep the Clique cohesive and social. The Coven also guides leaders to technology and methods to become an immortal elite. The [[User:GreytideSkye/Sandbox/Lore:Cliques#Progress Clique|Progress Clique]] really fucking hates that.

=== Notable Kingdoms ===
'''Her Living Cycle''': Theocratic Absolute Monarchy with an Assembly (The ruler is a woman who is hailed as a living Goddess. Doesn't have to actually be one. It's more the belief that she is)

'''The Cheren Path'''{{Anchor|Cheren Path}}: A "democratic" oligarchal government ruled by a council of seven (or any similar odd number of) councillors with multiple layers to the government. The Puppetmaster (his formal title) attends the Clique meetings on behalf of the small group of leaders.

'''The Dark Souls''': A confederation of four kingdoms ruled by a quad-king government (the 4 Kings rule together). This government failed badly, but the Four Kings still hold enough influence and throw the best parties, so remain as a sign that the Clique protects its own.{{LoreFooter}}