Lore:Cliques: Difference between revisions

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(and that's all the cliquewords from the discord. gg)
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Galactical Corporation Regulation [https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1202740687276347423/1521689165362630797]
= 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.


=syndicate manifesto page=
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.
from [[Guide_to_your_Manifesto#Cliques]]


The warmonger clique Unity Clique is pissed that we chickened out of the Tizero-Terran war before striking a decisive victory. Conversely, the Tizirans... hate that we blew up their holy moon, and the clique hates that they don't recognize that they had it coming they way they started the war and hid behind that damn moon and whatnot. The war was a fair bit ago, but that moon's still a whole ton of dust in their orbit, almost cutting off the surface from space.
If you ask your automated Navigator the way to the 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 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 -->".
 
Plasma Clique, see the Plasma Runners but, but also their morals. They impose a lot of morals.


Frontier Clique, bunch of frontier-adjacent members banding together. The members might hate the Clique for poorly representing them, the clique might hate others for not listening to 'em, putting 'em in more danger with less support... They might support the Syndicate just because they're the only group who will help them out!
== How Voting Works ==
 
Unity Clique is also big about unifying the entire galaxy under a strong SolFed with equal power distribution, so... folk who want to be independent, or want to hold onto their imbalanced power. They're the reason SolFed has a military, so if their military pissed you off, you'd hate the folk who propped 'em up. They're so hateable, they've got two entries.
 
Progress Clique is all about technological progress at the expense of everything else, unless it's something immoral. So both pro and anti tech folk'll hate them. Cybersun's probably had more than a few products forced out of the marketplace by their lobbying.
 
Monarchists? There's a bunch of Kingdoms, and their kings unionize to better oppress their folk. You can imagine who'd hate that.
 
Trade Clique is about freedom of trade, and has a bunch of Sovcorps, so if you hate free trade, e.g. you like having a monopoly, or you hate the way they've put up regulations... there's your target.
 
=not that=
Lore already kinda states that they formed durin the First Great Migration and they ARE a "longstanding member of the Center Clique" so that's somethin I gotta orient myself around as well
 
[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1505771927220781218]
 
I forget why the plasma clique, and thus tsogyal, was the one with the stasisy anomaly zone. Kinda want Interdyne to have a major medical research presence there. Hell, even putting their capital there despite it being entirely Tsogyal's territory. Gonna write about it tho. (also I put this in the wrong channel before, tee hee)
 
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. i forgot why this was necessary
 
 
Experiments with "long person" have been forbidden by the Tsogyal Republic for the critical endangerment of all researchers involved.
 
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 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?  speculative source on the electrolytic CO2 reduction, i'm not science enough to care about justifying it another step deeper https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/x24ba3/comment/imhjvmd/
=putting that voting research degree I never got to bad evil sinister use=
[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1494917746792595587]
 
I don't think we addressed how SolFed votes; I know the Unity Clique is about equal power across nations and I'm interpreting that as a One Nation One Vote complete "equality"
 
I'm thinking it needs to be really dumb in a practical "yeah I can see how we got here" manner. @Owegno I propose that the ever-expanding number of voting nations be the feature that makes voting complicated and cliques necessary.


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.
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.
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.  
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.
 
{{Contributor/Owegno|said}}: 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.
 
it can get made silly. 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 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.
 
oh god there's a pun too good to pass up
 
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 Burger King. @Bad Jokes


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.
=== Votes ===


digital ballots are a sin
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.
it is atrocious that any nation uses any form of digital ballot as the solitary means of voting
every ballot should, at bare minimum, print out a physical ballot that can be later counted and verified
a user cannot conclusively verify that their vote has been counted, if it is submitted strictly digitally
that's flat-out ignoring actual accessability and user skill; Grandma Voter isn't going to be able to use a QR code, let alone understand private key encryption enough to understand what the government claims is proof that their vote counted


a secure vote needs to do like, three things:
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.
be countable correctly
be verifiable by the voter that their vote was counted correctly
be unverifiable by attackers


that is, I should be able to vote the way I want to, and John Gunman can't threaten me to vote for Other Guy, then after I vote hold me up and force me to prove I voted for Other Guy
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.
there's some cool shit in terms of verifiability going on, like I've heard of, [[Wikipedia:Scantegrity|Scantegrity]]


so I'm seein' it like:
=== Physical Ballots ===
Office prints off blank ballots with a specific issue pre-written on 'em. Like they print a batch of ballots for "Vote C3-196: Is Daylight Lighting A Hatecrime Against Shadekin?", one ballot per "district", in those denominations as above. This is like, a thousand ballots.
They stick 'em through an autopen to register a specific vote. There's security measures that can be added here, both fictional and real. 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.
They stick the signed ballots into a central ballot box, and the physical ballots are kept "secure" for like a year. They can basically gotta be auto-counted by computer systems, but the physical ballot exists as physical proof of a physical vote.
After a short time, like 4 hours, the ballot box closes (or like, the line to the ballot box is cut off). This time is debatable, whether it serves narrative purpose.
It gets counted in whatever amount of time this part's not narratively interesting.
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.
so if I wanna buy a burger with votes, I'd literally just take a few printed, unsigned ballots off the top of the stack and hand 'em to the guy


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.}}.


=not that 2=
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.  
Center Clique isn't mentioned in the cliques section on the Manifesto page. That's the only thing I notice.


Fuck you, Plasma Clique. Bunch of up-their-own-ass moral purists trying to monopolize one of the most potent fuels in the galaxy, mysteriously stable in any state of matter at room temperature yet extremely volatile. It's an amazing rock! It burns great and is an incredible fuel, and these motherfuckers want it locked down and distributed at their whims. Fuck this "price stability" morality bullshit, let the people pay what they want for as much as they want. Fuck this "overextraction" fearmongering shit, you know it's a lie to line your own pockets with the tears of SolFed citizens. Fuck the Tsogyal Republic, waving their "big plasma energy" around. Fuck that, people need plasma and I want these upright pricks out of my mother-biking way so I can give the people what they want. For money. Fuck you for bending ass-backwards over to this voting block, SolFed.
=== Casting Ballots ===


the gorlex defector guy, he currently serves as a prominent political figure in the {{TooltipInline|Slipstream Clique|A lesser Clique, focused on controlling the path of trade routes and assorted FTL travels.}} gonna call that a subset of the Trade Clique
A typical vote goes as such:


One aspect regarding regulation I was thinking i will say is that SolFed did initially regulate genemodding, but in the 2300s the Progress Clique got that repealed and genemodding is regulated on a member state basis.
====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]]?"


re NT, I assumed they were with the Corpo clique? Sable's stuff got "NT sits on the Luna board of directors" so they're important enough to have a dedicated table in whatever clique they're actually with. Like, I'd imagine the FTU has a table but some regional shipping companies need to subclique to have 1 vote at the clique.
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.}}
I'm rather distracted rn but I don't recognize the Corporate Territories project?


---
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.


[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1229596167185104926/1256811266991718431]
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."


Also some more possibilities for cliques:
====The Ballot====


Center Clique: This is mainly to be a sort of baseline which other cliques are viewed. Nominally pro-democratic, somewhat pro-corporate, and generally in favor of more power to SolFed itself. This puts them at odd with the Frontier Clique, and I'm thinking they'll also often be at odds with the Assimilation Clique, due to prefer a softer approach to diplomacy.  
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.  


Frontier Clique: Representing the more outlying regions of SolFed they're typically anti-corporate, and very opposed to giving power to SolFed, preferring the Federation to simply protect them and otherwise stay out of their business, particularly in regards to expansion which they want to be free and without any real regulation or oversight. Their anti-corporate nature would make them rivals with the Trade Clique.
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}}.  


Aristocratic Clique: The few monarchies and aristocratic nations in SolFed banded to primarily protect their often very particular interests. They are also probably one of the few (if not the only) clique that is pro-hemophage, due to their pursuit of technology or methods that provide immortality. This puts them very much at odds with the Progress Clique, due to the fact they're pretty openly trying to create an immortal elite, the exact thing the Progress Clique is strongly opposed to.
====The Vote====


Production Clique: A sort of alternative economic alliance to the Trade Clique which instead of pursuing typical capitalism utilize command economies with each member of the clique specializing in the production of a few things for maximum efficiency. Not really socialist or communist, but instead democratic, authoritarian, or technocratic, they'd be rivals with the Trade Clique due to pursuing a much more protectionist and anti-megacorporation economic model for the Federation.  
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.


One thing I'm kind of struggling with is this:
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.


Thus far in the writing for SolFed my plans involve generally only portrayed generic ideologies (democracies, capitalism, generic authoritarianism) with more wacky things tacked on (technocracy, monarchism) as I know these are pretty uncontroversial, but there would definitely be more socialist/communist ideologies out there in a capitalist space future. I know the old SR lore made the big brain decision of making the socialists the mega racists, which I'd obviously avoid, but the issue I'm having is that for some people any sort of positive portrayal of Marxist ideologies is EVIL PROPAGANDA, while for some people any negative portrayal of Marxist ideologies is also EVIL PROPAGANDA.  
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.}}.  


I want to avoid the whole IRL politics shtick of old SR lore like the plague, but I also do want to include groups that hold that viewpoint because it just makes sense for the setting to me, but, I don't have a clue how to go about it in a manner that won't result in angry readers. Just don't know how, so any suggestions are welcome.
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.




me being slider brained [https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1229596167185104926/1253014114817675274]
= 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.


I'm going to use this thread to post current ideas for cliques that I have, so that way other people can give input on the ideas if they want.
Strongly epitomized by the [[Lore:Libraeans|Libraen thosefucks]]. 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.
Assimilation Clique: Created by the Tiziran war and seeks to try and incorporate every alien government into SolFed and export SolFed and human culture to aliens, while being very aggressive and jingoistic to any alien government that may be hostile to SolFed, even going as far as to try and agitate revolt in hostile alien governments.
 
Plasma Clique: A collection of member states who own the main plasma producing systems in SolFed. These are probably going to systems that are anomalous, so they may produce other things too, but plasma is likely 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.
Trade Clique: A generally pro-corporate clique, the exact specifics are rather TBD as work on SolFed corporations is generally very vague, but they look out for corporate interests and generally push a free-trade agenda, trying to prevent any member state from enacting tarrifs, or from restricting the activities of outside corporations.
 
Progress Clique: A technocratic clique that generally pushes for technocratic governance within SolFed, and little to no restriction on technology and science. However they do oppose the creation of AI and push for tight regulation on personality transfers, seeing both as immoral and/or dangerous, with the specifics varying from member to member. Regardless synthetics are generally banned in the various member states that make up the Progress Clique while there are some major restrictions on transferring your personality.
 
For the Progress Clique they're opposed to synthetic life for varying reasons. It could be they view it as a threat, or they could view creating synthetic life as immoral. For mind transfer the restrictions are based around preventing the creation of an immortal elite, or putting people in terminator bodies. There are likely other dangerous technologies they're opposed to, like mass cloning, but I think that's not a thing in SolFed already.
 
 
=presiDON'T=
 
{{Contributor/Owegno}}: The idea of creating the role of president is actually a popular one, and something that will happen pretty soon after lore is "done" and the focus turns to creating a living universe (at least for me), the SolFed president will be a thing I think regardless of if this coup plotline will be part of the SolFed Troubles Arc or not.
 
The elected president will be fairly moderate for obvious reasons, as no one extreme is getting elected, but for one reason or another they end up being brought into a conspiracy (or this conspiracy plans to replace them) that wishes to basically put an end to the power of the Federal Assembly and drastically centralize SolFed, some inspiration here from the August Coup, basically hardliners who believe that SolFed is dying and they need to take drastic action to save it.
 
This conspiracy is backed by the governments of several member states (who exactly is TBD, although I have a few ideas) and they begin making plans, recruiting more members, working with the generals in the SolFed military who are part of the plot to move potentially disloyal units and commanders to prime postings on the rim of the Federation, where the best and brightest are needed! Meanwhile units led by commanders who are part of the conspiracy are placed in command of dull, quiet postings near the center of SolFed. There will also be other actions, like potentially brokering a secret deal with NT to supply the SFAF with plasma in the event the plasma clique opposes the clique.
 
This will basically culminate in the president suspending the power of the Federal Assembly and putting them into an advisory position (and if the president isn't part of the coup a new one will be put in place and the old one arrested) while the president now basically has absolute authority. Any resistance from the Federal Assembly will be prevented by SFAF units loyal to the coup who will control the capital, and larger resistance will be kept in check, some member states may protest and even leave the Federation, but they can be dealt with once the new order is established and power consolidated, plus they may even come around to the plotters way of looking at things once the dust has settled. This is of course, their plan, and in reality it would play out differently.
 
 
I like the part about couping against the Plasma Clique politically instead of just biker gangly
I like the idea of folk getting sick of the Federal Assembly's general inability to do anything
and I like tabbing away, so don't take me not shouting out a specific bit as dislike
I would rephrase the part about moving generals, just because the "disloyal" ones getting moved to the rim are literally there because they would remain loyal to the Federal Assembly and status quo, and thus fuck up the coup
The end result kind of seems like exactly the current status quo, where if you ain't appealing to a Clique, you get jack shit, except now there's a face for each interest
except now they're all sucking up to someone else, the urClique that's the wrong prefix lmao
 
I feel like the idea would get a lot of support from nations with strong interests in two different cliques, who're sick of being torn between them and basically getting benefit from neither
like a... plasma-producing conquerer, torn between the plasma and unity cliques?
like obviously it's already got support from nations with interest in one or zero cliques who're already getting jack shit from who they support, but the folk split between two+ are also in that "getting nothing" boat
Definitely like the idea of the Triumvirate better than a solitary president, mostly because personal politics
triumvirate is such a good name but it's sooooo three-locked, like "Quadrumvirate" does not fuck
Protectorate?
 
And in terms of SolFed politics while Saturn is not a technocracy their origins as one still has them leaning that way, with them being one of the founding members of the Progress Clique.
 
= Plasma Clique wants =
[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1354544301119377540]
 
Did we ever decide what the Plasma Clique wants?
like, the ideology they're pushing as part of their vaguely-charity near-monopoly on Plasma?
Owegno — 3/26/2025 3:59 PM
I was thinking that they want to maintain their monopoly, both for selfish but also altruistic reasons (keeping this vital resource price stable, and preventing over extraction)
 
Otherwise they basically try and be Switzerland, they might want certain things, but they try and be as neutral as possible otherwise.
Although I'm open to other ideas and suggestions.
 
I can build off over-extraction; since plasma is basically bruises in the bluespace wall, they're trying to prevent Space Global Warming by being smart about distributing plasmas. Fuck it, they're the reason every station has an abundance of solar panels for free. The distribution is to disincentivize individual extraction, which would be worse, because somehow they can Make Plasma more safely at scale?
This would lead to folk opposing the idea of Space Global Warming, because it sounds kinda spiritual actually and not hard sciencey, and gets in the way of short-term profit
 
Plasma mining's fine, esp. on lavaland, because the plasma's already there, we're not making more of it. Xenobio is... less fine, but we don't scale up to ecosystem-affecting amounts in-game without an admin event.
 
What do they think of the proliferation of PACMAN generators though? Like.. most stations have it for emergency power. And they usually come pre-stocked
 
Betcha they put them there. Like, they're not hoarding plasma, they're controlling it, and emergency generators seem reasonable.
 
They may also accept competition from big fission and big fusion, as most power generation being non plasma probably fits their aims. They're mostly state monopolies so they don't really pursue infinite growth in the plasma market like corporations would, which could be an additional point of friction with NT we can use.
 
state monopolies... that means they don't answer to CEOs or a voter base, they own everything top to bottom and so don't have external pressures at anything but a state-vs-state level?
 
Basically. It would vary some but for instance for Tsogyal, they answer to their voter base in how the revenue from plasma sales are spent, but the Tsogyal population isn't going to demand infinite growth, as they have no reason to. So long as the social services they enjoy are maintained, which they easily are, they're happy.
 
Which is a dangerous attitude in a corpo-centered universe. It's not just the Plasma Runners who'd hate them, it's anyone on a board 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
 
Basically. I'm thinking they fall into the anti corporate side of SolFed alongside the Progress Clique, partially so the teams are balanced for reasons, and also because it increases their tension with NT.
 
 


= Unity Clique =
= Unity Clique =
the war guys
in regards to the Infinite Empire's fringe, the Spartan Invasions... the "claims" ehh maybe. The Zone of Infinite Attrition, hell yeah that's a low-grade conflict that'd be fuel for the Unity Clique, far below the Sagittarius War's struggles but still enough to piss the locals off that nothing's Being Done
they're declared here [https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1263659815662784572]
I'm torn on what to call the Sagittarian's pro-expansion, pro-mobilization, anti independent alien clique. I've mostly called in the Assimilation Clique but it could alternatively be called the Expansion Clique, the Integration Clique, or the Militarization Clique. Anyone have any suggestions of which I should pick?
They're trying to get people rolled into SolFed specifically although generally on their side. However I was thinking that the minority political opinion with the Sagittarians was anti-SolFed.
"Can't beat the system, so we'll stack the odds in our favor"
Makes sense
It's like they're trying to build a clique of their own in the assembly
Basically. They did actually build a clique of their own after the war as well as that's where the Unity Clique came from, and I was thinking the members of their clique are incredibly binary with how they support things politically. 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 (probably, not fully written yet), so they'll help them out if they need it.
it sounds like a tumor, actively taking in outsiders to swell to monolithic size
their goal is exploiting the clique system to achieve a majority. a 51% attack.
{{Contributor/Planty}} Are there particular criteria for joining solfed?
I was thinking it would be a simple majority. International recognition would basically be included in that.
The Unity clique goes a long way toward explaining why joining is so easy, it can be taken for granted.
Vast majority give no darn either way. Abstain from vote.
Only people basically adjacent 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.
No would be for those intent on conquering the zone themselves, or for those pissed at a neighbor who might vote yes above.
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.
One other thing I was thinking is that the pro-self determination side did get a slight win during age of revolutions 2.0, in that it has become precedent and a matter of pride that so long as you're a proper nation you can join if you want to. Efforts to gatekeep successful rebel states from joining SolFed generally failed.
How proactive is the Unity clique? Are they "we must expand continouously" or are they "Expand when we see it, never tolerate a neighbor but we don't gotta expand in empty space to make more neighbors right now"
or is that an internal debate they're not settled on
I was thinking the latter. I see no real reason for them to want territory for territories sake. The one thing is that any known alien government is a target of their attempts to woo, or their preparations for war.
They have basically no interest in conquest, as avoiding war is their main goal.
--
[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1202994362024198246/1262577089140363274]
Sort of the core tenant I had in mind for the Assimilation Clique to help ensure they're different from classic sci-fi xenophobes is that they hate 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.
When abouts did the tenets of the assimilatiob clique manifest?
My read was always that the Sagittarians were in it to remove a distict and dangerous threat on their front doorstep. Get the lizards off thr board and make sure they can't pose a threat to us anymore.
Which would over time morph into more of a sunk-cost fallacy related to how costly the fighting has been.
But going for more of a "They will accept our peaceful ways, By Force" could be an interesting spin on trying to salvage a what would have become a bit of a political and diplomatic deathspiral from continuing to prosecute the war.
Ofc what exactly is meant by "assimilate" could be up for some debate. I'd imagine it would look a lot like "puppet".
Basically my current thoughts on when their tenets manifested was during and after the war.
They wanted to prevent any similar war from happening ever again, which is done through militarization of SolFed (creating the SFAF, and the Sagittarians being in a constant of semi-mobilization ever since), and through trying to make any potentially hostile alien governments into friends, either by befriending them, or if they can't be befriend, trying to take steps to cause a regime change and/or weaken them.


As for what it means, it is up for debate. They wanted to basically do a West Germany or Japan to Tizirans, but their policies are certainly culturally Imperialist to a degree.
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.


Sounds almost like the US during the cold war in the kind of "democracy is non-negotiable kind of way".
Fight, for everlasting peace.
Like they'll ask you very politely to shack up w SolFed. Just never mind that folks who tell them to pound sand have this odd habit of unexplained civil wars a few years after the fact.
And they're not afraid to go kinetic against anyone who is properly hostile to them.


=remember when i did a post about the cliques in the future=
Out of the ashes of the Sagittarius-Tiziran War rose those who would will that to be the end of war, the final conclusion.


[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1202742896428589096/1337259605964755028]
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.


{{Contributor/Owegno}} the Summary Of Cliques list [https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1328086462620635177]
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.
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.


The Trade Clique, which is 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.
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.


Plasma Clique, which is made up of the plasma producing states of SolFed, with the exception of Nanotrasen. They try and keep the price of plasma nice and stable, and protect their monopoly of it. They're otherwise incredibly neutral politically as they try and befriend everyone so they have as much political favor as possible to protect their narrow interests.
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.  


The Frontier Clique, which 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.
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 Unity Clique, which is both the Sagittarian Triumvirates revenge club, and also die hard believers in Unificationism that want SolFed to unify the galaxy. 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. They're also responsible for SolFed having a military, as that is a bill they proposed and got other people to agree to.
The standards for a new nation joining SolFed are lax, almost exclusively because of Unity meddling. 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 the vote cheaply. Only the peoples basically adjacent 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.


The Progress Clique, which is still very WIP, made up of generally technocratic members of SolFed and focused on ensuring that technological progress is not stifled. The one exception is that they don't want technology being used for things they view as immoral, like the creation of an immortal undying corporate elite, which does mean they're paradoxically both pro and anti-tech, as they believe technology should be for everyone, not just the wealthy.
= Frontier Clique =


An unnamed Monarchist Clique, which looks out for the interests of the monarchies of SolFed who are probably not very popular with other members, and also have taken an interest in hemophages and want to elevate their rights. This Clique is also very WIP.  
Of the thousands of nations in SolFed, a good 40% are within 50 light years from Sol Federation's declared borders. TODO: remove those numbers, never give the readers concrete numbers. 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 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.


{{Contributor/goldenfreddycl}}
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.
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)


A democratic oligarchal government ruled by a council of seven (or any similar odd number of) councillors with multiple layers to the government
= Trade Clique =


A Stratocratic Citizen Republic ruled by, hence "stratocratic", a military council and citizenship is guaranteed upon military service to the nation. Citizens also participate in governance.
Trade requires two things: an imbalance of supply and demand, and the freedom to ride that gradient to profit.


A union of clans who are all governed by this "Grand Assembly" of elected individuals. Not much different from a lot of populat fantasy governments of the same origin.  
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.


A Consortium of different corporations where all the CEOs rule as a council.
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 ... it's teamsters. it's a teamsters union. they do mafia shit to keep the monopoly but they want standards.


A confederation if four kingdoms ruled by a quad-king government (the 4 Kings rule together). This government failed badly.  
~~Trade Clique: A generally pro-corporate clique, the exact specifics are rather TBD as work on SolFed corporations is generally very vague, but they look out for corporate interests and generally push a free-trade agenda, trying to prevent any member state from enacting tarrifs, or from restricting the activities of outside corporations.~~


= Production Clique =


Plasma clique's homeworld is a runaway star..? wait did that BECOME the cryostasis star of tsogyal? [https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1202779287791341609/1324297558033432576]
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.


Plasma Clique nation [https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1324171078557372427]
All about technological progress at the expense of everything else, unless it's something immoral. So both pro and anti tech folk'll hate them. Cybersun's probably had more than a few products forced out of the marketplace by their lobbying.  


I've still been trying to write the Plasma Clique Nation and have roughly what they are down:
Unsurprisingly Syndicate-sympathetic at times.
Wealthy nation heavily funded by a state run plasma extraction company.
Centered upon an anomalous system that is a weirdly high speed star.
The primarily anomaly of this star is that almost everything is more stable. For example: Chemical reactions are much harder to start and keep going, living things straight up live longer, but require biological modification to boost their metabolism or else they feel cold and perpetually tired, probably more neat results that I haven't thought of.
There are other smaller anomalies in the region and weird creatures and such on the main Earth-like world, which is a very wet world with extreme amounts of rain, with its terrestrial regions mostly being rainforest, swamps, ect.
Overall its safer and nicer than the Nova anomalous zone, and the living longer is a nice thing, but for people not specially modified it sucks, and if those modified people then leave the zone they will overheat as their metabolism goes crazy.
The government is a pretty representative democracy, they're generally pretty nice. Their biggest concern is maintaining the Plasma Clique's monopoly.
In terms of external relations they do their best to maintain absolute neutrality, they want corporations and other governments to like them and cooperate with their monopoly, and do their best to avoid angering anyone.
They're unique for a major SolFed power as their territory and population is based around this one star, with it being one of the most populated systems in SolFed (I don't like absolute numbers too much, but in the realm of perhaps 150 billion)
Probably three fourths of their population lives in space rather than on planets. This has resulted in a very "space maritime" inspired culture. The biggest industry they have after plasma extraction is starship production, and it is what employs the most people.
Culturally I want to give them vibes focused on that spacer culture. Children often want to be starship crews, and their people are disproportionally represented in the general SolFed spacer community.


The Plasma Clique is the n- oh, the nation. their heart, their Capital, their center.
= Plasma Clique =
This gives extreme Cryostasis vibes. Y'gotta surgically make yourself go faster to counter the Anomalous Zone's full-zone Basically Cryostasis? I imagine this zone's also a hotbed for hospice and hospitals alike, for the same reason, which would contribute to the Most Populated Systems of 2564 Runner-Up award (nothing can beat Meat Cubeia, where all the fugitives who get compressed back into meat cubes go). We gotta drop a shout-out that it's also a hip Snailperson vacation spot


Playing it straight but Star Wars levels of on-the-nose with, slow, cryo... Cryostia, Dod Ling, The Loistar Ring,
Thou shalt not harvest Plasma in the dark, thou shalt only brave extraction in our light.


But we mechanically already have Slow theming: Sepia slimes, with the Sepia floor tiles, with the Sepia Time Stop.
The only thing more dangerous than a monopoly is one that can't be controlled by profit.  


Sea the Sepialantic, cruise the Beige of Basklay, Grisaille https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grisaille, something off the Cephalopod genus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepia_(cephalopod), ... if it's photography themed, it's a developing nation. @Bad Jokes but also serious.  
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.


Plasma Clique, The moralisitic good guys of Plasma. Y'know what happens when you fuck with them? They cut you off. And if that's not enough? Whoopsy it looks like that pirate fleet you thought was chasing you and running out of fuel is suddenly faster than you. Oops haha that's space piracy baby.
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.  


I just need a name for the Plasma Clique nation, to write their paragraph (which shouldn't take long once I have a name) and then do some information various Cliques which also shouldn't be hard. After that we should be good to add quite a bit to the SolFed wikipage.
The Plasma Clique own the main plasma producing systems in SolFed, including several Anomalous Zones.  


* The Plasmelody, folk hate them because they insist on singing and they straight give Crystals Shop vibes. Does not need to be literal singing, their words just need to flow more than they need to be precise or correct.
== Why? ==
* Pinkpeace, a play on Greenpeace which is an organization I just realized I know very little about
* Fuel Good Inc., known for their hit song Delamination Inc. which plays whenever an unstable, experimental power source starts to fuck up and they're not already playing Ebb & Flow.
* Plasma Control
* Plasthma Attack
* The Tri-State Area (because it exists at room temp in all 3 states of matter)
* Fuel All Mankind
* some pun on pac man
* Omniplasm
* Mother Knows Combest
* Combusty Babes (Too Hot)
* Burny Sanders (too political but c'mon it's a ncie pun)
* Collective for the Right to Burn
* Backburn, as in the backbone of our society
* Autonimos Technical, a play on Atmos Tech. Sends criminals to Autonimo Bay.
* The Light Brigade: they keep the lights on
* Lightgivers
* Power to the People
* Self-Stable, a play on plasma being shelf-stable and also ensuring folk aren't beholden to an energy overlord (besides themselves lmao)


[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1300091700693172304]
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.


⁠solfed⁠
None of these are false, but none capture the full scope of the Plasma Clique's motives:
remembering that they're idealistic, do good social programs, help others, moralize and oppose injustice, but have to have some sort of reason folk could possibly dislike them:


They're opposed by the Plasma Runners, biker gang m'fers who want profit over whatever moral BS the plasma clique does. They oppose because they see plasma as PROFIT, BABY! PURE FUCKING CREDITS IN A ROCK!
* '''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.
maybe the PQ also demands a tithe of plasma and/or Accurate Reporting of the plasma you mine, so they don't give you more than you've already gotten to fulfill your own needs...
hopefully there's some bits worth working with in there.


As my mind is stumped on the new NRI at the moment I'll work on SolFed members. I have two basic ideas at the moment that I might utilize if it doesn't turn out that they suck.
* '''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.


[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1274851745226428490]
* '''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.  


{{Contributor/Owegno}} Plasma clique member which is generally nice. They're very fair and free democracy with all their citizens living very comfortable lives thanks to the government using the profits of the state-run plasma corporation to enact some of the best social programs in all of SolFed. I was thinking of giving paragon like idealism being part of the core of their culture. Aiding others is to them the greatest calling, but they also tend to be very moralistic and they will try and oppose injustices. This applies to their government as well as generally it works to help other SolFed member states, but with an "evil" nations like the Libraen Federation they work to harm them however possible.  
* '''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.  


The Corporate Territories, a Trade Clique member (or the leader of the Trade Clique) that is a collection of corporate controlled systems. It exists that give the corporations that are members of the project a perfect place for manufacturing, and to give them votes in the Federal Assembly. It has a generally unified façade that works to protect corporate interests in SolFed, but that unity ends there and the various corporations that contribute to it are generally incredibly hostile to one another, and trickles down into the Corporate Territories.
* '''[[Lore:Bluespace#Sources|Plasma is unlimited]]''': 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.


They don't give out free plasma, but they do generally try to use their power to help others. However they can be very moralistic and that can put them into conflict with people very easily. Plus you know, defending their clique's monopoly.
* '''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.


Moralistic is... vague, hence fleshing it out. Examples of moralistic helpers I can think of:
* '''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.
Churches who do charity drives for homeless, thus flaunting their morals and getting to give brief lectures to their captive audience.
Youtube Influencers, e.g. Mr. Beast, who profit off the perception of the work they do, independently of how effective the work done is. Can range from "just recouping costs" to "being a charity middleman is a successful business." See also: for-profit foster parents.
Churches who do charity but only for active worshippers, effectively forcing homeless to routinely attend sermons to survive off of their charity.
Brotherhood of Steel FO3:Broken Steel, who operates with an independent agenda but uses the charity to remain in good graces. They will take your Technology whether you're subscribed to their free water or not, but they'll also give you water whether or not you have technology to surrender.
Dude at church who tithes to satisfy a minimum "good person" threshold to feel good about themselves.


So I'm gonna guess at three factors, on a scale:
* '''[[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!!]]
How Specific are they? How different are their morals from the cultural norm? needs better name
How Intrusive are they? What do they impose in exchange for their help?
Self-Centered? I think this is a subset of intrusive. What do they gain from this interaction?
How Helpful are they? Do they actually help, or are they doing things that only look helpful?


so church charity homeless: Not very specific, their morals are similar to the religious morals of America. Intrusive: not very. Subjecting homeless folk to like 30 minutes of being in a church and surrounded by helpful people isn't all that imposing. Self-centered: They gain ingroup cohesion, and individuals go to Heaven. Helpful: pretty helpful. Treats symptoms of wealth imbalance without disrupting the status quo. Blankets /beans are useful. Money, jobs, housing would be more useful.
* '''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 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 prophesized... in the Plasma Clique's focus groups, in the Time Before, a clock-themed conference hall.


I mean moralistic as in the definition of the word.
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.
So intrusive, based off their cultural code of righteousness which I'm not settled on but I do want it to be similar to modern classic moral values. Not necessarily self centered, and they only help people they like.


so yes imposing: conform to us or get no help. Correct, and more importantly: They will oppose [that which] they view as immoral.
Naive morons would consider them affiliated with the Trade Clique.


outdated on the distribution of plasma, before the Scars In Bluespace stuff [https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1218023221551693885/1273077696347504664]
TODO: talk about their capital, the stasis star thing.


= Center Clique =  
= Monarchist Clique =
[https://discord.com/channels/1202740686768574566/1226312380175220787/1267707856149545022] and there's some really good discussion about other cliques above that. this is page 5 of 9.


{{Contributor/Owegno}}
Name TBD.
So here is the current concept and plan for the Imperialist Center Clique nation.


Their narrative purpose is to basically replace the void left by SolFed becoming completely different. A lot of people had their character writtens with a controlling somewhat oppressive imperialist democracy being a major part of the setting. I want to include them so that people who don't want to write something new of their own, or rewrite their characters some, have a fairly easy option other than just rejecting the lore. In addition they act as a baseline/moderate for SolFed politics, representing a pro-corporate (although not as strong as any trade clique members), pro-democracy, somewhat corrupt entity that the more wacky, evil, or good entities can be compared against.
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.


Like old SolFed they're an imperialist democracy that is trying to expand as much as possible, often bullying, bribing or coercing smaller nations or independent systems into joining them. They have a very close relationship with corporations and while they are a Federation the central government has a lot of control and will 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.  
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.


They're one of the biggest nations in SolFed 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. Their capital is Beta Librae, which is why I think Libraen Federation is the name I'll go with. I'm a bit unsure on what sort of theming to give them, I just know I want to avoid any sort of US coding for them. If anyone has any suggestions for inspiration on their style and vibes let me know.
More than a few Theocratic nations vote with them, but their heads, their gods rarely show up to the barbeques.
..
I'm hoping less "single nation," and more "that social media that's for landlords to collaborate".  


"Not US Coded" rules out the best two options: Home Owner's Association, and Landlord Coalition
{{LoreFooter}}

Revision as of 02:52, 5 September 2026

FACTION

Sol Federation

Other Names: SolFed
Related Lore: Lore:Space, Lore:Sol
Languages: Sol CommonAnd when contact was established, the Admiral waved at the screen and said, "Mi parolas la lingvon de la Homines!" - I speak the language of Mankind. A simplified mix of Esperanto and Modern Latin, and the only recognized official language of the Sol Federation. This peculiar constructed language became popular during SolFed's earliest days, and was almost entirely overtaken by other popular tongues - it became widespread through heavy-handed political maneuvering with the help of corporate bureaucrats and other undesirables. Nowadays, it's a near-universal tongue and a must-know for any sentient being that plans to leap forward into space.
Contributors: Owegno Dang, like every single Clique is of their design.
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Owegno., ArcanaObscura mothzone
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Resident Mothic influencer and incredible artist. May their lamp shine brightly at all times.

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 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 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 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 Burger KingYou 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 Shadekin?"

The nation presses a button in Federal Assembly Vote Calling office and is assigned a unique Proposal NumberEach nation can press this button once a day, barring other conflicts, but are under no obligation to use the proposal number., in this case C3-196Each 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, inconsequential proposal numbersProposals 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 currencywant to each burger.

The Vote

The ballots are marked with the specific Yea or Nay marking unique to the specific VoteNot 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 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 physical proof of a physical voteIn 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.
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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.

Strongly epitomized by the Libraen thosefucks. 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.

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.

Fight, for everlasting peace.

Out of the ashes of the Sagittarius-Tiziran War rose those who would will that to be the end of war, the final conclusion.

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 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. 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 the vote cheaply. Only the peoples basically adjacent 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.

Frontier Clique

Of the thousands of nations in SolFed, a good 40% are within 50 light years from Sol Federation's declared borders. TODO: remove those numbers, never give the readers concrete numbers. 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 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.

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 ... it's teamsters. it's a teamsters union. they do mafia shit to keep the monopoly but they want standards.

~~Trade Clique: A generally pro-corporate clique, the exact specifics are rather TBD as work on SolFed corporations is generally very vague, but they look out for corporate interests and generally push a free-trade agenda, trying to prevent any member state from enacting tarrifs, or from restricting the activities of outside corporations.~~

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.

All about technological progress at the expense of everything else, unless it's something immoral. So both pro and anti tech folk'll hate them. Cybersun's probably had more than a few products forced out of the marketplace by their lobbying.

Unsurprisingly Syndicate-sympathetic at times.

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.

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.
  • Plasma is unlimited: 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.
  • 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, 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 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 prophesized... 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.

TODO: talk about their capital, the stasis star thing.

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.


Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.

Nova Sector Lore

Common Species Humans, Tiziran, Unathi, Moths, Azulae, Slime Hybrids, Vox (Primalis et al), Tajaran, Synthetic Humanoids (and assorted robots), Pod Persons, Hemophages, Xenomorphic Hybrid
Other Species Genemodders (Felinids, Ice Walkers, Dwarf), Ashwalkers, Ethereals, Snailpersons, Teshari, Ordoht (Formerly Skrell), Plasmamen, Flypeople, Vulpkanin, Rouges (Abductorkin), Kobolds, Miscellaneous Species, Dullahans, Employee Golems, Changelings, Shadekin, Proteans, Ghouls
Nanotrasen Nanotrasen, Central Command, Emergency Response Corps
SolFed SolFed, Sol in 2566, The SolFed Armed Forces
Notable Member States: Libraen Federation, Nanotrasen
Government: Voting Cliques (Plasma Clique), Voting in SolFed
External Groups Heliostatic Coalition (HC CompactThe HC Constitution, the document formally defining the HC., HCAFHeliostatic Coalition Armed Forces (Ranks), CZDCommonwealth of Zvirdnyn Dominions, KMIFKemppainen-Morozov Industrial Fabrication, Expeditionary Police ForceHC's Cops (InspectorsThe Expeditionary Force. They inspect more than stations. (Quick Reference, SOPStandard Operating Procedure, LexiconLingo, chatter guide, manner of speaking.))),
Interdyne Pharmaceutics, Cargo
Hostiles The Syndicate (Gorlex, Tiger Cooperative, DS-2, Syndicate Manifestos),
The Void Imperium, The Spider Clan, Changelings
Nova The Nova Sector, IndecipheresLavaland, volcanic mining place., FreyjaIcebox and Snowglobe station frozen moon., BoletusSerenity Mushroomoon.
Concepts Bluespace, Plasma, Faster Than Light Travel, Resonance ("Souls"), Death
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