NationStates

Table of contents
1. Geography
2. Economy
3. History
4. Military
5. Government and political structure
6. People and population
7. Communications
8. Foreign relations

Geography
The Commonwealth is located toward the outer tip of the Perseus Arm, in the Beta Quadrant. It controls four stars and their associated planetary systems.

Yelan is a class G2V (yellow dwarf) star of approximately one solar mass.

Yelan c, informally referred to simply as Yelan, is the sole habitable planet, a terrestrial world with a 24-hour day, 365.25-day year, and average temperature about 5 K lower than that of Earth; it has a single moon, Yelansky. It has a population of roughly five billion.


Yelan d, officially known as Korolyev and informally as Pavel, is the system's one gas giant. It is slightly larger than Jupiter, but less dense, and plentiful in helium-3, which powers Commonwealth ships' fusion drives.

Mescalero is a class K1III (orange giant) star of approximately 1.1 solar masses.

Mescalero c, informally simply Mescalero, is the one colonised planet in the system, although preliminary surveys indicate that its neighbours might he habitable. The planet itself has a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, but is larger and slightly denser than Earth, and orbits much faster and toward the inner edge of its habitable zone, so the temperate latitudes resemble what would be considered a tropical rainforest in Earth terms. It has a population of about three billion.



Suskind is a class G5V (yellow dwarf) star of approximately one solar mass.

Suskind b, informally Suskind, is its star's only planet. It is small and extremely dense due to relatively extensive high-grade aurium deposits. It has a thin nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, which is thinning slightly year by year – in a few centuries, it will be impossible to breathe unaided on the surface, and in several millennia the atmosphere may be gone altogether. Why there was a nitrox atmosphere in the first place remains unknown, as there is very little chance there was ever any life on Suskind; it appears to have been in its present state essentially since formation. The average surface summer high is lower than Earth arctic.



Hadassah is a class B2III (blue giant) star of approximately eight and a half solar masses. The system is held by the Emirate of Esther's World, a vassal of the Commonwealth.

Esther's World (Hadassah e) is a terrestrial planet about the size of Earth and slightly denser. It has no satellites, and is rockier than most planets typically described as such; however, despite the adverse conditions, it has a thriving ecology of hardy plants and the occasional very strange fauna. The conditions are further complicated by the fact that, due to a combination of factors, Esther's World constantly experiences planetwide hurricane conditions with accompanying rain, making the great outdoors rather inhospitable for human habitation. It has a total planetary population of about two billion.



Clytemnestra is a system which the External Coordination Authority ceded to the Commonwealth in the 2253 Treaty of Arcturus by way of reparation. Uniquely among Commonwealth systems, there is archaeological evidence in the Clytemnestra system indicating it was once colonised by the enigmatic ancient civilisation known as the 'Septals' (so called because they appear to have counted in base 7). While the system is technically governed by the Commonwealth, the only Commonwealth presence there so far is a Field Xenology Corps station (whose existence remains classified) on Clytemnestra's second planet, Agamemnon.

Agamemnon (Clytemnestra c) is the system's second planet. It is terrestrial, with slightly less mass than Earth, and proportionately speaking a slightly thinner, but more oxygenated, atmosphere. It is strikingly cold as Commonwealth possessions go, with equatorial summer highs of not much above 280 Kelvin (7 Celsius). The most immediately obvious feature of Agamemnon is its heavy urbanisation, to the point of almost complete coverage of the planet's surface - its entire surface, such that there are no immediately visible bodies of water. The settlement on Agamemnon has been abandoned for, conservatively, seven hundred and fifty thousand to one million years, but remains relatively intact, a testament to the Septals' high level of technological and scientific sophistication.

Cassandra (Clytemnestra g) is the system's sixth, and last planet. It is also terrestrial, with about 10% of Earth's mass, and a trace atmosphere consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, with a Red 1 habitability rating - not dangerous, but not compelling. That having been said, initial assays indicate Cassandra is much more attractive than it appears - returns indicate abundant quantities of industrially useful elements, even despite indications from superficial archaeological evidence that the Septals oversaw extensive resource extraction on Cassandra during their hegemony. Indeed, the prevailing historical speculation is that mining operations on Cassandra are what gave rise to the settlement of Agamemnon. Considering that Agamemnon developed into an ecumenopolis, the Septals must have either developed very fast or stayed for a very long time.

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“The confederates” is a term referring to the systems which are not technically Commonwealth sovereign territory, but are in rather intimate alliance with the Commonwealth government. There are several dozen, most of them in the double-digit millions with a few major population centres. Overall, they have a population of about six billion. Citizens of confederates are entitled to enlist in Commonwealth military forces and receive full Commonwealth citizenship as a reward for their service. CDF enlistment in confederate systems is slightly lower than average, but overall enlistment percentage, including in local militias and navies, is significantly higher, more in line with Commonwealth wartime enlistment; this is largely due to paranoia about imperialism from both Earth and the Commonwealth, and due to persistent strong senses of national identity.

• Democratic Republic of Grand Sequoia: Grand Sequoia aligned with the Commonwealth during the War, gaining infamy as a friendly port to both sides - a fact to which the External Coordination Authority took particular exception. Since Grand Sequoia is aurium-poor, it was impossible for Commonwealth and confederate forces stationed there to deploy effective faster-than-light inhibition. As a result, no fewer than five major naval battles were fought there during the War of Independence, making Grand Sequoia unpopular among Commonwealth soldiers, who saw it as an unhelpful, ideologically impoverished drag on resources. This reputation was not helped by the postwar election of a Reform Party administration, which proceeded to promulgate a deeply anti-Commonwealth line of rhetoric while pursuing covert operations against Commonwealth personnel and installations on-planet. Ultimately, what would become JTF CITATION was formed in order to cripple the Reform Party's offensive capabilities without the cascading consequences of a full-scale military intervention. Today, Grand Sequoia is a significantly more peaceful Commonwealth ally - a status which probably owes a fair amount to the loss of the ECA in the Event of 2282. It has never managed, however, to shake off its reputation.

Economy
The official currency of the Commonwealth is the dollar (CWD), symbol $ (where needed, C$ or CW$), which consistently runs at about $2 (standard).

[This section is awaiting expansion.]

History
Aurium is an exotic element which, when subjected to specific external stimuli, affects local gravity in a predictable fashion. With the correct stimuli applied at the correct level of power, an aurium core can sustain a traversable Einstein-Rosen bridge. Aurium is therefore the key to faster-than-light travel. While it occurs naturally, it is extremely rare and the stimuli which cause its effect are even rarer; its discovery was essentially by chance.

It was in search of this element that AES Resolute landed on Candidate 1394 in 2181 CE. 1394 was a highly terranesque world, but more importantly, it turned out to be practically made out of aurium compared to Earth. Resolute's landing party officially christened the planet Yelan, after the town in Volgograd Oblast which was the birthplace of Pavel Korolyov, who brought the first aurium drive into being. Having done that, they called home.

The first colony ships arrived within weeks. More followed. Yelan's combination of natural wealth and a hospitable environment made it very hot property. As well as providing significant natural resources, Yelan served as a release valve for Earth's overpopulation and a welcome relief from its rickety climate repairs. At the 2241 ECA Census, the last before the war, Yelan had a population of slightly over three billion.

Yelan became the linchpin of Terran hegemony. As long as Earth controlled Yelan's aurium supply, there was little possibility of any offworld power arising to challenge it. Between 2181 and 2249, the number of military ships registered with the Internal Security Agency near-doubled, in the process of making especially sure. The free flow of aurium from Yelan also allowed for major extensions on the network of standing faster-than-light anchors sustaining the hyper-capacity wormholes that threaded together Earth's imperium.

Unfortunately for Earth, its control soon became its downfall. Diplomatic and intelligence records would later show that Earth had engaged in a great degree of interference in the internal affairs of Yelan Colony, by both legitimate and illegitimate means. The first overt manifestation of this control was the imprisonment of the 2222 Group, a group of nine local politicians calling for greater freedom and autonomy for the citizens of Yelan colony [to be covered in further expansions of this section].

Civil unrest continued to mount over the next three decades. The spark in the powder keg occurred at the Yelan-Mescalero wormgate in 2249 [to be covered in further expansions of this section].

The Event
The Event occurred on November 17, 2281.

To summarise, from the Commonwealth's point of view, the Event was the disappearance of Sol and over two dozen affiliated systems and their apparent, and apparently instantaneous, replacement with near-identical copies, usually with the exception of all known human settlement. This is not to say that the systems in question were not settled; to the contrary, many were subsequently discovered to be quite settled, some less than they had been prior to the Event, some much more. What distinguished the new settlements that they were, without exception, completely unknown.

All controlling authorities with whom peaceful contact could be made ultimately purported to have experienced a history considerably different from the Commonwealth record. More than one divergent history was reported, with points of divergence in no case any later than the early twenty-first century. In no case did any system controlling authority report affiliation with or knowledge of the External Coordination Authority or (prior to contact) the Commonwealth; further, those systems which had central clocks gave wildly different returns, yielding timestamps between 2063 and 5743 CE. Accuracy of said clocks was attested where possible by maintenance authorities. Divergent historical records were substantiated by personal testimony from multiple residents; before the FXC liaison and cataloguing effort was ended by mutual agreement in mid-2284 (Commonwealth count), over one hundred and twenty-five thousand subjects had voluntarily consented to be interviewed across seven separate worldbases.

The immediate impact of the Event was the elimination of the Commonwealth's - at that point - sole trading partner, the External Coordination Authority. By extension, this meant major disruption resulting in an economic depression of record severity, leading in turn to significant civil unrest not aided by the existential shock of losing what many Commonwealth citizens, even thirty years after the War, continued to regard as the human motherworld.

Should the pre-Event versions of those systems continue to independently exist in some other context, their status is unknown.

[Section marked for expansion - further material not yet cleared for public release]

_{* For the record, the Field Xenology Commission now curates an effort to understand and reconcile divergent non-Commonwealth historical contexts describing events pre-2281. The consensus product of this effort is called the Standard History. After this point in the document, descriptions of pre-2281 galactic events that conflict with descriptions earlier than this point should be considered to be in the Standard History.}

Praxis
As analyst Vanessa Scolin succinctly put it at the time, Praxis was the Commonwealth's first mistake.

Praxis is a currently Huerdaen Star Empire-controlled system in a sector designated RK12 at the time of Commonwealth intervention there. The primary is a G-class star, and the system has eighteen planets (designated Praxis b through s). Of those planets, fourteen are terrestrial and four are gas giants.

On November 17, 2282 - the one-year anniversary of the Event - Commonwealth military forces arrived in Praxis system as part of the Joint Security Task Force, an at-that-time highly classified collaboration with multiple recently contacted partners, primarily Otagian Fleet Command, the Terran Alliance, and the Babylon Commonwealth. The pragmatic motive for the attack on Praxis was fairly clear - the Commonwealth had been displaced into a new political circumstance in which it was no longer necessarily a superpower, and saw the acquisition of territory in the new context as a demonstration of power and the ability to defend itself. When considered in those terms it was sensible. The exact origin of the idea of making it a top-secret operation alongside partners with whom the Commonwealth had been in contact less than a year is unclear, but multiple conspiracy theories remain in circulation.

The Commonwealth complement of the Joint Security Task Force consisted of two prototype command cruisers, Clarion and Brio, several heavy cruisers, light cruisers and over one hundred corvettes - by tonnage the largest single formation deployed in the history of the Commonwealth before or since. It is generally agreed to have been completely insufficient. Under the command of Commodore James Jackson, JST-Commonwealth joined combat in-system no more than 300 seconds after initial downtransit. Opposing factions included the Huerdaen Star Empire and the Rethast. Duration of combat is arguable, but was not more than sixty minutes. During the fight, Commonwealth forces suffered a Huerdaen boarding action for which they were completely unprepared, and a negotiated peaceful withdrawal is generally considered to have been an important element of the survival of onboard personnel.

Overall, as a result of ill-informed political hawkishness, military adventurism, insufficient intelligence (in every sense) and arguably inadequate command, the Commonwealth suffered the total loss of one command cruiser, heavy damage to another, the loss of over a dozen cruisers and over one hundred corvettes, and in the area of fifteen to twenty thousand total fatalities.

While Praxis led to an eventual normalisation of diplomatic relations with the Huerdaen Star Empire, it also led to a total shattering of the media masquerade, to that point relatively successfully maintained, that had purported that the Event had been entirely subtractive in nature and that the galaxy had been otherwise unaffected. The fact that the Commonwealth's popularly-understood first contact was so bloody and so entirely unsuccessful in achieving any aim whatsoever is a particularly sore political point up to the present day. More practically, however, the Praxis incident unavoidably foregrounded the crucial importance of the then-Field Xenology Corps in the post-Event intelligence community and led ultimately to its shaping into the organisation it is today; fighting the Rethast also influenced the Commonwealth to consider lateral strategies and unconventional threats, leading directly to the formation of JTF ESOTERICA.

The aftermath
Due to the sheer bloodletting, the Praxis Incident was impossible to keep classified. First contact was reluctantly declared, but downplayed by the sitting administration as merely the reacquisition of contact with a divergent human faction - a Big Lie aided by the near-total lack of FTL travel within the Commonwealth, outside warships and government-operated travel infrastructure. The Rethast remained unmentioned.

The Praxis Incident is probably the most severe blow to popularity suffered by a sitting government to date. Its timing was less than ideal, coming as it did in the mid-term of Emily Sinclair's second government (elected 2279). With economic depression and a major blow to national psychology already on its hands, the government's situation had been worsened by what billions of voters considered to be an unaccountably idealistic view on regulating trade with the Suskind Institute in the wake of the Event. The loss of thousands of Commonwealth personnel in a secret and strategically inadvisable skirmish was nearly a killing blow, igniting great derision even in some wings of the governing Radical Faction, with particular unrest among the Naranjeros (Senators of Mescaleran origin and titular Radical affiliation, aligned with the Radicals largely as a libertarian concern).

The survival of the Sinclair Administration is described almost unanimously by analysts as a political near-miracle, powered in no small part by Sinclair's personal charisma and historical record of competence and successful gambles. Nonetheless, it was sufficient to end her political career; Sinclair ultimately pre-emptively declined to stand for re-election at Easter 2283, and the Radical Faction designated her popular Controller of Infrastructure and frequent deputy, Marcus Whitaker, as their candidate for the 2284 election.

With Whitaker at their head, the Radical Faction won a slim but adequate victory in the 2284 election (51.4%). Unfortunately, the reprieve was not to last. While Whitaker was well-liked as Controller of Infrastructure, the popular opinion quickly developed that he lacked substance as a chief executive. Detractors pointed to his relative youth (41, while Sinclair had been 56 when she entered office as his predecessor), and his reputation as a convincing and fluent off-the-cuff speaker in interviews and conferences was used against him by the Conservative Faction press bureau, who framed him as a shallow creature of little more than image, and implied on several occasions that he was unprincipled, amoral and entirely political. Analysts and insiders have remained divided on whether this was true. Ultimately, the public never found out; in the face of fierce resistance from all quarters, First Councilor Whitaker called a snap election in 2287 to avoid a vote of no confidence which would likely have passed due to Naranjeros crossing the floor.

Unsurprisingly, the Radical Faction lost, although by a respectable margin rather than the landslide that analysts theorise they would have suffered had they waited for the vote of no confidence. Whitaker was succeeded as First Councilor by Conservative former diplomat Julia K.

[Section marked for expansion - further material awaiting clearance for release]

Military
The Commonwealth Defence Force is open to all Commonwealth and confederate citizens over 18 who can pass the admission tests. Conscription is outlawed, but constant high tensions with Earth and, more recently, the stresses of the Event, have served to keep enlistment rates up. As mentioned above, for citizens of confederate states, CDF service grants Commonwealth citizenship at the end of their obligated term of service, which is another big draw. The total number of serving CDF personnel is 115.2 million (0.7% of population); actives are 70.5 million (0.4%). The CDF has two official services, the Army and the Navy, and a third service, the Marines, of debatable official status.

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Strategic command
Above the service level, the CDF is split into three unified commands: Yelan, Mescalero, and Suskind and Outlying Areas. The Alliance largely provides for its own defence, and the confederates provide for theirs (although the Commonwealth is in military alliance with them).

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Navy (بحرية الكومنولث Bahriat al-Kumnulith / 联邦海军 Liánbāng Hǎijūn / Marine du Commonwealth / Содружество Флот Sodruzhestvo Flot / Armada de la Mancomunidad)
The Navy is the larger of the two Commonwealth services. In addition to the orbital and deep-space combat/trade lane protection/power projection roles typical of modern navies, the Navy also has responsibility for offensive and defensive air operations, offplanet law enforcement, border protection, and (in conjunction with state services) search and rescue. It is the more senior of the two services, having fought the first battles of the War of Independence during the first mustering of the Commonwealth Army's predecessor, in order to disrupt ECA space superiority and clear the way for the vigorous ground operations in which the Army would eventually engage.

The Navy employs c. 39.5 million active personnel and 15.9 million reservists. It maintains over six thousand deployable vessels, with about 60% allocated to 1st Fleet (Yelan), and the remainder split between 2nd (Mescalero) and 3rd (Suskind and Outlying Areas). In addition to its combat roles, the Navy also has a share of responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the Commonwealth's infrastructure FTL network, which it ran singlehandedly until 2271; in that year the Space Agency was activated to assume a large number of the Navy's more civilian-friendly roles.

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Army (جيش الكومنولث Jaysh al-Kumnulith / 联邦军 Liánbāng Jūn / Armée du Commonwealth / Содружество Армии Sodruzhestvo Armii / Ejército de la Mancomunidad)
The Army looks after ground operations. It is the smaller of the two official services, but it is also probably the least multitasking - the Army is largely analogous to any other ground army from the Industrial Revolution onward.

The Army has approximately 27.4 million active personnel and 28.1 million reservists. It is divided into 39 army groups which are further divided into 182 field armies. Almost all army forces are allocated to Yelan and Mescalero Area Commands, with only a single field army (not group) permanently allocated to Suskind and Outlying Areas, and even that allocation is largely titular in nature (S&OA Command has responsibility for Suskind, the Alliance and the confederates, which currently have little need for ground forces). Army groups are usually named after their headquarters city ('Anytown Group') and their component armies follow the formula ('1st Army of Anytown', or '1st Anytown' for short).

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Marines

The definition and disposition of marine forces has been a subject of much discussion in Commonwealth military circles; shipboard and land-based infantry combat are much more different from each other in the modern day than they were when the idea of marine soldiers was first considered. In the 24th century, a land-based soldier can expect to fight much as they would have in the 20th, albeit with heavier weapons and armour and a considerably faster pace of combat in general. A shipboard soldier, however, will fight in a completely different range of scenarios for which ground forces training simply will not suffice. Among other things, the prospective marine must be trained to fight in hard vacuum, zero g, inconsistent gravity, gravity sabotaged by hostile forces, and environments experiencing capital-ship-class ECM; without kinetic weapons due to decompression danger; while sheltering from capital-class laser point defences during boarding action; and without voice comms, or indeed comms of any sort, including sign language.

As a result of the highly interdisciplinary requirements imposed on a modern-day marine soldier, there has been significant contention within the Commonwealth political-military hierarchy regarding who should train and oversee the corps of marines. The service has existed both under the Army and the Navy; it was at one point proposed to spin it off as an independent service, but the idea never gained traction. Since 2285, the marines have been organised as the Commonwealth Naval Infantry, a sub-branch of the Navy. CNI are formally naval personnel, but receive initial training from the Army, are classified within the 'Naval Infantry' specialist stream, and use variant ranks and insignia resembling those of the Army. At the present time, of the naval personnel numbers quoted above, 2.1 million actives are attached to CNI, as are a further 463,299 reservists.

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Uniforms

The Commonwealth armed services issue a variety of uniforms. Many of them incorporate the CDF ensign in some way - the eagle regardant from the Commonwealth flag, with a single star placed between its wings.

The most popular image of the Commonwealth military forces is Commonwealth black, or the Service and Working Dress Uniform Model 2281. This uniform consists of the following components:



There are also other uniform styles, not as commonly seen.

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Armour

Several kinds of Commonwealth infantry armour are issued.

Common design features

Commonwealth infantry armour generally does not have a transparent visor. Rather, the face is thickly armoured, and the wearer sees out through what is known as an eyeplate: a flip-down armour plate over the eyes, with the external surface covered in a miniscale wideband EM sensor layer. The input from the external sensor surface feeds back through a relay in the temple to a rider on the wearer's optic nerve, which in turn transmits directly to their ICD. A direct result of this is that Commonwealth Army and Naval Infantry soldiers in armour usually fight with their eyes closed, which in Navy circles has earned them the derisive nickname 'sleepers'.

Some Commonwealth armour systems have a core - that is, an aurium block of varying mass, hooked into the armour power systems, designed to provide the wearer with some ability to modify ambient gravity. Said cores are in extremely limited rollout due to the danger of allowing the enemy to capture aurium in the field; one gram of aurium under power can lift the mass of an armoured soldier, but if collapsing field annihilation is induced it can produce a blast equivalent to, in the worst case practically observed, several tons of TNT (the theoretical worst case is far higher - in the area of 43 kilotons - but the theoretical worst case cannot be achieved due to practical considerations). As a precaution, Commonwealth armour systems equipped with this feature are also outfitted with a quantity of stable, insensitive explosive linked to a deadman switch, designed to vapourise the core and deter or neutralise enemy acquisition of the armour. Armour systems with cores are limited almost without exception to Operators (who use the AAS PANTHEON run of heavy armour designs) and the FXC (who usually use more conventional designs redesigned slightly to accommodate low-mass aurium cores).

Government and political structure
The official name of the state is “the Commonwealth”. From 2249 to 2250, it was known as “the Commonwealth of Earth”; the name was chosen to stake a claim to Earth and to lessen the perception of the Commonwealth as uppity colonial rebels, painting them instead as heroic insurgents reclaiming Earth and the legacy of humanity from an oppressive, corrupt government. After some time, however, the name was felt to be alienating people who considered themselves to have a uniquely non-Terran national identity, and was dropped. The correct demonym for a citizen of the Commonwealth is “Commonwealther”, or preferably “Commonwealth citizen”. Use of “Yelanese”, “Mescaleran” or “Suskindi” is common; reference to national and ethnic identities of Terran origin, such as “Chinese” or “African”, is frowned upon, although divisions of race are still officially acknowledged.

The Commonwealth has several different types of government, depending on one's perspective. In theory, it is a federal parliamentary republic governed by the Commonwealth Senate.

Legislature

The Senate is the unicameral legislature of the Commonwealth, headquartered in Yelan City. Senators represent single-member electorates not exceeding a population of 25 million – the population upper limit can be revised with a three-quarters majority, and must be revised whenever the number of sitting senators equals or exceeds 1,000.

There is no facility for registering formal political parties, and the creation of such a facility is prohibited by law. Candidates are granted an equal amount of coverage in state media and are prohibited from advertising elsewhere; political non-advertising coverage is subject to very strict guidelines of neutrality. That said, advertising for a particular ideological position on a single issue is quite legal as long as

Election promises are legally binding, and a Senator can be impeached on the grounds of failing to carry out an election promise where it can be proved that they must have known that they could not carry it out. Impeachment proceedings can be initiated several ways, most notably through a simple majority vote in the Senator's electorate.

Any 'informed and understanding adult citizen' can vote. In practice, this means almost everybody over 16, with two exceptions:

• Those who are in legal involuntary treatment for a mental illness with a delusional element may not vote; they are legally considered to be falsely informed.
  
• Those who have not begun paying their taxes or had an exemption by Election Day may not vote; the Commonwealth conception of the social contract is that the citizen has inviolable human rights, but has rights of citizenship that are subject to their carrying out their legal responsibilities as a citizen. Voting is one of those rights – you have to pay the fee to play the game.

A citizen may not be disqualified from voting when jailed for a felony, as committing a felony does not impair their ability to acquire information or understand the information provided to them.

Citizens can also initiate a referendum in their administrative division with a petition signed by one third of voters. On the national level, this is rather difficult, requiring five billion signatures; in smaller electorates it is more achievable.

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Executive

The Commonwealth's head of state and government is the First Councilor, so called because their legal role is to head up the Commonwealth Council, which is functionally equivalent to other nations' cabinets. The First Councilor is elected for a term of five years by the Senate, from the Senate, and appoints the Councilors. Councilors are divided into Controllers and Councilors-Auxiliaries; every Councilor is entitled to equal standing through protocol, so Councilors without portfolio are typically appointed very carefully. Like Senators, a First Councilor is bound to their election promises and can be impeached.

There is no dedicated assistant First Councilor. One of the Ministers is appointed to head the line of succession; in the absence of the First Councilor they become First Councilor pro tempore, and may appoint a successor of their own. Technically the First Councilor is entitled to assign all positions in the line of succession as they see fit, but appointing more than a successor is considered rude and possibly indicative of division in the government (by ranking Councillors least to most in 'value').

The de facto inaugural First Councilor was Richard Fox, who held an informal but effectively analogous position in the wartime Commonwealth Council. However, the title was never applied during his leadership; Fox was killed in April 2252, late in the Siege of Yelan, by orbital bombardment. The title did not come into use until January 2253, by which time Fox had been succeeded by Emily Sinclair, his close friend and de facto deputy; Sinclair reigned until May 2254, when reconstruction had progressed sufficiently to allow democratic elections. For this reason, Sinclair is considered to be the de jure inaugural First Councilor, while Fox is accorded the title of 'leader of the Commonwealth Council' (a title also applied to Sinclair in the first eight months of her reign); Fox is nonetheless often referred to as 'First Councilor Fox' when not speaking technically. (Incidentally, Sinclair would later go on to seek and win election in 2279 as the Radical candidate, serving one term.)

To date, the following people have been First Councilors of the Commonwealth:



Executive agencies
Beyond the obvious, there are several agencies gathered under the executive branch. Those unique to the Commonwealth include:

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Judiciary

As of 2283, the Commonwealth judiciary is essentially the same as any other common-law judiciary, and summarising it is not a priority for this factbook.

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Administrative divisions

Practically speaking, the Commonwealth has three divisions: the core worlds, the Alliance, and the confederates.

The core worlds are Yelan, Mescalero and Suskind. Their legal situation is complicated – theoretically, they still maintain sovereign, independent governments. In practice, Yelan is the most completely absorbed - the power of the Parliament has been considerably limited (compared to the rather large pre-war government), and much legislative work is simply day-to-day administration, not aided by the comparable neutering of the Presidency, which had also previously been relatively powerful.

Mescalero is less absorbed. Its legislature, the Kurultai of the Mescaleran Republic, still meets on a regular basis, and a President is popularly elected. It is subjugated, however, in that Mescaleran law will be struck down if it conflicts with the resolutions of the Commonwealth Senate on Yelan – a fact which generates a little resentment among older Mescalerans, although nowhere near the point of unrest.



Suskind is a curious case. It is formally known as the Suskind Institute, and considers itself a self-funded, independent university with no national identity or affiliation, which happens to be under the Commonwealth's protection. In light of this, and with a cautious eye to the fact that Suskind has both the majority of Commonwealth weapons research and the greatest military enlistment per capita, the Senate maintains an unspoken gentleman's agreement not to legislate particularly far with regard to Suskind. Incidentally, Suskind has some of the loosest research controls in the Commonwealth, making it a tempting destination for scientists with controversial views. The Institute political 'faculty' does maintain stringent security protocols, however; grey goo is not good for business.



The Hadassahan Alliance is a vassal state of the Commonwealth; it has complete internal autonomy and a great degree of influence over its own naval architecture, but the Commonwealth decides its foreign affairs policy. The Alliance is a semi-democratic corporate republic with legacy elements of aristocracy, formed from a joint venture between several dozen corporations disaffected from Earth immediately preceding, and during, the War of Independence; it controls (depending on the manner of counting) dozens to hundreds of small holdings, with its capital at Esther's World (population c. ~2 billion). While the Hadassahan Alliance is hardly a national model, for various reasons, the arrangement suits the Commonwealth, so it continues.



Finally, the confederates are a number of small republics, self-proclaimed independent states and corporatocracies scattered across the galaxy and forming a sort of Commonwealth bloc. They have liberal trade terms and military alliances with the Commonwealth, although in practice this translates to the Commonwealth protecting and funding them; the systems would be a formidable power if combined, but individually they are rather ineffectual.

People and population
The Commonwealth has a total population of c. 16 billion at the 2297 census, counting Yelan, Mescalero, Suskind, Esther's World and the confederates. Without the confederates, it has a population of approximately 10.75 billion.

The Commonwealth's age structure is impossible to describe accurately – with advances in medical and dedicated life extension technology since the twentieth century, biological age seems to essentially be a non-quantity, but the cumulative effect of medical advances is only now really beginning to hit hard, the oldest demographic inflating without end. Many face the prospect of no longer being the oldest, so to speak, due to clinical trials of technology which would not only halt aging, but reverse it. There are concerns, however; the oldest living human is in his mid-130s, which is not particularly far ahead of the oldest human before the biotech singularity. There exists, as yet, no data on the effect of attempting to store hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of memories within an only slightly modified human neurophysiology.

With the help of advances in physics, medicine and biology, technology is being prototyped which, if it worked, would allow humans to own and control multiple bodies at least one at a time; some suggestions are that a sufficiently reengineered human might be able to control several bodies at a time. Experiments with implanting such technologies into the bodies of recently deceased donors have been hailed as highly promising, although there are a significant number who view them as ethically problematic. Nonetheless, Commonwealth legal theorists are drafting new legislation to deal with the perceived possibilities. For the moment, however, Commonwealth citizens are generally baseline humans.

Most Commonwealth citizens are bilingual, speaking at least fluent English and basic Cantonese. The Cantonese is a holdover from the Yelanese Republic, which has a significant population of Chinese descent and historically maintained good trading relations with several colonies sponsored by the People's Republic of China. Cantonese is the go-to non-English language taught in schools – however, several other non-English languages also enjoy great currency within the Commonwealth. Mescaleran English, for example, is heavily peppered with vocabulary from Southern Russian dialects, and a significant demographic of Mescalerans speak Russian competently to fluently.

The official Commonwealth demonym is 'Commonwealther'; the position of the state has always been that existing nations which are incorporated into the Commonwealth should retain their national identities, and that the unity of the Commonwealth should come from a spirit of cooperation and common goals, rather than from the implication of blood ties or genetic family. Nonetheless, there is a fairly strong Commonwealth-nationalist movement which favours 'Comun' as a word to describe 'Commonwealth people'. Most such movements point to Suskindis, a created group, as an example of an emergent Commonwealth ethnicity; this view has met with mixed reactions among Suskindis themselves.

Suskindis
'Suskindi' is defined as an adjective, 'originating from Suskind', or a noun, 'a person from Suskind'. In more recent times, it has come to refer to a particular subgroup of that people.

The subgroup in question received genetic engineering and gene therapy in early childhood, largely as a result of the Peace Attack of 2270 (a cultural phenomenon unique to Suskind, discussed elsewhere). Consequently, this group - the first generation of whom it is agreed are now in their mid-twenties to early thirties - are distinguished by several traits. They are exceptionally tall (average height for males: 201cm; females: 185.6cm), tend toward broad shoulders and narrow waists, gain muscle mass quickly and have better-than-average baseline cardiovascular endurance. As a curious aside, followup genetic research suggests people in this group might have had a slightly elevated predisposition toward dark hair and dark eyes, relative to their genetic backgrounds.

[UPDATE PENDING; AWAITING CLEARANCE FROM COMMONWEALTH CULTURAL AFFAIRS AUTHORITY]

Communications
Internet access is provided by the government and is essentially universal. Where possible, it is provided through public wireless services; however, actual interconnection with other parts of the internet is through terrestrial trunk lines connected through very tightly controlled and safed wormhole gates. Prior to the event, as a matter of tradition, the Commonwealth telecommunications administrator pointedly only maintained one connection to Earth territory, connecting to the Arcturus-Miami relay – the connection was high-bandwidth enough to comfortably serve all the data that came over it, but made routing slightly more inconvenient, as a pointless gesture of political independence. Since the Event, however, the Arcturus-Miami relay has been defunct due to the Sol dead zone.

Due to the faster-than-light mediation of the internet, even ships assigned to duties at a distant remove from the Commonwealth core are quite capable of connecting to the internet. However, doing so is probably the least subtle means of communication, as ships have to actuate their faster-than-light drives in order to provide the connection interstice, creating an ongoing gravitic force that can be picked up by gravitic sensors up to several AUs away.

Foreign relations
International organisations
Galactic Economic and Security Organisation (designation: RARELY MADDENING MAGIC) - The Commonwealth is currently negotiating with the Galactic Economic and Security Organisation relations executive regarding allocating space aboard Reclaimer Station.

Individual nations
The Anglicians (designation: SHIVERING ZEBRA) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER] (les Angliciens / Англици Anglitsi / los Anglicianos)

The Argonians (designation: NUMBERLESS SKY) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER] (les Argonians / аргоницы Argonitsi / los Argonianos)

Holy Galactic Imperium of Arkotania (designation: QUIZZICAL FLIGHT) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

Babylon Commonwealth (designation: JUDICIOUS TIGER) - The Commonwealth's relations with the Babylon Commonwealth are normalised, but largely inactive, in no little part due to the embarrassment and loss of credibility suffered by both parties at their first collaborative endeavour in Praxis. (Babylone Commonwealth / Вавилон Содружества Vavilon Sodruzhestva / Babilonia Mancomunidad)

The Gata'ja (designation: HOLLOW EDGE) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

Star Community of Genomita (designation: MAJESTIC CHANCE) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER] (Communauté des étoiles de Genomita / Звезда сообщества Геномита Zvezda Soobshchestva Genomita / Comunidad Estelar de Genomita)

Hecarian Confederation (designation: BLACK SNOW) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

Interstellar Commonwealth of Hircus (designation: COLOSSAL VIEW) - The Commonwealth maintains an FXC diplomatic station (current chief Geraint Orlov) in Suite 9 of Section 3 of the Hircine Embassy Starport. Official public contact has not been made.

Huerdaen Star Empire (designation: BRIGHT RIVER) - The Commonwealth's position on the HSE is one of cautious friendliness. While first contact between the two nations occurred under less than optimal circumstances - violently, during the Commonwealth's failed police action at Praxis - relations have since normalised enough that the HSE military now retains a contingent of Commonwealth soldiers on permanent secondment, designated 'Caligati'. There is no treaty or even non-aggression pact, and there is no newsworthy international cooperation between the two powers, but those with an interest in foreign affairs consider the HSE to be potential allies. (Empire Stellaire Huerdaen / Хуерда Звездная Империя Khuyerda Zvezdnaya Imperiya / Imperio Estelar Huerdeano)

Terrestrial Planet of Krosana (designation: BOUNDLESS HAND) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

The Kshatrijan (designation: NORMAL QUEEN) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

Mizarian Collective (designation: SILENT QUIVER) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS: FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER] (Collective Mizariaine / Мицарийский Коллектив Mitsariyskiy Kollektiv / Colectivo Mizariano)

Imperial Regency of Otagia (designation: WAITING ARMY) - Much as with the Babylon Commonwealth, relations with Otagia are normalised but inactive.

The Primareliqua (designation: WANDERING MAGIC) - The Commonwealth has little in the way of relations with the Primareliqua, but maintains an FXC station at Portus Altus Interstellar Terminal.

The Rethast (designation: PENITENT ESOTERICA) - The Commonwealth is formally in a state of undeclared war with the Rethast Pathogen, as are most species unlucky enough to encounter them. Considering, however, that no trace of the Pathogen has been seen in almost two decades, the Rethast are no longer considered a major threat, although their effect continues to be felt in institutions such as the FXC and JTF ESOTERICA (their code designation, a more modern innovation, was backformed from the latter). For more information, see in the "History" section above.

Taledonian Consortium (designation: MELODIC THUNDER) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

United Terran Alliance (designation: NULL PUSH) - [CLASSIFIED; AWAITING FXC CLEARANCE ORDER]

Vektran Federation (designation: JADED VISITOR) - The Commonwealth maintains an FXC diplomatic station on Vektra (current chief of station Patrick Mizushima).

Imperial Star Republic of Vocenae (designation: RAMPANT EYES) - The Commonwealth's relations with the Imperial Star Republic are distant at best, but the Commonwealth maintains a civilian outpost, DSRS Evergreen, in high orbit of Taen (Liu Xiu c), located within the Liu Xiu Special Economic Zone.

Yos Namoi (designation: GIFTED QUILL) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

People's Republic of Yymea (designation: TESTED MOUNTAIN) - [UPDATE IN PROGRESS; FILE SEALED BY FXC ORDER]

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<sup>The current FXC state designations are included in the above file. Designations consist of a number of random words; nations are designated in the format ADJECTIVE NOUN, whereas international organisations are designated ADVERB ADJECTIVE NOUN. These designations serve to provide objectivity and a degree of anonymity to the parties described.

The word "the" appearing at the start of a proper name indicates that while subjects are identifiable as belonging to the same species, the sovereign authority from which they originate is indeterminate, unclear or not applicable, so the designation is provisionally applied to the entire species.</sup>