Full Nation Name:The Empire of Harmonious Unity.
Short Nation Name : The Unity.
Flag / National Symbols:
Government Type: Caste-based Oligarchy.
Official Political Ideology: The Great Society.
Head of State : Enlightened Master Marlevaur of House Xinihl.
Head of Government: Enlightened Master Marlevaur of House Xinihl.
Government Description: The Mugulath colony, just like the Empire of Harmonious Unity that it until very recently was a part of is a caste-based oligarchy with power concentrated in the Celestial Caste which contains the entirety of the psionically sensitive Ruhal species, effectively monopolizing power over the entire interstellar polity that is the Harmonious Unity in their hands. At the head of this interstellar empire stands the Celestial High Council, consisting of the thirteen most senior Celestials in the Unity and headed by the Grand Celestial Supreme who functions as the Head of State. The Ruhal and thus by extension the Celestial Caste are also by far the least numerous in the Unity, making up only 2% of the total population. This caste essentially combines the functions of aristocratic nobility and priesthood in one, as they lead the species of the Unity along the path to build the Great Society. The decisions made by the High Council then trickle down through the ranks of the Celestial Caste and the administrations that they control. After ISOT, the Mugulath Colony is hurled through space and time, severed from all contact with the rest of the Empire and the ranking Celestial House of Xinihil, formerly heading the local colonial administration of the planet must take charge and lead the colony forward alone on an unknown alien world.
Territory : Greenland.
Territorial Ambitions : None as of yet, that might come after sense has been made of the whole FUBAR situation and everyone doesn't die from weird Earth diseases.
Capital City : Valakhan, on the site of RL Nuuk.
Population : Approximately 14 500 000.
Majority/Official Culture : As a diverse interstellar empire spanning a little over 10 000 settled star-systems and composed of seven different species, a way must be found to hold such diversity together in a singular state. For the Unity, this comes in the form of a strong policy of cultural hegemonism. Species that are integrated into the Unity are either willingly or not are soon made to live a completely different way of life, and if unlucky enough have nearly their entire ancestral culture and history basically erased from memory over a few generations. The species that eagerly join out of their own free will are largely held together by a common belief and dedication to the path of the Great Society and thus have more of their traditional cultures untouched, at least those aspects not deemed to be contrary to the ideals of the Great Society. Forcibly conquered species are driven by the ideology which they had been forced to accept, though resentment often simmers under the surface among them, at least among those most recently conquered. The Unity has understandably been forced to brutally put down several large rebellions over the course of it's 4300-year history. The ideals and teachings of the great society permeate all levels of life and citizens of the Harmonious Unity tend to value wisdom, duty, efficiency, loyalty and modesty (not of dress, but of character.). Society is divided into a number of castes with the Celestials making up the ruling philosopher-nobility. In temperament, Celestials often come off as enigmatic and studious, yet unfaltering in their authority and their drive to further the Great Society, they are mystics and philosophers who work hard to tune their psionic power. The Steel Caste makes up the military population of the Unity. In some ways, their training regimen begins moments after their birth and discipline, fitness, hard work and following orders are drilled into the maturing warriors. The Water Caste makes up the traders, civil servants and business classes of society and they are known for their charisma. The Stone Caste is made up of workers, laborers, farmers and so on, making it the largest caste, notably it also contains the scientists and engineers of the Unity at it's highest tiers. In comparison to the Water Caste, members of the Stone Caste are literal and matter of fact in their manners, even the highest among them once had calloused hands before working their way up the ladder. Lastly there is the Servant Caste which is the youngest of them, instituted only 400 years ago after a large-scale rebellion by the Pralok species which was relegated to the Servitor Caste earlier. The reforms enacted after the rebellion abolished the Servitor Caste, which was essentially a slave caste and replaced it with the Servant Caste which still carries out harsh duties and serves the other castes but now with wages and actual rights, if somewhat curtailed. Standing in society is based on Caste, Caste-tier and sadly, often species. While near-unheard of that someone switches caste, it is very common to move up within the caste itself, with most people gaining and losing caste-tiers many times throughout life based on professional performance, loyalty and so on. Caste and tier determine nearly everything about your life, from what kinds of jobs you may apply to and if any restrictions are placed on your freedom of movement all the way down to how much water is allotted to your shower every week.
Majority/State Religion : The Great Society is a highly spiritual, almost quasi-religious, socio-political philosophy that formed as a result of the Storm of Steel on the Ruhal homeworld of Telith. After that great conflict that lasted 74 years, the planet was rendered uninhabitable and the splinters of the Ruhal species fled into space on large, primitive colony-ships looking for a new world. The concept of the Great Society was developed by philosopher and political theorist Filaurel Nelthyra as a system she hoped could lead her people to greater levels of prosperity and advancement and make sure the wastefulness and bloodlust of their past would not be repeated and a way for the many weaknesses and divisions of their old cultures to be eliminated. It promotes perfect harmony on every level, within individuals themselves and all the way up to the interaction between the citizenry and the state while also promoting service to the people of the Unity as a whole. It dictates that people dedicate themselves to a role in their caste and that they through their work rise in station and better themselves. In bettering themselves as individuals, they will also better the Unity as a whole since every civilization is ultimately made up of individuals. The pursuit of the Great Society now guides the Harmony in it's attempts to expand across the galaxy and to absorb other intelligent races into it's empire. The ultimate goal of this philosophy is the advancement of the whole society and all it's members together towards a more successful, prosperous, safer and easier existence in the future. How this will evolve and develop with the colony severed from the rest of the state and thrown onto an alien world surrounded by unknown aliens remains to be seen.
Major Industries / Economic sectors: Agriculture, Fishing, Food Processing, Mining, Metal Processing, Light Consumer Industry, Shipping and Transport (pre-ISOT), Business Services.
Amount of Industrialization : Thanks to the overall level of advancement and technology in the Unity, it can be considered highly developed. Mugulath has significant food processing, mining and lighter consumer industries. Heavy industry is rather limited, at least by the standard of the Unity but this is not strange bearing in mind that Mugulath was an Outer Colony, relying on imports from more heavily industrialized core or middle worlds to satisfy it's need for heavy industrial products and advanced parts and machines.
Economic Description : The economy of the Harmonious Unity befits that of a significant interstellar empire. By the standards of the Andromeda galaxy of whatever universe it is located in, the Unity has a decent economy with a generally decent standard of living. It is not among the wealthiest states in the galaxy, but it is at the same time far from the poorest and while the economy of the Unity does not come close to matching that of galactic superpowers such as the Khortaan Accord or Targal Imperium, Unitarian companies have established a strong share of the market. The economy is organized in a mixed market, split market seems to be a better way to describe it however. The Harmonious Codex Commercial defines exactly which areas of the economy are under state control and which are more or less free from government interference. In most industries such as agriculture, mining, consumer industry, financial services, construction etc more or less free market rules apply. A number of conglomerates and mega-corporations hold significant sway in the Unity and act as powerful political pawns on the chessboard for the Water Caste. There are issues with the Harmony's economy however, such as the caste system itself which sees individuals with talents better applied in other fields forced down a specific path. However, bear in mind that it is not the entire Unity, only the Mugulath colony, with some exceptions, that vanished through the maze of space and time on that fateful day. Mugulath was a world in the outer rim of the Unity, like many other worlds in the outer regions it focused mostly on agriculture and mining along with some light industry. Mugulath was also home to a significant shipping industry and served as a major logistical hub in it's cluster thanks to it's orbital tether station, or space elevator in common parlance. Now, they have been thrown through the space and time of the multiverse and the colony is cut off from both the internal market of the Unity and the galactic market basically from one second to the next. It will need to adapt itself to the new reality and that will not be painless, costs will rise, jobs will be lost. But a new world and new environment also mean new opportunities for an enterprising member of the Water Caste.
Technological Level : Futuristic/Science Fiction. The Unity has the ability to perform exceedingly accurate FTL-navigation, fast interstellar communication and man-portable application of energy manipulation. The discovery of mictharium, a rare element that when subjected to an electrical current is capable of projecting directional gravito-electromagnetic fields which can then be manipulated is used in several ways by modern the Unity, from generating artificial gravity on starships to manufacturing high-strength construction materials. It is most prominently used to enable faster-than-light space travel without causing time dilation. Energy is generated by advanced pinched cold-fusion reactors, through deuterium-tritium fusion, the plasma that is generated is compressed, or "pinched" and heated by magnetic fields, This process generates an enormous amount of power and plasma. While the Harmony could probably create at least a semi-sentient AI, a ban on machine intelligences has resulted in more simplistic Virtual Intelligences being used within the Unity instead. Medical technology is highly advanced and most diseases that once plagued the species of the Unity have been wiped out, sicknesses that were once terminal to a Yaar or Zorvishi are now treated with a simple half-hour visit to your local clinic or hospital. Medical inventions such as medifoam, bone-knitting polymer, polymerized blood and other synthetic compounds allow rapid recovery from injuries and eases the treatment of patients in general. Thanks to manipulation of mictharium, both starships and various forms of ground vehicles are equipped with various forms of anti-gravity technology, allowing ships to hover easily inside an atmosphere and allowing frictionless movement of vehicles across terrain. Weapons come in various forms though largely either as plasma-based directed energy weapons or mass-accelerator based projectile weapons. (Basically think of something along the Covenant from Halo mixed with the general tech-level of Mass Effect and a sprinkling of XCom.)
Magic and other shenanigans? (If any exists) : Psionics. Latent psionic genes were awakened throughout the whole Ruhal species through gene-therapy and it is one of the ways they gain legitimacy as a ruling caste, not least through using psionics to make the individuals of the other member species highly suggestible. It is believed that many of the species that was quickly voluntarily integrated were especially vulnerable to this, and thus quickly adopted the ideals and tenets of the Great Society. Psionics can in addition to this knock enemies over from a distance, lift them into the air, generate gravitational vortices to tear obstacles or enemies apart, or create protective barriers. (Think a mixture of XCom Psi and ME Biotics.)
Military Description
Manned almost exclusively by members of the Steel Caste, the military of the Harmonious Unity tends to fight only after carefully coordinating their troops and weapons for the mission at hand. The Unitarians prefer to fight offensively, much more concerned with the quick destruction of the enemy force rather than the taking and holding of ground in prolonged battles of attrition. Pinpoint destruction is favored, with the hope of breaking through weak points in the enemy front and then immediately launching deep into their rear, cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters along with supply-dumps and support units and then leaving the enemy to wither away surrounded, cut off from communications and supplies. If a military base is attacked by an enemy with overwhelming force, the Unitarians will usually evacuate, dismantle or destroy all important technology and equipment, and return at a later time with a greater force to retake it in a decisive counter-attack. Large focus is maintained on speed, firepower, recon/situational awareness, adaptability and establishing cyber-superiority within the battle-space, regardless of fighting in space or on land. Mobility and individual initiative are central concepts to the Steel Caste's way of war. Drone and VI-support are widespread. The idea of a static defense is a foreign concept to the Steel Caste's military philosophy, on the defensive the Harmony's military lives by the maxim "He who tries to defend everything defends nothing." Fighting to defend every little scrap of strategically unimportant ground is not seen as honorable, it is in fact seen as infinitely stupid. Many worlds only have token garrisons placed on them which are intended for scouting and guerrilla ops rather than large-scale combat, harassing the enemy and avoiding large engagements to observe and report on the invaders using drones and pathfinders. However, the Unitarian military stations powerful concentrations of fleets and armies at strategic points in it's star clusters so that in the event of an attack they can soon respond with overwhelming force. This was the situation of Mugulath, with seven Myriads and three Lances present on the planet, once part of large military machine, now the ISOT'ed colony has to support and supply these forces by itself. It should be noted that there is no large distinction made into various service branches such as an army or navy. For example field officers could command ground operations as well as starships with Fleets being the basic organizational unit, with each fleet consisting of warships and land forces led by a Celestial dedicated to the art of military command known as an Archon and his staff of Subarchs. There are 96 000 active troops in the colony, with a total Steel Caste population of around 725 000, some 405 000 could quickly be mobilized, but as little more than infantry since the small planet had no notable stores of heavy military equipment.
Army: While making up less then half of the Unity's overall military, the ground forces are still an important part of the Unity's military force and are at their highest level organized into more or less divisional-equivalent units called Myriads. Their primary objective is mostly defensive, being placed on worlds across the entire Harmonious Unity, however most colonized stellar bodies only have a token garrison, with either one or a few worlds in each cluster being home to a massive concentration of forces which serve to execute large scale counterattacks with overwhelming force in case of hostile incursion. Unitarian troops are heavily segregated by species with weapons and equipment being determined by each individual solder's species and by their rank within the Steel Caste. Mugulath has a standing force of seven Myriads and three Lances present, bringing a combined strength of active 96 000 troops into this new reality. The land forces of the Unity rely heavily on fast, contragravitic vehicles such as of hovertanks and hovering APC's that facilitate their wars of movement alongside large numbers of dropships. Artillery is used to rain down devastating precision fire on enemy hardpoints to allow the troops a way through and into the rear, battle-suits equipped with jetpacks allowing to preform long "jumps" swoop in with heavy supporting fire while infantry are rarely seen without drone support, both in the form of recon and gun-drones, most mid to high level troops have access to personal energy shielding.
Navy: The Harmony's military was heavily naval-oriented, with it's star-fleets ranging from small battle groups to entire armadas serving as the basic unit of military organization on the strategic level. However this of course refers to spaceships, which are irrelevant in this scenario as no warship came through in the mass-teleportation event. The Unity does maintain a groundside or "wet" navy in it's military but it is small, very small and largely relegated to handfuls of mostly automated submarines armed with orbital anti-ship missiles for planetary defense and carriers serving as launch platforms for drone-fighters, of which Mugulath has none of either being a rather small frontier world. All it has is 20 patrol boats operated by the planetary Constabular Obedientary Service, out of them most are unarmed and the five that are armed do not carry any weapons heavier than a plasma suppressor (machine gun).
Air Force: The aerial forces of the Unity are largely made up of wings of fighter and bombers that are stationed on planetside bases, orbital stations or carried by carrier vessels in space. At the time of the ISOT-event, Mugulath was home to several air-bases scattered across it's surface, most of whom made it through along with the majority of the colony. This gives Mugulath a force of fighters to ward off incursions into it's airspace, both 124 VX-10 Flanker heavy fighters armed with missiles, plasma guns and a heavy long-range mass accelerator used to hit and take out specific targets on heavier warships, such as the point-defence gun on a frigate. It has a further 64 A-11M Fencer fighters armed with missiles and plasma guns. Both the flanker and the fencer are equipped with energy shielding and can operate in space as well as in atmosphere and are made with a surface of refracting materials to reduce their cross-section on radars and various sensors. The armed forces of the Harmony rely heavily on dropships for insertion of troops into the battlespace, however these are often counted as part of land force units. Each Lance (Marine Corps unit basically) is equipped with 32 Liche Heavy Force Deployment Dropships, craft able to carry up to 40 soldiers into battle and support them with it's heavy frontal plasma-beam projector and side mounted machine-guns. The colony's heaviest aerial assets are 12 heavy Manta Ground Support Cutters. The Manta is one of the largest aircraft that can be fielded within a planet’s atmosphere in a front-line role, and is the largest dropship of its kind in the Unity's military. Indeed, the Manta is so large that it is actually classified as a small spacecraft, and lies on the borderline of classification between a strike-craft and actual small starship. The Manta is able to deploy a company-sized force to the front, transporting them safely within it's large hold and can provide heavy fire support against well-entrenched enemies. Most of the Unity's military aircraft are designed to be used both in atmospheres and in space, but it remains to be seen if they can still do this post-event.
National Goals : Survive this madness. Make sure everyone doesn't die from weird Earth diseases. Make sure everyone doesn't die from starvation. Secure this new territory. Get through the economic crisis soon to come. Identify threats. Make alliances. Secure resources. Re-establish space-flight capability over the long term.
History : The story of the Harmonious Unity is over four millennia long, starting with the exodus of the Ruhal from their homeworld after burning it to an uninhabitable wasteland. It continues with the discovery of a new world and the development of the philosophy that now unites a vast dominion stretching over 10 000 settled systems and at least as many unsettled ones. It tells the story of the Seven Great Leaps, it tells the story of First Contact with alien civilizations and the first interstellar wars. It tells the story of when explorers blundered into the far frontiers of the Taghal Empire, bloated, stagnant hyperpower of the known galaxy triggering the Damakean Gulf War and countless other stories. For the sake of brevity we shall focus on the history of the ISOT'ed colony itslef. The history of the colony on the planet of Mugalath is much shorter however, only 23 years long actually. The planet named Mugulath was first colonized during the Seventh Great Leap and was among the first naturally habitable worlds on the other side of the Perdus Nebula. It fulfilled criteria including and exceeding standard gravity, tolerable atmospheric pressure and a suitable climate. Thus the planet required no terraforming and was settled early on but that did not mean the settlement was free from complications. There were a number of significant issues that had to be overcome, such as a particularly invasive local insect species that look a liking to many of the Unity's staple crops after they were planted in the planet's soil. Soon however, most issues were on their way to be handled and Mugulath was becoming a relatively important logistical center in the region as it was one of the first major ports of call for ships either heading further out into the newly colonized area or heading back from the new Seventh Spheres and deeper into the Unity. This soon led to a joint public-private effort to build a space elevator tethered to a station above the planetary capital of Valakhan. This allowed the colony to prosper as a major link in the logistical network of the newly established Spheres of the Seventh Leap and along with the new space elevator came a vitalization of economic activity centering around services for the ships that docked and their crews. Tourism was also developed as many people came to vacation on the planet's warm beaches and to hike the reddish mountains. This led the planet's population to grow rapidly to over 14 million in only 20 years since the first outpost was constructed on it's surface. Despite the planet being a logistics and transport hub, the economic activity still revolved mostly around agriculture and mining as it did with most Outer Colonies. Veins of vanadium, rhenium, cobalt and molybdenum were intensively mined by the Horizon Extraction Corporation which had bough the mineral prospecting rights for most of the veins. The planet led a rather unremarkable existence overseen by the Celestial House of Xinihl which had been appointed to head the local colonial administration and lead the inhabitants on the path of the Great Society. This quiet existence was cut to an abrupt end with a bright flash, cities and towns were plucked from warm shorelines thrown through space and time, placed along the icy shores of a strange land in a foreign reality, roads and mag-rails ripped out and reshaped, people plucked away alongside them in their homes and workplaces, the whole colony is gone from it's own world, now in another with no explanation, now a time of trials has come upon the colony of Mugulath.
#POD 3 (don't remove this!)