Nation Name:
The Federated People's Republics of Auriga
Government Form:
Federal Neo-Socialist Multi-Party State
Demographics:
Aurigan's are largely baseline humans, though minor technological augmentation is not uncommon.
Population:
2.1 Billion
: Aurora - named for its prevalent magnetospheric disturbances known as "Aurorae" - is a "continental" world, though its oceans comprise a larger amount of its surface than that of Earth as well as being slightly smaller, if more dense, and as such it barely scrapes by on this designation. Nonetheless, featuring two large continents and one smaller, tertiary one, it is a human inhabitable world that featured vibrant but non-hostile and in some cases pseudo-sapient plant life, although with minimal risk or threat to initial colonization efforts.
Aurora possesses two moons, Boralis and Australis, who were both pushed into habitable by basic terraforming techniques concerned almost exclusively with inducing a human breathable oxygen content and are themselves resource rich. Boralis is a cold, arid and dry world, whilst Australis, with its much thicker atmosphere and ring system, is a significantly more tropical partner to Aurora, with numerous oceans and and some more enjoyable temperate zones.
History: Initially deposited into the vast local system of the Auriga's resident gas supergiant, the Aurigan colonization effort very nearly ended as it began, with the local system almost entirely devoid of notable "first choice" colonization sites and a difficult entry into the system from the wormhole exit point having damaged a significant portion of the colony flotilla's long range and survey sensors. With minimal information on the rest of the system and unable to countenance exploration of initial astrographical information, the effort's command staff initially detached a small portion of the colonial flotilla with a lion's share of resources. This detachment was to begin developing efforts at long-term habitation of the rocky worlds orbiting the gas super-giant, whilst the rest of the fleet headed to the innersystem on the barest of information that indicated a habitable world had been found before damage had obfuscated the effectiveness of the expeditions survey equipment.
Thankfully, the rest of the fleet found Aurora - and while a spectacular and very much unplanned interaction with her eponymous dazzling seasonal lights caused yet further issues with the founding of the first colonies on her surface, grounding much of the colonial expedition upon their first landing, Aurora was found to be welcoming and without issue for the displaced colonists of a dying planet.
While communication with the initial colonies was possible - the grounding of the larger ships of the fleet made relocating them difficult, and consequently the early colonies in the system diverged. With no sapient life on the planet - the closest being dog-like intelligence "migratory" forests and other related plant life - The founding of the first settlement, Rochette, signified the beginning of 0 A.L - After Landing.
By 30 A.L, several dozen settlements had spread across Aurora, though all operated nominally under the authority of a democratic government headed by Rochette - this democracy would last another generation, before cronyism and the rising corporate power behind the scenes began to cripple the fledgling democracy - by 70 A.L, Rochette's authority was limited to its most loyal settlements and by 100 A.L, Aurora was home to a dozen different city states, all under some varying degree of corporate control or despotic corruption hiding under a veneer of the notion of democratic processes.
This came to a head in 116 AL, when the premier corporate powers of Aurora, chiefly Ashandra Systems and Miskovsky Incorporated merged and began integrating those settlements, companies and nations in no position to resist it, first by financial means, and as their power and abilities grew, outright violent means - this corporate authority eventually came to control most of Aurora, with only a few isolated settlements, themselves usually "company towns" lost from a ledger escaping direct control. By 170 AL - A small but nonetheless effective expedition forced the capitulation of the outer system colonies, whom had not long established effective means of transportation to Aurora themselves. Conditions on these colonies would become almost untolerable with their economical output redirected towards feeding a nascent stellar state on Aurora and their efforts to tame her moons.
These outer colonies would become the nexus of organized resistance - too far to effectively police - and too valuable to outright crush in absolute terms, small pockets of organized political and later, armed, resistance would continue to grow in the place that had once been established as a worst-case scenarion, meant to save humanity or the Aurigan colonists if no home could be found. Though this had never turned out to be necessary, the radical political thought and defiant attitude - even in the face of deteriorating conditions and sometimes brutal crackdowns - that arose in these underground and glass sealed settlements would prove to be the end of a nation and the birth of a new renaissance.
By 220 AL, what had been isolated defiance in the outer colonies was a widespread campaign of civil disobedience all the way back in the now long since urbanised centres of civilization on Aurora. Worker strikes crippled mines and factories, orbital infrastructure was sabotaged and a brutal and violent repression of a shipyard strike culminated in the death of 235 civilians - the response was the obliteration of a corporate defence frigate in orbit whose next mission was to repeat the same kind of violence that had just killed hundreds in the now almost uncontrolled outer colonies.
In 230 AL, corporate power had effectively ceased in the outer system and several "nations" on Aurora were effectively independent as soldiers of fortune were concentrated to control areas of economic importance and to repress civil disobedience. This culminated in the collapse of the Corporate Alliance backing much of the shaky "democratic" states on the planet and the beginning of a civil war, independents, revolutionaries and corporate forces clashed, destroying wide swathes of infrastructure and urban centres on the surface of Aurora, though the conflict largely remained confined to the surface - Boralis and Australis had established their own "neutral" regimes, the outer colonies in support of revolutionaries but crippled by their own needs and proto-revolution, and the orbital corporate assets long since rendered non-functional by saboteurs or defectors.
The Auroran civil war lasted 5 devastating years, resulting in the destruction of the corporate alliance and the establishment of a patchwork of independent states of varying degrees of organisation. Over the next several years, many of these states would come together to establish a constitutional convention looking to reintegrate themselves, in 240 AL - a true planetary assembly was convened with representatives from around the planet and from beyond meeting in the ruins of the former corporate haven of Rochette, which itself was slowly beginning to rebuild.
The result was a rejection of everything that had come before barring the principles of direct representation of the people - but little else. Several political groupings from across the spectrum that existed in what was left of Auroran politics held their appeal, but it was the widespread new wave Green Socialists that held sway in most of the organised states left - while the outer system was certainly more hardline, it was the Australis and Boralis representatives, themselves the swaying vote and arguably the most able to actually act at this juncture, who backed the "Green" Socialist movement on Aurora but pricing it at their own independence. The convention ultimately organised the multiple republics that had come into existence on Aurora into a cohesive federal system to be seated in a new capital on the planet - Svoboda, whilst also recognizing the independence of the Outer Colonies.
The ultimate success of the unification of Aurora was viewed favourably by Australis and Boralis, already politically aligned domestically - and in 265 AL, despite their initial desire for independence, Aurora's moons collecttively petitioned for membership in the Aurigan state, with the outer colonies ultimately petitioning for membership in 275 AL.
The Last 25 years have been spent rebuilding, undoing years of ecological degredation and the consequent decline in the preservation of native life, embracing the need for civil liberties and the redistribution of hoarded resources and wealth across the system whilst simultaneously building up the transport and orbital infrastructure of the Aurigan state, and consequently the system at large. A recent effort to devise an artificial intelligence to manage the necessary matters of state operating under what a socialist system intends to achieve free of human bias has also recently achieved fruition, with the advanced Red Star Intelligence coming online with its authority over the allocation of resources and suggestions for policy already lauded by the political class.
Culture and Society: Aurigan culture and society is currently undergoing a golden age - or so they would say. Freed from the trappings of greed and with information largely uncontrolled with even the original colony ships Earth databanks open to all without cost, old and new are melding together in a uniquely Aurigan way, though often considered a "Neo-Classical Fusion" in as much as Earth before its fall could be considered "classical". Advances in technology no longer confined to the elite and state sponsored programs have opened up formerly commercialised augmentations, allowing every day citizens access to implants and prosthetics to aid in daily life and in particular helping remedy the situation of those who suffered greatly under corporate rule.
Aurigan society has now nearly almost completely embraced enviromentalist and socialist principles wholesale, though there has been a very strident attempt to avoid creeping authoritarianism - the rejection of corporate authority should not be replaced by a socialist or communist tyranny either, and much of the military force built up during the times of conflict has been reduced or re-organised into civil police forces under local authority, even the formerly disabled but potent corporate space forces have been relegated to minimal deployment against the few pirate forces that exist in the system, though the potential for a corporate hold-out to be discovered on some asteroid or in a bunker somewhere has prevented a completely wholehearted embrace of pacifism.
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Governance and Politics: The Government of the FRPA is organised into the following branches;
The Presidium:
The Presidium is the highest office encompassing the majority of exercisable legislative power and oversight vested into the the collected council that makes up the Presidium, selected cross-party and headed by the General Secretary, whom is the leader of the largest party in the elected Assembly of the Republics. The Presidium is not unbound - with the Assembly able to challenge through vote his or her decisions or force an ousting of the General Secretary or of the Council wholesale, however, for all intents and purposes the General Secretary, serving as the Head of the Presidium and the Aurigan State, pursues most elements of Foreign Policy and traditionally serves to approve legislation passed by the Assembly.
The Presidium also discusses and potentially acts on suggestions from the Red Star Artificial Intelligence, with the Presidium providing oversight for the AI as outlined by the Freedom from Tyranny constitutional amendment.
The Assembly of the Republics:
The Assembly of the Republic's is a somewhat traditional legislative body made up of proportional representatives from each of the constituent republics of the Aurigan state. The Assembly divises legislation, votes on said legislation to pass to the Presidium and approves judicial appointments as well as being the only body able to propose or approve constitutional amendments, effectively functioning as the primary element of the legislative process. The Assembly functions as the core of the Federal Government, and it is from these members that most government appointments are made.
Federal Republics:
Each Federal Republic is free to organise its own administration provided it adheres to the principles of the federal constitution, its own founding documents and continues to allow the free expression of political power by its citizens. Whether the Republic be organised by workers councils or traditional parliamentary systems, all republics must also organise a federal vote to appoint members to the Assembly of the Republics, and all must contribute to the continued freedom of the working class through whatever means they are able to do so. The People's Republics consequently make up the majority of citizen facing government.
Technology Overview: Whilst the majority of the working class was kept ignorant by the Corporate Alliance that came to dominate the Auriga system, it did preserve the databanks of the initial settlers and further, invested in anything that could potentially provide profit - while most of these innovations were largely beyond the working class, such innovation created and maintained an academic base that has persisted throughout even the harshest times. Whilst the Auroran civil war damaged much of the infrastructure, the knowledge of times past and of corporate innovation was by and large preserved - and the opening of all information to every citizen where practical has caused another scientific revolution.
Technological augmentation has become a widespread possibility, although corporate innovations in genetic fields has largely been restricted to gene therapies to treat illnesses - memories of tragic corporate genesplicing have rendered exploitation of this field largely taboo, especially an in a new born age of equality.
Military Overview: The Aurigan Armed Forces includes the Red Guard & the Red Space Forces. Alongside these, the independent but small Red Strategic Forces consists of the limited mass destruction assets available to the Aurigan State.
The Aurigan Military is an academy based, voluntary system. It consists of three official branches and their constituent subbranches, as well as independent elements - The Aurigan Navy, referred to as the Red Space Force, the Red Guard, a union of all terrestrial ground, air and water based forces of the republics, and the Main Intelligence Directorate under which intelligence services are performed.
However, The effects of the civil war are long lasting - whilst building up and exercising a great deal of military power, most of this has been disposed of or mothballed in a rejection of violence. This has left the Aurigan state with an elite, voluntary core maintained "just in case" alongside a formerly competent naval force that has been left to play spaceborne coast guard. All the same, these forces are kept supplied and technologically up to date, just in case something was missed.
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Red Guard:
Once the tip of the spear that was the revolution, the formerly large and disparate militias of the civil war era, transitioned into national militaries, and then downsized, now find their place in the Red Guard. The Red Guard controls all terrestrial military assets from corvette to supersonic fighter craft down to the standard logistical truck. The Red Guard is present in all the Republics to varying degrees, and takes pride in its slimmed down elite status. A lingering fear of corporate shadows has kept this elite force well maintained and equipped, for now, and pride, particularly on Aurora and in the Outer Colonies, for some of its oldest veterans service in the liberation of the system is not without a small part to play in its maintenance even in the face of the pacifist trends of the Aurigan State.
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Red Fleet:
The Red Fleet is notable for largely consisting of former corporate assets, though these are slowly being replaced as practical - whilst the Red Fleet is most certainly a competent and reasonably advanced space-based force, its role as primarly anti-piracy has slowed this down to as budget and innovation demand. While the Red Fleet is not considered particularly prestigious - the Red Fleet played no role other than disabling or taking over the neutered Corporate Fleet during and after the civil war, and rarely actually faces any real combat, it is not considered inglorious either. The Red Fleet is certainly somewhat popular in the outer system, where much of it is based and its presence has ameliorated what was once crime ridden spacelanes, whilst also serving as a beacon of Federal Authority in the shadow of the ever looming Vastergeant.
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