“I said, 'General, I believe in the well-known golden rule. If you've got the gold, you make the rules.’” ~Ben R. Rich, “Skunk Works”Nation Name: Laurentia Defense Federation(LDF)
Government Form:
Merito-Technocratic Republic
Demographics: The LDF is mostly human (about 60%), though the shape these humans take varies wildly from baseline, to cyborgs, all the way to robotic bodies alongside full AI. The native population, termed as “First Nations Peoples of Laurentia”, or “Native Laurentians”, have been steadily pressured into assimilating into Laurentian society over time. A small minority of Yol-zhaar also exist, assimilated into the LDF in the LDF’s most recent war with the Yol-zhaar. The large majority of the LDF’s population consists of Americans and Canadians, a substantial portion of Europeans, many of whom were employees of the defense sector companies that now control the LDF with an iron fist.
Population: 1.845bn
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Planet Name and Description: Kepler-62f/Laurentia-f: high atmospheric CO2/thick ozone layer
Laurentia F isn’t just a close analogue to Earth -- in many ways, it’s arguably even *more* ideal for human habitation than Earth. Its host star, Laurentia, has a significantly longer expected lifespan than the sun, being a K-type main sequence star, has relatively mild periods of stellar activity compared to the Sun, with minimal flaring and comparatively benign radiation output, in addition to being metal-poor.
Laurentia-f may be substantially more massive than Earth (approximately 1.46 RE), though surface gravity is nearly identical to Earth thanks to the planet’s large radius. Average global temperature and atmospheric composition are broadly similar to Earth’s prior to the apocalypse, temperature likewise varying across the planet in predictable patterns.
A rocky planet, Laurentia-f‘s surface mostly consists of water, with several significant inland seas, lakes, and river systems on its several continents. Wildlife remains mostly native, as most animal proteins are provided by industrial-scale cultured meat operations, with additional extensive GMO agriculture consisting of both native and Earth-born crops grown in quarantined environments.
Unsurprisingly, this extremely habitable environment has led to a handful of sapient species developing on the world with various names, the most common being an apelike species technologically similar to early-holocene humans termed “Speculohomo Sapiens”. Broadly speaking, these native populations are extremely low-class within Laurentian society when they are made citizens at all, forcibly assimilated into Laurentian society most often when their habitats are inconveniently located for resource extraction or public works projects.
The planet even hosts a single moon with substantial tidal effects.
Kepler-62e/Laurentia-e: Laurentia-e is one of two other planets in the system with a significant civilian population. Being a relatively warm ocean world with limited land available, most of this population consists of resort staff and vacationers, with some industrial activity especially in the form of fishing. A native population of deepwater aquatic sapients is located on the planet (termed Aqua Persona Sapiens), though contact is exclusively distant and xeno-anthropological in nature, with the natives believed to be largely unprofitable and inconvenient to exploit by the LDF’s ruling government thanks to their extremely deep-water habitats.
Laurentia-g (discovered during colonization, hence the later letter despite being closer to the sun than Laurentia-f): Another habitable world sitting between Laurentia-e and f (but named Laurentia-g due to being discovered last), Laurentia-g is slightly warmer than Laurentia-f, though only marginally so. Laurentia-g is similar in size to Laurentia-f, though slightly smaller, and has yet to develop sapient life.
Laurentia-d: Laurentia-d, as a “hot Neptune”, is primarily valuable due to its highly hydrogen and helium-rich atmosphere. However, extremely high temperatures make extraction extremely challenging, limiting usefulness.
Laurentia-c: Completely uncolonized, Laurentia-c is highly rich in iron for a planet of its size) approximately similar to Mercury), but remains of little interest due to the extreme difficulty in establishing mining operations on the planet -- not to mention, most of its iron is located in the planet’s molten core.
Laurentia-b: The closest planet in the system to the sun, Laurentia-b is also among the hottest -- but remains a rocky super-earth, with temperate so hot as to create rivers and lakes of molten metal in its hottest parts. laurentia-b, like its nearest sibling, is presently considered too dangerous to be worth colonizing.
History: Rights to the Laurentia system -- and thus colonization rights to all of its planets -- are claimed to have been secured by a selection of NATO-affiliated states, colonized relatively early in the Gateway initiative with a high concentration of military personnel and highly wealthy defense conglomerates, which provided large portions of the colonization’s funding, with the secret intent to (hopefully) reclaim Earth and push humanity’s borders significantly beyond if the conditions that allowed for the use of gateways could be replicated or an alternate method of FTL was uncovered.
In other words, from the very beginning the people that would become the LDF were intended for conquest, or so the LDF’s present government claims (claims which are practically impossible to back up).
Regardless of the truth, from the very beginning the newly-minted LDF was oppressive, forcing natives that'd already settled in the locations the LDF selected for colonization to either assimilate into their society or be forced out of their homelands entirely, such moral sacrifices deemed necessary to ensure that humanity survived in case their colony was the only one that survived. Extensive genetic modification programs were undertaken to adapt local crops for human consumption, limited hydroponic and aeroponic stocks utilized in the meantime, though the LDF’s capacity for cultured animal protein was already robust.
From initial colonization, the human population on Laurentia exploded alongside the mass deployment of industrial robots, eventually stabilizing after the initial century when it became clear that Laurentia would become a permanent, habitable home with equally permanent settlements, concentrated mostly in large, densified mixed-use megalopolises reliant on public transit networks.
Laurentia industrialized at an incredibly rapid rate, in spite of the relatively slow-growing population of the colony, thanks to its impressive technological might, though its military built up relatively slowly in comparison, owing to initially limited access to and familiarity with local natural resources.
For several more centuries, the LDF remained stable, prospering in relative peace -- such that their defenses began to slacken. Much of the government’s energy was inevitably dedicated toward massive public works projects: building up Laurentia-f, their now home, toward and eventually past the heights of Earth.
Industrial activity, however, remained mostly limited to Laurentia itself and the debris belt surrounding it, with resource needs mostly met on their new homeworld.
For several hundred years, the LDF progressed much like this - - steady industrial expansion and slow fleet buildup, until roughly fifty years before present, when a fleet of sleek, dagger-shaped vessels appeared at the edge of the system, advancing toward Laurentia-e. It took several months to establish communications, but once they were, the message the LDF received terrified the public into action: prepare for the arrival of the main body of the Yol-zhaar colonization fleet in ten years, and submit to Yol-zhaar rule at the end of these ten years or die.
The government made overtures of submission outwardly, even preparing a massive Yol-zhaar embassy...
But, in secret, overtures were made to the LDF’s defense conglomerates to rapidly expand their fleets and R&D capabilities, working from secret facilities in the system’s debris belts and on Laurentia-g. In exchange, the defense conglomerates were granted enormous expansions of powers and resource access, constructing a massive stealth fleet in secret while DIA agents infiltrated the Yol-zhaar colony to prepare sabotage and mark targets for bombardment.
As the Yol-zhaar fleet finally arrived, the government declared martial law under the guise of preventing unrest, rolling out Yol-zhaar flags and clearing out the streets. The Yol-zhaar fleet was greeted with thanks and enthusiastic welcome.
Until they crossed into the debris belt nearest Laurentia-f. All across the system, coded signals went out. Special forces in the capital leapt into action, storming Yol-zhaar embassies and other facilities, capturing a handful of scientists and summarily executing diplomats and military leaders. Hypervelocity magnetic accelerators in the fleet erupted into action, tearing the Yol-zhaar fleet to shreds in a massive, steady ambush. Reactivated and upgraded nuclear missiles carpeted the Yol-zhaar colony on Laurentia-e, eradicating it near-completely, and, in record time, the Yol-zhaar were rendered combat-ineffective, with few soldiers managing to avoid becoming casualties, and even fewer being taken prisoner.
In the subsequent elections, the LDF’s conglomerates, having effective control of the government, were elected on a meritocratic platform in a record landslide. They had, in the minds of many people, saved humanity.
Over the next several decades, LDF democracy was steadily eroded in favour of an increasingly controlling meritocratic system, which itself has only fully taken shape in the last handful of years before present, so patient was the LDF’s ruling conglomerate in cementing its control.
Culture and Society: Despite being as oppressive and militaristic as it is, the LDF has little patience, if any, for open bigotry, seeking to maximize compliance and its wealth of technical and scientific knowledge by widening the recruiting pool as much as reasonably possible without lowering education standards whatsoever. Its education system is the LDF’s strongest, best-funded public programme, and stands out as one of the few examples of relatively minimal classism. Medical care is implicitly prioritized based on a merit-based system in the event of shortages, and most elements of society follow a similar skin: people considered sufficiently meritorious or worth substantial investment have access to better medical care, more cosmetic surgery and luxuries, and are generally better taken-care-of than the lower classes. This is the primary source of civil unrest: class conflict, and though such unrest isn’t uncommon, it rarely, if ever, persists for long because being selectively and systematically crushed; special emphasis must be placed on selectiveness, as the government goes to great efforts to avoid collateral in civil conflicts in hopes on not stoking further unrest by doing so.
Unsurprisingly, cosmetic surgeries and other enhancements are exceedingly common; even the lowest classes are generally willing to spend some of their allotted currency on cosmetic surgery to avoid social ostracization. Small arms, likewise, are considered very prestigious to own, though extremely tight controls on their proliferation make it nearly impossible for the poorest, most likely to revolt classes to arm themselves, while upper and to a lesser extent middle classes are very well-armed and often protected by robotic bodyguards.
The LDF’s positions on crime are unusual and often discordant, though largely pragmatic under closer scrutiny. For example, while recreational drug use is common and mostly publicly accepted, and crime is frequently treated with a rehabilitative hand (though mostly because the government is hesitant to get rid of potentially useful people, and because it has a vested interest in keeping crime low rather than for moral reasons), political imprisonment is relatively common. The right to protest exists in name only, with politically inconvenient protests crushed swiftly and brutally.
War crimes and other crimes of humanity, likewise, are cast in an unusual light by the LDF. The government has few actual moral compunctions about utilizing WMDs, and merely has had few opportunities to utilize them due to primarily fighting defensive and civil conflicts which make such mass destruction undesirable. Even collateral damage is viewed through a primarily pragmatic eye, seen as undesirable in the case of ground the LDF wants to capture intact and a general non-concern otherwise.
There is, additionally, very little patience on the part of the government for racism, homophobia, transphobia; again for primarily practical reasons, as such antiquated ideas are widely seen within the upper echelons of society as wasteful, impractical, and at best useful only in the short term.
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Governance and Politics: Having done away with elections, the LDF can no longer be called a democracy if any kind: rather, it is an ultra-pragmatic, largely amoral meritocracy, in which leadership positions are filled based on intelligence measures and other forms of examination. Broadly speaking, in theory, this means that the LDF’s leadership is highly competent and biased...
But hardly fair, in truth. The very nature of how government exams are structured ensures that disruptors who might seek to loosen the government’s controls on society or disagree with prevailing policy at all rarely, if ever, are able to acquire any significant power at all. The government itself is controlled by a large assembly of the greatest minds that remain: mostly administrative and economic/industrial experts with secondary specialties in various sciences and other disciplines. This, of course, results in a highly centralized government, and an economy that moves exactly as said central government - - the Central Committee of Directors - - deems necessary for their plans, a fact which allowed the LDF to rapidly expand its industry after its recent war even beyond the heights the LDF had already achieved.
Perhaps the most powerful government institution outside of the Committee is the Skunk Works or the LDF’s military; the former an inordinately massive military R&D house descended from Lockheed Martin’s own Skunkworks and a handful of other development groups from the pre-war LDF. Both the Skunk Works and the LDF Armed Forces hold enormous political power, despite being separate from the committee.
Technology Overview: While broadly a very advanced nation,it isn’t surprising that the area which the LDF excels in is military technology, often to the point of seeming excessiveness.
Ship-ship weapons primarily consist of particle beam weapons and extreme hypervelocity railguns, slugs of extremely dense metals (usually Tungsten or tungsten-coated plutonium), but very rarely osmium and iridium) propelled at high enough speeds to be cleanly penetrate most known starship armour. Impacts are so energetic as to temporarily liquefy both the impact and impacted surface, additionally generating powerful plasma discharges on impact that can disrupt electronics and personnel. The LDF also makes use of ultra-short pulse laser weapons, especially for point defense. Various missiles see extensive use, especially electromagnetic pulse weapons and others designed to interfere with or outright burn out electronic systems, usually equipped with armour penetrators to enable them to penetrate outer hull layers and EMP shielding.
Infantry small arms are typically of the coilgun variety, and, although not nearly as capable of extreme velocities as spaceborne varieties, typical LDF coilguns are nonetheless highly lethal and capable of firing practically any material that their magnets can move out of the barrel.
LDF vessels do not utilize energy shielding, except in the case of carrier and transport vessels too large to be effectively hidden from sensors, or AWACS ships, as the inherent nature of their role renders stealth nearly impossible - - instead, these ships rely on distance or extremely heavy shielding to protect themselves, oftentime both. This is largely because of doctrinal emphasis on maximizing stealth: the signatures of energy shielding are considered so glaringly obvious as to nullify stealth advantages.
In the case of both ground and space forces, material science is incredibly advanced - - the fibers and metals in most types of armor are highly effective at dissipating the heat created by laser and plasma weapons, and are relatively resistant to kinetic attacks. Most armored and aerial vehicles larger than a robotic soldier are also equipped with active protection systems, while active camouflage is found on both vehicles and some infantry.
Broadly speaking, the LDF also possesses a substantial arsenal of WMDs (mostly high-yield nuclear and a small stockpile of antimatter), though they are not frequently used, secretly maintained even in the wake of the Yol-zhaar wars in the event of revolution that cannot be resisted and in the event of a hostile reception on the reopening of their gateway. Preparations for this scenario are extensive, codenamed “Operation: Homecoming” in the event of a peaceful reception and “Operation: Spring Cleaning”, calling for the mass deployment of high-yield airbursting nuclear weapons on hostile population centers on Earth in the event of intense hostilities.
None of this is to say that the LDF’s civilian technology sector is unadvanced, however, merely less extensively-funded than the Armed forces and intelligence agencies. For example, the LDF makes extensive use of medical nanorobotics and genetic engineering, and high-end cybernetics are also relatively common in intelligence and military communities.
Military Overview: As their name might suggest, the LDF was, indeed, born from a need to defend the original colonists from alien invaders -- and this will for vigilant defense remains true to this day. Politically dominated by what used to be major military-industrial corporations, thus, the LDF’s military is, put simply, powerful and extremely well-organized, fully capable of executing stellar conquest in spite of what its relatively moderate population might suggest.
Its armed forces are organized into three distinct components: National Guard, Army, and Space Force. Two separate unified commands unite various sections of the military: the Electronic Warfare Command and Special Operations Command, both serving to oversee the relevant units in the main branches and enable them to cooperate as closely as possible (additionally, to provide a link between on-the-ground and Defense Intelligence Agency cyberwarfare personnel).
Electronic Warfare command, though the second smallest portion of the LDF’s armed forces, is among the best-funded, with a vitally important mission: control the information sphere, and ensure that the enemy can't trust their own technology. Their methods vary widely, from simple brute force jamming attacks, to stealing control of enemy systems, to distributing digital propaganda, to listening, all the way to defending military systems against the same attacks, overall intending to create mass confusion within the hostile information space. So far, their experience has been limited to conflicts against the Yol-zhaar and a few handfuls of internal revolts.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, though technically a part of the “Department of Defense” rather than the military, works closely with the armed forces, especially E-War and Special Ops commands. The DIA’s own E-War and cyberwarfare components are, in reality, larger than the entirety of E-War command’s, engaging enemy information and electronic space primarily behind the lines of battle. Theoretically, this can involve remotely sabotaging infrastructure, sabotaging computer and electronic components to assassinate targets, or any number of other electronic/computer attacks and intelligence gathering outside of the battlefield itself. Infiltration and more classic “spy” activity, of course, is another important component, though DIA agents have relatively fewer opportunities to engage in such activity. Nonetheless, a few handfuls of assassinations and mutinies in the forces of Yol-zhaar invaders bear near-invisible marks of DIA activity.
Then, of course, comes the Special Operations command, the final piece of the clandestine ops triad. Like E-war command, it primarily exists as a unifying coordinator than its own branch, and likewise frequently works with the DIA, relying on DIA operations and agents to pick out targets and lay the way for behind-the-line special operations. The Special Operations command does not include only infantry, though - - special operations units are supplied with special operations transport and fire support regiments, and rarely rely on the mainline Armed Forces for either. This even includes highly customized, stealthy orbital bombardment platforms, capable of near-silently deploying ordnance up to and including weapons of mass destruction.
The Space Force, however, is easily the largest and best-funded of the branches of the LDF’s armed forces, extensively deployed in both inter and intranational conflicts. Rebellious settlements have occasionally been suppressed before boots even reach the ground, rebel leadership shredded apart by inexpensive drone swarms, their weapons storage obliterated from orbit by ultra-precise munitions. A wide mix of weaponry is common on most ships, from ultra-short pulse laser weapons, to a widely varying stock of missiles (including AP-tipped neutron missiles) , and an extremely limited stock of high-yield antimatter munitions reserved for doomsday scenarios. It is here, in space, that the LDF carries its most deadly, ethically questionable ordnance, as there is little concern for collateral damage -- and thus little need to be concerned with laws of war they consider to be largely obsolete and easily propagandized away.
Like other sectors of the battlescape, in space, LDF doctrine emphasizes the ability to cause confusion and disorder in the enemy ranks, through a mix of information control and suddenly overwhelming firepower. Stealth technology forms an utterly crucial element of this rapid dominance doctrine: practically every last LDF military vessel expected to see combat is equipped to maximize stealth, from radar absorbing coating to stealth shaping -- usually both. Cross-gateway offensive doctrine is presently theoretical, but drills and simulations have established a doctrine in the case of the gateways reopening, centering around mass deployment of jamming buoys followed by missile and drone swarms designed to overwhelm defenses, before actual vessels would finally cross the threshold. The LDF side of the gateway, however, has been extensively mined, both with intentionally visible and stealth-coated and shaped mines.
Both its army and National Guard are extensively automated, their ground forces consisting almost entirely of remotely controlled drones and robots. This extreme preference for robotics, combined with the LDF’s high level of industrialization, allows them to produce significantly more soldiers than their population would otherwise suggest. This is not to say that their drones and robots are entirely “dumb”, however, often controlled by AI and capable of defaulting to internal programming in the event of a loss of wireless connection. Nonetheless, the AFE’s Army is smaller than most major powers in terms of number, though their soldiers are nonetheless extremely physically capable, being machines entirely unburdened by the limitations of flesh. Here, too, a strong emphasis is placed on comprehensive control of the information space and extremely strong coordination and the LDF’s extensive atmospheric and orbital bombardment capabilities.
