Confederacy of Kesh
Species:
The Vorskel are multi-ethnic mammals that resemble Earth's bats; they are humanoids with digitigrade legs. Their feet have four toes. They have perky triangular ears that are always shifting towards any noises they pick up. Their eyes are usually orange of yellow and are of a decent size. They have hog-noses much like the hog-nosed bat. However, another race of the Vorskel have long fox like snouts. The Vorskel usually have short vestigial tail stumps. However, the fox like Vorskel have longer tails than the hog noses. The tails are lizard-like except furred. They are usually around five feet tall. Their hands have four long fingers (one of which is an opposable thumb) ending in short blunt claws. The hands have pads on the palms and fingertips like paws. Vorskel have leathery membrane wings attached to their underarms like bats. The Vorskel's fur is usually tan, brown, or black; their underarms and belly have lighter tones usually. With age it becomes gray, silver, or even white.
Description of government:
The Confederacy is a multinational organization made up of all Twenty One nations on Kesh. In practice it is a representative democracy where all nations still have their own identity and government types. Each nation has two senators in the General Assembly. The senators have annual meetings and pass laws that affect the entire Confederacy. In order for a ruling to be passed one side must have at least 50% support. Senators are elected by popular vote in each nation for five year terms with a maximum of two terms. The General Assembly elects the Triumvirate, which are the three de facto leaders of the Confederacy. The three positions are the Lord Marshal, Secretary General, and the Merchant General. The third part of the Confederacy is the Security Council, which is the martial arm of the organization.
Description of military:
The Armed Forces of the Confederacy is made up of the Space Forces, Army, and Space Security. In practice, the Space Forces hold most of the power. The Space Forces control the FTL capable warships of the Confederacy. Each of the branches have their own responsibilities and tactics but they have cross-branch strategies for when they need to work together, which is often. In general they focus on long ranged combat in space, preferring to pound the enemy from afar with missiles and beam weaponry.
The aforementioned Space Forces have the powerful FTL capable warships. They lack battleships and dreadnoughts for the most part, preferring the versatility and speed of smaller ships. The use of strike craft like starfighters is considered anathema to the powers in control. Strike craft lacked the range, thrust to weight ratios, and durability of large ships. For the most part they were considered useless, except for specialized planetary invasions. As stated before, long ranged beam weapons and missiles are favored. Still, most ships do have railguns to retain some versatility.
The Army is the main terrestrial fighting force of the Confederacy. Army troops with zero-g training are also seen in detachments on most military spacecraft. On the ground the army is a versatile force having forces capable of both defensive and offensive operations. However, it is generally a defensive force that makes a large use of crew served weapons such as mortars, anti-tank launchers, and autocannons. The offensive minded units are highly mechanized with a large array of infantry fighting vehicles, tanks, and armored cars.
Space Security is what the title states really. It's purely for internal defense and operates light patrol ships. Space Security checks the cargo of civilian ships for illegal contraband, fights pirates, and upholds the laws of the Confederacy. Space Security is mainly stationed on the frontier and in the colonies. It has a secondary role of acting as the first line of defense and an early warning force. They're more or less a space police force.
Technological Overview:
The Vorskel are relatively advanced, being an interstellar entity in control of several star systems. Still, they are a relative newcomer to the scene and are primitive in some areas. They're comparable to Earth's 21st century in a lot of ways. The Vorskel still rely on nuclear power, but have made breakthroughs in power storage such as room-temperature superconductors. They also still rely on radio, radar, and optical sensors. They lack energy shields for the most part, instead relying on armor and speed. For weapons they use firearms due to ease of maintenance, and low cost. Spacecraft make use of lasers, particle beams, and railguns. They do possess faster than light drives in the form of the warp drive which is capable of approximately 3 light years a day.
Spacecraft are built like a skyscraper with propulsion on the bottom with the thrust parallel to the decks. This is to prevent disorientation when the spacecraft is accelerating. For when they're not accelerating they have rotating segments called centrifuges. Vorskel spacecraft are modular with distinct sections that can detach and get replaced. Spacecraft of similar sizes often have interchangeable sections and parts. They're made in a utilitarian fashion with little to no regard for aesthetics. The spacecraft are made with redundancy in mind with back ups for most systems.
For 'shields' they use a system called Super-Capacitor Armor (Reactive). This technology, known as SCAR for short, involves placing a cloth-like layer of super-capacitor under the armour a vehicle or spacecraft. After charging the super-capacitor, the energy can be readily discharged into the armour when a threat is approaching. For a split-second, this forms an electromagnetic field around the spacecraft, which can redirect kinetic energy weapons and cause missiles to detonate. It is not a perfect technology, however. Missiles have a chance of bypassing the shield if timing is wrong, and it can only turn a glancing blow from a KEW into a near-miss. A KEW's direct hit can be, at best, turned into a glancing blow, which would still be fatal for most non-capital vessels. The shield's effectiveness can be increased by having a more powerful reactor. It will decrease when more armour is used.
There is also another shield system that sees limited use due to drawbacks. R&D calls it the IonoSpheric Protective Shield. It creates a magnetic field around a spacecraft, in which plasma is suspended. This plasma recreates the effect of a planetary ionosphere, reflecting electromagnetic signals. It can effectively block lasers, and can muffle the effect of plasma weapons. It has the downsides of not affecting any other weapons system, preventing or severely disrupting communications, and does not discriminate between incoming and outgoing weapons fire. While this shield is in operation, a spacecraft cannot return fire.
Power generation is mainly fusion reactors, but fission still appears on smaller craft and on outer colonies. Chemical reactors show up on many ships as a backup. Solar panels are often used as a tertiary power source.
Sublight engines are a mix of fusion torches and nuclear pulse drives. The fusion torch ejects plasmatised gas. This form of propulsion is liked because it has variable thrust and thrust vectoring. Nuclear pulse drives detonate nuclear bombs behind the spacecraft. The energy from the detonation presses on a pusher plate at the rear of the spacecraft. This turns into forward velocity change. This form of propulsion throws out versatility for pure power. For this reason many spacecraft have both methods of propulsion.
Cultural Overview:
The Vorkskel are historically a patriarchal race, and in some places still are. Generally the two genders are equal for the most part though. Vorskel culture places a great deal on family. They live in extended nuclear families. Groups of families are often in clans and adoptions are commonplace. Adoptions occur for a variety of reasons such as employment, notoriety, education, or simply bringing new blood into the family group. Whilst the family usually comes before the state, joining the military is usually seen as a positive thing. Vorskel religion is mainly polytheistic, but monotheism isn't unknown. However, in the current age, atheism is pretty common too.
History: When the Vorskel were beasts they were social creatures. They congregated into large family groups in caves or large dens. This tribal behavior carried on into sapience. They eventually started villages that grew up around these cave communities. The Vorskel discovered agriculture which allowed these groups to grow even more. They became city states with the founding tribal families controlling them. City states fought other city states. Clans got absorbed, assimilated, or outright destroyed in wars. Other clans started confederations and empires crumbled occasionally. When nuclear weapons were invented, the largest clans made a treaty in a neutral city, Iseia. This created the Iseia confederation.
Other:
Rakesh - (Home System):
Planets of note: Kesh (home world)
Rorsch - (Colony System):
Planets of note: Markuras (colony)