State of the Galaxy

The United Federation of Planets

The Federation has just celebrated its one hundredth (Earth) year. In that time, it has grown greatly from the small coalition of four planets and their handful of colonies. There are over sixty members now, and while boastful claims of it being present on 'a thousand worlds' requires counting every tiny ten-person outpost on a distant moon or planetoid, it does include a truly staggering amount of space. While there remain considerable internal disagreements, it nevertheless remains committed to a vision of cooperation where those disputes are settled peacefully through discussion and to mutual benefit, and where a certain set of rights and protections are extended to all sapient beings. In particular, the Federation enshrines guarantees of freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom from bondage, and freedom from want.

The Federation is governed by the Federation Council, which is made of elected representatives of its members. The Council in turn elects the Federation President. All members are required to have a democratic government responsible to its citizens, although the exact structure and most other internal matters are left to the members. In the past half-century, the central government has grown considerably as interstellar relations have tied the members more closely together and a single vision of Federation citizenship, rather than just member citizenship, has arisen among the generations who grew up within it.

There are two major political issues facing the Federation at this time. The first is the after-effects of the Klingon War. The Federation was caught off guard and unprepared by the sudden attack, despite regular low-level conflicts with their warrior neighbors. Starfleet proved too scattered during the initial months and member self-defense forces were often outdated and poorly coordinated by the Federation executive. Indeed, shortly after the armistice the sitting president lost a rare vote of no-confidence over failures prosecuting the war. While Starfleet has been rebuilt, there remains concerns about another possible conflict and debate over how to avoid or prepare for one. There is also concern about the potential over-militarization of the fleet.

The second matter is that of colonial authority and member accession. An increasing number of colonies chafe at continued control by their founding worlds and also demand greater representation on the Federation Council, especially in the wake of the Klingon War, where many outlying colonies suffered heavily and lacked the strong orbital defenses of member homeworlds. The growing number of multi-member settlements with diverse populations and 'wildcat' independent settlements has also strained traditional governance models. This has spilled over into debates on the admission of the Corridan planets to the Federation, which has been blocked repeatedly in the Federation Council amid accusations of exploitation and bribery. A constitutional reform proposal is currently being considered to redefine home rule principles for larger colonies and establish a more streamlined admission process and will likely be debated and voted on during a special Babel conference within the next year.

The Klingon Empire

The Klingon Empire is the largest neighbor of the Federation, and its greatest threat. It is located in the Beta Quadrant past Sauria. The Klingons style themselves as a warrior race, although the details of this are of course more poetic than practical. What can be said is that the warrior class has over the last two centuries come to dominate the rest of Klingon society, drawing in an increasingly large segment of the population, with much of the practical work now done by vassal and client races. Modern Klingon society is quasi-feudal in structure and based on a hierarchy of families and clans, also called houses. Twenty-four 'Great Houses' make up the ruling council, and in turn various Minor Houses owe them allegiance. Each house controls various estates, generally swathes of productive land or urban areas but also claims to asteroids and moons. They also rule over the Empire's vassals, with some of the Great Houses having entire planets and species at their command. Treatment of these species varies wildly based on what house they answer to and their reputation with the Klingons.

Until recently, the Empire had been badly fractured, with the central government barely existing. This period of disunity began with the 'Augment Crisis' and continued until the Klingon-Federation War of 2257. During that war, the House of Kor briefly rose to prominence before losing its grip. One reason the Federation was able to stave off the Klingons was the complete lack of inter-house cooperation and a failure of the Klingons to secure their conquests due to a perceived need to outdo each other. This ended with a sudden coup by L'Rell, one of the pro-unification followers of T'Kuvma.

Since then, the Empire has been increasingly unified, with the houses brought to heel by the chancellery and the central bureaucracy. The Klingon navy has been greatly strengthened and professionalized, at the expense of the great houses, as has been both an intelligence and internal security apparatus. The government has been particularly successful in co-opting large numbers of 'smooth head' augment virus sufferers who were previously excluded from power, even those born to great houses, such as Kor son of Rynar, now heir to House Kor. Industrial and economic structures have been rationalized. Notably, several recent conquests have accrued directly to the Empire rather than the Great Houses and centrally-appointed governors emplaced rather than traditional feudal ties, as seen with the annexations of Krios and Vault.

Klingon power continues to grow. With it comes the risk of conflict with the Federation. While there is a somewhat firm, if disputed, border in the core areas of both powers, the outer regions are much fuzzier, and the Klingons have made vast claims to sectors that include both Federation colonies and neutral worlds. Diplomacy with the Klingons has proven difficult and it seems unlikely that the issue of the disputed claims can be settled without either capitulation or force. Neither option is one the Federation likes.

The Romulan Star Empire

Little is known about the Romulans. During the mid-22nd century, they fought a four-year war with Earth, and before that were implicated in attempts to sabotage peace efforts between the Vulcans and Andorians. They went to extreme efforts to prevent direct contact with other races, refusing to accept visual communications, destroying their own ships to prevent examination, and using subject races as ground forces. At the end of the Earth-Romulan War, a Neutral Zone was established between the Romulans and the newly founded Federation, into which ships of neither side may enter. This zone is lined with surveillance outposts.

The Federation currently lacks much information about Romulan activity beyond the Zone. What there is is gleaned from long-range subspace telescopes and signals intercepts, as well as scattered third-party sources. It is clear that they possess a minimum of twenty worlds and that their borders must push up against the Klingons. The size and power of their fleet is unclear but likely substantial. While the Federation has made attempts to contact the Romulans since the war, communications have been largely ignored or answered with only curt and uninformative responses.

Update August 2266: There was a short but explosive encounter with a Romulan warship, during which several Neutral Zone outposts were destroyed before the intruder was engaged and shot down by USS Enterprise. The most notable revelation, beyond the fact that Romulans possess a new type of cloaking technology, is that Romulans appear to be of Vulcanoid origin. Examination of historical records suggest they may be a splinter faction that fled Vulcan during the Surakian revolution. Further investigation is underway.

The Orion Syndicates

Once, Orion was the heart of a large and cruel empire. This was destroyed centuries in a great war with the Hurq', who in turn were overthrown by their Klingon janissaries. There is no single Orion government these days, with each world largely self-governing, insofar as they are governed at all. A reasonable description of most would be a "hypercapitalist libertarian hellscape crossed with a pirate kingdom*". There are great wealth disparities and slavery is common. Power is mostly held by the Syndicates, semi-corporate, semi-clan-like organizations that act as a cross between governments, crime families, and businesses. Orion raiders once crossed much of what is now Federation space in search of goods to be stolen and high-value skilled sapients to be taken in bondage. One of the major successes of the early Federation Starfleet was stamping out the slave trade in Federation space and putting an end to raids on Federation colonies.

With all that said, it is important to distinguish between the dominant Orion society and Orions in general. There are several small Orion colonies in the Federation who have eschewed these practices in favor of egalitarian social structures, and countless individuals have fled Orion space as refugees. The Federation maintains a concession on the major Orion colony of M'Talas Prime in the Orion Triangle in an uneasy arrangement with the ruling faction, which has decided that giving up slavery in order to do business with the Federation gives it a competitive edge over other Orion syndicates. Many hope this is a wedge by which the Syndicates can be broken, but during the period from 2258 - 2263, Starfleet's anti-piracy efforts were hamstrung by its wartime losses and the pirate problem has grown. Only time will tell how long it will take to reverse that.

*There are many who would argue that a more accurate translation into English would be 'viking'. Much like the early medieval Norse voyagers, whether a given Orion ship is a trader, pirate, or slaver largely depends on whether the people they encounter can defend themselves enough that bargaining is more productive than raiding.

Independent Powers

Tholian Freehold: One of the Federation's more enigmatic neighbors, the Tholians are a crystalline species that thrives in high-pressure, high-temperature environments. While this should reduce competition with the Federation's mostly-humanoid population, the Tholians are nonetheless highly territorial and will aggressively attack any perceived interlopers. They rarely stake their claims openly and as such the first sign of entry into their space will be disruptor fire. In more recent years, a level of diplomatic interaction has been achieved and the Tholians are usually satisfied by merely driving off intruders. Starships are warned to remain on the watch when near known Tholians systems and if possible to withdraw when challenged.

Gorn Hegemony: Little is known of the Gorn, a reptilian species somewhere beyond the rimward edge of Federation space. There have been a handful of encounters in deep space, most ending in violence, and at least two massacres of outposts have been attributed to them. However, many reports are contradictory, particularly the descriptions of their appearance and biology. Some have suggested that 'Gorn' may not be a species but rather a collection of them.

Bajor: One of the most distant known planets, Bajor has been a civilized world for tens of thousands of years, and spacefaring for much of that. Despite that long history, Bajor has rarely started any colonies, with most of its famous explorers returning home. It has taken a particularly isolationist turn in the last century, with the djarra caste system becoming increasingly rigid. A few small groups of Bajorans have settled in Federation space to escape religious and caste-based persecution.

Cardassia: The Cardassian Republic is another distant nation. A handful of Starfleet deep-space explorers have encountered them. There has been some small cultural exchange but by and large there is no regular contact except by a few enterprising far traders. In recent years, Cardassian society has grown more unstable due to resource shortages and a legacy of poor environmental management during their industrial period.