The Galactic Council - old

The Galactic Council is a legislative government entity consisting of just over a hundred thousand celestial empires, alliances, kingdoms, dominions, etc. It has been around for millions of years. They pride themselves on being open and fair to all member species no matter their ability or technological level but many members say the council is a giant inept, corrupt, bloated bureaucracy that caters to the interests of only the most powerful members.

Structure

The Galactic Council Consists of a High Council and a Low Council. The Low Council can potentially have a single seat for every single system in the galaxy, though there are only 100,000 systems that currently have membership. The High Council only has 12 seats at any given time, and throughout history has consisted of the most powerful empires in the galaxy.

Low Council

The Low Council deals with the issues with the running of a gigantic galactic government and almost all of it is rather mundane. They will regulate how certain chemicals are stored and handled because what is harmless to one species can be extremely toxic to another. They will vote on how each sector is divided and what stars are in which sector. They will vote on whether to accept a new species or system into the council. If any given system has an issue and would like to bring it up for a vote, their request to the Low Council can take up to 20 years to process.

The Low Council meets at the Galaxy Megastructure in the City Aramea, on the Planet Arad, in the Aral system, in the Aramea Sector. Aramea can be considered the Capital of the Galaxy. A Significant chunk of the planet is dedicated to a gigantic city that houses and caters to repreesentatives of tens of thousands of different sapient species. The city has a population of over five trillion people. Representatives live in this city throughout their terms as council members which lasts about a Standard Galactic Decade (22 Earth Years). Terms are staggered so only 10% of representatives are replaced/reelected every two years.

The Low Council is also in charge of running several Offices or Departments. There is the Department of Data that forever records an ever expanding database of new species, planets, systems, sectors, and more. Examples of their work include the Galactic Compendium of Sapient Species, that includes over 175,000 different known sapient species, most of which aren't even members of the council or are extinct. Generally the species data has to be added to the compendium in order for a new sapient species and their system to join the Galactic Council. This normally requires several decades of research and data gathering that must be sent in, but there are ways around it.

There is also the Office of Charting that keeps accurate maps of the Galaxy. They have radio telescopes installed on every known Black Gate in the Galaxy, that then sends back extremely accurate 3 dimensional data of the position of every single star in the galaxy. New Star Charts are published every Standard Galactic Decade. The Low Council has to use these charts to decide which sector that different systems belong to. There are around 370 million Black Gates known to exist in the Galaxy and most star systems have more than one, but it is thought there might be up to twelve orbiting every main sequence star in the galaxy, making the total well over a trillion. They have yet to be found because Fater Than Light travel is impossible, no matter how advanced the civilization.

The Low Council also has a sort of sub-council system that handles smaller disputes between member systems. This system is usually ran at the Sector Level, and there are usually between 5 and 5,000 members of any given sector, depending on how developed it is and how many sapient species live there. Smaller sectors are grouped together until there are at least 24 members. As all members of any given Galactic sector are often in an alliance anyways, their issues are usually with neighboring sectors. Disputes between entire sectors are handled by the entire Low Council, and most commonly involve updated star charts and what star systems are in which sectors.

High Council

The High Council consists of only 12 members at any given time and there are no exceptions to this. Current members include the Vusinor, The Sseterri, and the Areakeyuk and they are the most powerful civilizations in the Galaxy. The Aesperi and Kallet are permanent members despite their waning power, and are two of the original members of the council. The High council votes to emphasize and fast track issues to the low council. They can also veto laws passed by the Low Council, with no way for the Low Council to override this veto.

They also deal with Galactic Councils from other Galaxies. The Galaxy they have to deal with the most is the Andromeda Galaxy. The two galaxies share similar Black Gate frequencies, and members of each respective galaxy accidentally find themselves millions of light-years away instead of the thousands they were expecting. When this happens, they have to contact the specific Galactic Embassy of each galaxy, located in star systems that ALWAYS has a Black Gate open with the coordinates to each other. The two galaxies have a good relationship with each other, though each have their own internal problems.

Another Role of the members of the High Council is dealing with particularly unruly member states, or rogue civilizations that aren't members. The Vusinor and Sseterri acts as the enforcement arm of the High Council, and each has starship fleets numbering in the billions. They will forcibly subdue any civilization that doesn't keep themselves under control and they have been doing this for tens of thousands of years.

If a Civilization does something horrifying like wiping out another spacefaring civilization, then they themselves are obliterated from existence by a vote of the High Council. The Council will activate an Erasure Protocol, sending trillions of nanomachines down on a world to break technology, metals, plastics and the like into base molecules and to kill anything matching the DNA signature of the offending species, wiping them from history and existence. This has happened many, many times throughout the history of the Council, and this is the only reason the Galaxy is at relative peace.

((Gonna stop here for now))