The Galactic Council

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Digital Elya

If you file a request with the Galactic Council right now, depending on how important your civilization is in the universe and how many senators you can bribe, your request will take approximately 74 years to be processed!

The Galactic Council

The Galactic Council is a government entity consisting of many tens of thousands of 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.

The government consists of a High Council and a Low Council that performs both legislative and judicial functions. The Low Council can potentially have a single seat for every single system in the galaxy, and there are as many as a hundred thousand seats at any given time. The High Council only has twelve seats. This number has never changed and throughout history and the high council has regularly consisted of the most powerful empires in the galaxy.

The Galactic Council has many responsibilities, including keeping accurate maps of the galaxy, resolving disputes between neighboring systems, and establishing relations with neighboring galaxies. They also keep track of every one of the member systems and they maintain a standardized monetary system between all of them.

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The 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 many years to process.

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The Low Council has roughly a hundred thousand senators currently. Each senator's term lasts as long as a Standard Galactic Decade. Terms are staggered so only 10% of representatives are replaced/reelected every two years.Every single system in the galaxy is eligible to have a representative. The vast majority of civilizations in the galaxy only control a single star system and thus only have a single vote. Other civilizations like the Areakeyuk have thousands of star systems under their control and even then only control 5% of so of the Council. Even the single most powerful civilization in the galaxy, the Sseterri, only has around 3% of the vote.

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The Megacity of Aramea, where the Low Council meets. Over five quadrillion other beings live their as well, supporting the colossal government in every way imaginable. Specialized passageways and buildings exist to cater to specific species so everyone can live comfortably in the city.

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Department of Data

One of the many offices under the control of the Low Council is the Department of Data. Workers here forever record and maintain 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 multiple decades of research and DNA sequencing that must be sent in.

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All this information is stored on a megastructure orbiting a star near the galactic core. It is called the Etskal Kalin, which roughly translates to "Tree of Life" by the alien civilization that built it. The structure is nearly the size of a planet and features hundreds of thousands of miles of twisting passageways filled with many billions of servers. Roughly ten Yottabytes of data are added to the severs each standard galactic year.

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Actually accessing the raw data can be quite difficult because permission is required to dock a ship with the megastructure. After this, miles and miles of passageways must be navigated in order to find the access terminals. After this, knowledge of the Sseterri language is required to do a search query. The Sseterri maintain several versions of the galaxy's databases, and many people believe it's so they can hide data they don't want others to see.

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The Galactic Council uses these Meginno Probes, created by the Sseterri, to regularly survey known worlds and systems connected together by the Black Gate. this allows the galactic council to keep accurate records of star system locations as well as whatever might be living there.

Office of Charting

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.

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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. The other large galaxy in the local group, the Triangulum Galaxy... their government is much more hostile.

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The floating high council building above the city of Aramea. This building is exclusive to the members of the High Council and very few people ever get to see the inside. Only intergalactic envoys, as rare as they are, are the only others allowed in.

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Enforcement and Erasure

Another Role of the members of the High Council is dealing with particularly unruly member states, or rogue civilizations that aren't members. As they are the most powerful, most advanced civilizations in the galaxy, there are few that can stand up to them. The Vusinor and Sseterri specifically act as the enforcement arm of the High Council, and each have fleets with starships 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.

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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 times throughout the history of the Council, and this is the only reason the Galaxy is at relative peace.