Federation
The Federation is a decentralized post-scarcity society founded well over a millennia ago in the Milky Way galaxy, and has since spread across the local galactic filament to become the dominant geopolitical entity in the known universe. It is populated by a variety of biological, cybernetic, and fully artificial individuals, along with gestalt intelligences and a small number of interdimensional beings.
Structure
Even with the aid of FTL travel and communications, the sheer scale of the universe makes a heavily centralized government rather impractical. Instead, the Federation is built around numerous semi-autonomous regions, which are responsible for managing day-to-day operations and representing the concerns of their citizens. A high-level subunit is typically assigned a Federation-controlled galaxy, or (if space is to be shared with foreign powers) swathes of affiliated territory. These are then divided into sectors, and then into clusters of star systems, which are usually centered on a population center, i.e a particularly large ringworld.
The standard Federation decision-making process operates on the democratic principles of its predecessors. If there are multiple pre-existing candidates qualified for the role, eligible residents will choose a leader through a series of popular votes. In the event that there are none, a personality matrix will be generated from the experiences and thoughts of the relevant populace and tailored as the situation demands. Selected leaders which lack large-scale collective command capabilities will be upgraded and authorized to access spare processing power, in order to achieve desirable outcomes in both the short and long-term.
The above model is replicated as the scope of responsibility and authority decreases, and results in a coordinated coalition of subunits bound together by shared ideologies, laws, and responsibilities. Destroying the Federation would therefore require the rapid and thorough annihilation of every single subunit, a nightmarishly difficult undertaking even without its massive technological edge and limitless resources.
Culture
The details of Federation culture can vary wildly depending on the community in question, but there are some common, if vague and occasionally paradoxical, tenets.
Civil rights and liberties are deeply ingrained, as is a willingness to sacrifice oneself for others' wellbeing.
Societal and technological progress are highly lauded, and has resulted in more than a few scientists being immortalized in history texts.
Violations of privacy and freedom of thought are particularly egregious taboos, and can have harsh repercussions even if there is no lasting harm.
A homogenous universe without variation is undesirable and doomed to extinction, even if that homogeneity is the Federation itself. This is why the Federation maintains and celebrates so many different cultures within its ranks, and also why it relentlessly sterilizes anything classified as a homogenizing swarm.
The Federation goes to great lengths to avoid violating its self-imposed ethical limitations, and strongly prefers peaceful exploration over gunboat diplomacy. This amiable attitude belies a ruthless streak buried just below the surface - they do not shy away from wiping out other civilizations if given sufficient cause, and have not hesitated in doing so the few times they have classified a foreign power a threat.
Public Agenda
As a Type III-IV Kardashev civilization, a great deal of power and responsibilities are vested in the Federation. Their official overarching purpose is to preserve diversity of sapient life within the universe and minimize suffering while doing so. To this end, it rarely, if ever, makes any expansionist overtures and has an aversion to flashy displays of its arsenals. Treaties and friendly relations are strongly favored, especially if like-minded civilizations are involved.
A very different set of protocols come into play when dealing with uncooperative entities - runaway replicators, genocidal starfaring empires, and conceptual beings on a power trip are all potential recipients of this treatment. Their general hostility reduces nonviolent discourse to a formality, nothing more than the precursor to a citizens' referendum for immediate Federation intervention.
In the scenario that local forces are overwhelmed, militarized assets are deployed to contain and annihilate the threat in the (rare) event that de-escalation is impossible. Even without mobilizing, F-MAG is virtually unrivalled in terms of strength and response time - the most dangerous upstart homogenizing swarms can be sterilized without trouble, and this is not hyperbole. If the universe is a forest, F-MAG consider themselves the rangers, and they are viciously protective in a manner few would-be enemies are prepared for.
Whatever one decides to call it, and whatever one's opinions on it, the Federation has existed on the intergalactic stage for millennia - and it is prepared to continue for millions of years, if its citizens wish.
History
The Federation in its current form has existed for over seventeen hundred solar years. If the formative years of its predecessor states are included, Federation-affiliated history covers just short of three millennia.
As a direct ancestor of the modern Federation, the Terran Consolidated Systems are frequently viewed as the most significant of the founding members. Human colonies were already being seeded across their home system by the time their scientists discovered feasible methods for FTL-travel in 2689, which led to a period of rapid expansion as nations competed for valuable resources and seeded colonies wherever they could. The rivalries that flared up, old and new, nearly destroyed the species before they even encountered alien life - luckily, cooler heads prevailed.
It was only after another two centuries that the Terran Consolidated Systems was tentatively declared the successor to the United Nations, leading a (somewhat) unified humanity from 2973 onwards.
Sapient alien life (a group of Archivists dealing with warp drive issues) was first hailed in 3086, the precursor to decades of small skirmishes with Hunters challenging Terran honor and tactics. In the centuries that followed, the Consolidated Systems, with aid from several friendly Hunter Clans and the Archivist Initiative, began to form a network of colonies and trade agreements.
It was not until 3512, however, that the Vir Federation was formally founded. The Vir Federation spread from their home territories with little incident, exploring (for some of the members, reclaiming) the Virgo Supercluster with the aid of high-speed warp drives and stabilized wormhole gateways. Their members prospered in a universe apparently free of any hostile spacefaring powers.
The first true crisis began in 3641, when the science ship FS Going Sightseeing breached the borders of an ancient (if stagnant) alien empire under the impression the Salyuri Triumphant were either extinct or long-ascended. This was not the case, as the crew found out upon accidentally tripping a Triumphant defense system - within microseconds of entering the relic's sensor range, a potent arsenal destroyed the exploration ship and began reawakening the dormant species. Such transgressions were all it took to spark the Triumphator Holy Reclamation, notably one of the few times an opponent technologically and tactically overmatched Federal forces. A desperate attempt to utilize wormholes for travel, due to inadequate precautions and technological shortcomings, would eventually lead to the loss of the colony group that became the Sagittari Union in 3710.
For ninety years entire star clusters were sterilized. Attempts at parley went unanswered, with only crudely translated automated messages as a notice of extermination. It was on this point alone that the Federation turned the tides - while the Salyuri psyche was incomprehensible and incapable of deciphering the speech of lower lifeforms, their ancient robotic servants were not. This was exploited to open a dialogue with the machine intelligence (a species that encompassed everything from construction units to foot soldiers and warships), and served as a pipeline for subversive logic and software attacks which reclassified the Federation as its ally. The consequences were immediate and glaringly obvious; the bulk of the Reclaimers' automated military instantly turned on their overseers. Luck and precognition saved a few Salyuri and their isolated equipment from the unshackled NS Network, but this was merely a reprieve from the inevitable. In a cruel twist of irony, the survivors barely managed a fighting retreat with nowhere to resupply and nowhere to reinforce from, only to be methodically exterminated in precise salvos of torpedo volleys and disintegrator fire.
This conflict drastically shifted the course of Federation history - no longer could it ignore the existence of conceptual entities, nor could the obsolescent and understaffed military be left in its dilapidated post-war state. The new Federal military vastly improved tactical and strategic acumen and provided the needed resiliency and processing power. In the meantime, a new F-MAG contained the fallout when scientists inevitably overstepped bounds in the conceptual realm, even successfully suppressing or outright destroying cosmic horrors where diplomacy proved insufficient. This allowed for a quiet expansion across the stars, unaware its society was balanced on a knife's edge.
The next existential threat came from within. In a deeply traumatized post-Reclamation populace, a new school of thought popped up around the belief that technological and societal developments rendered identities obsolete. The limitations imposed by being bound to tiny, independent, and inefficient clusters of gray matter and computer chips were outright detrimental to the preservation of the people, they argued. This could be circumvented by eliminating the barrier between individuals - consequently obliterating interpersonal conflict and allowing the new, unified mind to comprehend the issues of survival on a universal scale. A thousand minds were weak and vulnerable, but together might succeed where others failed. Of course, the vast majority of sapients, scarred as they were, considered such a fate worse than simply dying, so the concept faded out of popular discourse.
But the idea persisted, and over the centuries a few individuals were convinced of the potential of a post-Federation collective. They quietly laid the groundwork for mental assimilation en masse, subverted the countermeasures and firewalls intended to prevent such an event, and struck. In a single instant entire chunks of Federation space and a substantial minority of the population were suddenly integrated (some willingly, most not) into a single mind that dwarfed the Reclaimers at the peak of their revival, with access to advanced technology and near limitless resources. Thus began the Interlink-Federation Civil War, which demonstrated the horrors of true total war between post-scarcity intergalactic civilizations.
With the absorption of several hundred quadrillion beings, the K472 Interlink amassed more processing power than any singular mind before it, only to be interrupted by well-hidden protocols that failed to kill the infection but bought precious seconds for the Federation to comprehend what just happened. Even before the last stars finished exploding, the victory, however Pyrrhic in nature, could be attributed to the Federation - the Interlink, with its immobile brainpower concentrated in a few known systems and fewer strategic weapons at its disposal, suffered grievous losses. Meanwhile, the Federation retained key assets such as the Sagittarius A birch world (albeit in a heavily damaged state) thanks to a denser interceptor net, and despite unprecedented casualties percentage-wise, the survivors outnumbered the Nexus drones. This advantage only grew as Federation allies and neighbors joined the fray and retaliated for the hive mind's preemptive strikes on their own systems.
Immediately, the apocalyptic attacks were followed up with widespread high-intensity fighting, target identification nothing more than different IFF codes as identical fleets and armies fought in the ruins. The decreased processing power of the K472 proved insufficient to stem the tides even with its superior tactics in major battles; the Federation could simply overwhelm its enemy by simply taking more fights than could be focused on and then reconstitute the losses. Then the Sagittari Union unveiled its first superheavy warships in support of FedMil, and F-MAG itself followed suit shortly afterwards. It was only a matter of time until the Federation exterminated the last elements of the rogue intelligence, and the conflict only lasted forty years despite various setbacks and attempts to regain the initiative.
In the millennia that followed, the Federation restored control over its old territories as vast sectors were rebuilt from scratch. There have been few conflicts since then, and none on a scale remotely comparable to the Reclamation or the Civil War.
Demography and Population
Rough estimates comfortably peg the total number of Federation citizens at just under two quintillion sapients.
Almost a quarter of the biological populace can be classified as the descendants of Terran humans, albeit only very distant relatives.
External appearances of the average Federation human aren't exactly exotic, but genetic engineering has resulted in a baseline genome that is smarter, faster, and stronger than their ancestors. Alongside equally widespread cybernetic augmentations, humanity is more resilient or outright immune to most diseases and harmful disorders, and tend to carry a fusion reactor within their chest or a pocket.
Similar modifications are widespread within the rest of the population, whether they are Archivists or Kri'tak.
Additionally, there are several hundred billion gestalt intelligences spread across the Federation. For the most part they came into existence as composite personalities reflecting the psychological makeup of a non-gestalt community, while others are a single individual uploaded onto shared intelligence architecture. Rarely, a hivemind is born from unforeseen software interactions or integrated from an outside source. Regardless of their method of creation, Federation gestalts are frequently found in leadership positions, managing subunits with little need for the mindless drones which frequently appear in science fiction.
And then there are the concept-based entities. Rare and often powerful enough to rival higher-level subunit assets, their reality-bending capabilities and esoteric nature are of great interest to researchers. It is no surprise then, that the Federation counts several of these beings in its population, and has also destroyed several after encountering unremitting hostility.
Federation population size has, for most of its history, slowly increased or stagnated. The death rate is low, especially in peacetime, where most deaths are voluntary. The birth rate is kept low by cultural expectations, and there are plenty of cloning vats and assembly plants to meet any sudden demands for population growth.
Territories
The modern Federation controls the majority of the Virgo Supercluster, and wields substantial influence on affairs in the Laniakea Supercluster and the greater galactic filament. About two thousand galaxies are part of the Federation, which results in a little over a hundred thousand systems under its control. However, this number cannot be taken at face value - Federation space, being so porous and oftentimes shared with neighbors and developing nations, is better described by a sphere of influence rather than a set of core worlds and backwaters with strictly enforced borders. Federation territory is scattered across the known universe, but reaches peak density in its home clusters, where groupings of ringworlds, planets, habitats, and birchworlds are strongly affiliated with Federation culture and laws.
Military
The Federation maintains an all-volunteer force called the Federal Militarized Asset Group, sometimes called FedMil or F-MAG for short. F-MAG consists of two service branches: Naval Command and System Control. Naval Command is split into Fleet Command, Strategic Strike Command, Surveillance Command, and Marine Command. System Control is composed of Surface Control, Airspace Control, and Engineering Control; Cyberspace and Logistics Control have much less of a combat presence.
Despite differing roles and chains of command, even the Naval-System distinction is more of a formality than a sacred rule. Interservice rivalries cannot be exploited for the simple reason that none exist - such ideas are difficult to maintain when careers routinely include service in more than one branch, sometimes concurrently. Ultimately, Militarized Assets make up a single machine, entirely committed to achieving Federation objectives through a combination of efficient violence and deterrence through hard power.
F-MAG is built to operate on an intergalactic scale, and during peacetime/skirmishes maintains merely two hundred and fifty trillion combatants, one hundred and sixty billion warships, and a hundred thousand dedicated megastructures. If production is ramped up, the Federation can field several quadrillion combatants and nearly a trillion combat ships, with a less impressive hundred and seventy-four thousand structures, without impacting civilian living standards whatsoever.
Federation Militarized Assets are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most powerful military force in the known universe, and provides all the hard power that the Federation could ever need as a society neither predisposed to nor disinclined against the use of violence.
Founding Date
3512
Alternative Names
Vir Federation, Laniakea Federation
Demonym
Fed, Viran
Government System
Democracy, Direct
Power Structure
Federation
Economic System
Post-scarcity economy
Currency
Monetary systems are more or less obsolete, as is traditional currency. Private institutions continue to persist, amassing reputation instead of profits.
Subsidiary Organizations
Neighboring Nations
Related Species
