Kais Trade League

Structure

The structure of the Kais Trade League is rather complicated, as far as most post-colonial human governments are concerned, given that it was cobbled together from a broad sector of space with many types of governments, structures, beliefs, and ideologies, only being pushed to unite in the face of Aldottorai dominion as the original colonizer of these systems. 
None of the formal colonies wanted to find themselves subjected to another foreign power, and so, eventually, a trade league was settled on as the overarching government. Each system maintains its own autonomy and self-rule, as well as armed forces capacity, with no League interference in domestic affairs except to outlaw slavery, indentured servitude, and other systemic forms of oppression. 
At the highest level of governance is the Council-Captain, who leads the main League Council in its deliberations, facilitates debates, and helps make sure decisions are made, serving as an overriding vote when no consensus vote can be made for an extended period of time. 
Beneath the Council-Captain is the Kais League Council, composed of one representative from every member state, each with an equal vote when it comes to making deciding factors. They are appointed or elected by their constituents, as is appropriate to each system's method of governance. 
Beneath them is the Captain-General of the League Fleets, serving as the military commander of any unified or combined military forces to ensure the objectives set by the Council are fulfilled. It is an elected position, rotating every ten years. 
Under these, there are the individual system and planetary governments, each with their own laws, regulations, governing styles, and cultural norms.

Culture

The Kais Trade League, culturally, is diverse, to say the least. Made of almost two dozen systems, often with multiple inhabited planets, each with their own collections of governments, there are even more cultures than those. Overall, however, it is a bustling, thriving culture that is slowly evolving into its own, original culture with artists, masterpieces, schisms, and ideologies unique to the sector. With free travel and trade between the League members, there is a great deal of movement between them all leads to a great deal of cultural mixing and interaction, with inevitable flare-ups and tensions at times. Overall however, it is vibrant, thriving, optimistic, and eager for future possibilities.

Public Agenda

The Kais Trade League was created out of necessity to meet immediate, desperate need rather than with a long-term, strategic vision in mind. Initially, they were a coalition of loosely aligned independence movements dedicated to freeing their homes from the Aldottorai Republic.
As a result, their public agenda is to maintain strong relations between the Kais sector systems, ensure thriving trade between them, protect against external threats, and foster mutual development of stable societies throughout the sector.

History

The Kais Sector was one of the many sectors terraformed by the The Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino in their second wave of extrasolar expeditions, with the Aldottorai Republic, a major trading power situated at the intersection of a variety of trade routes purchasing the colonization rights and keeping them under tight yokes for most of their development, utilizing their natural resources and labor harvest raw goods for their own industrial might. This lasted for several centuries, even through the Great Colonial War that led to the Aldottorai Republic breaking free from its original Terran colonial control, along with all other major Terran colonies. 
The Aldottorai colonies, arranged and governed as a Colonial Sector under the Republic, petitioned for independence, but the Aldottorai had been too valuable in winning the war for the peace conference to risk alienating them. As a result, the Republic's colonies remained colonies. Seeing the now-victorious Republic as far too powerful to contest, the Colonial Sector accepted their fate, save for some more radical elements that began to seriously consider what it would take to free themselves from the yoke of oppression and exploitation. 
In time, they managed to connect in a loose network of independence movements and began a coordinated effort to remove the Republic's influence from their systems. First, it began with protests, petitions, and choosing pro-autonomy governing officials, to which the Aldottorai responded harshly by imprisoning dissenters, shutting down newspapers, radio stations, and interplanetary communications networks. 
Such action provoked further furor and pro-liberty governments were rapidly put in place across the sector and began establishing their own alternative methods of communication through couriers and smuggler networks to form a provisional government and officially declared themselves independent, as the Kais Freedom Coalition.
It was a hard-fought war that lasted nearly twenty years, but eventually, the Aldottorai were forced to acknowledge the colony's independence, in exchange for preferential treatment in trade, law enforcement, and military matters, despite the treaty limiting the size of all post-war military fleets for one hundred years to try and prevent another war breaking out. 
With the relatively easy part behind them, it took four standard Terran years to finally establish the nature of the government. It took a great deal of politicking, negotiation, and very persuasive arguing to finally establish a trade league, giving each other the benefits in trade to negate the advantages held by the Aldottorai Republic in manufacturing, industrialization, infrastructure, and military experience.

Demography and Population

The League's population is in the area of 30 billion, spread across the 21 systems. While a massive number to think about, it averages out to only around 1.4 billion per world. By all standards, even pre-spaceflight Terra, these are lightly populated worlds. All are human, from a wide variety of Terra-based ethnicities, although these have lost their relevance in a confederacy made of former colonies of larger, more powerful colonies. 
The systems closest to the Aldottorai border are the most heavily populated, as they tend to be the closest to the homeworld, and thus settled first, leading to more time for development and population growth. Diskward, the systems are sparsely inhabited, primarily with little more than scattered settlements and very fragile forms of planetary society. 
As a result, average life expectancy on these worlds is lower than normal for most major powers in human space. The League is still very much a frontier coalition. Medical care is not always accessible, or scattered across the entire planet with great distances between them. Advanced resources are hard to acquire and nearly impossible to manufacture with existing infrastructure.

Territories

The Kais Sector The Kais Trade League exists exclusively within the Kais Sector of space, as charted by the Cupertinans. Composed of 21 star-systems, there are dozens of worlds within the League. 
Star Systems:  Kais Alpha, Kais Beta, Kais Gamma, Kais Delta, Kais Epsilon, Kais Zeta, Kais Eta, Kais Theta, Kais Iota, Kais Kappa, Kais Ia, Kais Mu, Kais Nu, Kais Xi, Kais Omicron, Kais Pi, Kais Rho, Kais Sigma, Kais Tau, Kais Upsilon, Kais Phi, 
As per Cupertinan tradition, each planet within the system is usually named, initially, with the world's number from its primary star. These systems, as a whole, all willingly joined the League, although various splinter groups, loyalist factions, and planets may have been more reluctant.

Military

The Unified League Defense Fleet: A fleet that exists on paper more than in reality, this is the sum of every system and planetary armed forces combined, which can be called up in times of crisis by the Kais League Council. Even when everything is gathered, the fleet is small, aged, and not up to par with the modern fleets of Aldottorai Republic (Even the ships abiding by the treaty) and Vanaeran Corporate Space. The League simply has not had enough wealth and material infrastructure developed to build modern, competitive fleets. 
Kais Trade Patrol Fleet: The only real fleet under the direct command of the Captain-General of the Fleets at any time, the Patrol Fleet is mainly responsible for patrolling the largest trade routes within the League and along the borders for pirates, smugglers, and raiders. Composed mainly of cutters, corvettes, and frigates, with a few cruisers acting as regional flagships, there are no heavy cruisers or above in this fleet. 
Kais Greater Defense Fleet: Scattered across the key systems for transit and resources and under local control, the Greater Defense Fleet maintains the bulk of the capital or ships-of-the-line in the League. Since the peace treaty restricts ship size allowed to possess faster-than-light travel, these are the destroyers, heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, and proper battleships. Most of them were captured in the previous war, had their faster-than-light drives stripped away, and periodically retrofitted with newer weaponry. 
Privateers: In practicality, the bulk of the League's defensive and offensive fleet capabilities. These are private ship-owners, captains, and even a few companies, granted a letter of marque and reprisal to harass, attack, and seize the ships and goods of the League's enemies. Most are small ships that serve as merchant ships during times of peace and are converted in times of war, or will have a hybrid-design to them to allow both at once. 
Kais League Army: Another instance of something existing on paper rather than in reality, the Army is composed primarily of system and planetary ground forces, with a wide variety of training, preparedness, and weapons quality. Much of its senior officer corp is drawn from the survivors and veterans of the war against the Aldottorai Republic, so despite its ramshackle appearance, they are fairly combat-hardened and experienced.

Foreign Relations

Aldottorai Republic: In the current day, tensions between the two are very tense. The Aldottorai Republic has been pushing to the very edge of the preferential treatments provided by the original peace treaty, with them often demanding more than obligated by the treaty and backing it up with economic retaliation against the offending world. Moreover, the Adottorai Navy and Merchant-Marine, known for their ruthless discipline, have been overtaking League vessels under the legal excuse of searching for deserters and then conscripting League citizens and spacers into their fleet against their will, with no option for legal recourse until they can apply to a League embassy on an Aldottorai world. League intelligence also suspects that the Aldottorai Republic has rebuilt its navy above and beyond the limits imposed by the treaty on some secret industrial world of theirs.
Diskward Marches: The Marches are a mix of Cupertinan monastery worlds, independently founded terraforming projects, trade posts, and independent worlds not officially settled, all on the very edge of Human Colonial Space. As such, there is no such thing as a central government. Despite this, the League makes sure to keep the Marches happy through strong relations, good trade deals, and support, as a way of preventing piracy and smuggling from growing rampant in the region. The Knights-Stellarum are active in the Marches, but are scattered and primarily focused around the monastery worlds.
Mennonite Havens: The League is friendly with the Havens and engages in trade, but with Mennonite beliefs, there is not much that League worlds desire in bulk, outside of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The League is the only government to have trade relations or relations of any kind with the Mennonite Havens, but even so, there is little interaction between them. 
Vanaeran Corporate Space: The closest to an economically equal rival that the League possesses, the Vanaerans are a Terran-based corporation specializing in mining, heavy industry, and weapons manufacturing. The Corporate Space is their newest expansion into the frontier in search of asteroids, rocky planets, and other locations suitable for their business with no environmental oversight or worker regulations. There are frequent brawls along the border between League settlers and Vanaeran mining scouts, even developing into skirmishes on occasion. The only thing preventing a full-blown war is that the Vanaerans know the Aldottorai Republic still views the League as their colonial possessions and will quickly respond to anyone threatening them. As the Aldottorai control the trade route intersections the Vanaerans need to transport their goods, they dare not move against either for the time being.

Agriculture & Industry

AGRICULTURE
• Grain Production: Burgeoning into intergovernmental trade levels, with primary crops being wheat, corn, soybeans, barley, and lentils. Starting the development of an industrial peanut sector to export to foreign biodiesel producers.  
• Vegetable Production: Primarily local economy only. Trading, buying, and selling within planetary governments. None grow enough excess vegetables to afford the interplanetary vegetable trade and its refrigeration costs. 
• Livestock Production: Wide variety of cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, etc. Primarily intergovernmental and local trade only based on available natural resources. Export small amounts to frontier worlds, monastery-worlds, and other systems in need of livestock to start their own industry. 
• Commercial Plants: Linen, flax, kitchen herbs, flowers,
INDUSTRY
• Mining: Primarily rock and ore based mines, with an emphasis on raw ores like iron, tin, copper, and limited precious metal mining in silver, gold, and diamonds. Focus is primarily on providing materials to industrialize fully on a planetary basis. 
• Manufacturing: Limited to household goods, agricultural equipment, and limited shipbuilding and weapons manufacturing.
• Logging: Well-developed and established given lack of industrialization and prevalence of old-growth trees due to earlier terraforming forestry projects. 

Trade & Transport

Trade is the life-blood of the League and the only real consistent factor keeping the various systems and worlds united. They trade primarily with each other, both in official government merchant-fleets carrying cargo between governments, as well as commercial trade companies and trade guilds, but also in independent tramp merchants that move from world to world trying to find the best market for their goods. Merchant-Marine and Trade Company ships tend to travel well-established, well-charted routes, while the tramp merchants often are the primary sources of trade for less developed, frontier worlds.

Liberum Fortuna

Founding Date

May 4, 2595

Type

Political, Confederation

Capital

Independence Station

Alternative Names

Colonial Trade League

Predecessor Organization

• Aldottorai Republic Colonial Sector

Training Level

Semi-professional

Veterancy Level

Experienced

Demonym

Kaisim, Leaguer,

Leader Title

Council-Captain

Government System

Meritocracy

Power Structure

Confederation

Economic System

Market economy

Currency

Kais Leaguers: Gold-based currency, printed into sheets to act much like paper money to save on weight and space. One Leaguer averages to being a day's wage for a manual laborer. These are broken down into a decimal system, with one hundred Knucklers to a Leaguer.

Major Exports

• Agricultural Goods 
• Raw ores and materials 
• Timber & wood pulp
• Luxury woodworking  

Major Imports

• Refined steel 
• Heavy Manufacturing and mining equipment 
• Large vehicles 
• Large ships 
• Luxury goods 
• Precious metals 
• Tea & Coffee 

Legislative Body

Kais League Council: The main legislative body of the League, and its only formal legislative body at the confederation level, is composed of a single representative from every system or planetary body in the League, with each member being given equally weighted votes and capacity to raise issues, propose legislation, and so on. They are led by the Council-Captain, which is a rotating position a new being elected every five standard years. Council representatives are appointed or elected according to their home traditions.

Judicial Body

Kais League Court:  The main judicial body for League-wide disputes, they usually only intervene in affairs between League-worlds and League-worlds and the League council. They almost never interfere in disputes on levels below that, unless there is some precedent that will affect the rest of the League.

Location

Kais Alpha IV

Neighboring Nations

• Aldottorai Republic
• Mennonite Havens
• Vanaeran Corporate Space

Governing Structure Flowchart
Council-Captain
Kais League Council
Captain-General of the Fleets
System Councils
Planetary Councils