The average Republican views Northern life as suffocating and repressed. Most Northerners denounce Republicans as decadent imperialists. The Humanist Alliance is the result of an attempt to create a utopian state. While the Alliance is hardly a perfect society, it has managed to survive for over three hundred years. Its population is generally content and its crime rates are astonishingly low.
Preceptors are the society's leaders and scholars.
Protectors are the military and police forces of the Alliance. Commoners are the laborers, businessmen, and craftsmen of their society. Children are assigned to a caste at age 12 after undergoing a complex battery of tests to determine their interests and natural aptitudes. Many foreigners mistakenly label the people of the Alliance as robots who serve their society. Preceptors plan, protectors fight, and commoners work.