Free Trade League

The Free Trade League is a relatively minor power found in the region of the Aoshtai Galaxy known as the Encounter. Rather then being a singular, unified nation the Free Trade League is a loose confederation of system states controlled by various merchant princedoms united via a pact of mutual protection and a series of laws governing norms of trade and a universal ban on development in the areas of genetic engineering, cybernetics, and psionics.

The Free Trade League is mostly known outside its boarders for its dedication to an extreme form of laissez faire capitalism and it's historical rivalry with the United Persan Descendants, and rivalry spawning from the Leagues distrust of psionics and any transapient practices, as well as the Leagues prosecution of the Persan at various points in history.

## History

### Provian Revolution

The history of the Free Trade League first begins with the establishment of a mining colony on the world of Prov by the Aoshantai Empire who shipped in a large number of human convicts and other dissidents to act as the colonies labor force. Overtime mining operations expanded to other planets throughout the region and the human colonists developed their own ethnic identity known as Provian, with the region they inhabited becoming known as the Prov Cluster. When the aoshantai empire fell the Provian colonists rebelled against their Aoshantai rulers, driving most of the Aoshantai out and developing a stigma against cybernetic and genetic augmentation, as well as psionics. All powers which their Aoshantai rulers had wielded.

With their freedom won from their former Aoshantai masters the Priovians set to work organizing themselves into a proto-republic. The dreams of a unified Provian society would be cut short though by invading Tesar hordes which would lead to the destruction of Provian spacefaring infrastructure and result in Provian societies throughout the cluster being hurled back into a pre-spacefaring age.

### Formation

The first of the former Provian colonies to regain spaceflight would be the Uulux, would had been spared the worst of the ravages of the Tesar. Scavenging the remains of Aoshantai ships that had been scuttled in the Uulux system during the Provian revolution the Uulux managed to reverse engineer quatum breach drives and set out to reunite the scattered former Provian colonies. What the Uulux found though was that the various colonies that had survived the Tesar invasion had culturally drifted far enough from another to no longer be considered Provian, leaving the former Prov Cluster a scattered patchwork of different ethnicities. Indeed the Uulux discovered that they too had drifted significantly from the original Provian culture so as to make any claims to inheriting the Provian's legacy tenuous at best.

Needing something to unite the scattered colonies back into a cohesive whole the Uulux started searching for potential unifying factors that could be used to weld together the various ethnicities descended from the Provians into a cohesive whole. Ultimately the Uulux found two things shared by almost all of the Provian's descendants: a focus on the free market and general distrust toward psions. Seizing upon this the Uulux came to the other Provian descended colonies with an offer: join and get access to space travel and large interconnected free market spanning the stars, and the Uulux would remove the psionically sensitive population from their society.

Those who choose to ally themselves to the Uulux's cause were granted a plethora of special privileges and access to resources that ultimately cemented their place of power creating the current system of nobility that dominates modern Free Trade League politics. While those that did not were often stripped of what power and wealth they had becoming a new underclass. Psions meanwhile were rounded up by the hundreds and resettled on a desert planet named Rodes where it was expected they would all die. But would survive in spit of the Uulux's expectations and form the only planet in the Free Trade League with a significant psionic population.

## Society

### Structure

The Free Trade League is a loose confederacy of system states each ruled over by a system of powerful merchant families. These merchant families form the FTL's Colonial Council which oversees the governing of inter-house trade between the system states. Heading the Colonial Council is the king of the FTL who is elected via a vote of the patriarchs/matriarchs of each family. The king also heads the Strategic Council, a council of generals and admirals appointed by the king to oversee the military and matters of security. While the king has final say in all matters dealing with the military and inter-house trade they have no authority over the internal matters of the system states beyond a few basic provision listed in the constitution of the Free Trade League: No citizen shall be held in bondage, if someone is able to pay for something they may have it, a ban on the merchant families owning their own militaries, and a blanket ban on all genetic engineering, cybernetics, and the development of psionic powers.

### Economics

The Free Trade League practices a rather extreme form of laissez faire capitalism with the government having very little in the way of powers to interfere in the economy beyond regulating trade lanes, resolving intra-family disputes, and ensuring the no transapient technologies such as gene altering tech and cybernetic implants are proliferating throughout the Free Trade League's markets. Due to the sheer amount of power and wealth wielded by the merchant families of the FTL, combined with the lack of regulation of their activities, most of the economic power of the FTL is concentrated in their hands. This creates a sharp wealth divide between them and everyone else with most of the FTL's population falling under their employ as what are basically (if not technically) serfs.

### Law Enforcement

Law enforcement in the FTL is usually up to the individual system states as the colonial council has limited power to enforce federal law in case that do not involve transapient technologies nor merchant families attempting to assemble their own militaries. When action does needed to be taken to enforce the few federal laws of the FTL or do eliminate the occasional pirate then the strategic council and the military are usually called in to handle the issue, usually employing a show of force to ensure compliance or to eliminate the threat in question.

### Religion

The FTL is a decidedly secular society with most of its citizens being atheist or agnostic. While religion is not banned or persecuted by any means there is an underlying social stigma against belief in higher powers. While there is little in the way of religion the FTL does have an almost cult-like devolution among the upper classes to a objectivist philosophy that holds ones own happiness, productivity, and reason to be the highest things in life. Among the lower classes though there is a underlying spiritual belief that holds that all things in nature have some sort of soul that should be respected.