Galactic Federation

The **Galactic Federation of Sol-Daiban** is the political union reigning over the Orion Spur of the Sol-Daiban Galaxy, centralized on planet Daiban. Initially founded in 2568 Common Era as a simple coalition of worlds in the aftermath of the Covenant War and the Reclamation, the loose alliance underwent a greater reformation in 2681 just prior to the Second Machine War, guided by the Thó'ha Chozo into what is now the Galactic Federation. Currently, the Federation claims to include over twenty thousand system worlds throughout ten thousand light-years of the explored Orion Spur, though many are in fact small mining stations, dome-cities, or world station platforms orbiting otherwise uninhabitable planets, and has an estimated twenty trillion senti-sapient inhabitants.

## History

Formed in the Common Era year of 2568 by former subject worlds of the now collapsed Covenant, the original form of the Galactic Federation was merely a loose coalition of the recently freed worlds. Initially an agreement of trade and mutual protection between the primarily non-militant races, the original ten systems began forming alliances with new species, eventually encountering the remains of the once vast Mantu Empire, now shattered and nomadic as a result of the destruction of their entire sector by the chain of supernovas that decimated their systems, and expanding their influence out from the Al’kya System in the Cygnus X-1 sector and outward through the Orion Spur. This gave the coalition worlds some banded protection, as the Mantu were of a technological level similar to the former Covenant, but generally more inclined to avoid conflicts when possible. Within sixty standard years, the Freed Worlds found themselves once more attempting to avoid destruction as the Kilrathi Empire began aggressively expanding out from their regions along both courses of the Spur, seemingly resuming the course of domination left by the Covenant as they had been claiming various salvage and abandoned Covenant bases with which the Kilrathi further enhanced their own technology and fleets.

It was in 2629 CE that the Kilrathi encountered the Terrans, still rebuilding from the Covenant War and the reorganization of the United Earth Government into the Terran Confederation, leaving the coalition to watch as the Confederation waged a nearly forty year war with the conquest-crazed and destructively armed Kilrathi, and ended the conflict with the destruction of the Kilrathi homeworld in 2669. The conflict made the coalition wary of interacting with the Terrans, as many still remembered the Covenant War and the ferocity with which the humans fought against seemingly certain extinction. The lengths humanity was able to go to when fighting those conditions furthered paranoia about the Terrans and what they were capable of. By 2681, the coalition was visited by representatives of the Chozo Brood, the last dying remnant of the ancient Chozo race, who helped guide the reformation of the former fringe worlds into the Galactic Federation. A little over a decade later would be when the Prometheum Machine Empire arrived from the Andromeda Galaxy in full force in 2701 and plunged the known galaxy into a horrifying conflict the likes of which had not been seen since the height of the Covenant War.

The newly formed Federation watched in fear for the most part as the Sangheili Nation threw themselves almost gleefully into the conflict, while a battered and bitter, yet still vengeful Confederation brought everything it had left or had built up in the span of just under four decades between the end of the Kilrathi War and the Machine Empire's invasion even as the humans continuously pushed their technologies further and further. The Machine War raged for over sixty years, during which the Federation found itself relying heavily on the aid of the humans and their allies for survival. By the time the Empire mysteriously ceased hostilities and withdrew from the galaxy, most of the Orion Spur was left with so much to rebuild, especially the Terrans, who were cut down to approximately four and a half billion remaining throughout the known Galaxy within the Confederation itself. At the continued urging of the Chozo, the Federation extended thanks and an offer of membership to the Terrans.

## Political Structure

The Federation officially operates on a form of what Terrans recognize as a federal representation republic combined with aspects of neo-feudalism. Officials are elected as representatives and meet in the capital on Daiban to form the Galactic Congress, made up of the Lower Assembly and the Greater Assembly, which is lead by the High Chairman of the Federation, and the Member Systems are able to function under their own governments and laws so long as there are no conflicts with those established on the galactic federal level, as stipulated in the Al'kya Accords. In theory, every Member System is supposed to be represented by their own elected Councilor or Ambassador, allowing each species to voice their concerns and views on galactic affairs and bylaws and have effect on the course of the Federation. In practice, despite the inclusion of the embassy member systems in the Lower Assembly to draft and propose laws, and allowance of observation by the Ambassadors of those systems in the Greater Assembly, they are allowed little beyond giving views and opinions while only the Councilors of the Greater Assembly have real power to vote and institute policies. This policy of elite favoring and consolidation of power to the central systems has frustrated many, including the Terran Confederation, who have still been denied a seat in the Greater Assembly after two centuries, on the grounds of “considerations to be taken" every time the matter is brought up.

Politically, there are a number of factions that center around cohesive ideologies in how the course of the Orion Spur, and in theory, the Sol-Daiban Galaxy, is to be governed. Three of the most well known and influential are the Fro'mal, the Praetareus, and the Reconcilers, and each has different views of how the Federation should be managed and the influences that should be given to the member systems outside the founder worlds, as well as the extent of restrictions to be placed on military assets of the member systems that maintain their own defense forces and militias.

The Fro'mal Faction takes its name from the Divolu word for "originators" or "founders", and proscribes stability in the status quo, to avoid rapid unchecked change and the chaos thereof. Comprised primarily of members of the Divolu, Alphinians and Yonhet species, along with some of the Mantu in their numbers, a drive toward centralized power in the hands of the Founder elites has been motive for many of the senior members of this political faction that has lasted since the formal founding of the Federation. They ascribe resolution of conflicts by use of peacekeepers and specialized agents, as opposed to an active and large scale armed military such as those maintained by the Terran Confederation and the Sangheili, and thus are the faction responsible for many of the policies that constrain armed forces growth, such as the required use of Aurora Units in capital class vessels, and the size-mass restrictions on combat vessels that are considered capital class warships.

The Praetareus faction was founded soon after the reorganization that birthed the Federation in the 2680s as an initially small but stubborn group of shared ideals, but gained some significant favor and growth into a major political faction after the Machine War brought its horrifying front into the Orion Spur. Aggressively expansionist and ascribing to an ideology of centralized military power, the Praetareus faction is most popular with elected representatives of the Ok'th-lhu, the Q'roq'us, the Phrygisians, and has some support from a number embassy member systems, including the Tokargans, several human colonies, a large number of Jiralhanae, and many of the Firekkans. The common view of the Praetareus faction is that the Galactic Federation must be prepared to face any external aggressor with a unified force, and has called for placing all military and self-defense assets of Federation Member systems under the direct authority of centralized Federation military command. This obviously puts the Praetareus at many ideological odds with the factionists of the older Fro'mal Faction, and some contention with the Reconcilers. It is in fact Praetareus factional pressure that contributed to the current requirements of all member species to contribute a portion of their military no defense ship production to the maintenance and support of the Federation Defense Fleet that protects Daiban and other politically valuable systems in the Federation. This, following the devastation of the Machine War in the 2700s, has become one of the faction's most prominent policy legacies to date.

After the devastation left in the aftermath of the Machine War, and the Chozo Brood re-emerged from their sanctuaries to press once more the importance of bringing the humans of the Confederation into the fold of the Galactic Federation, the Reconcilers were formed from the ideologies of cooperation with all the worlds within and without the Orion Spur. The unique identities of each member system are what the Reconcilers consider key to the Federation, and the strengthening of each member's individual defenses to contribute to a networked web instead of centralizing all military power into the hands of one singular organization is their view of how to better combat the threats they face. The Reconciler Faction first had leadership in the Mantu representative of the 2770s, and as was then, the current headrunner of the faction, as well as current Chairman of the Galactic Federation itself, is a Mantu, Arba'dos Kea'ton.

## Size and Population

At present, the Federation is comprised of over twenty thousand planets, moons, and colony world stations throughout thirty-five hundred stellar systems in the Orion Spur of the Sol-Daiban Galaxy. There is, however, a great population disparity from one to another, particularly among the terrestrial colonies. A number of planets, mostly in the center of the Federation, are densely populated into the billions each, while others on the Outer Edge have no more than a few thousand inhabitants. Most planets fall between these two extremes with the average planetary population being approximately fifteen to twenty-five million residents of sentient species in cities of under fifty thousand. World stations also range from a minimum of several thousand citizens at the far edge of minor trading routes to a maximum of ten or fifteen million in the largest world stations along major trading routes. The typical population for the average world station is between two to five million, since unlike planets, it eventually became more cost effective to pack as many people into one area as possible because of the high fixed costs associated with environmental and gravitational manipulation. Beyond ten million residents, however, it becomes unsafe to maintain the number of atmospheric cyclers required to keep the environment at the proper equilibrium in the typical world station.

The population is distributed sporadically across the Federation in clusters, with centralization in the regions around the primary political centers of civilization within the Orion Spur. The "hub" of the Spur is the Inner Systems, centralized around the Al'kya system and the federal capitol of Daiban, near Cygnus X-1, and contains about one fifth of the territory of the Federation, but forty percent of the population. The middle of the Spur, or the Expansion Systems, better known as the Neck, reaches out from the outer edge of the Cygnus sector nebula and through the Confederation up to the edge of the Orion Molecular Complex, into the edges of where the Spur branches out from the Sagittarius Arm at the coreward edge, and comprises sixty percent of Federation territory and about thirty percent of the population. The rest of the area and population belong to the Outer Systems, which are mostly thinly populated trade ports, resource gathering outposts, and rural colonies primarily within the outskirts just before the Vela Ridge on the rimward end and the some of the coreward regions into the Sagittarius Arm, with a few distant outliers in exotic materials mining colonies such as Calliope IX and K-2L that sit outside the nominal borders. Connecting the regions are the major trading routes, which tend to be much more densely populated than the surrounding area. Being included in a trading hub is almost guaranteed to provide prosperity, and the opposite is true of those systems bypassed by a new route.

It's important to note that despite its name, the Galactic Federation is not actually "galactic" except in the sense that the Federation considers the entire Sol-Daiban Galaxy part of its rightful territory, regardless that it has not actually surveyed and explored much of the galaxy at large. The actual territory of the Federation is primarily within the Orion Spur, with everything outside the three and a half kiloparsec span of the settled Spur being considered the Unknown Regions. This includes the Perseus Transition up to the Cygnus Arm Intersection, the neighboring regions of the Perseus Arm, and almost all areas within and past the Sagittarius Intersection. Also, despite being within the Orion Spur, some territories are not actually part of the Federation due to reluctant agreements made with the Sangheili Nation States, as well as the generally hostile nature of the Jiranhalae at large, the Banished, and of course, the scattered factions of the Kromus, who are estimated to number at least one trillion hiding out in just the Unknown Regions of the galaxy alone, and likely far more still in the Greater Magellanic Cloud and in the outer unexplored regions of dark space.

In total, there are just over twenty trillion registered citizens, though a sizable chunk of other unofficial residents also exist. These include many in the Outer Systems whose families never registered them or are part of Terran colony systems thought lost following the First Machine War in the end of the 2200s. Estimates of these two demographics range from two to fifteen billion, depending on the source. Accounting for these unaffiliated and unregistered populations, the total throughout the Orion Spur reaches a possible twenty-two trillion.

## Departments and Internal Organization

* Galactic Congress of the Federation
	+ Greater Assembly of the Congressional Council
	+ Lesser Assembly of Legislation and Embassy
* Office of Foreign Relations and Contact Oversights
* Galactic Federation Academy of Sciences and Knowledge
	+ Galactic Federation Exploration Corps
* Department of Finance and Commerce
* Department of Military Oversight and Defense Affairs
	+ Galactic Federation Stellar Defense Fleet
	+ Galactic Federation Peacekeeper Division

## Trivia

* *Metroid Prime's* US website states: *"Welcome to the GFB Inter-Stellar Network. This state-of-the-art network links to **98%'*** **of the Galactic Federation's *140,328*** *Permanent-Member Systems. From Zebes to Corella 5, you'll have full access to the Federation's entire database."* While this may be the size of the Federation in Metroid canon, it was reduced in size in Monomachiarum's unified setting to reflect the various conflicts and other major civilizations within the galaxy.