Kingdom of Aratacia

Overview Characters Military

### Policy

See Kingdom of Aratacia#Government and Politics and Kingdom of Aratacia#Foreign Policy

## Societal information

### Members

Drodo
Humans

## Historical information

### State

Stable

The **Kingdom of Aratacia** is a Drodo nation located in the Axanar region of the Aoshtai Galaxy. One of three major polities in the Drodo Sector, it is embroiled in a long-standing power struggle with its neighbour and rival Adriyan. The Kingdom of Aratacia is the oldest extant Drodo nation, originating in the distant pre-spacefaring past of the Drodo race when the feuding tribes of the Aratacian people were united under one charismatic king, Sevrasi the First. It is a leading member of the Grand Concourse Treaty Organization and presently considered among the galaxy's great powers as a result of being one of the victors of the Ascendancy War.

## Operatives

1 Asten ***Sleuth***
2 Phero ***Cypher***
3 Herrath ***Sleuth***
## History

*See History of the Kingdom of Aratacia.*

## Government and Society

*See also: Aratacian People.*

The Government of Aratacia is a Constitutional Monarchy in which the Crown, as the defender of the Aratacian people, their customs, and their ancient liberties, is conferred a theoretically limitless amount of power to enact and execute law and state policy. The Crown is also an important cultural institution, with the person of the reigning monarch being a sacred figure considered separate from regular political operations and important in various Rhyan religious duties pertinent to the Aratacian state.

In practice, the power of the Crown is distributed across a small but efficient federal state apparatus. For most occasions, the Crown governs through the Cabinet, which is a group of Ministers appointed both by the monarch and by the Prime Minister, who is a politician elected by Parliament, itself a democratically-elected body of representatives which elects a Prime Minister and advises and petitions the Crown on behalf of constituents. Therefore, the decision-making part of the federal state apparatus is comprised of the Monarch and his Cabinet formally, and informally also the Prime Minister, Members of Parliament, and any advisors any of these individuals may have. In all cases however, it is the Monarch who has final say.

This decision-making tranche directs the **R.A.A.F.** via the War Ministry, the **Royal Aratacian Intelligence Agency** (R.A.I.S.) via the Crown and relevant ministers (typically the Foreign and Justice Ministers), and the Justice Ministry through the Justice Minister and judges of rank.

Most of Aratacia's bureaucratic and law enforcement work is done via the **Royal Uniformed Civil Service** (R.U.C.S.), a large umbrella of civil agencies who share in common a military-style organisation, use of uniforms, and reception of two-year contract conscripts from Aratacia's mandatory male military service. Agencies that fall under the Civil Service include the Royal Revenue Agency, Royal Customs, Agriculture and Health Inspection Agency, Construction Compliance, the Royal Aratacian Constabulary, and several others. The R.U.C.S. overall is quite small compared to the country it must run, but is well-regarded internationally for the efficiency and professionalism of the agencies under its purview.

Aratacia's government is explicitly autocratic, however the people of Aratacia regularly score on international surveys as among the freest as regards individual liberties and civil rights. This apparent contradiction is explained by analysts in two ways: first being the small size of the federal government means that much of the day-to-day governance on the worlds, provinces, and cities of Aratacia is done by local governments, who are often democratically elected and are closely tied to their constituents by communal bonds.

The second, related reason owes to the scale, power, and sheer inertia of Aratacian society and culture. Millennia of custom, culture, and legal jurisprudence weigh on the Crown and explicitly describe its responsibilities to the people, the expectations it must uphold, and the practical limits on its power. Indeed, it is implicit in the Aratacian social contract that the only reason the state is allowed to function is because the gigantic tangle of civil, social, and religious institutions comprising Aratacia believes that it *should* function.

Successful state policy, such as mass conscription, is accepted by the mass of Aratacian society and absorbed into it as a self-sustaining cultural institution. Unsuccessful state policy is rejected by the society, and is impossible to implement at any level. In practical terms, this has the benefit of cutting down on the bureaucracy needed to run the country, but it also makes sweeping reforms extremely hard.

### The Crown

**INCLINATION** -  Liberalism
**REIGNING SINCE** - *1 NE*
**AGE** - *40* (23 NAC)
**APPROVAL** - *78%* (23 NAC)
**HEIR** - *Aratis Kilar*

Sevrasi was never meant to be king. After the unexpected death of Sevrasi's father, who was to be heir to old Jilnaris X's throne as his only son, Sevrasi found himself in line for the throne. When Jilnaris X died of health complications mere months later, he left the throne to the seventeen year old as his dying decree in an unexpected move. His reasoning for picking Sevrasi over a regent or close colleague died with him.
News of his ascent terrified the boy, who realised that his clear life trajectory was shattered right before his eyes. Media from all corners of Drodo civilisation trampled over the pieces to obtain information on the then-obscure nobleman, who made his first few trembling steps into the halls of royal power mere days later. The transition from an aristocratic boy to king was troubling and uncomfortable, but it did not take him long before he found the weight of the crown perfectly bearable upon his head.
Sevrasi XI's reign has been known mainly for its moderation, in defiance of most expectations early on in his reign. While Sevrasi did overhaul the Kingdom's foreign policy early on in his reign, ever since then he has settled into the careful constitutionalism of his forebears. Some have privately raised doubts as to whether Sevrasi XI's careful, almost reluctant, style of rule will be sufficient in a galaxy increasingly enflamed by conflict and tensions.

## Territory

**THE KINGDOM of ARATACIA**

The Kingdom is divided into Sectors which are broadly responsible for the maintenance of astroinfrastructure including waystations, etherlanes, spaceborne policing patrols, and emergency services. The personnel responsible for maintaining the Sectors come from the Royal Uniformed Civil Service, a federal institution.

Sectors are further comprised of system and/or planetary governments called *Balecs*. These regional governments are responsible for the maintenance of planetside and systembound infrastructure, and the provision of police and emergency services. Sectors are expected to raise revenues through the collection of tolls and the running of state enterprises, whereas *Balecs*, which typically have almost all of the Sector's population under their purview, primarily raise revenues via taxation. *Balecs* are elected governments and have a wide range of autonomy so as to best respond to the requirements of their constituents.

## Economics & Trade

*See Kingdom of Aratacia/Trade.*

The Kingdom of Aratacia maintains a mostly free market within its own borders. Regulations are very light in most regards which allows for efficiency and innovation, however anti-monopoly laws in Aratacia are some of the toughest in the entire Cluster. Aratacian regulators aggressively pursue and break up large and influential corporations and injunctions against major mergers are frequent. Largely, this is done as a means to protect small businesses and national sovereignty from corporate meddling, but it has the negative side-effect of making Aratacia difficult to do business in when operating in a high-growth sector or when extremely successful. This in turn incentivises business models that prioritise slow and steady growth, which in turn slows down Aratacian GDP growth overall.

As an extension of these policies, Aratacia is extremely suspicious of multinational corporations and prohibits the ownership of Aratacian land or space by noncitizens.

## Military and Defence

*For a more detailed military breakdown, see Kingdom of Aratacia/Military.*

### Overview

The armed forces of the Kingdom of Aratacia are the *Royal Aratacian Armed Forces*, or RAAF. The RAAF's commander-in-chief is the Crown, and its administration is handled by the Ministry of War.

The RAAF has three branches: the Royal Aratacian Army (RAA), which handles all planetside operations and rotary-wing aircraft; the Royal Aratacian Navy (RAN), which handles all operations in deep space; and the Royal Aratacian Orbital Force (RAOF), which handles all orbital and airspace operations in coordination with the Army, acting in a capacity analogous to an Air Force. The Orbital Force also maintains Aratacia's fleet of fixed-wing terrestrial aircraft.

In each of these branches there are further subdivisions and some overlap-- for Orbital Force, for instance, maintains its own fleet of corvettes and destroyers separate from the Navy's in order to fight for dominance of planetary orbits, whereas the Navy maintains its own fighters and marine corps separate from the Orbital Force's. Overall however all three are meant to cooperate and coordinate operations with eachother in order to achieve success, and all three have clearly defined missions.

While Aratacia had at many times in its 7000-year history the most powerful military of all Drodo states, the extended peace of the past two centuries previous to the Second Concourse War had meant that the Kingdom's conventional military capabilities had been allowed to severely atrophy. Cuts to the military's funding-- so as to be diverted to the intelligence work of Foreign Affairs and the Interior or to be put toward economic development-- had meant that more and more the Aratacian state and the governors that ran it had a growing reliance on reservists, irregulars, and police to provide security against insurgencies or to provide emergency relief. This hurt the prestige of the regular military due to a perceived inability to provide internal security and justified further defunding, which then harmed the Kingdom's external security capabilities.

This situation had reversed rapidly with the coming of the Second Concourse War, during which national service was reinstated and the entire military was rapidly and massively increased in size in order to fight the Ascendancy of the Broken Ring and support the GCTO. While the conscripts were demobilised after the war's end, the large and revitalised military establishment remained. Within a few years, the Aratacian armed forces had reclaimed its place of cultural and social importance.

## Foreign Relations

  Binding Military Alliance
  Close partnership
  Guaranteeing independence
  No relationship
  Open Rivalry
  State of War
  Trade Embargo

### Alliances & Commitments

**Grand Alliance**
   Phero Ecumene
   Amestria
   Aoshanti Republic
   Karstedt
   Naer'si
   Arboros
   Concourse Commonwealth
   Trillic Khaganate
   Day's End
   Marric Union

**Other Alliances**
   Illarian Empire
   Girtabelilu State
   Aoshtai's Psigates
...

### Trade & Support Relations

   Amestria
   Phero Ecumene
   Karstedt
   Ibi's Hollow
None

### Rivals & Enemies

   Phero Ecumene
   Illarian Empire
   Girtabelilu State
**▼** Adresaas Empire

   Aoshanti Empire   Kingdom of Vigila   Kingdom of Neodorum

**▼** Adresaas Empire
   Aoshanti Empire
   Titian
   Kingdom of Neodorum

### Embassies & Diplomatic Missions

  Kaikyo
  Aoshanti Republic
  Naer'si
  Grand Concourse Treaty Organization
  Sultanate of Hasariah
  Concourse Commonwealth
  Verisan
  Trillic Khaganate
  3rd Imperium of Coriusian
  Amestria
  Phero Ecumene
  Realm of Stjarnavík
  Kuvik Jahar
  Argen Syndicacy
  Galactic Federation
  Levlistra
  Kuolbenic Despotate
  Arboros
  Lunsariat
  Illarian Empire
  Little Illaria of Northern Aoshtai
  Muara
  Aoshanti Republic
  Naer'si
  Grand Concourse Treaty Organization
  Seniborcia
  Concourse Commonwealth
  Krizovia
  Brestovik
  Kaikyo
  Dorosani
  Amestria
  Phero Ecumene
  Realm of Stjarnavík
  Kylnrift Parity
  Holy Eden of New Tvolai
  Kuolbenic Despotate
  Arboros
  Lunsariat
  Illarian Empire
  Little Illaria of Northern Aoshtai
  Lindinis
  Order of Kiari
  Muara
  Levlistra
  Krallia
  Marric Union
  Clans of Torkac
  Argen Syndicacy

### Rivals and enemies

 ! Karstedt
 ~ Merosian Imperium
 ! New Adresaas Dominion
 ! Aoshanti Republic