The Bright Republic
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| Space City by Felix Ortiz. |
Shining jewel of Arcem and the center hub of all interstellar trade route, the Bright Republic is the oh-so-cliche image of the scifi trading hub: massive megastructures and arcologies dominate the landscape and a staggering amount of xenotypes mingle in the street and plaza. The average inhabitant of the Bright Republic has a life very much on par with modern day Earth: they go to school as children and as adults work for a company of some kind. The only major difference being in the window dressing: cars can fly and their neighbor might have four arms and blue skin. There are poorer and richer people but overall things are pretty fine.
That is, of course, the surface image the Bright Republic love to project to both foreigner and citizen alike. The Republic is increasingly nothing more than a puppet to various technological consortium and cabals of all stripes eager to have as much power and dominance in the region. Corporate warfare is the norm and those working in the arcologies of these various factions may very well one day be cut down by the nano-razor sword of some genetically and cybernetically-enhanced mercenary out to extract some crucial data for a rival company.
Divine-level transhuman modifications are comparatively rare in the Bright Republic, as it lack the establish posthuman families of other nations. Most citizen, even those from highly divergent xenotypes, are generally within the realm of mortal capabilities when it come to physical and mental attributes. However the technological stability of the Bright Republic and it's wealth makes it extremely easy for well-connected individuals or corporately-backed warriors to acquire dubiously legal modifications which go far beyond the average health-correcting modifications of ordinary citizen.
The armies of the Bright Republic include various enlisted forces like it's marine corps, the navy, the cyber-warfare division and various branches of elite super soldiers. Some are part of specially-altered regiment of genetically and/or cybernetically augmented soldiers designed for surgical precision warfare while others are more exotic or unique individuals assigned on a case-by-case basis. However what the Republic doesn't want to acknowledge is that these elite soldiers are, in truth, few and far between to police the sector not to mention there is the question of who hold such mighty champions accountable?
Kingdom of Ancalia
Once a powerful nation famous for it's transhuman nobility and its many, many orders of knights and warrior-monks of all stripes (and indeed shape, form or nature as the descendant of the transhuman Ancients take oh-so-many-forms), Ancalia is now a broken land. The collapse of it's Celestial Engines have not only weakened Arcem as a whole but allowed a destructive and ill-understood nanophage weapon to spread inside Ancalia, reanimating the dead. The fact this plague has not spread beyond Ancalia's border in spite of many refugee ship fleeing in time has led many to believe it to be somehow tied to the life support systems of the whole region.
That was centuries ago: today Ancalia's nobility and people are in exile or near-exile in the various space fortress at the limit of their border. The more exotic transhuman lineage have not fared very well under the effects of this life-support degradation and have become crippled and bitter. The Ancalian now refer to them as the 'Cousins' and these strange beings are now fighting a protracted war between the infected creatures and the Ancalian themselves.
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| Art by Rodrigo Galdino |
The Patrian Regime
No society is more regimented and war-like in Arcem than the Patrian Regime. Their society would very much seem familiar to the paleo-writer Robert A. Heinlein and his seminal work Starship Trooper. To be a Patrian citizen is to be a soldier, or at least serve the military regime in some meaningful capacity be it as engineer, scientist or non-combat personnel of some stripes so long as it is under the banner and toward the advancement of the Patrian Regime. Non-citizen are generally seen with suspicion, either as sympathizer to outside causes or merely as cowards without the guts to do what must be done for the glory of the Patrian Regime. To the Patrian, denying certain rights to those unwilling to do their part is only fair, after all.
Mechanized and power-armored warfare is central to the Patrian identity as is their long-standing war with Dulimbai, as is their extremely sturdy military-grade architecture. The Patrian cities are arcologies are both marvel of architecture as they are functional modular fortresses and the Patrian certainly excel at the marriage of beauty, form and function...even if critics are quick to point out the lingering sense of brutality in the clean-yet-dominating shape of their buildings. Looming eagle and leopard shapes can be both magnificent and intimidating at the same time, after all.
Dulimbai Directorate
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| Just the typical Sci-Fi Scientist by Maik Beiersdorf. |
Austere, traditional and extremely bureaucratic the Dulimbai Directorate was once the spearhead of an invasion until the inter-system transit network connecting Arcem to this distant empire collapsed, leaving the invaders to fend for themselves and establish their own society. This early invasion is what started the endless war between Patria and Dulimbai, which has alternate through the centuries between skirmish, proxy warfare, political bickering, cold war and in one instance exchange of inter-planetary missiles. The Dulimbai of today are a very different people from the invaders, however and have long kicked out any pretense of serving some empire they have lost contact with: instead the scholarly elite staged a coup and assassinated the former leaders and installed in it's place a technocratic and scientific directorate.
The people of what is now Dulimbai merely kept trading one form of hierarchy for another. Today, all poor Dulimbaite aspire to be accepted in the various universities in hope of being elevated to the more prestigious castes. Unfortunately many of those who do succeed only find themselves relegate to various middle management position as only the most cutthroat, cunning, intelligent or connected of individuals ever stand a chance of becoming part of the erudite elite caste which dominate their society. The Dulimbai are only rivaled by the Bright Republic when it come to technology and in certain aspects they boast that they have (or soon will) outshine their rival. For someone in the Bright Republic, to have studied at a fancy Dulimbaite university is a mark of prestige.
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