Cincastrella Confederacy

Confederació Cincastrellana

The Cincastrella Confederacy is a small, but economically prosperous, and technologically advanced state at the edge of civilized space. The Cincastrella Confederacy managed to survive The Great Cataclysm relatively intact maintaining, barely, interstellar civilization throughout the whole of their relatively small territory. The Confederacy has also been able to benefit economically from its prime location near several ruins from the Pardian Civilization in the Wild Frontier, receiving a lot of trade from long-range explorers looking to unearth those ruins. The Cincastrella Confederacy is one of the main Stelsoc societies in the explored galaxy, and maintains a vibrant e-democracy at the edge of known space, though it is often threatened by the State of Pariah.

Culture

Cincastrella Culture is rather libertine, with most of the original colonists coming from backgrounds as Anarchic Stelsoc advocates, and coming out of the Great Cataclysm and its aftermath with a renewed sense of value in mutual aid and reasons to distrust the more restrictive cultures of Solist states. As a result, Cincastrellan culture values autonomy and solidarity, with a strong sense of personal freedom tempered by a need to look out for one's community. Cincastrellan culture is most widely known for its music and dance, which is highly regarded throughout explored space, or at least the parts of it where its export is allowed or even possible. It is a major producer of moving pictures and other performing and visual arts.

History

Among the last systems terraformed by the Stellar League before Great Cataclysm the five stars of the Cincastrella Confederacy were offered up to a group of colonists hailing from Iberia, Nueva Aztlan, and Angola among other states who had paid handsomely for the contract for colonization, chaffing under the increasingly overbearing Stellar League's precepts. The first colonists arrived in the region in AU 1682 quickly establishing successful colonies on the five stars that would eventually make up the Confederacy. The unearthing of Pardian ruins on Barcelona and de Leon would trigger a boom in new settlements as hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of scholars would flock to the small but burgeoning colonies in search of viable Pardian artifacts. The Confederacy would be largely unaffected by the Jred Scourge, though the rapid ramping up of military industry saw a dramatic increase in contracts for the manufacturers of Nova Luanda. As the Scourge continued, the region went into a significant economic downturn as deeply impoverished refugees from the systems ravaged and destroyed by the Jred arrived in numbers, and contracts from the battered and broken Stellar League began to dry up. This economic turmoil broke the back of the Frentierist economic order, and most of the colonies would fall to Stelsoc movements by the AU 2090s. The Stellar League put together an expeditionary force to put down these dissident governments, however, the events of the Great Cataclysm put an end to that expedition. After the five systems lost contact with nearly the entire outside world, they struggled to maintain interstellar civilizations, keeping their jump gates online only through great effort. The collective effort, however, proved to strengthen the ties between the states, and a few short decades after the Cataclysm, the Cincastrella Confederacy was first assembled. In its first form, it was a loose organization providing mutual aid between members with only minimal overarching laws, and no formal central government. In the years during and after the Long Dark the Confederacy focused inward, first maintaining, and then rebuilding a truly interstellar civilization and strengthening internal ties. The Confederacy managed to develop its economy, with Neto and Nueva Catalonia becoming prosperous and the other systems managing to survive, particularly with assistance from their more prosperous peer worlds. Two centuries after the Cataclysm, the Confederacy would face a major threat in the form of space pirates, ironically descended from the Expeditionary Force that nearly descended upon them two hundred years earlier. They ravaged the system defense boats that member worlds possessed. This forced the Confederacy to come together and establish an emergency presidium that could put together the cream of various system defense forces into a capable force. After the destruction of the pirates, this Presidum remained, and a second establishment began that created a central government, though one that would still devolve a lot of power to local forces. In recent years, and particularly after the jump interference caused by the Cataclysm began to abate, the Confederacy turned to the outside world. Though it tried to remain neutral and open for interstate exchange with everyone, the State of Pariah ruled by autocratic descendants of the former Sector Governor attempted to reintegrate the Confederacy into his own state, launching multiple invasions within fifty years of initial contact between the two states. Though these invasions were beaten back everytime, it was done so only at great cost. This forced the Confederacy to turn to outsiders for assistance, in which they found a willing partner in a nearby Stelsoc neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Yuanjing. These two states began trading heavily with one another and exchanged a treaty of mutual defense. With its security mostly assured the Confederacy opened once again, quickly becoming a major hub for explorers transiting into the Wild Frontier in search of human civilizations needing to be re-contacted and Pardian ruins to explore. This culminated in the creation of the Mutual Development and Assistance Pact which has become one of the dominant forces in Frontier Space.

Demography and Population

The Cincastrella Confederacy is fairly densely populated with an overall population of 21,686,263,612. Cincastrellans are scattered across 23 inhabited planets. Most of the population of the Confederacy lives on a few major planets, with Barcelona and Nova Luanda being the largest population centers, and the only ones with populations over one billion, with a few other worlds with populations in the millions. The colonies composing the Cincastrella Confederacy were some of the last colonies established before the arrival of the Jred and as a result, maintaining a relatively consistent population makeup. Most Cincastrellans are descendants of peoples who originated in romance language-speaking territories of Old Earth; Iberia, Nueva Aztlan, The Platan Confederacy, and Angola being the largest contributors of colonists to the project.

Territories

The Cincastrella Confederacy is one of the smallest of the major powers by territorial size, with only five systems placed closely together. They can, as a result only be considered to control 5 parsecs of explored space. The few systems under Cincastrella's control are, however, broadly some of the most habitable territories in explored space. Every system in the Confederacy's territory is inhabited, often by multiple worlds Most of the Cincastrella's primary worlds possess atmospheres that are breathable with at most minimal assistance, and many such as the Confederacy's capital world, Barcelona, being a jewel of the Stellar League's terraforming project before the Fall.

Military

Cincastrella's primary defense forces are the planetary defense militias that are organized and maintained by each member world. These militias are expected to maintain ground and intratellar fleets to defend against an initial assault. These are augmented by a Confederated Fleet and Marine Corps which are better equipped to see off a serious threat and provide the Confederacy's expeditionary capability. Defense militias are armed with whatever they can produce locally, with the standard Confederate design for customs cutters and defense boats being intentionally simple and low technology to ensure ease of manufacturing throughout the Confederacy. The unified Fleet is much more advanced, however, with some of the best technology seen outside the Union of Sol, and in the case of their flagship, beyond even that with a number of reconstructed Pardian artifact technologies.

Technological Level

The Cincastrella Confederacy maintains some highly advanced technologies, with Nueva Catalonia, and Barcelona in particular possessing a rough technological level approaching or even equal to the technological development of the Stellar League before the Great Cataclysm. Neto, the most populous territory maintains a "Low-Stellar" level of technical development. Other systems possess less advanced capabilities, though even the lowest technology member worlds possess early space-age manufacturing and maintenance capabilities. The Confederacy is also not reliant on Standard Build Templates, producing objects of their own design and being a major innovator in explored space.

Religion

The Cincastrella Confederacy is a broadly secular society with various members of its communities allowed to practice any religion they desire freely, or refuse to practice any as they wish. The Confederacy has largely avoided the influence of many of the religions to arise Post-Fall, and those who are religious still tend to maintain faith in the traditional religions of Old Earth. As was the case with many of the original colonists, most religious Cinastrellans are, in a certain sense Christian, and most of those still nominally swear loyalty to the Papal See on Io, though three millennia of drift and syncretization, one of which was conducted in near isolation from the outside world, Cincastrellan Christianity is radically different than its twenty-first-century Solar counterparts. Other traditional religious groups, especially Muslims, and the nonreligious also make up a large percentage of the overall population with no clear majority consensus on religion.

Foreign Relations

The Cincastrella Confederacy has tried to maintain a relatively peaceful stance with the other major powers of the world. However, geopolitical realities have presented a different situation. The State of Pariah, the largest power of the sector, the State of Pariah is hostile to the Confederacy and has enacted a blockade of their Jumpgate into its territories. A few military expeditions against the Confederacy have been beaten back at great cost. The Conderacy has therefore made an alliance, the 2nd Interstellar, with the Democratic Republic of Yuanjing, trading technology for ample trade, and a pact of mutual military assistance, this organization has expanded to include other members, and a new organization, the Frontier Mututual Development and Assistance Pact, which has been a powerful force in the Pardian Frontier.

Laws

Laws in the Cincastrella Confederacy, even by the standards of a Post-Fall society, are highly localized, with each independent soviet and world largely making its own laws. Generally, people have broad freedoms of expression, speech, and association and most planets are vibrant E-Democracies with the population able to shape the broad direction of the economy via referendum. Weapons laws are also relatively lax in the Confederacy, as most of the member worlds have citizen militias with unusually high membership. Some member planets are more restrictive, though membership in the Confederacy requires that member soviets not interfere too much in the daily lives of citizens and concern themselves instead with efficient public management of production.

Agriculture & Industry

The Cincastrella Confederacy maintains a high level of productivity in both the fields of agriculture and industry and is, broadly self-sufficient in that regard. The Confederacy produces more than enough food to meet the needs of its citizens, and is an exporter of food, primarily to its main trading partner Yuanjing. The Confederacy, particularly member worlds in the Neto and Nuevo Catalonia systems maintain extensive, heavily automated, high-technology industrial bases, with Nova Luanda actively being classified as an Industrial World. Cincastrella's industrial output is more than enough to meet the needs of the Confederate's citizenry and it trades a lot of high-tech goods with the outside world. The tertiary industry is quite valuable, as the exchange of services is a key driver of the internal economies of many member world's gift economies and is useful even in the more centrally planned and organized economy of Neto.

Education

Each member world of the Cincastrella Confederacy is responsible for providing free and accessible education for its citizen body, with at least a broad base in mathematics, the sciences, and at least one or two languages considered the bare minimum standard of education. Every member state has exceeded this minimum, offering curricula on topics such as civics, engineering, and the arts. Most educational materials are produced in Durruti, with Nueva Alacant's university being one of the finest educational institutions for educators in explored space, and are exported to other member worlds. In recent years, trade in educational materials has expanded to Yuanjing as well as the two states grow closer together in the face of the Pariah threat.

Infrastructure

The Cincastrella Confederacy is well connected, especially for a nation on the frontier. Spared from the worst effects of the Great Cataclysm the Confederacy managed to retain all of its Jumpgates and construct a few additional ones during the dark age. This has ensured that every member state is connected to the rest of the Confederacy by Jumpgate, a fact that was instrumental in keeping interstellar civilization in the Confederacy mostly intact. Within each member state, most people can expect amenities typical of at least an information-age economy.