State of Pariah

The State of Pariah is a large and powerful autocratic federative state that is the most powerful state in the Pariah Sector. The State of Pariah was formed in the ashes of The Great Cataclysm and has been slowly growing throughout the years after the fall, with the pace of its conquests accelerating as travel between the systems of the galaxy became easier. Pariah is a major Solist state, and its most developed worlds are often totalitarian states, though the frontier worlds have much looser controls. Drawing its descent from the original sector governorship of the Sector, the State of Pariah lays claim to the whole sector. This has seen a flareup in tensions between Pariah and its neighboring worlds.

Culture

The State of Pariah maintains a militant, authoritarian culture emulating similar states such as the Cetian Union and Union of Sol, to foment a martial state capable of eliminating the hostile Stelsoc states on its frontier and enforcing its claim on the whole of the Pariah Sector. To that end, the instilling of patriotic values is necessary, many of the arts, particularly the mass media have therefore been harnessed to achieve this aim. This has limited cultural expression within the State of Pariah, especially within the Pariah system itself. However, the realities of maintaining a large, underdeveloped state means that the periphery has more diversity.

History

Initial colonization of the inner parts of the Pariah Sector, those systems that existed outside the confines of the Hawker Nebula, was quite early, with the Cantobaria System, home of the world of Pariah itself, being settled in AU 197 by an early jump ship. These initial settlements were quite small and focused almost entirely on the export of natural resources to the homeworld and importing the crude and slow-operating terraforming equipment that would make these worlds habitable. Within a few centuries, however, worlds became, broadly, habitable, populations grew, and some of the larger colonies industrialized, allowing the exploration further into the frontier, with exploration of the Hawker nebula commencing in the third century AU. Pariah came into incredible prominence in these early days, being the largest, most heavily industrialized world in the sector by the sixth century AU. Though the relative autonomy of the worlds in the Pariah Sector would continue well into the interstellar era, thanks to the comparative isolation of the region from Earth. After the conclusion of the Third Great Human Civil War, the outer colonies of colonized space became increasingly subject to more direct governance from Earth, though the realities of interstellar civilization would mean that in reality, this central control meant that administrations were reorganized with individual colonial administrations merged into sector authorities that maintained sector fleets that could, structurally, be made inferior and subservient to Sol and the innermost colonies. When reorganization came to what would become the Pariah Sector, Pariah being, at the time, a highly developed and prosperous world, was selected as the seat of the Sector Government, with the first Earth-appointed sector governor arriving in the early 15th century AU. The Pariah Sector throughout its early history struggled with frequent strikes, protests, and rebellions, particularly in the frontier worlds of Yuanjing. This would grow even more frequent as the newly established Stellar League increased its demands of the outer colonies. This would come to a head with the Great Yuanjing Rebellion, a massive uprising that nearly overthrew the Sector Government before the Stellar League dispatched an expedition of the Sol Sector Fleet and utterly crushed the rebellion. After this event, governorship of the region was much more restrictive, and more worlds were seeded with loyal colonists to prevent the possibility of another uprising. In the last years of the Stellar League, the twin disasters of the Jred Invasion and the Great Cataclysm would threaten to tear the Pariah Sector asunder. Though the Sector was spared direct invasion of the Jred, refugees from the rim destabilized the economies of the Sector, and increased strain on the Sector Governorship saw further rebellions in the Hawker systems, those that would become Cincastrella and Yuanjing. Shortly before the Cataclysm, the Stellar League began to intervene again, with a major fleet coming to destroy the rebellions. The Great Cataclysm brought an end to these plans, as the nearly impossibility of interstellar transit led to the collapse of the wider sector governance. The scattered worlds of the Pariah Sector, particularly those that weren't able to maintain their jumpgates, regressed to pre-stellar levels of development, and even the core worlds struggled to survive the age of barbarism, particularly as a large horde of pirates, descendants of the Sol Sector Expedition that had to turn to piracy to survive, ravaged Pariah space for decades, until most were eventually driven in the direction of the Hawker Nebula, or Rimward towards the worlds ravaged by the Jred. In this time, Pariah, still claiming itself to be the legitimate sector seat, established a new state of Pariah. This state, based on the Solist Principles that had begun to take over inhabited space in the last years of the Stellar League, attempted to reclaim control of the sector. This process was slow at first but gained pace as the aftershocks of the Cataclysm abated, and more and more interstellar travel was allowable. In recent years, this expansion has moved even outside the traditional bounds of the Sol Sector. It has hit a stopping point, however, with the new states in the Hawker Nebula, which both aligned themselves against the old power. As a result, the contemporary era of the Pariah Sector has consisted of political and economic struggles between Pariah, Cincastrella, and Yuanjing, with tensions sometimes breaking out into brief periods of open war.

Demography and Population

The exact size of the population in the state of Pariah is hard to pin down. Due to the vast array of technological development levels in the state and the vast distances with poor infrastructure, the State of Pariah gives a lot of power to local governors, so long as they are loyal, to count the population and tax them to whatever amount they choose, so long as money, goods, and persons flow into the power centers of the state. Pariah is estimated to have a population in the low tens of billions, with most of its population concentrated in its core industrialized worlds. Parians are a very diverse lot, with the various local subsector governments and settlement contracts being issued to a wide array of states. Most of these peoples originated in Old Earth's global south, however, as the regions of the Pariah Sector outside the Hawker Nebula were colonized earlier in the history of the galaxy.

Territories

The State of Pariah maintains a vast expanse of territory spanning roughly 40 parsecs of charted space, making it, territorially, one of the largest, if not the largest, interstellar state in charted space today. Much of this territory is largely empty, however, with roughly half of Pariah space lacking settled systems, or indeed any systems at all. It has been steadily expanding, absorbing worlds in the Fracana Sector, and pressuring rivals in its home sectors, but has been struggling to maintain the pace of expansion. The worlds of the Pariah Sector are a mixed lot, though thanks to its position, the majority of major member worlds in Pariah are comparatively verdant, with fewer hostile worlds than many other states.

Military

The State of Pariah possesses, at least on paper, one of the largest militaries in civilized space. Its Navy has a vast fleet of warships, several hundred strong, and even larger numbers of system defense boats, smallcraft, and other assorted auxiliary craft. It also possesses a fairly sizable corps of naval infantry and even a large offensive planetary army. This is on top of planetary defense forces numbering in the tens of millions. The State of Pariah's military is fairly capable, though its age and a lack of innovation have begun to take their toll on Pariah's armed forces, with much of its military still reliant on equipment produced from the Standard Built Template system, which combined with its status as a frontier world hampers the technological capacity of its armed forces. It lacks large capital ships, with only a handful of improvised designs in service, as well as a heavy starlift capacity, which also relies on jury-rigged designs.

Technological Level

The State of Pariah is, by many standards, relatively backward. Though its core worlds maintain a level of technical understanding and production that fits well with a stellar society, most of the outlying worlds have much, much less to work with. That being said, most worlds under the control of the State of Pariah have at least the capability to split the atom, and only a handful of genuinely feral worlds still exist under the control of the State of Pariah. Pariah is a net importer of technology, purchasing most of what it is incapable of producing on its own.

Religion

The State of Pariah is relatively unique as a major interstellar state in that it does actually have an official religion. After missionaries from the expanding cult of Opus Dei arrived at Cantobaria, the existing Chancellor of the State of Pariah was enraptured. The State of Pariah adopted Opus Dei as its official religion and has continued to enforce practice of Opus Dei ever since, favoring the Beaconist perspective in most matters. Though this newfangled tech-cult has state backing, other religions have continued to survive; traditional faiths in particular find their followers, especially at the frontiers of Pariah Space, where a wide array of religions from all over Old Earth practiced. These religions struggle to survive, however, in the core worlds of the State of Pariah as Opus Dei's enforcers crack down on "deviant" faiths.

Foreign Relations

The State of Pariah is an aggressive, expansionist state, seeking to spread its influence to the whole of its home sector and most of its neighbors in the galaxy. This puts it at odds with virtually all of its neighbors, particularly the nearby Cincastrella Confederacy, and Democratic Republic of Yuanjing, which additionally have ideological reasons to oppose Pariah's objectives in the reason. Pariah maintains cool diplomatic relations with both of these states, and occasionally border skirmishes flare up, but no serious war has been considered in at least thirty years as Pariah turns its attention away from the galactic core and towards the core of charted space. Instead, it has found itself coming into contact with the Cetian Union, and the two states have fought over territory in the Fracana Sector.

Laws

The State of Pariah is a Solist state and maintains very strict laws wherever in its territories that prove a feasible possibility. There is a statewide ban on conscious intelligences and extremely strong laws pertaining to the import of live animals, which are some of the most stringent and carry the most draconian punishments in known space. In real terms, however, the vast expanse of the State of Pariah, the wide dispersion of most of its member worlds, and the comparative lack of infrastructure mean that exact laws cannot be uniform throughout the whole of Pariah territory, and many individual worlds of the wider State are laxer, or more rarely, stricter than the homeworld itself.

Agriculture & Industry

The State of Pariah manages to maintain some measure of self-sufficiency through sheer size and inertia. Many worlds lack industrial capacity, and many others lack the means to feed themselves, with most of the worlds, barring feral worlds that are only loosely held by the State of Pariah, being highly specialized in either industrial or agricultural output. As a result, the worlds of Pariah are highly dependent upon the complex trade and supply networks that keep Pariah running, though this network is indeed adequate to compensate for the individual inadequacies of the individual colonies held by Pariah. The State of Pariah has struggled to build up technological capabilities in most of its territories over the bulk of its territories, in large part due to poorly developed infrastructure and in smaller part due to the influences of the state's church, which has been hostile to the commons having access to advanced machinery.

Education

The State of Pariah does not have nation-wide educational standards and leaves the specific details of education mostly to member worlds. This is in part because of the vast differences in technology between member worlds and in part due to a lack of interest in a highly educated population from the state. Generally, most citizens of the State of Pariah are literate and are given a basic education in math, reading, and education; however, in most cases, a stronger emphasis is placed on vocational education. This attitude is encouraged by the government on Pariah, as it believes that focusing the people on their work will not be as inclined to dwell on dangerous, seditious thoughts.

Infrastructure

The State of Pariah has struggled significantly to rebuild the trading and transport networks within its own territories. Having never received the technology to build jump gates in the SBT databases that reached the colonies currently held by the state, or perhaps more likely were lost in the damage caused by The Great Cataclysm. It has therefore struggled to receive enough jump gate assemblies to restore their network to full functionality. Instead, a central spine of jump gates has been constructed connecting the core worlds of the state together, as well as connecting the State of Pariah back to Sol, which has been the source of much of the advanced technology that Pariah imports.