Galactic Council
The Galactic Council was first established by the ancient Lazax and overseen by the Empire’s Winnaran Custodians. When the Lazax Empire collapsed, the Council collapsed with it. However, when the first of the Great Civilizations returned to Mecatol Rex, the Winnarans invited them to reconvene the Galactic Council. Recognizing the need for some mechanism of galactic cooperation (or simply suspicious of what might happen should they remain off of the Council while their enemies joined), each of the Great Civilizations accepted.
The reborn Galactic Council shares the same structure as the original. Each world that is a part of the Council has one or more votes, as determined by an ancient metric created by the Lazax. This metric determined whether a planet was worthy to vote in the Council (and how many votes it would receive) based on its energy expenditure and cultural output. A world must produce and consume a certain amount of energy to receive even one vote. More powerful worlds might receive more votes, and even more votes could be awarded based on cultural contributions.
In practice, these means worlds with newly established settlements, small populations, or societies below a certain tech level almost never gain votes on the Council. Even if a world qualifies for votes, it is still their responsibility to deliver representatives to Mecatol Rex and pay for them to live on the former throneworld.
The Galactic Council is always in session, and a Councilor must be present to cast their world’s votes. Given the days or weeks it might take a courier vessel to reach their government, it also means Councilors must act with a fair degree of autonomy. By the time they receive instruction on how to vote on a certain matter, the vote may have already taken place.
Councilors and Votes
While each world receives votes, there are no requirements that each planet send a specific number of Councilors to cast them. It is up to each planet as to how they determine who will travel to Mecatol Rex to represent them, and who those individuals will be. Many worlds have only one vote, and they may send one representative to cast it. But some planets may send multiple representatives who agree among themselves how their vote will be cast, or even rotate the position of Councilor between them.
If a world has more than one vote, things can be just as varied. A world may send one representative to cast all of its votes, choose one Councilor per vote, or anything in between. With all these variations, the Council has several hundred members; a mix of constantly rotating faces, naïve neophytes, and old political veterans.
How these Councilors are chosen also varies from world to world. Some elect their representatives, others appoint them, and some pass down the position along family lines. In most cases, however, the Councilors are also members of their planet’s government, due to the autonomy they must act with.
The Great Civilizations in the Council
Although the process seems designed to give each world a voice, it still leaves the Galactic Council just as fraught with infighting and factionalism as the rest of the galaxy. Each of the Great Civilizations wields the votes of dozens or even scores of worlds, giving them massive voting blocs that can snuff out the voices of the independent systems that make it onto the Council. Many independent worlds end up trading their votes to one faction or another in exchange for concessions, but many of the Great Civilizations can afford to ignore these minor players and only worry about making deals with other factions of equal power. In addition, the very means of awarding votes is outdated. The process by which the Lazax tabulated a world’s votes was extremely complex and arcane—likely deliberately so, since the Lazax seldom retabulated votes but occasionally threatened to do so in order to keep an unruly world in line. The last calculations occurred centuries before the Quann Wormhole crisis and the start of the Twilight Wars.
When the Custodians reformed the Galactic Council, they resurrected it in what they claimed was its last known state. This means that worlds are awarded votes based on their historical status of more than three millennia ago. Many powerful worlds find that they have no voice on the Council because they were newly settled colonies on uninhabited planets during the end of the Lazax Empire. On the other hand, worlds that are now war-blasted wastelands or have been depopulated due to environmental catastrophe still possess multiple votes on the Council, even if they have no living inhabitants to send. These worlds become just one more pawn in the Great Civilizations’ political games. More than once a faction has sent in a military force with some token settlers to take one of these ghost worlds, just to give their government a few more votes on the Council.
