The Alliance
Who rules on interplanetary law? How do we defend ourselves? What do we know about the universe? These questions – and more – about the Alliance that oversees the Ardent Initiative are answered on this page!
The information presented here is accurate as far as the crewmembers of the Ardent know. There may be developments during the game that will have wider effects on the setting, including the Alliance back home, and this document will be updated in response to those storylines.
If you have additional questions, contact the game team at contact@ardentspacers.com or reach out on our Discord!
Introduction
The Alliance is an optimistic interplanetary government, founded by the Omdua and Tever several hundred years ago. It is a beacon for cooperation and mutual productivity in all regions of the galaxy it controls, bringing all willing species and their territories into a bond of protection that is much stronger than its individual parts.
The strength of the Alliance is its people. Common goals and legal structures allow wildly different governments to coordinate, trading expertise and resources for the betterment of all. From the automated corporatists of Viront Z85 to the anarcho-syndicalist research groups of Geostation Kessler, as many ideologies thrive within the Alliance as there are individuals to hold them.
Some key tenets of Alliance law include: respect for the freedom and autonomy of others, prevention of harm, creation of opportunity, respect for difference, and making a fair contribution to the success of the Alliance as a whole.
The Alliance believes in co-operation, opportunity, individual liberty and guaranteed quality of life.
Ideologies with the Alliance cover a whole spectrum of belief structures. The Alliance avoids limiting its members freedom of expression, but some activities are explicitly against its goals and therefore proscribed.
The Alliance as a whole is a heavily regulated capitalist economy, guided by committee and administered by a vast bureaucracy. Individual planets can have their own local economic models that better suit their conditions, but all members must uphold a series of standards set by the Alliance as a whole: they have to guarantee provision of food, shelter and healthcare for their citizens to ensure a baseline quality of life, and they must actively work to prevent mass poverty, starvation and illness.
The Alliance is a multicameral representative democracy: citizens elect delegates to roles within legislative committees, which govern on key issues. These committees are myriad and varied, ruling on everything from environmental protections to import tariffs. If you need a legislative body to render judgement or offer advice on any given topic, it almost certainly already exists.
The interlocking complexity of these committees results in a certain amount of red tape, but building redundancy and the need to co-operate and consult into the system helps to prevent any one body or single person from enriching or empowering themselves at the expense of others.
Most of the galaxy is unexplored by the Alliance, though telescopic surveys have allowed many regions to be mapped at a distance. Recent advances in faster-than-light travel technology allow for exponentially more rapid travel across the breadth of the galaxy within a standard lifetime, and these developments have profound implications for the future of the Alliance.
Exploration beyond the galaxy’s rim – into the region known as Void Major, beyond the encircling “Belt of Tiamat” – has only been conducted by Alliance probes via manifold collapse. No notable discoveries have been made public.
The Alliance does not have a unified formal military. Instead, it provides contracts to a multitude of different organisations, security task forces, and planetary regiments. The result is a decentralised military force operating under a unified system of committees, checks and balances.
Anyone wishing to provide services that require use of force must obtain a license to do so legally. Purely defensive services that present little-to-no risk to the lives of sentient beings do not require a military license, but must be able to prove this extensively – most defensive services will opt to hold a license to cover themselves and reduce administrative hassle.
