We’re doing a series of articles looking at the galaxy as Brute and Rose experience it. Last week, we looked at The Founding Races that created the Galactic Federation (note: I reserve the right to change the name to alliance, republic, co-op, or such but for now let’s continue with federation). This week we’ll take a deeper dive into the Federation itself.

The Federation is not so much a governing body, so much as a mutually agreed upon and enforced framework that all members adhere to, to provide integrity and workability in a galactic society.

Virtually all space-faring races in the Milky Way are a part of the Federation. Since the Federation strives to not interfere in the affairs of member races, there is little reason not to join and plenty of reasons to join.

The most noteworthy feature of the federation then is the size of it’s space fleet. Comprised of military and support ships from most every member of the federation (most predominately porcupinian, wadring, xylanterian, and mcmacazorkian in that order) the Federation’s fleet is there to protect and serve. Protecting members from the ever-present threat of pirates, and potentially, other members.

Over the life span of the Federation, it has had to squelch several threats of war between races (most commonly between Porcupinian and Crystalonian forces) and one all-out war when the AI robotic Chortian ‘race’ attempted to wipe out all organic space-faring races. A war the federation, embarrassingly, was close to losing.

The Federation only has a handful of ‘laws’ that it enforces, but it enforces them without quarter given to anyone.

Raised species
  1. All member races are recognized as having the inherent right to exist, and to live their lives in a manner of their choosing, insofar as that it does not infringe on another member’s ability to also existing in a manner of their choosing.
  2. No member race will engage in acts of war against another member race.
  3. Member races can ‘raise’ (genetically, mechanically or electronically) one other species on their home world, but only one, to full self-awareness. These sub-races are under the care of the member race and are expected to be treated in a humane and respectful manner. They are not considered members, but may petition the Federation if they feel they are not being treated in a humane and respectful manner.
  4. Founding members of the Federation may ‘sponsor’ a sentient race into the federation if they lack the physical capabilities, or environmental conditions to ever develop space travel independently. The founding race then acts as a mentor for the sponsored race, developing them into an independent member of the Federation. This usually takes hundreds of years, and each founding member race can only have one sponsee at a time. The latest race to be sponsored are the cetaceans from Earth, by the plantis (who found them to be spiritual and intelligent but endangered on their own planet). This caused a local commotion as the other sentient race of the planet, were not even members of the federation themselves yet, and resented what they considered to be a lessor race being given membership a century before they were.
  5. Except for in the cases of ‘raised’ or ‘sponsored’ races, no member race will share technology with other races. Instead each member race is allowed to develop at their own pace. This is by far, the hardest to ‘police’ as races close to each other technological levels can usually find ways to get ahold of each other’s devices and reverse engineer them. However, when the technological gap is wide (for example humans are still need to use suspended animation to travel between even the closest star systems, whereas founding races can travel from one system to another relatively close system in hours or days), it’s easy to determine if someone has been providing them with higher tech.
  6. No member will in any way interfere with non-space-faring races, or even cause them to become aware of other life in the galaxy.
  7. No member will allow ‘true’ (IE: self-aware) AI to exist (outside of the chortian ‘race’ which are AI robots). This is a relatively recent law enacted after the start of the ‘Chortian-Federation War’.
cetacean a sponsored member

Beyond this all ‘laws’ are those enforced by member races within their own territories and one can expect all the basic protections and boundaries for any society (IE: no stealing, fraud, slavery, assault, rape, etc.) although how they may define those things, the justice system in place and penalties given can differ wildly from one member race to the next.