Friday, April 1, 2022

Stargazers Codex #007: "The Olympic Republic"

::: The Olympic Republic :::

            It all started with the Olympic Republic.  Historically speaking, Ark Olympus was the first to open, and it was the first to establish a civilization around it.  As a result, Olympus was the first planet to achieve space travel and, after years of exploration and tracking, was the first to find another Ark and begin the process of settling the stars.

            Olympus’ capitol city, Rhea, is the foundation of civilization.  Considering itself something of a cradle, it was home to the Republic Senate and the state houses from where it was run.  A city of ambassadors and politicians, it is still quite large and thoroughly settled.  The citizenry are baroque but well-educated, having a firm grasp on not only their history but on their place in the world.  The historically significant and chronologically recent failure of the Centurion Project is something fresh to the public mind and shapes much of the discourse and politics within the city.  Patriotism within the city is high but waning, as the secession of the Asgardian Federation is seen both as a blow to the governing powers that be and a natural consequence of government overreach.

            Founded by the president Ahmad Al Saud, the Republic is made up of many planets.  Following the Asgardian succession, the government has been made smaller and more centralized.  The Republic’s parliament exercises control of these planets, wrapping their autonomy in a bureaucratic nightmare that they present as a red-taped bow.  They mask this control as the necessity of a functioning civilization, though recent history has proven this wrong.

            With the far fringes of the Republic removed, however, there has been an improvement in the quality of life across the planets.  There is, however, a darker undercurrent as the cheap costs of production exported to other planets are rising on account of such sudden and dramatic governmental changes.  The current regime paints themselves in Al Saud’s image and use his popularity to maintain their control.  Even then, their hold and their reach is absolute on the planets that have remained within the fold.

            The Republic is also known to hold the most Guide ruins.  In each secession, the Republic has negotiated at gunpoint to maintain material control over the Guide ruins, sharing only what is necessary with the other worlds out of necessity of the Three-Party Accord.  Much is publicly acknowledged as being kept back, and there is a deep public distrust for the government and the military when it comes to the Guides and to the technology that is shared.

            To maintain their image, the Republic outsources much of their work to private scientific and military organizations.  The result is that each of these private companies, while ostensibly Republic employees in practice are technically contracted.   Because of this, the government bodies leading the Republic can harvest the results of the work done by these private companies without being penalized for their dubious methods.

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