Seven months after the proposal to found the Galactic Community, the Allied Systems made contact with Minamar Specialized Industries (MSI), founded by the Olinbar species. While MSI’s representative presented the corporation as a benevolent one, the Allied Systems recalled the accounts that its contacts in the Shadow Syndicate had shared of MSI. And while agents of the Shadow Syndicate were not necessarily trustworthy, especially with their increasingly bellicose stance toward the Allied Systems, MSI itself ended up confirming several of their claims, including the ‘indentured’ nature of its workforce. MSI tried to cast its business practices in the best possible light, but the leaders of the Allied Systems were wary of letting MSI exploit humanity.
It was also through contact with MSI that the Allied Systems finally discovered the location of the Alari Republics, along the southern side of the galactic core, between MSI and the Courts of Decunia. Whereas the Illios Corporate Interests were materialistic in outlook, the Alari Republics practiced spirituality, and most Alari living in the Republics had latent psionic abilities that were fully expressed in a small percentage of individuals. Like the Alari of Illios, the Republics were highly xenophilic, and had an extensive diplomatic corps, and they also had a hedonistic culture, perhaps to compensate for the boredom that would otherwise set in over the course of their long lifespans.
The Alari Republics had been subjugated some years previously by MSI, though it was unclear to the Allied Systems as to whether MSI had used military force to dominate the Alari, or if MSI had established such an economic stranglehold over the Republics that their subordination was inevitable.
Somewhat reassuringly, it became clear that MSI
had allowed the Alari to retain substantial self-governance over the internal affairs of their Republics. However, they had very little economic independence. Not only did MSI have corporate branch offices established across most worlds of the Republics, each Republic was required to pay their MSI ’shareholders’ a substantial portion of their economic output.
While stories of the terms of MSI’s contracts of indenture were appalling to activists throughout Allied Systems space, many human CEOs looked to MSI as a clearly successful corporate model to emulate for expansion on the galactic scale.
Along the outer spiral arm of the galactic east lived the Crollgan Warrior Clans. A heavily armored, turtle-like reptilian species, they possessed far greater physical strength than even the Vurxac. They had once had a retrovirus introduced to their genome to limit their numbers, which was believed to be the work of a joint Sathorian-Tezekian venture. The Sathorains, with their genetic expertise, were thought to have engineered the retrovirus, and the Tezekians had used their military forces to cover the Sathorian scientists long enough to introduce the virus into the Crollgan population. In the years since, the Crollgan had turned to cloning to maintain a stable population, and had been dependent on the technology of their cloning vats to maintain their health, limiting their expansion.
That, however, was now in the past. A Crollgan scientist had recently worked out a cure for the retrovirus, and while it wasn’t perfect, slightly blunting their formidable martial abilities, it had given them the ability to reproduce naturally once again. And even then, the Crollgan remained individually the toughest warriors in the galaxy. And so the stage had been set for the re-emergence of the Crollgan, once again seeking to compete with other galactic powers.
It should be noted, however, that while both the Tezekians and Crollgan had fanatically militaristic societies, their approaches to conflict were very different. The Crollgan lived and fought primarily alongside other members of their extended clans, for both family and individual glory. The Tezekian program of mandatory service took members from all different backgrounds in their society and molded them together into cohesive units with shared discipline, working together to advance the goals of the Hierarchy for the good of all Tezekians. In other words, the Tezekians were professional soldiers in a way that the Crollgan were not.
In a cluster of systems between the Tezekian Hierarchy and its allies, the Crollgan, and MSI, lay the Bakturian Hegemony. Four-eyed mammalians, the Bakturians were distinctly unfriendly, viewing other species as depraved and inferior next to themselves, fit mainly for use as slaves, a fact they were far more open about than the likes of MSI. And it would later become clear that they held a particular dislike for two-eyed species, such as humanity itself.
Yet despite the Bakturians' xenophobia, authoritarianism was actually the defining feature of their society. Their government was a constitutional dictatorship, with its Executor granted effectively perpetual emergency powers to guide the Hegemony with an iron fist, not only when faced with alien nations on all sides, but to maintain stability on their homeward and colonies. And to further protect the Bakturian Hegemony from any threats, real or imagined, the Executor continuously monitored his citizens with a large secret police force.
The Bakturian homeworld, Nharr’san, was actually said to be quite similar to Earth, climate-wise. But the Bakturians immediately closed their borders to the Allied Systems, and few humans would be foolish enough to visit anyways, when they would be sure to be rounded up and sold into slavery by one of many powerful Bakturian slaving guilds. And any Bakturians who made their way out of the Hegemony seemed to delight in making themselves insufferable to everyone else.
Like the Shadow Syndicate and the Alari, the Roc League was another civilization that had been touched by MSI. First arriving at their homeworld of Tervoss decades previously, MSI had offered to share their technologies with the Roc - only for the Roc to later realize the terrible cost their deal with MSI came with. Winning a rare victory against MSI, they had forced the mega corporation off of their world, and were now determined to oppose tyranny wherever they found it.
Lastly, along the outer spiral arms in the galactic southeast lay the Thorquell Growth. It was a massive hive-minded superorganism like the Rahnids, growing among the ruins of the ancient relic world of Ferrus. Yet while the Rahnids were arthropoid in nature, the Thorquell were fungoid, constantly budding new growths. The average Thorquell drone was significantly less intelligent than the typical Rahnid drone, but they were much more tightly bound to the will of their ruler, the ‘Ancient of Thorquell’, of which all Thorquell growths were but an extension of. The Ancient of Thorquell compensated for the lower individual initiative of his growths by using specialized cordyceptic drones to infect and then reanimate other organisms, assimilating them and their knowledge into himself.
Due to the immense size that a Thorquell growth, especially their Ancient, could attain, they tended to be fairly sedentary, but like the Rahnids, the Thorquell jealously guarded their space.
The Galactic Community was officially proclaimed in 2233, with representatives from most alien empires accepting humanity’s offer to meet in the station constructed over the ruins of the Citadel.
The Tezekian Hierarchy came to the first meeting at the Citadel already prepared with its own resolution, ’The Readied Shield’, encouraging increased military spending by all Galactic community members. However, the resolution proposed by the Illios Corporate Interests, to establish a Galactic Market, was the first to receive enough support in the Community to proceed to a full debate in the new Community Senate.
And with so many new contacts and agreements to be made with alien empires now that the Community was legitimized, it was only a matter of pragmatism that humanity began to invest heavily into diplomatic efforts.
The Allied Systems, despite its best efforts, wasn’t powerful enough militarily to fight off potential foes just yet, especially with the technological disadvantage that it had compared to most other empires in the Milky Way.
But if it couldn’t destroy its foes by force, then perhaps the Allied Systems could destroy at least some of its enemies by making them humanity's friends instead.
