The MVEX

The other four nations all at least claim to practice democracy, but the AAA stands alone in having proudly reinvented feudalism. This continent was settled by a number of richer ships, and in the first generations after landfall became a patchwork of gated communities that grew and grew. Over time, an aristocracy of the wealthy mutated into a true aristocracy, a cluster of fiefdoms each ruled by a peer who answers to the Crown; a place where it is impossible to get away from who your family are - and what they own.

The AAA is beautiful and it is rich. No household worth its name is without a relic of Old Earth, treasured down the generations since landing. Its theatre and opera are unchallenged for scale or pageantry; no other state can seriously compete with its fashion houses, its immaculately landscaped gardens or the soaring spires of its city cores. The Royal Family and their innumerable cousins are everywhere, visiting hospitals, opening bridges and smiling graciously for the ever-present cameras.

But keeping the facade up requires unimaginable work, and it is not the shining aristocrats who do it. The ordinary citizens of the AAA dream of one day reaching those glittering heights, and work themselves into early graves for a sniff of a chance to do so. Any criticism of the Royal Family or suggestion that perhaps their vast wealth would do better things elsewhere is met with violent public backlash: to puncture the illusion is to take away the dream - and people have little else.

The AAA is ruled by the Royal House, currently led by a co-regnant King and Queen, who however cannot possibly be expected to personally decide every little thing and are advised in matters of state by the civil service Ministries. Their MVEX delegation is jointly overseen by the Ministry of Technology and the Ministry of War.

The NEU dominates the large continent to the north of the great archipelagoes. There used to be a patchwork of smaller countries here, each seeded from a single generation ship. Gradually they federated more closely, as the power of the AAA grew to their south and that of the UNAS across the sea. There were still wars, sometimes, as nations argued bitterly over how best to keep their independence among the behemoths. And then, within living memory still, those wars flared up into continent-wide unrest, the Union Council was bombed, and when the dust settled the army were in charge. 

The NEU is home to some of the oldest and grandest architecture on the planet, and is second only to the AAA in its possession of artistic treasures from Old Earth. It is a civilised place, with its love of archives and records often tipping into bureaucracy. Under the temporary military administration the continent is secure against outside threat and the constituent nations able to recover and rebuild. Crime is almost unheard of and dealt with swiftly. History is preserved. The green farms and neat cities of the Union look more like those of humanity’s homeworld than anywhere else. This, you will hear on every broadcast, is how people were meant to live.

And most people in the NEU do live a safe life - until they try to leave, or object to their children’s military postings, or turn up something in the archives that does not fit the official versions of history. Then … then, most often, they simply disappear. Everyone in the NEU knows at least one person who made too much of a fuss, and quietly faded out of society shortly afterwards. The people who consider themselves political realists agree that this is the price one must pay for order.

The NEU is ruled by a military junta led by the Interim Commander-in-Chief for the Duration of the Emergency. The Emergency has lasted forty years and shows no signs of ending.

UNAS spans a great rocky continent reaching to the roof of the world, where ice gives way to alpine forests and then to wide brown rolling plains. A sprawling patchwork of sectors - bickering mini-republics - it used to be somewhat smaller than it is: half a lifetime ago it fought a short, brutal war with its erstwhile northern neighbour the Polar-Maritime Commonwealth, which ended in the annexation of the PMC and its six provinces becoming the northernmost sectors of the meganation.

More than any other state, the UNAS teaches its people to love their country: not even the AAA, whose adoration of the royals occasionally borders on worship, fosters such unshakable national pride. Its cities are frenetic and narrow, its land hardscrabble, but any citizen will tell you they would rather live free here than answer to military dictators, or unelected royals, or stodgy bureaucrats, or a machine that claims to speak with the people’s voice. In UNAS, anyone can rise to the top if they’ve got what it takes; anyone can do anything if they’re committed to find a way.

Every other news broadcast in UNAS boasts of the loyalty and ruthlessness of its military. But it has been a generation since they went to war outside its borders, and nobody alive remembers the last time before that. Instead they patrol its crowded cities, its rural trackways, ensuring that patriotic citizens are kept safe and that internal threats are dealt with swiftly and in public view. In the NEU, dissenters tend to quietly disappear; in the UNAS there is nothing quiet about it.

UNAS is led by the President, who presides over a House and Senate elected at sector level; congressional committees large and small oversee specialist areas. Their MVEX representatives report to the Committee on Unconventional Methods.