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[h1]Name:[/h1] 
	Free Association

[img]https://i.imgur.com/uomkVIL.png[/img]

[h1]Brief Description:[/h1]
	“You can have your cake, and eat it too.”
	- A Free Associate, probably.
	The Free Association is a collection of loosely affiliated ships crews and stations scattered throughout the galaxy. Founded on the fundamental beliefs in direct democracy and rejecting private industrial ownership and what could be declared unjust hierarchy they are very much Anarchists united in an institutional understanding of the merits of and practice of mutual aid.

[h1]Claim:[/h1]
	“Fuck territory, there's two-hundred-fifty-billion stars in the galaxy.”
-A Free Associate, probably.
	They ostensibly don't believe in territory or the ownership of territory. They don't expect any respect of their own territory, because they do not claim any. Neither will they expect themselves to respect others. That which only matters to them is the presence of communities, and an average planet with even the smallest colony implies to them a space to stop, rest, study, and have fun.

	To their credit though the Free Association collectively owns a number of free-drifting space stations scattered around. These space stations, referred to as “Stockpiles” are primarily utilized by the associate crews and communities to form into collective assemblies as contingents of the broader organization, as well as to off load raw material and collectibles as well as to take on anything they might need, or any persons that would join.

[h1]Government:[/h1]
	“I don't even have to be governed, if I don't want to. I think.”
A Free Associate, probably.
	The Association is ruled largely by voluntary direct democracy. Or given crew social dynamics, it may be less than voluntary. In any case, crews, contingents, the broad Associative Congress operate on the principle of direct democracy or democratic representation. The scope of which on the smallest level can vary, with ship's crews electing a captain with the authority as such, or electing a captain as a figure head or a joke, or not at all and instead filling in their roles as needed as decided as comfortable among the crew.

	Given that the association abolished private means to owning industry, much of the stature between individuals is not determined by individual wealth, man – and alien – maintains wealth proportional to their ability to produce it by themselves for themselves and many necessities – food, water, maintaining the station or ship – is a collective effort by all, the rewards of which freely given access to for the work and assistance given. On this paradigm, any sort of leadership in whichever field is determined more by the individual's personal merit. 

[h1]History:[/h1] 
	“And firstly: fuck the Emperor.”
	- A Free Associate, probably.
	Formed after humanity went interstellar, the origins of the Free Association come down to a rejection of the centralization of authority, and the backwards relationship that mankind took with its own productive capabilities. Citing automation, the readiness of available information in the quantum leaps in digital communication, and the resource rich worlds mankind was settling, the original fore-bearers who would form the Free Association argued that if there was any time in which utopia might be achieved, it was damn close then. Starting first as effective pirates, actively dismissing and ignoring private or government claims to planets, moons, asteroids, claims on a planet, and so on they went about taking what they needed or wanted from regions of human space or planets where no one would be poorly effected. While it never disturbed the colonists nor did they seek to injure anyone, their presence as squatters riled the human elite and ruling class who began citing long lists of grievances and damages their own mining was causing on their claims. As a response, the government sanctioned the Free Association and sought to arrest them.

	Instead of resisting, they left.

	Possessing ships they claimed large enough to meet their needs – many early captains using their own interstellar freighters or seizing them – they voyaged further into deep space, avoiding conflict where needed and contacting alien species at the fore of human kind's expansion across space. While humans still considered them outlaws, the growing diversity and scope of the Free Association as they took on and invited into their family the disaffected and fleeing turned them into a complicated matter. As well as the Free Association' shifting nature and self-imaging, at times bearing no marks and at others marking themselves with the color black. As such, while they were considered terrorists many associates again managed to enter into, associate with, and interact with the growing empire of the humans. Their price being any achievement they may lay credit to was often ignored.

	While humanity grew and then fell apart, the Free Associates loitered on the periphery exchanging blows when needed or throwing assistance when decided. The war with the religious radicals often brought many into their association and in more than a few cases they became the neutral third party to protect the refugees or ferry them far outside the conflict zone.

	Since then, they have abided by their own philosophy. Namely that the galaxy – let alone the universe – is large. There's more than enough for anyone, and it's unethical to turn it into a monopoly.

[h1]Military:[/h1]
	“In space, no one knows you're armed.”
	-A Free Associate, probably.
	Barring any intent to do anything with it, by saturation of weapons the Association may be the most well armed. There is a weapon for nearly any individual associate and many of their craft have been outfitted with defensive weapons, including the Stockpiles. It is natural to expect, that as interstellar nomads, that not any place they will visit will be necessarily inviting, and even their old enemies, those claimants to man kind's empire may not view them peacefully. All the same, the common doctrine is to move out of the way than engage.

[h1]Religion/Culture:[/h1]
	“Who needs God when you got the quark.”
	- A Free Associate, probably.
	Being a collection of odds and ends across socio-economic class and race, a consistent culture has become tough to pin down. And with access to tools like real-time translation or even implants to wire these directly into the parts of the brain responsible to interpreting speech or text the boundaries between language have never been thinner for the Free Associates. While religious practice is respected as an individual thing, it is not imposed collectively and it's expected that prayers are made private. The general image then is that the Free Associates are radically agnostic if not at times seemingly atheist.

[h1]Demographics (Species):[/h1] 
	“My best friend has the mouth of a toad.”
	- A Free Associate, probably.
	Anyone and everyone can come and go, but mostly come. It's a free association.

[h1]Characters:[/h1] 

	This is the kind of bullshit I write about in IC.

[h1]Relations:[/h1] 

	“Fuck the Emperor.”

[h1]Habitation:[/h1]
	Anywhere
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