Nations??? Colonies??? I would never-

I promise this is the last one for real ;_;

ALSO NOTE: I've put the Nous-Choir on hold for now, for plot reasons, so it would be the Easifan Promise, the Summation, and Avalon for now

[hider=The Green Table, the Homesteads, and the Syndicates]
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[color=077B0A][h2][b]The Green Table; the Homesteaders’ Collective; and the Peoples’ Syndicates[/b][/h2][/color]
[b]The three pillars of Avalon are these:
JUSTICE for yourself, each other, the planet – all things must have their voice and their moment, and no one should take that away.
PATIENCE with yourself, each other, the planet – the road to paradise is long and will take effort.
RESPECT yourself, each other, the planet – we are all needed as we all need each other.[/b]

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[color=077B0A][b]GOVERNMENT FORM:[/b][/color] Baseline Eco-Syndicalist Federation

[color=077B0A][b]POPULATION & DEMOGRAPHICS[/b][/color]:
Baseline humans (Homo Sapiens), approximately 1.6 billion souls all together.

Humans are the only sapient species within the nation, and while they make occasional use of prosthetics or replacement organs as needed, they have largely not changed themselves -- the exception being that their time spent on Avalon's lower gravity has generally made them slightly taller and thinner on average. This is in spite of the difficulties adapting to life on Avalon and the strangeness of its wilderness – as they carefully balance the needs of their people while trying to limit the ways they disrupt the local ecosystem, it has left them as cautious but generally welcoming and supportive people.

Avalon’s population are primarily of Welsh, Australian and South African descent, though it had also received support from several smaller failed colonies before the Gates closed and has left them culturally and genetically diverse.

[hider=Life on Avalon]
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[color=077B0A][b]AVALON[/b][/color]
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[color=077B0A][b]PLANET NAME & DESCRIPTION[/b][/color]: [b]Avalon[/b] is a warm, mid-sized rocky world and an ecologically dense garden planet with a broadly “cold tropical” environment similar to the temperate rainforest that once stretched across Ireland and the British Isles many generations ago. The fourth planet in orbit around its star, Avalon is roughly 6% smaller than Earth but possesses an unusually fertile cocktail of minerals, soils, and sediments that flourish with billions of species, many of them still little known or understood. However, the system as a whole has limited precious metals, and what has been available was mainly offworld and made use of by the colonists in the early days of their arrival.

[hider=Wilderness on Avalon]
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[color=077B0A][b]HISTORY[/b][/color]
[b]SYNDICATES OF THE OLD COMMONWEALTH[/b]
In the decades leading up to the great collapse, entire nations had buckled and shattered under the weight of ecological and political collapse; as shorelines receded globally in the wake of mega storms and flooding, and as nuclear deployments had rendered increasing swathes uninhabitable, entire nation-states ceased to exist in their original forms.

In this process, Australia, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom were all among those whose existing right-wing or neoliberal authorities and systems had imploded. As political authority broke down, the colony ships they had begun to construct were left unfinished, with time running out. But amidst this, numerous local organizations – the remnants of unions and grassroots leftwing organizations, many of them associated with various aspects of the colony ships construction – were able to fill the void. In the process, they seized control of the [i]Matter of Hope[/i] -- the lead vessel of a series of smaller colony ships, the entire fleet being designed to transport over a million souls in stasis to a new world.

[b]FINDING AVALON[/b]
The journey to Avalon was a tense one, but they were blessed by what they found – greater than any of the earliest predictions, they found a planet dense with life. Unfortunately, much of it was deeply alien – living plastics, hallucinogenic tree networks, and parasites that would puppet sources of calcium. Still, they were determined not to repeat the same mistakes as Earth; thus, they began the long work of establishing their first homestead (Safehome) in a relatively safe and low biodiverse region.

[hider=Safehome, the first homestead, in its present state]
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With time, they were able to start awakening more colonists and to establish new homesteads. Within a century they had established five additional homesteads – [i]Monmouth[/i], [i]Northshire[/i], [i]Sydney[/i], [i]New Pretoria[/i] and [i]Autumn[/i] – and had awoken about half of the colonists. Unfortunately, they were starting to feel the pressure on their supplies when…

[b]THE AUTUMN BOMBINGS & CIVIL WAR[/b]
The homestead of Autumn reorganized itself in a most extreme way. Their council had steadily been infiltrated by those awakened colonists who had been invested in the old power structures and were deeply unsatisfied with the more egalitarian system implemented by the syndicates. Using people’s resentment at the speed of expansion and cutting themselves off from the other homesteads, they began taking increasingly violent and destructive methods to clear away “obviously dangerous” organisms and to transform the landscape for resource extraction – when the crew of the Matter of Hope tried to reason with them, the Autumn homestead council provided the council head with “central judicial authority” and revealed it had been manufacturing and stockpiling weapons. In a deadly terrorist bombing they damaged the Matter of Hope’s control systems and launched attacks onto two other homesteads that left hundreds dead, their intent clear.

The civil war that followed was a short and tensely quiet conflict; with the Matter of Hope unable to effectively intervene as it rested in orbit until its systems could be repaired, transportation was highly limited. The large distances and varied, often hostile or strange wilderness between the homesteads made actually launching successful attacks or troop movements difficult. After several months the Matter’s secondary control systems were repaired to a point that it could safely navigate out of its stable orbit, and the crew had not been idle on other fronts. After requests for further talks and a ceasefire were met with resentful insults, the crew deployed multiple security teams equipped with modified, militarized hardsuits. In a bloody battle hundreds died and the homestead of Autumn was shattered. Those held responsible for the violence were executed, while those who refused to respect the syndicates and the collective, democratic institutions of the homesteads were banished into the wilderness…

[b]THE FAEFOLK[/b]
Following the war a period of rebuilding and centralization took place, with the crew of the Matter of Hope continuing to serve a crucial administrative and policing role between the homesteads. However, resentment continued to grow and as more and more homesteads were established – at least a dozen more in just the following thirty years – with more and more colonists being safely awakened each year, the desire and necessity for greater independence became needed. After all, the density of Avalon’s life also meant the dangers and ecosystems of two different neighboring homesteads could have massively different needs, and relying on a central authority to justify and explain every plan and strategy became more and more impractical.

The breaking point revealed itself as more and more homesteads had started to report the appearance of “strangers” in the wilderness. These figures varied in appearance and personality, but were always deeply uncanny – sometimes outright alien or monstrous, sometimes abstract, sometimes ‘mostly human’ aside from odd proportions or slight mutations. Stranger still, these figures could never be captured on any kind of video footage, audio recording, or imagery. They were definitely [i]real[/i] in some sense, and capable of great intelligence, with huge numbers of scouts and settlers reporting sighting them in similar locations and with recurring (if sometimes imperfectly so) descriptions. Even more concerning, these figures often knew things about the settlers that were either highly classified or that would be impossible to know – relating the subjects of dreams or long buried memories and trauma. Bouts of paranoid raving and accounts of violence between settlers was likewise worrying, while in other homesteads they had faced few issues after reacting positively to these ‘strangers’.

While this was happening, many homesteads had also started to arm themselves for their safety. Lithe, monstrous creatures containing a mixture of human, animal, and alien DNA had been spotted occasionally in the regions bordering the Autumn homestead. Some of these worked closely with the reported ‘unrecordable entities’, who had started to take on characteristics of popular fictional characters or long dead famous historical figures.

[b]THE GREEN TABLE OF THE MATTER[/b]
Something had to be done – the homesteads were straining under these strange pressures, and resentment at the ways the Matter of Hope handled them was growing. At last, in fear of Avalon’s total fracturing, Captain Arthur Jones of the Matter established a new system – the [b]green table[/b], inviting representatives of all of the homesteads with himself as moderator to create a “high council”, representing the councils and peoples of all of the homesteads. Collectively they reviewed and studied what the reports and research efforts had collected, and they were able to find some answers. Pooling their resources without over speaking them, something could at last be done.

With the support of the local militia and teams of scientists, the security teams of the Matter were able to take the fight to the monstrous raiders and scatter them deeper into the wilderness. As they did so, by putting the suggestions of those whose ‘strangers’ had been less harmful into practice, they were able to start recognizing common signs of their presence. It took another thirty-nine years of research, but the strangers – now known commonly as “visions” or “faeries” – were found to be ‘images’ or ‘echoes’ created by exposure to the spores of a wide variety of networked fungi which communicate with themselves by ‘hijacking’ the brains and nervous systems of more centralized organisms. While generally not toxic, exposure to these spores had created vivid hallucinations that were in turn fed back to the network, resulting in similar hallucinations appearing to later infectees.

These discoveries brought the question of expansion to the forefront. In some very real sense the homesteads had encountered a kind of intelligent life, albeit one that had only become intelligent through human influence, and in doing so had massively disrupted the ecosystems of Avalon. Like an immune system reacting to a foreign invasion, the colonists were facing an evil of their own making. Whatever idealism had previously guided their decisions, now they realized how much more patience would be needed. Expansion, it was decided, would need to be slowed yet further.

[b]PRESENT DAY[/b]
Since that time, over the past century and spare, Avalon has settled into an uneasy but ongoing peace. The homesteads expand at only a snail's pace and primarily seek to study and adjust themselves to the wilderness, the syndicates support them in these efforts, and the green table serves a vital role as oversight and – on at least a few occasions – protector.

Over the past fifty years new homesteads have been established and the very last of the sleeping colonists have been awakened to a carefully refined “reawakening program”. Tensions once again threaten to bubble as people removed from 250 years of history and culture have now struggled to adjust to this age of slow growth, and all the more so as the children of these awoken ones watch the Gate reopen from afar.

Still, as a whole the people of Avalon view things with hope. Together they will face whatever strange horrors should rise up, confident in the strength of the knight-marshalls and the homesteads.

[color=077B0A][b]CULTURE & SOCIETY[/b][/color]: For the vast majority of people on Avalon, life is one of relative peace and hard work. The localized authority of each homestead and natural barriers that separate them have led to unique cultures and dialects across the planet, and the frontier constantly being so close to home has created a culture of self-sufficiency and “cautious empathy”, where it’s normalized to be welcoming and caring but always with just a [i]hint[/i] of paranoia in case that person who needs your help is actually a sentient hallucination.

Physical activity and training is a big part of Avalonian culture along with horticulture and biological studies among an overall heavy interest in education and academic study – so long as such has clear applications to the homestead’s present or future needs. Rugby and cricket have particularly survived in various forms, while cross-homestead “tourneys” serve as the basis for a lot of inter-homestead interaction and collaboration of ideas and skilled workers, serving as something between a multi-disciplinary athletic competition, inventor’s fair, and cosplay convention or ren-faire.

Religion is tolerated and present on Avalon and has synthesized from a combination of various branches of the  old Anglican and Methodist churches, but is not widely practiced in an organized state: while many avalonians will admit to being at least somewhat spiritual, their attitude to such tends to be quite loose and personal.

[hider=Other homesteads on Avalon]
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[color=077B0A][b]GOVERNANCE & POLITICS[/b][/color]: In essence, Avalon is governed under a system of separated political and economic powers, divided into three distinct but vital pillars:
[list]
[*] Most people dwell within one of the many [b]homestead settlements[/b] that dot Avalon’s surface. These settlements vary in both size and self-sufficiency, but all are ruled via locally held elections in which members nominate and vote for new council members to govern the homestead. These handle decisions as regards local laws, infrastructure, and carefully balance the needs and situation of the homestead’s residents, and are together referred to as the [b]homesteaders’ collective[/b].
[*] Likewise, most people are members of one of the many [b]syndicates[/b]. These large worker co-operatives handle specific industries or fields of interest and are primarily organized digitally. They take on new “junior”, or trainee, members from among homestead residents who want to learn the relevant field. Once qualified they become “senior” members and are eligible to vote and put forth suggestions for the syndicate’s own council. Together, these are referred to as the [b]peoples’ syndicates[/b].
[*] Thankfully, for the most part the various homesteads and syndicates are able to work together in harmony. But unfortunately these systems are not completely immune to issues like corruption, populism, or proto-nationalism and bigotry. To this end, and as a necessary evil in the event of harmful or invasive strangers arriving to their world from outside, the [b]green table[/b] serves as a centralizing and peacekeeping body. Based onboard the Matter of Hope, the green table was formed as the colony ship’s role shifted from establishing the first settlements to instead become an information gathering and observation platform, and eventually a means of transport of precious metals from the lunar mining rigs to the homesteads and syndicates. Homesteads and syndicates alike regularly pay a very small gift of resources or trained personnel to help maintain the Matter of Hope and to staff the green table, which is centered around an elected crown-president and his or her governing council. Appropriately, these meet and discuss matters across a large, round green table.
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Because all three of these sets of organizations are democratic in structure and the syndicates are only formed from unions with many members, it leads to a situation where all of the syndicates have at least some representation in any given homestead, and each homestead has at least some representation within the syndicates. Likewise, both the homesteads and syndicates have representation on the green table.

[color=077B0A][b]TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW[/b][/color]: The Matter of Hope was staffed and equipped for a large scale civilian colony and was thus selective in its crew and company to be well-versed in a wide range of disciplines. In the years following their arrival and the gradual settlement of the planet, they have had to improve in a range of areas, but as with everything else the results have been mixed:
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[*] [b]Robotics and mechanical augmentation[/b] are fields the Avalonians have made several advancements in, having relied a lot on drones and hardsuits to navigate Avalon’s dangers while minimizing their active workforce. As they’ve gradually finished awakening the colonists and their knowledge of Avalon’s native ecosystem has grown, their need for advancements in these areas has slowed, but they still make heavy use of hardsuits and drones.
[*] [b]Biomimetics and selective genetic engineering[/b], specifically regarding its usage in agriculture and animal rearing. While their knowledge of genetic engineering is behind that of many more specialized and technical nations, their gradual but in-depth observation and study of Avalon’s organisms has paid off greatly. While the majority of avalonian humans have fairly minimal genetic modification – mainly some smaller changes to average muscle growth to help reduce the long-term side effects of living on a planet with lower gravity than Earth – they have been able to make a number of very effective, selective edits to both local organisms and to Earth animals and plants they brought with them to massively improve yields and the nourishment of food and usability of natural resources.
[*] [b]Powered-armour and low gravity transportation[/b] are both areas the avalonians have improved with time spent on Avalon’s lower gravity, particularly since transportation over land can be a risky proposition the further you get between homesteads.
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[color=077B0A][b]MILITARY OVERVIEW[/b][/color]: Thankfully, in Avalon’s history there hasn’t yet been a need for large scale conflict since the autumn bombings and the brief civil war – because most of the homesteads operate semi-autonomously with space between them, and with an well-educated population with well-enshrined rights and respect, it’s rare for conflicts to escalate. However, the wilderness of Avalon can be extremely dangerous and unpredictable, and criminals and bandits do crop up at times. For this reason, there are four primary “military” organizations, in addition to each homestead being able to call up a volunteer militia if absolutely necessary:
[list][*] The [b]scout syndicate[/b] trains its members in survival, reconnaissance and information gathering skills, with their contracts focused on prolonged exploration and survival for days, weeks, or months at a time far from home.
[*] The [b]rangers’ syndicate[/b] handles contracts regarding problems in the wilderness closer to homestead territories such as dangerous or unknown animals causing harm to people, supplies, or infrastructure. They also handle “faerie issues” that crop up occasionally.
[*] The [b]sheriffs’ syndicate[/b] handles day-to-day security on important sites, investigates crime, gathers evidence, and tracks down criminals and fugitives - sometimes also serving as an in-person representative or mediator between homesteads when needed.
[*] [b]Knight-Marshalls[/b] are the “actual” military of Avalon, elite soldiers who reside aboard the Matter of Hope full time and chosen from volunteers across the homesteads. Equipped with highly agile, armament-modified hardsuits commonly known as [b]Caliburn[/b], Knight-Marshalls are also expected to be skilled diplomats and virtuous towards others. While they thankfully only see occasional deployment outside of ceremonial occasions or training exercises, they serve as the crucial last resort in the event of situations that the ranger and sheriff syndicates cannot deal with.
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[hider=Example Caliburn Suits]
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Avalon doesn't have much in the way of a navy; while several of the original colony ships are maintained as part of the Green Table's infrastructure and serve as both mobile bases of operation for the knight-marshalls as well as go-betweens of the various mining rigs, observatories and satellites scattered throughout the system. Their armaments are limited, but functional and kept in good condition.

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