THE INTERSTELLAR

organization

The Interstellar is the intergovernmental astropolitical organization established by the signing of the All Souls’ Charter on 2 November 2121, with the stated mission of maintaining interplanetary and -stellar peace and security, promoting cooperation and amity between and among the peoples of different worlds, and stewarding outer space as part of the common heritage of all sophonts. It is also largely seen as the parahuman astrostate. Its sole official language is Esperanto.

It is headquartered in the House of All Peoples in Utgard Commune, Callisto. There are several key organs of the Interstellar, the foremost being the Universal Congress which appoints the Executive Committee to oversee the Bureaus and Secretariats. The backbone and muscle of the Interstellar, however, is without question the Cosmonautical Service, which carries out most of the policies decided upon by the other organs.

The Universal Congress meets every three Gaian Standard Years, and is composed of delegates from each of the members of the Interstellar. Its main task is to appoint the 100 members of the Executive Committee, typically though not always from its own number. Additionally, the resolutions of the Congress set a broad direction for the Interstellar over the next three years, though they typically do not concern themselves with the details of implementation.

The Executive Committee is the practical head of the organization. It elects its own co-chairs, and oversees the Bureaus and Secretariats. The Committee can issue binding orders and regulations to those bodies, and appoints their Directors and Secretaries. It has various sub-committees dedicated to specific areas of Interstellar policy, including the Sub-Committee on Service which oversees the cosmonauts and appoints the Administrator of the Cosmonautical Service.

Interstellar Bureaus are regional offices, planning centers, and clearinghouses. A Director is responsible for managing and coordinating the work of the Interstellar in their area, which may range from an entire sector to one moon. They are named for the celestial body upon which they are located.

Secretariats, meanwhile, are organized by policy areas, such as Peacekeeping, Trade, or Education. They have a centralized core, located at the House of All Peoples and under the direct leadership of their appointed Secretary, as well as offices in each of the Bureaus, led by Officers appointed by the Secretary and working under the relevant Director. Secretariats work to plan and enact the policies decided upon by the Executive Committee, and work with Bureaus to adapt them to local circumstances.

The Cosmonautical Service are the hands that carry out the work set forth by the Committee, Secretariats, and Bureaus. Its rocketships patrol the spacelanes, survey new frontiers, and deliver messages and supplies across the Interstellar. They also provide essential agricultural, medical, and educational services to those in need, and in times of war, be it internal or external, they bring about peace’s speedy and just return.

The Cosmonautical Service maintains seven Cadet Academies to train new members. Anyone between the ages of 16 and 24 may apply to an Academy, and must pass a series of stringent tests and interviews evaluating a combination of physical fitness, mental acuity, and moral character to earn admission. On average, 6.02% of applicants are admitted, and of them an average of 49.35% will drop out of the rigorous training course before graduating. Those who make it through four years, learning a combination of the sciences and the humanities and embarking on training missions, will be commissioned as Cosmonauts. Each Academy is based on a large rocketship, and travels on a circuit through its assigned area to allow its cadets access to a broad range of locations to gain practical experience in.

Membership in the Interstellar is not limited to states; many megacoops are also full members, as are some other non-governmental organizations like the Society for Uplift Justice and the Tutelary Rights League. The newest member, having earned full membership in 2199, is the Drasyllic Commonweal, the first alien-majority organization to do so. Membership comes with rights, like access to the Interstellar’s services, but it also comes with responsibilities, formalized in the All Souls’ Charter as the Thirteen Conditions. These involve contributing resources to the Interstellar and complying with its regulations, as well as meeting certain standards of political, cultural, and economic democracy. Members determined to have fallen out of compliance with the Conditions have faced penalties ranging from temporary denial of service all the way to armed intervention.

The Interstellar’s origins lie, ultimately, in the apocalyptic climax of the Melting Wars on Gaia in the early-to-mid 21st century. As climate change ravaged Gaia’s surface, tensions rose both between the great powers and within them. This tension expressed itself in proxy wars, the New Space Race, and rising extremism, and reached a head in the 2070s. Open war between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America wreaked havoc on the satellites in Gaian orbit, and culminated in a nuclear exchange.

As the homeworld seemed fit to shake itself apart, the colonies began to separate themselves. Unification and independence movements had been rising in popularity, and when the Kessler syndrome from the great powers’ war made travel to and from Gaia much, much harder, they struck. The separate national colonies cast off those allegiances and combined into the Lunar United Nations, Confederation of Martian Autonomies, and Lover’s Republic of Venus, all following their own flavor of cooperativist ideology. These new states first competed for resources around the Inner System, but after an indecisive interplanetary war, thought it best to work together, and so established the Coalition of Worlds.

In many ways, the Coalition was the Interstellar’s direct predecessor. It oversaw the creation of an interplanetary fleet, with cooperation guaranteed by the fact that ships were all constructed by one world, crewed by cosmonauts from another, and commanded by officers from the last. It also oversaw the establishment of multinational mining colonies throughout the Belt, bringing the peoples of Luna, Mars, and Venus together in close quarters and with Esperanto as a shared, neutral language. Finally, the Coalition led an orbital clean-up mission lasting for years, to make Gaia accessible again.

When the Kessler syndrome had abated, the Coalition saw that the homeworld was still recovering from climate change and nuclear warfare, and established the Gaian Joint Administration to heal the world. This marked the name change from Earth to Gaia, after the environmentalist model of conceiving the planet as a whole, living organism which guided the Administration, at least in theory.

By the 2110s, the Coalition was struggling with independence movements similar to those that had given birth to itself, with its colonies in Gaia and the Belt seeking equality with the Three Worlds. The invention of the projection drive briefly seemed to present a release valve, opening the outer system to settlement and exploitation, but it would also lead to contact with Alpha Centauri. Interactions between the two parahuman civilizations were initially frosty, though technological exchange did allow for both sides to produce projection drives and artificial magnetospheres, allowing for the creation of the first waystones. Then, the differences between Sol’s cooperativism and Centauri’s capitalism became too much, and the Centauri War began.

The war ended with Coalition forces having overthrown the capitalist regime on Chiron, but at the same time facing dual rebellions on Gaia and Jupiter. Tensions were high, with Gaian equalists seizing the Coalition headquarters on Luna and the Jovian home fleet mutinying in support of the outer system miners. Peace won out, with negotiations taking place on Callisto ending in the All Souls’ Charter on 2 November 2121, which abolished the Coalition and founded the Interstellar as the astrostate of all parahumanity.