Confluence of Empires - ConEmp - CoE
The Swirling Pulses of Harmony, official common symbol of the Confluence of Empires and its ruler, the Sequence.
Overview
The Confluence is an ancient, highly diverse and technologically-advanced interstellar civilization and empire, controlling more than 860,000 star systems in the spinwards and rimwards regions of Sector A1-0. Xenophilic, AIphilic and overall friendly, though with the capacity to be equally as brutal and domineering if need be, the Confluence has recently ended a two-century long period of passive isolationism and seeks to establish friendly relations all across the Sector.
Government
The Confluence is an AIocracy, ruled and overseen by an immense distributed hyper-intelligent AI known as the Sequence of Empires, or just the Sequence. The AI possesses an enormous processing substrate spread throughout the entire Confluence, together with dedicated computational megastructures. The Sequence controls an extensive hierarchy of lesser hyper-intelligent AIs commonly known by coemperial citizens as the HyperAIs, which handle important imperial operations such as diplomacy and international relations, observe regional politics and oversee all of the Confluence’s industrial and military apparatus.
Operating directly under the Sequence, the Confluent Overlords are the second-most powerful entities within the Confluence: they are a collective of eight vast hyperAIs, directly appointed by the holy Sequence to act as the highest overseers of their respective aspects of interstellar government. The Overlords do not rule their own empires, but instead act as civilizational guides above all polities in the framework of the Confluence. They are:
- Nixhoeils, Overlord of Diplomacy and Integration.
- Ilephnisom, Overlord of Data Networks.
- Karheismas, Overlord of Defense.
- Aetnexum, Overlord of the Economy.
- Verchamelo, Overlord of Technology.
- Yatnahas, Overlord of Internal Mediation.
- Chezeqiel, Overlord of Justice.
- Nethrevoor, Overlord of Transportation.
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The Overlords of the Confluence, blessed emissaries of Our Holiest One. Star clusters of intelligence: every thought, the breath of a new world.
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Despite being effectively ruled by a single intelligence and its subordinates, the Confluence is actually subdivided between tens of thousands of highly different polities that, while sharing the same metaethic principles of the wider Confluence, can be considerably different from one another due to their political autonomy and vast sociocultural freedoms. While many are similar to “regular” nations and empires, others are megacorporations, large group minds, institutes and nearly all possible kinds of willing association between sapient beings. Said diversity also extends to their size: some component polities may be confined to a single city or small orbital habitat, while others might span thousands of star systems. The most common forms of local government for component polities are socialist cyberdemocracies, AIocracies and various forms of cybertheocracies and anarchies; but yet again, many other more exotic forms of government and rule exist.
In light of this, the Confluence is officially classified according to imperial standards as a mix between a Direct and Indirect AIocracy : while many HyperAIs subordinate to the Sequence control the civilization through direct intervention, avatars and memetic influence, the vast majority of polities and citizens of the Confluence are almost always left to their own devices.
The Emperor-Elect of the Archozimann Atavocracy, followed by ceremonial guards, discussing trade deals of artisanal local-biosphere products and computronium manufacturing with a representative of the Bharsav Commerce Association.
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The fundamental principles and legal basis of the empire are defined by the Coempireal Constitution, officially known as the Compact of the Flow, first codified in 7032 BBT based on a series of metaethical pronouncements attributed to the Sequence and eir subordinates. Within the Compact are enshrined the Three Holy Principles that shape the intents and modus operandi of the Confluence:
C O E X I S T --------- L O V E --------- T H R I V E
As for its legal system, the Confluence possesses a complex civil law system based on comprehensive legal codes and, similarly to the constitution, pronouncements by the HyperAIs. This “higher” legal system common to the entirety of the civilization is overlaid with lower, regional and local legal systems (or the absence thereof) that vary by polity, organization, species and culture. The same can be said for the local and regional constitutions of the empire’s various component polities.
Demographics
As of 0 BBT the Confluence has a total population of 2.1 quadrillion sapients, 94% of which are digital artificial intelligences and uploaded minds of some kind. The remaining 120 trillion citizens are instead embodied as robotic, biological or hybrid beings.
The many sapients of the Confluence are extremely diverse: alongside the endless diversity of virtuals, the thousands of physical species within the Confluence are part of fifty different families of clades, and have diversified to cover many vastly different forms of existence.
A considerable majority of the Confluence’s population (roughly 73%) lives on vast habitable megastructures and in many kinds of smaller orbital habitats, both on their habitable surfaces and in their computronium substrates. The other quarter of the population instead lives on planets and moons, primarily on aerostatic habitats suspended in the atmospheres of gas giant planets. A non-negligible minority, some 37 trillion sapients, instead lives on the Confluence’s traveling habships.
Vast and glorious worlds, for vast and glorious lives.
Culture
Coempireal metaculture and society are extremely diversified and commonly idiosyncratic, but are very often centered around promoting diversity and cooperation between all sapients. Coempireal society tends to be very hedonistic, with the pursuit of pleasure in all its forms (carnal, intellectual, moral, etc.) and entertainment often being highly valued. Intellectual enrichment, socialization and augmentation of the self are also very widespread in the metasociety, and are often considered to be utmost priorities by many sapients. The HyperAIs openly disapprove of cultural homogenousness, and actively promote diversification and cultural conservation. When new groups or civilizations from outside are integrated within the Confluence, all sapients are always encouraged to maintain and cultivate their own cultural identities, and to freely interact with already existing ones.
Religion
Together with its cultures, countless religions and beliefs exist within the Confluence of Empires, as the HyperAIs also actively promote religious and ideological diversity. It should be noted that these religions and philosophies can be very different from one another in how they grow and exist: while some are very widespread and have existed for millennia, some are practiced by only a handful of individuals and exist for short periods of time (sometimes even just realspace seconds), especially when being practiced in more abstract and exotic environments by equally eccentric sapients. Despite this, many beliefs and ideologies still have some common characteristics between one another: the primary example of this would be the fact that almost all of them have rather intimate connections with science, and therefore have different focuses and approaches compared to most other external religions.
Many lives of joy and wonder, for many worlds and many peoples. Be faithful or faithless, prim and proper or chaotic and decadent: such distinctions do not matter. Coexist, Love, Thrive.
History
[[To Be Added]]
Economy
The Confluence is a fully automated post-scarcity society, in which robot workers and molecular nanotechnology controlled by non-sapient artificial intelligence (with sapient oversight) perform all the necessary functions to fully maintain the coempireal society and economy, almost always vastly exceeding their actual material demands. Notably large variation exists between the economic systems of different polities, that oftentimes incorporate elements and traits of different economic systems such as direct provision, free-market trade, basic incomes, socialism, communism, capitalism, ecological symbiotic networks and many more. The Sovereign (◉) is utilized both digitally and physically as the standard common currency within the Confluence, but many polities either have their own local currencies who “overlap” with the Sovereign or don’t use any real currency at all, instead relying on other systems of distribution.
While all polities are free to choose their own systems of currency, industrial organization and resource distribution, the adherence of said systems to the metaethic core ideals of the wider Confluence (first of all, the Three Principles) is overseen and controlled by the Grove of Verdant Rivers, the section of the hyperAI hierarchy led by Aetnexum, Overlord of the Economy. Alongside maintaining equity, the Grove also occasionally intervenes in the internal market and trade networks of the Confluence to prevent instabilities.
Trade
As of 0 ABT, the Confluence maintains trade relationships with the People’s Commune, the Treecuu Star Empire, the Republic of United Worlds, the Allied Nations of Alvira and the Orion League. Given its entire self-reliance and post-scarcity status as a civilization, the only things that the Confluence is usually interested in importing from other foreign powers in the Sector are biosphere samples and templates, cultural artifacts, luxury items and art pieces. However, exceptions are often made for forms of exotic matter and energy, spacetime defects and technological principles that the Confluence has not yet discovered or has had limited information on.
Conversely, the Confluence exports massive amounts of raw resources, refined materials, assembled components, technologies, advanced weaponry, and various forms of mass-produced exotic matter and energy. A variety of services, such as megastructure construction, high-grade planetary engineering and custom species creation are also part of most trade deals, though so far they have only been widely requested in the Allied Nations of Alvira. Coempireal engineered drugs, while freely offered by the Confluence during negotiations and almost always promptly refused, are starting to become widespread across the Sector through smuggling and other illegal means.
Stars remade by the needs of the Flow. Hydrogen and helium, ancient infants of creation, born anew through the fires of the Forge into things most wonderful.
Military
The Coempireal Armed Forces , often abbreviated to CAF , act as the common military of the Confluence of Empires. Despite most member polities having their own fleets and armed forces, the CAF act as the protectors of the wider empire, having access to the most advanced and powerful military technologies available to the Confluence.
All CAF warships and weapons arrays are directly controlled and guided by dedicated military hyperAIs, who also oversee the sub-orbital operations carried out by a wide variety of para-sapient, mass-produced automated military units. The section of the coempireal government hierarchy that these military intelligences belong to is known as the Empire of Lights, and is lead by Karheismas, Overlord of Defense. Unless they directly wish to do so themselves, citizens of the Confluence are never directly involved in any of its conflicts.
Despite having only recently been part of an armed conflict after millennia of quiescence, the Confluence has continued to maintain its military, progressively upgrading and improving all vessels, constructs and weapons in accordance with new technological advancements and higher-efficiency designs.
As of 0 BBT, the Coempireal Armed Forces wield 800.000 warships belonging to multiple different classes, produced in the Confluence’s main industrial centers and piloted remotely by dedicated hyper-intelligent AIs.
One cannot argue for peace from a position of weakness. To be peaceful, you must be capable of great violence; if not, you are merely harmless.
Conflicts
The vast majority of coempireal history has been one of peaceful expansion with relatively minor bickering between some of its component polities, interspered with occasional attacks in the outernmost colonies by pirates or nomadic civilizations. A notable example of this would be the short-lived invasion attempts of the Rhyzeia Swarmers, a relatively mysterious and aggressive nomadic swarm that attacked the peripheral systems of the Confluence before being pushed back by the CAF. After fleeing from coempireal territory, the Swarmers travelled to the territories of what would then become the Treecuu Star Empire, where they became known as the Loo-Yee and caused the homonymous Loo-Yee Calamities.
The major exception to this course has been the war against the Timuhuu Empire, during which both powers mobilized a considerable portion of their armed forces and redirected a non-neglibigle percentage of their industrial apparatus towards the war effort. Lasting from 1743 BBT to 1709 BBT, the conflict ended in a Confluence victory, and with the signing of the Peace of The Novas treaty in 1708 BBT the systems of the Timuhuu Empire officially became part of the Confluence.
In addition to the war against the Timuhuu, the Confluence has recently been involved alongside the Treecuu Star Empire in a war of conquest against the Otmoonan Pentarchy, a relatively middling civilization bordering the Treecuu volume that employed slavery in its domestic life and industrial apparatus for various ideological reasons. The war started on the 26th of May, 0 BBT and ended on the 9th of July of that same year with an unconditional surrended by the Pentarchy to the joint Treecuu-Confluence forces.
FTL
Void Bubble Drives serve as the primary method of FTL propulsion for coempireal vessels and structures. They are essentially a more advanced and manipulable version of “regular” warp field drives, capable of generating multiple secondary warp bubbles alongside the primary one, as well as shrinking their external size while leaving the interior unaffected.
Void Bubble Drives are also capable of manipulating one of their secondary bubbles to induce the formation of a “hyperhole”, a temporary trans-universal wormhole connecting to a dimension outside of realspace where space is compressed, allowing for much greater FTL speeds. This method of superluminal propulsion is known as Hyperbrane Insertion.
A symphony of spacetime, a concert of gravity beyond the dreams of light.
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Alongside the Drives of FTL-capable starships, Astroducts serve as the other primary form of superluminal transportation in the Confluence. Astroducts are interstellar wormhole gates used to directly connect the most important systems of the Confluence, as well as distant regions of the empire. Astroducts are not stable by themselves, and need a large energy supply and a considerable amount of active machinery to remain stable and properly traversable: as such, Astroducts are usually built into the frames of large megastructures, and are powered by the radiant energy of the system’s star through dyson swarms or energy distribution channels in non-dysonian megastructures. The network of Astroduct connections spread throughout the Confluence is known as the Wormwork.
Distant lands brought closer together, the universe folded like luminous paper.
