The Revolutionary Workers' Union
Jul 17, 2015 23:22:44 GMT -6
Post by RWU on Jul 17, 2015 23:22:44 GMT -6
Nation Name: THE REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS' UNION (R.W.U.)
Government: Democracy
Description: The RWU is an ambiguous structure that constitutes both a sovereign state and a federal labor union. It is built on fundamental principles, codified in the Union Constitution, that are at once political and economic.
-- Syndicalism, considered the overarching principle, mandates that the only acceptable political-economic system is one founded on the cooperation and/or conglomeration of worker organizations. This is the basis for the RWU's dual structure as state and union.
-- Worker Self-Management mandates that the only acceptable authority in these organizations is that of the workers themselves or their representatives. For this reason, the RWU is structured as a many-tiered federal democracy, with the central bodies linked all the way down to the neighborhood and workplace councils.
-- Collective Action mandates that no individual has any inherent claim to represent the workers, but rather that any such claim must extend from the people's will in the name of group improvement and must be subject to revocation. Therefore, the offices of all elected officials are revocable by vote from below. Furthermore, lower levels of government have a strong level of autonomy and self-sufficiency to shield them against central domination.
-- Collective Liberation mandates that self-determination for one oppressed class or nation must mean self-determination for all. One class of workers cannot free themselves only to subjugate another. Hence, one of the primary roles of the RWU central institutions, where they can override the local levels, is to combat discrimination and subjugation by reactionary forces within the Union: racists, religious bigots, aristocratic or bourgeois remnants, etc.
Hence, in its many levels of governance, the RWU combines elements of direct democracy and representative democracy undergirded with fundamental protections, and its primary institutions are as follows:
-- The Takudar System – A synthesis of traditional Ayar village democracy that rallied prior rebellions and pre-reform RWU industrial workers' councils, Takudars are both the primary basis of RWU government and the extension of its base economic actors, the cooperatives. They are based on the principles of direct democracy and authority from the bottom up. Outside of RWU sovereign territory, Takudars may simply refer to themselves as “councils,” but the Ayar terminology is popular even far outside of former Antoviyan territory. A member of any Takudar is referred to either as a takudari or a people's delegate. A noteworthy characteristic of the office is that it is revokable by the lower levels, making Takudaris very committed to representing their constituents. They operate on five consecutive levels, from smaller and more organic to larger and more bureaucratic: Workplace, District, Township, Province, and Regional.
-- The Revolutionary Workers' Congress – Every Province, Regional, and “occupied” (foreign) Township Takudar sends a delegate with a single vote to the RWC. Here broad policy goals and timetables are set, the Union Constitution is modified, treaties are ratified, and revenue mechanisms are determined. Because every foreign Township has given voice equal to a Province or Region, delegates from outside of RWU sovereign territory have disproportionate power in the Congress relative to the number of workers they represent. Nonetheless, in total, the clear majority of seats are held by representatives hailing from former Antoviyan lands.
-- The Union Council – This institution has broad authority to set and execute policy according to frameworks and goals set by the Revolutionary Workers' Congress. Notably, it has spending authority over the large RWU non-discretionary central budget and is the official commanding body of the Revolutionary Guard. It also has the authority to submit legislation to Congress to request large-scale structural/policy changes. The Union Council is comprised of five members, nominated by the Revolutionary Workers' Congress and confirmed or denied in an RWU-wide general election every five years. Every member is revocable by a 2/3 majority in the Revolutionary Workers' Congress or a simple majority in an RWU-wide referendum.
Political Parties: Up until ten years ago, the Union Leneruist Party was the majority party and unifying force of RWU politics. But after the death of the prominent radical leader Jawalir Leneru, the intra-party coalition he had build crumbled apart. Now three very distinct parties compete over the direction of the Revolution.
-- Anarcho-Syndicalist Front (ASF) – This is a party with a very long history, in some ways representing of the “Old Guard” of the pre-reform RWU. Only the most extreme elements of the party are truly “anarchist” in the sense of categorically opposing the state. Rather, their main rallying point is the empowerment and autonomy of the lower Takudars and cooperatives on the one hand, and limiting central institutions to well-defined narrow roles on the other. For example, the Anarcho-Syndicalists are generally wary of the Revolutionary Guard and support the distribution of military professionals, technicians, and heavy weapons (such as mechs) to the People's Militias. They are also strong proponents of direct democracy, exerting a constant pressure to reform some higher-level institutions to better incorporate it. Perhaps quite appropriately, the ASF is currently the smallest of the “Big Three” RWU parties, but it is extremely popular among the growing sector of RWU space-shipping and space-dock workers. It holds one seat on the Union Council and roughly 25% of Congress.
-- Social Reformist Federation (SRF) – The RWU's newest major political faction, the SRF as characterized by two major political goals. First, they seek to expose persistent reactionary culture at home and combat it through education, state support for mutual aid and activist organizations of traditionally marginalized groups (non-Ayar, Awodejan ethnic Ayar, women, etc), and direct intervention in identified cases of local reactionary oppression. Secondly, they emphasize the power of diplomacy and “soft power” in international relations, and they advocate a strong respect for cultural differences that might make Syndicalism look different for every society and even be inappropriate in some. The party is often the de facto the "center" of the Big Three, deciding votes by swinging towards the Anarchists or the Communists, but its key foci distinguish it from both of its counterparts. The SRF is especially popular among non-Ayar, as the party that most emphasizes multiculturalism. It holds one seat on the Union Council and roughly 30% of Congress.
-- Union Communist Party (UCP) – Currently the largest RWU party and arguably the best-organized and best-drilled, the Union Communist Party is the Union's strongest voice for centralization. It has made a name for itself with the two famous institutions: The Union Planning Commission, which instituted the highly-successful First Five Year Plan between the Third and Fourth Revolution Wars; and the Greater Cooperatives, ongoing experiments in amalgamating communities and workplaces into enormous cooperatives that can encompass entire regions. More so than other parties the UCP tends to evoke strong feelings: People are often either greatly inspired or deeply troubled by its hard-line politics. It is especially popular among the Revolutionary Guard and certain segments of the Navy, heavy industry workers, and non-SRF academics/intellectuals. It holds three seats on the Union Council, including that of the President-Premier, and about 45% of Congress.
Species: Ayar
Description: Ayar are the humanoid talpids native to New Sovereignty. They have markedly cylindrical bodies covered in dark fur, unusual strength for their size (standing no more than a little over 5 feet tall), thick hands bearing clawlike nails and two thumbs, an acute sense of smell and hearing, black bulbs of eyes suited to low-light vision, and a high tolerance for carbon dioxide. Hence, Ayar are natural burrowers. However, they have better daylight vision, a less-developed sense of touch, shorter snouts, and larger arms and legs than their evolutionary ancestors, allowing them to live comfortably both above and below ground.
Ayar are difficult for many foreigners to distinguish among by sight; they identify one another primarily by smell. However, the talpids make extensive use of all five basic “senses” and communicate with a spoken and written language, like most other species.
The RWU also includes large Asteran-human, IkaKwazan, and Wuxianese minorities.
Homeworld: New Sovereignty
Description: Though the RWU is staunchly internationalist, the Revolution has tied it inextricably to the former Antoviyan Empire. As such, the Union Council is located on the Ayar homeworld of New Sovereignty. Formerly known as Antoviya Prime, the planet is a very large for a rocky planet and relatively old. The surface is mostly water, with landmass split almost entirely into two enormous supercontinents. The first, Awodej, forms a wide belt about the planet's equator, marked by tropics along the center and temperate climates North and South. The other continent, Hauthkaj, lies South of Awodej and is known for its generally arid climate, especially in the massive desert of its center, except for along its few major rivers.
In the last three centuries, the surface of New Sovereignty has been scarred by the Ayar World War and the New Revolution Wars. A few regions of both Awodej and Hauthkaj have been rendered uninhabitable by concentrated nuclear bombing, while zones of particularly intense conventional warfare have lost forests and countryside to battle. Despite the destruction, the vast majority of land is covered in an urban landscape. The rural regions are almost as dense: The Antoviyan Rhizomatic Industrial Agriculture system turned farms into virtual cities with relevant mills and processing industry more or less attached to the nutrient-saturated farms themselves.
Capital City: In recent decades, the Union has turned the former Awodejan colonial port of Garald into its first project in Revolutionary Reconstruction, a massive metropolis of arcologies and industry known as Victory City. This is where the Union Council meets.
Sectors:
Commercial
3x Industrial
Military
Agent Name: President-Premier Briyandawas Karad
Agent type: Government Agent
Syndalicalist Heartland
The RWU is more than a nation, and even more than a union. It is the center of a militant, growing international movement.
-- Can recruit Union Agents in place of Activists. Union Agents have a slightly improved chance of success on all actions, and can attempt to Unionize foreign Sectors.
-- Unionized Sectors are marked as Unionized and remain that way unless action is taken to remove the Union mark. The RWU can shut down or interfere with Unionized sectors at will.
Blueprint Name: New Model Hunter
Ship Class: Destroyer
Speed: II
Defense: I (Point Defense Guns)
Weapons:
-- 2x Beam Cannon (2 Credits)
-- Point Defense Guns (3 Credits)
Utility: N/A
Cost: 5 Credits, 15 Industry
Upkeep: 1 Credit/turn
History:
(1) The Revolutionary Workers' Union
The original organization existed for over seventy years before its rise to statehood: It began through early space-age contact among radicals of different species, with autonomous branches in Asteron, Wuxian, and Antoviya . It was a Syndicalist labor union based on the idea of cutting across the lines of specific trades and roles, but focused exclusively the industrial working classes as the “harbingers of Revolution.” For decades, it was a small force of highly-politicized, well-organized proletarian activists with relatively few actual unionized workplaces to their name, but which catalyzed and often steered much larger coalition campaigns. Most notably, in the Empire of Wuxian, the RWU played a pivotal role organizing the 9-A Movement, which eventually won a series of concessions from the Chancellor (confirmed by the Yuyan). These reforms would allow low-class citizens an unprecedented level of autonomy in the workplace and the village/neighborhood, by incorporating the people's councils into the bureaucracy. Ironically however, the pacifying and coopting effects of this "victory" led the Wuxianese RWU to fade into obscurity. In Asteron, the track record was more muddled and the state was far more willing to use lethal force to put down the "rabble-rousers." The final blow to the Asteran RWU was the opening of trade between Antoviya and Vorcia, which allowed bosses and authorities a profitable way to get rid of suspected "troublemakers" en masse. The Union was soon in tatters, and the remnants rallied to the National Liberation Party and the Asteran Workers Party.
However, forty years ago in Antoviya, political divisions between the “centralizers” and “decentralizers” ended in a catharsis of several reforms that would change the Union forever. Firstly, the Union Council was established and given significant central powers. Second, doctrine was reformed to include peasants, agricultural laborers, slaves, technicians, and all other manner of workers as essential to revolution. This came at a key moment, when Asterans and Wuxianese were present as agricultural slaves in huge numbers. Displaced peasants, slaves, and the long-suffering industrial proletariat found unity in the new RWU platform, exemplified in the writings of Union Councilor Jawalir Leneru. This expanded RWU membership so much that the Antoviyan branch would reach membership numbers entirely unheard of anywhere else, ending in the Revolution for which it is famous today.
(2) The Antoviyan Empire
Antoviya first became a spacefaring power a little over two centuries ago, when it won the Ayar homeworld's race for military starships. It was a royal house from Hauthkaj, actually considered weaker than most of its competitors. While other kingdoms had carved the continent of Awodej into colonial empires in the later stages of their industrial era, Antoviya had been left on the continent. However, it made its name as a financial powerhouse, and when the Great Powers set off the Ayar World War, Antoviya's King Antov XIII stepped in decisively by endorsing the total rebellion of Awodejan colonies. Nuclear weapons were not an option, it seemed, with every power possessing highly-effective missile defense systems. However, decades of war were suddenly ended when Antoviya launched the planet's first military starships, trumping missile defense with nuclear fire from orbit. The king was then quick to turn on his Awodejan “allies,” using his space forces to wipe out centers of rebel activity and enact reprisals against any community suspected of aiding them. The struggle of these anti-colonial rebels is considered the First Revolution War. Afterwards, mass slavery was instituted, and the Antoviyan plantation system began.
As time went on, advancements in mechanized agriculture temporarily displaced agricultural slavery, pushing Awodejan Ayar into into the industrial work of the urban poor -or lower administration, for the lucky ones-. Some privileged strata of Hauthkajan workers would see some benefits, but most Awodejans this change was simply a new form of slavery. However, just over a century ago the rise of labor-intensive RID agriculture made the de jure enterprise profitable again. But without reliable means to re-enslave billions of Ayar, the Empire needed a way to push the institution onto other species. It achieved this in two ways. The first was through the Empire's first spaceborn diplomatic relationship, buying masses of Asteran convicts (often political prisoners) from Vorcia to toil on the new model plantations. The second was through two military campaigns. The first was the Decimation of Kwazan, essentially a long series of massive slave raids from roughly 100-70 years ago. The only real fighting was a few months of skirmishing with the Kwazan Conglomerate, after which the invaders simply avoided that state in favor of easier targets on the planet. The second was a much more ambitious, fourteen-year military campaign known as the Slave War that started just under 70 years ago, when the Empire invaded a large Wuxianese colony and took staggering numbers captive. The Wuxianese navy eventually beat back the Antoviyans, but not before their constant raids had turned the colony into a mostly-depopulated wasteland.
(3) The New Revolution Wars
The Revolutionary Workers' Union had underground elements on Antoviya Prime as long as seventy years before the monarchy fell. However, a number of factors converged thirty years ago to light a powderkeg never witnessed before on the planet: the rise of a class of radical revolutionary Ayar intellectuals, the RWU reforms, the consolidation of the new slave system, and the badly botched campaign of the Second Slave War.
What followed were the Revolution Wars, a series of global conflicts that engulfed Antoviya over two decades. The Second Revolution War, a one-year conflict beginning some twenty-eight years ago, was extremely bloody but ended quickly in nuclear bombings of key revolutionary centers. But thirty years ago, the Third marked a turning point. RWU-aligned pirates and Antoviyan Royal Navy defectors swarmed to the revolutionary cause from early on, forcing the Empire to renounce nuclear conflict for fear of reprisal. The rest of the Third War proceeded as a “convential” conflict, though this implied no shortage of blood and atrocity on all sides. It ended eighteen years ago after the Union of Asteron hosted truce negotiations among the RWU, Antoviya, and the now counter-invading Empire of Wuxian. Antoviya was left as an isolated kingdom on Hauthkaj, heavily indebted to the Wuxian in war reparations. The RWU then called for its first official elections as a state, ending in a resounding affirmation of Syndicalism, though with many notable divisions within this. For five years afterwards, the RWU was at peace and devoted its energies to reconstruction and implementing the political and economic structures of Syndicalism.
The Fourth Revolution War was the final conflict in the series, provoked by border skirmishes in murky circumstances and Syndicalist revolts in Antoviyan territory that called to the RWU for help. After three years, it put a relatively quick but costly end to this last bastion of the old monarchy. The revolutionaries were methodical in their isolation and extermination of the royalty, and the only remaining traces of the nobility hide in the wastelands of the Hauthkaj Irradiated Zone.
Thus, with the Revolution Wars over, Ayar culture began a time of transformation that continues to the present. The old, Antoviyan ideologies of royal privilege, race hierarchy, patriarchy, and capitalist-imperialism have been rejected wholesale by the revolutionary ideology of Syndicalism. They are being phased out by a combination of the revolution's natural popularity, suitable "publicity" released by the Union Council, and the ongoing extermination of the scattered remnants of the old Antoviyan regime. In their place are being set the values of the Revolution. Yet, matters are more uncertain now than ever. Although Antoviya is dead and buried, advances in space travel have brought an entire new world to life. Will the Union bring Syndicalism to the stars? Or will the brief light of Workers' Democracy be crushed, or worse, corrupted?
Culture:
The RWU is something of a mass experiment in political unity with cultural autonomy. Not only communities of Asterans and Wuxianese and IkaKwazan, but also countless numbers of centuries-oppressed Awodejan cultural communities have sought to revive old traditions while synthesizing them with new politics. The sense of "return" to old roots, which may have reactionary elements in some cases, is checked by the historical experience of collective liberation and a general anti-conformist bent.
Antoviya had little love for religion except the Cult of the Emperor, so now gods and spirits of all colors and stripes have made a grand return to the public sphere. Most Awodejan Ayar could be loosely described as animist, while most Hauthkajans hold to a more coherent, shared polytheistic pantheon. The largest single organized religion in the RWU, however, is known as Rightful Reverence. It is a variant of the Wuxianese Reverence of the Fundamental Truths and the Yuyan that almost all RWU Wuxianese practice. It has also been adopted by hundreds of millions of Ayar, humans, and IkaKwazan. It holds to many of the traditional Wuxianese philosophical and ethical principles but with a few key differences. Firstly, although the Yuyan is revered for his immense knowledge and wisdom, they are skeptical of his divine mandate over all (some believe he has limited divine mandate over traditional Wuxianese lands, others reject the divine mandate altogether). This skepticism is partly ideological, questioning the concentration of power in a single being, but also practical: Can any single creature really try to rule an entire planet or more without becoming drowned out by the bureaucracy they must build around themselves? Furthermore, the Rightfully Reverent acknowledge that, or at least the possibility that they live among divine beings other than the Yuyan, such as the ethereal spirits and gods worshipped by the Ayar (as well as beings worshipped by Asterans and IkaKwazan). Finally, they strongly reject the strict hierarchy of the Imperial Wuxianese, a reaction that comes across most strongly in their widespread opposition to any sort of "Great Man" worship.
Government: Democracy
Description: The RWU is an ambiguous structure that constitutes both a sovereign state and a federal labor union. It is built on fundamental principles, codified in the Union Constitution, that are at once political and economic.
-- Syndicalism, considered the overarching principle, mandates that the only acceptable political-economic system is one founded on the cooperation and/or conglomeration of worker organizations. This is the basis for the RWU's dual structure as state and union.
-- Worker Self-Management mandates that the only acceptable authority in these organizations is that of the workers themselves or their representatives. For this reason, the RWU is structured as a many-tiered federal democracy, with the central bodies linked all the way down to the neighborhood and workplace councils.
-- Collective Action mandates that no individual has any inherent claim to represent the workers, but rather that any such claim must extend from the people's will in the name of group improvement and must be subject to revocation. Therefore, the offices of all elected officials are revocable by vote from below. Furthermore, lower levels of government have a strong level of autonomy and self-sufficiency to shield them against central domination.
-- Collective Liberation mandates that self-determination for one oppressed class or nation must mean self-determination for all. One class of workers cannot free themselves only to subjugate another. Hence, one of the primary roles of the RWU central institutions, where they can override the local levels, is to combat discrimination and subjugation by reactionary forces within the Union: racists, religious bigots, aristocratic or bourgeois remnants, etc.
Hence, in its many levels of governance, the RWU combines elements of direct democracy and representative democracy undergirded with fundamental protections, and its primary institutions are as follows:
-- The Takudar System – A synthesis of traditional Ayar village democracy that rallied prior rebellions and pre-reform RWU industrial workers' councils, Takudars are both the primary basis of RWU government and the extension of its base economic actors, the cooperatives. They are based on the principles of direct democracy and authority from the bottom up. Outside of RWU sovereign territory, Takudars may simply refer to themselves as “councils,” but the Ayar terminology is popular even far outside of former Antoviyan territory. A member of any Takudar is referred to either as a takudari or a people's delegate. A noteworthy characteristic of the office is that it is revokable by the lower levels, making Takudaris very committed to representing their constituents. They operate on five consecutive levels, from smaller and more organic to larger and more bureaucratic: Workplace, District, Township, Province, and Regional.
-- The Revolutionary Workers' Congress – Every Province, Regional, and “occupied” (foreign) Township Takudar sends a delegate with a single vote to the RWC. Here broad policy goals and timetables are set, the Union Constitution is modified, treaties are ratified, and revenue mechanisms are determined. Because every foreign Township has given voice equal to a Province or Region, delegates from outside of RWU sovereign territory have disproportionate power in the Congress relative to the number of workers they represent. Nonetheless, in total, the clear majority of seats are held by representatives hailing from former Antoviyan lands.
-- The Union Council – This institution has broad authority to set and execute policy according to frameworks and goals set by the Revolutionary Workers' Congress. Notably, it has spending authority over the large RWU non-discretionary central budget and is the official commanding body of the Revolutionary Guard. It also has the authority to submit legislation to Congress to request large-scale structural/policy changes. The Union Council is comprised of five members, nominated by the Revolutionary Workers' Congress and confirmed or denied in an RWU-wide general election every five years. Every member is revocable by a 2/3 majority in the Revolutionary Workers' Congress or a simple majority in an RWU-wide referendum.
Political Parties: Up until ten years ago, the Union Leneruist Party was the majority party and unifying force of RWU politics. But after the death of the prominent radical leader Jawalir Leneru, the intra-party coalition he had build crumbled apart. Now three very distinct parties compete over the direction of the Revolution.
-- Anarcho-Syndicalist Front (ASF) – This is a party with a very long history, in some ways representing of the “Old Guard” of the pre-reform RWU. Only the most extreme elements of the party are truly “anarchist” in the sense of categorically opposing the state. Rather, their main rallying point is the empowerment and autonomy of the lower Takudars and cooperatives on the one hand, and limiting central institutions to well-defined narrow roles on the other. For example, the Anarcho-Syndicalists are generally wary of the Revolutionary Guard and support the distribution of military professionals, technicians, and heavy weapons (such as mechs) to the People's Militias. They are also strong proponents of direct democracy, exerting a constant pressure to reform some higher-level institutions to better incorporate it. Perhaps quite appropriately, the ASF is currently the smallest of the “Big Three” RWU parties, but it is extremely popular among the growing sector of RWU space-shipping and space-dock workers. It holds one seat on the Union Council and roughly 25% of Congress.
-- Social Reformist Federation (SRF) – The RWU's newest major political faction, the SRF as characterized by two major political goals. First, they seek to expose persistent reactionary culture at home and combat it through education, state support for mutual aid and activist organizations of traditionally marginalized groups (non-Ayar, Awodejan ethnic Ayar, women, etc), and direct intervention in identified cases of local reactionary oppression. Secondly, they emphasize the power of diplomacy and “soft power” in international relations, and they advocate a strong respect for cultural differences that might make Syndicalism look different for every society and even be inappropriate in some. The party is often the de facto the "center" of the Big Three, deciding votes by swinging towards the Anarchists or the Communists, but its key foci distinguish it from both of its counterparts. The SRF is especially popular among non-Ayar, as the party that most emphasizes multiculturalism. It holds one seat on the Union Council and roughly 30% of Congress.
-- Union Communist Party (UCP) – Currently the largest RWU party and arguably the best-organized and best-drilled, the Union Communist Party is the Union's strongest voice for centralization. It has made a name for itself with the two famous institutions: The Union Planning Commission, which instituted the highly-successful First Five Year Plan between the Third and Fourth Revolution Wars; and the Greater Cooperatives, ongoing experiments in amalgamating communities and workplaces into enormous cooperatives that can encompass entire regions. More so than other parties the UCP tends to evoke strong feelings: People are often either greatly inspired or deeply troubled by its hard-line politics. It is especially popular among the Revolutionary Guard and certain segments of the Navy, heavy industry workers, and non-SRF academics/intellectuals. It holds three seats on the Union Council, including that of the President-Premier, and about 45% of Congress.
Species: Ayar
Description: Ayar are the humanoid talpids native to New Sovereignty. They have markedly cylindrical bodies covered in dark fur, unusual strength for their size (standing no more than a little over 5 feet tall), thick hands bearing clawlike nails and two thumbs, an acute sense of smell and hearing, black bulbs of eyes suited to low-light vision, and a high tolerance for carbon dioxide. Hence, Ayar are natural burrowers. However, they have better daylight vision, a less-developed sense of touch, shorter snouts, and larger arms and legs than their evolutionary ancestors, allowing them to live comfortably both above and below ground.
Ayar are difficult for many foreigners to distinguish among by sight; they identify one another primarily by smell. However, the talpids make extensive use of all five basic “senses” and communicate with a spoken and written language, like most other species.
The RWU also includes large Asteran-human, IkaKwazan, and Wuxianese minorities.
Homeworld: New Sovereignty
Description: Though the RWU is staunchly internationalist, the Revolution has tied it inextricably to the former Antoviyan Empire. As such, the Union Council is located on the Ayar homeworld of New Sovereignty. Formerly known as Antoviya Prime, the planet is a very large for a rocky planet and relatively old. The surface is mostly water, with landmass split almost entirely into two enormous supercontinents. The first, Awodej, forms a wide belt about the planet's equator, marked by tropics along the center and temperate climates North and South. The other continent, Hauthkaj, lies South of Awodej and is known for its generally arid climate, especially in the massive desert of its center, except for along its few major rivers.
In the last three centuries, the surface of New Sovereignty has been scarred by the Ayar World War and the New Revolution Wars. A few regions of both Awodej and Hauthkaj have been rendered uninhabitable by concentrated nuclear bombing, while zones of particularly intense conventional warfare have lost forests and countryside to battle. Despite the destruction, the vast majority of land is covered in an urban landscape. The rural regions are almost as dense: The Antoviyan Rhizomatic Industrial Agriculture system turned farms into virtual cities with relevant mills and processing industry more or less attached to the nutrient-saturated farms themselves.
Capital City: In recent decades, the Union has turned the former Awodejan colonial port of Garald into its first project in Revolutionary Reconstruction, a massive metropolis of arcologies and industry known as Victory City. This is where the Union Council meets.
Sectors:
Commercial
3x Industrial
Military
Agent Name: President-Premier Briyandawas Karad
Agent type: Government Agent
Syndalicalist Heartland
The RWU is more than a nation, and even more than a union. It is the center of a militant, growing international movement.
-- Can recruit Union Agents in place of Activists. Union Agents have a slightly improved chance of success on all actions, and can attempt to Unionize foreign Sectors.
-- Unionized Sectors are marked as Unionized and remain that way unless action is taken to remove the Union mark. The RWU can shut down or interfere with Unionized sectors at will.
Blueprint Name: New Model Hunter
Ship Class: Destroyer
Speed: II
Defense: I (Point Defense Guns)
Weapons:
-- 2x Beam Cannon (2 Credits)
-- Point Defense Guns (3 Credits)
Utility: N/A
Cost: 5 Credits, 15 Industry
Upkeep: 1 Credit/turn
History:
(1) The Revolutionary Workers' Union
The original organization existed for over seventy years before its rise to statehood: It began through early space-age contact among radicals of different species, with autonomous branches in Asteron, Wuxian, and Antoviya . It was a Syndicalist labor union based on the idea of cutting across the lines of specific trades and roles, but focused exclusively the industrial working classes as the “harbingers of Revolution.” For decades, it was a small force of highly-politicized, well-organized proletarian activists with relatively few actual unionized workplaces to their name, but which catalyzed and often steered much larger coalition campaigns. Most notably, in the Empire of Wuxian, the RWU played a pivotal role organizing the 9-A Movement, which eventually won a series of concessions from the Chancellor (confirmed by the Yuyan). These reforms would allow low-class citizens an unprecedented level of autonomy in the workplace and the village/neighborhood, by incorporating the people's councils into the bureaucracy. Ironically however, the pacifying and coopting effects of this "victory" led the Wuxianese RWU to fade into obscurity. In Asteron, the track record was more muddled and the state was far more willing to use lethal force to put down the "rabble-rousers." The final blow to the Asteran RWU was the opening of trade between Antoviya and Vorcia, which allowed bosses and authorities a profitable way to get rid of suspected "troublemakers" en masse. The Union was soon in tatters, and the remnants rallied to the National Liberation Party and the Asteran Workers Party.
However, forty years ago in Antoviya, political divisions between the “centralizers” and “decentralizers” ended in a catharsis of several reforms that would change the Union forever. Firstly, the Union Council was established and given significant central powers. Second, doctrine was reformed to include peasants, agricultural laborers, slaves, technicians, and all other manner of workers as essential to revolution. This came at a key moment, when Asterans and Wuxianese were present as agricultural slaves in huge numbers. Displaced peasants, slaves, and the long-suffering industrial proletariat found unity in the new RWU platform, exemplified in the writings of Union Councilor Jawalir Leneru. This expanded RWU membership so much that the Antoviyan branch would reach membership numbers entirely unheard of anywhere else, ending in the Revolution for which it is famous today.
(2) The Antoviyan Empire
Antoviya first became a spacefaring power a little over two centuries ago, when it won the Ayar homeworld's race for military starships. It was a royal house from Hauthkaj, actually considered weaker than most of its competitors. While other kingdoms had carved the continent of Awodej into colonial empires in the later stages of their industrial era, Antoviya had been left on the continent. However, it made its name as a financial powerhouse, and when the Great Powers set off the Ayar World War, Antoviya's King Antov XIII stepped in decisively by endorsing the total rebellion of Awodejan colonies. Nuclear weapons were not an option, it seemed, with every power possessing highly-effective missile defense systems. However, decades of war were suddenly ended when Antoviya launched the planet's first military starships, trumping missile defense with nuclear fire from orbit. The king was then quick to turn on his Awodejan “allies,” using his space forces to wipe out centers of rebel activity and enact reprisals against any community suspected of aiding them. The struggle of these anti-colonial rebels is considered the First Revolution War. Afterwards, mass slavery was instituted, and the Antoviyan plantation system began.
As time went on, advancements in mechanized agriculture temporarily displaced agricultural slavery, pushing Awodejan Ayar into into the industrial work of the urban poor -or lower administration, for the lucky ones-. Some privileged strata of Hauthkajan workers would see some benefits, but most Awodejans this change was simply a new form of slavery. However, just over a century ago the rise of labor-intensive RID agriculture made the de jure enterprise profitable again. But without reliable means to re-enslave billions of Ayar, the Empire needed a way to push the institution onto other species. It achieved this in two ways. The first was through the Empire's first spaceborn diplomatic relationship, buying masses of Asteran convicts (often political prisoners) from Vorcia to toil on the new model plantations. The second was through two military campaigns. The first was the Decimation of Kwazan, essentially a long series of massive slave raids from roughly 100-70 years ago. The only real fighting was a few months of skirmishing with the Kwazan Conglomerate, after which the invaders simply avoided that state in favor of easier targets on the planet. The second was a much more ambitious, fourteen-year military campaign known as the Slave War that started just under 70 years ago, when the Empire invaded a large Wuxianese colony and took staggering numbers captive. The Wuxianese navy eventually beat back the Antoviyans, but not before their constant raids had turned the colony into a mostly-depopulated wasteland.
(3) The New Revolution Wars
The Revolutionary Workers' Union had underground elements on Antoviya Prime as long as seventy years before the monarchy fell. However, a number of factors converged thirty years ago to light a powderkeg never witnessed before on the planet: the rise of a class of radical revolutionary Ayar intellectuals, the RWU reforms, the consolidation of the new slave system, and the badly botched campaign of the Second Slave War.
What followed were the Revolution Wars, a series of global conflicts that engulfed Antoviya over two decades. The Second Revolution War, a one-year conflict beginning some twenty-eight years ago, was extremely bloody but ended quickly in nuclear bombings of key revolutionary centers. But thirty years ago, the Third marked a turning point. RWU-aligned pirates and Antoviyan Royal Navy defectors swarmed to the revolutionary cause from early on, forcing the Empire to renounce nuclear conflict for fear of reprisal. The rest of the Third War proceeded as a “convential” conflict, though this implied no shortage of blood and atrocity on all sides. It ended eighteen years ago after the Union of Asteron hosted truce negotiations among the RWU, Antoviya, and the now counter-invading Empire of Wuxian. Antoviya was left as an isolated kingdom on Hauthkaj, heavily indebted to the Wuxian in war reparations. The RWU then called for its first official elections as a state, ending in a resounding affirmation of Syndicalism, though with many notable divisions within this. For five years afterwards, the RWU was at peace and devoted its energies to reconstruction and implementing the political and economic structures of Syndicalism.
The Fourth Revolution War was the final conflict in the series, provoked by border skirmishes in murky circumstances and Syndicalist revolts in Antoviyan territory that called to the RWU for help. After three years, it put a relatively quick but costly end to this last bastion of the old monarchy. The revolutionaries were methodical in their isolation and extermination of the royalty, and the only remaining traces of the nobility hide in the wastelands of the Hauthkaj Irradiated Zone.
Thus, with the Revolution Wars over, Ayar culture began a time of transformation that continues to the present. The old, Antoviyan ideologies of royal privilege, race hierarchy, patriarchy, and capitalist-imperialism have been rejected wholesale by the revolutionary ideology of Syndicalism. They are being phased out by a combination of the revolution's natural popularity, suitable "publicity" released by the Union Council, and the ongoing extermination of the scattered remnants of the old Antoviyan regime. In their place are being set the values of the Revolution. Yet, matters are more uncertain now than ever. Although Antoviya is dead and buried, advances in space travel have brought an entire new world to life. Will the Union bring Syndicalism to the stars? Or will the brief light of Workers' Democracy be crushed, or worse, corrupted?
Culture:
The RWU is something of a mass experiment in political unity with cultural autonomy. Not only communities of Asterans and Wuxianese and IkaKwazan, but also countless numbers of centuries-oppressed Awodejan cultural communities have sought to revive old traditions while synthesizing them with new politics. The sense of "return" to old roots, which may have reactionary elements in some cases, is checked by the historical experience of collective liberation and a general anti-conformist bent.
Antoviya had little love for religion except the Cult of the Emperor, so now gods and spirits of all colors and stripes have made a grand return to the public sphere. Most Awodejan Ayar could be loosely described as animist, while most Hauthkajans hold to a more coherent, shared polytheistic pantheon. The largest single organized religion in the RWU, however, is known as Rightful Reverence. It is a variant of the Wuxianese Reverence of the Fundamental Truths and the Yuyan that almost all RWU Wuxianese practice. It has also been adopted by hundreds of millions of Ayar, humans, and IkaKwazan. It holds to many of the traditional Wuxianese philosophical and ethical principles but with a few key differences. Firstly, although the Yuyan is revered for his immense knowledge and wisdom, they are skeptical of his divine mandate over all (some believe he has limited divine mandate over traditional Wuxianese lands, others reject the divine mandate altogether). This skepticism is partly ideological, questioning the concentration of power in a single being, but also practical: Can any single creature really try to rule an entire planet or more without becoming drowned out by the bureaucracy they must build around themselves? Furthermore, the Rightfully Reverent acknowledge that, or at least the possibility that they live among divine beings other than the Yuyan, such as the ethereal spirits and gods worshipped by the Ayar (as well as beings worshipped by Asterans and IkaKwazan). Finally, they strongly reject the strict hierarchy of the Imperial Wuxianese, a reaction that comes across most strongly in their widespread opposition to any sort of "Great Man" worship.