From: RWHofrich@a...
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 21:00:23 EST
Subject: A New Star Nation...
Okay, here's a new star nation making its presence known in the non-canon GZGverse... ...the immeasurably confused, yet heroically independant Far Stars Union Summary Category: Conventional Political: 1 Military: 2 Economic: 2 Size: 2 A star nation of three systems (from largest to smallest in population: Harzweld, Newich, Neu Pilzen) located approximately 12 parsecs from Sol. The worlds were settled by a mixed bag of colonists (Latin Americans, North Americans, English, Germans, and Czechs). The Far Stars Union is currently (2185) allied with the NSL against the FSE, but has fought the NSL in the past. Union government can be considered a constitutional oligarchy. Upper (Lords) and lower (Volk) Houses of Parliament with a rotating presidency in place of a monarch make up the central government,. The Union government's philosophy is currently mostly libertarian, though the individual planetary governments vary-Newich is very free market/democratic, Neu Pilzen's is almost socialist, and Harzweld's is between the two. The Union military is almost exclusively made up of a Navy and Marine force (there is a small Revenue and Rescue--RAR--paramilitary service). Organization is a mixture of NAC and NSL theories and doctrines, leavened by some purely local approaches to ship design. If the Marines aren't enough, larger ground forces, when needed, are provided by the governments of the individual planets. The flag is a dark red St Andrews cross bordered by white and blue in a field of yellow. This actually seemed to work out for tying the various elements together--Red St Andrews cross on Gold is the old standard for the House of Burgundy and used by the German emperors in the 1500's, in blue it is the cross on several of the different CSA battle flags, and of course the cross is also in the flag of Scotland. Comments from anyone? I've submitted three stars for ownership by the FSU to Nyrath, and am working, as you can probably tell, on a GZGpedia entry. I've also put together a timeline for these folks, but won't post that unless someone's interested (it would make this posting too long). Eventually, I'll have a web page for these guys, but haven't finished writing that stuff up yet (I'll be using it as a test--and a way to learn HTML). Rob