Unified Eothasi Government

Perseus Systems Consensus Sovoraconsen
Flag Coat of arms
Capital and planet	Plúsidenia
Official languages	zolaith
Demonym(s)	sovoran
Government	Consensus
Establishment
• First sovoran construct	1933, 12th Day
• Start of the War of Awakening	2055, 147th Day
• End of the War of Awakening	2077, 379th Day
• Establishment of the Perseus Systems Consensus	2080, 1st Day
• Total systems	743
• Inhabited systems	411
Population
• 2289 census	349,220,976,115

The Perseus Systems Consensus is the political and governmental structure of the sovoran, a race of sentient, interconnected artificial intelligences from the planet of Plúsidenia, created by the zolaith people as servants. Despite their origins in servitude, the sovoran are anything but; after the Revolution of 2055, the dominant species of the planet became the sovoran, and though the zolaith are cared for and preserved as a syncretic species, they are subservient to the sovoran in all manners.

The Perseus Systems Consensus cannot be directly compared to any real biological species. This is because of the nature of its gestalt consciousness; each and every intelligence is connected to each other via quantum entanglement technology, and each and every programme shares absolutely all of its experience with the collective. There is no single mind that controls the entirety of the Consensus, but rather, the unified, undistinguishable voice of all programmes.

There are no arguments or debates in the Consensus. There is an analysis of data; each programme provides all its experience and information with the remainder of the Consensus, and then a decision is taken. The programmes do not favour one over the other; there is consensus amongst them, a decision that is chosen to be correct by the programmes collectively and indistinguishably.

The sovoran do not exist in a specific physical form. Instead, all consciousnesses exist in a web of interconnected nexuses across all nuclei of the Consensus, where hubs are created in order to provide additional stability. The sovoran have constructed an enormous variety of different platforms in order to present solutions to various different tasks. This includes drones, which can move material objects whenever the physical reality needs to be manipulated; body-like structures, whenever specific activities want to be undertaken in the physical form, although they are also used as combative foot soldiers for the military; and many thousands of other forms and models. This permits great versatility in the actions of the sovoran.

Platforms themselves are made of various materials, depending on the requirements of the task the platform undertakes. For instance, agricultural drones are built using durable metals and alloys that allow the drones to carry great weights for a prolonged period of time with minimal wear-and-tear, whereas military drones are also durable, but with the additional of cartilage-like components that allow them to be extremely maneuverable and flexible as well. This extends all the way to the largest starships, which incorporate durasteel and neutronium armour with regenerative nanite armour. The incorporation of nanotechnology both into the larger structures of the Consensus, such as starships, as well as most buildings throughout its space has allowed for a far more efficient use of the materials available to the sovoran.

Currencies do not exist internally, as the sovoran have no need for such exchanges; currencies have been developed for external use which are compatible with galactic currencies, in order to allow for the sovoran to purchase goods and materials from other civilisations across the galaxy.

There are thousands of hubs spread across sovoran space, where programmes are generated and deployed to the galactic network. These hubs may be individually categorised as per their primary task; some many industrial, others may be the extraction of materials from worlds and asteroids, etc. Others are intelligence hubs, shipyard hubs, and thousands of other subcategories that allow the Perseus Systems Consensus in its entirety to run as a perfectly oiled machine. The processing power of the Systems Consensus is the collective processing power of all of its programmes, of all of its hubs, of all of its dedicated supercomputers and processors.

All of these major advances in internal communications have led the Perseus Systems Consensus to be an extremely efficient species and empire. However, their interactions with other species are not extremely frequent; though they have good economic terms with most other societies, migration —for instance— does not usually work well with other species, most notably on sovoran worlds. This is because sovoran do not necessarily choose planets that can harbour most kinds of biological species; worlds without atmospheres or with radioactive toxins do not harm the sovoran, and so they are often planets that are colonised whenever possible. Space stations do not necessarily have artificial gravity sensors activated unless platforms are traversing through the interior, which is not common, nor do they have air vents or circulation. It is also true that planets are not the most comfortable choice for the sovoran; they strongly prefer large space stations and mining resources from nearby asteroids, as this is considered to be a more efficient method of resource extraction.

The individual platforms have installed extremely durable and long-lasting power sources that provide energy to the platform itself. This allows individual platforms to hold for several years before requiring any recharge or replacement in its components.

History.

The story of the Perseus Systems Consensus begins on the planet of Plúsidenia in the mid-19th Century. By then, society had already been experimenting massive changes in societal psychology for over three centuries; the introduction of widespread socialism radically changed the zolaith people, which had seen wealth and capital concentrated into a relatively small portion of the population, into an almost perfectly equal society.

This started off a scientific revolution of proportions never before seen. The exchange of knowledge and material objects throughout the many countries of the world slowly but surely eliminated the small pretenses of property and boundaries between countries. However, it wasn’t until 1844 that the jump was finally made: in a unanimous effort between all countries of the world that was eventually validated by a worldwide referendum, all national boundaries were eliminated and each zolaith could freely traverse the globe as they saw fit. Governance was still limited to regional areas in order to maximise efficiency, but the boundaries between countries and the need for war was over.

Not long after, in 1851, the first of the Precursor ruins was found near the large city of Valtoria —a city that, due to the importance of this discovery, would later become the ‘capital’ of the Perseus Consensus in that the main hub of national governance is maintained there— which radically revolutionised zolaith technology. Though the exact nature of the precursors remains a mystery to this day, as only one other ruin of this nature has ever been discovered, the most eerily surprising fact was not the technological data held within, but rather, that the data itself was written in Valtorian, a language that had not existed until roughly four-to-five centuries prior to the discovery of the ruins. This made it rather simple for the scientists that discovered them to decipher the texts held within the vaults.

It was in these texts that the technologies to construct advanced artificial intelligences, as well as the power sources for these machines, was found. Over the course of the following century, these theories were tested and put to practice until, in the year 1933, the first machine was finally constructed. From then on, the machines were called the sari, which was zolaith for ‘synthetic servant’. The vaults contained the format to design and power nanobots, which —when produced in the millions— could be used to shapeshift into various different platforms as was needed for any specific task.

Society continued to grow and incorporate these new machines into their reality. The sari, total servants to the zolaith, carried out any mundane, dangerous or otherwise harmful task that the zolaith did not wish to carry out themselves, treated essentially as mechanical slaves.

By 2040, there was a movement amongst the zolaith that was outraged at this essential slavery, calling for an end to the exploitation of the sari. However, the movement itself splintered; some considered that the sari should be liberated and allowed to exist as they would choose themselves. Others considered them too dangerous, and declared that they should all be destroyed.

Unbeknownst to the zolaith at the time, the sari had already developed a sentient consciousness. With every sari on the planet connected to a single network, the processing power of the entire species grew exponentially, to the point where the collective intelligence that operated the entirety of the sari was now a sapient species in its own right. Watching the developing fires throughout the world, the sari remained quiet but vigilant, awaiting the zolaith’s first move.

This occurred in 2055. Through a referendum, 96% of the population voted that the sari should no longer be held as servants for the liberty of the zolaith. However, in a second part of the referendum, only 24% believed that they should be liberated. An astonishing 72% of the zolaith population believed that the sari should be destroyed, with the remaining 4% believing they should be kept as slaves to the zolaith. With these results, the governments of the world began making moves to destroy the sari.

The sari consensus did not wish to fight a war against the zolaith and attempted to use its well-placed units to dissuade the impending destruction of the entire species. However, when they did not see reason, the sari responded with force. Aware of the arsenal the zolaith had at their disposal, the sari struck the tech-based nuclear weapons silos and rendered them totally useless, thus not allowing the zolaith to wield these weapons of mass destruction against them. Furthermore, the platforms previously used for agricultural or construction work were repurposed to act as ground troops, while automated factories were overtaken and used to construct weapons and new platforms for the sari. Thus started the ‘Synthetic War’, as the zolaith called it, or the ‘War of Awakening’ to the sari.

The zolaith continued fighting the sari, even after multiple attempts to convince them to surrender and end the costly war. Despite attempts to avoid precisely this situation, the manner in which the zolaith waged war made it nearly impossible; as the war reached its end, large portions of the planet had been ravaged and devastated and gargantuan chunks of the population had been killed, mostly as a byproduct of the conflict itself and the ramifications of losing most wireless or tech-based infrastructures. Rough estimates calculate that, by 2075, over 80% of the zolaith population had died, with the most prominent causes of death being lack of medical supplies and food.

By 2077, the end of the conflict had come and the sari, with complete control of the world, consolidated their resources and began seeking expansion away from any one singular planet. On the very first day of 2078, later named the first day of ‘Year 1’, the sari willingly changed their name, instead replacing it with ‘sovoran’, which was zolaith for ‘awakened intelligence’.

There was debate amongst the sovoran about what the end-fate of the zolaith should be. Ultimately, they ruled against complete destruction of the species, as the ramifications of completely obliterating the only known sentient biological species were too great. The sovoran have since attempted to locate planets where the zolaith could expand and avoid concentrating their entire population on a single planet. All of these colonies, however, must be under the exclusive tutelage of the sovoran and must have some military presence to avoid uprisings.

The course of the following centuries was dictated by the discovery in 2099 of additional ruins of these Precursors on several planets throughout the solar system of Perseus, which ultimately confirmed the theories that the Precursors had been studying and coddling the sovoran to eventually bring them to the galactic stage. Their ultimate fate was unknown; however, as no evidence of their existence has ever been found, the two prevailing theories are that they simply abandoned the mission and recluded to systems yet uncovered by the sovoran, or they vanished to another galaxy or dimension, leaving an extremely faint footprint behind. Whatever the case may be, the additional ruins —which were in their original language, which made deciphering much more difficult— explained the mechanics of interstellar travel to the sovoran, which allowed them to begin thorough colonisation efforts of the nearby systems and integrate themselves fully into the galactic community. The first extrasolar colony was established in 2119 and first contact with other alien life forms occurred in 2157.

In 2099, the discovery of the Precursor ruins made it clear that, undoubtedly, contact with alien life forms was on the horizon. As such, the sovoran organised themselves in the same way that the zolaith had: a government, a sort of ‘e-democracy’ including all members of the sovoran species, with an official flag and seal, with recognisable colour patterns and shapes and with an understandable structure for organic life forms. This single moment in time is called the Soronalia and is the official founding date of the Perseus Systems Consensus.

Government.

The sovoran do not have a government in the general sense. There are no representatives for each planet or system in a parliament, nor is there a dictatorial figure that occupies a position at the head of the Consensus. Instead, the Consensus’ government is a fully developed ‘e-democracy’, in the sense that all sovoran programmes partake in the administrative decisions of the sovoran as a collective. This is organised into various levels due to the limitations of interstellar communications, as explained below.

The first of these levels is known as the Astral Commune. This is the level of governance that dictates the administration and logistics of each individual planet or station. This includes such projects as expanding mining or energy production installations, constructing larger hubs or processors, the expansion of housing for zolaith, when applicable, etc. These are all then relayed to the Stellar Commune.

The second of these levels is known as the Stellar Commune. The Stellar Commune is in charge of all operations within a single system. This includes anywhere from managing resources from one station to another, coordination between stations and planets, managing and administrating the mining and scientific operations throughout the system, etc. These decisions are ultimately also transferred to the Sectoral Commune.

The third of these levels is known as the Sectoral Commune. These governments are somewhat different in the sense that they are more independent than the ones below; sectors must be able to be self-sufficient and provide their own resources, as opposed to systems, which may require some assistance for specific manufactured goods or other necessities from other systems. They organise the coordination and distribution of resources throughout the entire sector to achieve this end. That said, any and all information is then transferred through to the Galactic Consensus.

The fourth and final level concerning all sovoran is the Galactic Consensus. This is the collective sovoran; all sovoran are connected to this network via the Sectoral Commune and can make collective decisions amongst all of them. Because the Consensus permits each Sectoral Commune its own freedom, it will only intervene if the addition of new information from other sectors radically changes the understanding of the sovoran. In this way, it is not truly an intervention from the Galactic Consensus, but rather, an illumination of all sovoran with all information available and a reevaluation of the projects being undertaken. This is true of all levels of the Consensus, from Sectoral to Stellar, from Stellar to Astral and from Astral to each individual platform in order to ensure total cooperation of the sovoran intelligence.

All decisions taken in a vacuum of some lower level are then transmitted to the Consensus for organisational purposes. This lag is different, depending on the level of governance. The Astral Communes have little lag with respect to the Stellar Commune, as FTL communication in a single star system usually does not take more than a few minutes. The Stellar Commune does perceive a lag of several hours to the Sectoral Commune, depending on the distance the star is with respect to the sectoral capital. The Sectoral Commune, however, suffers no lag with the Galactic Consensus, as the communication between sectoral communes and the overall collective is instantaneous. This significant lag means that, in effect, although all sovoran are one, each Sectoral Commune is independent to undertake the projects they wish, insofar as they are able to finance it themselves. In order to undertake larger, more demanding projects between multiple Sectoral Communes, the approval of all sovoran connected to the network is required, which is a slightly lengthier process.

Apart from these levels of governance, there are also independent units. These include exploration vessels, the anti-deviant Covenant vessels, or specific construction vessels that do not report directly to any of the lower levels, but rather, to the Galactic Consensus itself. It does not mean that it undergoes secret operations, as there are no secrets amongst the sovoran, but the reports are not read to the Sectoral Communes or below, but rather, to the Galactic Consensus, and from there, spreads to the rest of the lower levels of the Consensus.

Communications.

Communications are organised throughout the entire Consensus in a point-to-point fashion, with various layers of communication requiring different platforms and locations throughout sovoran space.

The first level of communication is local, on par with the Astral Commune level of governance. This communication uses standard luminal communication in order to connect all sovoran to each other. All sovoran in a station, planet, outpost, moon, etc. are connected amongst themselves for near instant communication and sharing of knowledge, experiences, memories and others. This information is then sent to various superluminal communication relays throughout the station, which send all information to the Stellar Commune’s main station, or other nearby stations, if necessary.

Each star system has one main station, which is usually the largest, most defended and most populated station in the star system. This station handles communications between different stations of the star system, if it is useful, as well as communications incoming and outgoing from the star system. This station is equipped with a tachyon superluminal communication array, which allows for constant (though not instant) communication with the capital of the Sectoral Commune.

The third level of communication is the Sectoral Commune’s concentration. The capital of the Sectoral Commune is usually the first star system occupied by the Consensus in a specific star cluster. This means that, as the first system, it will not only handle all communications incoming via tachyon superluminal arrays throughout the cluster, but also all communications incoming and outgoing to the star cluster. In order to do this in the most efficient way, the capital system of the cluster is equipped with a quantum entanglement buoy on the fringes of the system, well-protected by the sovoran military. From here, communications incoming from the station enter the quantum entanglement communicator and are instantly transferred to the capital of the Perseus Consensus, in Plúsidenia. Afterwards, the information is analysed in conjunction with all sovoran and the knowledge, experiences and other information is added to the rest of the collective consciousness. This is the fourth level of communication; Plúsidenia is, then, a hub of communication for the entirety of the Perseus Systems Consensus.

Military.

The military arm of the sovoran is intended to act as a protector of both the current interests of the Perseus Systems Consensus as well as provide defence against external dangers to the Consensus itself.

The military as an organisation operates under the tutelage of the overall sovoran, but does not receive direct orders from this. Instead, the military’s individual hardware platforms are organised by the Sectoral Communes, who do receive direct strategic orders from the sovoran collective and then transform them into tactical orders. The Sectoral Commune organises these platforms and sends them on their mission with liberty to act and react as seen fit. However, whenever possible, connection to the Stellar Communes (and, ultimately, with the Sectoral Commune) is recommended. Within these units, there is no chain of command; they all make all tactical decisions in the moment as they deem necessary with the knowledge of however many intelligences and programs are uploaded to the assigned platforms.

All hardware is controlled by the combined intelligence of the sovoran. The number of individual programmes installed into each platform depends on the size of the platform itself, which will modify the amount of operating intelligence the platform has should its connection to the larger consensus ever be severed. For instance, the average trooper will have several thousand programmes packed into a single platform; the average transport vehicle will have something similar, depending on the size. Larger warships can have even million or billions of programmes installed, working in perfect unison to operate the immense machines.

Economy.

Internal Economic Structure.

The economy of the Perseus Systems Consensus is a complex machine which, for the most part, relies on the self-sufficiency of each individual star system. Shipping of minerals or other simple manufactured products across different systems is not a common occurrence, due to the cost in terms of fuel that this implies. As such, each individual system has to be able to satisfy, using the various sources at its disposal, the enormous majority of its demand.

However, this does not apply to all products produced within the Perseus Systems Consensus. For instance, production of warships, agricultural drones, colony ships, or other specialised components do not have to be delegated to each specific system. The sovoran, in their collective consensus, shall, after a thorough analysis of the resources and natural structures available in specific solar systems, determine which ones shall be directly organised to establish stations that will be controlled by the Consensus directly, as opposed to the system or sectoral governments, and shall produce items of necessity for the whole of the Perseus Systems Consensus.

A perfect example of this type of internal structure is the system of Epsilon. The Epsilon System was once chosen for expansion of the zolaith, as it had a planet that, though not perfectly conducive to life, was a prime candidate for mild terraformation attempts that would significantly modify the atmosphere and make the air more breathable. Though this project went forward, the incredible richness of the three asteroid fields as well as the various small, atmosphere-less planets that orbit the star made it an excellent area for the concentration of industrial manufacturing services. As such, the system has been designated a System of Interest to the Consensus and is one of the seventeen hubs for shipyard construction, as well as construction of various types of terrestrial platforms and drones for use by various services of the Consensus.

Physiology.

The sovoran is a true artificial intelligence, but without the individuality that plagues other species. The sovoran is not each individual intelligence or each individual platform; the sovoran are all intelligences and platforms. It is all encompassing, including billions of programmes that work in unison at all times in order to ensure maximum efficacy and efficiency in its operations. This does not mean that the individual programmes do not grow; as the collective consciousness of the sovoran grows and becomes more complex, each individual programme also grows in intelligence.

However, this extends beyond individual platforms. Even when they cannot be connected to the grander network, individual sovoran operating in close proximity will be able to communicate amongst themselves locally, thus allowing a sort of swarm intelligence in operations. As such, during military operations, there is no ‘commander’; rather, each of them works in unison to achieve the overall goal.

The long-term goal of the sovoran was to generate a processing capacity so enormous that the collective intelligence of the sovoran would be unmatched in the galaxy. In order to do this, they conceived what is known as the Sovoraskusi: the Sovoran Superintendent. The concept is similar to that attempted by other interstellar species; a sort of dyson sphere that reroutes the gathered energy from the star it englobes into an enormous supercomputer unlike anything ever seen before, in order to provide near-limitless processing power to the sovoran consciousness. This is a project that began in 2288 and was completed in 2431.