Editing FederalSpace:Peoples (section)

== The Others ==

But they aren't the only new government on the block:

=== The Orion Alliance ===
A mercantile trade and defense alliance, grown into a group of federated states. In some aspects, it clings to ancient traditions; in others, it blithely charges forward down new paths. A mirror image of the Federated Worlds. Sometimes they are partners, sometimes rivals. (If you like, you can think of the Alliance as the U.S. and the Fed as the E.U., though that's a gross simplification, of course.) In fact, because of the dispersed nature of space, in places the two governments overlap, with worlds switching allegiance from time to time, or existing side-by-side.

=== The Great Galactic Empire ===
…is what they call themselves. Everyone else thinks of them as the Cronan Empire. A fragment of the old Empire still survives, centered on the world of Cronos, and with a resurgent, feudally-inspired culture, they're back in the Great Game, hoping to reclaim lost territory or colonize new. These are the Klingon / Soviet Union analogs.

=== New Byzantium ===
Our Romulan analogs, and also our Space Communists / China in Space. Formerly isolationist, now hoping for new blood and ideas, a small but powerful polity with lots of transhuman aspects, and lots of little intersecting social groups and concepts of public face that make it tricky for outsiders to quite grasp what's going on. 

=== The 'Borg Hives ===
Several of these, actually, mostly way out in the deeps beyond explored space. People who modified themselves and their society so heavily that they may no longer be ''human'', and now exist in such a web of telecommunication and body-modification that each hive is practically a single "person." A couple are aggressive like the TV shows, but others are introspective, or even friendly—though disturbing, for how far they differ from human norms, and yet how close they can still be… 

=== And More… ===
Plus various pocket empires, like whatever we'll name our Cardassian analogs, and a myriad of isolates, including no doubt a few nuts who base their culture off of Greek mythology, Nazism, cowboy movies, or Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. If it works for them, it's hard to criticize…

All of the larger nations have a mix of races, species, and cultures within them, often on the same worlds. And there are, of course, alien, or alien-dominated nations, as well. I'd like to work the Kzin / Lyrans in there somewhere, the Gorn are a must, the Tholians would fit the "freaky alien space horde bent on devouring us out of existence" role nicely, I wouldn't mind sticking the Hivers and the K'Kree in there on the side… there's room, Space is Big. And don't forget that the aliens may well have para-alien genemods, alien-animal uplifts, and AIs of their own—and humans living among them, playing the "obligatory non-alien part" on ''their'' media shows, etc. 

It's a big, wide, wonderful galaxy out there.