# Virtue Coalition ## Overview The Virtue Coalition was one of the two major colonial entities to expand after the Terran collapse. They had utopian visions for the human experiment as they viewed it, along with the ongoing trepidations that plague the species. Their modern form is radically different from the universalism of the past, being more now a networked entity of information chaos known as the Vapour. Indeed they view themselves as the coalition of Valour or the Vapour Coalition due to this arrangement of many mutual client worlds that have part of their network attached in the neutral zone and well within their own volumes. The coalition has seen increasingly hive minded tendencies in the recent centuries. As competing gestalt tribes of people make up larger and larger shares of the population. Many live in an existence of fantasy and like most space faring, post-scarcity societies make liberal use of automata to sustain this life style. Indeed the coalition standard to this day is a strongly "socialistic" economic paradigm of universal distribution that permeates all levels of society in what has become a de facto cybercracy. Culture; Despite the de facto hive minds caused by the neural tribalism that is herded by local leaders and bureaucrats through various levels of cybercratic entities one finds a culture dominated by a different sense of human individualism that's always hard to pin down for outsiders. Individuals may be part of neural-tribal organizations but their roles are hierarchical within the scope of a neural tribe due to their still being administrators within these gestalts who keep order and many people often may have split gestalt loyalties. Being mind controlled ten different directions by feuding neural-tribes remains a common issue to this day planetary authorities have to often crack down on. The virtue coalition's ongoing culture has been one of various instabilities that they can never get a grip on due to the fragmented AIs that infest the whole place from memory corruption of many Virtue inhabitants. Natalism is a common issue, but not one common enough to warrant half of what goes on in the virtue coalition's decentralized client network that for all the liberties in interstellar movement granted through an elaborate system of warp relay points and messaged ships allow for domino effects to cascade around the coalition without much issue. The various groups within the virtue coalition can be slow to respond to larger scale problems mainly due to their culture of census making that has managed to paper over many conflicts within the bureaucratic organs of the coalition but it can be frustrating to clients even if the timeless nature of hyper-stable distribution often keeps them from getting bothered enough to do much about it. Lots of internal conflict arose from the virtualization reforms in the 2600's that still persists to this day in the form of rogue client worlds and their ongoing ire for the Assembly continues to this day- seeing the Assembly in negative lights to put it charitably. Gender role wise, they're borderline matriarchal at points despite being mostly gender egalitarian due to the material existence of life in the gestalt making gender roles beyond pointless and culturally suppressed by the common sense of virtue in loathing essentialism entirely. Instead seeing everyone as a blank slate, and if not neural technology is used to make them blank slates free to be themselves. Life in the VC can be very timeless, some have lived centuries within their own realms generated by the collective dreaming the Nueral tribes can and often do. That these dreams are sustained by an unstable hegemonic authority on larger scales is something often overlooked. There are various aliens in the VC, but they often fit in just because Tikali clan cultures are used to the concepts and the Natvyr are an underclass in the regions around the hive volumes and often are seen as just evil due to their low value of life, even as they are clearly influenced at points by Natvyr outlooks. The neutral zone remains a sore point for the VC, with the autonomy of the [[Solar Protectorate]] and intermingling of the Plexus and the VC's virtue networks only having gotten more extreme for neutral zone worlds and their mixed client status. The Great ellipsoid volume as flattened by expansion difficulties as it is created a disk-like neutral zone of budding interests that intersects with the "lost" sprawl and manages to also cut into Tikalian entities, mainly the Minavans. ## Structure The VC is an extremely decentralized entity, with low stratification for a society as spread out as the VC. Their distribution systems promote an egalitarian structure and they make use of AI census from reading the dreams of virtue coalition inhabitants to create a greater sense of comity between the clients of the VC network. The VC has no single home system like the Assembly and its necropolis world. Instead you find a network of various worlds whose pacts lead to a homogenization of motives and goals through the implications of connecting relay systems to make their systems into nodes of the greater VR. This creates a general "fugue" to which major systems linked up and spread in focus control point colonization towards brighter stars while diffusion of smaller colonies percolated from the major worlds with AI systems managing conflict resolution in general. The long census they have has been accelerated by appropriating warp systems from the prospect spacers and sprawl but their expansion waves have led them to an issue where census taking has forced them to mostly have census apply to colonies that have been developed to Virtue standard with a general prerogative to develop all colonies to virtue standard. This system is also why clients seem to stick to the VC, at least for a time. While the automated military forces clamp down on unruly systems and the surveillance potential of the VC's virtue standard makes true dissent extremely difficult outside of the enigmatic white noise- the strongest rejection of the census and one that can only be described as chaos and negativity. ## Demographics ### Biological One [[Stargi]] 80% [[Human Clades]] 15.9% [[Ikirmite]] 0.1% other species ### Machine 60% neural controlled machines (NCMs) / [[Virtual Minds]] 25% client world controlled machines 4.1% universal enforcer machines 0.1% Cybercratic AGIs (see: [[AGI in the Plexus]]) 10% archival minds ## Tech The VC uses a range of technologies mainly dealing in neural-sciences and systems management that all exist to allow for universal virtue. On more local levels one may find a wide range of hacking drugs and time dilation drugs that induce long term dream states in their users. The gardens and architecture of the VC are often neo-brutalist in their design when not honeycombs of metasteel sprawling about chandelier cities and sky cities, grand displays of these flat, identity free structures that exist for augmented minds to project whatever the neural tribes want to see. The general layouts are sterile and orderly, with a sense of machine care throughout and a very maternal attitude from the AI systems who work out this stability and automated even emotional labour. The cliquish nature of the neural-tribes can lead to sudden waves of extreme violence at times, but it is mostly calm and stable, everyone in their dreams. The capacity of collective dreaming is ubiquitous to their civilization, indeed privacy is non-existent in the VC outside of the more autonomous clients and even their privacy is routinely violated. Their spacecraft are capable of a wide range of information disturbance and like everything, make use of a group of pilots in an AR situation. Many are decentralized but sometimes there is a captain. Their management is affected by their usage of homing rail gun shots and GRASERs S both offensive weaponry and defensive weaponry. See also: [[The Birth of New Virtue (or Grennism)]] [[Virtual Minds]] [[Plexus_Augmentation Technologies]] #Galactic-Region/plexus #human #VirtualSpace #superpower