Common Core:The SSC
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| Regional Governing Body | |
 Spinward Stellar Coalition |
Capital: New Moscow City, New Moscow, Zvezda Revolyutsii Oblast Languages: Spinwarder Russian, Galactic Common Organization: Regional Governing Body Location: Territory mainly coreward of the station, within Civ-Space Relations with NT: Loyal (unstable) Population: Sparsely populated planets, orbital outposts |
Born of the ashes of the collapsed Third Soviet Union, the Spinward Stellar Coalition (Vostochnaya Zvezdnaya Koalitsiya, *lit.* Eastern Stellar Coalition) is the closest governing body to SS13, controlling much of the regions closeby to the station. Small in comparison even to other independent human governments, their holdings consists of a number of (mostly sparsely-populated) planets and orbital outposts, spread across a wide territory that is mostly owned by the government in New Moscow on paper only. Life this far from Sol is austere, but the Spinwarders are generally honest, hardworking folk, unfairly subjected to the whims of various entities that have arrived in the region and started to throw their weight around.
A New Power
The collapse of the Third Soviet Union was a brutal and bloody affair, with the February Revolution and its aftermath costing the people of the Spinward Sector dearly. In this chaos, a stabilising force was needed, and this came in the form of the Spinward Stellar Coalition. Founded on idealistic principles, the SSC represented a new hope for the Spinward Sector, and for a brief few decades, it seemed as though this would a true new page for the Spinwarders; and then came the corruption. It may be too early and too severe to call the SSC a failed democracy, but its institutions are in terminal decline, precipitated by the efforts of its autocratic leader, Oleksandr Kushnirenko, who has maintained his grip on power via cronyism and remarkably brazen electoral fraud for a long 12 years. Kushnirenko has also been keen to court corporate interest, with the backing (and funding) of corporate powers being critical to his stranglehold on power, in particular that of Nanotrasen.
Life on the Rim
Despite everything, life on the rim continues. The average citizen lives a better life under the SSC than they did under the late Third Soviet Union, with the liberalisation of the economy and the corporate arrival bringing a deluge of new money to the region, as well as the infrastructure they need to operate. The first comms buoy link to Earth came about 30 years ago; direct flights between New York and New Moscow (in as little as three weeks!) came the next year. Core-made products are common at grocery stores. In many ways, the Spinward Sector is the most well-connected Far Rim territory across all of Far Human Space.
Such luxuries, however, don't come free, and the overbearing hand of the corporation can be felt across the sector. Many younger citizens of the SSC have taken up jobs with the corporations, which has lead to a generational divide between young and old. An open implication also hangs in the air that everything the corporations have brought, they can easily take away if the Spinwarders prove unhelpful to their interests. None of this engenders much love for the corporations on the Far Rim, with many citizens hoping to see a day where their influence over the Coalition is brought to heel, and their quality of life doesn't rely on the whims of trillion-dollar companies that have forgotten what it is to be a normal person.
In the larger cities and orbital habitats of the SSC, corporate workers have started to rent or purchase houses, seeking some degree of freedom from the corpos during their time off-rotation. The pay offered by Nanotrasen means that most workers can afford a decent enough place to live, and the commute from the SSC to the nearest NT Dispatch Station is only a few days by local mass transit options. There's also a lot of recreational facilities here that just can't be replicated on one of Nanotrasen's stations; while you can always drop by the bar, there's a certain ambience the on-station facilities lack. Naturally, none of this particularly endears the locals to Nanotrasen's presence, as if they needed any further convincing to hate them.