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Stroud Alliance
Members
The Stroud Alliance is a very young alliance only a handful of years old,
only semi-independent and still under the auspices of other governments. The
alliance is composed of three planets in the
Twilight sector: Centin, Stroud,
and Ygnus. The members of the Stroud alliance are currently lobbying to join
the UTP.
Stroud
Currently still an official member on the physical fringe of the
Core Commonwealth. Debate rages on the
planet whether to remain a member or to rescind and become singularly
involved in the Stroud Alliance. Much of the controversy rages, not around
loyalty to the Commonwealth, but around
the most efficient way to exploit the
Commonwealth.
Stroud is a dirty planet with an industrial
economy and working population, manufacturing a variety of industrial
products and processing local minerals. In spite of its heavy
manufacturing, it remains poor and somewhat isolated from the rest of the
Commonwealth, both physically and
politically.
Centin
A recently withdrawn member of the Spinward
Confederacy, Centin is currently host to a large contingent of diplomats
from several neighbouring empires, notably the
Spinward Confederacy and the Core
Commonwealth. Small contingents of Spinward
Confederacy ships occasionally "evaluate" the system but are kept in
check from threats of action by the three planets and by the
Core Commonwealth, who are not interested
in seeing Centin rejoin the Confederacy.
Centin, as a remote colonial world, is still
close to its working roots. The economy is strong and diversified, centered
around coaxing food from the soil, minerals from the earth, and bringing
them all to market. While Centin, by all accounts, is a bountiful world in
terms of producing large amounts of the necessities of life, it is also
somewhat poor and suffering from being taken for granted by the
Confederacy.
Ygnus
A predominantly Ptatl world that has
maintained its independence from the time it was settled. While Ygnus
maintains a diversified and independent economy, its independence has
somewhat hurt it in terms of technological development and it often lags the
major empires in terms of available technologies and conveniences.
Through the Stroud Alliance, Ygnus hopes to
diversify its culture and draw in rich corporations and new technologies.
Ygnus also runs an aggressive tourist campaign, promoting both its exotic
Ptatl heritage and some of its severe
and breathtaking geography to bring in foreign money and trade.
Agenda
The members of the Stroud Alliance are essentially all isolated from
their purported allies, both in terms of financial gain and political power.
By withdrawing from or exploiting their old "masters", the members of the
alliance hope to maximize their wealth and control their own destiny. The
member worlds of the Alliance tend to be somewhat hostile and defensive,
perhaps even a little paranoid, when it comes to their former empires.
The Stroud Alliance is building and
sponsoring large, aggressive trading centers on the surface and in the
system of its members in an attempt to facilitate trade between themselves
and with their former empires, though on a much more favourable stance for
themselves. The Alliance has rescinded and altered many of the trade laws of
their old empires and play host to many questionable traders and trade
practices in a blatantly free market. While this is an annoyance to the
empires, a number of major corporations see the Alliance worlds as
convenient places to trade.
Piracy
Rumor through the
Commonwealth has it that much of the
pirate activity around the planet and its near neighbors are either
sponsored by or directly carried out by Stroud and its allied planets. The
pirate activity has been predominantly directed toward the
Commonwealth but includes activities
against the Spinward Confederacy and
Bjaki Federation as well. The ships of
major independent corporations are often left alone, though not always.
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