While not a kingdom unto itself, the Compact is a treaty to which many in the Array are signatories. The Compact is a major force in maintaining the primacy of natural humans throughout the Array, by defending and sometimes enforcing the Edicts against artificial sentience and genetic modification. Four of the five Great Kingdoms are currently signatories to the Compact, which is at a zenith in its 1500 year history. Triene was a founding signatory, but was expelled 400 years ago for violating the third Edict. Both the Empire and the Dominion are more recent additions.
In addition to the force of the treaty, the Compact has Marshals, or Sokun, whose jobs are to track down international fugitives, as well as dealing with local violations of the Edicts.
X-boat routes within the borders of a kingdom are left to that kingdom, but the Compact has their own advanced X-boat network that connects the signatories across international space. They have their own Scout Corp, and staff and maintain hundreds of spaceports and jump bridges facilitating access to signatory worlds.
The Compact does not have a military. The Sokun are the closest thing they have to warriors, but their authorized activities are under umbrella of protection from all of the signatory powers, which of course have massive military potential. On two occasions, the Compact signatories have had to unite to deal with larger threats to the Edicts and the balance of power in the Array.
The Compact has a world, Aruna (A765A87F), close to the core of the Array, and adjacent to the Pocket. Aruna is one of the major centers for corporate commerce throughout the Array, with a population of over 20 billion.
Sokun
To deal with local violations of the Edicts, the Compact usually relies on their Marshals, or Sokun. Larger instances have been met with military intervention by a coalition of Compact kingdoms, but only after the Sokun have been sent in to investigate. It’s no wonder that kingdoms throughout the Array are very careful about how close to the line on the Proscriptions they are willing to go, and there is a minimum standard that is publicly broadcast throughout the Array, so as to make the Proscriptions universally known.
Triene openly tests the standards with their parental eugenics selection, but they aren’t known to be using artificial gene enhancement currently. That’s why Sokun aren’t welcome in Triene any more, as 150 years ago they infiltrated and brought out controversial intelligence. This led to a brief war by Compact signatories (all except Sallumin) to force Triene to discontinue their genetic modification programs.
Also, it’s not unusual for a signatory to have more stringent standards than those set out in the Compact, within their own borders. Sokun are familiar with these local differences, and are supposed to enforce the Edicts based on those standards.
For example, the Morathi do not employ very advanced AI tech, relying on other humans (often Glinde), along with secondary computer assistance, and so they prohibit AI above TL-12 on any of their worlds, bases or ships. The Unsaag Morathi in particular tend not to interact with AI on any level, as computers don’t bleed and so cannot be trusted. Thus, Morathi Sokun are rarely sent to Almerand territory on missions, and they are never given jurisdiction there, because Almerand approaches the limits set by the Edicts for their use of artificial intelligence, allowing TL-13 (semi-independent robots).
Signatories
The Compact is made up of dozens of signatory kingdoms and hundreds of independent worlds throughout the Array. Four of the five Great Kingdoms are signatories.
To qualify for membership, a kingdom must have:
- at least unified one home world;
- have jump travel beyond the bottleneck of 1.5. They can meet this requirement even if they didn’t innovate the tech or manufacture the ship. This usually means keeping at least two such ships, so as not to lapse if one is destroyed;
- full commitment to all three Edicts, including support for authorized Sokun activities within their borders;
- and a 3/4 vote in the Great Council to admit the new kingdom. This is the one where corporations usually insinuate themselves into the process, in an attempt to maximally exploit single-world and smaller kingdom applicants, in exchange for securing votes.
New kingdoms are also given fewer votes than longer-term members. Each signatory gets two votes, but each also gets an additional vote per century of membership. So Almerand, Sallumin and four smaller kingdoms, as the only remaining signatories from the founding, have disproportionate voting power.
Applying isn’t easy. There is a process of inspection and auditing, as well as interviews, followed by approval. It takes years just to be allowed to apply. Also, being a signatory is literal. When a kingdom applies to the Compact, they select one person who will be recognized by the Compact as their Sovereign, who signs a document that is then transported to Aruna, along with a delegation for the Great Council. Until the declared home world hears back from Aruna, they are considered a provisional member.
This means one person must sign, to represent the entire kingdom, even is it’s an interstellar kingdom of many stars. Some interstellar nations are not kingdoms in a sense that would allow one Sovereign, such as democratic states with regular elections. This, along with the third Edict, keeps many worlds and kingdoms from applying for membership, and many other applicants don’t make the ¾ vote needed. It’s thought than more than half of the population of the Array is not living in Compact-aligned territory, and the Compact’s growth has slowed.
A kingdom can be expelled from the Compact. It requires a petition, and a second, and a simple majority is enough to force a trial, after which it takes a 3/4 vote in the Great Council to expel the kingdom. This is in effect the moment the vote is case, even though news probably won’t reach any of the worlds in question for months.
Edicts
The Compact exists in part to deal with what the signatories have agreed are threats to their ways of life, even to their very lives in some cases. This agreement is reflected in all of them committing to the three Edicts.
The first two are primary Edicts. The Compact signatories are committed to finding any instances of either artificial sentience, or genetically enhanced human beings. These two practices (the Proscriptions) are prohibited and not even tolerated from other kingdoms, guilds, churches, or corporations. Once discovered, these instances are to be halted by any means necessary, including detention of those responsible, and then reported as soon as possible to the Compact.
The first Edict is usually considered the most important, due the interpretation of cryptic warnings inscribed on artifact tablets, as well as the experience of early TL-14 kingdoms with inadequate restraints on AI when it achieved self-awareness. Thus, while some technologies in the Array have reached at TL-15.5, the first Edict prohibits anyone (even non-Compact signatories) from having computers above TL-13 without Compact-approved limitations in place. This can lead to military confrontations, and even Almerand spent decades in a probationary status within the Compact, about 500 years ago, for testing the limits of allowable AI.
The second Edict is almost as important. Artifact tablets have been interpreted to also refer to genetic manipulation, and the dangers of using it on humans. Even in the present, there are populations in the periphery of genetically enhanced outsiders. The Compact allows for and even encourages husbandry and selective agriculture, but doing it in a lab is more problematic. There is a strict opposition to human genetic improvement, and different kingdoms and world may have more expansive bans on any higher life (primates, cetaceans), or even outright forbid any gene modifications. Sokun must know these local rules as well.
When they are in unaligned space, Marshals are supposed to only enforce the well-defined upper limit on both primary Edicts. Some Sokun do still bring along their own predispositions.
The third Edict is considered secondary, not a Proscription. The rule is against any private, local or national policy of forced servitude, or human ownership. The Edict itself sets out a clear standard for this.
This standard can be seen by comparing a signatory with a non-signatory. The line is between Almerand, where there are serfs, bound to their planet, and also peasants, free but poor, often working for subsistence wages, vulnerable to press gangs if not otherwise in school or employed; and Triene, where there is widespread indentured servitude, nationalized forced drugging of much of the population, and in areas, several forms of outright slavery.
Unlike the first two edicts, this third Edict against slavery is not enforced beyond the borders of Compact signatories. Thus, the Compact is not willing to go to war or openly subvert a kingdom because they practice slavery.
The Shadar Empire has been pushing a fourth Edict in the Grand Council, a secondary banning of psionics throughout the Compact, and their lobbying has met with predictable results, mainly due to corporate interests valuing the utility of psions.