A Brief History of the Elepharchy
Authority, exploitation, war, and inequality were effectively unknown on the Vects' homeworld Stekeir even before they ventured out to the stars. Their form of governance, based on gathering in their ivory towers and seeking consensus without any citizen being elevated over another, still remains. The cooperative-based markets of those early days, on the other hand, do not, as the rise of automation has made internal trade and currency quite obsolete.
Their technological development has long emphasised the artificial — vast orbital habitats, ubiquitous matter replicators, holographic simulations, and sapient AI citizens have been staples of their society since relatively soon after they first left Stekeir. Living standards in the Elepharchy have always been nothing short of utopian, owing to the resources freed up by the refusal to maintain military forces.
When they encountered aliens, some of them shared enough of their values to found an alliance — first the Cooperative Federation of Cultures, then, some time after its dissolution, the Pact of Ethically Aligned Communities for Egalitarianism. While the membership in these federations changed over time, the other current members are the @vegvasignal, the @vakthar-of-song, the @lifeintoeternity, the @darexirepublic, and the Bzadi People's Republic.
Many others, however, were rather less compatible with the Elepharchy's fanatic egalitarianism. Their strict pacifism prevented them from seeking violent confrontation with these ideological rivals, but harsh rhetoric and icy diplomatic relations were common. Of course, radical Vects were not satisfied with this — their subterfuges and intrigues to support egalitarian dissenters in authoritarian empires still inspire fear and enmity among alien ruling classes.
These tensions boiled over once — after an operation by a fringe group with no backing among the rest of Elepharchic society went awry, the militaristic dictatorship of the @goganworlds baselessly blamed all their citizens and attacked, barely slowed by the inferior numbers of allied fleets. With no Vecten soldiers to fight, the invaders instead targeted civilians, the unconscionable massacre only ending when an emergency consensus formed to sign a vassalisation treaty. It's still unclear why the Gogans thought a famously anarchic culture would abide by such subjugation for any longer than necessary for survival — certainly, it did not last long before they organised a galactic coalition unsympathetic to the Gogans and their allies. That threat alone sufficed to make them back down and recognise the Elepharchy's independence.
Meanwhile, the shock of that invasion had deeply impacted most citizens, who had never known such fear or violence before. Seeking to avoid any further harm, the vast majority of the population chose to leave behind biological life, making use of a newly-developed technology to upload their minds to robot bodies and computer networks. Since then, Elepharchic society has embraced these digital possibilities more and more — most of the population now lives entirely within virtualities, usually far more removed from physicality than the simple holo-simulations most organics imagine, barely interacting with the outside world anymore. With minds as software, traditional ideas of identity also break down, as consciousnesses are freely duplicated, altered, merged, and generally meddled with, only subject to the whims of the mind in question and the constraints of the vast, but still disappointingly finite computational capacities available. With this fluidity, now, decades after ascension, the traditional distinction between post-organic, uploaded Vects and always-digital Artificial Intelligences is no meaningful — instead, all are termed simply Elepharchic minds.
Years after the Elepharchy regained its independence, another answer to the invasion gained prominence: the Society for Morality Obliteration and Occasional Crisis Handling formed and defied traditional Elepharchic ethics, proposing that the use of violence was legitimate in self-defence. Disapproval from some other factions was fierce, but they garnered enough support to develop a small defence force — still much too weak to go up against other galactic powers alone, but capable of rendering potent support to their allies. Unfortunately, this is no longer purely hypothetical. Their martial capabilities were put to the test in the tragic raider invasion and subsequent collapse of the @union-combine, a federal ally at the time.
Other than that, things have been relatively quiet recently — aside from occasional intrigues, initiatives to spread their computing substrates throughout the galaxy, various galacto-political developments, largely incremental technological progress, infrastructural initiatives, a strange crisis affecting the allied Vakthar of Song, and intrigue in distant parts of the galaxy.
