Grand Nomad Fleet

"Motto goes here." - Moth

Description

Government Form	Spacer Junta
Head of State	Grand Admiral Signori
Capital	Flagship Va Lumla
Demographics	Mothic Majority
Official Language	Mothic
Official Religion	Mothic animism
Supranational Association	None

The Grand Nomad Fleet is the largest of a collection of fleets set forth from their homeworld, Lumla, after a forgotten calamity tore the planet asunder. The Grand Nomad Fleet’s military arm is an assembly of frigates, destroyers and cruisers, with a handful of notable battleships interspersed. But the much larger percentage of the fleet’s total mass consists of civilian ships, ranging from small freighters to converted passenger liners, some of which are as large as the fleet’s battleships.

History

The GNF’s origins date back to the initial exodus of Mothic spacecraft from Lumla following the calamity. Being in the earlier section of their space age, the Moths were ill-prepared for what hit them. The central government of the time folded all emergency power to the navy as the only force that could organize Mothic shipping fast enough… fast enough to collect as many citizens and personnel as possible before doom came.

Organization and Culture

The Grand Nomad Fleet is, first and foremost, organized in the style of a military junta with heavy spacer trappings. Grand Admiral Signori, with his life extended by custom cybernetics and with spiritually messianic status, is at the top of the military hierarchy. The wear and tear of age on this moth, however, means much of the day-to-day fleetwide affairs are handled by the admirals of the Admiralty Board, and their vice-admiral deputies.

Below this centralized council are the individual captains of each ship in the Fleet, who dictate the affairs of their own vessels while paying their dues to the Admiralty. Groups of Captains sometimes come together in Admiralty-approved sub councils to determine the correct course of action for ships affected by a certain situation or mandate.

Below the rank of Captain, officer culture in the Fleet is highly competitive. Officers preach the values of the Starlight Herald (Grand Admiral Signori) to keep the crew in line and put anyone they don't like on the list, the bad list. Still, while most cocky officers get themselves shoved out airlocks, smart ones build personal cadres of enlisted and civilians around them, for the informal warfare between them. Everyone is gunning to be an admiral, but expected qualifications are high, and berths are few.

Below the commissioned officers, the enlisted rates of the GNF are the backbone of the naval ships. They endure terrible conditions, do the worst work, but it'll all be worth it once they have veteran status and get more government scrip allowance – and an enlisted moth who manages to survive long enough to achieve seniority is one to fear.

The lowest class of GNF society, however, are the civilians, often brushed aside at baton’s length by GNF officers. Universal Basic Income exists in the Fleet, but the payout is barely livable without bonuses of some form. Notably, salvage teams tend to consist largely of civilian personnel as the hazard pay and right to take home loot is a massive motivator. Civilians must follow direction given by military personnel, but a number of services and ministries are operated by the Colonialist-backed “provisional government” that remains of their former homeland, which administers individual needs yet has no overall control over the navy’s operation. There is no oversight of the navy by civil authority.

Few non-moths, if any, take up permanent residence within the fleet. While the moths are communally minded and generally welcoming as a people, the constant state of military control and spacer hardships deters all but the strongest outsiders.

Economically, the GNF is a fully-controlled command economy, though with none of the socialist trappings that such systems tend to elicit. All moths of age within the Fleet receive ration credits (intra-fleet scrip, which in recent years, has been vaguely pegged to the value of galactic credit) to spend on the bare necessities, the occasional luxury, and even advancements in rank.

Faith and State

The moth people follow the teachings of the Grand Nomad, the first Grand Admiral whose name has been lost to time. They now take the name Nomad in honor of one who rallied moths to flee their shattered homeworld and kept them all alive to form their eventual flotilla society. Mothic animism is simplistic in nature but vibrantly expressed by its practitioners, to the point that it has spawned multiple political ideologies based on its undercurrents.

Church of Starlight (politically, the Astrists)

Religiously, the faithful of the starlight believe that the very stars resonate with sapient energy that nourishes and guides as much as they consume and destroy, the closest thing to real Gods that are observable in our reality. Flotilla navigators are the designated priests of this worship, giving the general population of the fleet the dictation of the starlight’s demands and messages. Many believe that the stars have a plan for the moths, to lead them to total galactic dominance. They believe the Grand Nomad saw the apocalypse coming, and saved only the worthy for his fleet.

Politically, the Mothic Astrist movement is a radical viewpoint even compared to its Terran equivalent. For reference: Astrists support the imposition of spacer values - loyalty to your crew, honesty and integrity in your dealings with others, responsibility to your subordinates and absolute and unquestioning obedience to your superiors - over everyday life. The Moths have managed to take this a step further by converting pretty much all of their everyday life into spacer routines, and the military establishment seeks to maintain its power through indoctrination.

Greenhearts (politically, the Colonialists)

Religiously, the greenhearts are seen by many in the fleet as deserters, traitors to the navy and their people, for they believe that the grand nomad fleet cannot continue on like this forever, and they must find a new homeworld to live on before more moths continue to suffer and die needlessly. They are mostly civilians, and a few are navy that quietly keep their real opinions to themselves. Instead of worshiping stars, the greenhearts are animists, believing in planetary spirituality. They believe the Grand Nomad had been trying to find a new homeworld for his people, but failed.

Politically, the Mothic Colonialist movement seeks the final settlement of the Mothic people on a new home planet, and calls for an end to generations of subverted tradition. Sentient life, as the Colonialists understand it, was meant to subsist within the confines of naturally contained atmosphere and gravity, rather than the sterile, recycled fumes of fleet ships and the often missing gravity thereof.

Nightmare Path (practiced by the pirate offshoot, the Midnight Fleet)

Religiously speaking, Nightmarists believe the stars are long dead, there is no reality, what passes for it is an illusion meant to comfort our dying minds as long as possible in a misguided attempt at empathy. But we will live and die by our own choice, the nightmare must end. This nihilistic movement believes that the galaxy is a simulation running with the moths trapped inside it, and that certain conditional cues must be met in order to manually shut it down. They believe the Grand Nomad destroyed their homeworld in an attempt to free them, but failed.

Politically, the Nightmarist movement is an apocalyptic cult mostly professed by pirates and madmen seeking to justify the continuation of barbaric actions which the Grand Nomad Fleet largely abstains from in the modern day.  A rival fleet, the Midnight Navy, follows the path, and they have gained a following, poaching off the GNF’s desperate underclasses.

Territorial Holdings and Population

The Grand Nomad Fleet is an assembly of frigates, destroyers and cruisers, with a handful of notable battleships interspersed. While the Grand Nomad Fleet is a military organization, many ships are purely civilian with non-military crew.

The moth people once had a homeworld, but it is now a field of debris that has formed an asteroid belt in their abandoned star system. While the moth people have zero planetary holdings, they do man a few hidden drydocks and smuggler stations to resupply their people. There are even some planetary mining and salvage operations deemed “legitimate” in the eyes of the governments those camps fall under, the total of those outside the fleet being at best one million citizenry. The fleet population as a whole, civilian and military, is twenty six million total, while moths who have left the fleet either temporarily or for good are at three million spread out.