Niops Association 3058 Update

Thus far, the Association's efforts to end its long isolation have been fitful at best. Though many of the elite recognize that they can no longer go it alone, they are unaccustomed to dealing with the give-and-take of interstellar politics and trade. They are also unused to considering anyone's interests but their own, and find the art of compromise and alien concept. Finally, many of them fear that too close contact with other realms will prompt the very social upheaval they have avoided for so long; they believe that firsthand knowledge of freer societies will inspire their own laborer class to agitate to gain such freedoms for itself. As declining prosperity is just as likely as outside contact to prompt a rebellion before too long, the Niops Association seems unlikely to survive in its current form - unless its leaders can manage the delicate balancing act of forming loose trade ties with their neighbors while hiding knowledge of those neighbors from the Niopian masses.

Thus far, the Niops Association has confined its halting efforts at diplomacy to other Periphery realms. In the past three years Niopian leaders have made tenuous contact with the Illyrian Palatinate, the Magistracy of Canopus, and the Taurian Concordat. The latter two realms show only superficial interest in the Niops Association; they are busy solidifying their own recent alliance, and the tiny Association has little to offer them by comparison. The Illyrian Palatinate is eager to forge diplomatic ties with any realm that might offer aid against its enemies, but Niopian ambivalence about the entire endeavor keeps the diplomatic process moving at a glacial pace. The Niops Association has not amde any overtures toward the Marian Hegemony, perhaps from a desire to avoid attracting the attention of the planet-greedy Caesar.

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#include <stddiscl.h>

Will Day < wd@firstcircuit.net >
John Dutka < jdutka@pcnet.com >
Sep 23, 1996