The Confederacy

The Confederacy is an alignment of independent worlds that oppose Federation expansion. Its members remain loosely coordinated. They share resistance to what they judge to be aggression without becoming a single equivalent of the power they resist.

Independence and common cause

Humanity’s distant worlds have developed across generations of separation. Federation offers of protection and infrastructure do not settle the question of who should govern them. Some worlds refuse those terms and stand alone; others find common cause within the Confederacy.

The conflict is already decades old at the beginning of Geometry of Grace. Crews inherit names and histories from ships that came before them, placing individual missions inside a longer struggle.

Deniable work

The Rebel Ascendant operates under Confederate sanction. Her assignments depend on extraction, disguise, and covert action. Sanction gives the crew an institutional connection, while the nature of its work requires separation between a mission’s identities and the lives of the people carrying it out.