Tratton
Tratton is a trading nation near the surface of the world of Thorgh. One of Thorgh's most cosmopolitan nations, it is quick to absorb trends and fashions of the foreign worlds it trades with, along with their goods. Most of this, however, applies only to Tratton's largest cities; the "countryside" between remains largely undeveloped, its people largely ignorant of what goes on in the metropolises and living simple and often short lives.
Geography
A large nation, particularly for Thorgh, Tratton is about seventeen hundred kilometers across at its widest point, forming something of a stubby L-shape. It spans hundreds of thousands of internal chambers of varying sizes and contents, including about ninety lake rooms. Unlike many nations of Thorgh, however, it's relatively flat; it covers a large area, but virtually no depth, including few large chambers not directly beneath the surface. Tratton reaches its greatest depth at a chamber called Eyelight, a scant two point two kilometers from Thorgh's exterior.
Despite its vast size, however, Tratton's population is concentrated in a relatively small area, surrounding the six large rumina that communicate with the surface. Surrounding each of these rumina is a thriving city, with complex buildings constructed from a mixture of imported materials such as metals and synthetics and native materials such as shellbrick and lutch. These densely urbanized areas extend several kilometers from the rumina, through a number of chambers, and each has between two and ten million inhabitants. The edges of the cities are rather abrupt, however, and beyond their boundaries the rest of the nation is sparsely populated, with few large settlements and none approaching the size of the six ruminal cities.
History
Before Tratton existed as a nation, each of the rumina it now contains was claimed by a separate state. The first step to their coming together was prompted when one of these states, Dajana, declared war on the others, and three of its neighbors combined to oppose it. Though Dajana was probably the most powerful of all the nearby nations at the time, it was not mighty enough to stand against these three opponents at once, and Maled's War, as the conflict came to be called after the Dajanan leader credited (not entirely accurately) with being the primary force in its instigation, ended in its defeat.
By that time, its three enemies had been acting jointly for long enough to see the advantages in continued coöperation, and formally united, claiming the territory of the defeated Dajana as also part of the new nation of Tratton. Over time, the nation spread to more or less peacefully absorb two more states that claimed nearby rumina. One state near Dajana, however, maintained its independence, and still remains today as the nation of the Barrity. The Barrity managed to stay out of Maled's War simply by escaping attention as Dajana was busy fighting the alliance, and took advantage of the time to bolster its defenses against future aggression and further entrench itself. Now, relations between Tratton and the Barrity are strained, with Tratton perhaps never quite forgiving the smaller nation for letting the alliance take the brunt of Dajana's attack.
Inhabitants
Tratton is a racially mixed nation, with humans, cacis, sabergels, and many other races living more or less in harmony—at least in the large cities. Certainly some races may be more common in some neighborhoods than others, but by and large species prejudice, while it exists, is relatively low-key, and not officially sanctioned. In the expanses between the cities, things may be different; while some places are as integrated as the cities, others include monoracial enclaves where other races are distrusted or outright hated. So isolated are some of these enclaves that their inhabitants might not even be aware that the nation as a whole is more diverse—and that indeed their leaders may be of other races than themselves.
Because they are exposed through their trade to such a variety of goods from different worlds, and because their trade partners and hence their imports change dramatically over time as Thorgh passes on near new planets, the people of Tratton tend to be an eclectic and adaptable lot. Some of them are quick to embrace the newest finds and change their possessions and lifestyles accordingly; others may fix on one particular favorite set of cultural and material imports and stick with it long after Thorgh has moved on from the planet it was imported from. Again, all this is more true in the big cities than in the places between them, where the people might not have any exposure to the latest imports at all, or might happen to get access to one particular wave of imports but not to any succeeding ones.
Government
The national government of Tratton comprises three main supreme bodies: the Parliament, the Bench, and the Command. Each of these bodies has dominion over a different aspect of the government, but overall they're roughly equal in power. The Parliament takes on legislative duties, as well as judicial, deciding when the laws that it passes are being followed. The Bench's purview is nominally economic; it sets the nation's trade policies and controls its finances. In practice, the Bench has certain powers that go beyond strictly economic concerns. Finally, the Command comprises the military and executive wing of the government.
Each of these bodies has five members at the highest level, though the hierarchies below that vary. One member of each body is elected by each of the ruminal cities, save Waio, the city that formerly pertained to Dajana. Because of its historical enmity with the other cities that formed the nascent nation, Dajana was denied representation in its government. Tratton's actual capital, however, lies in Waio, precisely because it has no representation in the government and thus represents a neutral territory. Aside from the buildings actually in use by the nation government, Waio's infrastructure and economy remain in a very poor state, the government not caring to improve conditions there partly out of apathy since none of the members of the governing bodies hail from there, and partly due to still-lingering prejudice against the Waian people. The Waians have agitated on several occasions to try to obtain full representation, but thus far without result.
Below the national level, the local governments differ, each of the ruminal cities having some measure of self-determination but the cities not choosing to organize their municipal governments in the same way. In theory, all of Tratton's territory is assigned to the six ruminal cities, all the land not lying within the cities proper considered to pertain to one of the cities nonetheless, usually the closest. In practice, the city governments generally ignore the surrounding countryside unless some circumstance makes that impossible, and the inhabitants of the hinterlands end up more or less fending for themselves and organizing their own local governments without the guidance or, in most cases, even the awareness of the governments of the ruminal cities that purportedly oversee them.
Economy
By far the mainstay of Tratton's economy is trade, trade with the other planets that Thorgh passes near, and trade of goods thus acquired with other Thorghan nations and peoples. Because it holds so many rumina giving it easy access to the surface, and because of its long experience in such pursuits, Tratton has a near-monopoly of interplanetary trade in its vicinity on Thorgh. Given the world's constant motion, this is a monopoly that must be reëstablished afresh each time Thorgh moves near a new civilization, but Tratton has become very good at doing so, and never fails to reëstablish it.
It is only the ruminal cities that participate directly in this trade, however; the lands outside the cities do not. They concentrate on more local pursuits of farming and manufacture, trading mostly with others in their own or neighboring communities. Some of them do trade with the ruminal cities, however, and therefore acquire some of the goods from the interplanetary trade, but far from the rumina such items are rare, and often in some way subpar or defective.