- Mercury (130,000 pop)
- Eastern Federation (600 million pop)
- Themistian Cluster (500 pop)
- The Cybele Group (13,000 pop)
- The single most powerful national polity in the 25th century, the Eastern Federation is challenged militarily and economically only by the other Earth polities of Union and State.
- The Eastern Federation boasts the largest navy by displacement in the solar system (though not the largest in number of vessels), being the premier builder of dreadnoughts and super dreadnoughts. Only the still-present threat of mutually assured destruction has kept war from breaking out on Earth herself, those tensions instead emerging in the form of proxy wars and conflicts in other parts of the solar system.
- The Eastern Federation has its origins in the turmoil following The Great Contraction of the late 21st century. As world populations plummeted to war and famine, in Eurasia the Russian Federation struggled to maintain its influence over its more distant territories in Siberia as most of its resources and attention became focused on the western parts of Russia.
- Although politically weakened by The Great Contraction, China's own private metanational corporations had only gained from their national sponsor's weakness, and aggressively expanded their economic influence, then later de facto political and military authority over Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and other areas unable to cope with the aftermath of the devastation of The Great Contraction.
- The Russian Federation did not have in its political or cultural DNA the ability to willingly relinquish its control over its territories in Siberia, however, which sparked the brutal Sino-Russian War of 2105. Some 18 million lives on both sides were lost in the wake of widespread biological and drone warfare; the release of the devastatingly effective gene-resequencing implant plague in Russian territory was, however, the last straw for Russia, forcing it at last to the peace table on China's terms.
- The Russian Federation was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Astana, allowing the various localities of Siberia to vote in favor or against annexation by China. Despite widespread evidence of systematic voting fraud, the "universal results" in favor of annexation were upheld, and the Chinese metanationals' paternalistic local company governorships in the region became matters of de jure law rather than simply de facto.
- As the metanationals' own power grew in comparison with the Chinese central government, it soon became clear that the tail was wagging the dog, and metanational interests inside China forced the national government to reform as a new "Eastern Federation" consisting of the newly-won territories in Siberia, China, Mongolia, Korea, Kazakhstan, Taiwan, and several smaller polities.
- The difficulties and stumbles in this reorganization took time, and as metanationals in Union and State rushed to build corporate colonies on Luna, Venus, and Mars, the Eastern Federation mounted a huge effort to claim its own manifest destiny before all of the most valuable real estate in the solar system had been claimed. Seizing Mercury and several clusters in the Asteroid Belt, the Eastern Federation today still feels as if it received a raw deal in the solar system's colonization, and has been steadily increasing its navy with an eye towards redressing that imbalance.
- Fissile Materials
- Massive shipyards capable of building capital-class ships including dreadnoughts and super dreadnoughts
- Huge center for the data economy - the line between legal and black market data is especially murky in the Eastern Federation; it is the single largest market for data.
- Like much of Earth, the Eastern Federation has been largely stripped bare of metals and hydrocarbons, but the metanationals headquartering themselves in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong have very, very long arms, and control interests throughout the Inner Worlds, and to much a lesser extent to the Outer Worlds.
- The Eastern Federation maintains tense relations with its two biggest rivals, State and Union. Much of its political efforts lie in keeping these two rivals from uniting. Since the Sino-Russian War of 2105 there have been no instances of open war between the powers, but each has supported proxy elements in Africa, South Asia, Mars and Venus, including the disastrous Fall of the Cities on Venus in 2319, an event that cemented the Venusian Republic's hostility to the Eastern Federation politicos.
- The Jovian Conflict has seen the Eastern Federation trying determinedly to win the favor of the Sovereign Republic of Ganymede in its war with the Commonwealth of Callisto. The Eastern Federation has sold a number of dreadnoughts to Ganymede and offered even more, but despite its hard-fought war, Ganymede does not fully trust the Eastern Federation's intentions.
- With its control over Mercury shaky at best due to local labor unrest, the Eastern Federation has been moving firmly to consolidate its dominance of Mercury with an ultimate end of using a secured position there to Findlandize Venus, and thus strengthen its political and economic dominance of the inner worlds.
Politics and Culture:
- Much as State and Union, the Eastern Federation is essentially a puppet state controlled by a cabal of powerful corporate interests who have ceded to the central authority only those elements of governance that they cannot find a way to capitalize upon. While the metanationals of State and Union maintain a measure of independence from their puppet national governments, the corporations of the Eastern Federation are so fully integrated into the state apparatus that it is very difficult to discern where metanational ends and polity begins. In the Eastern Federation, corporate business development is indistinguishable from internal political maneuvering.
- Both national polity and corporate stewards of the Eastern Federation tolerate no dissent and maintain a harsh monopoly on information to keep the population largely in line. Internal news is so fabricated that trust in society tends towards extremes of either fanatical nationalism or amoral cynicism.
- Corporations in the Eastern Federation tend towards a distinct paternalism complete with corporate criminal and civil courts, corporate-run health care, and corporate housing. While there is considerable upwards mobility for the best and brightest, for everyone else the reality is difficult to distinguish from outright serfdom.
- A thriving black market in data exists in the Eastern Federation alongside the more public manifestations of the data industry. The Eastern Federation black data market is famous for providing most of the best data-raiders and illegal manipulators of data in the solar system.
- The dominant language is Mandarin. The writing system is somewhat simplified from the Chinese of the 21st century.
- The Eastern Federation Mercury Authority is dominated by Siberians and Kazakhs, resulting in a kind of throwback Russian nationalism among the labor force on Mercury, despite that virtually nobody on Mercury (or even the Eastern Federation) speaks Russian anymore, it having long since given way before Mandarin.
- Although the Alliance based around Uranus is an independent polity, its founding was the result of an alliance between Chinese and American metanationals, and in the process has maintained very friendly relations with the Eastern Federation, although the distance limits the amount of practical interchange or support between the two polities. This amity is more cultural than practical, however, for the Alliance is far more of a true nation state than the Eastern Federation has been since the early days of its inception.