updated 02.07.2026
Eskana People
The Eskantan Assembly of Nations
The Tarnic Union are the first offworld nation ever to make contact with the Denebolian Republic — and they did it backwards, reaching up to Denebol rather than being reached. A single human-like people divided into many nations upon an Earth-like world, the Eskana people are a pre-interstellar civilization standing at the very threshold of their own space age. Where the Orbitum Accord is a fractured world already made whole by catastrophe, Eskanta is the open question: a hundred-plus nations who might one day choose to unify. That question is the heart of their story.
Government: several forms
Supranational body: Eskantan Assembly of Nations
Current High Speaker:
Current First Delegate:
Capital World: Eskanta
Population: +- 5 bilion
Tech lvl: Tier I - 75%
Flag of Eskantan Assembly of Nations
Government
The nearest thing Eskanta has to a unifying institution is the Eskantan Assembly of Nations, a body comparable to a planetary United Nations, through which Denebol has conducted all of its negotiations. This was a Denebolian condition, not an Eskana preference: as a precondition of establishing any relations at all, the Republic insisted on dealing with the whole of Eskanta collectively through the Assembly, and refused to treat with any single nation in preference to another. By the same principle, Denebol will share information and development only with all nations together, never with one nation alone.
The Assembly speaks through two offices: the High Speaker, who presides over it and serves as its internal head, and the First Delegate, their highest ambassador and external voice — the figure who represents and signs for the Assembly before outside powers.
This collective principle is at once high-minded and prudent. The Influence Directive requires non-interference in a developing world's natural course, and refusing to favour any one nation honours that. But it also keeps Denebol from tipping Eskanta's internal balance of power — and, by refusing to let any single nation be the planet's gateway to the stars, it quietly pressures all hundred toward acting through one body, nudging them, without interference, toward the very cooperation that their future may require.
Diplomacy
Under the present framework they are negotiations to offer them the status of Development Client of the Denebolian Republic: protection, supervised lawful development at the rate permitted by the Influence Directive, and interstellar access provided as a service — with a hard wall against the transfer of space-program, propulsion, and military technology, and a graduation pathway by which Eskanta, on reaching interstellar capability in its own right, would become eligible for Observer status and a peer compact.
Planetary System
The homeworld, Eskanta, is the second of seven bodies in its system and has a single moon. Its climate is practically a copy of Earth's. Eskanta possesses a strong planetary industrial and trade infrastructure, which makes the Eskana a rare and valuable partner despite their modest technology.
Galactic Sector: Alvar
Galactic coordinates: 2,5' bearing 60 degrees
First Contact
Tarnis scientists, working without any outside help, decoded the Stargate dialing system and accidentally dialed the address of the T.R.A.C.E. base, which lies relatively close to their homeworld. This makes them unique: under the Prime and Influence Directives, no Denebolian power could ever have lawfully reached down to first-contact a people so far below the technological threshold — the gap is far too large. But the directives say nothing about an underdeveloped people climbing up on their own. Because the Eskana initiated contact themselves, the relationship is lawful where a Denebolian approach would not have been. Contact occurred early in the DASF-to-STARS interstellar-expansion era, around 2021–2022 N.T. — roughly four to five years before the present day.
Nations
The Eskana are a single species with Earth-style variation — one human-like stock divided by ethnicity, culture, and religion into more than a hundred distinct nations, with a large total population. They have no planetary government. The sheer number of nations and the size of the population are precisely why relations with them must be handled with great care.
Technology
At first contact, Eskana technology stood at roughly the level of Earth in 1970 — orbital flight achieved, early crewed spaceflight and mainframe computing in hand, but no means of crossing between stars. On the Tier scale this places them at about 75% of Tier I, the point at which a people first reaches space. They have continued to advance at a natural rate, without Denebolian intervention, and presently sit around the mid-1970s-equivalent; no uplift has yet taken place.
Influential Nations (WIP)
Tarnic Union / Tarnis
The nation that found the gate is Tarnis, the Tarnic Union — a hard, industrial, ambitious power. They did not build their way to the discovery; they unearthed it, finding the Stargate buried at one of their archaeological sites, an artifact that had lain on Eskanta long before any Tarnic nation existed. Their claim to be Eskanta's rightful voice to the stars therefore rests on an accident of geography rather than achievement.
Tarnis is not pleased with Denebol's insistence on negotiating through the Assembly. By their reckoning, they made the single greatest discovery in their world's history — proof that they are not alone, and a working door to the galaxy — and should by rights have been Eskanta's broker to the stars. Instead they were made to lay that discovery before an assembly in which their rivals hold an equal say. They did not lose a negotiation so much as a once-in-a-civilization advantage.
If Denebol were fully honest, however, Tarnis is not the best candidate among Eskanta's nations to hold such an advantage. Hard, industrious, and ambitious, they are exactly the sort of power that, handed sole access to alien technology, would use it to dominate their neighbours rather than lift the planet. So the "deal with all nations" precondition is not only principled non-interference — it is also a sober threat assessment. The directive supplies the high-minded reason; the assessment supplies the realpolitik one, and both point the same way. This leaves Tarnis genuinely aggrieved and yet not wholly sympathetic: their grievance is real, but it is precisely the reason the sharing was right.