Editing Outworlds Alliance (section)

== Society ==
Life in the Outworlds Alliance is roughing it as a matter of necessity, in turn driven by policy. Due to a weak central government that has plagued the Alliance for centuries, many planets have varying levels of safety, literacy, technology, and amenities thanks to the ultimate problem of many of their worlds being largely colonized by farming folk, non-fighters, and extremely few scientists and researchers, seeing relatively very little need for the technology until it was far too late. The Alliance would effectively be verging on a third world status, were it not for effective and powerful laser technology developments making for good trading. Generous incentives have also turned many border worlds into trade hubs, though of course that means they're often plagued with pirates, smugglers, drug runners, food shortages and other such ills, so it's a double-edged sword.

Life for the citizenry didn't drastically improve under the Raven Alliance, but it has been better in some crucial regards, as Clan Snow Raven's technological superiority allowed them to uplift dozens of worlds from abject poverty and otherwise allow them to keep their local cultures (because Clan Snow Raven had about all they could of the Clanner way of doing things back in Clan Space). Bondsmen that join up in their military still often run into the same spiderweb of Snow Raven politics that most newbies are brought into, but given the choice between that and the old days, where water was a precious commodity and your weaponry was near-20th century level, most prefer the Touman system.