Overview
The Intercolony Union is a medium-sized nation that spans a pair of large islands seperated by a narrow stretch of water, along with an archipelago of small and mostly unihabitable islands.
With a population of roughly fifty million, the ICU (standard abbreviation) is an oligarchy, divided into three main sections. The Internal Council handles the internal affairs of the nation, the External Council the external affairs, and the Central Overview Council provides the executive power, but also can over-ride decisions by the lower councils.
The government (and all functionaries and bureaucrats part of it) is open only to a more privileged class of citizenry, referred to as Electors. Within the Electors are a smaller group who while not specifically named are from families who wield especially great power, and as such are the only ones allowed into the Central Overview Council.
The military is also divided, with officers coming from the Electors, and all others from the lower classes.
Information is heavily controlled and censored in the Intercolony Union, making it difficult to determine exactly what is going on. It is known that propaganda plays a major role in the informing of their populace about the other nations of the world, giving them a very distorted view of them.
Despite this, the ICU maintains a large trading fleet, and is a major seller of arms in the Western Continent.