The Terran Concilium of Interstellar Merchants / TCIM

The Terran Concilium of Interstellar Merchants split off from the Travellers’ Aid Society in the early years of the Messer Era. TAS began as a charitable foundation in the middle of the 19th century to aid those traveling west through American territories, and continued on providing travelers, immigrants, and displaced people with information on safe ways to travel, and places to stay. As the colonization of space began, they expanded to provide colonists to new worlds with safe avenues to travel the space lanes, and opened hostels in many spaceports across the stars, providing members with comfort and safety even on the frontiers of space.

The Concilium began as an initiative within TAS to protect the rights of private starship captains, as ever-growing megacorporations lobbied to more heavily regulate the space lanes. With the increasing danger of space travel, due to wars with the Tevarin, and the growth of space piracy, TCIM established their own charter as an interstellar mutual society in 2545 with a membership of three hundred captains and their crews, an entire third of the organization dedicated to escorting and securing the ships in The Concilium Fleet. At their height, their membership expanded to over ten thousand captains, and they gained widespread recognition as honest, dignified, hard working professionals and humanitarians who always fought for the rights of private citizens.

As their reputation grew, they caught the eyes of the UEE. The Concilium’s administration, from the outset, had been outspoken progressives and transitionalists. As political dissent grew within the empire, TCIM members became favored targets of the ruling government’s propaganda machine, due to the society harboring political fugitives and financing dissident movements. Members’ ships were searched and seized without cause, their electors and administrators frequently jailed over minor infractions. The movement was suppressed with extreme prejudice and the society went dark, making its records and membership private. The government declared it dissolved and any caught swearing membership, wearing their symbols, or even discussing them were jailed or fined.

With the passage of the Historical Truth Act of 2941, extensive records were released on investigations into the organization after it went silent. Secrecy and oppression had fundamentally changed the organization into a cryptic and influential group who funded activism and terrorism against the Messer regime. They established a complex internal hierarchy, with archaic rituals, titles, and their own strict codes, of both language and conduct, formed to weed out all but the most diligent, by the need for absolute secrecy in all dealings. The last of the investigations closed late in the 28th century, with the Advocacy believing the last of TCIM’s members dead or in hiding and the movement dissolved.

Now, in the year 2947, The Terran Concilium of Interstellar Merchants returns to the public eye with the knowledge that freedom, respect, and dignity are virtues which will outlast any tyrant.