"Stars as a sea."

Not to be confused with the Laniakea Expedition. 

Laniakea is Earth's second superpower alongside the USRE. It encompasses two billion inhabitants in the Pacific Ocean and its shores including southeast Asia, Earth's most populated region. Laniakea is somewhat of an oddity as it is a proper state and not a continental federation like the USRE or the Eloran Ekumen. The self-proclaimed biggest parliamentary democracy of all time also controls Okean, several thousand lightyears away from the Earth.

The centralized nature of Laniakea is rooted in pre-Low Age traditions though it is a much younger state than the USRE. The loose and federal nature of the USRE meant that it could exist even with limited means of communications in the mid-Low Age era. Laniakea, being a centralized democracy scattered all around the Pacific Ocean, had to wait for instant worldwide communication networks to be recreated at the very end of the Low Age. In present-day Laniakea is divided into regions that are only superficially similar to USRE Socialist Republics as they are purely administrative divisions without political autonomy. The real power in Laniakea resides in its three capitals: Manila, Kiribati and the underwater metropolis of Hawai'i.

Laniakea adopts the same kind of multiculturalism as the USRE, merging influences and traditions from the various cultures under its administration. However, Laniakea is wary of independent cooperatives and manages its continental economy through massive state-owned companies known as the Pillars. Allied with the existence of centralized ID systems this state of things makes the Laniakean polity somewhat more uniform than the USRE albeit it still displays a staggering amount of ethnic and cultural diversity.

Another difference with the USRE is that Laniakea is a two-headed state. The vast majority of its population is to be found on Earth but Laniakea also controls Okean and the eponymous settled region. The historical roots of this strange acquisition are to be found in Laniakea's maritime tradition which gave its colonists a notable headstart in settling and managing an ocean planet. Holding and controlling Okean puts Laniakea in a strange place. Its nature as a centralized state prevents Laniakea from considering Okean as a semi-independent place the way the USRE does with its distant settlements, however, the vast distances mean that direct rule is almost impossible. Okean thus exists in limbo, protected and supported by a state that lies thousands of lightyears away. A state that thus has what can be legally qualified as a colony, that is to say, an obscene oddity in the interstellar age.