War is obsolete. Killing is not.
The Confederated Pentagon Stars, is a polity composed principally of a single nimbus city that is notable for being the only nimbus city yet built that does not ring a disk. Rather the nimbus city, known as the Citadel in Bronze, rings 5 stationary stars after which the CPS get their name. In the middle of these 5 stars is a very small artificial hab that serves both as the seat of the CPS government as well as the location of their great arena.
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The CPS was founded sometime after the REDACTION by Human and Ork veterans and refugees of various wars that the smaller polities were undertaking around this time. They were learned of history, such as was possible to learn after REDACTION, and they saw horrible wars being fought in the names of tyrants and gods and governments who were willing to spend the lives of countless numbers of their countrymen but would never think to spend their own and they committed themselves to making a society that would not be plagued by such horrors. For a time they traveled and worked for the houses of the navigator guilds, staffing many sublight ships and becoming familiar with living in the void, and for a time after this they operated as a guild house by the name of House Zak'ra. Their membership in both guilds granted them a level of influence unique for such a young house and they were able to leverage this influence very quickly. They came to possess both the funds and the access needed to secure 5 stars and a lot of raw materials and they set to work creating the Citadel.
The construction of the Citadel, as well as the cultural, political, and procedural goals of such a project were not universally agreed upon by the House Zak'ra and as a result the house fractured and separated into several short lived minor houses all of which were either disbanded or absorbed by other larger houses over the next few decades. The Ow'sla and the Valo-Kav'watova League of Houses in particular gained a sizable influx of people as human members of House Zak'ra left in protest of the citadel project. Unlike many humans, the Orken members of House Zak'ra who left in protest generally decided to leave the guild houses altogether and left for various orken-majority worlds on a family-by-family basis and as such their cultural influence is much more dispersed and difficult for modern historians to pinpoint.
Politically and culturally the CPS is very unique. They do not claim any disks or other natural ground and as such they are immune to legal warfare, which can only be conducted on foot. This is because their founders intentionally created a society and culture that they felt would be separate from what they identified as the principal evil in the verse: war between governments. The founders reasoned that any government which could commit to a war while not being required to personally participate was one that would inevitably incentivize the use of military force as the primary means of political conflict resolution. This is why the Citadel does not have a disk and instead rings 5 stars, with no land on which to wage legal war their politicians must seek alternatives to warfare. Instead of leading from the back, politicians are expected to, should all other forms of diplomatic and political conflict resolution prove ineffective, to be the first to engage in armed conflict. The governors of the CPS are expected to personally fight for those who they govern however, the CPS does not view doing so with any particular reverence and instead view the need to do so as a grave burden and shame as it means that those fighting have failed politically and must resort to direct conflict. A politician who frequently engages in trials of combat will very quickly be removed from office to avoid further shame.
The very middle of the Citadel, surrounded by the 5 stars themselves, sits the arena. This is the seat of their government as well as the site of all trials. Here trials should be taken to mean all official challenges, be they trials of combat or other more mundane trials. A challenger will state their name, their station, the station of their direct superior if they have one, the type of trial, the reason for the trial, and the terms of the trial. Generally this will involve junior officials engaging in debates and in court hearings on behalf of their respective superiors. Should a challenge be issued, accepted, and lost, then the matter is considered settled unless another challenge is made by someone of a higher rank. This allows all matters, regardless of scope, to reach the highest authority possible as a lost challenge will always be reviewed by the superiors of the losing party. Even a matter as mundane as renaming a transit line may raise enough contention at lower levels that there is pressure to elevate it to higher authorities in order for them to issue additional challenges on the matter.
The CPS are notable in the narrative present for the weapons of war that their gladiatorial systems have incentivize the production of. Concessions are not made for mass production or for cost, but for destructive power, aesthetics, personal preference. Personal armor produced by the PCS is second to none save possibly the Azi and generally possess powered runic and mechanical systems that enable use of heavier and more robust armor without straining or encumbering the wearer. The armor is prodigiously expensive, requiring enchantment as a matter of course and exotic materials, but for those with the coin or the trade they are of a quality quite literally impossible to get anywhere else. This quality extends to all of man-portable weapons that they make.
But it is when one looks beyond man-portable weapons that the CPS are truly outstanding. They are certainly not the only group producing war-engines, but they pioneered the technology and have always had the most advanced engines available. They make mechs, and they make them better than anyone else. The first war-engines were made possible by the creation of dream engines which enabled powerful, if esoteric and delicate computerization, to be used for the complicated drivetrain and weapon systems of such a large construct. The downside of using dream engines is of course that their destruction is massively harmful to local ambient magic in the place that they are destroyed which can have interesting long term effects. This is generally not an issue as a single war-engine has enough firepower to level a city and can generally only be destroyed by another war-engine or by direct artillery fire. Like personal armor the war-engines of the CPS are also a very expensive, and very popular, export. With the Azi and the Queen's Court being the only groups banned outright from purchasing them. Their popularity is so great that CPS designs are treated as standards for other designers and for 3rd party manufacturers and many companies exist to supply buyers with custom and replacement parts for CPS designs, some of whom are willing to sell to the Queen's Court or to the Azi though such trades are generally under the table.
And to elaborate slightly on that point, the Azi and the CPS have a very tense relationship owing to issues with their initial dealings. This first impression is one that neither group is particularly motivated to improve. As a result the Azi do not indulge in the political theater of the CPS; if they want something from the CPS they do not ask, they simply demand it. If that demand is refused they do not declare a challenge, they simply go to the Citadel and await a fight. The Azi have never lost to the CPS. The CPS will say that the Azi fight without honor, without even the pretense of respect or recognizable martial tradition. To the minds of the CPS the Azi fight like an angry animal, like a dog that has been made into a weapon, not like soldiers. For this reason the CPS do not trade with the Azi and the Citadel is the only place where the Azi are barred outright from entering. Even the Court of Marble does not bar the Azi from entrance. For the CPS's part their political system, while effective for them as a tool both for effective governance and for maintaining a certain level of cultural cohesion, puts them at odds w/ the ways the azi maintain cultural cohesion, which is to say you can't participate in CPS society without engaging in Azi taboos and likewise you can't participate in Azi society without engaging in CPS taboos.
The CPS do not have a state religion, though they do have a few gods unique to them and for gods not unique to them they tend to have a few worship practices that are not found outside the citadel. Most well known by outsiders is the CPS practice of keeping pet hag stones which they paint in bright colors with floral patterns, skulls, and other skeletal patterns to suggest an animal form. These stones are viewed as household protectors who watch over the living and how guide the dead back to their families on various holy days. The stones are often given offerings, either to pass along to the spirits of loved ones or as gifts to the stone itself meant to implore the stone to intercede on behalf of the offerer in spiritual affairs. The stones are often prayed to so that they can pass those prayers to various gods, with many believing that particularly old stones are guardians or stewards of particular earthly affairs and that because the stones have voluntarily chosen such roles that their authority will move the gods to action when the requests of mortals might not.