Battle Charter

The Gudersnipe Foundation Battle Charter is the document containing the rules the Foundation operates by, as well as the rules they expect everyone else to abide. The Charter is divided into five main sections:

• The Rules of Engagement
• The Rules of Organized Warfare
• The Laws of War
• The Conventions for Prisoners of Peace and War
• The General Guidelines for Times of Peace

It is well understood that any party, be it political, national, ideological, or economic, is required to both sign and abide by the Battle Charter if it wishes to be at peace with the Foundation. While the Foundation will not openly attack other groups simply for now signing the charter, any provocation will invite attack. Entities that provock the Foundation without having signed the charter are not eligable to negotiate, Foundation forces will assualt, invade, capture, and subjugate the population, enacting the charter by force.

Sections

This contains a brief overview of the contents of each section. Each section has additional sub-sections, each including articles and numbered paragraphs. To quote a specific piece of the charter, one will typically list the section, sub-section, article, and paragraph.

Rules of Engagement

The rules of direct, open military combat. Including rules for distinguishing civilian targets from military, firing on civilians, and considerations for confirming a target identity before attacking.

Rules of Organized Warfare

The rules for the broader scope of a military campaign. Considerations for the treatment and welfare of civilians, list of distinctions between military and civilian, and the distinctions between civilian and war work.

Laws of War

This section deals specifically with what is legal and illegal in warfare, what constitutes a legal war, and what individuals can be charged with at a military tribunal. It has two main sub-sections, reguarding 'crimes commited during war' and actual 'war crimes'.

Conventions for Prisoners of Peace and War

This section is divided directly into two sub-sections, and in the original draft, did not include one. The Conventions for Prisoners of Peace and War

History

Uther himself famously signed a hand-copied version of the charter on the Day of Dawn's Reflection, and swore that the Alliance would uphold it. However, when the Unity Earth Sphere Alliance was finally founded, it voted that each member world had the right to sign or reject on it's own accord. This conflicted with earlier treaties made with Uther's original Alliance(which the Foundation was obligated to uphold), and actually allowed member worlds to violate and ignore the charter without fear of reprisal. In order to attack these nations, the Foundation would have to go to war with the entire Alliance.

Eventually, this oversight was corrected, but the new law only forced member worlds joining the Alliance for the first time to sign. It included a grandfather-clause that allowed all all existing members to handle the charter as they saw fit. This became immensly problematic during the Necromanic Wars.