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There is a world based on the order of a trusted and loved government organization.
It is genuinely free. It is hard to explain that this isn’t a trick if you’ve lived with too many untrustworthy governments. Anything I say–that the people eat well, perhaps that travel is easy, that schooling is free–invites the justifiably suspicious mind to read into the gaps. Even if this is not an outright lie, what are you not saying? If the people eat well: what does “well” mean? Is it perfectly nutritious but without artistry? Is schooling free but textbook costs so high as to still keep out all but the richest?
But live with me in this, for a moment. I’m not asking you to trust anyone to be perfect. I am asking you to trust that there is a world where everyone cares, and things work out. Where there are many cultures, many artforms, and plenty such that everyone is fed, housed, free to move.
It may look like gods have little to say to people so well kept. And it is true that the gods may be easier to see in a famine, when a loved one is ill, or in the middle of a war. Easier to understand why one would reach out in moments of grave catastrophe.
There are still touches. See a marriage ceremony that carries a divine blessing. See a great forest called a cathedral. See a home with a central hearth connecting earth to sun, long after the fire is necessary for light or warmth. Long after the bottom of the hearth is Earth, at all.
And look to the markings on their ship’s medical bays. You might be forgiven for seeing the rod of Asclepius. He would be an obvious choice, representative of doctors, health, wellbeing.
But this ship does not grow from a history of doctors. Each ship bears the mark of the god that has walked by travelers of all stripes, merchants and thieves and wanderers.
Each ship remembers when the highest rank of this trusted government body was not “admiral” but “postmaster”.