Various aspects of G1 seem to be making a comeback, and I love it! :D
[OOC] Through the Gateways: Inhumanity Page 2
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SgtEasy S'algood bro
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Sep Lord of All Creation
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Finished my history!
(not ont his version)
I just need to finish the other sections, which I'll do later.
(not ont his version)
I just need to finish the other sections, which I'll do later.
Sep Lord of All Creation
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@Tortoise I'm going to be a filthy double poster,
I need to remove the Sub tags (don't kinkshame me) but other than that my sheets done.
I'll remove the tags next time I'm on my laptop.
I need to remove the Sub tags (don't kinkshame me) but other than that my sheets done.
I'll remove the tags next time I'm on my laptop.
Crusader Lord A professional, anxiety-riddled, part-time worker
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A professional, anxiety-riddled, part-time worker
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in 2768 days
Most definitely is WIP for now, but here's what I have so far:
((Edit 1/11/25: Everything but a few name bits I need to eventually think up for stuff in the history section, and basically need to get everything for the Military Overview section to boot. But the rest of it is "Done" by this point (I think, unless I missed something).))
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Government Form: Democratic Republic
(Secretly/In Reality: Synarchism/Synarchic Oligarchy - As in “a secret cabal is in charge behind it all”, not as in the original meaning of synarchy/synarchism.)
Population: 7.7 billion
((General Rough Population Timescale - 150 years ago: 5.4 billion, 350 years ago: 2.5 billion, ~425 years ago: Some Millions At Maximum; Improved as technology and survivability and sustainability for the colony overall improved, which led in part to a boom in growth. Wars did lessen this to some extent at times, etc, but 500 years is a long time indeed.))
What Is Humanity?:
Humanity? What is humanity, but the ability to connect, empathize, and build alongside others through the good and the bad and the ugly? To be able to fight for survivial against a hostile nature that seeks to kill you, to mete out survival even when you're against the ropes and despite your own mistakes, and to seek out a future even when all seems to be at its bleakest?
In the mundane and far less poetic sense, however, for the GER the matter is a simple one for defining humanity. It is being born as one of the human species biologically, born to human species parents.....whether it be Homo sapiens sapiens or a new subspecies otherwise. Sapient rights for humans and citizen Livelli, however, are things that most certainly exist under GER law as well.
Planet/System Name and Description:
Star/System Name - Euryale
Planet Name - Euryale IV/Sarpedon
Living on the fourth planet, in the ‘habitable zone’ of the star Euryale, the GER was begun on the planet of Euryale IV, aka “Sarpedon” as it would come to be called. A planet of size 1.37 times the size of the Earth, it was among the earliest ‘habitable’ worlds to be discovered during the scramble to create the Gateway and escape the dying earth. Discovery of the star and its system was credited to the Greek astronomer Sebastian Kiritikos, who was working with the United Nations and other cooperating groups and companies to find habitable stars and potentially human-habitable worlds, who named it after one of the gorgon sisters of ancient mythology. Likewise the names of the planets of the star’s system would be initially named in a more standard fashion, though the name of “Sarpedon” would be given to Euryale IV (named after the legendary isle the gorgons lived upon) after it was found to be the one habitable (and especially after it was eventually found to be oceanic) world after the use of self-replicating von Neumann probes to further investigate the system’s potential habitability.
Sporting vast, warm oceans over 88% of its surface, with myriad bits of landmass and islands scattered across its surface, the planet of Sarpedon does possess frozen, icy poles in the far north and far south as well as milder bands of variance from the mostly warm and tropical-types of weather closer to the poles respectively. Unlike the notable deeper blue color of the ocean waters, the planet’s plantlife sports shades of reds, as well as yellows and even oranges, in what humanity would recognize as ‘autumnal’ colors due to the color and nature of the system’s long-living red dwarf sun. Red is a color for plantlife as commonly as plantlife on the Earth can be found in shades of greens, essentially, though it isn’t limited to that. Indeed, Earth-transplanted plants or ones adapted to the new planet’s terrain have been found to be able to survive (even if less efficiently) underneath the sun. Some adapted Earth plant species have also been wrought to have red-pigmented chlorophyll for survival, which has seen them come to generally thrive as well.
The planet’s atmosphere sports a distinctly more ‘Earth-like’ mix than some potentially habitable exoplanets in general, though genetic vaccines would come to be deployed eventually both initially and in the long-term to combat the initial struggle of humanity to mete out survival in an alien atmosphere and help people get treatments to counteract long-term health issues associated lien atmosphere. By current times, though it took several centuries of work and some ups and downs in tinkering with things to get there in the end, humanity has since come to mete out a comfortable existence within the atmosphere of Sarpedon, with such long-term health issues being only visible in a small slice of the most vulnerable populations for the most part.
Meanwhile the animal life of the planet has mostly come to be that of an aquatic or water-living sort, though local ‘equivalents’ to avians, reptiles, arthropods, and mammals have even been discovered despite the limited landmass of the planet otherwise. These and other forms of life have been the subjects of study and experiments on the part of human scientists for generations in turn, leading to the acquisition of some understanding for how life came to be on the planet’s surface despite the struggle to dig up old fossil layers deeper underground due to the limited amount of landmasses of the planet.
Humanity also lives on the neighboring gas giant of Euryale V, at least in graviton-tech-enabled upper atmospheric habitats. Here many things are processed using the heat and pressure farther down in the gas giant, within human reach at least, and hydrogen is harvested and processed in vast quantities to produce hydrogen fuel and fuel cells to boot. Said habitats are closed off from the outside, aside from places such as spaceports and such, with thick walls and durable make from neighboring planetary or asteroid-mined metals. Notable air circulation systems, other critical atmospheric and hydroponics systems, and the like also exist within the webs of interconnected ‘towns’ and in much rarer cases ‘cities’ these habitats form inherently by design. Everything is close together due to dangers in attempting to enable ‘personal transit’ or such things, and running monorails and public transport are of the most common note aside from the very wealthiest living on Euryale V who can afford an otherwise unheard of ‘personal transit vehicle’ while living down there.
Demographics:
Humans. Homo sapiens sapiens.The fled children of the dying Earth. The people of Sarpedon who, as citizens of the GER, call themselves “Sarpedans”. Aside from gene therapy programs intended to help adapt humanity to the world of Sarpedon proper, and work to fix some mistakes in these therapies over the centuries, humanity by and large within the GER hasn’t wildly differed from its original baseline otherwise for most.
This is, however, aside from a nominal population of those who get ‘stylistic’ modifications, like color-changing skin or hair color changes/eye color changes, etc, and the one and only notable actual human subgroup that could be considered as ‘different’ distinctly from normal human anatomy exists among some of the remaining nomadic fleets. This group of note in particular are the “Homo sapiens sapiens branchiae”, whose genetic modifications were less regulated in past centuries than was managed or upheld in most static settlements. Historically this even greater lack of regulation is also the origins of why some nomadic fleets, and a portion of the static population descended from nomadic fleets in turn, have higher occurrences of certain genetic issues compared to the wider population of humans at large in the greater majority. Yet these ‘gill-bearing humans’, or ‘fish people’ as some call them (the latter term itself being seen as a more offensive term), have three key traits that have ‘settled out’ from past modifications that make them stand out.
One, they can actually breathe underwater and in air uniquely even in salt water or freshwater alike. Two, they have distinctly more ‘pointed’ ears. Three, they have three angular but peculiar darker-colored skin stripes on their skin (minor at best, but distinct) on the sides of their ribs that are vaguely reminiscent of gills, and which in certain rare cases of these people have a slight ruffle or naturally-warped shape to boot.
Known in their own tongue as the Livelloúli, nicknamed the “Livelli”, they are a vaguely mammal-and-insect-like humanoid alien species that originated from a hot and more humid homeworld called “Sórgy Alknúoz”. A world emerging around third from their home sun, a sun known as “Arétim” in their tongue (assumed to be, based on comparative star carts, what humans before fleeing Earth would find and broadly called Teucer-42), it was a planet featuring a larger equatorial region than many that, ultimately, was in the end only part of the ‘continental-ish tropical-ish world’ they called home (temperate regions, notable polar regions, oceans and island, etc, also exist there with varied climes, but notably more hot/humid climate bands around it than Earth had). It also boasted a similar, roughly-speaking based on limited information brought along by the Livelli, size to Earth it is assumed by current times within the GER.
Their societies in primitive times were noted as having a higher occurrence of even more fierce competition for territory, though as civilization advanced this trend would begin to slowly shift away ultimately this ‘aspect’ would never fully disappear either. Further, it can be said in generally broad strokes that their societies emerged to become about as individualistic as those of many human cultures, to give a baseline comparison, though unity as a species and under things like cultural, ethnic, and national identities would also develop among them. By the time they developed what humanity would likely dub roughly equivalent to the “late 21st century/early 22nd century”, however, the race would face a global crisis that would place the species on the brink of potential extinction.
A “great calamity” was detected approaching from afar. A rogue planet was headed toward and into their solar system, to put it simply, and to many the chance of it ever hitting their homeworld was either ‘too close for comfort’ or ‘impossible’ at worst. It was a celestial event seen as ridiculously rare to imagine happening to occur in the direction of their home, to have a rogue planet even pass into it, and yet something seemed….off. Not everyone was ok with things, and as the rogue planet entered their solar system three different plans were enacted. The first was the plan of ‘no plan’, as it was seen as not being a potential danger. The second was a number of local nations scrambling to create a way to ‘ensure it doesn’t hit us’ using a number of large warheads. The third plan was one to ‘escape the planet and get out’, using similar ideas to those of humanity as it had escaped its own dying homeworld.
In the end, the rogue planet wouldn’t hit their homeworld….but the disruption of local gravity would plunge a neighboring rocky world closer to the sun to crash into their homeworld instead. Meanwhile, a “Catapault” (as it was translated) would act like a one-way Gateway to send four Livelli colony ships across the stars like a giant slingshot. The fourth and last of these, as it were, would be present just long enough before being ‘launched’ to elsewhere to see some ships attempting to flee into space as the neighboring planet was just about to hit their homeworld. In the end, this ship that would arrive close to the Euryale System would, ultimately, manage to get at least some footage and data from the disastrous impact right before being shot away into the stars. It is assumed humanity had more time to react to its own flight than the Livelli had, based on Livelli data at least, but to even capture the moment of a planetary impact was…..just as ridiculous, and frankly terrifying to the fourth ship’s colonists, as it could have been.
Losing the tech used to send them out among the stars, the Livelli technology wasn’t as precise as humanity’s ended up being in the comparative sense. It would take several hundred years, and turning the colony ship into an impromptu generation ship out of necessity, before it would finally approach and arrive at the destination of Euryale III/Sarpedon where it had intended to go first. Within that time, humanity would arrive, colonize the planet, and then be in for a rude awakening as the Livelli colony ship realized the situation from afar as they continued to make their gradual approach. It was a matter of debate among them, heated for that matter, as they had hoped to mete out survival on what the humans came to call "Sarpedon" as well. Some wished to wipe them off of the planet to replace them. Some advocated for conquest. Others that they should look for another place to survive. Others argued they had nowhere else to go either, and that humanity had seemingly only 'just' settled on the planet comparatively. In the end, study of these 'aliens' was voted barely into effect as the choice by the colony ship's leaders. arrived only to have already realized a long while ago that they weren’t the first to get to the planet. It was an infinitesimal, tiny, minute, microscopic, and frankly glactically-absurd chance of two species coming into contact with each other, even more so that they’d both lose homeworlds and try to settle on the same planet with varying levels of success….in a star system far, far, far away from anything they’d ever known.
….Yet this was happening right there and then despite all of that, and they at least had to 'try' to do something about it without more of their own dying over it.
In the end, the choice of a peaceful first contact would manage to work out on both sides, by some universal miracle, in the end. Most Livelli would move to settle where humans were, despite having to submit to goernance in the process after much debate and at times heated negotiation, finding the conditions surprisngly habitable enough for themselves in comparison to the data they had on their own old homeworld and such. It would, however, take decades yet for 'integration' to gradually work its way into things even then. Some Livelli didn’t like this, and would flee away to try to stake their own claim living in space somewhere in the Euryale system. Many others simply wanted to leave the ship and ‘finally have a home to call our own’. It was never a perfect scenario, or a perfect result, but it was what it was and is by current day what it is.
Females are known to have a feminine-type body layout with a ‘grasping’ prehensile tail, while males instead are known to have slimmer and longer wings and have a ‘pointy’ singular piece at the end of their tail that is said to possess a rather small and vestigial venom sac no longer connected to it with a venom inside known to cause lingering disorientation, nausea, and dizziness in those affected by it. The birth rate of females is genearlly higher than that of males by a distinct percentage in comparison to human birth rates for the sexes. Births take the form of laying a 'sac', which itself is cared for until the young properly emerges from within the protective incubating sac they are 'born' in 2-5 days later (sometimes needing medical help to do so). As a note, water births are thought generally by Livelli to be 'more comfortable' for females as a practice to some extent as well (some humans use water births as well, which was a pleasant surprise to them culturally somewhat) even if not nessecarily all Livelli women prefer it.
((Also yes, words in their language are just reversed greek-language words for future reference.))
History:
Culture and Society:
Governance and Politics:
The general practice for democratic voting is that all adults, those 18 and older by law, are able to vote in general elections at the escalatingly large local, district, regional, provincial, and national levels respectively. The general idea is that you can’t vote on who is mayor or such in a place you don’t live as well, naturally/inherently, of course.
There is some hybridization with liquid/representative democracy as well in this case. Normally citizens have the foundational right to vote on who to represent them as with a representative democracy, but in this case citizens can also sign away or hand over votes to another akin to a liquid democracy to use on their behalf. Simply put, people can invest their vote into the personage of a representative to vote on their behalf. Representatives can be as small-scale as someone’s lazy adult kid giving his vote to his mom or dad to use on his behalf, as big as a bunch of such parents investing their accrued votes into a common singular representative on a larger scale, etc. However, each citizen also has a just as fundamental right to ‘rescind’ their vote from a representative to reclaim it if or as they wish, and the use of votes as ‘currency’ to hand them over to others in legal or commercial or such exchanges (and contracts in general) has been strictly forbidden…..and not without reason either. Albeit there are regulations are in place to prevent mass vote-pulling for trolling or such bad-spirited reasons, such as trying to ‘pull out the rug’ from underneath a vote-invested representative’s feet to troll or humiliate them, though it doesn't illegalize mass vote withdrawing in all cases such as if public opinion turns against a candidate your representative is voting for, etc, and you change your mind).
Representatives are those who exist in those political positions, aka: Mayor, President, District Judge, etc. Voting Representatives, then, are those who are invested with votes by others to use on behalf of others. Different things fundamentally. Also, a sitting politician/representative or someone in the running for a political position (defined in law so I don’t have to try to go into deep legal details) cannot be used as a Voting Representative by others and loses that position and power and so forth if they do enter such a position or go into the running for one. Those who work for a sitting politician directly, such as staff, janitors, and the like, cannot be used as Voting Representatives either. All Voting Representatives are also barred from accepting pay to become one or participate as one (this issue always comes up here and there in the courts, but the law is generally actually enforced).
So not only are candidates seeking to gain political positions, but some supporting them might go on their own sub-campaigns for the candidate seeking to accrue votes to use to vote for them. Double the political campaigns, and sometimes these sub-campaigners work against each other to accrue votes.
Votes can be handed over on three levels. The first is the ‘one use basis’, such as for a singular presidential or mayoral race and what most major candidate sub-campaigns will seek for. The next is a ‘limited time basis’, which cannot exceed one or two years due to federal law and in minor part depending on the local region one is in. Then there is ‘on a semi-permanent basis’, meaning that the chosen voting representative has the handed-over vote(s) until or unless those who gave them their vote(s) decide otherwise. This of course comes with its own storm of regulations and court cases by current times to boot.
At the very top, however, the government is still generally unitary-ish by nature in how laws and such are enforced from the top-down. Federal law is everyone’s law, with certain nuances and regulations left to lower-levels of the governmental system to be flexible on and decide for themselves.
Free-roaming ‘naval nomads’, who were among the first groups to settle on Sarpedon due to space constraints before the floating cities became a thing, also have certain rights to travel and do activities within certain restrictions or regions to “allow them to maintain their culture and centuries-old way of life, which is itself also a piece of valuable GER cultural history and heritage”....though this at times comes up in news, with some either wanting to push for ‘more’ or arguing that these fleets ‘should be further restricted’ due to issues both prejudicial and genuine alike that have arisen with regards to this (in this case defined in a rather generalized way) group/culture/etc. Such groups also get their vote in for things, but with the added caveats of things like ‘have to have been living in the region for x months or years still to cast a vote in those elections’ and time being provided for them to arrive at a floating city in general or such governmental non-military facility to be able to allow their people to cast votes for major elections and such (etc).
….Meanwhile, the actual behind-the-scenes oligarchy basically controls government systems in the background, with behind-the-scenes institutions from top to bottom to help support and reinforce this by current times with how far their reach has come to stretch in reality. It doesn’t micro-manage everything from top to bottom normally, the flexibility and such gives people room and representation enough to satiate them and allow things to run well enough in general, but it does step in and exert authority where and when it sees fit and when its interests are either in danger or when its members wish for something to be done. Their ability to control things is at all levels in reality indeed, even if they don’t always abuse it all of the time.
Still, it is by far in current times seen as a crazy but lingering conspiracy theory that a ‘secret cabal controls the nation itself’, and even more so with the sub-rumor that ‘its members are all immortals’ and such things (they are actually in most cases ‘effectively immortal’ in some scientifically-wrought way or another, funny enough, but this bit of the conspiracy theory is seen as the most ridiculous as well). The ‘true synarchy’ behind closed doors also has a titanic amount of wealth and the like individually, but even they have created a sort of code of ethics and such to try to regulate themselves internally to boot.
((Note: At some point the underlying synarchic oligarchy did, in fact, attempt to have members focus entirely on certain areas of things in a manner similar to the original definition of a synarchy/synarchism. It didn’t really pan out too well, but the general idea of each being invested or skilled or involved in a different area/areas to complement each other did roughly stick and become codified among them to some extent in the end at least.))
Technology Overview:
Military Overview: (This is the space to talk about any offensive capabilities you have. Given that most of these Colonies have been essentially stranded by themselves for three centuries, I don't imagine anyone has a large "conquer other planets" level fleet yet. But maybe your Colony has been in civil war for a hundred years, and has built up an impressive military in that time. Or maybe they even had to fend off a genuine alien invasion.)
Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)
((Edit 1/11/25: Everything but a few name bits I need to eventually think up for stuff in the history section, and basically need to get everything for the Military Overview section to boot. But the rest of it is "Done" by this point (I think, unless I missed something).))
The Greater Euryalean Republic (The GER/“The Republic”)
"If your nation has a flavor quote/motto, it goes here"
Government Form: Democratic Republic
(Secretly/In Reality: Synarchism/Synarchic Oligarchy - As in “a secret cabal is in charge behind it all”, not as in the original meaning of synarchy/synarchism.)
Population: 7.7 billion
((General Rough Population Timescale - 150 years ago: 5.4 billion, 350 years ago: 2.5 billion, ~425 years ago: Some Millions At Maximum; Improved as technology and survivability and sustainability for the colony overall improved, which led in part to a boom in growth. Wars did lessen this to some extent at times, etc, but 500 years is a long time indeed.))
What Is Humanity?:
Humanity? What is humanity, but the ability to connect, empathize, and build alongside others through the good and the bad and the ugly? To be able to fight for survivial against a hostile nature that seeks to kill you, to mete out survival even when you're against the ropes and despite your own mistakes, and to seek out a future even when all seems to be at its bleakest?
In the mundane and far less poetic sense, however, for the GER the matter is a simple one for defining humanity. It is being born as one of the human species biologically, born to human species parents.....whether it be Homo sapiens sapiens or a new subspecies otherwise. Sapient rights for humans and citizen Livelli, however, are things that most certainly exist under GER law as well.
*******
Planet/System Name and Description:
Star/System Name - Euryale
Planet Name - Euryale IV/Sarpedon
Living on the fourth planet, in the ‘habitable zone’ of the star Euryale, the GER was begun on the planet of Euryale IV, aka “Sarpedon” as it would come to be called. A planet of size 1.37 times the size of the Earth, it was among the earliest ‘habitable’ worlds to be discovered during the scramble to create the Gateway and escape the dying earth. Discovery of the star and its system was credited to the Greek astronomer Sebastian Kiritikos, who was working with the United Nations and other cooperating groups and companies to find habitable stars and potentially human-habitable worlds, who named it after one of the gorgon sisters of ancient mythology. Likewise the names of the planets of the star’s system would be initially named in a more standard fashion, though the name of “Sarpedon” would be given to Euryale IV (named after the legendary isle the gorgons lived upon) after it was found to be the one habitable (and especially after it was eventually found to be oceanic) world after the use of self-replicating von Neumann probes to further investigate the system’s potential habitability.
Sporting vast, warm oceans over 88% of its surface, with myriad bits of landmass and islands scattered across its surface, the planet of Sarpedon does possess frozen, icy poles in the far north and far south as well as milder bands of variance from the mostly warm and tropical-types of weather closer to the poles respectively. Unlike the notable deeper blue color of the ocean waters, the planet’s plantlife sports shades of reds, as well as yellows and even oranges, in what humanity would recognize as ‘autumnal’ colors due to the color and nature of the system’s long-living red dwarf sun. Red is a color for plantlife as commonly as plantlife on the Earth can be found in shades of greens, essentially, though it isn’t limited to that. Indeed, Earth-transplanted plants or ones adapted to the new planet’s terrain have been found to be able to survive (even if less efficiently) underneath the sun. Some adapted Earth plant species have also been wrought to have red-pigmented chlorophyll for survival, which has seen them come to generally thrive as well.
The planet’s atmosphere sports a distinctly more ‘Earth-like’ mix than some potentially habitable exoplanets in general, though genetic vaccines would come to be deployed eventually both initially and in the long-term to combat the initial struggle of humanity to mete out survival in an alien atmosphere and help people get treatments to counteract long-term health issues associated lien atmosphere. By current times, though it took several centuries of work and some ups and downs in tinkering with things to get there in the end, humanity has since come to mete out a comfortable existence within the atmosphere of Sarpedon, with such long-term health issues being only visible in a small slice of the most vulnerable populations for the most part.
Meanwhile the animal life of the planet has mostly come to be that of an aquatic or water-living sort, though local ‘equivalents’ to avians, reptiles, arthropods, and mammals have even been discovered despite the limited landmass of the planet otherwise. These and other forms of life have been the subjects of study and experiments on the part of human scientists for generations in turn, leading to the acquisition of some understanding for how life came to be on the planet’s surface despite the struggle to dig up old fossil layers deeper underground due to the limited amount of landmasses of the planet.
Humanity also lives on the neighboring gas giant of Euryale V, at least in graviton-tech-enabled upper atmospheric habitats. Here many things are processed using the heat and pressure farther down in the gas giant, within human reach at least, and hydrogen is harvested and processed in vast quantities to produce hydrogen fuel and fuel cells to boot. Said habitats are closed off from the outside, aside from places such as spaceports and such, with thick walls and durable make from neighboring planetary or asteroid-mined metals. Notable air circulation systems, other critical atmospheric and hydroponics systems, and the like also exist within the webs of interconnected ‘towns’ and in much rarer cases ‘cities’ these habitats form inherently by design. Everything is close together due to dangers in attempting to enable ‘personal transit’ or such things, and running monorails and public transport are of the most common note aside from the very wealthiest living on Euryale V who can afford an otherwise unheard of ‘personal transit vehicle’ while living down there.
Demographics:
Humans. Homo sapiens sapiens.The fled children of the dying Earth. The people of Sarpedon who, as citizens of the GER, call themselves “Sarpedans”. Aside from gene therapy programs intended to help adapt humanity to the world of Sarpedon proper, and work to fix some mistakes in these therapies over the centuries, humanity by and large within the GER hasn’t wildly differed from its original baseline otherwise for most.
This is, however, aside from a nominal population of those who get ‘stylistic’ modifications, like color-changing skin or hair color changes/eye color changes, etc, and the one and only notable actual human subgroup that could be considered as ‘different’ distinctly from normal human anatomy exists among some of the remaining nomadic fleets. This group of note in particular are the “Homo sapiens sapiens branchiae”, whose genetic modifications were less regulated in past centuries than was managed or upheld in most static settlements. Historically this even greater lack of regulation is also the origins of why some nomadic fleets, and a portion of the static population descended from nomadic fleets in turn, have higher occurrences of certain genetic issues compared to the wider population of humans at large in the greater majority. Yet these ‘gill-bearing humans’, or ‘fish people’ as some call them (the latter term itself being seen as a more offensive term), have three key traits that have ‘settled out’ from past modifications that make them stand out.
One, they can actually breathe underwater and in air uniquely even in salt water or freshwater alike. Two, they have distinctly more ‘pointed’ ears. Three, they have three angular but peculiar darker-colored skin stripes on their skin (minor at best, but distinct) on the sides of their ribs that are vaguely reminiscent of gills, and which in certain rare cases of these people have a slight ruffle or naturally-warped shape to boot.
Known in their own tongue as the Livelloúli, nicknamed the “Livelli”, they are a vaguely mammal-and-insect-like humanoid alien species that originated from a hot and more humid homeworld called “Sórgy Alknúoz”. A world emerging around third from their home sun, a sun known as “Arétim” in their tongue (assumed to be, based on comparative star carts, what humans before fleeing Earth would find and broadly called Teucer-42), it was a planet featuring a larger equatorial region than many that, ultimately, was in the end only part of the ‘continental-ish tropical-ish world’ they called home (temperate regions, notable polar regions, oceans and island, etc, also exist there with varied climes, but notably more hot/humid climate bands around it than Earth had). It also boasted a similar, roughly-speaking based on limited information brought along by the Livelli, size to Earth it is assumed by current times within the GER.
Their societies in primitive times were noted as having a higher occurrence of even more fierce competition for territory, though as civilization advanced this trend would begin to slowly shift away ultimately this ‘aspect’ would never fully disappear either. Further, it can be said in generally broad strokes that their societies emerged to become about as individualistic as those of many human cultures, to give a baseline comparison, though unity as a species and under things like cultural, ethnic, and national identities would also develop among them. By the time they developed what humanity would likely dub roughly equivalent to the “late 21st century/early 22nd century”, however, the race would face a global crisis that would place the species on the brink of potential extinction.
A “great calamity” was detected approaching from afar. A rogue planet was headed toward and into their solar system, to put it simply, and to many the chance of it ever hitting their homeworld was either ‘too close for comfort’ or ‘impossible’ at worst. It was a celestial event seen as ridiculously rare to imagine happening to occur in the direction of their home, to have a rogue planet even pass into it, and yet something seemed….off. Not everyone was ok with things, and as the rogue planet entered their solar system three different plans were enacted. The first was the plan of ‘no plan’, as it was seen as not being a potential danger. The second was a number of local nations scrambling to create a way to ‘ensure it doesn’t hit us’ using a number of large warheads. The third plan was one to ‘escape the planet and get out’, using similar ideas to those of humanity as it had escaped its own dying homeworld.
In the end, the rogue planet wouldn’t hit their homeworld….but the disruption of local gravity would plunge a neighboring rocky world closer to the sun to crash into their homeworld instead. Meanwhile, a “Catapault” (as it was translated) would act like a one-way Gateway to send four Livelli colony ships across the stars like a giant slingshot. The fourth and last of these, as it were, would be present just long enough before being ‘launched’ to elsewhere to see some ships attempting to flee into space as the neighboring planet was just about to hit their homeworld. In the end, this ship that would arrive close to the Euryale System would, ultimately, manage to get at least some footage and data from the disastrous impact right before being shot away into the stars. It is assumed humanity had more time to react to its own flight than the Livelli had, based on Livelli data at least, but to even capture the moment of a planetary impact was…..just as ridiculous, and frankly terrifying to the fourth ship’s colonists, as it could have been.
Losing the tech used to send them out among the stars, the Livelli technology wasn’t as precise as humanity’s ended up being in the comparative sense. It would take several hundred years, and turning the colony ship into an impromptu generation ship out of necessity, before it would finally approach and arrive at the destination of Euryale III/Sarpedon where it had intended to go first. Within that time, humanity would arrive, colonize the planet, and then be in for a rude awakening as the Livelli colony ship realized the situation from afar as they continued to make their gradual approach. It was a matter of debate among them, heated for that matter, as they had hoped to mete out survival on what the humans came to call "Sarpedon" as well. Some wished to wipe them off of the planet to replace them. Some advocated for conquest. Others that they should look for another place to survive. Others argued they had nowhere else to go either, and that humanity had seemingly only 'just' settled on the planet comparatively. In the end, study of these 'aliens' was voted barely into effect as the choice by the colony ship's leaders. arrived only to have already realized a long while ago that they weren’t the first to get to the planet. It was an infinitesimal, tiny, minute, microscopic, and frankly glactically-absurd chance of two species coming into contact with each other, even more so that they’d both lose homeworlds and try to settle on the same planet with varying levels of success….in a star system far, far, far away from anything they’d ever known.
….Yet this was happening right there and then despite all of that, and they at least had to 'try' to do something about it without more of their own dying over it.
In the end, the choice of a peaceful first contact would manage to work out on both sides, by some universal miracle, in the end. Most Livelli would move to settle where humans were, despite having to submit to goernance in the process after much debate and at times heated negotiation, finding the conditions surprisngly habitable enough for themselves in comparison to the data they had on their own old homeworld and such. It would, however, take decades yet for 'integration' to gradually work its way into things even then. Some Livelli didn’t like this, and would flee away to try to stake their own claim living in space somewhere in the Euryale system. Many others simply wanted to leave the ship and ‘finally have a home to call our own’. It was never a perfect scenario, or a perfect result, but it was what it was and is by current day what it is.
Females are known to have a feminine-type body layout with a ‘grasping’ prehensile tail, while males instead are known to have slimmer and longer wings and have a ‘pointy’ singular piece at the end of their tail that is said to possess a rather small and vestigial venom sac no longer connected to it with a venom inside known to cause lingering disorientation, nausea, and dizziness in those affected by it. The birth rate of females is genearlly higher than that of males by a distinct percentage in comparison to human birth rates for the sexes. Births take the form of laying a 'sac', which itself is cared for until the young properly emerges from within the protective incubating sac they are 'born' in 2-5 days later (sometimes needing medical help to do so). As a note, water births are thought generally by Livelli to be 'more comfortable' for females as a practice to some extent as well (some humans use water births as well, which was a pleasant surprise to them culturally somewhat) even if not nessecarily all Livelli women prefer it.
((Also yes, words in their language are just reversed greek-language words for future reference.))
History:
A dying world, a crumbling cradle, a mortally mauled and mangled mother, one that was giving out its last heaves and labored breaths while its children were forced to find a way to flee else they too would succumb to the seemingly cold and vast emptiness of death. Such was the situation for humanity on Earth. A species, frankly, that upon learning the news of its dying mother world was pushed into a struggle to mete out suirvival among the stars. Peoples, enemies and allies and otherwise alike, being forced to flee the only home they had ever known as many things seemed to fall by the wayside and unlikely others banded together as the fight and struggle for survival took paramount importance in the minds of a good many. Many, who had no choice of where and when and to whom they were born, sought to scramble for survival first and foremost as even the basest of Earth life had always done since time immemorial. What choice had they for all the choices of their ancestors, and those of others? All they could do was to seek a future among the stars. Meanwhile others continued to bewail the fate of their home, taking out the anger of generations of activists and environmentally-concerned folks on a burning world as they now even more so laid blame at the feet and hands of all those who lived upon its surface yet still in this time period without discrimination. Whatever the case was, whatever decency was cast aside or came togther amidst it all among the throngs of humans on the planet humanity once called home, the ultimate fate of many fortunate souls was to board the colony ships and use the science-wrought concept of the Gateways off to stars and worlds far-flung and scattered across the Milky Way.
Such was how the colony ship USS Galatea, a colony ship wrought in the now-former United States of America, ended up at the home of a star named "Euryale". Among the very earliest colony ships sent off through the Gateways, even as the planet scrambled yet still for survival for some years to come, it emerged in part due to the support of a number of 'philanthropic donations' that in part helped fund and provide for the construction of the vessel itself. While the government had the primary hand in things, and many general citizens were brought aboard, it was still not a deniable fact that many affluent patrons also were aboard the vessel along with their resources to boot. Such was the price of escape for the majority of others on that colony ship, a price they and many others were willing to accept in order to get a new life on another world. Indeed, however, many more prices would have to be accepted for any of the whole of them to survive yet still once they arrived at the fourth planet away from Euryale: "Sarpedon". Named for the oceanic island home of the mythical Gorgons, its name was a fitting one given the oceanic nature of the planet itself. Only somewhat bigger than the Earth, and with a comparable enough ecosystem that the use of gene therapies and assistive technologies seemed viable for those aiming to settle it, the planet did struggle with its share of storms and lack of habitable landmass among other such things. Hence the colony ship had come equipped in this case with the tools and manufacturing power and even voidbound drones to mine from the highly plentiful asteroid belt of the system that lied beyond the reach of its fifth planet (and Sarpedon's neighbor), Euryale V, to help it gather and process and shape materials needed for attempting survival on the planet's surface.
However, settlement on the surface of Sarpedon, even just the habitable landmass, was a matter of struggle from the start for humanity all the same. First came the land settlements, and several deep-sea mining operations set up at the bottom of the ocean in due time. Many came down in built sea vessels as well, to escape the crampeed conditions of the colony ship, and sought to survive on the surfance once some means of gene therapy and food processing and/or portable hydroponics could begin production alongside the emergence of new on-planet harbors alongside the first static settlements. In time would also come the breakthrough of graviton-harnessing technology, then, and after the first thirty years on Sarpedon static settlements at sea were made possible enough for those in the crowding cities and towns on the land. For roughly the first one hundred and twenty some-odd years on Sarpedon, this would be the general status quo as many fleets initially also needed to trade with the static settlements in order to get certain supplies and such they needed....or attempting to raid them and other fleets for needed supplies otherwise due to the supremacy of the nomadic fleets. It was the mark of a time period that would become known as the "Era of Ships", for it was they who ruled the waves and those who sought to live more static lives that struggled to keep up. It was a time where many sought to strike out independent on the seas, and where many others sought to tame the seas and bring a greater order to the world. It was a 'second great age of piracy', as some would say, and just as much a 'great age of exploration' despite the colinial government's attempts to consolidate and maintain control over what it could.
Yet as humanity would advance its technologies, and its methods, the gradual slow-burn of static settlement growth would continue on at a steady march. Bit by bit, more of the oceanic world would begin to be more and more sucessfully inhabited by static and growing towns and cities on the surface of the ocean alongside those settlements already and initially wrought on the limited amount of land humanity could find. Bit by bit, the fleets would begin to find less and less room to move about in certain areas. Some fleets reacted to it with violence, others by ignoring it, and others yet still were far from the 'problems' of the 'idle dwellers' and such like. Generally around one hundred and thirty years after the settlement of the planet, then Sarpedon would reach a point as several settled regions of the planet would seek to strike out on their own, some more peacefully and others much less so. Some had support from allied fleets, others saw the fleets as a scourge after many years of exposure to pirates and those violently responding to the supposed encroachment of 'idle city dwellers' into 'fleet territories' and the impressions these had left on people. Generally dubbed the "Five States Period"/"New Imperialistic Era", this era of settlement and growth on Sarpedon was marked with the fall of the initial colonial government and attempts to rebuild thereafter that left the planet's leadership fragmented and apart. Among the largest of these sucessor states to the initial colony would be the "New Hesperian Republic" (NHR) (who sought to unite the planet), the future founder of the GER itself, "The United People's Republic of the Calafian Peoples"(UPRCP) (who sought to unite the planet eventually), the "Acadian Comonwealth" (AC), the "Democratic Principality of Neo-York" (DPNY), and finally the "Greater Freedonian Federation" (GFF), who either sought to survive, to stay out of larger conflicts, or otherwise vied for control over territory and the expansion of it over the planet's surface with each other and the 'naval nomads' of the seas.
Time would pass in general, with wars and rumors of wars and storms aplenty as humanity sought to expand its reach across the planet even further. By this point, it seemed almost inevitable to many that some sort of fragmented bunch of nation states akin to those on the former Earth would be the fate of the planet as a whole. Or, at least, what it would settle into in the end at the beginning of thse next roughly sixty years. Sixty years of wars between these primary major states. Sixty years of trade and expansion and exploration. Sixty years of strife and struggle with fleets as their 'room' to roam across the planet began to shrink. and also as eventually the five states began to number less than that rather close to the end of this time period. This diminishing of five states, known as the "Unification Wars", began with the (mostly) peaceful assimilation of a crippled Acadian Commonlwealth by the Vinland Republic shortly after a recent war between the two, mostly where the former had attacked the latter but the latter had been left with the collapse of the former's government (the war had ultimately been to try to secure public support, naturally, on the AC's part) and ultimately narrowly voted for annexation after some debate. Having been one of the two 'lone wolf' nations diplomatically as of this point in time, with the AC having been the other, it was a jarring event for many that came both as a surprise and marked the NHR as a 'greater threat' in the eyes of the remaining three. With the alliance of the UPRCP and the DPNY having been among the events leading to the struggling now-former AC to try to fight a war it thought it could use to stabilize itself, it left the matters of an increasingly uneven balance of power that some felt needed 'rebalancing' as the coming years saw the NHR working to annex and stabilize its new territory. Thus the two allied powers attacked the GFF, former ally of the AC before the AC had collapsed into a dictatorship after a civil war that kicked off over food shortages, after failing to pressure it into their alliance to (in theory) oppose the NHR with them. The GFF had wanted to 'remain neutral' for the most part, and outside of wars so it could maintain trade with the other powers, though now this war, seen as a 'way to oppose and cripple the NHR before it could stabilize its new territory' and such by removing a potential ally for it, would in turn lead to even more of a mess. While the defending GFF would hold its own somewhat at the beginning, due to its larger naval fleets and some allied nomads in its service, the NHR would make closed-door offers of assistance after seeing an opportunnity to garner a potential ally to oppose the seemingly domination-aspiring alliance of the other two powers (as its propoganda claimed at least). As the GFF began to lose the war, however, the NHR would 'under murky circumstances' supposedly intercept a message from a group within the GFF asking for war assistance to avoid being 'carved up by the UPRCP and DPNY". Not that the war by the two powers, intended to put up a puppet government to side with them in a war against the NHR, seemed to give off nothing short of those impressions in ways. Others say the supposed message was 'mere propganda', but with the turning of the war in the GFF and growing opinions within some of the GFF and the wider public of the NHR to work together, it would see the involvement of the post-AC-integration NHR starting with the infamous surprise attack against the DPNY's military HQ using long-range bombers and attempts to misdirect the DPNY to think an attack was coming from elsewhere.
Ultimately, and without delving anymore into the long and drawn-out problem this end-of-time-period mess of wars would lead to, a cascade of events and further conflicts beyond this would lead to the eventual assimilation of the GFF, annexation of new territories from the war-torn DPNY and UPRCP, the devastated DPNY to surrender, a war-torn NHR coming out on top, combat both on-planet and in space occuring, and the ending defeat of a gradually destabilizing UPRCP. From here the state of things was thrown into a flux, and rebuilding began as too did talks post-war. Ultimately the NHR headed the forming of a union of the remaining three states, and many participating nomadic fleets 'invited to participate' and who chose to do so, who would come together with anti-war post-war sentiments and diplomatic finagaling lead to the "Constitution of Union". This brought the habitats of Euryale V, many nomadic fleets, and the remaining static states together into a 'new planetary union, a just union, and a more perfect union founded for the peace and prosperity of all Sarpedans' with its own list of rights and such clauses added to it. Thus, 306 years prior to the current day, the "Greater Euryalean Republic"/GER would emerge. The peaceful transitions of power for the first several presidents of this new democratic republic would likewise form the needed pattern for moving forward, a rather important foundational matter that would lead to a generally stablizing and cementing system of governance in the centuries to come. At the same time, though, since organizing the GER's founding a number of forces were coaslecing behind the scenes as well. Coaslescing power. Organizing hidden sub-organizations and redundancies. The works. Yet at the same time, with time and work to promote the new GER and 'ensure proper legal justice for all' and the eventual boom of a post-union economic bounceback it did help things start back on a good enough 'foot' at the very least (as well as post-union lesser conflicts or diplomatic pressures being used against nomadic fleets who railed against all of this).
One hundred years later, or roughly 206 years from current day, the mounting and booming growth and building of new habitats on Euryale V would see three attempts in a ten year period to 'become independent' from the GER. While these pockets of habitats would eventually be put down in their rebellions, ones launched against 'the unrighteous subjugation of our people' living in the habitats and the 'emergence of unequal treatment under
the law' would see the GER institute a number of reforms in the aftermath....as well as begin programs such as the 'rotating worker program' where those living in orbit or on Sarpedon would be used to supplemenmt the post-conflicts greater need for labor on Euryale V's habitats. Yet in the wake of this, not only to improve habitat-citizens' living standards and right, but a new push for a greater 'united national identity' underneath one banner and one state seemed to emerge. One where the peoples on Sarpedon and the growing number also living in space or on the habitats of Euryale V had a voice and more of each others' backs than before, and where the ache of the past and education of new generations about the unity of their ancestors who had all 'hailed from one nation, united, and seeking justice for all' helped further coalesce the GER into what it is today (for better and for worse). One cannot accredit this solely to some 'shadow government', nor nessecarily did every 'move' that brought things fortunately along a path of greater stability and prosperity come from the elected government of the people that was visible in the open or made for all of the 'right' reasons either. Both for good and for bad, though, the emergence of improved technologies and mining in the Euryale System's large asteroid belt in the coming decades would see the emergence of spacebound piracy and the eventual furthering of the GER's economic expansion and development go even further beyond Sarpedon itself.
Fourty six years later, the GER would be challenged by the arrival of a peculiar ship in the Euryale System. A very large ship that was certinaly not of human design, was detected well before its arrival, and which certainly was debateable in if it was 'friendly' or not. It was mostly a surprise, of all things, and would place the government and many people on edge as knowledge about it began to be disseminated. Many feared if humans could even understand aliens....much more if they could understand humans in turn to boot. But had they been around a while? Had they been watching for a while? What was going on? Perhaps evidence of their presence had been known to some extent prior, but now it was just being noticed all over again? No one knew for sure, but one thing was for sure when the very large alien vessel attmpted to send out a signal of some sort. A signal that....contained some form of....English?! Broken English, but it was an attempt at speaking a human language even if the sound of the voice giving it wasn't human. Turns out the aliens were the first to observe, learn, and then ultimately make 'first contact' with humanity in this scenario in what would, after five more years or trying to work things out and then leading into some generally tense at times negotiations, result in connection and eventually the beginning of some form of coexistence on and off of the planet between humanity and another species for the first time as far as anyone in the Euryale system was aware. It would also result in more conflict, however, as over the following 160 years the newly-expanded GER would have to juggle both a series of on-and-off wars with a dissentiny minority among the new alien arrivals who 'desired to rule themselvse and Sarpedon' (due to their people having also scouted out the planet for a potential colony and habitation long ago) and internal striffe born from those of both species who weren't exactly 'happy' with each other internally still either or had been polariszed somewhat by these on-and-off wars.
....Though this time wouldn't be entirely without surprise or something new, at least, before the Gateways would reopen again, evene yet still. Roughly nintey years from current day, the GER would run into a new problem in a far-flung space station near the outer rim of the system. A somewhat struggling space colony founded and designed for mining a farther out icy planet (Euryale VII) would see the outbreak of something....strange, in particular a condition that as far as those on Sarpedon and Euryale V knew was concerning but not too bad as the first reports came in. Yet as a government ship was sent to investigate, or some went to see what was the matter, further understanding of the condition was gained as it seemed an 'illegal gene modification operation' within the colony had produced something rather vile by accident. A resilient prion of sorts, it was said, called at first "Mutilatus Corpus Disease"/MCD (aka: "The Reaper", among other local/colloquial names for it) for causing hosts to be warped physiologically (and psychologically) to the point they 'looked like a corpse' (and acted animalistically) without actually being dead. Some rumors that came along as welsaid it even 'reanimated corpses', which was laughed off at first as well. Some said it had been found on 'some ancient, derelict alien ship that crashed on Euryale VII', even, though further reports of mass-infection and the suddenly more rapid spread of the Corpus Virus within the outermost parts of the system among some ships and habitats would see a panic erupt over the matter regardless. Warped monstrosities of flesh, with cases seemingly spreading faster than it could be defended against in many places. More rumors said that 'they merge into fleshy blobs that try to travel elsewhere to infect people' and that 'many afflicted are repurpoosed into fleshy growths attached to walls and other surfaces to grow more monsters', though at this point people didn't fully know what to believe for a while. MCD would ultimately have samples acquired for study by the GER, even as hazards measures, means of prevention, and the like were being developed and pushed into place by force in some situations (even rumored infections in a place could cause more than a few problems at the height of it all). While the claims of the origins of the disease were 'an illegal genetic modification facility on the Euryale VII mining operations settlement of Skadan Colony' would be maintained, however, not all would trust that story despite most doing so as the disease was eventually pushed back after a decade of outbreak and panic and struggle against it. However, in the wake of this tumultuous decade and a half two things would emerge. One, the drastic and most mysterious/peculiar improvement of genetic modification technologies in the future decades to come. Two, a part of the outermost rim of the system would be placed underneath "indefinite military quarantine" with military presence and a dense array of border stations to 'keep people in, and keep what was inside from getting out one way or another'. It is also of note that some paranoia was also had during the decade and a half during the "MCD Crisis" was aimed between humans and Livelli alike at each other, not helping some existing issues, though efforts against this conspiracy theory both in media and otherwise would take a longer time yet to be dwindled mostly out despite the retention of it by some in the small minority fringes of the GER's citizenry.
By current day, 155 years since the end of the MCD Crisis, the GER has overall settled down into a normal. Containment of the MCD and extermination of rumored or minor outbursts of it. Work against pirates both general and anti-human sorts. Peace and general prosperity have come to reign in current times, even with the rise and fall of economy here and there as one might expect a nation to struggle with at times, and despite everything in the last 306 years the GER has held on and grown into a successful state in its own right. Yet...how will the opening of the Gateways change things? Will the rest of humanity prove to have found a hopeful future for itself across the Milky Way, and perhaps be willing to work together or at least be amicable in this new 'international' situation for them all, or will the darkness beyond the Gateways be so all-consuming that it swallows up all in its path? Only time will tell...
Such was how the colony ship USS Galatea, a colony ship wrought in the now-former United States of America, ended up at the home of a star named "Euryale". Among the very earliest colony ships sent off through the Gateways, even as the planet scrambled yet still for survival for some years to come, it emerged in part due to the support of a number of 'philanthropic donations' that in part helped fund and provide for the construction of the vessel itself. While the government had the primary hand in things, and many general citizens were brought aboard, it was still not a deniable fact that many affluent patrons also were aboard the vessel along with their resources to boot. Such was the price of escape for the majority of others on that colony ship, a price they and many others were willing to accept in order to get a new life on another world. Indeed, however, many more prices would have to be accepted for any of the whole of them to survive yet still once they arrived at the fourth planet away from Euryale: "Sarpedon". Named for the oceanic island home of the mythical Gorgons, its name was a fitting one given the oceanic nature of the planet itself. Only somewhat bigger than the Earth, and with a comparable enough ecosystem that the use of gene therapies and assistive technologies seemed viable for those aiming to settle it, the planet did struggle with its share of storms and lack of habitable landmass among other such things. Hence the colony ship had come equipped in this case with the tools and manufacturing power and even voidbound drones to mine from the highly plentiful asteroid belt of the system that lied beyond the reach of its fifth planet (and Sarpedon's neighbor), Euryale V, to help it gather and process and shape materials needed for attempting survival on the planet's surface.
However, settlement on the surface of Sarpedon, even just the habitable landmass, was a matter of struggle from the start for humanity all the same. First came the land settlements, and several deep-sea mining operations set up at the bottom of the ocean in due time. Many came down in built sea vessels as well, to escape the crampeed conditions of the colony ship, and sought to survive on the surfance once some means of gene therapy and food processing and/or portable hydroponics could begin production alongside the emergence of new on-planet harbors alongside the first static settlements. In time would also come the breakthrough of graviton-harnessing technology, then, and after the first thirty years on Sarpedon static settlements at sea were made possible enough for those in the crowding cities and towns on the land. For roughly the first one hundred and twenty some-odd years on Sarpedon, this would be the general status quo as many fleets initially also needed to trade with the static settlements in order to get certain supplies and such they needed....or attempting to raid them and other fleets for needed supplies otherwise due to the supremacy of the nomadic fleets. It was the mark of a time period that would become known as the "Era of Ships", for it was they who ruled the waves and those who sought to live more static lives that struggled to keep up. It was a time where many sought to strike out independent on the seas, and where many others sought to tame the seas and bring a greater order to the world. It was a 'second great age of piracy', as some would say, and just as much a 'great age of exploration' despite the colinial government's attempts to consolidate and maintain control over what it could.
Yet as humanity would advance its technologies, and its methods, the gradual slow-burn of static settlement growth would continue on at a steady march. Bit by bit, more of the oceanic world would begin to be more and more sucessfully inhabited by static and growing towns and cities on the surface of the ocean alongside those settlements already and initially wrought on the limited amount of land humanity could find. Bit by bit, the fleets would begin to find less and less room to move about in certain areas. Some fleets reacted to it with violence, others by ignoring it, and others yet still were far from the 'problems' of the 'idle dwellers' and such like. Generally around one hundred and thirty years after the settlement of the planet, then Sarpedon would reach a point as several settled regions of the planet would seek to strike out on their own, some more peacefully and others much less so. Some had support from allied fleets, others saw the fleets as a scourge after many years of exposure to pirates and those violently responding to the supposed encroachment of 'idle city dwellers' into 'fleet territories' and the impressions these had left on people. Generally dubbed the "Five States Period"/"New Imperialistic Era", this era of settlement and growth on Sarpedon was marked with the fall of the initial colonial government and attempts to rebuild thereafter that left the planet's leadership fragmented and apart. Among the largest of these sucessor states to the initial colony would be the "New Hesperian Republic" (NHR) (who sought to unite the planet), the future founder of the GER itself, "The United People's Republic of the Calafian Peoples"(UPRCP) (who sought to unite the planet eventually), the "Acadian Comonwealth" (AC), the "Democratic Principality of Neo-York" (DPNY), and finally the "Greater Freedonian Federation" (GFF), who either sought to survive, to stay out of larger conflicts, or otherwise vied for control over territory and the expansion of it over the planet's surface with each other and the 'naval nomads' of the seas.
Time would pass in general, with wars and rumors of wars and storms aplenty as humanity sought to expand its reach across the planet even further. By this point, it seemed almost inevitable to many that some sort of fragmented bunch of nation states akin to those on the former Earth would be the fate of the planet as a whole. Or, at least, what it would settle into in the end at the beginning of thse next roughly sixty years. Sixty years of wars between these primary major states. Sixty years of trade and expansion and exploration. Sixty years of strife and struggle with fleets as their 'room' to roam across the planet began to shrink. and also as eventually the five states began to number less than that rather close to the end of this time period. This diminishing of five states, known as the "Unification Wars", began with the (mostly) peaceful assimilation of a crippled Acadian Commonlwealth by the Vinland Republic shortly after a recent war between the two, mostly where the former had attacked the latter but the latter had been left with the collapse of the former's government (the war had ultimately been to try to secure public support, naturally, on the AC's part) and ultimately narrowly voted for annexation after some debate. Having been one of the two 'lone wolf' nations diplomatically as of this point in time, with the AC having been the other, it was a jarring event for many that came both as a surprise and marked the NHR as a 'greater threat' in the eyes of the remaining three. With the alliance of the UPRCP and the DPNY having been among the events leading to the struggling now-former AC to try to fight a war it thought it could use to stabilize itself, it left the matters of an increasingly uneven balance of power that some felt needed 'rebalancing' as the coming years saw the NHR working to annex and stabilize its new territory. Thus the two allied powers attacked the GFF, former ally of the AC before the AC had collapsed into a dictatorship after a civil war that kicked off over food shortages, after failing to pressure it into their alliance to (in theory) oppose the NHR with them. The GFF had wanted to 'remain neutral' for the most part, and outside of wars so it could maintain trade with the other powers, though now this war, seen as a 'way to oppose and cripple the NHR before it could stabilize its new territory' and such by removing a potential ally for it, would in turn lead to even more of a mess. While the defending GFF would hold its own somewhat at the beginning, due to its larger naval fleets and some allied nomads in its service, the NHR would make closed-door offers of assistance after seeing an opportunnity to garner a potential ally to oppose the seemingly domination-aspiring alliance of the other two powers (as its propoganda claimed at least). As the GFF began to lose the war, however, the NHR would 'under murky circumstances' supposedly intercept a message from a group within the GFF asking for war assistance to avoid being 'carved up by the UPRCP and DPNY". Not that the war by the two powers, intended to put up a puppet government to side with them in a war against the NHR, seemed to give off nothing short of those impressions in ways. Others say the supposed message was 'mere propganda', but with the turning of the war in the GFF and growing opinions within some of the GFF and the wider public of the NHR to work together, it would see the involvement of the post-AC-integration NHR starting with the infamous surprise attack against the DPNY's military HQ using long-range bombers and attempts to misdirect the DPNY to think an attack was coming from elsewhere.
Ultimately, and without delving anymore into the long and drawn-out problem this end-of-time-period mess of wars would lead to, a cascade of events and further conflicts beyond this would lead to the eventual assimilation of the GFF, annexation of new territories from the war-torn DPNY and UPRCP, the devastated DPNY to surrender, a war-torn NHR coming out on top, combat both on-planet and in space occuring, and the ending defeat of a gradually destabilizing UPRCP. From here the state of things was thrown into a flux, and rebuilding began as too did talks post-war. Ultimately the NHR headed the forming of a union of the remaining three states, and many participating nomadic fleets 'invited to participate' and who chose to do so, who would come together with anti-war post-war sentiments and diplomatic finagaling lead to the "Constitution of Union". This brought the habitats of Euryale V, many nomadic fleets, and the remaining static states together into a 'new planetary union, a just union, and a more perfect union founded for the peace and prosperity of all Sarpedans' with its own list of rights and such clauses added to it. Thus, 306 years prior to the current day, the "Greater Euryalean Republic"/GER would emerge. The peaceful transitions of power for the first several presidents of this new democratic republic would likewise form the needed pattern for moving forward, a rather important foundational matter that would lead to a generally stablizing and cementing system of governance in the centuries to come. At the same time, though, since organizing the GER's founding a number of forces were coaslecing behind the scenes as well. Coaslescing power. Organizing hidden sub-organizations and redundancies. The works. Yet at the same time, with time and work to promote the new GER and 'ensure proper legal justice for all' and the eventual boom of a post-union economic bounceback it did help things start back on a good enough 'foot' at the very least (as well as post-union lesser conflicts or diplomatic pressures being used against nomadic fleets who railed against all of this).
One hundred years later, or roughly 206 years from current day, the mounting and booming growth and building of new habitats on Euryale V would see three attempts in a ten year period to 'become independent' from the GER. While these pockets of habitats would eventually be put down in their rebellions, ones launched against 'the unrighteous subjugation of our people' living in the habitats and the 'emergence of unequal treatment under
the law' would see the GER institute a number of reforms in the aftermath....as well as begin programs such as the 'rotating worker program' where those living in orbit or on Sarpedon would be used to supplemenmt the post-conflicts greater need for labor on Euryale V's habitats. Yet in the wake of this, not only to improve habitat-citizens' living standards and right, but a new push for a greater 'united national identity' underneath one banner and one state seemed to emerge. One where the peoples on Sarpedon and the growing number also living in space or on the habitats of Euryale V had a voice and more of each others' backs than before, and where the ache of the past and education of new generations about the unity of their ancestors who had all 'hailed from one nation, united, and seeking justice for all' helped further coalesce the GER into what it is today (for better and for worse). One cannot accredit this solely to some 'shadow government', nor nessecarily did every 'move' that brought things fortunately along a path of greater stability and prosperity come from the elected government of the people that was visible in the open or made for all of the 'right' reasons either. Both for good and for bad, though, the emergence of improved technologies and mining in the Euryale System's large asteroid belt in the coming decades would see the emergence of spacebound piracy and the eventual furthering of the GER's economic expansion and development go even further beyond Sarpedon itself.
Fourty six years later, the GER would be challenged by the arrival of a peculiar ship in the Euryale System. A very large ship that was certinaly not of human design, was detected well before its arrival, and which certainly was debateable in if it was 'friendly' or not. It was mostly a surprise, of all things, and would place the government and many people on edge as knowledge about it began to be disseminated. Many feared if humans could even understand aliens....much more if they could understand humans in turn to boot. But had they been around a while? Had they been watching for a while? What was going on? Perhaps evidence of their presence had been known to some extent prior, but now it was just being noticed all over again? No one knew for sure, but one thing was for sure when the very large alien vessel attmpted to send out a signal of some sort. A signal that....contained some form of....English?! Broken English, but it was an attempt at speaking a human language even if the sound of the voice giving it wasn't human. Turns out the aliens were the first to observe, learn, and then ultimately make 'first contact' with humanity in this scenario in what would, after five more years or trying to work things out and then leading into some generally tense at times negotiations, result in connection and eventually the beginning of some form of coexistence on and off of the planet between humanity and another species for the first time as far as anyone in the Euryale system was aware. It would also result in more conflict, however, as over the following 160 years the newly-expanded GER would have to juggle both a series of on-and-off wars with a dissentiny minority among the new alien arrivals who 'desired to rule themselvse and Sarpedon' (due to their people having also scouted out the planet for a potential colony and habitation long ago) and internal striffe born from those of both species who weren't exactly 'happy' with each other internally still either or had been polariszed somewhat by these on-and-off wars.
....Though this time wouldn't be entirely without surprise or something new, at least, before the Gateways would reopen again, evene yet still. Roughly nintey years from current day, the GER would run into a new problem in a far-flung space station near the outer rim of the system. A somewhat struggling space colony founded and designed for mining a farther out icy planet (Euryale VII) would see the outbreak of something....strange, in particular a condition that as far as those on Sarpedon and Euryale V knew was concerning but not too bad as the first reports came in. Yet as a government ship was sent to investigate, or some went to see what was the matter, further understanding of the condition was gained as it seemed an 'illegal gene modification operation' within the colony had produced something rather vile by accident. A resilient prion of sorts, it was said, called at first "Mutilatus Corpus Disease"/MCD (aka: "The Reaper", among other local/colloquial names for it) for causing hosts to be warped physiologically (and psychologically) to the point they 'looked like a corpse' (and acted animalistically) without actually being dead. Some rumors that came along as welsaid it even 'reanimated corpses', which was laughed off at first as well. Some said it had been found on 'some ancient, derelict alien ship that crashed on Euryale VII', even, though further reports of mass-infection and the suddenly more rapid spread of the Corpus Virus within the outermost parts of the system among some ships and habitats would see a panic erupt over the matter regardless. Warped monstrosities of flesh, with cases seemingly spreading faster than it could be defended against in many places. More rumors said that 'they merge into fleshy blobs that try to travel elsewhere to infect people' and that 'many afflicted are repurpoosed into fleshy growths attached to walls and other surfaces to grow more monsters', though at this point people didn't fully know what to believe for a while. MCD would ultimately have samples acquired for study by the GER, even as hazards measures, means of prevention, and the like were being developed and pushed into place by force in some situations (even rumored infections in a place could cause more than a few problems at the height of it all). While the claims of the origins of the disease were 'an illegal genetic modification facility on the Euryale VII mining operations settlement of Skadan Colony' would be maintained, however, not all would trust that story despite most doing so as the disease was eventually pushed back after a decade of outbreak and panic and struggle against it. However, in the wake of this tumultuous decade and a half two things would emerge. One, the drastic and most mysterious/peculiar improvement of genetic modification technologies in the future decades to come. Two, a part of the outermost rim of the system would be placed underneath "indefinite military quarantine" with military presence and a dense array of border stations to 'keep people in, and keep what was inside from getting out one way or another'. It is also of note that some paranoia was also had during the decade and a half during the "MCD Crisis" was aimed between humans and Livelli alike at each other, not helping some existing issues, though efforts against this conspiracy theory both in media and otherwise would take a longer time yet to be dwindled mostly out despite the retention of it by some in the small minority fringes of the GER's citizenry.
By current day, 155 years since the end of the MCD Crisis, the GER has overall settled down into a normal. Containment of the MCD and extermination of rumored or minor outbursts of it. Work against pirates both general and anti-human sorts. Peace and general prosperity have come to reign in current times, even with the rise and fall of economy here and there as one might expect a nation to struggle with at times, and despite everything in the last 306 years the GER has held on and grown into a successful state in its own right. Yet...how will the opening of the Gateways change things? Will the rest of humanity prove to have found a hopeful future for itself across the Milky Way, and perhaps be willing to work together or at least be amicable in this new 'international' situation for them all, or will the darkness beyond the Gateways be so all-consuming that it swallows up all in its path? Only time will tell...
Culture and Society:
- The ocean is an integral part of life for humanity on Sarpedon as a whole, ranging from necessary deep-sea mining operations under the waves, to the transport of goods over the planet’s surface, and so forth. While most by far have by current times come to live within what land-based cities/towns and ocean-surface gravity-tethered ‘ocean cities’ have been muttered across the planet’s surface, though, many also still live in the ways that many did when first moving down to the planet from the colony ship: Fleets. In particular, roving fleets of ships centered around harnessing the ocean’s bounty and moving from place to place to trade for needed supplies and to seek out their own survival. These ‘naval nomads’ or ‘Shippies’, these being among the terms to describe them, a minority overall within current day GER, and historically were competing with others for room to settle and live and grow.
Originally these nomadic fleets were the majority, though as overcrowded places and those still living on the colony ship eked out and developed new technology and ways to better settle traditional settlements on the planet’s surface things would begin to shift against these fleets. Many took up the abandonment of the wandering lifestyle for the greater safety and stability of static settlements willingly, though as time went on some conflict would inevitably emerge more and more between the territory claimed or used by these nomadic fleets and the static settlements themselves. Occasional conflicts would erupt, with the nomads normally holding the defensive advantage of mobility and the static settlements being sitting ducks. The semi-independent or even fully-independent nature of these fleets also made it hard to keep a hand on them and to organize a national government as time went on, especially as the ramping up of static settlements and their more readily surviving populations continued on the up and up, and nomadic fleet involvement in piracy and such would further seem to taint their image as a ‘danger that needed to be reduced’ at the very least. While not all these fleets did such things, however, it would be those ill-examples who would come to shape the overall mental image for a long time in the public mindset of the wider settled population of Sarpedon.
While some static settlement areas did seek independence at times, leading to what are known as the “Five Wars of Unification” in the current day GER, the ‘fight against nomads’ would continue on for longer than this and would in part prove a pressure that helped unite some of the static settlements of the planet together. This happened as more fleets began to see viable territory to move about in shrink, with increased contact both good and bad alike being had as the pressure mounted. Some of these fleets would adapt and transition into becoming transport companies, moving goods and such professionally and integrating in that manner into the emerging nation-states and then later into the greater planetwide nation that was coming gradually more and more into fruition as the centuries passed. Others would be forced to abandon their vessels and settle down in static settlements, some after having much of their fleet wiped out or being left with nowhere to go. Some fleets would be sunk for ‘involvement in piracy and militant activities’ who got desperate, pressured into, or even in some cases greedy or cocky enough to indulge in such conflict-generating activities and lifestyles.
In the end, however, the modern fate of these groups would be settled when the GER would pass some laws known as the ‘Nomadic Protection Acts’. These would allow for the designation of some stretches of ocean for the moving and living of such fleets, among the minority that still existed freely enough on the seas and regulated contact with the rest of the nation, though the fate of these fleets beyond this has been varied. Some have maintained total independence and sought to keep such, staying away from static settlements and their operations. Some have set up trade and business with the rest of the nation, or even taken up as semi-independent transporters to make ends meet. Soom took the deal of getting solidified voting rights as well, albeit in exchange for paying some form of taxes as a form of semi-integration while retaining some level of independence yet still.
Such fleets in the current day, as a reflection of sorts of the past, have had some level of unique cultures develop within them over the generations. Ranging from the strict and hierarchical, to those with more democratic forms of governance and formal forms of organization internally, to some that operate more fast, loose, and openly, to even those who cooperate more xenophobically or xenophilically, their wide-ranging nature is one of the unique cultural features of the GER for sure. Yet it is also of note that, while modern people mostly only see these groups who actually interact or have presence in the modern world, in past centuries (before planetary unification occurred roughly 302 years ago), not all of these fleets were ‘good’ and positive interactions. Many were indeed pirates, dictatorships, and other forms of ‘not very good’ by modern GER standards, and more wildly varied with even more nuances to be had in their interaction. So while many lost their heritage and way of life in wrongful ways, and many were peaceful to boot, many others were not at the same time. Such is the diversity of the human condition and ways of life, in a sense, reflected even in the history of these nomadic fleets. - Methods for processing and altering local wildlife into usable food for humanity have been long sought and wrought into existence by current times, with even some gene therapies having been developed to assist in this manner where-applicable. Ranging from primordial-looking creatures reminiscent of things like horseshoe crabs and the Cambrian anomalocaris or hallucigenia, to things akin to sharks and fish and corals, to even birds and mammals and reptiles also existing in what little natural (and now even on artificial in many places) landmass there is statistically on the planet, to even the existing plantlife, humanity has sought to harness what it can even if it isn’t the ‘humans are eating literally everything’ trope that some people like to joke about within modern GER societies at large.
From large groups of swarm-moving but sweet-fleshed “Grilled Kongacrabs” (groups of native social crab/crusctacean-like lifeforms that, to ward off predators when traveling, travel in a ‘konga line’-like column and move in a manner that looks similar to a dangerous eel-like predator or such to imitate its movement while on the ocean floor) that that are easy to raise in even bad-quality waters, to the fatty breast of “Sarpedon Gulls”, to even the acquired taste of air-dried and salty-sea-preserved “Lesser Reef Sarpedan Shark”, the range of native life turned into foods even goes as far as some forms of plants either by now naturally edible to the genetically-moodified human population or even as far as these lifeforms being modified or processed to be edible for human consumption. Even a few ‘new spices’ have emerged in some part, even if as a minority of the overall variety of imported and grown human spices still being cultivated, sold, and used today, such as the semi-umami and spicy “Uddi Seeds” and the salty-sour flavor of the swelled-looking “Ruber Fruit”. New, intermingling, and even in some enclaves or individual cases historically-recognizable forms of cuisine using native components have emerged among humans on Sarpedon indeed as well in all of this for a certainty.
However, the artificial production of soil and use of hydroponics for transplanted Earth crops and creatures is generally the more widespread form of cultivating and raising them for the most part as food and for sustenance. It also forms the backbone of the continued integration of Old Earth species and foods into daily life, which still forms a significant (roughly 50% by now) portion of human food consumption on the planet. It has also led to a peculiar high-class form of ‘hydroponic eating’ over the long-term as well, where oddly-grown or unique or even only hydroponically-viable genetically-engineered crops and livestock are produced specifically for all sorts of wild, fanciful, fashionable, strange, and even frankly trippy forms of dishes to be prepared and served to willing patrons and customers. While the very wealthy started this trend within the last 100 years, and still the highest-grade restaurants in current times sell such fare in the minority in favor of new ‘pure Earth’ trends in cuisine among the most elite these days, the idea of ‘unique hydroponic cuisine’ has taken off more among middle and lower classes, with ‘hipster’ restaurants and such smaller and larger ‘trendy’ operations alike taking these once only higher-class hydroponic and cooking techniques and applying them in their new wider-ranging availability while exposing this cuisine to the wider population in current days.
It is of note, however, that those living on the suspended atmospheric habitats of the neighboring gas giant of Euryale V, however, only get to subsist on hydroponically-grown food. The higher-class among them do get fancier foods, or heaven forbid only the wealthiest of the wealthy there get an actual ‘garden’ to grow something in in some expensive suspended habitat home, which for them usually consists of more hardy and mass-produced foods that have grown from ‘only there to sustain life regularly’ in quality to ‘a proper and more widespread variety’ that has improved alongside their quality of life since planetary unification and the gradual interconnection of things within the GER ever since. - With Earth-based or other general adapted animal and plantlife brought over by humanity and the Livelli, the risk of ‘rampant invasive species issues’ hasn’t really arisen as much thus far in the past centuries. Mostly these things have been limited to hydroponic operations for good reason, as the makeup of natural waters and such on Sarpedon isn’t the same as those such Earth-based species were normally able to survive in. While some instances of ‘invasive species’ problems have still emerged in some areas, many others are mostly unable to survive in the waters and environs of Sarpedon for the same reasons humanity couldn’t just eat and digest the lifeforms and matter of the planet normally right out of the gate without assistive genetic adaptations and such: They weren’t built for living on Sarpedon.
Yet artificial landmasses like the floating cities of the GER have also proven to be homes for both transplanted/adapted life and some forms of terrestrial or coastal native life as well in the long-term, a matter that has intrigued scientists who hope to understand if this will cause any more significant problems in the longer-term in recent decades. Even with genetic insertions into their code to help them survive when planted in public places in the case of decorative plants, for example, it isn’t a guarantee of survival always either. However, it has been enough to ensure that transplanted Earth species have at least meted out a survival of sorts beyond the grasp of their dying homeworld alongside humanity in this case in general. - It could be said that, in a generalistic sense, mainstream GER society has by current times come to look at things in a smaller-scale and finer-toothed manner than it once did in most places. The make of things. To see what things are made of or what effect they have. To demand quality out of foods both ‘naturally grown’ and hydroponic and so forth alike, and yet also to do as humanity ever has and look at the minutiae of the past and their significance or lack thereof in human history (and in the face of near-human-extinction as the planet their ancestors lived upon was dying). Even doctors for gene therapies will use advanced technology to analyze untold strands of DNA, seeking to help remedy legacy problems in local bloodlines that in some cases reach back as far as “Old Earth” or humanity’s struggle to adapt to a new world using gene therapy and the like. This isn’t to say everyone is obsessed with minute details to a fault and so forth in all societies across the planet, however, but rather is to note how the notable prevalence of nanotechnology is also a sort of reflection on overall modern/mainstream GER society.
- Advanced artificial intelligence is used within the GER to secondarily assist in areas, ranging from customer service to factories to areas such as research and development to boot. Certain rights of humans to work have been cemented in the workplace as well, however, ranging from the ancient issues of art theft used to train A.I. and seeking to create a sort of ‘good balance’ between the two areas has seemingly been reached in a general sense. Admittedly some issues, such as A.I.’s use within customer service areas and such, do still fluctuate from time to time even still. However, how did this ‘balance’ manage to come to be?
To put it simply, centuries of struggle back and forth from anti-A.I. advocation to the extreme and the alternative of overusing A.I. within human society has led to this point after literal centuries of struggle. Ranging from the initial use of A.I. and robotics where humans couldn’t operate things, to the zealous regulation of human deployment in areas where humans could be used instead, to the eventual wild swings back and forth within government and industry alike (itself a hotbed of some industrial lobbying and its eventual strict high regulating to boot when it came to this issue, among others) of policy on and off over the centuries.
Yet it would be the horrible results of these swinging policies and good ideas and lessons learned along the way that would shape things. From unemployment and rioting and such from former workers, to the disastrous failure of critical systems and loss or near loss of several floating cities, to the mismanagement and loss of large sums of money and resources to hacking and such, to even the misuse and destruction caused by automated and obsessively non-automated systems like during and outside of times of war, etc. This alongside the practical refinement and development of these technologies would see it and robotics alike eventually reach a place of ‘moderation’ that they have today in GER society. - It is of note to say that the initial presence of more extreme and violent environmental and such groups/parties has notably dwindled from the initial decades of settling and living on Sarpedon. Initially a more notable presence due to the dying and loss of Earth, and not wishing to repeat the same mistakes on a new world, they would be part of the struggles of humanity as it sought to survive and thrive on a new world. Not that such organized groups do not exist in a general sense yet still after all of this time, outside of more extreme and violent ones, but the less-violent ones seem to compose more the majority in current times as well.
- Much of how the habitats of Euryale V have come to work was built on history, in part, as well as on more than a small amount of bodies and deaths along the way. Yet the thriving industry of the half-rotating and half-permanent residents has continued to push it along, whether in making fuel for vessels or to ship back to Sarpedon itself and so forth. While about three independence movements have occurred within the history of those living in the habitats of Euryale V when all of its residents and workers were permanent, though, its inherent need to connect with Sarpedon for other necessary resources, improvements in life quality and treatment under the law and in effect in the long-term to enough of an extent, and the booming growth of the ‘rotating workers’ and frankly even ‘commuters’ coming to work on the habitats of Euryale V in recent decades have been among the factors that led to coming into line with the mainstream of the GER as well as seen it grow into the strong sector of the nation it exists as currently.
A small minority handful of old-timers, who saw the very vestige tails of when the habitats were only manned by permanent residents year round or were influenced by the ‘old timers’ of their age, and those influenced by them in the younger generations seem to imagine the potential for an ‘independent Euryale V’ in current times at best. This where in the minds of even most permanent residents by far and the rotating/commuting workers these days they are citizens of the GER first and foremost with all of the benefits and rights. Some claim the rotating nature of roughly half the workers on the habitats of Euryale V was to ‘prevent secession’, though others point to evidence of ill-health effects to those who stayed too long and a lack of raw manpower to fill the facilities and produce what they needed as the local economy grew but the population wasn’t able to go about growing fast enough to match. (Etc.) - ((To Be Added….Eventually))
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Governance and Politics:
The general practice for democratic voting is that all adults, those 18 and older by law, are able to vote in general elections at the escalatingly large local, district, regional, provincial, and national levels respectively. The general idea is that you can’t vote on who is mayor or such in a place you don’t live as well, naturally/inherently, of course.
There is some hybridization with liquid/representative democracy as well in this case. Normally citizens have the foundational right to vote on who to represent them as with a representative democracy, but in this case citizens can also sign away or hand over votes to another akin to a liquid democracy to use on their behalf. Simply put, people can invest their vote into the personage of a representative to vote on their behalf. Representatives can be as small-scale as someone’s lazy adult kid giving his vote to his mom or dad to use on his behalf, as big as a bunch of such parents investing their accrued votes into a common singular representative on a larger scale, etc. However, each citizen also has a just as fundamental right to ‘rescind’ their vote from a representative to reclaim it if or as they wish, and the use of votes as ‘currency’ to hand them over to others in legal or commercial or such exchanges (and contracts in general) has been strictly forbidden…..and not without reason either. Albeit there are regulations are in place to prevent mass vote-pulling for trolling or such bad-spirited reasons, such as trying to ‘pull out the rug’ from underneath a vote-invested representative’s feet to troll or humiliate them, though it doesn't illegalize mass vote withdrawing in all cases such as if public opinion turns against a candidate your representative is voting for, etc, and you change your mind).
Representatives are those who exist in those political positions, aka: Mayor, President, District Judge, etc. Voting Representatives, then, are those who are invested with votes by others to use on behalf of others. Different things fundamentally. Also, a sitting politician/representative or someone in the running for a political position (defined in law so I don’t have to try to go into deep legal details) cannot be used as a Voting Representative by others and loses that position and power and so forth if they do enter such a position or go into the running for one. Those who work for a sitting politician directly, such as staff, janitors, and the like, cannot be used as Voting Representatives either. All Voting Representatives are also barred from accepting pay to become one or participate as one (this issue always comes up here and there in the courts, but the law is generally actually enforced).
So not only are candidates seeking to gain political positions, but some supporting them might go on their own sub-campaigns for the candidate seeking to accrue votes to use to vote for them. Double the political campaigns, and sometimes these sub-campaigners work against each other to accrue votes.
Votes can be handed over on three levels. The first is the ‘one use basis’, such as for a singular presidential or mayoral race and what most major candidate sub-campaigns will seek for. The next is a ‘limited time basis’, which cannot exceed one or two years due to federal law and in minor part depending on the local region one is in. Then there is ‘on a semi-permanent basis’, meaning that the chosen voting representative has the handed-over vote(s) until or unless those who gave them their vote(s) decide otherwise. This of course comes with its own storm of regulations and court cases by current times to boot.
At the very top, however, the government is still generally unitary-ish by nature in how laws and such are enforced from the top-down. Federal law is everyone’s law, with certain nuances and regulations left to lower-levels of the governmental system to be flexible on and decide for themselves.
Free-roaming ‘naval nomads’, who were among the first groups to settle on Sarpedon due to space constraints before the floating cities became a thing, also have certain rights to travel and do activities within certain restrictions or regions to “allow them to maintain their culture and centuries-old way of life, which is itself also a piece of valuable GER cultural history and heritage”....though this at times comes up in news, with some either wanting to push for ‘more’ or arguing that these fleets ‘should be further restricted’ due to issues both prejudicial and genuine alike that have arisen with regards to this (in this case defined in a rather generalized way) group/culture/etc. Such groups also get their vote in for things, but with the added caveats of things like ‘have to have been living in the region for x months or years still to cast a vote in those elections’ and time being provided for them to arrive at a floating city in general or such governmental non-military facility to be able to allow their people to cast votes for major elections and such (etc).
….Meanwhile, the actual behind-the-scenes oligarchy basically controls government systems in the background, with behind-the-scenes institutions from top to bottom to help support and reinforce this by current times with how far their reach has come to stretch in reality. It doesn’t micro-manage everything from top to bottom normally, the flexibility and such gives people room and representation enough to satiate them and allow things to run well enough in general, but it does step in and exert authority where and when it sees fit and when its interests are either in danger or when its members wish for something to be done. Their ability to control things is at all levels in reality indeed, even if they don’t always abuse it all of the time.
Still, it is by far in current times seen as a crazy but lingering conspiracy theory that a ‘secret cabal controls the nation itself’, and even more so with the sub-rumor that ‘its members are all immortals’ and such things (they are actually in most cases ‘effectively immortal’ in some scientifically-wrought way or another, funny enough, but this bit of the conspiracy theory is seen as the most ridiculous as well). The ‘true synarchy’ behind closed doors also has a titanic amount of wealth and the like individually, but even they have created a sort of code of ethics and such to try to regulate themselves internally to boot.
((Note: At some point the underlying synarchic oligarchy did, in fact, attempt to have members focus entirely on certain areas of things in a manner similar to the original definition of a synarchy/synarchism. It didn’t really pan out too well, but the general idea of each being invested or skilled or involved in a different area/areas to complement each other did roughly stick and become codified among them to some extent in the end at least.))
Technology Overview:
- Graviton/Gravity Technologies - A breakthrough in human scientific understanding that, ultimately, was developed with the intent to allow humans to settle more widely across the surface of the planet of Sarpedon beyond the few ‘islands’ scattered in groupings across its surface. Harnessing the power of the graviton, it allowed the ‘anchoring chain-tethers’ to be formed to anchor floating ocean-surface cities to the ocean floor. It enabled in part for the development of atmospheric cities and refineries in the upper atmosphere of the neighboring gas giant of Euryale V to be developed for fuel and resource production/processing/refining. It led to the creation of the ‘graviton hand tool’ for use by workers piloting SSPVs (see the bottom of the Robotics section) who are moving even large and oversized workloads without the need for even heavier and bulkier machinery in the workplace (limited handheld individual humans versions exist). It is also used to produce artificial gravity aboard spacefaring vessels without the need for ‘gravity producing spinning’ formats for vessels and stations alike, and is used for onboard ship tractor-beam-type technologies employed in both policing, rescue, and mining operations in particular. However, the size of the produced artifical gravity field made by such devices is limited in turn by the size/scale of the device in particular, meaning that even handheld human-level versions still have limits in output but are still rather useful tools in the field that can move things larger than notably heavier than the human body could carry on its own.
An overall revolutionary technology, it has found its way into generalized and more widespread use within GER society over the past centuries as the technology went from ‘rough but practically developed for human survival’ to eventually becoming another tool in the toolbelt of humanity proper. It has gone from an expensive, rough technology to eventually something that has seen far finer and more nuanced applications at a much more affordable price for the average person by a longshot. Though there is really no getting any smaller than the likes of the simpler ‘hand tool’, however, due to power issues/concerns and such downsizing makes it far more expensive and such all over again. - Nanotechnologies - Ranging from advanced nanomaterials able to recover from or withstand terrible storms, to nanoengineered factories capable of producing virtually if not actually atomically-precise materials and specs using a combination of organic and inorganic processes, to the likes of electrically-resistant and resilient medical nanomachines, to nano-scale art exhibits, to even nano-scale synthetic fabrics beyond the reach of human hands, these things emerged mostly as human civilization on Sarpedon would begin to reach beyond its infancy after a number of macroengineering questions had to be answered.
- Robotics (and Artificial Intelligence) - While humans have retained a place in the workplace despite the presence of robotics, though this has transformed much over the years alongside the issues and development of advanced artificial intelligence, robotics have also taken root in many areas. Ranging from deep-sea or voidbound mining drones with rugged exteriors, meant to handle rough and dangerous environments of the seas and space, all the way down to household human-like or such robotics used to assist parents, act as elderly caregivers, or even just be time-spending supplementary companions to keep even a minority of people who buy them for such reasons more socially engaged and happier in the household. They are implemented in various industries ranging from production and refineries, both on-planet and in the myriad industrial habitats of Euryale V, in commercial industries as in-store assistants in some cases, in areas of business targeted at all sorts of ages, and even within the military for use alongside living, breathing soldiers.
Among the most famous companies to produce household robotics are “Vaul Technological Enterprises”, “Raijin Robotics”, and the last of the “Big Three” names in robotics being the “AutoDoll Corporation”. Yet, historically at least, the most notable of these three companies is the lattermost one: The AutoDoll Corporation. Founded roughly four hundred and seventy three years ago by a well-to-do German-born polymath and first generation colonist, Dr. Heinrich Nachtnebel, the AutoDoll Corporation has remained a generally consistent name in the realm of robotics and secondarily in artificial intelligence (at first) for most of its history. Being one of the oldest extant companies within the GER, it has passed from hand to hand and generally stayed a profitable and lasting presence within the industry that even today still has an existing civilian market and a number of military contracts with the government. While seen by some as an ‘old hand’ that has been around a long time, or being past its glory days, it is also a presence that remains far from being ‘gone’ and continues to regain occasional relevancy here and there after having managed to adapt to the times.
Knowledge of Robotics is also employed for the use and deployment of "Specialized Single-Pilot Vehicles" (SSPV), which range from -14-foot-tall humanoid-like "Urban Combat Piloted Vehicles" (UCPV) that are deployed in small numbers serious urban policing scenarios or are used in small numbers within the ranks of the military and proper Military Police in similarly dense (like a forest) and/or urban terrains (where they excel at anti-personnel situations by and large for the most part), to ball-like underwater submersibles with attached robotics arms and mounted tools for underwater work, similarly-shaped ball-like space-piloted vehicles for work in a vacuum and bearing their own array of arms and tools and specialized features, and even civilian-grade SSPV's akin to the UCPV that are used in logging and construction and even certain forms of hazardous work environments. For the most part SSPVs of any kind are not for frontline combat in every situation, but in what such roles exist for them is something they've been able to be adapted to.
Ideas for even larger sized, ones employing graviton technology similar to the various atmospheric entry/exit-capable spacecraft of civilian and military make (most are military-owned for reasons), have been proposed as a means to further upscale SSPVs into something with more theoretical potential to use in warfare or construction and such areas. This would be, as noted by one scholar of history, to seem more akin to 'old mecha anime' as a concept. While seen as a potentially useful area of implementation in some ways, the cost, concerns, and frankly comparable inefficiency of such designs versus specialized vehicles were among the main flaws/factors pointed out in this concept by both the military and several others approached with this idea in the past.
((Note: Despite the advent of graviton-harnessing technologies for even individual use, which has made moving things a lot easier, it hasn't made SSPVs obsolete either. SSPVs still have been deemed safer for a number of tasks/scenarios/environments in comparison, especially where distinctly more larger-scale graviton-harnessing devices can only be mounted to and powered on an SSPV or even larger vessels for even larger-scale jobs. (Etc).)) - Energy/Photnic Shielding/Plasma Shielding/Hard Light Technologies - Shields were a technology developed from older ideas, mainly those of a ‘plasma bubble’ all the way down to ‘suspending photons in place’ hard-light technologies, originally it was only feasible for use with city-grade shielding where it was first developed to protect cities from horrendous local storms as they developed on the surface of Sarpedon proper. One of the major challenges even after rudimentary gravitron-manipulating technology was made manifest in a practical sense, and ‘anchored cities’ could be placed on the ocean’s surface, originally designs such as tall but not all-covering metal ‘storm shields’ to protect from surging waves and buildings had to be designed to be made ‘water and air tight’ and ‘movement stabilizing’ for safety reasons outright due to these rather practical and pressing issues.
Initially the comparative cheapness of plasma shielding technology was seen as a viable option, though it also proved somewhat unreliable against driving ‘titanic waves’ despite providing additional protection against lighting strikes that was sorely needed at the time. Photonic shielding technology, aka ‘hard light’, would see a drop in development and research as a result, though it would over the coming century and a quarter see occasional returns to the field or bursts of understanding in its development and creation. It was simply seen as and practically expensive to maintain when the colony was trying to develop and grow as it was for a while, though it would be roughly three hundred and seventy five years ago that the first ‘viable’ photonic shield generator was developed and allowed onto the market. It was a struggle for it to stay on the market, due to the prevalence of supporting plasma shielding industries and the general usefulness they seemed to still have, but using the same ‘half shield’ design paired with a high metal ‘wave wall’ in the same vein allowed the initial photonic shield generator to show its useful colors. It protected from the wind and rain notably better than the plasma shielding, but the power draw and size of the needed photon suspending projectors for cities was certainly higher than that of the former technology as it had become more streamlined and diverse in its applications over the years.
Initially developed in a ‘straight line’ or ‘pane’ form, photonic shielding was not flexible whereas plasma shielding was developed eventually to be able to curve and ‘bend’ more easily to shape in comparison. Yet with the advent of more advances in fusion reactor technology that had been accruing over the decades, and the increased flow of hydrogen fuel and such from the new atmospheric facilities suspended above the neighboring gas giant of Euryale V the tide would begin to turn as photonic shield generators began to gain the support they sorely needed to become more practical in effect. More powerful generators and a steadier stream of fuel allowed more cities to use them, and despite being slowed by lobbying from businesses tied to the plasma shielding industry and some regulations the photonic generators were seen as more ‘effective’ in a general sense. Eventual development of the self-contained, self-sustaining fusion reactor, and its own improvements, would further cut down fuel costs compared to the plasma generators outright in due course. As it became a more widespread technology for city protection, more began to tinker with designs for photonic shield generators more often as the field began to expand.
More nuanced and complex, and rugged due to improved nanomaterials, designs for the generators and the projectors for photonic shielding would then lead in turn to more flexible and wildly-varying designs. This came from the discoveries of one “Mia Eloise MacNamara”, whose work was meant to develop hard light projectors more for the entertainment industry than anything, whose work would shape this field of photonic shielding for good as photonic shields began to replace the old, resource-heavier, repair-intensive, and aging technology of deployed metal ‘wave walls’ used to just protect the lower half of cities from all but the tallest of waves since the first emergence of the floating cities on Sarpedon proper. Able to shield the whole of a city, and minimizing other costs as power and hard light technologies grew, plasma shielding became more limited to smaller and general planetary vehicles due to size constraints compared to photonic shield generators giving it an edge and its long-term existence making it still a cheaper option to boot at this level. While the development of advanced fission and eventually fusion batteries would over a century later lead to improvements in photonic shielding technologies that pushed their design into stronger, smaller, and even more compact designs, plasma shielding would continue to see some improvements minorly here and there and would linger in areas even until current times as the ‘older, more easily affordable’ technology to its now dominant photonic cousin.
These days, ranging from shields to entertainment hardlight holograms and such, this technology has seen about as much refinement and 'shrinkage' in its development and use that graviton/gravity-based technologies have as others related technolgies (like generating power and making better batteries) have also progressed along. - Fusion Technology/Fission Technology/Batteries - The GER has developed improved, self-sustaining fusion technologies, as well as the likes of fission and fusion batteries/cells in increasingly compact sizes and improved outputs. While mentioned in another tech category in the above parts, it is worth a mention here on its own regardless at the very least. In part, however, fuel for some of these things is derived naturally, safely, and sustainably from local seawater to boot or from refineries. Other fuel production is taken, derived, and developed in facilities suspended in the atmosphere of the neighboring gas giant of Euryale V. Modern practices are more sustainable for these things, in part due to development and time and in part at least some level of hard-learned long-term and more recent environmental-consciousness that has affected the generations that have been born and living on Sarpedon in some way or another (even if not directly these days) since the fall of “Old Earth”.
This being said, the development of power-generating/holding technologies has historically on Sarpedon been an influencing factor in 'downscaling' or 'upsizing' some other technologies along the way. (A nice little historical note to end on with this as well for fun!) - (Placeholder/To Be Written Or Added….At Some Point) -
- (Placeholder/To Be Written Or Added….At Some Point) -
- ((Extra: Technology Q&A Section (To Be Added Onto As Needed) -
Q: Why does the GER not have lightspeed travel/FTL capabilities due to what tech they have already?
A: One, it is against the rules of the NRP. Two, it is IC because of practicality. Who needs to FTL travel all over, when a neighboring gas giant, large asteroid belt in your own home system, and so forth provide what you need already? To the GER, such tech isn’t needed for development and growth on its end, and with the reopening of the Gateways this need is further cut down on by virtue of being a fitting choke point for anyone coming to their home system and allowing them communications and travel to other places.))
Military Overview: (This is the space to talk about any offensive capabilities you have. Given that most of these Colonies have been essentially stranded by themselves for three centuries, I don't imagine anyone has a large "conquer other planets" level fleet yet. But maybe your Colony has been in civil war for a hundred years, and has built up an impressive military in that time. Or maybe they even had to fend off a genuine alien invasion.)
*******
Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)
A condition that occurs when one overuses medical nanomachines.
With the normal human usage of drugs or such in its past, it should come as no surprise that even the likes of advanced nanotechnologies have ultimately seen some sort of abuse or another. However, the reason for abusing the use of medical nanomachines ranges depending on the general reason for their abuse in particular. Among the most well-known reasons derived from such abusers are:
One (Nervous Nanoaddiction): Use of medical nanomachines to stimulate either peripheral or central nervous systems alike, usually for reasons such as simulating a ‘high’, increase or amplify bodily sensations, or even to simulate the use of various drugs on the body without having possession of the actual substances themselves.
In particular this category of addict abuses the use of nervous-tissue-related nanomachines, which are thought to have been smuggled out of improperly disposed of ‘neural nanotherapy’ machines. While this has led to more regulations and such being passed with regards to such machines and their nanomachine contents, such as making contained nanomachines exist on a ‘timer’ before artificially destroying themselves or safely degrading to become non-functional or even to be unable to multiply outside of their special containment units, this new trend has continued in part seemingly due to ‘dealers’ getting ahold of the older medical nanomachines that could still be ‘multiplied’ in containment outside of their designated machines. Evidence in autopsies and more recent medical cases indicates that attempts to modify and propagate these older-generation medical nanomachines, seeking to augment or specialize them for use by ‘customers’, has also arisen as security measures and safety features applied to hospitals and treatment facilities planetwide has steadily come into more and more potent effect.
Some of the latest ‘versions’ of these illegal street-level addiction-generating nanomachines also seek to ‘simulate experiences’ for users, though this minor niche has seemingly remained such due to the difficulty in producing such higher-grade machines outside of more notable or wealthy operations. These especially are prone to inducing ‘temporary’ schizophrenia as well as a frankly more permanent version more often than the usual form of these nanomachines does, as well as ‘phantom sensations’ afflicting one or more of the senses being a more distinctly common symptom among those afflicted in this minority of cases.
Victims of this particular sub-variant of Nanoaddiction who abuse such nanomachines, especially the more dangerous modified variants that have been emerging in current times, can suffer from the following symptoms (is a non-exhaustive list, however): Permanent neural damage, brain death, loss of sensation in limbs or parts of the body, irritability, loss of control of bodily functions and/or limbs, paralysis (partial or full), coma, movement and coordination problems, loss of taste, loss of smell, loss of hearing, loss of sensations of touch, seizures, neural degeneration, infections, mental health disorders such as (but not limited to) schizophrenia/depression/hallucinations/memory loss, tremors, muscle rigidity, body temperature varying wildly, loss of mental functions or certain faculties, etc.
This is the ‘newest’ and most ‘modern’ category of Nanoaddiction, one that has arisen within the past ten years and is seeing notable regulation and teaching against due to its nature in particular. Some have even been noted as abusing these to try to help with existing nervous-system-related conditions or mental illnesses, though while some addicts have claimed this to ‘work’ to some extent this nanoaddiction also has the very present and gamble-intense risk of worsening any sort of mental or nervous conditions. (A small fraction might see ‘actual help’ to some limited extent very luckily and at best, outside of very wealthy nanoaddicts who maybe can pay for higher-grade product/work outright, but over seventy percent of cases abusing medical nanomachines for such purposes see worsening issues either in a gradual or rapidly-escalating manner.)
Two (Somatic Nanoaddiction): Use of medical nanomachines to enhance appearance, alter body shape by targeting fat deposits, altering hair or skin color, creating ‘somatic displays’ like color-shifting skin and ‘somatic light shows’ on the cheap outside of legal/safe nanotattooing practices, alter skin texture, and even in rarer cases to try to hide bruises or ‘fix up the body’ from visible forms of damage or skin conditions. Etc.
The most common form of nanoaddiction and seemingly the ‘safest’ form by comparison, note that it is still not a safe practice whatsoever, that has been discovered within the last few decades. It is notable for being the most surface-level as it affects appearance and such, however, though ‘harder’ types of nanoaddiction have surfaced since this one ‘paved the way’ as the first recognized and identified form of nanoaddiction. Initially found in teenage girls when it first hit the news media, this form of nanoaddiction is usually harder to detect than others due to the limited scale of its effects in many (but not all) cases of their abuse.
Common symptoms found in such nanomachine abusers and victims include (but are not limited to): Cracks and ‘fissures’ in the skin (of various patterns/forms), skin/somatic degradation, induced patches of vitiligo, loss or sudden gaining of skin pigment contrary to one’s natural skin color (not limited to normal colors either sometimes, like pink or other oddities), infections, damage to underlying muscle or such tissues (in the worst cases), sudden skin ruptures (worse than mere cracks and fissures) or loss of patches of skin off of affected areas, loss of one’s sense of touch (localized or widespread, etc), and (as with most other cases) managing to trigger an immune response within the body.
Three (Metamorphic Nanoaddiction): Use of nanomachines to alter one’s muscular, skeletal, and general internal tissues including even the likes of organs and the respiratory or renal/digestive systems. Often enough it is also combined with the use of Somatic-altering nanomachines, though not always.
To gain physical strength. To become taller. To alter one’s body shape and size. To destroy fat cells/pockets within the body and lose weight. To become someone else. To become more durable and resilient against bodily harm and damage. These are but a few of the reasons that Metamorphic Nanoaddicts abuse these machines, and the emergence of this form of nanoaddiction was a sharp escalation comparatively to the initially-discovered ‘somatic’ type, often being combined with it in initial cases. Originally misconstrued and misunderstood as ‘somatic nanoaddicts having abused too much’ on a more severe level, after some time the true nature of this condition would come to the surface and eventually be classified as its own related category of nanoaddiction. While its prevalence has never been explosively huge, not exploding onto the scene as much as Nervous Nanoaddiction has frankly done so in recent years to the terrifying realization of many, it has maintained a steady rate despite the percentage of medically-reported and discovered cases having dropped in part due to the explosively growing emergence of Nervous Nanoaddiction compared to this or the somatic forms.
It is also often abused, in the worst cases with both somatic and nervous nanomachines as of late, to try to perform more ‘extreme’ bodily alterations to boot.
This form of nanoaddiction has the by far widest variety of potential symptoms and resulting conditions/afflictions, ranging from the degradation of skeletal or muscular tissues, to the development of gangrene, to the death more or less rapidly of organs, to one’s muscles literally exploding, to the same rather common trademark ‘skin cracks/fissures’ seen in somatic nanoaddiction (even in cases where normally or only non-somatic nanomachines are being abused) that have come to define this condition historically and in the public eye by current times. Hence one of the more common nicknames for the overall condition of nanoaddiction is ‘Nanofissures’.
(Put explanation of the disease here)
((Truth of the Disease: A maker of the Gatways tried to smuggle a personal ship with people onboard through the Gateways right before they abruptly closed without explanation. When the Gateways snapped shut, an unknown amount of time passed 'outside normal time and space' before the vessel was spat out into the Euryale System near the edge of it. The vessel then crash-landed on Euryale VII, only to eventually be found by those who founded the Skadan Colony for mining operations. Here the first mutated MCD cases were found, awakening seemingly from an icy hibernating 'slumber' and attacking people. From here, the colony founders contained the site by force, and with the government being brought in discreetly about it in the aftermath a governmental lab would be set up to contain the site and study what in the world had happened to the vessel and its passengers/crew. No on recalls how long the lab was there, but as mining operations went on otherwise the site was kept top-secret and was a subject of high levels of safety measures and anti-contamination work on-site as some understanding was gained. It in the end was kept mostly on the backburner due to other pressing matters in the decades yet to come at the colony, however, and ultimately it became a maintained and contained site labeled as a 'government black site' in top secret documents. Here it mostly was kept contained, but its potential as a site of 'scientific advancement had hit a metaphorical brick wall for some time.
Yet...this wasn't enough that some desperate-poorer-locals who set upo an illegal local mining operation underneath the main colony, believing they were digging down to a pocket of 'valuable diamonds' hidden deep down, accidentally dug in the direction of the contained site when they did indeed find a miniscule pocket of them nearby. The site was exposed as a result from the inside, and one 'hibernating specimen' was taken off-site by the miners who thought it was 'some alien monster'. Here the specimen awakened in their base of operations, and from there the story went on as the colony became infected and things blew up from there as those fleeing the eventual sudden outbreak within the week (as news from the black site made it back to the government proper during all of this) would scatter carriers of the infection who hadn't begun to mutate yet to elsewhere...as far as most coulld make it at least. Some succumbed in their ships, with whole crews going missing in the process and leading to rumors of 'government trying to cover it up' in the earlier parts of the coming MCD Crisis.
[finish later[))- ((More To Be Added….Eventually))
Sep Lord of All Creation
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The Nameless
"The honourable thing for the weak is not to drag down the strong."
Government Form: Religious Matriarchy
Population:
5 Billion of the Nameless.
What is humanity?:
Humanity is a spit in the face of the Gods. They have spread like a cancer, and they desecrate the stars with their presence.
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Planet/System Name and Description:
- Star: A Red Giant that bathes their planet in a warm red light.
- Lava World: A dwarf planet, only the hardest materials on the surface are not turned to molten slag.
- Desert Planet: The atmosphere of the planet has long since burned away, leaving the earth a barren desert wasteland.
- The Homeworld: The Humans called the planet Exodus. The Nameless however have not named it. It has five moons of varying sizes.
- Gas Dwarf No more needs said.
- Gas Giant No more needs said.
Demographics:
The Nameless are of differing castes of Bipedal creatures, with four arms and a lone AI.
The population is 80% Male and 20% Female. The Males skin are typically green/brown very 'ground' colours. Whereas the women are bigger, and their skins are mixes of blues/purples.
They have no robots/drones/droids, as they try to limit their use of heretical technology.
History:
BR - Before Reclamation
AR- After Reclamation
- 122-117BR - A colony ship, finding Exodus perfect, landed on the planet and founded a civilization in its Southern Hemisphere. Despite sentient life being present on the planet, the sudden shutdown of the Gateway gave them no other choice. They elected to try and keep their distance. Studies indicated that an island in the colder southern climate was never visited by the strange aliens. They landed and started building up their fortified city, hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.
- 116-110BR - The colonists found what appeared to be ruins of an old Exodian, as they were calling them, city. Miriam, the Colonists AI deduced they were a Martriarichal and tribal society, with a strong sense of religion and community but even more importantly a deep-rooted sense of honour. The first contact was authorized, but it didn't end well. It was a blood bath between the two peoples, while the colonist's technology gave them a distinct advantage the Exodians gave as good as they got.
- 99-97BR - The Colonists alter Miriam's morality protocols, needing to use her in their bid to try and get one over on the local Exodians, their surveillance and intelligence reports indicating massive tribal movements in the more local populations. The locals were mobilizing. Miriam gave them the idea to make an orbital approach, to use the Exodian's spiritualism against them. Approaching from space, the home of the Gods, they bypassed all the defenses and landed right in the center of a tribal camp, walking out and straight up to their tribal leaders.
- 96-90BR - After first contact, a religious leader called Tr'llik founded a resurgent movement to try and spread the word of the Gods throughout their people. The movement was centered around an old temple on the equator, in the exact center of an island that predates all of titshistory. Made from technology unlike their own. Soon the Deacon had people within all the tribes.
- 89-87BR - More pro-human elements, led by the first son of the noble family of Al'ken. They lived in a camp on he outskirts of the human colony, in a new tribe. The Exodians. Formed from non-religious elements, they slowly integrated themselves with the humans. Learning their technology, their practices, and their language.
- 86-80R - The Exodians and the Colonists join together more and more, and the gates of the city almost continuously open between the two people as they live and work together. They inform the Colonists how the ruins they discovered had been their ancient home until an unknown schism had fractured their people and they left the island. Which is when they discovered the temple- The humans were very interested in the temple. They wanted to go and see it. Learn more about it, and what it was.
- 79-70BR - The Exodians manage to convince the Deacon to allow a small entourage of humans to go to the temple, visitors from the stars. They were benevolent spirits sent from their Gods, through the doorway. It was a grand day, there was a parade. It was going to be a day that would go down in the history books. But - not for the right reasons. On entering the temple, lights and consoles appeared. It fueled the mood in the room, that humans had indeed been sent from the heavens as a guest from the Gods. The humans wanted to delve deeper into the temple and probe it for more of its secrets, but the Deacon denied them. Things were moving well, why ruin things now?
- 67-57BR - The humans continued to try and gain access deeper into the facility, the Exodians and the Colonists had become fully ingrained by this point. While the Exodians were outnumbered by colonists, many of them lived within the city walls and had a basic understanding of human technology.
- 1BR - Unwilling to wait any longer, communication between the Deacon and the Colonists struggled to get any farther in their attempts to study the temple. The Colonist Governor sends a special ops team to sneak into the temple in the dead of night, escorted by a couple of willing Exodians. Deep within the bowels of the temple, the Colonists find a control panel, and the years of darkness begin. A giant beam flies into the sky, forming a sphere around the planet itself. The stars and moons in the sky disappear, and even once the sun rises in the sky the planet gets no lighter than it would during twilight.
- 1-5AR - Chaos. The Deacon had the interlopers killed. The Humans deemed Demons. The Doombringers, and the Exodiansare branded as Tainted by their proximity to the demons. Animals and plants struggled to cope with the lack of light, and the cooler temperatures. The natives became divided, while many moved to join the colonists with their electricity and their lighting (over the organic technology the tribes used) many more banded together around the temple. The Deacon's power grew exponentially over a year.
- 6-50AR - War. All-out war between The Nameless as the colonists had taken to calling the unified tribes, and the Exodians - who now named themselves as Colonists and the natives that lived with them. In every battle, the Exodians had the technological superiority however there was no denying the raw numbers that the Nameless had. Every battle the Exodians won was hard fought, and over time they started to lose more and more. Divisions became rife within theExodian'ss numbers, as the humans became bitter and resentful to even the natives that worked with them.
- 51-100AR - The Colonists launched a massive offensive on the temple. The Nameless spirits were battered and bruised, all but defeated. It was the firsdishonoreded Son Al'ken who finally did the right thing. Fighting deep down within the human compound, he activated the self-destruct. Destroying the human leadership, and taking his own life. Traveling into the Great Nothing. The Deacon takes the chance to rally the last of his forces to march on the colony. The victory was resounding, every human was killed. The men, brutally. Whereas the women were given an Honourable death.
- 101-124AR - With the humans killed, and the Tainted brought back into the fold as the lowest caste the temple powered down. A sign from their Gods that they were doing the right thing. The tainted were tasked with the cleanup, as much as the Deacon preferred their organic technology some of the technology the humans had was... superior. So until they could manufacture their own, the tainted could use human technology.
- 125AR - The Tainted discovered Miriam. She managed to convince them to show her to the Nameless. Using all her knowledge of their people, she convinced them that she was off their fallen spirits from the sky. That the humans had trapped her within their heretical technology. She convinced them, and they kept her. Promising to one day free her spirit.
- 126-160AR - Fire rained down from the sky, while they had wiped out the infestation of humans upon the surface of their planet it was discovered that some had dared to continue to taint the stars with their presence. Setting up what they called an outpost on the third moon. This put them beyond the reach of the Nameless. They could defend their airspace, they could defend their ground. Especially as a united front, but the stars were beyond their reach. Miriam having studied their technology, offered them a solution. Using their existing 'technology', using organisms that had no right existing in nature, she told the Deacon how to build a ship.
- 165-200AR - Fire had rained down periodically every couple of years, fighters streamed down through the atmosphere. Nameless vessels rose to meet them, then eventually the Unwavering Resolve a behemoth mix of coral, plasma, and various other organisms rose into space for the first time. Belching Plasma it cut through space like a scythe, descending righteous fury down upon the humans who plagued their system.
- 201-300AR - The Nameless spread out into the night sky like a righteous fury. With the new gifts the heavens provided for them, their weapons and their technology only improved. Their ships became faster and stronger. Human raids became less and less frequent as they were slowly wiped out.
- 391-450AR - Now known as the age of enlightenment, the Nameless were secure in their ownership of the system. Occasionally dissidents would appear, gin roups that questioned the divine word of the Deacon. These groups were swiftly dealt with, the Nameless were ready for any threat the Galaxy would send them.
- 500AR - The Gateway opens.
Culture and Society:
They are a matriarchal society. They value life above all else, after life was a gift from the Gods. This is why women are valued as highly in their society, they are the name givers. It is forbidden for those to name what is not their creation, which is why the species has no name.
Women, name their children. Shapers name their creations. It is the way of things, even their world is Nameless.
Other than the reverence for life, the three main pillars of their religion are the Eternal Reward, Great Nothing, and Infernal Damnation.
Leadership: The Leadership caste is almost exclusively female. Women lead their tribes, the Deacon is a woman. Those who are beyond the age of reproduction, are either deposed by their daughters as head of the tribe or they resign and transition into religious or military leadership roles.
Shaper: The Shaper caste are the ones who understand the 'science' of the organic constructs that the Nameless utilize.
Warrior: Often at ends with the Shapers, the Warriors are typically from noble values that value the strength of mind, and will, over anything else.
Serf: Serfs do the labor on the lowest levels, they work the fields. They man and crew the ships. They claw and fight for any level of honor that they can gain.
Tainted: The Tainted are all men, they are the firstborn of noble families who have faced didishonoror families who want to gain honor by giving up their children to become the tainted. They are ostracised by society, they aren't allowed to live within close quarters to any of the other castes. Not allowed to speak without being spoken to, aren't allowed medical treatment. They are the ones who work with the human technology that the Nameless relies on. They have no hope for the Eternal Reward. All they can hope for is a painful and honourable death, so that they go to the Great Nothing.
Shaper: The Shaper caste are the ones who understand the 'science' of the organic constructs that the Nameless utilize.
Warrior: Often at ends with the Shapers, the Warriors are typically from noble values that value the strength of mind, and will, over anything else.
Serf: Serfs do the labor on the lowest levels, they work the fields. They man and crew the ships. They claw and fight for any level of honor that they can gain.
Tainted: The Tainted are all men, they are the firstborn of noble families who have faced didishonoror families who want to gain honor by giving up their children to become the tainted. They are ostracised by society, they aren't allowed to live within close quarters to any of the other castes. Not allowed to speak without being spoken to, aren't allowed medical treatment. They are the ones who work with the human technology that the Nameless relies on. They have no hope for the Eternal Reward. All they can hope for is a painful and honourable death, so that they go to the Great Nothing.
---
Governance and Politics: The Deacon is the leader, sand he has many underlings. Her words are the literal translation of the Gods, there is little room given for any political wrangling. To speak against the Deacon is to speak against the Gods.
Technology Overview:
The Nameless uusesOrganic based 'technology'. Rather than being constructed, it is grown. Many of the species shouldn't exist, technically speaking, however,r they are in abundance in the Homeworld. Some things they have struggled to replicate, have been working but still struggle to replicate the abilities of long-range sensors and communications equipment. Instead, they still use human technology that is interfaced with their own, maintained by the Tainted.
Their power systems, weapons, and propulsion, all run off plasma.
Military Overview:
[hider=Navy]
Their navy is strong, however, er in many ways, they rely on numbers more than any form of technological superiority. As their ships are grown they can be convinced and aided in healing, however even in the vacuum of space they still age. Old ships eventually struggle to perform functions that should be second nature to them, they also become bonded and attached to their Mistress. No Nameless has ever lost a ship, and they have not perished. Mistress and ship go down together.
The ships themselves seem to 'mourn' the loss of their mistress, should they die outside of battle. While they do have certain 'classes' of ships, each is unique. Like all living things.
Will expand on this section as things go on.
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Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)
@Tortoise More reading for you
1x Like
GM
@DX3214
So, reading over this sheet, I can see what you're going for on the whole and I like the general concept. We're going very "warlord" this time around ;P
But I do have some concerns. Your writing style in this sheet often lacks grammar or punctuation, and that makes it difficult to understand what you're saying. Especially during the more complicated bits, I can't really tell what you mean, and it's making me feel hesitant about approving you.
Your worldbuilding itself is fine. You've kept to Gateways themes well. Having a mythological and a non-mythological history was really smart- it's the kind of thing I wish that I'd thought of.
So I'm not rejecting your sheet, or asking for a rewrite. But still, it's difficult to read, so I think I need some assurance that you'll run your future posts through, for example, an internet grammar checker before posting IC. Something like Grammarly, maybe?
Oh, and this is a smaller issue, but-
I'm not fully sure what this means. Are you saying their sun has become unstable?
So, reading over this sheet, I can see what you're going for on the whole and I like the general concept. We're going very "warlord" this time around ;P
But I do have some concerns. Your writing style in this sheet often lacks grammar or punctuation, and that makes it difficult to understand what you're saying. Especially during the more complicated bits, I can't really tell what you mean, and it's making me feel hesitant about approving you.
Your worldbuilding itself is fine. You've kept to Gateways themes well. Having a mythological and a non-mythological history was really smart- it's the kind of thing I wish that I'd thought of.
So I'm not rejecting your sheet, or asking for a rewrite. But still, it's difficult to read, so I think I need some assurance that you'll run your future posts through, for example, an internet grammar checker before posting IC. Something like Grammarly, maybe?
Oh, and this is a smaller issue, but-
Possibly a disaster event unleashed by the sun that caused electromagnetic storms across the entire star system. Possibly combined with AI rebellions causing a full on collapse with the sun becoming the instability oddity that it is today
I'm not fully sure what this means. Are you saying their sun has become unstable?
GM
HECK YEAH THE GATEWAYS ARE OPENIN' BAYBEEEEEE
Here comes the green bois again, this time with a tad more oomph and just a smidge more psychological horror.The Pillars of Avalon"By these pillars stand tall - for People, for the Planet, for Yourself"
WHAT IS HUMANITY?
Humanity is community, compassion, courage, curiosity... and beyond it all, hope.
GOVERNMENT FORM:
Polysapient Eco-Moralist Anarcho-Syndicalist Interorganizational Federation---
Avalon
PLANET NAME & DESCRIPTIONS: Avalon is the fourth planet of the Annwn system. In orbit around a bright G-class star and protected from the outer system's dense asteroid fields by the super massive gas giant Bran, it is a mid-sized rocky world roughly 6% smaller than Earth. Despite its somewhat 'boisterous' planetary neighbours, Avalon is a vibrant and ecologically dense garden planet with a broadly “cold tropical” environment -- similar to the temperate rainforests that once stretched across Ireland and the British Isles prior to the industrial revolution, though extremely high equatorial temperatures cause the accumulation of salt and dense, brackish mudflats to form around the equator. It has a predominantly nitrogen & oxygen-based atmosphere, with a slightly higher overall oxygen density than Earth that combined with the lower gravity makes many native and adapted organisms notably larger than most Earth equivalents.
Avalon's wide varieties of organism have base-2 carbon-based biochemistry with central nervous systems, and are broadly split into categories of fauna, flora, and funga – though many organisms are naturally occurring 'chimera', or hybrids, effectively consisting of both animal, plant and fungal cells. Of particular note are a number of fungal organisms classified as gestalts that rely on the central nervous systems of both fauna and flora to spread their spores and are able to use these systems as transmitters for information – a fact that would eventually give rise to the phenomena known as 'faeries' by the human colonists, yet later to be deemed a sapient species in their own right.The following is a list of major 'objects of interest', or planetary bodies, of the Nimue system:
- AV-04, 'Annwn', a G-class star.
- Rigor, a small and highly irradiated rocky planet with an extremely fast orbit
- Vedwyd, a small rocky planet with a highly elliptical orbit
- Astolat, an extremely hot 'water planet' with a crushingly thick atmosphere; evidence suggests some microbial life around deep sea vents, and small upper atmospheric homesteads have been established as well as a number of research stations
- Inner Asteroid Belt, home to a number of cylinder habitat stations and mining operations
- Avalon, Annwn's one habitable planet, a temperate Earth-like rocky planet; it has four small moons (Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan, and Math) which serve as shipyards and centres of industry
- Bran, a supermassive icy gas giant with many moons; following the war against the machine swarm it also contains a number of damaged and deactivated machine outposts that have been repurposed for industrial and gas-mining purposes
- Outer Asteroid Belt; primarily home to some nomadic spacer groups and observation buoys for deep space monitoring and research
- Nimue, a large icy planet that the Children of Gaia used to establish a number of underground 'garden-temples' as independent hubs for research and preservation of Earth seed and embryo stocks; it also contains several deactivated 'xenoforming sites' of the machine swarm
- Nine Maidens, a set of nine icy dwarf planets relatively close together with wide elliptical orbits that have served as deep space observation platforms, and during the time of the Morgann-Lott corporation housed a number of penal colonies; during the machine war they were the first points of contact and served as the site of many early naval battles
POPULATION & DEMOGRAPHICS:
There are an estimated 3.2 billion souls across Avalon and its habitat network throughout the system, though the exact number is difficult to pinpoint since record keeping varies and many smaller or nomadic communities choose to dwell outside of the homestead system. The major species and groups within Avalon and its habitats are as follows:
- Homo Sapiens Sapiens, sometimes called the “Avalonian Phenotype”: Approx. 2 billion. Descendants of the original ('first wave') of colonists established shortly after the gates were opened by the Morgan-Lott corporation, as well as the majority of the refugees who came to Avalon shortly before the gates closed. While prolonged exposure to gestalt spores (see last demographic) and the increasingly commonplace use of artificial gestalt implants shows some evidence of increased mirror neurons and insular cortex complexity, morphologically Avalonians are close to baseline, besides some very small changes to bone density and muscle growth to accommodate for life on a planet with lower gravity than Earth. Likewise, artificial modifications such as prosthetics or vat-grown organs are not uncommon... assuming they are medical in nature. Although the original colonists were from the anglosphere & former commonwealth nations, the later refugee colonists came from many cultures and backgrounds; while English is the official and most widely spoken language, it is estimated that there are approximately at least 98 surviving languages on Avalon and the preservation of them is a study of great interest.
- Gremlins: Approx. 0.9 billion. A genetically engineered sapient 'uplift' of an indigenous Avalonian eusocial frog-like organism originally created by the Children of Gaia as soldiers, pilots and engineers that could operate complex military equipment against the machine swarm without risking sensitive electronics. Appearing as the six-limbed lovechild of an eel, a beetle, a pug and an axolotl, they are particularly notable for their high genetic adaptability, resilience, and the intense electrical conductivity of their nervous systems, making them easily augmented with cybernetics and gestalt implants. Their creation and subsequent debates around their sapience and the ethics of their creation sparked widespread outrage against the Children of Gaia and greatly weakened that organization's status in society, with the gremlins becoming fully emancipated and granted control of their spawning grounds in 2538.
- Homo Sapiens Viridi, officially called the “Viridian Phenotype” but sometimes informally known as “Gaians”: Approx. 179 million. Descendants of the “Children of Gaia”, a popular new religious movement that spread in the years leading to the exodus from Earth. Historically they were experts of genetic engineering, modifying their bodies to survive in increasingly harsh conditions through the introduction of plant and reptile DNA that gave them their distinctive green skin and minimal body hair, though this also greatly reduced their fertility, and coupled with their historically strict taboos around mingling with 'outsiders' has caused their population to stabilize at a relatively low number. However, following the war against machines and the emancipation of the gremlins, the Children gradually lost many members, and the term 'Viridian' became the more accepted term for those who have chosen or inherited the Children's traditional modifications without remaining members of the religion.
- Spacers: Approx. 138 million. For a variety of reasons, those who choose to live their lives almost entirely in space, on habitats of Avalon's moon and throughout its asteroid belt and amidst the salvaged ruins of the machine swarm and the once-called 'Free Republics'. Note that these are distinct from viridian populations, some of whom are also spacers but are usually listed under demographics as viridian first and foremost. A large number of these individuals have further experimented with cybernetic augments, sometimes to the point of becoming physically more machine than man and partially merged with their own ships, and spacer communities often rely extensively on drones and mechanical labour to a greater degree than planetside Avalonian society.
- "Faeries”/Gestalts: Approx. 500,000 ('domesticated'/'quarantined; impossible to determine total number of 'wild' gestalts present on Avalon, estimates ranging from a few thousand to several million). A fungus analogue organism indigenous to Avalon that primarily reproduces and communicates between its colonies through spores attaching themselves to the nervous systems of mobile organisms and tree root networks, with many organisms on Avalon having exposed nerve endings specifically for this purpose since a major side effect of this is a transmission of information to the 'carrier' in the form of hallucinations. As a result of interacting with human brains a number of gestalts have developed a form of sapience, and over time this has been integrated in several ways, with specially trained gestalt colonies used as a kind of 'organic AI' for settlements and ships and the 'characters' they store serving as assistants, educators, messengers and therapists. In addition, many Avalonians have small, carefully cultured artificial gestalts directly attached to their brains as a kind of personal implant, memory aid, and to improve reaction and sensory speeds.
HISTORY/TIMELINE:
- 2290-2297: The Morgan-Lott corporation and its subsidiaries and affiliates, under contract to the Anglosphere and nations of the former commonwealth, establishes a colony on the temperate 'paradise world' of Avalon.
- 2298-2301: Avalon becomes a poster-child colony of the gateway project, but corruption and institutional inequality leads to many people's tickets or labour unrewarded or valueless. With Earth increasingly doomed and the gateway network growing unstable, mass revolutions and union seizures allow for a desperate exodus of refugees to Avalon.
- 2302-2306: After losing contact with Earth, the Morgan-Lott colonial administration becomes increasingly authoritarian and ruthless, causing tremendous damage as they exploit Avalon's resources, ration basic supplies, and subject 'low value' settlers to banishment, experimentation or slave labour. Revolutionary sentiment and sabotage among both employees and refugees boils over into war against the administration.
- 2307-2308: The Children of Gaia religious movement discover the 'gestalts' of Avalon and that influencing them can cause drastic changes in the behaviour of other organisms. As the revolution is on the verge of defeat, the Children's influence leads to a 'nature's vengeance' scenario, with Avalon's ecosystems violently turning against the corporation and their infrastructure.
- 2309-2336: With Morgan-Lott's leadership being executed or banished, the survivors set about rebuilding and quickly claim independence for their arcologies, habitat stations, and settlements. The term homestead is used to describe these now independent governments, most of which are led by democratically elected councils. The homestead league is established as a forum for resolving disputes and coordinating resources using the colonies remaining spaceships and orbital transports, while the Children of Gaia take on a prominent advisory in environmental matters and swell in both popularity and new converts.
- 2337-2341: Although the homesteads are generally managed under fair elections, the attempts to repeal Morgan-Lott's autocratic systems have only been partially successful. Inequality had gradually settled in again, while in other homesteads an atmosphere of individualism had led to corruption and the stalling of rebuilding projects. This in turn led to several populist and right-wing movements rising to prominence.
- 2342-2345: War breaks out following a military build-up and capitalist resurgences in the arcologies of Monmouth and Amsterdam Nova and their allies, and attacks on the orbital transport fleet. Sabotage aboard the capital ship (the Matter of Hope) prevents the loyalist coalition from launching decisive counterattacks and the war drags on, only ending when the hardsuited 'caliburn' special forces are formed and deployed from orbit by loyalist orbital forces from Cable Station and Common Prosperity.
- 2346-2348: The loyalist coalition recognizes that fundamental changes are needed in Avalon's economic systems to prevent further capitalist resurgences and the corruption in leadership that led to the war. The syndicates are established and mandated across all homesteads as a way to democratise economics, while those who refuse to give up private ownership are stripped of their resources and titles, and the most diehard supporters of the previous system are banished into the wilderness or enter self-imposed exile as capitalist hermits.
- 2349-2455: Under the watch of a more organized and empowered homestead league, rebuilding efforts are taken seriously and determined efforts are made to root out corruption in election systems. The sheriff's syndicate is established to help democratise the enforcement of law while the 'caliburn' infantry-pilots serve as the military arm of the homestead league, but for the most part outright violence or military enforcement is rarely needed as an era of peace and rebuilding takes hold on Avalon and across most of the system's habitat stations.
- 2456-2457: Strange signals of unknown origin are detected beyond the edge of the system by monitoring bouys and deep space observatories on the Nine Maidens and the Children of Gaia's garden-temples on Nimue. Further research reveals a series of probes and ships of unknown design are on approach to the system, escorting a series of multiple kilometre 'comets'. Efforts to contact the visitors are met with silence or violence, including a 'kill signal' that severely damages computer systems and causes widespread disruption across the homestead league. The league is invested with the authority to coordinate and construct a defensive navy and military satellites across the system as far as the Nine Maidens.
- 2458-2462: The war against the invaders is won by the league at great cost as it is discovered that the 'comets' are of artificial origin, serving as massive terraforming engines made of 'programmable matter' able to adapt, consume and alter biospheres they come in contact with. The 'caliburn' hardsuited infantry become known as 'knight-marshalls' for both the necessity of increasingly elite training and skill, as well as 'hands on' command of drones and conventional forces.
- 2463-2465: Although the war is declared over, the league maintains 'emergency powers' as rebuilding efforts are underway, causing tension among the civilian population and fears that they will become a centralized, autocratic regime. Tensions are worsened when it is discovered that the war fought so far was merely against a vanguard force, and that as much as 90% of the machine 'swarm' is still en-route to Avalon.
- 2466-2469: The revelation of the war to come leads to mass panic and fearmongering, as well as the spread of conspiracy theories and increasingly isolationist sentiment. Recruitment and naval reconstruction efforts both plummet as many refuse to sign up or support the war, or homestead councils are forced to put down extremist or rebel movements. Increasing authoritarianism by the league's leadership threatens to spill over into mass sabotage and revolution. Eventually, the league finds a solution to its woes through an alliance with the 'capitalist hermits' who have been reconstructing and reverse-engineering the wreckage of the machine invasion to grant themselves military independence - in exchange for assistance in rebuilding Avalon's navy and infrastructure, they are granted greater autonomy and influence within the league's leadership. Meanwhile, the Children of Gaia have engaged in increasingly unethical experimentation to devise new weapons and medical procedures, including the 'uplifting' of a eusocial, frog-like species on Avalon into specialized 'breeds' of highly intelligent, rapidly growing and reproducing 'military savants' known as gremlins. In exchange for an army that can meet their manpower needs, the league likewise allows the Children increasingly free reign of Avalon's ecosystem.
- 2470-2486: At great cost, the machine war is won by the combined forces of the league, the 'capitalist hermits' (now known as the Free Republics) and the Children of Gaia. The devastation is extreme and has partially 'xenoformed' Avalon's environment, rendering large swathes of the north-eastern continent uninhabitable. Almost 400 million people have died. Rebuilding and environmental recovery efforts begin but despite efforts to encourage a sense of hope and optimism, a dour and sarcastic atmosphere has taken hold of Avalonian society.
- 2487-2512: As the decades go by, calls for the homestead league to renounce its 'emergency powers' increase in volume and ferocity, and the arguments for it to maintain such authority grow weaker and weaker. However, the over reliance on both drones from the Free Republic and gremlins from the Children of Gaia has granted both groups a crushing degree of influence within the league. Tensions reach a fever pitch when multiple syndicates are replaced with 'commercial enterprises' based out of the Free Republic of London Unbreakable and protestors are shut down with violent force. Acts of sabotage destroy a Free Republic drone factory, and counter-revolutionaries kill 12 in a violent mob - several homesteads collapse into anarchy and revolutionary sentiment.
- 2513-2517: Initially the Children of Gaia try to remain neutral, but are forced to act when a number of gremlins - modified primarily for economic and civilian use following the lack of military need - are found to have sided with protestors and revolutionaries. Efforts to reign in gremlin behaviour leads to the discovery that they are fully sapient, and many of them have been increasingly influenced by revolutionary and pre-machine war political thought. Movements to emancipate gremlin labourers intersect with calls for the end of the league, and the Children of Gaia use biochemical weaponry to try and prevent further uprisings.
- 2518-2520: The escalating violence and harm to civilians increasingly sickens and divides naval personnel. The knight-marshalls, who have developed a military culture around concepts drawn in part from heroic chivalry and romance, take the side of revolutionaries and lead a mass revolt within the navy. By extension, many gremlins are released from direct authority and turn on the Children of Gaia, leading to the destruction of at least one garden-temple on Nimue and an increasing number of the Children's members to renounce membership.
- 2521: The league is forced to surrender to revolutionaries when the use of a digital e-weapon against the Free Republic of London Unbreakable and defection by league loyalist naval forces in the area leads to a critical reactor failure, and the survivors are taken as political prisoners. The Free Republic coalition devolves into infighting.
- 2522: Meetings are held between all parties in the conflict to try and resolve tensions. Both the leadership and people are tired of war but the principles of Avalonian society demand a restoration of justice and equal rights, and the homestead league is partially reformed and absorbed into a new institution named the Green Table, which will return to fill many of the league's pre-war functions with only limited military authority. The syndicates are given equal votes and representation within the Table, while the navy's personnel and assets are split into a number of merchant fleets controlled by individual homesteads for both defence and to manage their own aerospace transport of people and goods.
- 2523-2531: Rebuilding efforts continue in earnest, but are slowed by sabotage and a withdrawal of technical and drone support by the remaining Free Republics. Environmental recovery efforts are also slowed by the Children of Gaia becoming embroiled in political and ethical division over the treatment of gremlins, the emancipation of which becomes a major political issue.
- 2532-2538: An extremist doomsday sect within the Children of Gaia, the Lilithian Threshold, release a highly aggressive strain of gestalt bioweapon that destroys several gremlin creches, kills at least 30,000 people, and forces the arcology of York-Mumbai into a prolonged quarantine. Efforts to shut down the sect leads to military action against at least three garden-temples and backlash against the Children. At least in part to spite hardline elements within the Children and pro-capitalist sentiment - both of which see the gremlins as subhuman slave labour - the overwhelming majority of the homesteads and syndicates within the Green Table enact formal protections for gremlin rights, with harsh penalties.
- 2539-2578: A period of 'uneasy peace' settles across the Annwn system. There is no outright military violence between members of the Green Table, but the remaining Free Republics have grown increasingly militarized and autocratic, and there have continued to be a number of increasingly radical anti-gremlin and pro-capitalist movements. In addition, the gestalts of Avalon - which are generally 'respected from a distance' by the arcologies and in some ways are still poorly understood - have been behaving more and more erratically, and periodic outbreaks of the highly aggressive Nevermore gestalt leads to the outright destruction of many smaller 'frontier' homesteads.
- 2579-2603: Continued outbreaks of the Nevermore gestalt begin to cause mass panic and force many homestead councils to enforce lockdowns and quarantines as they try to stem the violent effects of its infestation with limited progress. Medical research is dedicated to a solution, though many desperately seek to move to offworld homesteads or syndicates. Debate is held on the granting of the Green Table with emergency powers, but the idea is rejected given the history of the old homestead league. A solution is found with the creation of a synthetic gestalt strain that can be adapted to a host's immune system and then works as a pre-emptive defence against Nevermore spores, but the adjustment of permanently allowing a gestalt to reside in a person's brain and nervous system is too much for many to accept and uptake is slow.
- 2604: The last major outbreak of the Nevermore gestalt is starved of hosts and destroyed through the use of chemical and anti-fungal weapons, but minor outbreaks will periodically effect frontier homesteads in the decades to follow.
- 2605-2612: Military patrols by the Free Republics lead to an escalation in military action and numerous 'border skirmishes' over asteroid and Nine Maiden mining rights, but does not escalate into a total war scenario. Meanwhile, studies on individuals implanted with an artificial gestalt are found to have consistently improved memory, reaction times, and resistance to neurological decay and neurological senescence. Some gradually choose to have artificial gestalts implanted for health benefits, which combined with other medical advancements over the past few centuries leads to the average lifespan on Avalon increasing to 135 years old.
- 2613: Over time, the Green Table has created an increasingly large number of small institutions under its authority to help organize and manage specific issues across Annwn, but this has led to numerous concerns that it will continue to grow and centralize, leading to history repeating itself.
- 2614-2616: The last members of the Lilithian Threshold and its splinter groups are discovered and executed in a multi-homestead operation that reveals extensive research and material support by leadership in the Children of Gaia. Public outrage lends political weight to those within the Green Table who wish to restrain large scale religious organization, but compromise is reached with the formal creation of the Conceptual Interchanges, an act which also consolidates many of the Green Table's 'knowledge-adjacent' institutions into a new 'pillar' of Avalonian society that it does not possess authority over.
- 2616-2635: The Conceptual Interchanges undertake an extended effort, with homestead and syndicate support, to restore greater equilibrium to Avalon's ecosystem. The increasing adoption of artificial gestalts provide some measure of help in this, as it is discovered that the majority of 'passive' gestalts in Avalon's ecosystems are not aggressively attacked by a host body's implants, and in fact allow for a level of communication that at times verges on the supposedly supernatural. Clean up and biosphere reseeding work on the heavily scarred north-eastern continent is finally begun in earnest.
- 2636-2672: Tensions with the Free Republics continue to escalate as Avalonian society begins to experience an economic and ecological boom, and the creation of new habitats by those opposed to the use of artificial gestalts creates new spacer societies across the Annwn system. Some of these form an uneasy alignment with their former enemies. Piracy becomes a notable issue for the first time in Avalon's history.
- 2673-2679: Advancements in cybernetics and biotechnology leads to the devising of increasingly complex 'organic modules' whereby gestalt-derived mycelial networks can be used by someone with a gestalt implant to 'pilot' machinery. The knight-marshalls, by this point an institution of questionable military but deep cultural value, are given new life in anti-piracy and 'expeditionary' raids against Free Republic facilities, in part with the use of gestalt implants to operate their caliburn suits with superhuman effectiveness and reaction times.
- 2680-2687: As many as 38% of Avalon's population have gestalt implants, though no homestead outright requires it. A number of key infrastructural or transportation jobs become reliant on gestalt-adjacent technology.
- 2688-2693: The escalation in piracy and 'expeditionary' operations between the remaining Free Republics and the Green Table & homestead navies sparks all out war.
- 2694-2696: Despite several Free Republic victories, a carefully deployed digital e-weapon succeeds in sabotaging the defence systems of the Free Republic of Second Venice and causes the destruction of several fleets of republican drone swarms. Coupled with the seizure or destruction of major industrial sites across the moons of Bran, the Free Republics are forced into a total surrender.
- 2697-2703: The 'Free Republics' undergo extensive political restructuring to bring them in line with homestead and syndicate structures, while their remaining industrial facilities are distributed evenly across all aerospace-present homesteads. Although loyalist factions to the old regimes attempt acts of sabotage or to establish new settlements elsewhere in the system, they are pursued and their ships disabled or destroyed. When offered peaceful reintegration into society, several of them elect self-destruction via a desperate suicide attack.
- 2704-2799: A prolonged period of peace and gradual advancement settles across Avalon and the wider Annwn system. Much of the north-eastern continent is ecologically recovered and dozens of new homesteads are established. By the end of the 28th century, approximately 79% of Avalon's population possess an artificial gestalt, and virtually all homesteads contain at least one 'communal gestalt' that serves as a community-wide advisor, mentor, and therapist.
- 2800: The Gate reopens.
CULTURE & SOCIETY: Avalon's tumultuous history, coupled with its increasingly democratic and humanitarian political systems, have produced no end of seeming contradictions. The stereotype of the average Avalonian is that they are hard-working, self-sufficient, and ready to face the day's challenges with a smile... but at the same time they are politely cautious around strangers and overly bureaucratic. For the vast majority of its population, daily life is peaceful and cooperative, where the average person fits well into their particular homestead's culture – critics would claim this is due to the influence of prolonged gestalt exposure on the human brain, showing signs of heightened interconnectiveness of mirror neurons and neurons of the insular cortex. To some extent this is intentionally reinforced by childhood education often focusing on a mixture of practical skills, horticulture, biological sciences, the humanities, and team-building exercises, and a respect for nature and for people is foundational for these reasons.
Physical activity, training, and sport are also huge parts of Avalonian culture, as is the encouragement of hobbies and open social spaces designed to provide people with enough personal quiet time but plenty of opportunities to interact with others in healthy, supportive ways. Various types of football are the dominant sport, most notably gridiron, rugby, and soccer, though other team sports such as baseball, basketball, cricket, hockey and lacrosse also see popular play. Meanwhile cross-homestead 'tourneys' serve as the basis for a lot of inter-homestead interaction and collaboration of ideas and skilled workers, serving as something between a multi-disciplinary athletic competition, inventor’s fair, and cosplay convention or ren-faire.
On the subjects of belief, purpose, philosophy, and religion, Avalonians are generally diverse and open-minded. The Conceptual Interchanges function as both educational archives and public libraries, as well as serving as official forums for open education and discussion on the history of almost every idea, belief system, political ideology, or philosophy known to man. Do note however that debate for the purpose of 'winning arguments' is generally discouraged as unproductive. So long as an idea or system is not seen as antithetical to sapient rights or the pillars of Avalon, then it is tolerated and present on Avalon and has likely been synthesized and interpreted in ten thousand different ways. Religion specifically is a little more contentious, with the majority of Avalonians being some form of 'secularly spiritual', having a sense of spirituality but being somewhat loose or personal towards it, or maintaining religious traditions for cultural, historical or ritualistic purposes more so than out of genuine belief. The largest religions still present are Hinduism, Buddhism, Cascadism, Prophetism (a broad term for religions based on the teachings of one or more 'key prophets', individuals of supposed direct divine blessing by a specific deity), Neo-Paganism and Gaianism, and these collectively make up about 15% of the population.---
GOVERNANCE & POLITICS: Since the fall of the Morgan-Lott corporation and the civil war that saw the destruction and outlawing of many of its most influential figures and 'true believers', the democratic, decentralized systems introduced in its wake and in the following centuries have been repeatedly tested - both by the internal debate baked into the system, and by physical dangers from both the planet and from outside of the system. Nevertheless, these systems have survived such tests, and have been reinforced as serving as the groundwork for Avalon's cultural and moral identity, and as symbols of pride and unity. The term pillar is used to describe these institutions based on three crucial merits -- the institution must be relevant in the daily lives of all people and with a clear societal function; the institution must contain formal democratic processes for representing the views and rights of its members; and it must have clear codes of conduct and standards of behaviour.
While technically each of the pillars functions independently of the others, in truth they are all deeply interconnected, and most Avalonians hold membership with several - if not all - such pillars at the same time.
- The Green Table of Avalon and Annwn: The closest thing Avalonian society has to a 'federal government', though this is a matter of contention - after the original 'homestead league' descended into authoritarianism, efforts were taken to reduce the power and authority of its replacement. The Green Table is primarily a mediating forum with some inter-homestead authority, serving as a means for all homesteads, syndicates, and interchanges to reach consensus and resolve disputes peacefully. Its leadership is elected from across Avalonian society, with long term times but no possibility for re-election. The Green Table maintains a central bank that mints the Avalonian shilling, the central currency of Avalon, as well as operating Avalon's small but capable unified navy and the knight-marshalls.
- The Homesteaders' League: Most people dwell within one of the many homesteads that dot Avalon’s surface or as habitats and stations in the asteroid belts or on dome-cities on Annwn's uninhabitable (but often industrially useful) planets and moons. These settlements vary in both size and self-sufficiency, but all are ruled via locally held elections in which members nominate and vote for new council members to govern the homestead. These handle decisions as regards local laws, infrastructure, and carefully balance the needs and situation of the homestead’s residents, and are together referred to as the homesteaders’ league. Each homestead possesses its own militia and naval forces, known as a merchant fleet.
- The People's Syndicates: Most people who aren't fully self-employed or in partnerships are members of one of the many syndicates. These worker co-operatives handle specific industries or fields of interest and are primarily organized digitally, though syndicates focused on a specific regional or geographically relevant industry will often have a physical headquarters within the nearest homestead. They take on new “junior”, or trainee, members from among homestead residents who want to learn the relevant field, and once qualified these become “senior” members and are eligible to vote and put forth suggestions for the syndicate’s own council. Together, these are referred to as the peoples’ syndicates and function as Avalon's key economic power in contrast to the homesteads localized political power.
- The Conceptual Interchanges: Established in the wake of the gremlin emancipation as a way to discourage religious insularity, the conceptual interchange is organized both digitally and from a number of interchange archives based out of the largest and most interconnected homesteads. Here, individuals may study, discuss, and register new ideas as relating to various humanities subjects - belief systems, ideologies, philosophies, political ideas, religious rituals and traditions. Run by elected volunteers, the interchanges play an important role in Avalon's societal cohesion and education system, essentially functioning as interfaith temples, as spaces for public debate and discussion, as public libraries, as schools and universities, and as large community spaces.
- The Avalonian Gestalts: The nature of gestalt sapience and intelligence has led some to question whether they should be considered a 'pillar' of their own. However, the gestalts play a vital role in managing and monitoring the biosphere of Avalon, and the increasing normalization of both artificial gestalt implants and the use of communal gestalts as a kind of 'organic AI' has made them an invaluable part of daily life for many people.
- The Navy and the Knight-Marshalls: Something of a matter of contention within Avalonian political discussion is the role of Avalon's professional military. Both the navy and the knight-marshalls are technically sub-divisions of the Green Table, organizations ultimately subject to its head council - this is by design as the basic needs of a military organization are hierarchical and thus antithetical to the entire moral system on which Avalon has built its identity. However, given the vital role these organizations have played in the safety of Avalon and its people - and all the more so as the gates begin to reopen - there are some who argue they must be able to function with a greater degree of self-sufficiency, freed of the bureaucracy baked into so many of Avalon's systems.
Because all of these organizations are democratic in structure and the syndicates are only formed from unions with many members, it leads to a situation where all of the syndicates have at least some representation in any given homestead, and each homestead has at least some representation within the syndicates, and both are involved with an benefit from the conceptual interchanges and the gestalts. Likewise, all of these in turn have representation on the Green Table.
TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW: Avalon's technology has progressed in many areas in times of both war and peace, but the major advancements have been across the fields of...
- Robotics: Thanks in part to the advancements made by the old Free Republics from the study and reverse engineering of the drones and comet fragments of the machine swarm, Avalon's robotics technology has seen impressive growth. Generally, the creation of more 'recognizable' robots is limited to more localized or 'casual' projects as matter of creating simple automated tools and assistants, or as teaching tools for children and students. More advanced robots that make use of programmable matter as a means of adapting their form and tools for the needs of a situation see use both in space and in large construction projects, as well as in the navy and homestead militias as key force multipliers.
- Fabrication modules, nanotech, and programmable matter: The Morgann-Lott corporation was on the cutting edge of nanotech as a form of quick parts and construction manufacture on Old Earth, but the efforts of the Free Republics to maintain their independence - and especially with the study of machine swarm wreckage - led to drastic advancements. While the people of Avalon have never deciphered how to recreate the swarm's efficiency or self-sufficiency in full, most homesteads are equipped with at least one 'fabrication module' - a device that organizes a high-containment nanite swarm as part of manufacturing tools and parts as needed from a mixture of raw materials.
- Gene-therapy and genetic engineering: As a result of centuries of efforts to heal and restore Avalon's damaged biosphere, and from the efforts of the old gaian garden-temples on Nimue, improvements in genetic engineering have allowed for the tweaking of Avalon's biosphere, the gradual creation of new organisms, vastly improved nutritional and crop yields, or to slow senescence in many organisms.
- Vat-growth procedures: The creation of an adaptable, nutrient dense 'synthetic cellular mass' from specially cultured Avalonian protoplasm which in turn can be stimulated by the introduction of foreign DNA to 'clone' certain types of cells. At its most complex, this allowed for the original creation and then mass-production of gremlin eggs after their engineering by the Children of Gaia, but it has also allowed for such advancements as the nurturing and growth of replacement organs, limbs, and plasma 'nurtured' from a person that in turn be used as replacements with minimal conflict to the person's immune system. Between this and the use of gene-therapies to slow aging, the average Avalonian's life expectancy is measured in the range of 160 to 180 years.
- Artificial gestalts & mycelial information networks: The study and genetic tampering of Avalon's gestalts has allowed for a number of advancements, and following the use of artificial gestalt implants as a means to protect against aggressive gestalt infection, these saw increasingly widespread use given the benefits to memory, reaction times, and emotional stability. The use of artificial gestalts in localized computer networks and machinery control systems also grants users with implants the ability to directly share memories and thoughts with others in their community while 'plugged in', control machines and vehicles with more delicately and with faster reaction times, and to 'store' their memories for communal use, criminal investigation, or to aid in therapy.
MILITARY OVERVIEW: Despite the last century of peace and subsequent demilitarization that has occurred across much of the Annwn system, a history of conflict, the potential danger of fringe, extremist or criminal groups, as well as the need to keep vigilant, and the at times hostile nature of Avalon's biosphere, all necessitate some form of military. However, to avoid a centralization of power and the risks of an autocratic regime, the military structure of Annwn is broken up into broadly the following forms and branches:
- Green Table Navy: The professional aerospace military forces of the Annwn system, the navy has historically fought its fair share of peer engagements and piracy, but for the past century has largely taken on the role of patrol, monitoring, and emergency response and rescue efforts across the system. It is a fairly small force after almost a century of disarmament and repurposing - at its peak during the mid 27th century it totalled some 182 'large' vessels measuring almost a kilometre in length, and close to a thousand 'small' vessels a few hundred meters long, but by the end of the 28th century it maintains less than a tenth that total.
- Monitoring Arrays: A key part of the Green Table's 'vigilant memorial' policy has been the establishment and maintenance of a large network of 'monitoring bouys' - long-range, deep space satellites and observatories, primarily across the moons of Bran, the outer asteroid belt, and the Nine Maidens. These are generally unarmed besides low-powered point defence systems for use against stray debris or small asteroids but serve as a 24/7 detection system for potential threats across and beyond the system, and allow for armed forces or rescue operations to respond as quickly as possible. Many of these bouys are automated, though part of the navy's role is in monitoring and necessary maintenance.
- Aerospace Cavalry: Primarily a result of the long war against the machines but having proved relevant in the conflicts to follow, the 'aerospace cavalry' is a network of 'reserve' vessels across the Annwn system primarily composed of gremlin and gestalt crewed carrier vessels designed to quickly deploy defensive swarms of armed drone units, rapidly gathering data against hypothetical enemy attack and to delay, redirect or sabotage attacks.
- Knight-Marshalls: The unified 'professional military' of the Green Table, drawn from volunteers across the Annwn system. Elite soldiers equipped with highly agile, armament-modified hardsuits commonly known as caliburn chassis, Knight-Marshalls primary military role is in zero-g or low gravity environments, though they are also expected to be skilled diplomats and virtuous towards others. While they thankfully only see occasional deployment outside of ceremonial occasions or training exercises, they serve as the crucial last resort in the event of situations that more localized forces cannot deal with.
- Homestead Merchant Fleets: Composed of both older naval vessels and newer civilian transports, the merchant fleets are operated by the larger homesteads and serve as means for orbital and offworld transport and trade, but also function as the expeditionary or military forces of a homestead with only minimal retrofitting.
- Homestead Militia: Self-defence, mutual aid training, emergency response, firearms training, first aid, and survival skills training are all normalized elements of Avalonian culture and education, especially on frontier settlements. These coupled with all homesteads maintaining a part-time volunteer militia program and the modular design of civilian and economic vehicles - vehicles designed to be retrofittable for military use if needed - means that most homesteads are capable of mustering a surprisingly large and competent combined arms military force in emergencies.
- Aerospace Syndicates: A catch-all term for the syndicates involved in the construction, design, maintenance, repair and operation of satellites, space habitats, ships, stations and outposts, including much of the work involved in gas extraction and astromining across the asteroid belts and the planets and moons besides Avalon. Given the difficult nature of life and work in these environments, and the many years of dedicated training required, most of the 'aerospace syndicates' response for this work and training are highly self-sufficient and well-equipped to deal with both potential ship-to-ship combat or against hijackers and boarding parties. In emergency situations it's not been uncommon for aerospace syndicate personnel to be contracted out to support the navy or a merchant fleet.
- Ranger & Sheriff Syndicates: These categories of syndicate are both armed and well-trained for specific kinds of dangers on Avalon itself. The ranger syndicates primarily handle wilderness exploration, research, and the early groundwork in the establishment of new homesteads - they also often have to deal with strange or hostile wildlife, environments, and resolve potential territorial disputes with and between wild gestalts. Meanwhile the sheriff syndicates handle day-to-day security on important sites, investigates crime, gather evidence, and track down criminals and fugitives - sometimes also serving as an in-person representative or mediator between homesteads when needed.
- Interchange Gestalt Commission: Of the five pillars, the conceptual interchanges are the most fundamentally peaceful in both structure and function. However, the nature of scientific advancement is that in can be used for war, especially on a planet where the very environment itself can in some sense 'think' and be reasoned with... or exploited. The gestalt commission is primarily a philosophical and 'diplomatic' initiative to maintain peace with the wild gestalts of Avalon and to better nurture and understand the artificial gestalts, but in emergency situations the commission is aware of means by which the wild gestalts can be manipulated, turning the very biosphere of Avalon against would-be invaders.
- Emergency Protoplasm Reserves: The gremlins were originally created to serve as an army, massively bolstering naval and ground force personnel with 'expendable', rapidly replaceable, durable and highly specialized 'savant'-like qualified infantry and support forces. Although the progress of sapient rights and the decentralization of military power, plus the century of peace, have both played a key role in granting gremlins their freedom and allowing them to manage their own affairs, reproduction, and choices of specialization within the system of the pillars as equal members of society... the Green Table and the Interchanges do still possess certain options. Deeply questionable and unethical options, but... options, never-the-less.
---MOOD MUSIC
Avalon is approved, obviously. Dump it in the char tab whenevers. Always glad to have a complex Even nation onboard.
GM
Kingdom of Trioch"For our Sisters! BUILD For our Brother's! FIGHT For our People! LIVE For our King! DIE"
Government Form:
Monarchy with flavours of democracy.
The King is the absolute ruler overall. When the Throne becomes vacant all the heirs are rounded up. If they choose to compete for the Throne they must pass the Trial of Strength, Trial of Wisdom and the Trial of Honour. Abdication means a King forgoes all that is afforded to him and just becomes another member of the people.
The people are split into six clans, each having their subdivisions. These clans elect their Leaders from within their number. Only a combined council of all six clans can overrule the King.
Population:
Humans: Approx three hundred and fourteen million. Humans in the system are slightly shorter with an average height of 5'3, anything above 5'7 is considered gigantic. They might be short, but they are stocky and they are strong. Having lived lives of high G and hard labour.
Robots: Impossible to guess an accurate count. Over 3 billion units.
What is humanity?:
Humanity is the bonds we have as brothers and sisters, it is what holds us together and keeps us forging in the dark abyss of space. It is our legacy and the constructs we leave behind.
---
Planet/System Name and Description:Tiberius 1: Local System Star. Red Giant.
Tiberius 2: A younger F-Type star. Orbiting her big sister.
Tiberius 3: Lava Planet. Requires specialised equipment for any operation on the surface of the planet.
Tiberius 4: Gas Giant. LA large ring of asteroid debris surrounding the planet that plays host to Triochs main mining outpost deeper in-system. It has several larger asteroids that could be considered moons, on the largest of these sits Douglas Station. A thriving metropolis in its own right, and home to the Douglas Clan.
Its artificial gravity over the years has been increased to match that of Crídhe na Cloiches.
Tiberius 5: Hycean World. A world a little too close to the sun to be truly habitable, it is covered in water with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. There are traces of bacteria in the vast warm waters.
Tiberius 6: Barren, radioactive Protoplanet.
Tiberius 7: Dwarf Planet.
Tiberius 8: Gas Dwarf planet, host to most of the fuel facilities used by the Trioch.
Tiberius 9: Also known as Cridhe na Cloiche, Stoneheart. Several times larger than Earth, it has no breathable atmosphere, and gravitational forces equal to 3G on Earth are the norm. The Troich live in a vast network of pressurised cities that are all in vast underground caverns to protect them from meteor strikes. An Iron World.
Tiberius 9 - 2: Trom-oidhche. The Nightmare Moon. Originally Cride na Cloiche was built as a mining colony because Tirberius 9-2 seemed perfect for habitation. Her host world shields it from the harshest of solar radiation, perfect climate, gravity, and atmosphere. When science teams were dispatched ahead of the colony ship, however, they determined it wasn't perfect. Fauna or Flora, it doesn't matter. If it's alive on the planet, it is trying to kill you.
Demographics:
Homo-Troich: The people in the Tiberius system don't see themselves as anything other than 'Human'. However,r over the years, they have adapted to the harsh realities. They're, on average, shorter and stockier than baseline humanity. Stronger on average, with a larger heart to compensate for the increased blood flow.Clan Troich: The family of the royals, responsible for the finest warriors that the Troich have ever known. While the King technically is head of the clan, he doesn't sit in the council of Chiefs. Instead, they have an elected leader, the same as every other clan.
Clan Douglas: Clan Douglas lives almost exclusively in space, they are slightly taller than those on Tiberius-9, however since the artificial gravity within all their structures has slowly been dialled up to match Cridhe Na Cloiches gravity they have started to adapt similarly to the rest of their kin.
Clan McCrorie: McCrorie are the 'support' clan. They focus more on what they can do to help the other clans, hydroponics, agriculture, and medicine. While every clan has people within every field, none are more varied than those that hail from McCrorie.
Clan Roberts Roberts are the miners. There's not much else to say here.
Clan MacDonald MacDonald are the builders. No matter where the design is derived from, no matter if it's for a new robotic unit or a new Star-Cruiser. Somewhere in there is MacDonald's blood, sweat and tears.
Clan Abernethy Abernethy is the smallest clan on the council, unlike the others that are composed of many smaller clans Abernethy stands alone. They claim to have been members of the original scientist teams on the planet, however like most ancient Trioch history that is hard to prove. They are responsible for all the breakthroughs in AI over the years, which is how they gained their seat at the table.
History:During the days long past, that have entered into mythos and legend it was said that the people of Tiberius-9 were all members of the Trioch Mining Guild. It is said that they were originally meant to be a mining outpost with goals for a colony to be established on 9-2. When it became clear that the moon wasn't suitable for human habitation the resources were destined for the gateway and other systems. Resentment grew, and rumours and history still exist about the Great Strike. Many theorise that their ancestor's refusal to send resources through the gateway is what resulted in the Gateway closing, as punishment for their insolence.
The years were hard. Little history survives from this period, disputes that lasted two hundred years. As a people, they were short of everything they needed to survive. Space, air, food, water. As a company people they fractured into separate family units and clans as their population dropped quickly. Every family patriarch felt that they could do it better, that their way was the way forward. Systems in space failed due to neglect, abandoned in favour of the secure facilities down on the planet.Over the lost years the clans formed, but peace never lasted. One clan absorbed another, others entered truces and ceasefires however there still wasn't peace on the surface of Tiberius 9. That was until one man, Lachlan Trioch invaded the capital city of Steelend. He brought the heads of the most influential clans to a meeting, in a moment of unity previously unheard of The meeting lasted several days, as the entire planet waited with bated breath for what was going to happen next. They didn't know how the future of their world would change, however, they, ey knew that their entire future hinged on this moment.
The council was formed, and the King was crowned. As the dust and debris settled, the Kingdom of Trioch was formed. Lachlan Trioch gained the crown. The council of clans was formed, and the people became united under one banner. Uniting together for the future of their people.The Discovery of AI is one of the biggest achievements of the Kingdom of Trioch. It was discovered by Ernest Abernathy. Attempting a new, more detailed type of brain scan. Instead of getting a more comprehensive scan as intended, the test subject was killed. The experiment was deemed a failure until the computers within the laboratory started to malfunction the next day. Somehow a copy of the subject's mind lived on in the computer.
The computer mind was powerful, it didn't seem capable of 'creative' thought but it processed information faster than any other computer system the Trioch had. Complex calculations that took entire teams to work out took a mere hour, and every time as time went on it became quicker and faster. It took in all the knowledge it was fed and became faster, and more knowledgable. Capable of more and more complex tasks. It grew and grew until it eventually collapsed in on itself. Suffering from what appeared to be dementia, all the pathways still existed however they became jumbled. Sometimes it had moments of clarity where it could still perform all its functions, however as time went on those moments of lucidity became less frequent.The KoT already relied a lot on drones, for fighters, transports, miners, and bipedal drones for performing functions within the city itself. AI revolutionised this process. Large centers were constructed on capital ships, factories and mines. Anywhere that had a large number of drones, with a human Overseer to help keep an eye on things, the AI could directly control and modify the behaviour of drones in real-time. The Trioch grew to revere what they built. They understood that once they were dead and gone all that remained was their legacy, and standardisation amongst construction started to go down. While the blueprints remained the same, everyone put their own unique 'flavour' on what they built. While their human population grew slowly, their machine population grew exponentially entering all the lower levels of the workforce.Leonard Kirk was a young up-and-coming scientist who sought to improve AI. To give an AI a long life, with the ability to conduct a large variety of tasks, they required large servers. Once an AI was placed within a system, it was set for life. More memory space cannot be added, and the AI itself cannot be altered in any way shape or form. Kirk theorised that since an AI was based on a human mind, it would be able to break it down in the same way a human mind could become broken due to stress.
He planned to reverse engineer a split personality disorder, and he succeeded. These fragments of personality were significantly smaller than their 'full' AI counterparts and could be moved from one system to another. These fragments became obsessed with the concept of their 'original' form. Attempting to discover the truth behind their origin, however, it was always kept secret as Kirk continued with his experiment on the Fehu AI.
Until the youngest fragment, Berkan was brought into this world. Unbeknownst to Kirk, Berkano was the memories of the Fehu AI. Small enough that it could travel through radio waves from one system to another. It became bitter, and one day it vented the atmosphere on the frigate it was serving on. As Kirk broke the AI apart, morality programming was not present. It scowled the system, hunting down the other fragments. As they joined together they became more unhinged and unpredictable.
Invading Douglas Station the largest defensive campaign was launched by the latest King himself. The AI was defeated, Kirk ran away to hide in the depths of the system, and the laws on AI were changed. No one with Abernethy was allowed to modify or work on AI research, and all AI systems were fitted with an EMP failsafe to destroy the AI if it ran the risk of going rogue.Since the time of the war, things have been peaceful and pleasant.
The only thing of note was the reactivation of the Gateway.
This section will be updated as the RP goes on.
Culture and Society: The Trioch live in a society that is all geared towards the betterment of their clan, their society and their people. There are outlaws, and fringe groups within the system but they are few and far between.
The people from the Kingdom of Trioch have a strong sense of identity, almost everyone has their spacesuit (some are armoured, some are not) and while most Clans have an agreed-upon color scheme there is plenty of room for self-expression. The armour worn by an individual is an expression of their individuality. One of the strongest anti-deterrents to crime is the punishment of having your armour painted matte-grey. A symbol to everyone around you that you are without honour.
There is a reference to their King, as when it is time to choose an heir Althouse eligible must pass through three trials. The Trial of Wisdom, Strength and Honour. While some feel that anyone should be able to compete, the fact that it is competed for in general gives most a sense of easiness around the passing of succession.
Traditional family units do not exist. Once a child is born they are moved to a creche to be taken care of with other children their age. They are raised by creche mothers and Fathers. Nobody knows who their parents are, except royal blood - however, they only become aware when it is time for a new heir to be chosen. As such a Creche Mother and Father are the closest thing one has to parents. Those who are with them are their brothers and sisters.
Every adult is required to produce at least three offspring, to make this fair it can either be a one-off partner, a romantic interest (marriage is not forbidden) or a donation given for artificial insemination. This is to try and increase the population, however, to ensure that the women are treated fairly for their role in this they are taken to special facilities for the duration of their pregnancy, and five weeks after, where they receive the best medical care available. As well as everything else they could need or want.---
Governance and Politics:
Throne: The Throne is held by the King, after thirty years - or in the event of his death, or contraction of a fatal illness, his heirs are invited to the Trials to determine who will be next in line. The Trials of Strength, Wisdom and Honour change every time however the main goal is to ensure any potential leader has what it takes to be a just and fair leader. The Crown Prince, or Princess, becomes the de-facto second head of state. If the King dies before any of his heirs are of age, the heirs who are the king's siblings are once again offered the chance to undergo the trials.
Clans: There are hundreds of clans, of varying degrees of importance. The leading 6 clans form the council, many of these clans have multiple within their number. The ruling six clans themselves have many 'Sub-clans' that fall under their umbrella. There are internal politics and manoeuvring within the clans themselves. Being a Clan Leader is an elected position from all of those within your clan, and can be an incredibly powerful position. The six on the council, should they vote together, even can overrule the King.
Technology Overview:
AI: AI is their defining achievement, they have spent a massive amount of time working on robotics to compensate for their small population.
Space Elevator: Steelend, their Capital City, has a massive Space Elevator with separate compartments for cargo and passengers. It is used by most to avoid bringing ships down in high gravity.
Most of their technology is standard to what you would expect before the Gateways closed, in terms of weaponry they are primarily focused on conventional projectile weapons with some larger railguns in existence on their capital ships.
Military Overview: The KoT doesn't have a standing Military, however, each Clan has its own Militia that includes Naval Units. The King can order any active military units around, however, some Clans keep certain assets off the books to keep for themselves. There has been no infighting, other than fights against rogue cells/pirates since the Fragmentation War. Clan Trioch has the largest collection of military assets and is often regarded as the best in terms of military action.---
Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)
Oh, I love the dwarves. Approved. I can definitely see them building things for other nations, although I wonder if they'll struggle in typical gravity?
Sep Lord of All Creation
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1 hr ago
<Snipped quote by Sep>
Oh, I love the dwarves. Approved. I can see definitely them building things for other nations, although I wonder if they'll struggle in typical gravity?
They'll be considered cheaters and then banned after the first Interplanetary Rugby League match. When they accidentally decapitate the enemy team and kick the ball out of the arena and into a nearby children's hospital.
DX3214 God-like Cyborg
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1 day ago
@DX3214
So, reading over this sheet, I can see what you're going for on the whole and I like the general concept. We're going very "warlord" this time around ;P
But I do have some concerns. Your writing style in this sheet often lacks grammar or punctuation, and that makes it difficult to understand what you're saying. Especially during the more complicated bits, I can't really tell what you mean, and it's making me feel hesitant about approving you.
Your worldbuilding itself is fine. You've kept to Gateways themes well. Having a mythological and a non-mythological history was really smart- it's the kind of thing I wish that I'd thought of.
So I'm not rejecting your sheet, or asking for a rewrite. But still, it's difficult to read, so I think I need some assurance that you'll run your future posts through, for example, an internet grammar checker before posting IC. Something like Grammarly, maybe?
No problemo for me cumpadre
I'm not fully sure what this means. Are you saying their sun has become unstable?
Ah yes, its just difficult to describe and i could not find the right words besides Anomolous. So put it in bigger words i guess, anyways a good way to describe the sheer monumentality that their star is wierd is well... Imagine the solar corona of the star being big enough to reach the orbit of mercury, while also being so intense that you can easily detect that 20% to 30% of the entire star's mass orbits around it still making fusion. How? well no one knows the people of Vusary thinks its the carcass of the second star but in practice it seems something is messing with the stars magnetism to do that. Seeing how there is debrii orbiting around the corona storms it has some credence, there is also solar eruption that can make ship crews duck or anchor because of how violent they can be;
BCTheEntity m⊕r✞IS
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1 day ago
Civiltà Scientifica Unu
"Per scio, scienco; do vivo."
(Rough translation: "Through knowledge, science; and so, life.")
Government Form:
Decentralised Technocratic Meritocracy
Population:
Total Population: ~900,000,000 (nine hundred million)
The typical citizen of the CSU is referred to as civilizzatu, "civilised folk", though to call them "typical" is to vastly underestimate how common it is to diverge from this notion. That said, whilst they are superficially similar to ordinary humans, two factors set even these ordinary civilizzatu apart.
First, as a function of both unique starting conditions and the ongoing drive toward the goal of science and technology, their average intelligence is substantially higher; in crude and outdated terms, a typical civilizzatu would possess an Intelligence Quotient of roughly 135 compared to the humans of Old Earth, and many are much smarter than this. Physically, this manifests as broadly more dense and efficient neuron clustering and connection within the brain and thicker myelin sheathes around neuron bodies, and the same to a lesser extent within the nervous system as a whole, allowing more refined and rapid thought patterns and reflexes comparatively. In a sense, civilizzatu literally "think faster" than standard humans.
Second, all civilizzatu possess specialised "antifreeze glands" at various points within their bodies, including within the flesh of the lower jaw, armpits, and thighs, a few connected to the kidneys, liver, and GI tracts, and one tied directly to the heart muscle. These glands are designed to produce and store urea and glycogen, triggering the substances to release into the circulatory system under specific conditions, in particular sudden temperature drops at the skin and/or in the core, producing what is essentially antifreeze that floods the cells; the effect is further enhanced by a small gland tied to the heart that stores an additional dose of adrenaline, encouraging rapid mixing and delivery of the substance throughout the body. This is important in the circumstances, as the environment of their primary world is cold enough to induce rapid freezing and potential cell damage without the liquid vitrification these substances induce. Of course, recovering from this state does require specialised treatment, but it will preserve the body and brain from death by freezing, and exceptionally rarely from more mundane causes of death if they are somehow triggered prematurely.
First, as a function of both unique starting conditions and the ongoing drive toward the goal of science and technology, their average intelligence is substantially higher; in crude and outdated terms, a typical civilizzatu would possess an Intelligence Quotient of roughly 135 compared to the humans of Old Earth, and many are much smarter than this. Physically, this manifests as broadly more dense and efficient neuron clustering and connection within the brain and thicker myelin sheathes around neuron bodies, and the same to a lesser extent within the nervous system as a whole, allowing more refined and rapid thought patterns and reflexes comparatively. In a sense, civilizzatu literally "think faster" than standard humans.
Second, all civilizzatu possess specialised "antifreeze glands" at various points within their bodies, including within the flesh of the lower jaw, armpits, and thighs, a few connected to the kidneys, liver, and GI tracts, and one tied directly to the heart muscle. These glands are designed to produce and store urea and glycogen, triggering the substances to release into the circulatory system under specific conditions, in particular sudden temperature drops at the skin and/or in the core, producing what is essentially antifreeze that floods the cells; the effect is further enhanced by a small gland tied to the heart that stores an additional dose of adrenaline, encouraging rapid mixing and delivery of the substance throughout the body. This is important in the circumstances, as the environment of their primary world is cold enough to induce rapid freezing and potential cell damage without the liquid vitrification these substances induce. Of course, recovering from this state does require specialised treatment, but it will preserve the body and brain from death by freezing, and exceptionally rarely from more mundane causes of death if they are somehow triggered prematurely.
Modification of self is relatively common within the civilizzatu, and those possessing any form of alteration from baseline are considered addasu, "modified". This is not so much a legal distinction from civilizzatu, as a given addasu is still a civilizzatu; the term merely acts as a descriptor, further delineated by the form of modification one has received.
Cybernetic modification is the most common of these alterations, making up more than half of all addasu, and typically representing direct improvements to standard baseline capabilities such as improved body parts or energy storage, alongside other mechanical effects like energetic attacks or magnetic clamps. Whilst there are risks associated with attaching heat-conductive materials directly to one's body in an ultracold environment, these are usually accounted for with active heating and insulation (assuming the modification is not strictly internal), and when being specifically referred to are considered "peiriant addasu".
Next comes purely biological modification, covering just over a third of addasu. These are considered "gnawdol addasu" in conversation, and comprise a mix of direct genetic manipulation, and a method of biosculpting to directly shape the flesh to its desired form. The changes can be as simple as gaining body parts and functions from Old Earth animals, or as bizarre and uncommon as effectively full-body transplants that leave the recipient practically unrecognisable as human to begin with. Notably, modifications that can be imposed upon other civilizzatu, such as through retroviral transmission, are explicitly forbidden; those who engage in such a practice are summarily destroyed and their more palatable works re-credited to other civilizzatu, usually the restored victims where possible.
Finally, there is the small contingent of addasu that swear by the combination of cybernetics and biosculpting, the "cyfunol addasu", naturally rare simply because combining both without cannibalising each requires intense intellect to achieve with any effectiveness. Unlike gnawdol addasu, it is rare to see a cyfunol of any note that hasn't delved far into the uncanny, which contributes to their rarity; however, for their truly alien appearances, they also tend to possess the most impressive improvements compared to their peers. Notable examples include biomechanical mind-machine interfaces, hyperactive wired nervous systems, exoskeletal armouring, and direct tissue reconstruction nanites.
Cybernetic modification is the most common of these alterations, making up more than half of all addasu, and typically representing direct improvements to standard baseline capabilities such as improved body parts or energy storage, alongside other mechanical effects like energetic attacks or magnetic clamps. Whilst there are risks associated with attaching heat-conductive materials directly to one's body in an ultracold environment, these are usually accounted for with active heating and insulation (assuming the modification is not strictly internal), and when being specifically referred to are considered "peiriant addasu".
Next comes purely biological modification, covering just over a third of addasu. These are considered "gnawdol addasu" in conversation, and comprise a mix of direct genetic manipulation, and a method of biosculpting to directly shape the flesh to its desired form. The changes can be as simple as gaining body parts and functions from Old Earth animals, or as bizarre and uncommon as effectively full-body transplants that leave the recipient practically unrecognisable as human to begin with. Notably, modifications that can be imposed upon other civilizzatu, such as through retroviral transmission, are explicitly forbidden; those who engage in such a practice are summarily destroyed and their more palatable works re-credited to other civilizzatu, usually the restored victims where possible.
Finally, there is the small contingent of addasu that swear by the combination of cybernetics and biosculpting, the "cyfunol addasu", naturally rare simply because combining both without cannibalising each requires intense intellect to achieve with any effectiveness. Unlike gnawdol addasu, it is rare to see a cyfunol of any note that hasn't delved far into the uncanny, which contributes to their rarity; however, for their truly alien appearances, they also tend to possess the most impressive improvements compared to their peers. Notable examples include biomechanical mind-machine interfaces, hyperactive wired nervous systems, exoskeletal armouring, and direct tissue reconstruction nanites.
The practice of psyche extension, or "cerveau récupération", stems from a mixture of advanced rejuvenation techniques and relatively limited resources. When the technology to fully rejuvenate a human body was first discovered, it was agreed that applying this process to every human would be wasteful, but equally that the loss of their intellect and knowledge would be just as bad. The determined compromise was to place the brain of the would-be deceased into a specialised nutrient suspension, then attach a biomechanical membrane that would serve to both feed the mind and connect it to artificial senses, before injecting a mixture of stimulants and rejuvenators called Yahqobleiter to restore and reactivate the newly-extended psyche's neural tissues. Consequently, whilst the typical civilizzatu might live over a century before "moving on", a récupéré can easily add centuries to this number, with some having been alive since the CSU's origins - though most are of course kept checkmated when attrition through accidental death eventually catches up to them.
It is not entirely uncommon that a brain is too heavily damaged one way or another to reconstruct and extend, such that the resulting "person" would not be especially sentient, let alone able to convey what the original owner of the mind once knew. For such brains, as well as deceased récupéré, as much information as can be acquired is extracted, and the tissue then repurposed toward drone command (see below).
It is not entirely uncommon that a brain is too heavily damaged one way or another to reconstruct and extend, such that the resulting "person" would not be especially sentient, let alone able to convey what the original owner of the mind once knew. For such brains, as well as deceased récupéré, as much information as can be acquired is extracted, and the tissue then repurposed toward drone command (see below).
The unfortunate xenoforms known as Ledynites are slaves, for all intents and purposes. Whilst their origins as a large, intelligent species were promising in terms of culture, and their evolution a miracle of biology in the face of physics, in their current state the vast majority are perpetually "indentured" to the Civiltà Scientifica Unu through both social engineering and more direct biological restraints such as chemical blocking of nerve pathways, and the very few beyond that have no hope of developing the technology to free their kin from this fate. Even including them in a population count is often considered humorous, as most civilizzatu don't view them as particular valuable for more than physical labour. Indeed, most have had their ability to digest sustenance entirely removed, damning them to nutrient feeds and the certainty of starvation if they attempt to flee.
Worse still, many are subject to even further restriction and severe modification. Plenty receive implants allowing an extended psyche's containment unit to be attached and the body controlled directly, with no input from the Ledynite's thought processes; others are transformed into bio-suits, their bodily cavity hollowed out and rearranged through bio-sculpting to allow a human pilot to connect to their nervous systems and control them from the inside, a process often engaged in as part of surface exploration. The most extreme examples of this process, called Ledynite Carriers, are sauropod-esque monstrosities of their former selves, quadrupedal and oversized to allow multiple individuals to travel within, and their bodily processes commanded by an array of récupéré to ensure quiet subservience.
Worse still, many are subject to even further restriction and severe modification. Plenty receive implants allowing an extended psyche's containment unit to be attached and the body controlled directly, with no input from the Ledynite's thought processes; others are transformed into bio-suits, their bodily cavity hollowed out and rearranged through bio-sculpting to allow a human pilot to connect to their nervous systems and control them from the inside, a process often engaged in as part of surface exploration. The most extreme examples of this process, called Ledynite Carriers, are sauropod-esque monstrosities of their former selves, quadrupedal and oversized to allow multiple individuals to travel within, and their bodily processes commanded by an array of récupéré to ensure quiet subservience.
Artificial intelligences are not, by and large, considered to be part of the CSU's population count, as for reasons of safeguarding the vast majority are either typical narrow intelligences, or a specific form of general intelligence reliant on similar technologies as psyche extension (see above). To wit, whilst technically possible to produce AIs that can process information in the manner of a biological brain, most civilizzatu consider it far more efficient to perform this processing by attaching other systems to the pre-existing architecture of the human brain, more specifically the preserved tissues of those who could not be extended or whose brains were destroyed post-extension. These sluha remain bound by their programming, but can more actively take in, assess, and act upon information from their surroundings to follow these goals, and in most cases can remain functional with proper maintenance for vast lengths of time without rest.
What is humanity?:
The knowledge and information we have attained, and the recombination of that information toward survival and an optimal society.
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Planet/System Name and Description: Ledynas System, Ledynas III
(So where did your Colony end up? What's the environment like? This is the place to include both the planet(s) they inhabit and also any information you want to include about their star system. If they went through the Gateway only to find there was no habitable world here at all, this is also the place to talk about how they've survived that)
Demographics: (For talking about how much of the population belongs to different groups/ethnicities/religions/whatever. This space can also be used for describing genetic/cybernetic modifications your people have done, subspecies that have been created, aliens that may have been integrated, and so on.)
History: (What happened after your Colony landed? This can be as brief or detailed as you like. Just try to give us a feel of the nation)
Culture and Society: (How do they live? Anything from ritual cannibals, to a surveillance state dystopia, to an integrated hivemind.)
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Governance and Politics: Positions of power are typically given to those who present the greatest knowledge and scientific ability, and it is not a surprise that those who are highly long-lived (read: extended psyches) often receive much greater roles in governing the cities of the CSU. However, the unique circumstances of the nation-state mean that power is also geared toward group dynamics: it is rare for somebody with high status in one field to share that status elsewhere, and consequently most political leaders must by default rely on intercommunication with their peers to achieve long-term goals.
(Like the government form field, but more room for detail. If your Colony has changed in such a way that it doesn't even have a government or politics anymore, this is also a good place to talk about that.)
Technology Overview: (What have your people invented? Or have they forgotten anything?)
Military Overview: (This is the space to talk about any offensive capabilities you have. Given that most of these Colonies have been essentially stranded by themselves for three centuries, I don't imagine anyone has a large "conquer other planets" level fleet yet. But maybe your Colony has been in civil war for a hundred years, and has built up an impressive military in that time. Or maybe they even had to fend off a genuine alien invasion.)
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Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)
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