Tortoise

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [NEW PLAYERS WELCOME!]

Starring: Flynn and Ethan

Location: The Yellow Yacht

Onboard the Yellow Yacht, a luxury spaceship of the kind only the wealthiest could afford, a glass of golden champagne fell to the ground, shattered. It spilled into a fine and crimson carpet, an expensive heirloom, and drink mixing with fabric, they made a hideous brown hue. It was ruined. And for the moment, nobody cared. They were busy staring off into space. Literally. Even the stamps- usually tireless, quick- were too stunned by what they were seeing to attend to a mess. There was something more important for once.

They had all gathered around the viewscreen to watch it.

A woman named Molls, the same who had dropped the glass, mumbled with embarrassment "Have you ever seen anything like it?" She didn't know who she was asking, and there was nobody who answered. Her and her sym and her stamps were all huddled in starboard viewing deck and looking out together, into the void of outer space, where among the stars, a second sun was shining. A new one. It was the Gateway: suddenly coming back to life, it looked like a super nova. The void had caught on fire. The people in this grand room, one of them human and the others not, had their mouths hung open in undignified shock.

That's the Gateway, they all realized together. Our Gateway. And its working. It's been three centuries, and its working.

It's strange, how a moment like this blurs all the lines. For the seconds they stood there, all the divisions between them were vanished. They were not Molls, the important Division official, and three of her cyborg-clone servants, and an ingenious sym. They were just five people, stood together, all equally feeling the shock and smallness of watching something so much bigger than them. She nearly imagined that she could feel heat washing over her, radiating out from that portal to a million other worlds. What was out there?

But perfect moments always move forward, and through their viewscreen, they watched the brightness of the Gateway fade down. It demoted itself, from supernova to sun to dim star. It was just another light in an aleady star-dense sky by the time Molls felt a scrubbing sensation near her feet, and realized the stamps were cleaning up the spilled drink. The instant was done. Work was resuming. That, more than anything, made her mind accept that this was real, and that she would, today, have a million things to do.

"Ethan," she said blurrily, "cancel all my appointments. Actually, clear the whole schedule. All of it. For the next week, I don't even want breakfast pre-planned."

"I already did," said Ethan, the sym. He lived inside a tall, humanoid body of yellow steel, and knew Molls' mind better than Molls did. "Except for breakfast. You need to eat breakfast. Also, I already contacted the sym aides to all of the Seven's CEOs and major executives. They will know what has happened shortly."

"What if they don't have a sym aide?"

Ethan scoffed. Ridiculous.

"Right," ceded Molls. Ethan was usually right. "So, they'll know, that's good, and I'll comm with them on that, and..." She looked out again. The Yellow Yacht was a beautiful, rich ship and this was a beautiful, rich room that she stood in, designed for woo-ing corporate executives. It had felt so strange to have it to herself today. Or, relatively to herself. The Oldwell Conglomerate exec she had prepared the ship for cancelled last-minute, and being a Division official and not a corpo herself, she had no real way of changing his mind. The Division couldn't apply pressure, not against a megacorp like Oldwell. So she had planned to instead just sit on one of those soft white couches, watching the stars and talking to Ethan, planning things, while the stamps did... whatever it is that they do. She didn't know. She assumes they'd be doing things, but unless she's about to give a specific order, she never liked to ask. Feels rude.

"Hey," she said to a stamp, still high on the moment. "What are you guys gonna do after this?"

The stamp who answered was a beautiful human-like one with porcelain skin and hyperfocused, rainbow-shaded eyes. She smiled brightly and said, "One of us will have to scrub the ceiling. I saw a drop of your drink go up there."

"Huh. Well, good luck with that."

There was a heavy hand on her shoulder. It was familiar. Ethan said: "I think perhaps now would be time for a nap, Miss Flynn. You will get little sleep in the coming days."

--- --- --- ///---0---\\\ --- --- ---

They had listened first, little AI drones slipped through the Gateway and commanded to stay stealthy. Earth was the first place they went, of course, and what they saw-

The news was wildfire. That not only did humanity live, not only were there other colonies alive, but they had all gathered and formed together into a kind of unit, a large and insane Meeting Place established for Earth's descendants to meet as nations and speak. This was a club the megacorps wanted to belong to. A few more rounds of AI drones slipped through the Gate, gathered up every ounce of information and picked up every broadcast they could which was not encoded, and flew back through before anyone could try to hail them. Information was gathered. With the approval of CEOs and shareholders, if not the general populace, a plan was decided on for how they would approach their fellow Old Earth descendants. It was... crazy, some said. But it was Giltian, and it would make sure they could not be ignored.

That was the fear: that with all these diverse and varied nations huddled up around Sol, the Gilt corps would be ignored. Some annoying traders to brush aside. They needed to know that couldn't happen. And what was the most impressive thing that Gilt had which could be brought through the Gateway?

The Rainbow, the neon city-ship of commerce and luxury, journeyed through the night sky towards the Sol side of the Gateway without warning. On board, four million residents waited and held their breath. They emerged into Sol trying- hard- to make an impression. Fortunately, Gilt was good at making impressions. The ship was already two-dozen colors; when parts of it glowed, and it flared out bright lights into space like spotlights and emitted broadcasts of upbeat Giltian music, nobody would look away.

Miss Molls Flynn was onboard.

She was thinking: the Gateway had been so beautiful from the outside. Even after the initial flare died down, when it had calmed into a restful glow, it was still so beautiful to Flynn's eyes. On her world, she was the Division's Head of Transhuman Resources, and she had accepted that job for a very simple reason: she liked strange things. Most Giltian's didn't, and it was easy for them to pull back in revolt at the not-quiet-human face of a stamp. Xenophobes. She didn't pull back. She leaned in, and studied.

It felt like they were doing the same thing when the Rainbow flew through the Gateway to Sol. Like she was leaning in, leaning in, leaning in until the light was all around her- and then she found that things were even more beautiful on the other end. The Gateway, it looked the same on this side. But now, through a massive window she shared with dozens of other Rainbow residents, some rich and some poor stamps, they saw Earth. They saw Earth. Not Gilt, the golden desert. Not Argent, the shining snowball. It was Earth for the first time. And it was beautiful, too. It was all desolate, all destroyed, a gray and mucky ruined marble. Poisonous. But it was a wonderful, wonderful poison, because seeing it was seeing humanity's home. "We'll fix it one day," she remembers telling the stranger beside her, who didn't answer. "We're coming back."

She was standing in Navigational Command Center now, dressed in a golden-hued suit. Yellow and black were the colors of the evening; the shade of Gilt had to be represented. Hovering cameras were swarming her like planets caught in orbit. They were preparing to make an address to the Meeting Place. Her words would be broadcasted out to every ship and Meeting Place resident that would listen, while some heard only the audio and those who could picked up Molls' video as well.

One last swoop of the not-spotlights to draw attention. If you could make sound in a void, the Rainbow would even be blaring music. They settled for turning up the lights and making the Giltian ship pulse with color. Even the near-invisible hardlight shield that incased her took on a technicolor hue, for but a brief moment. (The shielding couldn't stay on all the time; the power cost was more than Molls' salary.)

Posing behind her, forming the background of the video, were about ten others. There was Ethan, always by Molls' side, and a mixed group of megacorp reps and syms. Every human had been instructed to wear either gold, yellow or bronze as a primary color, and black, bronze or midnight blue as a secondary. Ethan and the other syms were already golden. There were no stamps. They didn't yet want to the other colonies to see Gilt's stranger doings, at least until they were onboard. So it was all men and robots tonight, for their first debut onto the galactic theater.

She cleared her throat, cameras flicked on, and she spoke.

Greetings from Gilt!

"Greetings to the Meeting Place and all the people gathered here! My name is Molls Flynn, and I am delivering a word from the Gilt Division. We are an affiliate body of corporations, companies and free traders who have been working in the Gilt System since the Fall. Now that our Gateway has reopened, we would be glad to extend a hand of friendship, fair trade and mutual gain to all fellow descendants of Earth.

And to that end, we have brought along a structure. This city-ship you see now is the Rainbow, and she contains four million residents! Pretty, isn't she? Here you could find every service or product or entertainment imaginable, and we invite members from all nations to come and see the things Giltians can offer. We excel in gene-therapy, touchable holograms and hardlight, and robotics. For those in need of national-scale solutions such as terraforming services, please contact me directly. With time, we can make even a dead world look like Earth- just mentioning it.

Yes, we look forward to trading with you all. Come and see the sights!"

After she was done, a male speaker said, in a much faster, sped-up voice:
"Invitation onboard the Rainbow does not constitute a visa or citizenship status with the Gilt Division. Please do not interact with genetically resequenced individuals without approval from their holders. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Terms and limitations may apply to any and all offers. Thank you and have a nice day."

--- --- --- ///---0---\\\ --- --- ---

Starring: Andrei Fedorov

Location: Neo London, Gilt

On the lower decks part of the Rainbow, where the wide and crowded corridors were more like streets and alleyways than halls, there was a shift. Reports showed an uptick in holosuite usage. Concerts sold more tickets and the economy started to flow like water. Sales of food, drink, party clothes and sym servant-bodies were all soaring. This city-ship was celebrating and spending quick. The marketplaces that filled the more open parts (there were wider, square-like places on the Rainbow where you could very much forget you were in a ship) were busy and expectant, awaiting the promised foreign visitors. Work productivity alone was going down, everyone so- distracted, drunk, tired? All of them.

The affluent classes were throwing themselves even further into their entertainments this week. Andrei understood why, instinctively: they were trying not to think. The Gateways, open? The other colonies, living? Amazing. Frightening. By gold, the thought of Earth sitting desolate, and the Division new to this community so much bigger than themselves, and this heavy, looming certainty that things would be changing forever. They were trying to drown it all out. With entertainment. With tricks of light and sound, and drink. They could not handle the unknown.

Andrei Federov was looking down at them from behind a gilded window, high up on an interior deck. And he was pushing down his feelings of jealousy- really, he wanted to be out there with them. He loved play, hated work. But by an awful co-conspiring of fate and genetics, he was the son of a CEO. His mother wanted him reared to be a proper Giltian businessman. He was thirty-whatever years old and mom was still trying to do motherly stuff, putting him over big parts of Earnest, Smithers and Black. If he could only be lower on the totem pole...

"Don't you think so, Federov?" A man's voice. Someone else in the small, gray little board room was interrupting his brooding.

"No," said Andrei, having no idea what they were asking about. He didn't even turn away from the window. "I don't think so at all, and I think whoever thought of that idea is stupid."

"...oh." From the stricken sound in the man's voice, it was obviously his own idea he'd been asking about. Well, serves him right. Andrei should be allotted at least ten minutes of uninterpreted brooding per board meeting. He's going to put it in his next contract.

"Alright," Andrei told the window. "Somebody recap me. We already agreed, taking this neon abomination to the Meeting Place wasn't enough. We've made an entrance, but there are, what, how many nations there? And they all have governments and guns and navies? Frankly, I'm nervous. We're here to do business, but if our history books say anything..."

"It's that governments can't be trusted," finished someone. "I think everyone here would agree with that assessment. That's why we were thinking-"

"Our private navy," an older, female voice behind him cut in. "I know it sounds crazy, but we can't ignore this threat at our doorstep. We all know what states do when they get the chance. That's why we honest traders in Earnest, Smithers and Black need to build up our forces." They all thought about this for a second, and then she pressed it a little: "For defensive purposes only, obviously. We'll keep them on the Gilt side of the Gate. We've been behind in the navy game anyway. The pirates are getting ambitious, Everette Corp raided us twice last quarter. Having more ships available clears up all these problems, and now with the Gateways open, your mothe- I mean, our CEO- won't be able to ignore the issue any longer."

"Well," said Andrei at last, "someone give that woman a raise."

"Oh," she chuckled. "Well, the only one here who could give me a raise would be, uh, you, Mr. Federov."

"Somebody promote themselves into someone who can give raises, and then give her a raise.* Alright. Alright. Let's get the paperwork going. Lots of ships. Shiny ships. Ships that have little baby ships inside them. Whatever. The merchants of Gilt will not lose our freedom."

--- --- --- ///---0---\\\ --- --- ---

*She never received the raise.

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [NEW PLAYERS WELCOME!]

The Gilt Division

The Gilt Division

"Life is of Nature; Nature can be Rewritten"

Government Form:
Fragmented Megacorps

Demographics:

By Location:
Gilt: 70%
Argent: 30%
In Space (on mining colonies, asteroids, or the Rainbow): <1%
___

By Corporate Loyalty*:

Oldwell Conglomerate: 30%
Everett Corp: 28%
Earnest, Smithers and Black (EBS): 18%
NeoTerra: 7%
Xederox: 7%
Hei Technology: 6%
Sertron: 4%

_{*These corporations together are called "the Seven," and make up the governance of the Gilt system. The first three are sometimes called "the Top Three," and will have the most influence when it comes to Gilt's dealings with other nations. The "Little Four" that follow them should be less important where other nations are concerned.}
___

By Race:
Human: 66%
Stamp: 30%
Syms*: 4%

_{*As one sym mind can occupy hundreds or thousands of bodies simultaneously, or none at all, the sym population is here calculated based on the number of physical bodies currently in use. No attempt is made to guess how many unique sym minds exist, but the number is probably only a few ten-thousand.}

Stamps

_{Could you tell she's not human?}

There are other words for stamps: they're called clones and cyborgs on the streets, "resequenced individuals" in corporate papers. But "stamp" works for most people; it's not too rude, and it's clear who you're talking about. The people with barcodes tattooed onto their wrists and backs, like a stamp on product at the superstore. The people who are corporate property.

They were built that way; a stamp is anyone created in a gene factory, a streamlined laboratory that grows and sells clones. They were not born. They do not reproduce. Some of them look like humans (some of them most definitely do not), but in a genetic sense, they're not very human at all. They're synthetic people, part organic and part cybernetic, built for specific jobs. Some are bodyguards, with skin like a rhinoceros and nutrasteel bones, and a mind about as trusting of strangers as a paranoid crocodile. Some are pilots, with a preternatural sense of orientation and a neural link connecting them directly into the ship they fly.

But most are just waitresses, cooks, bureaucrats and tech support and janitors, doing low-class jobs, freeing up the human population for more fulfilling work.

They don't typically mind this; by-and-large, stamps are also created to have an intrinsic desire to be helpful. They want to serve a purpose. There may be some dog DNA in there. This works in tandem with cybernetic components of the stamp that keep them focused on fulfilling their purposes. Since their creation, the existence has greatly changed the Gilt economy, and they're part of why most Terrans today have it so much easier and richer than their forebearers. Some in the Division consider this their greatest accomplishment, the crowning glory, but others wonder if they'd still make it a week without their custom-tailored slaves.

Syms

_{Somewhere inside that metal skull, there's memories of a childhood and a sinking feeling of loss}

Giltians believes strongly in only two things. One: the importance of humanity, and two: profit.

The order of these two things is debatable.

With that in mind, it was never likely that corporate scientists would spend time painstakingly. slowly working on advanced AI. The benefits are obvious, but the start-up cost for such a venture is just too high. And, besides, who could trust an AI? An unknowable mind lives behind that screen, as alien to you as water to electric fire. You have no part in it and it has no part in you.

So it was a good day for Gilt when the first sym was created. Their name comes from "simulation," and they are near-exact copies of a human brain, translated into a digital format. This is what they simulate: humanity. An AI that, perhaps is not human, perhaps never was, but thinks of itself as one just as much as you do.

But it should be clear, syms aren't humans who ascended to be silicone. This is not quite like a human becoming an AI. It's more like an AI that's based on a human personality. A human gets into a machine and has his brain scanned, and then his traits and memories and knowledge and everything get stored as a sym. But then the human stands up out of the machine, and continues his life and eventually dies of old age. He doesn't become the AI. There are few on Gilt who believe he does.

The sym and the human exist simultaneously, in fact, and in a funny way, both would probably tell you that they're the original.

But then the sym gets put to work. Like a stamp, they are not free humans, but corporate property, owned by the company that paid for their creation. This is the way Gilt preserves people with truly useful skillsets. If someone is an abnormally skilled pilot or scientist or anything else, the Division will approach them and offer to buy a sym of their mind.

They pay a good bit, since it is a selling of 100% of your personal information, down to your most private thoughts and feelings, to a cold corporation. But the person does gets paid, and gets to continue their life, and an exact copy of them spends forever carrying out their best work.

___

Population:
2.4 Billion

---

Planet Name and Description:

Unlike many colonies, the colony ship sent to the Gilt system had two habitable worlds to chose from. The downside: neither was an ideal choice.

Gilt

_{Scorching heat and thin air; habi-pods like these were dropped down first, to protect the colonists inside.}

"A world of shining opportunity! The little planet of Gilt is full of clean air and plenty of warm, open space, where a pleasantly Earth-like gravity will keep your step light and your mood friendly. The best part? It's bursting with treasure. Gold and rare minerals under the soft Gilt sands. Come and find your fortune!"
-an advertisement for the Gilt/Argent colony ship

Gilt is world smaller than Earth, but with a slightly higher gravity and a thinner atmosphere. It is a little closer to its sun (also a yellow dwarf), which works with the thin atmosphere to keep the place hot at noon and freezing at midnight. Like Mars, its believed that much of the planet used to have water, possibly even oceans, but some unknown and unknowable cataclysm of the past dried them out. Fish fossils are found in low desert dips.

It has life. Or, had life. It had unique life, until the Gilt Division did what they called "a rewriting of the natural ecosystem," and what others call a crime against nature.

But more on that in the History section.

Nowadays, the Gilt ecosystem is similar to Earth's, and most of the local species are a familiar kind. The equatorial "Desert Belt" has Middle-Eastern species like camels and palm trees in some regions, and American breeds like cacti or rattlesnakes living in other areas. You can find Africa-esque savannahs in the more fertile spots and up near the poles, instead of artic cold, only cool forests mirroring Northern Europe or North America. The air and soil of the world, too, has been terraformed into just a drier, hotter reflection of Old Earth.

Gilt has most of the heavy industry of the Division, most of the economic power too. Especially on the equator, shining megacities dot the Desert Belt like little jewels, sacrificing comfort for access to the best resources and easy solar power.

Argent

_{A compact outpost hidden in the mountains; the cold is not the greatest threat here.}

"Be an Explorer: Argent is a cool, wild world of untapped and untamed wilds. But never to fear, our patented Habi-Pods™ will keep your warm and safe while you make this land your own. What will you discover?"
-an advertisement for the Gilt/Argent colony ship

The smaller and colder of the two sisters, Argent is named after an old word for silver- more for its color than its composition. Unlike Gilt, its not much for mineral resources. The atmosphere is more akin to Earth but the lightweight gravity is less so. The biodiversity was the real promise. Unlike Earth, where the truly cold places are barren, snowy Argent is bursting with more life than an Amazon jungle, from the tundra poles to the boreal midregions. The advertisements weren't fluffing it: strange life really does wait around every corner, and lurk under every stone.

This is why nobody wants to live there.

Its not just that the life there is plentiful and strange. It's that, on some level, it's all one thing; all the life on this world cooperates and shares information, even as it competes. This is not metaphor. Scientist believe that Argent may have some kind of primitive, wild hivemind that stretches across every animal and every plant and every of the other, weirder things that defy categorization. The hive's thoughts are like its world: glacial and slow-moving. It has barely noticed the presence of humanity yet, but what it has seen, it does not like. We are an invader.

So, Argent is the less colonized world. Unlike Gilt, no "rewritting" was made of its biosphere, the Division not wanting to ruin the world's greatest attribute. Cities here have to be hidden in the purest tundra, or if they dare to live in the more lifelike regions, fortified against the intruders. They depend heavily on Gilt for economic support. They do, however, serve as a kind of academic center, as their are more universities, labs and gene factories here than anywhere else. People think it may be owing to the crisp air, but people living on Argent often have sudden bursts of inspiration.

For what it's worth, the little bit of food that can be grown here is unusually delicious.

The Rainbow

_{A city in the void- a shining, technicolor beacon of Gilt values.}

While Gilt was being rewritten and Argent was not yet cleared for colonization, there were several awkward years where the Giltian colony ship was orbiting around two potential worlds, but not able to set foot on either one. Claustrophobia was setting in. Don't misunderstand- it was a big ship, one of the largest, with room for 500,000 bodies. The problem is that human bodies do not much like being trapped in close space, fighting for room, breathing recycled air that tastes much like chemicals and drinking water that may have been your neighbor's yesterday urine. Human bodies used to being rich like it even less.

Keeping people from madness, the corporations needed to make space. The funding of a dozen corporations had given the vessel access to on-board industry and fabrication units, originally meant to keep the affluent residents living almost-luxuriously while en route. You need a new dress, by tonight? The ship would make it for you. But, harvesting rich minerals from the Gilt asteroid belt, it became possible to reprogram the units to instead create materials for building new modules, which could be added to the ship gradually. They built new rooms, like private kitchens and luxury apartments. Then, theaters, gyms, dancefloors, restaurants.

Years passed, the desert planet's native life withering, the ship overhead growing and bloating out, a hungry parasite latched to Gilt.

When the all-clear signal for colonization came, the vessel was 70% larger than it had began. It was spacious and rich within, and not everyone wanted to trade that for a harsh life in a desert. Many of the colonists (especially the wealthier and older) stayed onboard, and aided the colonization efforts as they could from above.

Hundreds of years passed, and while expansion slowed, it could never altogether stop. The vessel was renamed the Rainbow after a beautification effort in Yr. 180 After-Earth, funded by an eccentric billionaire. Eccentrics often live on the Rainbow. Originally built for five-hundred-thousand, the ship now contains upwards of four million. If you don't mind elbowing through the crowd sometimes, it is probably the richest place in the system. No longer a colony ship; a city-ship. Their very own Atlantis.

History:

Abomination

The Giltian colony ship came screaming into the Gilt system, the Gateway collapsing behind them. Five-hundred-thousand people gripped their chairs in knuckles white with panic. They had left Earth at the last possible moment, they all realized then. It might be said that they were the very last ship. Barely did their tail end leave the shimmering portal before it disappeared behind them, and were the Gateway was, only the dark of space.

And, below, two habitable planets. Not one: the corporations that funded this final colony ship were in no mood to gamble. They would not find themselves with no world to live on. They would not die homeless in the cold. The story of humanity would not end with a colony ship starving to death in the void, and the rest of the universe moving on without mankind. The capitalist executives that ruled over the colony ship may have spent most of their life in pursuit of profit, but here and now, their calculating, gray minds were all bent in one direction: survival.

With that in mind, they had brought aboard a present. It was a gift, for their new home in the Gilt system. This "gift" was created by one of the corporations that had come aboard this little Noah's Ark of capitalism. The corporation in question was a bleeding-edge, only-slightly-illegal genetics corp called GENIE- a pun of a name that was not so funny at the moment.

The gift was a deadly virus.

No, no, that's not totally true. The virus was only deadly when it didn't work. Killing you was not its goal; if you died, it means something went wrong. When the virus acted as it was meant to, it mutated you, rewrote your DNA towards being... something else. It was highly targeted, and had to be calibrated for the correct results. Calibration takes time. Time is money survival.

They could have gone ahead and colonized Gilt. There was nothing wrong with it, technically; the air was breathable and the gravity perfect, and water could be drawn up from the deep earth. But it had life, unique life of its own. The humans on this ship had agreed before hand that they would not accept such a world. The whole future of humanity was at stake, and in a world of alien life and ways, there was too much risk- risk of losing their own humanity amidst a sea of otherness. And then, who would remember them? Remember the original mankind, and the world they came from? No. Something would be done.

So, the other corporate employees pressured the GENIE scientists to finish their job. They bribed, then threatened, then- as time wore on- they begged. Still, it took years. Strange, lifeless years where the Giltian colony ship floated through space, nobody able to do the thing they had come here for- to colonize. The impatience, the claustrophobia of being all trapped together on one ship while the GENIE people tinkered with a virus, it bred dissent. The first blood was spilled four months after the Gateway closed. A stressed Daython Corporation executive elbowed a janitor out of her way, and the janitor growled something about not working for her anymore, and she argued, and he struck her against the jaw. There were retaliations. Things were boiling.

In the meantime, GENIE tried. They wanted to save everyone. Save mankind. They had to get samples of practically every major form of life on the Gilt planet, and tailor a new strain of the virus to target it specifically. Once a host was infected, the mutation process would begin, and if they were lucky...

Yes, finally, one day, there it was.

With the virus complete, no more time was wasted. Little metal pods were dropped down onto Gilt from orbit, and released the plague into Gilt's thin air like a fresh, fine mist. Every creature that breathed it was infected. And as the infection took hold, they mutated, and became the life of Earth. Bug-like creatures turned into scorpions and cicadas. Alien trees dropped seeds that would grow into, not themselves, but palm trees. A couple more years passed, which were impatient for the waiting colonists, but chaotic and apocalyptic for the natives. Some creatures didn't take well to the virus, and instead of mutating, the virus killed them off.

Some of them were sentient.

The rest of the species did not die away, but changed into other, more familiar species. Their minds and bodies transformed more each generation. Until it was that one beautiful morning, the golden sun rose on a new world that was no longer truly Gilt at all, but a dry mirror of Mother Earth. Fresh and pure and waiting.

Then, they colonized it.

Progression

Decades passed after the Rewriting of Gilt, in which not much noteworthy happened. Cities were built. Life expanded. The old corporations managed to stay in charge, each one staking out its own territory, with one city called Neo London serving as the central hub. There they went to trade, to job-hunt, to celebrate. And the rest of the world was mostly about work.

Life during this early period was harsh but richly rewarding, as the corporations competed with a ferocity over potential employees. This was the Golden Age of Gilt Capitalism: where a man could apply as a janitor with a company, and well and truly work his way up to an executive, with enough smarts and elbow grease. Many of the Giltian ideals about hard work and prosperity originate from this time.

Argent, the other habitable planet in this system, still hadn't been cleared for colonization yet. When one ship of explorers landed there, carnivorous plants ate them all, and then ate the ship. Right down to the metal. A joke was going around that "Argent must have seen what we did to Gilt." It was one of those jokes that has a kernel of truth to it- everyone knew they could just let loose the GENIE virus on Argent, but there was nobody who wanted that. Maybe it was lingering guilt. Or maybe, they didn't want to lose the most valuable thing Argent had to offer: the sheer mystery of its ecology. It was the strangest world anyone had ever heard of, a freezing-cold snowball filled to the brim with more life than a rainforest.

When they did colonize it, they did so without genocide, and carefully. They hunkered down in isolated parts. When they dared to inhabit the wilder regions, it was with walled, dense cities built like fortresses. Argent from that point grew in population, but never much in power; always it has been the little brother to Gilt.

They did, however, invent stamps.

Reportedly, the idea for how to make these genetically-modified, half-cyborg servants came "all at once" into the head of a young scientist at an Argent university. His name was Leo Smith, and everyone thinks he is a liar. Nobody could have thought of such a complex idea in just one moment; he must be bragging. Still, that was the claim. According to Leo, he was sitting in his dorm with the window open one day, and as a cold Argent breeze blew into his bedroom, suddenly he envisioned it all. The design of the cloning chambers that would grow them from fetuses into adulthood in only a few months, the way their DNA could be mixed with animals and aliens to create the perfect features for needed jobs. The way they could breed all the aggression right out and make them perfect, obedient servants. He fainted. When he awoke, he wrote a paper.

Bolduc never tried to make money. He released his idea freely. Smelling opportunity, megacorps jumped at the chance for free labor. Soon, "stamp" clones were taking the hard jobs that humans didn't want to do, and the economy went through a hard few decades of shift. It didn't help that, three days later, in another dorm room on another part of Argent, another young scientist had invented syms.

Consolidation

The Golden Age of Giltian Capitalism was over. With syms stealing the mental labor and stamps the physical, the era of rags-to-riches stories and the self-made man had come to an end. Most humans settled into bureaucratic or managerial jobs, while the work week was reduced and their paycheck was increased greatly. Altogether, a good thing, although progress came to a halt and class mobility was a thing of the past. Giltians settled into a more comfortable kind of life.

Some resisted.

The Mixies: a political movement that started as a reaction to the stamps. Some people had always felt uncomfortable with free labor, but as megacorps installed tracking chips and thought-monitors into stamps, it began to look less like free labor and more like forced labor. History had not altogether been forgotten. Protests spurred up as people called to set the stamps free. These progressive protesters fused themselves together with the larger body of conservatives who were already concerned about the impacts of free labor on people's sense of character, strength and self-sufficiency. "Stamp" became a dirty word. But the last nail in the coffin was something much older: there was a looking back at the Rewriting of Gilt, as it was finally reframed as a genocide in the public's eye. The guilty conscience of Gilt's past was coming back to haunt it. And it was making the megacorps look really, really bad.

Members of the Mixies disavowed their corporate loyalties. Some refused to work, saying that in a society as automated as Gilt had the power to be, work was no longer necessary. Others protested or hung banners. A rebellion in its own way, many found faith- Giltian culture had always been strongly atheist, and a sudden wave of spiritualism amongst the Mixies was a sure mark that they weren't listening to the mainstream thought anymore. The megacorps, secure in their wealth, mostly ignored their detractors- at first. But it came to a head when the first gene factory was bombed.

A gene factory is expensive. Somewhere, a cold-hearted calculation was made. The Division decided that it would cost less to dispose of these discontents than to let them dispose of factories. The Mixies were identified and marked, and then sym assassins were sent to deal with the leaders. It was quick and bloody. The remainders were driven out, out of the cities and out of society. They were a leaderless mob, and had not the organization to fight back. That was thirty years ago. They still exist, but in the desert, as scattered bands of outcasts.

With society suddenly emptied of its discontents, the megacorps were able to consolidate power even more than they had before. Their wealth soared on the back of stamp labor. And the human middle-class, distracted by bread and circuses and frightened away from discontent by tales of savages in the desert, have fully given their loyalty over.

Culture and Society:

_{City life is the only life for most Giltians}

Gilt is a deeply materialistic society. This shows itself in different ways to some than to others. For humans, modern technology has made work easy and their lives light. The work-week has been reduced to four days, and the average shift to less than six hours; a pre-Fall corporation might never have believed that such a thing could happen without unions and unrest, conflict, but the Giltian megacorps have given it over willingly. Most humans are only management and bureaucracy, with stamps and syms doing the real physical and mental labors. It would be possible for most of them not to work at all. But if they didn't, what would happen to society? How could a capitalist world work with half the people always at rest? So, they prefer to keep them lightly employed, and during their plenty of off time, entertained. "Bread and circuses" is the way.

Open-air holosuites call from every street corner, and casinos abound. Theaters with actors human and sym and holographic put on shows that punctuate in firework displays and scream out with beautiful orchestras. Plenty of food. Plenty of rest and play and hobbies. They are a fat, happy middle-class, blind to the issues and to what their employers might be doing.

For the richest humans, that veil is off. Here are the real movers and shakers, who head up corporations. Their own mode of living is no less indulgent than the middle-class, but they express it differently. Much of their time is spent in real work, gaining more wealth while they spend it, on anything they could ever ask for. They can and do eat caviar with one hand (a rare treat, in a world with no ocean) and sign for the purchase of half a continent with the other. Their joy comes from power. Raw, unbeatable authority that comes from immense wealth.

And for the stamps and the syms, they see only the hard edge: that they must work, and lift, and build, and construct for the comfort of others. That they are property. The stamps don't mind it only because they can't mind it, because their will to live for themselves has long-since been taken out of them. The syms might care, but their hard programming would never let them say it. Here is where those that bear the weight of decadence live. When they retire after a sixteen-hour shift, the stamps among them will go to sleep in a bedroom hardly bigger than a coffin. The syms will never sleep. They will keep at work.

There's the core of it. But a couple of other things could go with mentioning.

Remember Earth™

Earth has often been a cultural rallying point for the various, fragmented megacorps of Gilt. Its one thing every human can bind around, period. Even the stamps borrow their DNA from there, and the syms, their minds.

It has always been important to Giltians that humanity is not made totally a thing of the past. That we do not modify ourselves too far, or forget our native culture, or all "ascend" into AI. That is why the dividing line between the humans and the transhumans of Gilt exists in the first place; to keep humanity clean of infection. That the transhumans can be one thing, and the real humans- untouched, as we were on Earth- another. Even the greedier and seedier of megacorps have tried to tow this line.

Remembering Earth: that's another part of this equation. Not only to keep humanity physically the same, but to keep us anchored to the same cultural notes. So, it is very important to the gilt division that humans keep up their dress, accents, drinks and foods of the past. Often, people will even practice an "Old Earth" accent or dress-style that they otherwise would never have had, a woman practicing her Korean accent and wearing a hanbok to work. A man who drinks whiskey and "puts on" a Scottish accent that perhaps is not native to him. This is Remembering Earth. Keeping the disparate, beautiful cultures of our homeland alive. Even when, sometimes and in some lightings, it can feel like a bit of an act.

Pirate Culture

There's enough space pirates marauding the Gilt system, and they live separately enough from the main chunk of people, that they have their own culture. A clear-cut criminal one, but nonetheless, culture is culture. Pirates are no less greedy and ownership-oriented as the corpos they steal from, but out here in the void, the knives are a little more visible. In a lot of ways, they're a dark and dirty mirror of Gilt's more proper society.

Like the "Top Three" Megacorps who lead up the Division, there are three Pirate Leagues who compete for targets and territory. The Silver Robbers, the first and strongest, have set in motion a loose Pirate Code that keeps some level of cooperation going between pirates, just as the Division proper has done for Gilt. They also have stamps; but theirs are the rare, defective stamps who have enough willpower to reject a life of slavery. And they have- one- AI.

And they, too, remember Earth. The pirates play along with the Giltian's game. Wearing old-fashioned, swashbuckling-ready attire like blouses and coats, loose pants, and their preferred accents: the seventeenth-century editions of West Country English, Jamaican, and Scottish. Their bases are holed-up in captured asteroid mines, a few small cities of Argent that could not resist them, and (oddly enough) onboard the Rainbow, which looks the other way so long as their "piratical guests" pay a proper fee.

---

Governance and Politics:

The Division is a group of megacorps. They're capitalistic, profit-motivated organizations that seeks to maximize profit and treat all of their people as either employees or property. They are unscrupulous, materialistic, and money-oriented. They work smoothly as a unit when they have to, but if they don't, they're not above stealing from or fighting one another. For most people, this is as far as we'll need to go.

But, if you like details, read on.

Details for NERDS

Hey, Enigmatik, good to see you here. You too, Crus.

Alright, let's go.

The Gilt Division is not, as we've mentioned, a true megacorp. It is more like seven different megacorps stacked on top of each other and wearing a trench coat, lurking in alleyways, offering to sell you genetically-modified watches. The body called the "Division" is actually only a small, bureaucratic group of officials that are selected by the most powerful megacorps to resolve disputes and manage neutral issues, like a UN made of corporations. It's the closest the Seven will let themselves get to having a government. It mints a money they all use, has some power to enforce patents and trademarks and whatnots, and keeps a watch on any major issues that might one day become a crisis for everyone.

But being an almost-government in a very anarcho-capitalist world, The Division has little power beyond that; mostly, they are there to advice the megacorps and negotiate disputes between them, but the most powerful corps may or may not actually listen to them. Again, I reference the UN.

When you cut past all the fluff and get right down to it, the Division only has two more real responsibilities. Only two major issues that let them flex their muscles.

The first is when it comes to the transhumanist population. Although each stamp and sym belongs strictly to either the corporation that made them or whomever has since purchased them, the Division gets to set limits on how many can be produced at a given time. This power was granted to them only recently, as a response to the growing fears of "real humanity" being drowned out in a wave of genetically-perfect clones.

The second, sadly, is... foreign policy. Yes, foreign policy. A bad joke, on a world that has no foreign nations to deal with. It's not hard to imagine megacorp officials laughing behind their hands as they send an unlikable coworker to join the Division, saying to them "Well, now you'll get to set foreign policy! Won't that be exciting?" There is a real point to having the Division handle any hypothetical foreign nations- without any corporate loyalties, they have a more neutral view than anyone else in the fragmented landscape of Gilt politics, and this issue is one of the few that one can't afford to slip up on.

But, as time stretched on and on and on, and no other nations (alien or human) were ever found, the whole idea had become almost a humiliation of the Division. And then the Gateways started to waver to life...

Now there, that's the boring part done. Let's talk about something more fun: space pirates. Gilt has a space pirate problem.

It's a major issue, or getting to be. Some consider it only the natural consequence of having a society that so idolizes ambition, risk-taking and personal profit, even at another's expense. That is the mix that creates cutthroat executives, sure. But it's also a perfect recipe for the career criminal.

Some of the poorer humans of Argent (plus a nice, motley mix of defective stamps) found themselves in possession of a small swarm of beetle ships from an underfunded security zone on Argent. This was about fifty years ago. Since then, the group that right-away started calling themselves the Silver Robbers has grown, splintered, stolen more ships, established a hierarchy and a Pirate Code, and altogether just become a huge, swashbuckling thorn in the side of Gilt's spaceborne operations. They love nothing more than hitting the sensitive trade routes between Gilt proper and the Argent colony.

The current Pirate Queen is a red-headed stamp who names herself Ariel, and the price on her head is quite high.

Technology Overview:

_{A complex tower seeds the Giltian South Pole, while thickening the air with CO2 and fresh oxygen}

It's hard to account for three-hundred years of progress. If we're going to speak broadly, the megacorps of Gilt have made strong progress in many major fields of research, but mostly when they can see some tangible reward for all their studying. Science, like everything, must be profit-oriented. Ideas that don't lead to immediate gain are usually under-funded. There are more engineers and economists on Gilt than linguists.

A few of the more important techs are listed out below. If Gilt specializes in anything, its these.

Gene Modding:
Two of the twelve corporations that founded Gilt had a major stake in genetics, and progress in this field has never ceased. The stamps are an obvious triumph, but smaller genetic miracles happen too, everyday. Lab-grown organs and DNA-repair therapy keep humans healthy longer than natural. If you can afford it, it's not impossible to extend your life by more than a century. And speaking of healing: many of the newer models of Gilt ships can "heal" damage to their hull, by triggering organic tissue to grow into the damaged space. The healed-up portions are always weaker than the original metal was, but they stop the void from getting in, and that's a use.

Most things on Gilt are at a little bit alive, really. If you crack open any computer or ship system on Gilt, you'll usually find a couple of biological components in there, mixed right in with the silicone. Even syms have a bit of neural tissue, helping them think a little faster than pure processing power would allow. Everything is cyborg but the humans.

Terraforming:
A large-scale project like terraforming is never cheap, and probably wouldn't get funding if it wasn't for the clear difference between Gilt and Argent. Seeing how much easier (and incomparably more profitable) life is on the golden planet than the silver one, the major megacorps have been convinced that terraforming is a worth-while investment. The Reset of Gilt provides the foundation for fixing the ecosystem of a new world; the GENIE virus still exists. But since then, the Division corps have also learned to adjust temperature, atmosphere, soil composition and other details of a planet to make it into an almost-Earth. Gravity problems and extreme outliers alone cannot be fixed, and this is why none of the other planets in the Gilt system have yet been terraformed.

It would be nice to end there. But it should be said: some of the darker-minded scientists have theorized that GENIE and terraforming techs could be revamped into a WMD. One that devastates the ecology of a world while making it quickly unlivable. No such weapon has been built; right now, it only exists inside the minds of a few people. But it's not impossible.

Hardlight and Holograms:
Originally created by the entertainment industry, believe it or not. Holographic movies were a big hit early on in Gilt's history, creating a cinematic experience all around you. They expanded from there out into something more video game-esque, as users took on the role of a main character in a story. It looked and sounded totally real, like you were truly, say, battling with a dragon. It only didn't feel real; you still had to wear gloves that mimicked the sensations of holding that sword, and heated up just a bit when the beast breathed its flames. Immersion was always broken.

For many societies, that would still be more than plenty; but Gilt is a land of bread and circuses. The megacorps (especially Everett Corp) poured funding into created touchable holograms. Hardlight creations that have substance, as realistic as real touch, because it is real touch. The power cost of these things is immense, however; touchable holograms still only work inside specialized holosuites, and only for the affluent. Recently, the tech has also been renovated into hardlight shielding for ships during combat.

Unfortunately, holographic anime also exists.

And we'll end on that.

Military Overview:

Naval Combat

In terms of space combat, Gilt is well tested. Their constant problems with piracy have forced them to develop a navy. No, that's not true; it's forced them to develop a half-dozen very tiny navies, each one owned by different megacorps that have a stake in trading routes. The Division isn't a government, really; it's not going to protect you from the pirates. So, if you need protection, you buy it yourself.

But... these ships haven't stayed aimed only at the pirates. It was not long that the navy-wielding megacorps realized that it would be just as easy to disrupt their competitor's operations. Megacorps often rob each other's trade routes as much as the pirates do. Skirmishes are common. It has, so far, never amounted to full-scale war, owing to the general practicality of the Giltians; they figure, a real war would only drain resources from both sides- it's far better to just let steal whenever you can, try to defend yourself the rest of the time, and don't do anything stupid.

The same gray pragmatism goes into their ship designs. A space vessel is expensive, so their first designs were dense, shielded little scrappers. "Beetles," they were nicknamed. They built up a little from there, but the overall principle of it never changed. "Soak up the damage, power up the hardlight shields; don't ever lose a ship."

Since their competitors adopted the same practices, they often have to use a scattered, fast-paced mass driver weapon for overwhelming the AI-controlled shield systems, and then a torpedo/missile for cracking open the hull. Plasma-cutters, first designed for mining and profit, have also been repurposed defense, for more precision strikes against dense, metal surfaces.

And, in an ironic twist, all the focus on defense has led to many captains using their tough little ships as battering rams. So long as they think they can take the hit better than the other guys can. This birthed the idea of the boarding torpedo, a torpedo who's payload is not an explosive but a flock of waiting soldiers- a Trojan horse that doesn't wait for you to open the gates.

The bigger Gilt ships have had to invest a lot in point-defense, keeping off the missiles, the boarding torpedoes, and occasionally the ramming runs of a suicidal captain. Naval fights around Gilt are a close-range, brutal affair. They are street fights in a void, likely to end in broken bones.

And, on that dramatic line, I'll leave you with some ships.

Ship Details and Designs

Beetle Ships

<sub>Treasurer Class: the classic, well-rounded Beetle. Not too fast, but highly armored and shielded, with powerful close-range weaponry meant to crack open the toughest hulls.


Prospector Class: a quicker Beetle, built for taking down rival cruisers. Likes to move in annoying, strafing runs that throw missiles and scattered mass-drivers at the sides of targets. Carries boarding torpedoes.


Fighter Drone: small ships, only a little more than a man tall. In professional navies, these are piloted by a sym mind, but pirates usually have to crawl in and fly manually. They'll often be protectors of the larger ships, and have powerful shields for their size. In other circumstances, they might swarm unshielded ships and hit critical components with precision cutters.</sub>

Cruisers and (rare) Battleships

<sub>The Mercenary class: a light cruiser, created as a response to the growing number of Beetles and other small ships, the Mercenary specializes in anti-fighter weapons and point-defense. Practically functions as what other navies might term a "destroyer." Fast, for a Gilt ship.



The Broker class: a chunky cruiser with room for other vessels, so that it can rely on releasing drones and Beetles and throwing around boarding torpedoes. On its own, probably not as dangerous as the Mercenary, but far more independent.



The Negotiator class: A proper battleship, built for taking on other mid-to-large targets in a naval-battle type scenario. Not made for scrapping with pirates or bothering with Beetles, so only a handful of these currently exist. Their best purpose is killing cruisers in corpo-on-corpo scuffles; and it's hard to convince your boss to fund such a serious ship only for those.</sub>

Uniques

<sub>Searat: a one-of-a-kind battleship with experimental stealth capabilities, created first by the Everett Corp, but promptly stolen by the Pirate Queen for her own goals. It's now the roving base for the Silver Robbers.



The Yellow Yacht: a luxurious ship attended to by sym servants, with everything from a personal robotic chef, to a holo-suite able to create anything one can imagine, to a massive pool with a view of the stars above. Currently in the possession of the Division proper, for use when they need to "wow" a particular megacorp contact.</sub>

Planetside Combat

Gilt doesn't have much experience fighting on the ground. The planet of Gilt was already subdued before they landed, and while Argent throws monsters their way, the Division would rather fortify and hide its cities than try to wage war against a planet.

The only need for military-type moves have been hostile operations between megacorps, occasionally putting down revolts, and scouting out the more dangerous parts of the Argent world. The first and the last are the most common- the last near-rebellion was thirty years ago, the Mixie Moment. The weapons and combat armor that were employed there are the most advanced that the Division has to this day.

But combat armor is, still, a real presence. It has a place onboard most of the navy ships, so that when a boarding torpedo gets through, somebody is ready to fight off whatever comes out it. Unlike the ships themselves, Giltian armor likes maneuverability and comfort, more matching with scouts and pirates than warriors. Like the ships, the ones meant to be seen publicly have a gold-themed, gaudy design that advertises the wealth of the megacorp. (Or the Pirate League that stole it.) Their shine is worse than their bite.

They still use mass-driver weapons- guns, that is. Metals and minerals are cheaper on Gilt than energy is. The interior of a Gilt ship is usually sturdy enough to handle a few stray shots. Combat-bred stamps do most of the fighting, with sym minds strategizing and providing on-the-job assistance. Together, they're several times more effective than any human could be, even if there aren't very many of them. In a hypothetical war against another human nation, Gilitian soldiers would be unfairly fast, powerful and high-tech, but very few in number. Gilt has just never had a need to create many of them.

Human fighters are rare. If they're present at all, its only to keep an eye on the transhumans.

Concept Art

<sub>A scout, probably a sym


A stamp soldier in his armor, as ready for a showcasing as a battle


A heavy combat stamp, boarding an enemy vessel


A heavy combat stamp at work with fellow soldiers</sub>

(More to be added later)

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [NEW PLAYERS WELCOME!]

You don’t need me to say you’re accepted, but you are.

@Irredeemable

Shoulda just started posting IC one day without even telling anyone first, like a chad.

"Wait, who are the Gilt Division? What's a sym?"

"I dunno but apparently Tort's back."

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [NEW PLAYERS WELCOME!]

Let's go, my children.

The Gilt Division

The Gilt Division

"Life is of Nature; Nature can be Rewritten"

Government Form:
Fragmented Megacorps

Demographics:

By Location:
Gilt: 70%
Argent: 30%
In Space (on mining colonies, asteroids, or the Rainbow): <1%
___

By Corporate Loyalty*:

Oldwell Conglomerate: 30%
Everett Corp: 28%
Earnest, Smithers and Black (EBS): 18%
NeoTerra: 7%
Federox: 7%
Hei Technology: 6%
Sertron: 4%

_{*These corporations together are called "the Seven," and make up the governance of the Gilt system. The first three are sometimes called "the Top Three," and will have the most influence when it comes to Gilt's dealings with other nations. The "Little Four" that follow them should be less important where other nations are concerned.}
___

By Race:
Human: 66%
Stamp: 30%
Syms*: 4%

_{*As one sym mind can occupy hundreds or thousands of bodies simultaneously, or none at all, the sym population is here calculated based on the number of physical bodies currently in use. No attempt is made to guess how many unique sym minds exist, but the number is probably only a few ten-thousand.}

Stamps

_{Could you tell she's not human?}

There are other words for stamps: they're called clones and cyborgs on the streets, "resequenced individuals" in corporate papers. But "stamp" works for most people; it's not too rude, and it's clear who you're talking about. The people with barcodes tattooed onto their wrists and backs, like a stamp on product at the superstore. The people who are corporate property.

They were built that way; a stamp is anyone created in a gene factory, a streamlined laboratory that grows and sells clones. They were not born. They do not reproduce. They look mostly like humans, but in a genetic sense, they're not very human at all. They're synthetic people, part organic and part cybernetic, built for specific jobs. Some are bodyguards, with skin like a rhinoceros and nutrasteel bones, and a mind about as trusting of strangers as a paranoid crocodile. Some are pilots, with a preternatural sense of orientation and a neural link connecting them directly into the ship they fly.

But most are just waitresses, cooks, bureaucrats and tech support and janitors, doing low-class jobs, freeing up the human population for more fulfilling work.

They don't typically mind this; by-and-large, stamps are also created to have an intrinsic desire to be helpful. They want to serve a purpose. There may be some dog DNA in there. This works in tandem with cybernetic components of the stamp that keep them focused on fulfilling their purposes. Since their creation, the existence has greatly changed the Gilt economy, and they're part of why most Terrans today have it so much easier and richer than their forebearers. Some in the Division consider this their greatest accomplishment, the crowning glory, but others wonder if they'd still make it a week without their custom-tailored slaves.

Syms

_{Somewhere inside that metal skull, there's memories of a childhood and a sinking feeling of loss}

Giltians believes strongly in only two things. One: the importance of humanity, and two: profit.

The order of these two things is debatable.

With that in mind, it was never likely that corporate scientists would spend time painstakingly. slowly working on advanced AI. The benefits are obvious, but the start-up cost for such a venture is just too high. And, besides, who could trust an AI? An unknowable mind lives behind that screen, as alien to you as water to electric fire. You have no part in it and it has no part in you.

So it was a good day for Gilt when the first sym was created. Their name comes from "simulation," and they are near-exact copies of a human brain, translated into a digital format. This is what they simulate: humanity. An AI that, perhaps is not human, perhaps never was, but thinks of itself as one just as much as you do.

But it should be clear, syms aren't humans who ascended to be silicone. This is not quite like a human becoming an AI. It's more like an AI that's based on a human personality. A human gets into a machine and has his brain scanned, and then his traits and memories and knowledge and everything get stored as a sym. But then the human stands up out of the machine, and continues his life and eventually dies of old age. He doesn't become the AI. There are few on Gilt who believe he does.

The sym and the human exist simultaneously, in fact, and in a funny way, both would probably tell you that they're the original.

But then the sym gets put to work. Like a stamp, they are not free humans, but corporate property, owned by the company that paid for their creation. This is the way Gilt preserves people with truly useful skillsets. If someone is an abnormally skilled pilot or scientist or anything else, the Division will approach them and offer to buy a sym of their mind.

They pay a good bit, since it is a selling of 100% of your personal information, down to your most private thoughts and feelings, to a cold corporation. But the person does gets paid, and gets to continue their life, and an exact copy of them spends forever carrying out their best work.

___

Population:
2.4 Billion

---

Planet Name and Description:

Unlike many colonies, the colony ship sent to the Gilt system had two habitable worlds to chose from. The downside: neither was an ideal choice.

Gilt

_{Scorching heat and thin air; habi-pods like these were dropped down first, to protect the colonists inside.}

"A world of shining opportunity! The little planet of Gilt is full of clean air and plenty of warm, open space, where a pleasantly Earth-like gravity will keep your step light and your mood friendly. The best part? It's bursting with treasure. Gold and rare minerals under the soft Gilt sands. Come and find your fortune!"
-an advertisement for the Gilt/Argent colony ship

Gilt is world smaller than Earth, but with a slightly higher gravity and a thinner atmosphere. It is a little closer to its sun (also a yellow dwarf), which works with the thin atmosphere to keep the place hot at noon and freezing at midnight. Like Mars, its believed that much of the planet used to have water, possibly even oceans, but some unknown and unknowable cataclysm of the past dried them out. Fish fossils are found in low desert dips.

It has life. Or, had life. It had unique life, until the Gilt Division did what they called "a rewriting of the natural ecosystem," and what others call a crime against nature.

But more on that in the History section.

Nowadays, the Gilt ecosystem is similar to Earth's, and most of the local species are a familiar kind. The equatorial "Desert Belt" has Middle-Eastern species like camels and palm trees in some regions, and American breeds like cacti or rattlesnakes living in other areas. You can find Africa-esque savannahs in the more fertile spots and up near the poles, instead of artic cold, only cool forests mirroring Northern Europe or North America. The air and soil of the world, too, has been terraformed into just a drier, hotter reflection of Old Earth.

Gilt has most of the heavy industry of the Division, most of the economic power too. Especially on the equator, shining megacities dot the Desert Belt like little jewels, sacrificing comfort for access to the best resources and easy solar power.

Argent

_{A compact outpost hidden in the mountains; the cold is not the greatest threat here.}

"Be an Explorer: Argent is a cool, wild world of untapped and untamed wilds. But never to fear, our patented Habi-Pods™ will keep your warm and safe while you make this land your own. What will you discover?"
-an advertisement for the Gilt/Argent colony ship

The smaller and colder of the two sisters, Argent is named after an old word for silver- more for its color than its composition. Unlike Gilt, its not much for mineral resources. The atmosphere is more akin to Earth but the lightweight gravity is less so. The biodiversity was the real promise. Unlike Earth, where the truly cold places are barren, snowy Argent is bursting with more life than an Amazon jungle, from the tundra poles to the boreal midregions. The advertisements weren't fluffing it: strange life really does wait around every corner, and lurk under every stone.

This is why nobody wants to live there.

Its not just that the life there is plentiful and strange. It's that, on some level, it's all one thing; all the life on this world cooperates and shares information, even as it competes. This is not metaphor. Scientist believe that Argent may have some kind of primitive, wild hivemind that stretches across every animal and every plant and every of the other, weirder things that defy categorization. The hive's thoughts are like its world: glacial and slow-moving. It has barely noticed the presence of humanity yet, but what it has seen, it does not like. We are an invader.

So, Argent is the less colonized world. Unlike Gilt, no "rewritting" was made of its biosphere, the Division not wanting to ruin the world's greatest attribute. Cities here have to be hidden in the purest tundra, or if they dare to live in the more lifelike regions, fortified against the intruders. They depend heavily on Gilt for economic support. They do, however, serve as a kind of academic center, as their are more universities, labs and gene factories here than anywhere else. People think it may be owing to the crisp air, but people living on Argent often have sudden bursts of inspiration.

For what it's worth, the little bit of food that can be grown here is unusually delicious.

The Rainbow

_{A city in the void- a shining, technicolor beacon of Gilt values.}

While Gilt was being rewritten and Argent was not yet cleared for colonization, there were several awkward years where the Giltian colony ship was orbiting around two potential worlds, but not able to set foot on either one. Claustrophobia was setting in. Don't misunderstand- it was a big ship, one of the largest, with room for 500,000 bodies. The problem is that human bodies do not much like being trapped in close space, fighting for room, breathing recycled air that tastes much like chemicals and drinking water that may have been your neighbor's yesterday urine. Human bodies used to being rich like it even less.

Keeping people from madness, the corporations needed to make space. The funding of a dozen corporations had given the vessel access to on-board industry and fabrication units, originally meant to keep the affluent residents living almost-luxuriously while en route. You need a new dress, by tonight? The ship would make it for you. But, harvesting rich minerals from the Gilt asteroid belt, it became possible to reprogram the units to instead create materials for building new modules, which could be added to the ship gradually. They built new rooms, like private kitchens and luxury apartments. Then, theaters, gyms, dancefloors, restaurants.

Years passed, the desert planet's native life withering, the ship overhead growing and bloating out, a hungry parasite latched to Gilt.

When the all-clear signal for colonization came, the vessel was 70% larger than it had began. It was spacious and rich within, and not everyone wanted to trade that for a harsh life in a desert. Many of the colonists (especially the wealthier and older) stayed onboard, and aided the colonization efforts as they could from above.

Hundreds of years passed, and while expansion slowed, it could never altogether stop. The vessel was renamed the Rainbow after a beautification effort in Yr. 180 After-Earth, funded by an eccentric billionaire. Eccentrics often live on the Rainbow. Originally built for five-hundred-thousand, the ship now contains upwards of four million. If you don't mind elbowing through the crowd sometimes, it is probably the richest place in the system. No longer a colony ship; a city-ship. Their very own Atlantis.

History:

Abomination

The Giltian colony ship came screaming into the Gilt system, the Gateway collapsing behind them. Five-hundred-thousand people gripped their chairs in knuckles white with panic. They had left Earth at the last possible moment, they all realized then. It might be said that they were the very last ship. Barely did their tail end leave the shimmering portal before it disappeared behind them, and were the Gateway was, only the dark of space.

And, below, two habitable planets. Not one: the corporations that funded this final colony ship were in no mood to gamble. They would not find themselves with no world to live on. They would not die homeless in the cold. The story of humanity would not end with a colony ship starving to death in the void, and the rest of the universe moving on without mankind. The capitalist executives that ruled over the colony ship may have spent most of their life in pursuit of profit, but here and now, their calculating, gray minds were all bent in one direction: survival.

With that in mind, they had brought aboard a present. It was a gift, for their new home in the Gilt system. This "gift" was created by one of the corporations that had come aboard this little Noah's Ark of capitalism. The corporation in question was a bleeding-edge, only-slightly-illegal genetics corp called GENIE- a pun of a name that was not so funny at the moment.

The gift was a deadly virus.

No, no, that's not totally true. The virus was only deadly when it didn't work. Killing you was not its goal; if you died, it means something went wrong. When the virus acted as it was meant to, it mutated you, rewrote your DNA towards being... something else. It was highly targeted, and had to be calibrated for the correct results. Calibration takes time. Time is money survival.

They could have gone ahead and colonized Gilt. There was nothing wrong with it, technically; the air was breathable and the gravity perfect, and water could be drawn up from the deep earth. But it had life, unique life of its own. The humans on this ship had agreed before hand that they would not accept such a world. The whole future of humanity was at stake, and in a world of alien life and ways, there was too much risk- risk of losing their own humanity amidst a sea of otherness. And then, who would remember them? Remember the original mankind, and the world they came from? No. Something would be done.

So, the other corporate employees pressured the GENIE scientists to finish their job. They bribed, then threatened, then- as time wore on- they begged. Still, it took years. Strange, lifeless years where the Giltian colony ship floated through space, nobody able to do the thing they had come here for- to colonize. The impatience, the claustrophobia of being all trapped together on one ship while the GENIE people tinkered with a virus, it bred dissent. The first blood was spilled four months after the Gateway closed. A stressed Daython Corporation executive elbowed a janitor out of her way, and the janitor growled something about not working for her anymore, and she argued, and he struck her against the jaw. There were retaliations. Things were boiling.

In the meantime, GENIE tried. They wanted to save everyone. Save mankind. They had to get samples of practically every major form of life on the Gilt planet, and tailor a new strain of the virus to target it specifically. Once a host was infected, the mutation process would begin, and if they were lucky...

Yes, finally, one day, there it was.

With the virus complete, no more time was wasted. Little metal pods were dropped down onto Gilt from orbit, and released the plague into Gilt's thin air like a fresh, fine mist. Every creature that breathed it was infected. And as the infection took hold, they mutated, and became the life of Earth. Bug-like creatures turned into scorpions and cicadas. Alien trees dropped seeds that would grow into, not themselves, but palm trees. A couple more years passed, which were impatient for the waiting colonists, but chaotic and apocalyptic for the natives. Some creatures didn't take well to the virus, and instead of mutating, the virus killed them off.

Some of them were sentient.

The rest of the species did not die away, but changed into other, more familiar species. Their minds and bodies transformed more each generation. Until it was that one beautiful morning, the golden sun rose on a new world that was no longer truly Gilt at all, but a dry mirror of Mother Earth. Fresh and pure and waiting.

Then, they colonized it.

Progression

Decades passed after the Rewriting of Gilt, in which not much noteworthy happened. Cities were built. Life expanded. The old corporations managed to stay in charge, each one staking out its own territory, with one city called Neo London serving as the central hub. There they went to trade, to job-hunt, to celebrate. And the rest of the world was mostly about work.

Life during this early period was harsh but richly rewarding, as the corporations competed with a ferocity over potential employees. This was the Golden Age of Gilt Capitalism: where a man could apply as a janitor with a company, and well and truly work his way up to an executive, with enough smarts and elbow grease. Many of the Giltian ideals about hard work and prosperity originate from this time.

Argent, the other habitable planet in this system, still hadn't been cleared for colonization yet. When one ship of explorers landed there, carnivorous plants ate them all, and then ate the ship. Right down to the metal. A joke was going around that "Argent must have seen what we did to Gilt." It was one of those jokes that has a kernel of truth to it- everyone knew they could just let loose the GENIE virus on Argent, but there was nobody who wanted that. Maybe it was lingering guilt. Or maybe, they didn't want to lose the most valuable thing Argent had to offer: the sheer mystery of its ecology. It was the strangest world anyone had ever heard of, a freezing-cold snowball filled to the brim with more life than a rainforest.

When they did colonize it, they did so without genocide, and carefully. They hunkered down in isolated parts. When they dared to inhabit the wilder regions, it was with walled, dense cities built like fortresses. Argent from that point grew in population, but never much in power; always it has been the little brother to Gilt.

They did, however, invent stamps.

Reportedly, the idea for how to make these genetically-modified, half-cyborg servants came "all at once" into the head of a young scientist at an Argent university. His name was Leo Smith, and everyone thinks he is a liar. Nobody could have thought of such a complex idea in just one moment; he must be bragging. Still, that was the claim. According to Leo, he was sitting in his dorm with the window open one day, and as a cold Argent breeze blew into his bedroom, suddenly he envisioned it all. The design of the cloning chambers that would grow them from fetuses into adulthood in only a few months, the way their DNA could be mixed with animals and aliens to create the perfect features for needed jobs. The way they could breed all the aggression right out and make them perfect, obedient servants. He fainted. When he awoke, he wrote a paper.

Bolduc never tried to make money. He released his idea freely. Smelling opportunity, megacorps jumped at the chance for free labor. Soon, "stamp" clones were taking the hard jobs that humans didn't want to do, and the economy went through a hard few decades of shift. It didn't help that, three days later, in another dorm room on another part of Argent, another young scientist had invented syms.

Consolidation

The Golden Age of Giltian Capitalism was over. With syms stealing the mental labor and stamps the physical, the era of rags-to-riches stories and the self-made man had come to an end. Most humans settled into bureaucratic or managerial jobs, while the work week was reduced and their paycheck was increased greatly. Altogether, a good thing, although progress came to a halt and class mobility was a thing of the past. Giltians settled into a more comfortable kind of life.

Some resisted.

The Mixies: a political movement that started as a reaction to the stamps. Some people had always felt uncomfortable with free labor, but as megacorps installed tracking chips and thought-monitors into stamps, it began to look less like free labor and more like forced labor. History had not altogether been forgotten. Protests spurred up as people called to set the stamps free. These progressive protesters fused themselves together with the larger body of conservatives who were already concerned about the impacts of free labor on people's sense of character, strength and self-sufficiency. "Stamp" became a dirty word. But the last nail in the coffin was something much older: there was a looking back at the Rewriting of Gilt, as it was finally reframed as a genocide in the public's eye. The guilty conscience of Gilt's past was coming back to haunt it. And it was making the megacorps look really, really bad.

Members of the Mixies disavowed their corporate loyalties. Some refused to work, saying that in a society as automated as Gilt had the power to be, work was no longer necessary. Others protested or hung banners. A rebellion in its own way, many found faith- Giltian culture had always been strongly atheist, and a sudden wave of spiritualism amongst the Mixies was a sure mark that they weren't listening to the mainstream thought anymore. The megacorps, secure in their wealth, mostly ignored their detractors- at first. But it came to a head when the first gene factory was bombed.

A gene factory is expensive. Somewhere, a cold-hearted calculation was made. The Division decided that it would cost less to dispose of these discontents than to let them dispose of factories. The Mixies were identified and marked, and then sym assassins were sent to deal with the leaders. It was quick and bloody. The remainders were driven out, out of the cities and out of society. They were a leaderless mob, and had not the organization to fight back. That was thirty years ago. They still exist, but in the desert, as scattered bands of outcasts.

With society suddenly emptied of its discontents, the megacorps were able to consolidate power even more than they had before. Their wealth soared on the back of stamp labor. And the human middle-class, distracted by bread and circuses and frightened away from discontent by tales of savages in the desert, have fully given their loyalty over.

Culture and Society:
Gilt is a deeply materialistic society. This shows itself in different ways to some than to others. For humans, modern technology has made work easy and their lives light. The work-week has been reduced to four days, and the average shift to less than six hours; a pre-Fall corporation might never have believed that such a thing could happen without unions and unrest, conflict, but the Giltian megacorps have given it over willingly. Most humans are only management and bureaucracy, with stamps and syms doing the real physical and mental labors. It would be possible for most of them not to work at all. But if they didn't, what would happen to society? How could a capitalist world work with half the people always at rest? So, they prefer to keep them lightly employed, and during their plenty of off time, entertained. "Bread and circuses" is the way.

Open-air holosuites call from every street corner, and casinos abound. Theaters with actors human and sym and holographic put on shows that punctuate in firework displays and scream out with beautiful orchestras. Plenty of food. Plenty of rest and play and hobbies. They are a fat, happy middle-class, blind to the issues and to what their employers might be doing.

For the richest humans, that veil is off. Here are the real movers and shakers, who head up corporations. Their own mode of living is no less indulgent than the middle-class, but they express it differently. Much of their time is spent in real work, gaining more wealth while they spend it, on anything they could ever ask for. They can and do eat caviar with one hand (a rare treat, in a world with no ocean) and sign for the purchase of half a continent with the other. Their joy comes from power. Raw, unbeatable authority that comes from immense wealth.

And for the stamps and the syms, they see only the hard edge: that they must work, and lift, and build, and construct for the comfort of others. That they are property. The stamps don't mind it only because they can't mind it, because their will to live for themselves has long-since been taken out of them. The syms might care, but their hard programming would never let them say it. Here is where those that bear the weight of decadence live. When they retire after a sixteen-hour shift, the stamps among them will go to sleep in a bedroom hardly bigger than a coffin. The syms will never sleep. They will keep at work.

There's the core of it. But a couple of other things could go with mentioning.

Remember Earth™

Earth has often been a cultural rallying point for the various, fragmented megacorps of Gilt. Its one thing every human can bind around, period. Even the stamps borrow their DNA from there, and the syms, their minds.

It has always been important to Giltians that humanity is not made totally a thing of the past. That we do not modify ourselves too far, or forget our native culture, or all "ascend" into AI. That is why the dividing line between the humans and the transhumans of Gilt exists in the first place; to keep humanity clean of infection. That the transhumans can be one thing, and the real humans- untouched, as we were on Earth- another. Even the greedier and seedier of megacorps have tried to tow this line.

Remembering Earth: that's another part of this equation. Not only to keep humanity physically the same, but to keep us anchored to the same cultural notes. So, it is very important to the gilt division that humans keep up their dress, accents, drinks and foods of the past. Often, people will even practice an "Old Earth" accent or dress-style that they otherwise would never have had, a woman practicing her Korean accent and wearing a hanbok to work. A man who drinks whiskey and "puts on" a Scottish accent that perhaps is not native to him. This is Remembering Earth. Keeping the disparate, beautiful cultures of our homeland alive. Even when, sometimes and in some lightings, it can feel like a bit of an act.

Pirate Culture

There's enough space pirates marauding the Gilt system, and they live separately enough from the main chunk of people, that they have their own culture. A clear-cut criminal one, but nonetheless, culture is culture. Pirates are no less greedy and ownership-oriented as the corpos they steal from, but out here in the void, the knives are a little more visible. In a lot of ways, they're a dark and dirty mirror of Gilt's more proper society.

Like the "Top Three" Megacorps who lead up the Division, there are three Pirate Leagues who compete for targets and territory. The Silver Robbers, the first and strongest, have set in motion a loose Pirate Code that keeps some level of cooperation going between pirates, just as the Division proper has done for Gilt. They also have stamps; but theirs are the rare, defective stamps who have enough willpower to reject a life of slavery. And they have- one- AI.

And they, too, remember Earth. The pirates play along with the Giltian's game. Wearing old-fashioned, swashbuckling-ready attire like blouses and coats, loose pants, and their preferred accents: the seventeenth-century editions of West Country English, Jamaican, and Scottish. Their bases are holed-up in captured asteroid mines, a few small cities of Argent that could not resist them, and (oddly enough) onboard the Rainbow, which looks the other way so long as their "piratical guests" pay a proper fee.

---

Governance and Politics:

The Division is a group of megacorps. They're capitalistic, profit-motivated organizations that seeks to maximize profit and treat all of their people as either employees or property. They are unscrupulous, materialistic, and money-oriented. They work smoothly as a unit when they have to, but if they don't, they're not above stealing from or fighting one another. For most people, this is as far as we'll need to go.

But, if you like details, read on.

Details for NERDS

Hey, Enigmatik, good to see you here. You too, Crus.

Alright, let's go.

The Gilt Division is not, as we've mentioned, a true megacorp. It is more like seven different megacorps stacked on top of each other and wearing a trench coat, lurking in alleyways, offering to sell you genetically-modified watches. The body called the "Division" is actually only a small, bureaucratic group of officials that are selected by the most powerful megacorps to resolve disputes and manage neutral issues, like a UN made of corporations. It's the closest the Seven will let themselves get to having a government. It mints a money they all use, has some power to enforce patents and trademarks and whatnots, and keeps a watch on any major issues that might one day become a crisis for everyone.

But being an almost-government in a very anarcho-capitalist world, The Division has little power beyond that; mostly, they are there to advice the megacorps and negotiate disputes between them, but the most powerful corps may or may not actually listen to them. Again, I reference the UN.

When you cut past all the fluff and get right down to it, the Division only has two more real responsibilities. Only two major issues that let them flex their muscles.

The first is when it comes to the transhumanist population. Although each stamp and sym belongs strictly to either the corporation that made them or whomever has since purchased them, the Division gets to set limits on how many can be produced at a given time. This power was granted to them only recently, as a response to the growing fears of "real humanity" being drowned out in a wave of genetically-perfect clones.

The second, sadly, is... foreign policy. Yes, foreign policy. A bad joke, on a world that has no foreign nations to deal with. It's not hard to imagine megacorp officials laughing behind their hands as they send an unlikable coworker to join the Division, saying to them "Well, now you'll get to set foreign policy! Won't that be exciting?" There is a real point to having the Division handle any hypothetical foreign nations- without any corporate loyalties, they have a more neutral view than anyone else in the fragmented landscape of Gilt politics, and this issue is one of the few that one can't afford to slip up on.

But, as time stretched on and on and on, and no other nations (alien or human) were ever found, the whole idea had become almost a humiliation of the Division. And then the Gateways started to waver to life...

Now there, that's the boring part done. Let's talk about something more fun: space pirates. Gilt has a space pirate problem.

It's a major issue, or getting to be. Some consider it only the natural consequence of having a society that so idolizes ambition, risk-taking and personal profit, even at another's expense. That is the mix that creates cutthroat executives, sure. But it's also a perfect recipe for the career criminal.

Some of the poorer humans of Argent (plus a nice, motley mix of defective stamps) found themselves in possession of a small swarm of beetle ships from an underfunded security zone on Argent. This was about fifty years ago. Since then, the group that right-away started calling themselves the Silver Robbers has grown, splintered, stolen more ships, established a hierarchy and a Pirate Code, and altogether just become a huge, swashbuckling thorn in the side of Gilt's spaceborne operations. They love nothing more than hitting the sensitive trade routes between Gilt proper and the Argent colony.

The current Pirate Queen is a red-headed stamp who names herself Ariel, and the price on her head is quite high.

Technology Overview:

_{A complex tower seeds the Giltian South Pole, while thickening the air with CO2 and fresh oxygen}

It's hard to account for three-hundred years of progress. If we're going to speak broadly, the megacorps of Gilt have made strong progress in many major fields of research, but mostly when they can see some tangible reward for all their studying. Science, like everything, must be profit-oriented. Ideas that don't lead to immediate gain are usually under-funded. There are more engineers and economists on Gilt than linguists.

A few of the more important techs are listed out below. If Gilt specializes in anything, its these.

Gene Modding:
Two of the twelve corporations that founded Gilt had a major stake in genetics, and progress in this field has never ceased. The stamps are an obvious triumph, but smaller genetic miracles happen too, everyday. Lab-grown organs and DNA-repair therapy keep humans healthy longer than natural. If you can afford it, it's not impossible to extend your life by more than a century. And speaking of healing: many of the newer models of Gilt ships can "heal" damage to their hull, by triggering organic tissue to grow into the damaged space. The healed-up portions are always weaker than the original metal was, but they stop the void from getting in, and that's a use.

Most things on Gilt are at a little bit alive, really. If you crack open any computer or ship system on Gilt, you'll usually find a couple of biological components in there, mixed right in with the silicone. Even syms have a bit of neural tissue, helping them think a little faster than pure processing power would allow. Everything is cyborg but the humans.

Terraforming:
A large-scale project like terraforming is never cheap, and probably wouldn't get funding if it wasn't for the clear difference between Gilt and Argent. Seeing how much easier (and incomparably more profitable) life is on the golden planet than the silver one, the major megacorps have been convinced that terraforming is a worth-while investment. The Reset of Gilt provides the foundation for fixing the ecosystem of a new world; the GENIE virus still exists. But since then, the Division corps have also learned to adjust temperature, atmosphere, soil composition and other details of a planet to make it into an almost-Earth. Gravity problems and extreme outliers alone cannot be fixed, and this is why none of the other planets in the Gilt system have yet been terraformed.

It would be nice to end there. But it should be said: some of the darker-minded scientists have theorized that GENIE and terraforming techs could be revamped into a WMD. One that devastates the ecology of a world while making it quickly unlivable. No such weapon has been built; right now, it only exists inside the minds of a few people. But it's not impossible.

Hardlight and Holograms:
Originally created by the entertainment industry, believe it or not. Holographic movies were a big hit early on in Gilt's history, creating a cinematic experience all around you. They expanded from there out into something more video game-esque, as users took on the role of a main character in a story. It looked and sounded totally real, like you were truly, say, battling with a dragon. It only didn't feel real; you still had to wear gloves that mimicked the sensations of holding that sword, and heated up just a bit when the beast breathed its flames. Immersion was always broken.

For many societies, that would still be more than plenty; but Gilt is a land of bread and circuses. The megacorps (especially Everett Corp) poured funding into created touchable holograms. Hardlight creations that have substance, as realistic as real touch, because it is real touch. The power cost of these things is immense, however; touchable holograms still only work inside specialized holosuites, and only for the affluent. Recently, the tech has also been renovated into hardlight shielding for ships during combat.

Unfortunately, holographic anime also exists.

And we'll end on that.

Military Overview:

Naval Combat

In terms of space combat, Gilt is well tested. Their constant problems with piracy have forced them to develop a navy. No, that's not true; it's forced them to develop a half-dozen very tiny navies, each one owned by different megacorps that have a stake in trading routes. The Division isn't a government, really; it's not going to protect you from the pirates. So, if you need protection, you buy it yourself.

But... these ships haven't stayed aimed only at the pirates. It was not long that the navy-wielding megacorps realized that it would be just as easy to disrupt their competitor's operations. Megacorps often rob each other's trade routes as much as the pirates do. Skirmishes are common. It has, so far, never amounted to full-scale war, owing to the general practicality of the Giltians; they figure, a real war would only drain resources from both sides- it's far better to just let steal whenever you can, try to defend yourself the rest of the time, and don't do anything stupid.

The same gray pragmatism goes into their ship designs. A space vessel is expensive, so their first designs were dense, shielded little scrappers. "Beetles," they were nicknamed. They built up a little from there, but the overall principle of it never changed. "Soak up the damage, power up the hardlight shields; don't ever lose a ship."

Since their competitors adopted the same practices, they often have to use a scattered, fast-paced mass driver weapon for overwhelming the AI-controlled shield systems, and then a torpedo/missile for cracking open the hull. Plasma-cutters, first designed for mining and profit, have also been repurposed defense, for more precision strikes against dense, metal surfaces.

And, in an ironic twist, all the focus on defense has led to many captains using their tough little ships as battering rams. So long as they think they can take the hit better than the other guys can. This birthed the idea of the boarding torpedo, a torpedo who's payload is not an explosive but a flock of waiting soldiers- a Trojan horse that doesn't wait for you to open the gates.

The bigger Gilt ships have had to invest a lot in point-defense, keeping off the missiles, the boarding torpedoes, and occasionally the ramming runs of a suicidal captain. Naval fights around Gilt are a close-range, brutal affair. They are street fights in a void, likely to end in broken bones.

And, on that dramatic line, I'll leave you with some ships.

Ship Details and Designs

Beetle Ships

<sub>Treasurer Class: the classic, well-rounded Beetle. Not too fast, but highly armored and shielded, with powerful close-range weaponry meant to crack open the toughest hulls.


Prospector Class: a quicker Beetle, built for taking down rival cruisers. Likes to move in annoying, strafing runs that throw missiles and scattered mass-drivers at the sides of targets. Carries boarding torpedoes.


Fighter Drone: small ships, only a little more than a man tall. In professional navies, these are piloted by a sym mind, but pirates usually have to crawl in and fly manually. They'll often be protectors of the larger ships, and have powerful shields for their size. In other circumstances, they might swarm unshielded ships and hit critical components with precision cutters.</sub>

Cruisers and (rare) Battleships

<sub>The Mercenary class: a light cruiser, created as a response to the growing number of Beetles and other small ships, the Mercenary specializes in anti-fighter weapons and point-defense. Practically functions as what other navies might term a "destroyer." Fast, for a Gilt ship.



The Broker class: a chunky cruiser with room for other vessels, so that it can rely on releasing drones and Beetles and throwing around boarding torpedoes. On its own, probably not as dangerous as the Mercenary, but far more independent.



The Negotiator class: A proper battleship, built for taking on other mid-to-large targets in a naval-battle type scenario. Not made for scrapping with pirates or bothering with Beetles, so only a handful of these currently exist. Their best purpose is killing cruisers in corpo-on-corpo scuffles; and it's hard to convince your boss to fund such a serious ship only for those.</sub>

Uniques

<sub>Searat: a one-of-a-kind battleship with experimental stealth capabilities, created first by the Everett Corp, but promptly stolen by the Pirate Queen for her own goals. It's now the roving base for the Silver Robbers.



The Yellow Yacht: a luxurious ship attended to by sym servants, with everything from a personal robotic chef, to a holo-suite able to create anything one can imagine, to a massive pool with a view of the stars above. Currently in the possession of the Division proper, for use when they need to "wow" a particular megacorp contact.</sub>

Planetside Combat

Gilt doesn't have much experience fighting on the ground. The planet of Gilt was already subdued before they landed, and while Argent throws monsters their way, the Division would rather fortify and hide its cities than try to wage war against a planet.

The only need for military-type moves have been hostile operations between megacorps, occasionally putting down revolts, and scouting out the more dangerous parts of the Argent world. The first and the last are the most common- the last near-rebellion was thirty years ago, the Mixie Moment. The weapons and combat armor that were employed there are the most advanced that the Division has to this day.

But combat armor is, still, a real presence. It has a place onboard most of the navy ships, so that when a boarding torpedo gets through, somebody is ready to fight off whatever comes out it. Unlike the ships themselves, Giltian armor likes maneuverability and comfort, more matching with scouts and pirates than warriors. Like the ships, the ones meant to be seen publicly have a gold-themed, gaudy design that advertises the wealth of the megacorp. (Or the Pirate League that stole it.) Their shine is worse than their bite.

They still use mass-driver weapons- guns, that is. Metals and minerals are cheaper on Gilt than energy is. The interior of a Gilt ship is usually sturdy enough to handle a few stray shots. Combat-bred stamps do most of the fighting, with sym minds strategizing and providing on-the-job assistance. Together, they're several times more effective than any human could be, even if there aren't very many of them. In a hypothetical war against another human nation, Gilitian soldiers would be unfairly fast, powerful and high-tech, but very few in number. Gilt has just never had a need to create many of them.

Human fighters are rare. If they're present at all, its only to keep an eye on the transhumans.

Concept Art

<sub>A scout, probably a sym


A stamp soldier in his armor, as ready for a showcasing as a battle</sub>

(More to be added later)

Interest Check for Superhero Setting

I am tentatively interested.

Just count me as Schrodinger's RolePlayer for now; both in the RP and out of it until the OOC starts.

Pilgrim's Caravan: An Open-Ended Fantasy (with Worldbuilding!)

@Tortoise

Sorry to hear that man, and don't pressure yourself to write on our behalf. The silly little people who live in your computer aren't worth serious real-life impact. Stay safe!

@Irredeemable

Nah, I don't think it was any kind of stress from GMing that caused the episode, so no worries there.

<Snipped quote>

Lucalrith Endrose

_{♦ Lucalrith Endrose ♦ Luca ♦ Dark Elf / Sphel'ilf ♦
♦ Thirty-Five ♦ One Year Tenure ♦}

Race: The Dark Elves

The Sphel'ilfre

---

The term Sphel’ilfre (sfell-ilf-ray) translates to “chasm people” in Sphelse, and when introducing themselves to outsiders, the people of the chasm only refer to themselves as elves, but the term dark elf or dust elf has become popular in the wider world of Alwyne.

The Dark Elves are smaller than their cousins and live shorter, fraught lives, but they mature quickly (physical, social maturity and legal emancipation by thirty years of age; by fifty, the right to own property and hold council is granted) and because of the nature of Asphodel, possess heartier constitutions. They have deep complexions with desaturated tones, grow black, grey, or white hair, and have black eyes with sclera in shades of grey. Their features are delicate and sharp. Their ears are wider than most elves’ and prehensile, and they have frighteningly acute hearing; little light reaches the bottom of the deepest canyons in the world, so they have developed echolocation, and understand their world through sound before sight. It follows that their eyesight, in daylight, is poor. Most find direct light painful.

_source

In character, they are quiet, thoughtful, loyal, proud, aloof, and severe. They value silence and subtlety - in Sphelse, the concepts of evil, brightness, and harshness all share the same word. In conversation, they consider it cruel to pry for more information than is offered, tactless to provide more information than is asked for, and raising one’s voice above a certain octave in public is a punishable offense in some cities. Moral behavior is dictated by respect for those in one’s immediate area, and defense of one’s clan at any cost.

There are no rulers or representatives among the Sphel’ilfre. Instead, the rules of the hearth are the law of the land; each family is given complete sovereignty over their own home and the right to act as executioner should the need arise, and the law of public spaces is decided by a council of the families that share it. Other issues that pertain to more than one family may also be addressed by council.

Sphelse, the language, has two modes. The common, daily mode is known as Sphelse-soto or simply Sphelse, a whispered tongue that avoids using the diaphragm. The second, Sphelse-teno or Keen-speak, is a singing language that can carry for miles through the canyons and caves of Asphodel, and is used to communicate information between scouting parties or in emergencies, such a cave-in. Keen-tunneling is the process of psionically manipulating the larvae of the scaybeetle, a giant species of cicada, into creating small, smooth tunnels between settlements. These tunnels are keened down, allowing travelers to keep in touch with their families and news to spread between Sphelse cities quickly.

Finally, the Dark Elves worship only one unique deity - Wheye, the avatar of Entropy and Decay, is said to take the form of a dark elven woman with the wings of a moth, whose wispy hair sheds stardust and whose manifold robes fall to tatters with every step.

Locations: Asphodel and the Sphelse Cities

Asphodel

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Nestled in the valley between the Obsidian and Edithic mountain ranges, Asphodel is a small, subarctic wasteland, and among the harshest climes in the known world - it seems more like the surface of an extraplanetary realm than anything natural to Alwyne.

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Dunes of white, powdery sediment provide some barrier between the unseasoned traveler and the sheets of volcanic glass that coat the topography of Asphodel, but the region is known for its dust storms; wind exposes and erodes at these obsidian deposits and creates twisters of glass shards, so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, that flay skin like blades. Heavy, dark mists blanket Asphodel, toxic enough to kill a grown human over the course of several days if the right precautions are not taken.

Rainfall in this region is highly acidic, and the pools that cluster in the western basin of the wasteland are lethal, but so exquisitely clear and beautiful in color that many have attempted to brave the forsaken land to witness them. This pilgrimage destination is known as the Pillars of Wheye, named for the spires of gypsum and selenite that fence the pools.

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Asphodel was not always a barren desert. 40,000 years ago, it was a flourishing steppeland, boasting herds of massive beasts, clans of centaur, and a seasonal flowering that painted the valley in majestic reds and purples. Sphelse legend claims that the basin is the site of an ancient ritual, cast by a collective of elven mages attempting to bring the divine realms to ground for some long-forgotten purpose - whether the alien, inhospitable environment we have today is their success or their failure depends on who you ask.

Regardless of its origin, Asphodel has been incapable of supporting life above ground for some time. In the canyons and caves that form a natural march between the desert and the mountain ranges, however, animals and people alike eke out a living.

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The famous bridgelike cities of the Dark Elves, built into the canyons of Asphodel, are structured like so:

To shelter the inhabitants of Sphelse cities from the dangerous weather above, tarps made of fungal leather are stretched across the top of the city’s gulch in layers, with a mesh of soil and mycelium padding between each tarp. Then, various plants and fungi are planted in the underside of the tarps and the walls of the canyon; a bridge is built below, with conjured sources of daylight to nourish the hanging gardens. These Gardens are the foundations of every Sphelse city. They filter both the poisonous air of the surface and the pollution from the below, they provide fresh produce and a healthy habitat for game, and their acidic soils grow rare ingredients used for vital, necessary trade with foreign nations.

Beneath the Gardens lies the Dwelling, where the poor and middle class carve apartments into the walls of the canyon and develop commercial districts on the bridges between. Beneath the Dwelling is the Elysian, the ‘waterfront’ property near the bottom of the ravine and where the palaces of the wealthiest families can be found. Finally, there is the Riverine, built on the banks of the canyon’s river if it has one. If it is one of the five cities that share a river deep enough to support schooners, docks can be found in the Riverine, but mining, fishing, and keen-tunneling can also be found at this level.

The eight Shelse cities are; Acharest, Abiis, Dirgest, Phens, Phassil, Sorics, Ulervest, Viis. Of these, Abiis is the largest - in fact, there is no Riverain district in Abiis, and its canyon is so deep that there is no documented bottom.

Appearance

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[5’5”, 104 lbs, grey hair, black eyes] Luca is a short, thin, tired-looking young man. He has an ebony complexion and choppy, damaged hair that should be charcoal grey, but is more often muddled with ash and dust - his features are sharp like all dark elves, with some suggesting a distant mixed heritage, but it's difficult to tell - wide, bruised eyes, a slightly broken nose, prominent cheekbones, a short chin, a brittle smile.

In clothing, he prefers loose, sheer material with bright colors and patterns, precious clasps and buttons, embroidery, and other such embellishments. To put it simply - plain designs with heavy decoration. He often wears a wool poncho, clasped at the shoulder with a symbol of Wheye, and alternates between several earrings; plain copper hoops, a lapis teardrop, lyrebird feathers, and a carnelian stud. When he’s not wearing his blackened goggles, he’ll blindfold himself with gauze to avoid damaging his eyes during the day.

His mannerisms are boneless, but careful. His pace is measured, and he stops often to take account of his surroundings. His clothing and hair smell of cigarettes, spice, and clay. He’s soft-spoken, and his voice is easily his best feature, slow and silvery with a slight smoker’s rasp.

Timeline

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The name Endrose can be found in any chronicle of medicinal and alchemical history; the members of this clan guard the secret behind synthesizing Cassandra, a hallucinogenic, paralytic drug said to imbue the user with powerful precognitive abilities (among other innovations, such as the cure to wasting disease). Centuries ago, they enjoyed wealth and power for their contributions, but time and misfortune set them on a steady decline. By the time Luca was born, it was to a clan that numbered less than a dozen.

♦ TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO ♦

Luca’s mother brings them from Phens to the city of Leviathan, a melting pot of humans, dark elves, dwarves, and goblins and the closest port to Asphodel - meaning that all of the rare ingredients produced in Asphodel and nowhere else must be funneled through Leviathan before they are distributed to the rest of Alwyne. Drawing on her contacts in Dirgest and Abiis, she sets up an apothecary, vending illicit material under the table. It’s wildly successful, but it’s stepping on the toes of another prominent family in Leviathan.

♦ TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO ♦

The Vedics, a clan of dark elves who control a large criminal syndicate in Leviathan, manufacture the death of the apothecary Avamava Endrose, orphan a twelve-year-old Luca, and resume their monopoly over the exportation of regulated produce from Asphodel. Luca’s inheritance is seized by the council that convenes over such matters in Leviathan and it is decided that the assets will be released to him on his fiftieth birthday, or sold to the highest bidder should he perish before then. Luca is placed in a small temple of Wheye.

Within a week of his stay in the temple, he was thanking his mother for the lessons in testing food before eating it; eight of the fourteen bowls of porridge he’d been allowed had been poisoned. Realizing that if he wished to survive the Vedics’ ambitions towards his inheritance, he’d need to stay out of the public eye, Luca leaves the temple. The next decade of his life is spent eking out a living in the underground of Leviathan, doing everything and anything it took to survive.

♦ TEN YEARS AGO ♦

Luca no longer needs to pickpocket, burgle, scam, or worse to make ends meet. He’s squirreled away enough stock and befriended enough proxies to make and sell his own Cassandra, which allows him to eat well, dress well, and most importantly, support the opium addiction he’s developed in recent years. The future seems promising, and Luca begins to build the connections he’ll need to keep himself safe when the time comes to claim his property.

♦ THREE YEARS AGO ♦

Luca makes the mistake of trusting a woman named Edilthshi, charmed by her biting tongue. He allows her into his home one night, and wakes a day and a half later in an unfamiliar wine cellar, mind-addled by a number of poisons, just cognizant enough to suffer severe withdrawal. He makes up for the time he’d spent sleeping in the days the Vedics keep him awake, trying to pry the secret of Cassandra from him through various tortures. It’s like trying to draw blood from a stone, but not because of an iron will on Luca’s part - had he been remotely coherent, he would have told them the truth a hundred times over. He would have murdered his own kin to stop the things they did to him.

He suffers three days of abuse before the magebane they’d been dosing him on lapses enough for him to drain the health from a sleeping guard and cast phase. He abandons the life he’s built for himself and leaves Leviathan.

♦ ONE YEAR AGO ♦

Luca chances upon the Pilgrim’s Caravan outside of a small orchard village. The caravan is convenient for his purposes. He signs on under the guise of an apothecary, but many caravanners are familiar with what he actually supplies, and he draws as much business from within the caravan as he does in the locations they visit.

Personality

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His manner is vague and aloof, and you would think there was nobody shyer. Luca’s the quiet sort. He withholds information until he sees a clear benefit in revealing it, but he’s keen to watch others and compile observations. He’s reluctant in conversation and distrustful of most people, despite the fact that he’s desperately lonely. His poker face is excellent, but his nerve is lacking, and the only reason he’s so rarely been accused of cowardice is because he’s adept at covering his tracks when he decides to make like a coward and hide. He’s self-serving and callous, but non-violent by nature. He’s short on scruples, well aware of the fact that scruples can’t be eaten or otherwise imbibed, and he’s yet to find an ethical boundary he’s unwilling to cross; he calls this pragmatism, but his hedonistic quirks and addictive personality speak a different truth.

♦ [DESIRES] ♦

With an eye for the artistic, Luca covets all things beautiful. When he was small, this manifested as a tendency to hoard the textiles, jewelry, and sculptures he liberated from less appreciative audiences wherever he found the space, but necessity has made him sell or abandon his collections. The only comfort he’s found outside of inebriation is in his material possessions, and he wishes to live the tasteful life of a noble - to have clean, healthy hair, to wear tailored and flattering clothing, to sleep on silk and eat fresh fruit. It’s not about the luxury, really, it’s about the look. He already knows that there’s no earthly pleasure that can compare to a calm ocean under the stars, viewed through the lens of blue lotus - often, his desire to be blind on opiates and to look nice compete directly with one another.

♦ [FEARS] ♦

Physical pain and attachment. He’s had many experiences he wishes he could part with, experiences that have prompted his drug abuse to forget, but nothing has stuck with him like Vedic’s hospitality. Beyond that, he favors objects over people because dropping an earring doesn’t cut as deeply as losing a loved one.

♦ [MOTIVATION] ♦

He tells himself that he’s biding his time, waiting until he’s old enough to claim his property and powerful enough to protect it, and that when he’s the head of his own mercantile empire, the Vedics will get their due. The caravan presents a moving target while he’s building this future. Deep down, he knows he’s stalling; the more distance he puts between himself and Leviathan, the easier it is to forget his past, and lose himself in the pleasures of the present.

Skills

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I. Spellcasting - Before her untimely death, Avam passed many of her skills down to her son, including her talent with transmutation.

II. Apothecary - Luca is an alchemist, but one of a very specific variety. While he’s familiar with the recipes for the tonics and aromatics one might find in the home of any village healer, his real talent is in distilling ingredients down to their component parts in the pursuit of the pleasurable effects they have on the body.

III. Stealth & Agility - Luca spent his childhood hunted. One won’t find him when he doesn’t wish to be found. He’s able to hold his breath and still his movements for up to a minute and moves comfortably across rooftops.

IV. Appraisal - His passion for art has led to a keen eye and a familiarity with the worth of various goods. He’s played the part of appraiser and pawnbroker many times before.

V. Scrimshaw - A hobby he picked up in his twenties. He’s not the most adept at it, but it keeps his hands occupied.

♦ [STRENGTHS / WEAKNESSES] ♦

Strength / Sphelse - Luca is more resistant to gaseous toxins than other variants of elves - while this is mildly annoying to his purposes, it’s still a boon he wouldn’t give up. He interprets the world through echolocation as much as he does through sight, and can see clearly in complete darkness, as well as detect the shape of objects through obstacles that block his vision. This sensitivity to sound has made his movements almost undetectable.

Strength / Observation - Always cautious, he watches and listens to the people around him and takes good notes. He can guess a number of things about a person just by the way they look, speak, and act, and the ability to remember others’ schedules serves him well when stealth is required.

Strength / Mercantile - He’s had two decades to get over his inborn shyness when it comes to haggling, and his familiarity with the worth of artisanal and illicit goods makes him a formidable opponent in the game of bartering.

Weakness / Sphelse - Though he’s long grown accustomed to the abrasive speaking voices of other races, sudden loud noises and shouts are still painful and disorienting. There’s no growing accustomed to the daylight, however. Exposure to direct light can blind him for up to two hours. With their small size and weakened lifespans, the dark elves are fragile; what bruises another might break Luca’s bones.

Weakness / Combat - He’ll remember a spell or two when cornered and can throw a punch, but Luca’s no warrior. He’d much rather run and hide than stand and fight.

Weakness / Addictions - He’s sampled a wide array of vices, but Luca’s addicted to opium and tobacco. He chain smokes around the clock, but is more conspicuous about his opium use - most who’ve been in close quarters with him will report that he’s quieter than usual towards the end of the day, and mean as a viper if he’s forced to speak. After two days without a fix, his hands tremble and what had been nausea progresses to intense vertigo. He’s incapacitated with pain by day three.

♦ [SPELLBOOK] ♦

Phase - the caster takes on an ethereal aspect for three minutes. During this time, they are rendered transparent and non-corporeal, may pass through solid objects, and are able to move on a vertical as well as horizontal axis, but may not manipulate solid matter that was not on their person before the spell was cast. Luca is able to cast this once every five days.

Telekinesis - the caster gains the ability to manipulate objects without physically touching them. Luca is able to cast this once a day, and it may affect up to four objects weighing a total of 100 lbs. within fifteen feet of his person.

Levitate - the caster is able to move on a vertical axis at halved speed for two minutes. The spell may fail if more weight is added to the caster. Luca is able to cast this twice a day.

Distort - The target of the spell is blurred to the senses for ten minutes, and thinking creatures are compelled to ignore it. This illusion spell may be cast on the self or targeted, and requires the sacrifice of a tiger’s eye gemstone.

Drain - A curse that saps the vitality from the target and feeds it to the caster. Luca is able to cast this three times a day.

Tidbits

Miscellaneous

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♦ Alignment - Neutral / Neutral Evil
♦ Goddess - Wheye. Theoretically.
♦ Heart or Mind - Mind
♦ Color - Turquoise
♦ Animal - Magpie
♦ Time of Day - Between 3 and 6
♦ Season - Summer
♦ Song - No Eyes by Baths

@kellascat

To be reviewed in more depth later, but a first glance-over has this looking really solid.

Pilgrim's Caravan: An Open-Ended Fantasy (with Worldbuilding!)

Appreciate it, guys <3

Pilgrim's Caravan: An Open-Ended Fantasy (with Worldbuilding!)

RP is still coming. Planned launch date is now tomorrow.

I had... some kind of seizure, or panic attack, or something yesterday. I don't know exactly what it was. I lost control of my body completely, couldn't stand or hold anything, just thrashing around on the floor. It's not the first time. I don't know if it will impact my ability to write, so my priority is now getting the first post up and kicking things off for y'all.

Pilgrim's Caravan: An Open-Ended Fantasy (with Worldbuilding!)

Hey guys, still planning to kick off the RP tonight, but it's taking longer than I wanted, partially because I'm still wrapping up my own sheet. It's not very large or glamorous or anything. I've just been a lil under the weather, physically and mentally, this week, so stuff is running slower than I expected.

I am pretty proud of the hider I just finished for my dude's form of magic, tho.

Magic: Utterance

Utterance has been described as a kind of cross-breed between druidism and elemental magic. It is a form of language, allowing one to speak (literally, with their voices) to the non-living aspects of nature, like stone, or sunlight. The obvious use for such a power would be to control natural elements; to tell a fire to cook or to burn down, to teach ice to freeze itself around a threat, to call on rain for the crops. It can do those things, though not so quickly or effectively as a true wizard often can.

Instead, the main reason the Uttering Monks study it is for learning from nature. Nature, after all, witnesses and knows many things mankind does not. One who speaks to the stars may learn from them the correct paths to travel, may hear of ancient history those stars' eyes have seen, may be told of great and secret things that happen in the heavens. Those who whisper to the wind may hear it whisper back, telling them of news from far-off lands, of secrets said in a king's chambers while the window was open and the night breeze whistling by. They cannot control the elements with the same precision as a mage, maybe, but a Sayer (that is, one who practices Utterance) knows far more.

And this learning goes deeper than head-knowledge, too. Finally, a Sayer has an Aura. Their Aura is based on the elements of nature they most often speak too, because as you commune with something such as fire, you will find that burning power seeping into your own soul. The Aura a Sayer has is felt almost tangibly around them, and heard in their voice, giving most of them a kind of unnatural charisma. One who speaks to stone seems strong and unbreakable, one who speaks to ice becomes coldly intellectual. All of them feel impossible to argue with. A good Sayer tends to get their way in conversations. Their voices carry a lot of weight.

As a last note: Utterance isn't one language, it's many. Each part of nature speaks its own tongue, after its own form. All these things have a secret language; twilight, shadows, thunder, time. But these tongues are not like the languages of men, that anyone can learn them if they just study enough. They are stranger.

Take the language of the stars, for one example: to hear it spoken feels like fire, like a burning light, full of wisdom and cold fury. It feels like you're hearing something from another world, something straight from the cold void of space. It is so much more than just sounds. So when someone speaks it, they do indeed form actual words with their tongue, but there's something deeper happening that everyone who hears it can sense.

That's no accident. Before one can speak the language of, say, water, they must spend months or years in silent and intense meditation, learning to think like water. The same goes for any other natural language. Someone who wishes to speak to the wind must think as quick and surely as the wind. And during this time, the student must take a vow of total silence; they cannot speak a word in any language, even an ordinary one. This can take much focus. Only after a long time has passed is the student ready for a proper Sayer-Teacher to be brought in, who will finally show them the real words and syntax of the language that they wished to learn. After that, their vow of silence can be broken, and it becomes like learning any mortal language.

Each natural language is different, so this process has to be repeated for every Utterance one learns. You may already know how to speak to lightning, but if you want to speak to thunder, you still have to go back and start your meditations from scratch. So only the very old or very dedicated can know more than a few Utterance languages.

Pilgrim's Caravan: An Open-Ended Fantasy (with Worldbuilding!)

@Crusader Lord

Knossos is approved!! You're a born worldbuilder, as always. I like him.