Glassriver Sorority

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Artemis
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Glassriver Sorority

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The Glassriver Sorority

Major Worlds: Llantre, Appelia, Ithogem, Nocretya, Zepr, Doara, Aoken

History: The term "Glassriver" originally referred to a social and business networking program within the comm-grid of the Kingdom of Schxel, one of the larger and more powerful nations on Llantre. It was an effective and ubiquitous network, especially after the invention of cybernetic communications devices, which could access the grid with little more than a thought and an augmented reality interface. The system was so good, in fact, that the military adopted their own version, increasing the efficiency of the Schxelian military five-fold. Soon, copycat programs began popping up in the other Sylvan nations, and before too long, international networking laws were relaxed in order to allow these networks to grow together into a truly global communications grid, something the Sylphs had never had before, being as they were a fractious and nationalistic people before the true advent of Glassriver.

Perhaps it was the sudden, intimate knowledge of all the other sentient beings they shared Llantre (or at least Glassriver) with, coupled with a growing global dissatisfaction with the way the Sylvan governments were conducting their affairs with one another. Perhaps, as the Colonial Regency and the Cluster Crusade now theorize, Glassriver itself became sentient for a time, and directed its users on their fateful course of action. Perhaps it was just a meme that had laid dormant in the Sylvan psychology until the moment when it could spread from one set of personalities to the other. To ask most members of the Sorority today, it was all these things, and more. In a movement that nearly annihilated all Sylvan culture, spirituality, and nationalism that had come before it, Sylphs by the millions emancipated themselves from their countries, refusing to pay tribute or to even acknowledge the authority of their nations, political factions, or ethnic groups. They belonged, they said, only to one another - only to the new global sorority that had been strung together in less than a decade. These new “sisters” were not only the discontent, the rebels, the young, and the disenfranchised, they were politicians, soldiers, scientists - Sylphs from every walk of life, upbringing, and social standing.

Of course, not everyone who had been connected on Glassriver was now a member of the Sorority. Some refused to give up their values and beliefs for what they saw as a homogenizing force that would wipe clean everything that made them Sylphs in the first place. Some had never been connected to Glassriver in the first place - prisoners who had been cut off as part of their punishment, young children suddenly without parents, the elderly who had never seen much use in joining the network, and a few half-mad conspiracy theorists who insisted they’d seen this coming from the very start. And, ironically enough, the royal family of Schxel, the nation that had given birth to Glassriver in the first place, had never gotten cybernetic implants as a precaution against invasive brain-scanning.

The Sorority gave those who were not already on Glassriver an ultimatum - either join, thus ending what they called the race’s self-destructive policy of exploitation and expansion, or leave Llantre forever. The Sylphs had been using chemical rockets and primitive nuclear pulse ships to travel to a few worlds in their solar system, but they had not yet discovered their system’s two graveddies. The concept of a mass exodus was impossible, and so the resistance forces had only one real option.

Schxel’s nuclear weapons armament was controlled solely by the royal family, and they had built up a substantial surplus over the last century since the Sylphs first split the atom. Initially, the resistance fighters wanted to nuke the central server locations where Glassriver “resided,” thus killing the connection that the Sorority used to coordinate their efforts and spread their gospel. However, Schxel Alrie Somve III, one of the Queen’s more moderate personalities, suggested an alternative. If the Sorority wanted them gone so badly, they could do something to hasten the day.

(WIP)

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"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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