Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

There's been some recent chat about the Shepherds' Protectorate that gives our favorite libertarian nuclear nomads a bit more flesh:

Their history is more complicated than the formula of "ragtag Post-Cataclysm armada + desperate civilians -> various trials and tribulations ->
wholesale Fracture-driven inculcation of the Battlestar Galactica mythos -> they settle down, eventually, but are still weird about it". The passing of millennia have seen the Shepherds settle many worlds, worlds which have had plenty of time to eclipse their original seeding fleets in terms of resources, population and industry and probably provides the logistical base that all those space opera warships rely on. It's definitely not the case that in the modern day Fracture, the Shepherds still are this vast nomadic ship-cased nation like a lot of space opera races tend to be.

But then, said worlds are still politically subordinate to the fleet-based military. Most can trace their origins - and original constitutional documents - to being protectorates or colonies of the Fleets, which means they derive their political legitimacy from the existence of the Fleet, not the other way round. There is probably very little civil-level organization between the worlds of the Protectorates in that they all have individual relationships with whatever department in the Fleet which is responsible for interfacing with civilians, which itself answers to the Fleet's military leadership with its thoroughly military priorities. In most cases the sole cultural and institutional connection point between Protectorate worlds is the Fleet, and the Fleet is quite keen to keep it this way.

There are a number of ways to do this. Recruits from Protectorate worlds are distributed between ships to dilute any influence a planet's culture and identity might have on shipboard culture, preventing crews uniting in mutinies or worse, producing officers who enter flag command with misplaced loyalties and obtaining the clout to swing Fleet policy their way. On the worlds themselves, SERVICE CITIZENSHIP policies ensure that only veterans of Fleet service or also possibly Fleet-related defense industries have political power, theoretically reinforcing their loyalties. Outside of the mother Fleet, Protectorate worlds' power to raise and build their own spaceborne militaries are limited, though they probably do have their brown-space and green-space law enforcement and fishery equivalents. And of course, the Shepherds have a strong fleet-borne culture reinforced by the Fracture that provides more effective indoctrination of planetbound spacemericans than the other way around.

(As illustration, this is quite unlike the situation with Sternheim where their mecha pilot overlords started assimilating into the local culture of their protectorates almost immediately. The initial Sternheim military state was something that fought to create peace and an opportunity to settle down, which they did when NEUROM was forged into shape with the worlds under their control forming the stable, prosperous heartlands. The Shepherds had a far more adversarial relationship with the civilians under their charge, had firmer roots in military tradition than the Sternheim's total cultural amnesia, and well, didn't have the luxury of a relic warmoon with which they can dominate all force projection. The result was the Shepherds developing a fare more contemptuous, isolationist and regimented pressure cooker culture - but one which is ultimately far more resilient, and has an escape valve in the form of libertarian and idealized settler tendencies.)

A "Protectorate" of the Shepherds' Protectorates may therefore consist of as little as one system or one world, maybe a small-time spacemerica that submitted to the protection of a Fleet, maybe a colony established by ex-crew. Shroom mentioned how Shepherd colonists bring a lot of shipboard culture with them and retain plenty of a bunker mentality even when faced with nice rolling hills, barely terraforming and preferring to live in domed arcologies that may as well be landed arks. And if said arcologies are built to be able to blast themselves back into space, even better. The average Fleet would be in charge of a lot of these protectorates, extracting efficiencies of scale on the economic level if not the political one. I also entertained ideas of more "degenerate" protectorates which have entirely lost the capacity to construct or support warships, but whose legitimacy as a Shepherd-aligned polity is derived from all the ways the High Admiral's bunker-palace technically and legally counts as a starship. Maybe because its staff still follows a naval chain of command and posts watches and everything. Maybe certain technical features plus a few thousand years of degenerate tradition says so.

Another, even wilder idea is if former ragtag fleets can hold the patronage of entire worlds, what if even a single starship can? Such KNIGHTSHIPS would be rare and remarkable, granted fief and independence by their Fleet for some great achievement, or maybe just extraordinary lucky and opportunistic as a privateer or the sole survivor of some fleet-tontine, because I mean this is such a nuts idea. Imagine if after winning the Battle of Leyte Gulf in WWII, the US Navy decides to parcel out the islands of the Philippine Visayas between the carriers of the 3rd Fleet, and every crewman of the ship gets a share of the tributes and incomes enjoyed by the ship, so theoretically some midshipman can retire and cash out of a few millionths of a percent of the total industrial output of a space opera planet and probably buy his own starship or something. And somehow this is entirely legal and the wider Shepherds are too libertarian to do anything about it.

It may be very often where Shepherds can't do much about each other, actually. One side-effect of the shipboard pressure-cooker culture is how it makes different Fleets or even different vessels go stir-crazy in slightly different ways. Minor differences are enshrined with the force of dogma and soon the pre-messianists and the post-messianists and the Sons of Adama and the Church of Kobol are at each others' throats like a bunch of schisming protestant congregations except with nukes and battlestars. Though Shroom and I agree that the Shepherds are probably more inclined to let schismatics exile themselves rather than try to nuke each other to oblivion, if only due to natural selection. The losing side pack up all their civilian supporters and their loyal warships and rides off to another, hopefully less occupied sector of space, in effect recreating the ragtag armada of days yore before they can hopefully settle down and start generating their own dissidents.

In this way, there are always *some* Shepherd fleets wandering around somewhere in the Fracture, acting out some stage of their historical cycle.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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The key difference between Shepherd culture and Sternheim culture was that the Shepherd RAGTAG FLEET of old was the one securing civilian refugee ships and it became a toxic co-dependent relationship of the military-security and civilian societies, that pretty much went Stanford Prison Experiment. Whereas the Sternheim's warmoon made things easier through sheer overpower, hence less phobias and paranoias over TOASTERS or PSYCHIC CRABOIDS... AND their civilians weren't a ragtag fleet, but already inhabited worlds that the Sternheim crews looked upon favorably. The Sternheim initially treated those civilians as protectorate subjects too, yes, before the warmoon blew up and the surviving crews had to settle in said worlds and assimilate (and build new defenses). But the Shepherds' initial civilian population of space refugees... became prisoners in a way.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 10:31 pm The key difference between Shepherd culture and Sternheim culture was that the Shepherd RAGTAG FLEET of old was the one securing civilian refugee ships and it became a toxic co-dependent relationship of the military-security and civilian societies, that pretty much went Stanford Prison Experiment. Whereas the Sternheim's warmoon made things easier through sheer overpower, hence less phobias and paranoias over TOASTERS or PSYCHIC CRABOIDS... AND their civilians weren't a ragtag fleet, but already inhabited worlds that the Sternheim crews looked upon favorably. The Sternheim initially treated those civilians as protectorate subjects too, yes, before the warmoon blew up and the surviving crews had to settle in said worlds and assimilate (and build new defenses). But the Shepherds' initial civilian population of space refugees... became prisoners in a way.
They're for exploring different themes.

Though we at least should have some reasons in mind why the Shepherd military maintained their protection over the civilians anyway. Is there reciprocation? Are the civilians actually the Fleet's vital logistical tail? Did the Shepherds descend from escort fleets for Earthreign-era internal forced migrations and inherit sacred taboos against not having civilian charges?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 3:26 pmThey're for exploring different themes.

Though we at least should have some reasons in mind why the Shepherd military maintained their protection over the civilians anyway. Is there reciprocation? Are the civilians actually the Fleet's vital logistical tail?
They could encompass medical ships, refinery ships, transport and supply ships, city-ships that have various built-in infrastructural/logistical capabilities for their passengers/crews that then get overworked to supply the military vessels AND less-equipped civilians, plus just liners full of WARM BODIES CONTRIBUTING TO THE GOOD FIGHT... and yeah, even in those days the Adamas wouldn't see eye to eye with the more dictatorial Cains and such, I think the modern Shepherds are what counts as the "good ending" of the benign dictator Adamas over people who went like Christopher Eccleston in 28 Days Later and just abused and ravaged dependent civilians for kicks...
Did the Shepherds descend from escort fleets for Earthreign-era internal forced migrations and inherit sacred taboos against not having civilian charges?
They can just be forces that genuinely wanted to save people, even though "saving people" results in a fleet-wide sociocultural reenactment of Dirty Harry/The Dark Knight on a large scale.

Plus I think the Shepherds were in the resistance factions... so being pursued by neuromonger-controlled killships could be their equivalent of "TOASTERS FRAKKING GRR CYLONS!"
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 4:04 pmThey can just be forces that genuinely wanted to save people, even though "saving people" results in a fleet-wide sociocultural reenactment of Dirty Harry/The Dark Knight on a large scale.

Plus I think the Shepherds were in the resistance factions... so being pursued by neuromonger-controlled killships could be their equivalent of "TOASTERS FRAKKING GRR CYLONS!"
I do think it's a better idea for the proto-Shepherds to be the plucky Anti-Earthreign rebels who decided to launch mega-Dunkirks to evacuate rebelling populations to safer sectors, because just launching ragtag naval operations against the Earthreign like regular rebels wasn't enough for them. I suppose this is where their uncommon dedication came from, an ethos forged an age ago from spending long stints in hostile territory doing the riskiest shit.

In this case, it may not matter whether they were rescuing similarly overmatched baseline rebels or captive populations of Earthreign slave-clades who literally can't defend themselves - their own dedication just makes anyone they meet seem like ungrateful whiny shits by comparison.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2017 4:27 pmtheir own dedication just makes anyone they meet seem like ungrateful whiny shits by comparison.
Perfect, and the unhealthy toxic co-dependent enabler relationship goes both ways - the freed civilian populace adores and hero-worships the cult of the military fleet hard men making hard choices. The civilians likewise perpetuate the myth of UNGRATEFUL UNPATRIOTIC SPOILED SOFTIES TAKING FREEEDOM FOR GRANTED! Like Murca. This warped sense of patriotism resulted in everything being militarized, the civilians willingly LET the military run them like a police/prison state, heck the military might have its work cut out for them when the civilian orgs start militarizing on their own! Dissidents, criminals and whatnot are outcasted, tagged traitors, spaced or just chronically beaten, giving the whole society an internal stressor-source when EARTHREIGN SKINJOB TOASTERS and ALIENOID INVADER MENACES and PSYKER MINDCONTROL DOMINATION ain't enough!

This is different from the Sternheim, the host planetary populations were wary of the warmoon forces becoming conquistadores, there was no super-patriotic "beholden" thing... and kind of like the Mongol Khans, the Sternheim forces that came to control those worlds ended up adapting to the local culture, their identities being absorbed into those societies, rather than the collective Stockholm Syndrome of the Shepherds. The realpolitik of the original Sternheimers, that "we protect your planet, you supply us" was seen as a transaction, not a "must be beholden to us, be grateful you disloyal shits!" thing.

The Shepherds probably were less-amnesiac than the OG Sternheim.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I was thinking that another possible origin name of the K-Zone, K could've meant Korveil

OH and a clade of X/Kerberos working for some Telestrons, still functioning, could be called the COLLECTORS because the Telestrons seek understanding of galactic societies through the provision of artifacts and samples, which the Kerberi eagerly collect.

I don't know if this overlaps with the Raptured Lords and Hirados too much tho...
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 12:39 pmPerfect, and the unhealthy toxic co-dependent enabler relationship goes both ways - the freed civilian populace adores and hero-worships the cult of the military fleet hard men making hard choices. The civilians likewise perpetuate the myth of UNGRATEFUL UNPATRIOTIC SPOILED SOFTIES TAKING FREEEDOM FOR GRANTED! Like Murca. This warped sense of patriotism resulted in everything being militarized, the civilians willingly LET the military run them like a police/prison state, heck the military might have its work cut out for them when the civilian orgs start militarizing on their own! Dissidents, criminals and whatnot are outcasted, tagged traitors, spaced or just chronically beaten, giving the whole society an internal stressor-source when EARTHREIGN SKINJOB TOASTERS and ALIENOID INVADER MENACES and PSYKER MINDCONTROL DOMINATION ain't enough!
If the captive civilian population also served as the Fleet's recruitment pool, they could take the whole Watchman on the Wall complex into the military and perpetuate the attitude upon the next generation of civilians - and only partly because hey, they paid their dues themselves, it's only fair that the next generation suffers the same hardship, the fact that they got into the military shows that their BODILY FLUIDS have been PROVEN PURE and they are worthy of wielding the same power of judgement. Over time, this warps the original spirit of the proto-Shepherds into that deliberate co-dependence.

Also, a while ago I posited the role of Samtic-supplied counter-psi technology in facilitating the Reignfall - probably into the hands of anti-Earthreign rebels who can make the most use out of it. And it seems that counter-psi technology would be extra useful for the proto-Shepherds, which makes we wonder if there can be room for a more nuanced relationship between the Shepherds and the Nexus than the usual xenophobia.
Shroom Man 777 wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 12:45 pm I don't know if this overlaps with the Raptured Lords and Hirados too much tho...
Well, the Raptured Lords already have vaunts full of inconceivable antediluvian treasures with which they mess with people. And I suppose "messing with people" is main thing the Lords are after, as opposed to a (theoretical) sense of curiosity or constructed order that building collections satisfies.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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The not-Collector Kerberos/Xerberos will be called THE ARCHIVISTS.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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We've expanded the Isopterid entries in the Google Doc, adding some tidbits about ancestral Isopterid biology and then going beyond just the guilds but also expounding on the trans-guild trans-stellar organizations, particularly The Trust of Isopteric Formers:
The Trust originated from the informal networks and associations of Isopterid colonizers, the journeyer bands of worldbuilders that were the norm before the eventual emergence of the guilds and clades characterizing modern Isopterid societies. The Trust grew out of the older connections between communities, the cliques that worked by word-of-mandible to share resources, gauge reliability, form consensus on crucial matters and even pool funds to bankroll important projects.

Presently, while formal groups like the Guilds of Cascadia form the ‘face’ of Isopterid societies, the Trust of Isopteric Formers serves as the interstitial membrane that links them. Through this, the Trust gains a formidable sort of power on its own, connecting parties that, on their own, already wield the power to synthesize the accumulated knowledge of their members and tools into the science of their trade. With the Trust acting as a coordinating body and trustworthy trans-guild financial institute, Isopterids can collectively leverage their expertise into commanding sector-spanning industries, supplying food, services and hardtech substitutes to interstellar societies. All of which ultimately form the logistical backbone of the Isopterids’ true forte: terraformation.

The transformation of worlds remain the greatest works of the Isopterids, as it was before the time of the Trust and the guilds. Then and now, normally secretive pure-clades and heterogeneous guilds alike would congregate to muster all the arts needed to remake a living planet, and the generations-long endeavor can become temporary centers of trade and politicking for all Isopterids, as well as an advertised promise of tremendous wealth to attract alien investors and future settlers to the table. While the Trust quietly operates in the backrooms, it has been crucial in facilitating modern mega-endeavors, relieving the many inconveniences of interstellar logistics and smoothing out the astropolitical and socioeconomic hurdles faced by Isopteridkind.
We also made a distinction in that while guilds are Isopterid associations where those with similar augments and similar trades/specializations can band together regardless of whether they are truly ancestrally from/of the Isopterid species or from another species but modified with Isoptech, clades on the other hand imply something more than this and include genetic/species lineage, with Pure-Clades being the more insular "genetically Isopterids only" types of groups. Presumably HETERO-CLADES or something would be clades formed due to their non-Isopterid origins, perhaps a clade of human exoticists who've collectively Isopterized themselves!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:35 am We've expanded the Isopterid entries in the Google Doc, adding some tidbits about ancestral Isopterid biology and then going beyond just the guilds but also expounding on the trans-guild trans-stellar organizations, particularly The Trust of Isopteric Formers:

We also made a distinction in that while guilds are Isopterid associations where those with similar augments and similar trades/specializations can band together regardless of whether they are truly ancestrally from/of the Isopterid species or from another species but modified with Isoptech, clades on the other hand imply something more than this and include genetic/species lineage, with Pure-Clades being the more insular "genetically Isopterids only" types of groups. Presumably HETERO-CLADES or something would be clades formed due to their non-Isopterid origins, perhaps a clade of human exoticists who've collectively Isopterized themselves!
I'll add that the Trust is mostly a Fracture thing, where a combination of the following assumptions gives rise to it:
  1. It's an old, densely settled place where any given world probably already has millennia of history and every easily terraformable planet has probably already been terraformed and settled already, so every new terraforming project is significant and represents a major avenue of economic growth.
  2. Of course, that the Fracture is already full of people and polities means that there are no shortage of parties who want to claim planets and/or see them terraformed - the commercial character of the Trust comes from the ability to (and the security from) being able to leverage these desires into contracts and shares and law.
  3. Which means that an Isopterid terraforming consortium (and its investors) are sitting on a huge of untapped wealth, a soon-to-be productive part of the galactic economy that they can exploit on the promise of its completion, even if it's generations later. And that's how the Isopterids got into banking and finance!
  4. But the Isopterids don't exist comfortably in the Fracture, given the reflexive psychohistorical xenophobia that descends on anything too inhuman, which is why they haven't translated their wealth and influence into forming full-fledged empires and remain quasi-nomadic guilds valued for their services, or the equivalents of freemason associations within existing societies.
The Cascadian Isopterids are older, not as beholden to the pressure to become profit-making consortia (the Cascade being a frontier rich in room and scarce in ready investment), and are probably not terraforming swathes of worlds out of the same motives. And the fact that the Cascadian/Laurentian settlers couldn't just have some kind of sane commercial transaction to acquire territory from them lies at the root of the whole Cascadian civil war.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 11:18 amI'll add that the Trust is mostly a Fracture thing, where a combination of the following assumptions gives rise to it:
  1. It's an old, densely settled place where any given world probably already has millennia of history and every easily terraformable planet has probably already been terraformed and settled already, so every new terraforming project is significant and represents a major avenue of economic growth.
  2. Of course, that the Fracture is already full of people and polities means that there are no shortage of parties who want to claim planets and/or see them terraformed - the commercial character of the Trust comes from the ability to (and the security from) being able to leverage these desires into contracts and shares and law.
  3. Which means that an Isopterid terraforming consortium (and its investors) are sitting on a huge of untapped wealth, a soon-to-be productive part of the galactic economy that they can exploit on the promise of its completion, even if it's generations later. And that's how the Isopterids got into banking and finance!
  4. But the Isopterids don't exist comfortably in the Fracture, given the reflexive psychohistorical xenophobia that descends on anything too inhuman, which is why they haven't translated their wealth and influence into forming full-fledged empires and remain quasi-nomadic guilds valued for their services, or the equivalents of freemason associations within existing societies.
The Cascadian Isopterids are older, not as beholden to the pressure to become profit-making consortia (the Cascade being a frontier rich in room and scarce in ready investment), and are probably not terraforming swathes of worlds out of the same motives. And the fact that the Cascadian/Laurentian settlers couldn't just have some kind of sane commercial transaction to acquire territory from them lies at the root of the whole Cascadian civil war.
I thought the Cascadian Isopterid guilds' freedom to grow is what made the pre-existing networks composing the Trust become such an influential thing, and I would've imagined that the Trust's HQs, if they have any, would be in the Cascade - in some Isopterid guild/clade equivalent of Davos - whereas sure, their influence might seem less apparent in the Cascade because the guilds themselves are big and capable of doing stuff, whereas they treat the Fracture like some third world region where their soft power is more noticeable (because the guilds aren't as big there, so the Isopterids need the Trust's soft power more as a measure of safety).
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Sun Dec 03, 2017 10:02 am I thought the Cascadian Isopterid guilds' freedom to grow is what made the pre-existing networks composing the Trust become such an influential thing, and I would've imagined that the Trust's HQs, if they have any, would be in the Cascade - in some Isopterid guild/clade equivalent of Davos - whereas sure, their influence might seem less apparent in the Cascade because the guilds themselves are big and capable of doing stuff, whereas they treat the Fracture like some third world region where their soft power is more noticeable (because the guilds aren't as big there, so the Isopterids need the Trust's soft power more as a measure of safety).
We're in general agreement that the Cascade is where all the Isopterids in the Fracture came from, so the Cascadian guilds can indeed claim seniority and primacy where Isopterid cultural traditions are concerned. I actually have some problems coming up with reasons why the Isopterids are heading into the Fracture in the first place - a region that's more crowded and filled with those assholes who used to be the Earthreign, as they must know - even if they are being displaced from their old territories by Laurentian settlers. But Isopterid culture and tradition is effectively transmitted by their symbiotic hardware, so I suppose it doesn't matter even if the Fracture Isopterids are actually all non-Pureclade converts and their descendents.

But still, the Cascade is far enough from the Fracture that any HQ located in the former won't be able to micro-manage Guild affairs in the latter. Stargate connections between the two regions can exist, as Shroom reminds me, so there's some degree of direct connection, but I don't think the traffic bandwidth is as wide as the Isopterids want, or implies that there's any easy access for non-Isopterids who want to cross over. My preferred analogy is the early 20th century transatlantic gap: it's trivial for information to pass through, albeit the transmission points still being relatively centralized; physical travel is still time-consuming (force projection especially so), but within the means of individuals.

And at the risk of some unsavory stereotyping, my further analogy for relations between Cascadian and Fracture Isopterids is the golden age mafia. To Fracture Guilds, the Cascade is basically the Old Country, being the acknowledged roots of their traditions and legitimacy; and Isopterids trace their origins from various regions and cultures within the the Cascade and fraternize into Guilds accordingly. Many Isopterid masons would idealize retiring in the Cascade like with Vito Corleone and his Sicilian orchard, even if they have never set foot in the Cascade in their lives. The Guilds who control the stargate connections to the Cascade would be the most prestigious, or the most traditionalist.

On the other hand, as with the New World, the Guilds in the Fracture have acquired too much wealth and influence on their own to be dependent on the Cascade, so the sway the Cascadian Guilds have over their junior counterparts is limited. To the younger-generation, more nativized Isopterids the Fracture represents opportunity that they're well used to, and it's not like the situation in the Cascade isn't just as precarious these days. You'd see some Fracture Guilds deliberately formulating their own anti-traditionalist ways (if only to resist the control of the Cascadian traditionalists) and also embrace radical biotech and terraforming techniques in the process. You might even see them importing their heterodox expertise back into the Cascade with the rise of the Heteroplex.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

By ascending to the throne of chats to do commune with the spirit of Shroom and returning with a fragment of higher law clutched 'tween my charred fingers, I now doublepost!

The idea that the Isopterids originally came from the Cascade solves a lot of timeline issues. We know that early human colonization of the Cascade predates the Reignfall, and we can link the appearance of the Isopterids into the Fracture to the radical expansion of the Cascadians into Laurentian territories, which was in turn only possible by beating back the Green Sea and freeing up new astro-territories, which could only happen when polities on the major Fracture flank were stable and recovered enough to make the military effort.

So, the Isopterids came relatively recently to the Fracture! The Trust and the Guilds may well post-date stuff like the Shepherds' Protectorates or NEUROM (but maybe not the Grandeur of Auriga, because there's a lot of pre-Grandeur history involving the heroic exploits of transhuman aristocrats and the Terran Ascendancy and alien infiltrators and so on; or the Shen Rhapsody, because those guys and their orgone have always been presented as the enfant terribles of the Fracture). This may help explain why they're still mistrusted semi-strangers to the Fracture, even if the Fracture Effect means that the people in it can, like, never get used to things.

Furthermore, the Isopterids arrivals would be split into two major waves - the first wave dating back to the early colonization of the Laurentian worlds, when humans who back then were just Cascadian settlers displacing Isopterids off their own worlds with the help of the Cascadian military; the second wave when the formal Cascadian-Laurentian split happened and the ancient Guilds siding with the former, leading to an even less restrained and more reprisal-like expansion from the newly-formed Terranates. The former would be pretty grrr towards all humans and are going to have an interesting time in the human-filled Fracture. The latter are likely to have more nuanced attitudes towards the particular humans they are dealing with.

Also, given the lack of direct concern, I therefore submit that the Cascade "side" that most Fracture polities are going to sympathize with depends on which faction of Isopterids they happen to have as a lobby. This is of course not counting all those Fracture Isopterids who are too divorced from their origins to be any more than ambivalent about it. Other polities with feelers in the region, such as the Yggd-Zel-Ruun, are likely to have their own opinions.

Ironically, the "traditionalist" Guilds maintaining the connection with their Cascadian ancestors I mentioned last post would be more likely to hold the positions of the later wave, influenced as they are by their alignment.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Steve »

A few things.
'
A) I am still bemused at just what you lot have done with the "Cascadian" demonym. :P Shroom's revenge for the SDNW2 Cascadians being so straight-laced, I presume. 8-)

B) So, Shroom, did you ever follow up on your announcement last January that Kasszas S'szrishin's group, the Harmonious Val-Drillim, are now a canon organization among the Zigonians? :mrgreen:

And finally....

C) Cross the Fates and face the Furies, mwahahahahaha.... :twisted:
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Steve wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 8:39 am A few things.
'
A) I am still bemused at just what you lot have done with the "Cascadian" demonym. :P Shroom's revenge for the SDNW2 Cascadians being so straight-laced, I presume. 8-)
We actually went waaaaay beyond Spacemerica... unexpectedly.
B) So, Shroom, did you ever follow up on your announcement last January that Kasszas S'szrishin's group, the Harmonious Val-Drillim, are now a canon organization among the Zigonians? :mrgreen:
Yes, it'd be within the Tsorra Mahl Harmonies.

"Harmonious _____" can be a naming convention.
And finally....

C) Cross the Fates and face the Furies, mwahahahahaha.... :twisted:
Yes. I'm not sure what the vanilla SOTS Furies would be (espers who are self-contained WMDs and/or freaky unearthly things beyond even normal Ministers? IDK) but the wordplay is too good not to use!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Bah, Cascadia was more than just "America", in SDNW2 at least. We were more like Canadians, but with aircraft carriers. :P
Shroom Man 777 wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 12:59 pmYes, it'd be within the Tsorra Mahl Harmonies.

"Harmonious _____" can be a naming convention.
I think I had Kasszas say his group was part of the Tsorra-Mahl Harmonies. And what about Kasszas? Are you making "Zigonian Chirrut" a canon character too? :mrgreen:
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 12:59 pm Yes. I'm not sure what the vanilla SOTS Furies would be (espers who are self-contained WMDs and/or freaky unearthly things beyond even normal Ministers? IDK) but the wordplay is too good not to use!
Both things seem pretty possible, what with the magic of espery/Cryst-shards/mass cognometrics, though I really like the idea that the Ministry can make artificial psionic entities by projecting mind energies/frequencies onto the local twisted psychoscape through some kind of Cryst-shard DOOM PRISM machinery.

Although, didn't we establish very early on that the Allfather built his throne out of fragments of the literal superweapon that caused the Cataclysm?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Steve wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 3:52 pm Bah, Cascadia was more than just "America", in SDNW2 at least. We were more like Canadians, but with aircraft carriers. :P
I barely got that Canadia-ness. Well, you were less aggro since you were surrounded by more Murca Murcas and your character was pretty OK and was actually a character unlike every other MESS-ite there.

To be fare, the Cascade region powers would've been less messed up than the Fracture-guys since the effects were attenuated, so it has less-neurotic societies that nonetheless have whiffs of old human tendencies, but beyond the Cascade is the K-Zone where the Solarians are just nuts (though in some ways their military-industrial complex does make the USS space Murca-ish...).
I think I had Kasszas say his group was part of the Tsorra-Mahl Harmonies. And what about Kasszas? Are you making "Zigonian Chirrut" a canon character too? :mrgreen:
He should be! I already named my totally OP animist-barbarian-archeologist D&D character after him!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 8:44 pm
Steve wrote: Wed Dec 20, 2017 3:52 pm Bah, Cascadia was more than just "America", in SDNW2 at least. We were more like Canadians, but with aircraft carriers. :P
I barely got that Canadia-ness. Well, you were less aggro since you were surrounded by more Murca Murcas and your character was pretty OK and was actually a character unlike every other MESS-ite there.
I tried to write President Garrett as a guy who was basically turned into a gestalt mind by Q: the "real world" Steve merged with the Nova Terran Steve, aka the guy who actually did the hard political work and campaigning to win, just to get bodyjacked by a godlike being for a fucking game. My idea was that RL Steve, aka "me", was the dominant personality of the body up until the Pathogen War, after which the guilt and horror at what he had unknowingly helped into being by working with that madman Sheppard against Astaria plunged him into a depression that allowed the Nova Terran Steve, aka the guy with actual political experience and vision, to achieve an equilibrium in their mutual psyche.

You could even consider my absence from SDNW2 during that two month RL period after the Pathogen War shit to be a representation of this alteration to President Garrett's mind.

And wouldn't the Solarians be very "space America"-ish in terms of their being so militaristically assertive? And prone to dickeries of other nations. As poor Captain Dale found out when a breakfast meal with President Sinclair required a thorough deep scan, a telepathic deep scan, and then taking laxatives just to be sure. :mrgreen:
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Steve wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:34 pmAnd wouldn't the Solarians be very "space America"-ish in terms of their being so militaristically assertive? And prone to dickeries of other nations. As poor Captain Dale found out when a breakfast meal with President Sinclair required a thorough deep scan, a telepathic deep scan, and then taking laxatives just to be sure. :mrgreen:
I think aside from the military (a lot of SOTS societies are militaristic anyway, but something like NEUROM doesn't come off as space murca), the rampant capitalism, oligarchy mixed with the Transmetropolitan-esque weird ass hyperconsumeristic VR-obsessed democratic society of profligate people is what makes it Space Murca. But I think it's colorful and not Baen Books space murca so hey yay!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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While we're sort of still on the Cascade, there's a bit more detail I want to inject, right in the middle of the Laurentian/Cascadian rift.

The Laurentian colonies were originally set up as resource colonies. They were focused on digging up things, manufacturing things and shipping them back home, all built up with interstellar logistics and industrial infrastructure on a scale that would simply be impractical for serving purely the colonial economy, let alone be needed to serve a colonial economy that has collapsed from a lack of trade with the Cascadian homeworlds. And it would make sense for such export-oriented economies (and by extension the colonies themselves) to be run by big-ass corporations largely autonomous from government authority due to the distances involved, much like our RL colonial ventures.

This puts a layer between the disgruntled jeffersonian settlers on the ground and the distant metropolitan authorities that sent them there, an intermediary that wouldn't precisely care about the interests of either side. The profit-first Weyland-Yutanis can be the ones pushing for unchecked expansion into Isopterid territory that triggered the colonial conflict in the first place, because it's not their skins they're risking to deal with the rushed terraforming and the angry bug-people. They can be the ones clamoring for Cascadian military intervention to protect their (and their shareholders back home's) interests, further exacerbating the war. In short, it allows for a great deal of cross-purposed, short-sighted shit to go down in Laurentia to blow the conflict up into the centuries-long vendetta it eventually became.

Shroom says that the colonial corps have also been mostly toppled by settler discontent these days, replaced by more democratic (or at least more populist) forms of government, and I kind of want to make this coincide with the formal Laurentian secession that really kicked off the civil war - the newly founded Terranates weren't just claiming independence from a colonial authority that they have been separated from for centuries already, but also claiming a genuine birth of self-government. Said boardroom-storming coups also had the colonists nationalize trillions in what was technically Cascadian property, creating a case for reparations that motivates the Freeworlds' continued fight, as well as criminal prosecution against the ringleaders of said coups who are now revered as the Laurentian Founding Fathers and also probably still alive because living five centuries is like trivial in the spacefuture here.

Of course, when said populist warleader Founding Fathers took over, it...depends from Terranate to Terranate whether they went on to build a more broad-based economy and base of legitimacy for democracy to flourish, or just repurposed the ex-colonial economic structure into a patronage machine to ensure loyalty to El Jefe.

So some of the Laurentian Terranates are genuine democracies, and sometimes really innovate social experiments drawn from a blank canvas; some not so much - but I think it would be fun if loads of them also have to contend with the presence of the said long-lived Founding Fathers who are still political, military or ideological leaders and have had centuries to really burnish their halos. It would be like if the US political landscape had to make room for immortal badass mecha pilot George Washington, who is also the captain of the Battlestar Constitution, who was there when they drafted the Constitution and who still has Opinions on contemporary issues.

And because we're talking about a swath of hundreds to thousands of star systems instead of 13 colonies, there would be literally thousands of these dudes.

Sure, many or most of them may not have survived the centuries-long civil war, what with the war-leading and the defections and the being bagged and deprogrammed by Magi-advised SEAL Team Sixes and plain retirements from politics and the "retirements" involved neutral polities and offshore bank accounts, but now there's a rather interesting landscape in the Terranates made of charismatic leaders and their factions and a stagnation that comes from the humanist conservative memes that they formulated and continue to enforce by their very presence, and that's not counting the Shepherd influence.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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So we complicated it further than basic "RED FACTION" GET YOUR ASS TO MARS "ALL OUR MINERALS BELONG TO US!" F U COREWORLDERS stuff.

I presuppose that the heavy extraction happening in the Laurentian worlds is because the Freeworlds' core worlds were probably mined out, not just by the Freeworlders themselves... and, if we're into "hard" sci-fi, it'd take FOREVER for drone-miner swarms to consume whole systems, but perhaps by pre-existing societies that left the Freeworld area in ages past. Ancient societies could've already strip-mined the Freeworlder systems before the humans arrived, before going space-Angkor Wat or space-Mesoamerica and either diminishing and/or moving away, or both, or leaving enough remnants for the new-Freeworlder humans to absorb or smallpox-blanket or some such.

When the humans arrived at the worlds they'd claim to be Freeworlds, there'd be all sorts of abandoned or emptied Isopterid hives and Kallaquelle mega-blocs and such. Even signs of Phyrron bloodbaths.

Deep history. So the depletion of the area could be why, after settling there and finishing what scraps they could find, they decided to send people out to find systems with more resources!

AND perhaps the depletion of the Freeworld core systems could be why they were viable for settling. The initial human settlers couldn't exactly claim worlds already full of Isopterids, Kallaquelle, who knows what else, or Phyrrons.

"Phyrrons messed things up" can be a perpetual answer to why the Cascadian region's habitation levels are in a perpetual flux.

(Presumably, when the proto-Solarians crossed the Cascade, this was BEFORE the Freeworlders were settled and BEFORE even the Fracture, the Cascade had a different set of dominant societies...)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I like that. To resort to the New World colonization metaphors again, it's as if the Pilgrims somehow pulled into the southwestern scrublands and deserts instead of the lush and wooded Chesapeake, and then decided to resettle some abandoned cliff pueblos because really, it's the most expedient for a bunch of resource-deprived settlers. And because not finding somewhere defensible to live right away means being eaten by rampaging cyborg lizards.

And I can't imagine redecorating Isopterid or Kalaquelle ruins would have endeared the upstart humans to the two species, which is funny because with the history so far described the proto-Freeworlds societies had to be defensive, self-reliant and absolutely could not depend on having any external alien allies, which is an attitude inherited by the Terranates more than anyone else. All the more reason for the Terranates to claim that *they* are the true unperverted human civilization!

The bygone civilizations of the Cascade could have declined, or they could even have had their worlds exterminatus'd by roving Earthreign killfleets, who are not keen on anyone offering aid and comfort to their escaping dissidents.

I was also thinking of some kind of self-reinvention that the Freeworlds underwent to mirror the broad revolution undertaken by the independent Terranates in my last post. For this, making peace and forming an alliance with the Isopterid Firmagen Guilds the Laurentians were having turf wars with seems too external and not deep enough.

So I think what they did was they went hat in hand to their own Isopterid populations, the ones mostly made up of ex-Laurentian humans who were friendly enough with the Isopterids to taken the symbiotes themselves and were basically seen as species traitors once the battle lines hardened, who were driven back to the Cascadian homeworlds as refugees and then treated as best as second class citizens, and then asked them to help rebuild their worlds into something both humans and Isopterids would be proud to live in.

A lot of this was terraforming tweaks and optimization - investing the newfound colonial wealth into sustainable developments, making the homeworlds more livable and more population-bearing, erasing bad traditions from space pueblo-living, etc. This would be the less controversial stuff. When the wholesale redesign goes right down to the level of architectural planning and moral legislation, I bet the opposition was huge. You'd having unrest and people leaving for the Terranates, but for most Cascadians it worked out somehow. It really made the Freeworlds into a place that even we would regard as better, which goes to the heart of the point I personally want the Cascade situation to make - what if the fruit of injustice was a genuine good? How justified are you to seek revenge on someone who has become a better person that you are?

Not that many Laurentians think in such terms.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I'm good with that.

I guess domestically in the Freeworlds a lot of those Xenos Rights movements paid off, it could've been messy, with FOOKIN PRAWN Isopterized former-humans getting along with other xenos in ghettoes, having unrests and somehow even successfully seceding when the mainstream Freeworlds' society and security apparatus was focused on the Laurentian Terranate problems... so we have these Isopterized folks building BARRICADES and COMMUNES and actually creating new and better things and roping in "pure" human neighbors who realized they weren't so bad, especially when Isopt-eco-tech allows them to build even better hab-domes or whatnot and when they STRIKE and outright leave human-zones and deprive the mainstream of their vital services and vital tech.

Think of those minority communities that tried to separate themselves from mainstream society, now imagine if those minorities were crucial to the upkeep of advanced terraformational and eco-maintenance tech. Not that the mainstream human Freeworlders were clueless about building hab-domes, but Isopt-tech and organo-NANOMACHINES that make air are just simply better than what mainstream Freeworlders had on their own.

So TLDR, I agree and maybe the mainstream Freeworlds' society had an impetus to go hat-in-hand and reconcile because on the xenos end, they also were able to give the humans an offer they couldn't refuse.
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