Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

[Shroom Man 777]

I am thinking that the Kalaquel ought to have populations, even their homeworld and polities, outside the Sajit'satyk too. So their immigrants in the Sajit would be seen as opportunistic dudes making a quick buck, though they're probably the closest thing to humans in the Sajit'satyk... 2000AD Judge Dredd humans...

[Invictus]

I am thinking that the Kalaquel ought to have populations, even their homeworld and polities, outside the Sajit'satyk too. So their immigrants in the Sajit would be seen as opportunistic dudes making a quick buck, though they're probably the closest thing to humans in the Sajit'satyk... 2000AD Judge Dredd humans...

And they'd be eager to too, considering that the Kalaquel outside the Sajits' protection are going to be turned into Gorok fertilizer. (Though it's not like a lot of the Kalaquel under the Sajit'satyk's protection aren't going to be turned into Gorok fertilizer anyway...)

Still, outsiders! Clashing customs! Waging block wars with actual edged weapons! Heresy and unsporting! Let's get a few of them to give our neighborhood an edge! Etc.

[Shroom Man 777]

I want the multiple Kalaquel polities - possibly as diverse and like-human as possible - to have parts that are actually in the K-Zone while the other parts are in the Bounty and subscribing to the Sajit'satyk due to necessity... and maybe some of it was initially actually Sajit territory that got overrun by the Kalaquel who are on paper converts of the satykarma but in actually just rambunctious lots that make the Sajit and others SMH.

[Shroom Man 777]

Vic and I are mulling on the rearrangement of the Master List, wherein it will contain three lesser lists for SPECIES/CLADES, POLITIES and MISC. (i.e. hyperspace, tech, verdegrite, phenomenon...).

Because it's weird if say you scroll and see the polity Cthonemesis first before seeing the entry for the Myrran species. Or having a scavenger hunt for Oolycysts, Padryceps and then their polities in the Qylathic satrapies. Since the other alternatives would be to keep them close together... but that means giving them alphabetically similar names. Myrran, Myrranni Ascendancy. Bragulans, Bragulan Star Empire... etc.

[Invictus]

The space manatees are court astrologers, feng shui planners, karmic comptrollers and undertakers of all the mundane deep prognosis that the Sajit themselves consider beneath their station, or too boring, to do. They would also be responsible for investigating and enforcing individual karmic offences (while the Sajit hash out the intricacies of metakarma), which means they're also the ones who decide who exactly to point the Wrannath at, and also what to do with the resultant mindblasted convicts.

Now, mindblasting is such a more direct punishment than the usual caste-condemnation or ecological degradation of the Satykarma, and maybe it's special in that it counts as wiping the atoner's karmic slate clean (along with anything resembling the ego) because, well, it's not like they will be committing any more karmic acts out of their own volition any time soon. And if the space manatees find convenient uses for these handful of untouchables that bypass the whole system of karmic circulation, it's just a matter of making best use of resources at hand.

Until suddenly GOROKS, and pre-mindblasted thralls turn out to fare better against their Traumfangers parasites. Very invested in holding the Sajit'satyk together, the space manatees experience the perverse incentive to have the Wrannath mindblast as many Sajit subjects as possible. More and more sapients leave the karmic system, and things fall apart a bit more.

[Shroom Man 777]

Proposal to make K-Zone seem less of a potential relaxing vacation spot compared to the horrors we've visited upon the Fracture ( ):


Hrlgtuhe

(Pronounced: hurl-guh-tew-heh) Postnuclear wretches who bore the brunt of the first waves of the Bragulan Imperial Expansion Period after Apexaia’s fall. Their once glorious cosmopolitan civilizations coexisting with the Ruun artificer-slugs came to a nightmarish end, too close to the central Bragulan border and too far from the resisting Solarians as they were. Pale, lanky, wrinkle-hided Hrlguthes lurk in their world-ruins, organizing defenses, fending off maddened mutites and partaking in ritualistic reconstruction that inevitably incur Bragulan regulatory re-decimation, sometimes trading with those brave enough to venture so close to Bragspace, but such proximity again damning them to stagnate as a buffer in Wild Space. Those that left the condemned swaths are either marginalized by other K-Zone societies due to the Hrlgtuhes’ own hegemonic histories, engaged in meagre and oft illicit activities to survive, or begrudgingly settled in the Sovereignty or Cevaucia, though gathered in isolated pockets as the Hrlgtuhes’ neuro-dogma remains dyspathetic to alien memetic paradigms. There are also those so cognomemetically worn down that they have been successfully Bragulanized.

[Shroom Man 777]

For your consideration! Zigonians! (This has been a long time coming!)

Conciliation of Tsorra-Mahl Harmonies

After the homeworld Zhigonra was ruined and abandoned by hyperconsumerists who took to interstellar space, the remnant reptiles resolved to restore their ecosphere, developing a devout environmentalism that still embraced the nuanced application of transgenetics and synthbiology in planetary regeneration. Likewise survivors from diverse sects, creeds and ethnonationalities banded together to survive, forming an inclusive sociocultural syncretism reconciling their many contradictions. The resulting societies, the Harmonies, had “liquid” egalitarian hierarchies and mass fiesta-caucuses to assign leaders and Naaskha Mediators - the techno-monastic peacekeepers addressing social and martial concerns.

After restoring Zhigonra, reaching out into interstellar space and terraforming nearby worlds, the Harmonies inevitably re-encountered the techno-profligates, who had by then become the Feasts of Shleraac, a near-singularity paraspecies memetically and materially subsuming surrounding societies and alien colonies into their trance-substantiation. It was a reunion through conflict, to meet the Feasts militarily the Harmonies had to create biomechanical war-forms operated by their Mediators and ally with the resisting aliens, including plucky humans from Solaris. In time the Feasts were defeated, the pieces either scattered or reunited with the Tsorra-Mahl Harmonies in the act of Conciliation - the amends of the vanquished matched with the victors’ adoption of constructive, moderated forms of Shleraac technomemetic radicalism.

Since then, the Harmonies have witnessed the fall of Apexaia, the rise of the neighboring United Solarian Sovereignty and the looming Bragulan Star Empire’s belligerence. Zigonia, with its syncretic socioculture, has become interwoven with the rest of the K-Zone’s societies, most especially the ultraprogressive Solarians.’ The Harmonies’ Rhythm sub-polities grow increasingly porous with the USS, while the Holy Scale Nomad sects wander the cosmos with their philanthropic dream-quests. At the same time the remnants of the Feasts of Shleraac still lurk as the memetic extremists in Cevaucia, Wild Space mendicant-spellbinders and sensuous interventionists who reach even the Fracture and the Bounty - radical reflections of the tendencies the Tsorra-Mahl try to bring temperance to.

Holy Scale Nomad-Branches

A Zigonian cosmowanderer-sect whose members share their ways and beliefs while absorbing what they can glean from countless societies, going on routes that can take them from bustling trade hubs to the remotest reaches of known space. They practice a syncretistic faith much like their Tsorra-Mahl cousins, theirs originating from the sacrifice of their messianic figure, who was dismembered by the Shleraac Profligates and thrown from a cliff before disappearing midair - a surprise to the executioners and weeping watchers alike, the latter taking it as a sign of ascension. Such was the veracity of this miracle that, in ancient times, they could not reconcile doctrinal differences with the Harmonies, whose Naaskha Mediators suggested the sight of their savior’s sacrifice was a mere interpretation compatible with the other faiths’ tenets. While the Holy Scale faithful did aid in the homeworld-restoration, when the time came they went to deep space in a pilgrim-quest to find their ascended savior - which doubled as a survey mission for habitable or colonizable planets on behalf of the Tsorra-Mahl, whose blessings they had.

While the others eventually followed them and re-encountered the Shleraac, the advanced Holy Scale pilgrims truly became space-nomads. Deep in psi-chadelic shaman-trances within their tree-vessels they surf the hyperspace currents to meet, help and befriend strange species. A most fortuitous and odd contact was when one Nomad-Stem heeded their savior’s call and came across humans for the first time, a small group fleeing the Earthreign, sigil-worshipping Crestians whose own martyr-deliverer was so much like the Nomads’ that they adopted him as a manifest-incarnation. After the human clerics dwindled even as they devoutly upheld their chaste-vows (showing such dedication that moved the reptilians to cry biologically-impossible tears!) and the Fracture’s psychotrauma erased all remaining traces of their faith, the lineage of those Nomads became the only ones with recollections of the mythic (and now-Zigonianized) paleo-Christ and of pre-Earthreign humanity, heirlooms they ritualistically reenact in reverence - of course dismissed by modern man as preposterous tales made up by hallucinogen-huffing iguana-people.

In the centuries since then, the Nomad-Branches continue to do what they have always done, cosmo-philanthropists, missionaries, decadent xenopagans corrupting pure-bred societies, meddling lizards with their forked tongue-songs moving the masses against rightful rulers. And constant watchers of the Shleraac remnants’ machinations. They still seek their savior, knowing precisely that the search will never end… and journing because of that, only to return to Zhigonra every few decades to visit the Precipice to Ascent - the sanctuary of their genesis.

[Siege]

Dig the writeup, not a fan of the increased spelling complexity. Why Tsorra-Mahl instead of Tooramal and Zhigonra instead of Zigon? Is this a case of fantasy names GONE MAD or am I just a grumpy old conservative pedant?

[Shroom Man 777]

There's that... but I was worried that... the opposite end it sounded too normal. Tooramal is okay but I was also thinking... if the Zigonians sounded hissy snakey and such... it would have more Sss'es and Hsss-es. As you can see with the newer names I'm losing it and making really strange sounds and suffering from vowel deficiency.

And in ancient times, I think before we conceived the Zigonians, I pitched the name "Zigon" to Lord Tangith back in SCII and then he modified it to Zhigonra for his Myceloid-things. *sheds tear*

[Siege]

But presumably all these names are human renderings of whatever craziness came gurgling out of some alien's vocal cords. In fact certain species on the Master List might not even have vocal cords. If that's the case I don't understand why those humans would make it unnecessarily difficult for themselves: wouldn't they just leave out the hissing, warbling, flashes of color, psychic complexities and whatever else aliens might use to communicate and distill the written version down to something easily digestible by a human mind?

Besides, Zigonians or Myrrans or Pyrrhons (or indeed humans) might have many languages, not just one. 'Humanity' isn't called 'humanity' in all human languages either. So whatever the humans call a certain species might just be a peculiar butchering of whatever language the first explorer of said species happened to speak when he came across a bunch of humans.

In fact, it might be based on a specific butchering of a specific language many centuries ago, and the Zigonian language has long since moved on whilst the human name for their kind has stuck, the way a town in England might still have the same name as it did in Saxon times even though the English language has moved way on since then.

Come to think of it, in all likelihood not even the humans all speak the same language considering they are separated by time and by vast interstellar distances.

So, to my mind, it's just easier to imagine that this Master List is a modern English translation of a series of stubs compiled by, I dunno, the Meridian Institute or something. And whatever they happen to call a certain species, or a planet, or even another human polity, is just their translation from whatever the original was, transcribed into something pronouncable and recognizable for their convenience. And they would presumably write it as Tooramal instead of a random series of clicks and hisses.

I might be pedantic here, it's not that big a deal, but I'm just not a fan of the usual sci-fi cliche of inserting tons of consonants, dashes and apostrophes and suchlike into every other name.

[Shroom Man 777]

That's a very fair point, I think after a while after making so many names I was worried of making it all just Republic of _____ but at the same time I was also afraid of using cop-outs like using non-westerny sounding names as a substitute for "alien" exotic stuff (i.e. the Qylathic *Satrapies*... for a while I was also considering using "Suzerainty" for something else...) and the idea of making the human nations all weird-sounding and making the alien ones sound like the Confederation of _____ or the Allied Republics of Something-something as a subversion also crossed my mind. I have to check myself there.

But to our credit we're not using apo'stroph'es in those names yet so I think we haven't gone overboard. And Vic beforehand wondered why I was considering a slight renaming of the Myrran... yeah, it was excessive and pointless...

In the case of Tsorra-Mahl... I really *do* fancy this change though, I get that making everything too weird and trying to put into alphanumerics the gamma ray code-burst languages of Crysts or pheromone-secretions of Karlacks would be too much... so there will be approximations and such and that's a total given, but I get tickled with having (more than) a few weirdo names here and there. There's gotta be some degrees.

I can add a bit, like (a.k.a. Tooramal in classic Terran).

(You just gave me the idea of putting numbers in species names! I don't know how *that* will work out though. )

[Invictus]

So, Nova Meropia. An unrefurbished entry of an older generation, and rather barebones on the master list. It's a nominally Calibrationist polity that has a reputation for being (relatively) harmlessly eccentric and high-tech, and its origin stems from the usual renegade Meridian Institute scientists. I floated the idea of them being actual robots who thought of themselves as humans as to illustrate how big of a memetic mess the Fracture is in (and to add some robots to the setting), but that didn't go anywhere. Shroom wanted them to be borgish scientists who had gone off their rockers. I think we reached a compromise where they're both.

The ye olde Earthreign times weren't a good time for your typical sci-fi sapient "created by humans in their own image" robot race. The long, devastating war with the Falqowice had incubated a massive psychotrauma against the kind of advanced hardtech that leads to them, and in any case the Earthreign itself tended in its latter days towards using biotech and psi-tech to further its priorities. Still, robots had their uses in edge situations where sterility or resistance to bio-contamination was needed in interacting with humans. The breed of machines that eventually became Nova Meropia in particular were specifically designed as hybrid life-support units and walking freezers. Their robot components specifically corresponded to the human anatomy, and you could intuitively plug organs and other parts into them to be preserved. Lives and tissues could be kept alive through these robot chassis in those vanishingly rare cases where the Reign's biological sciences cannot overcome problems with cross-contamination. Nevertheless, the robots were not assets that the Reign liked to remember that they had, so they were generally kept out of the way, and thus survived Reignfall.

It may also be the case that the FREEMIND rebels of the late Reign uploaded themselves into such cold robot bodies, seeing it as a way to insulate themselves against psi-oppression. And it was in this state, much later, that Meridian explorers might have rediscovered them frozen in a No-Vault somewhere. And then they came to the same conclusion as the FREEMINDS of ages past, that they have finally discovered role models worthy of human emulation, ascended figures free from the omnipresent taint of the Cataclysm. Even though the robots were inhabited by human mindstates many generations copied and removed, were initially created under highly suboptimal conditions which haven't gotten better since, were not actually immune to the Fracture, and were in general all kinds of maladapted and dysmorphic. Traits that their later human discoverers revered as well, just what superior beings ought to act like. Which led to the cultural tradition of humans acting like malfunctioning robots AND robots malfunctioning because they're actually humans.

Shroom suggested as befitting their Calibrationist tendencies and their namesake, Nova Meropians initiated themselves by replacing their eyes with prosthetics as the first step towards TRUE OBJECTIVITY, then continued to replace their fleshy parts with metal in emulation of the robots, as to eventually free themselves from THE HUMAN SIN. However, the maladapted human-minds-in-robots also started to replace their robot parts with flesh, facilitated by the inter-operabiity of their robot designs and a similar desire to re-attain THE HUMAN COMMUNION. These two populations of Nova Meropia converge in the middle and, from robot to man, and from man to robot, and from robot to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

And that's how Nova Meropia became a bunch of fucked-up walking refrigerator murdertrons who stalk the battlefield devouring the flesh of humans as to free them from sin, and whose military philosophies involve pre-set kill counts.

[Shroom Man 777]

How could I resist when you throw around words such as THE HUMAN SIN?

To be clear, not *all* or *most* Meropians are treading refrigerator MURDERTRON not-Daleks... but they are certainly a dreaded unit. Most folks are probably just dysfunctionalized Asimovian robotos and wannabe AdMechs, and I think the uniqueness of their circumstances is what sets them apart from Calibrationism. In a way it's a more radical form, but in a way other Calibrationists might look at Meropians and just shake their heads.

Obviously the Meropians are probably even more ignorant of memetics and psionics than the average Calibrationist edgelord.

I also proposed that while the Meropians, like the Meridian Institute scientists, wear ritualistic labcoats, their thought-leader figures might also have the additional regalia of ritual FEDORAS.

[Invictus]

In what may be the first step to a more clear and comprehensive history of the 'verse, I whipped up this handy timelines of its earliest eras:


http://imgur.com/a/GrIhO
(open in new tab for full size)

[Shroom Man 777]

I love that it looks so awesome and yet we've developed such cosmology that it's pretty much inscrutable to outsiders (how do we get out of this) but it is so beautifully intricate and epic.

[Invictus]

The nest installment is here. It's a bit tilted towards my own fictional baby in this 'verse, but once this is done all that remains is histories of the Fracture and the K-Zone. Oh God.


(click for link to full size)

[Shroom Man 777]

That is incredible - dense and inscrutible to those unfamiliar with the lore and thus probably accompanied by a blurb (possibly like the "short concise entries" we have in our master list ) - but really it is a work of art and wonderful.

Also, guys. Are we amenable to renaming the Neuromancers of the Earthreign into NEUROMONGERS? So we won't get sued or accused of being ripoffs?

[Siege]

Very cool looking, 'Vic. One wonders - did you base that on the Hebrew Tree of Life?

[Invictus]

I think I can fit a bit more explanatory text into the picture, parts of which I think would benefit from looking busier.

Very cool looking, 'Vic. One wonders - did you base that on the Hebrew Tree of Life?

I won't deny that as an influence, but my main conscious inspirations are Bible prophecy timelines and Paul Laffoley's paintings.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Greatest Speech in the Universe was when the Imperator Byzon, before billions of patriotic proletarian Bragulan warriors, uttered words of utmost power and inspired such right-thought amongst his peoples that the psychocosmic barriers of Apexaia were brought down, cogno-ideologically drilled through, thus enabling the space legions of mighty Bragule to overwhelm and prevail upon the foolish grey alienoid shits.

[Shroom Man 777]

What if before the glourious triumph of Byzon, the Apexai's mind weapons were so developed that it was their entire deterrent. If their pylon network and their Oversoul was capable of soul-nuking entire specieses, removing their sentiences, etc. But by the time of the Byzonic Reckoning the Apexai had grown so apathetic with segments of Jor Els that predicted the fall, including some actively trying to prevent it, but others just either passively accepting it as their deserved fate or even making the effort to either hybernate or psionically evaporate themselves into the PSYCHOCOSMOS.

The general malaise is so much so that not only is their psychocosmic barrier vulnerable to pure byzonism ideology but their psi-weapons are futile and the ones who want to stage a defense are rendered impotent.

So the last ditch too late effort involves dusting off ancient warsaucers that are still terrifying by modern and post-modern galactic standards
but by then it was too late and the warsaucers were better off escorting the exodites and atomizing pursuing paleocruiser hordes than rushing into broken overwhelmed Apexaia. So the warsaucers were like those non-networked vipers and old battlestars, at least by the standards of great Apexaia.

[Siege]

... is that meant as some scathing condemnation of recent political events? Because it could be interpreted as such.

More generally speaking, I'm not sure man. I like the fall of Apexaia as some kind of completely unexplained cataclysm. Like, because of the psychocognitive dissonances surrounding the event not even the Apexai who were there can truly know - let alone explain - what the fuck happened, and the Bragulans through hundreds of years of doublethink are completely incapable of reproducing anything with any historical accuracy.

It's a complete mystery how a bunch of fuckin' spacebears with ancient ass weapons overcame the psychosorcerous might of the Apexai. But they did. And really that's all that matters, the rest is just history.

Maybe Byzon completely blindsided them. Maybe he made some speech that brought down the walls of Apexaia. Maybe the Apexai just gave up. Maybe it was their ancient design, as some Apexai whisper, giving up their world just one step in a centuries long plan to restore their species to greatness. Who the fuck knows? It doesn't matter: the Brags will, well, brag, and the Apexai are insufferable as ever. The more things change, the more they stay the same, etc.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think Vic and I mulled some of the concepts over the months... but yeah it is timely, I meet Vic again IRL and then the real life Apexaia falls. Not to a great Byzon though.

Anyway I can dig that proposal of yours - it might have been a mini-Fracture in itself. And to shield his species from psionic blandishments, that same achievement of Byzon - whatever it is - that caused the destruction of Apexaia and also the consolidation of Byzonism and the doublethinking somehow also made the Bragulans... psionically insulated (barring the few exceptions whose psionic abilities end up getting exploited if they don't escape the Empire). Perhaps the decrease in susceptibility and the decrease in psionic manifestation is kind of rooted to the sheer ideological prowess - the psychic potential is diverted there.

It shouldn't be too explicitly spelled out. This thread can be our Silmarillion and other Tolkien notes that are hard to codify.

Like how in Dr. Strange the paralyzed guy diverted his magic to his body allowing him to walk.

[Invictus]

The Cataclysm (the human one) broke memory and history. Shroom did mention that the final fall of Apexaia and the flight of the exodites to the surviving human fringe world colonies happened after that, so the explosive rise of both mighty Bragule and the Sovereignty could take place shortly afterwards. But before that, it's not hard to presume that the Cataclysm messed with what was left of Apexaia at that point, leaving them even more vulnerable to their eventual fall.

In fact, this implies that the Earthreign and Apexaia existed contemporaneously, and it's hard to resist trying to square the two psionic heavyweights with each other in historic terms even though both are supposed to represent the mythic before times of totally alien factions. It would be like speculating if the Buddha ever visited the Mesoamerican netherworld of Tlalocan or something.

[Shroom Man 777]

I would say that the Apexai probably tried to stem or contain extensive spillover from the Cataclysm... but also I really don't think that its intense effects spilled over past the Cascade. By that, the Samtics would be just as much at risk as the K-Zone.

But I think maybe just seeing such degrees of suffering and insanity - even by puny primitive worthless apes - is something that really made the Apexai feel horrible since those parts of the known galaxy were under their purview, protectorates of the Invisible Empire that was Golden Apexaia. Turns out their prime directives of being not-so-interventionistic was for nothing... and I now speculate the evolution of their detached dismissiveness stemmed from their prime directives, their non-interventionistic attitude, and their silent watching of other species just fucking up. Black humor that ate away at their souls.

I don't think the Reignfall's slugmen-based psychic mechanisms that were so easily destabilized - cataclysmically so - could be in the same tier as "heavyweightness" as the Apexai. Maybe whatever minds in charge of the Earthreign might have wanted to expand and overpopulate to provide more mind-fuel for whatever cerebromantic neuromonger mechanisms they eventually planned to implement (maybe the cataclysm was a misfire of their FINAL WEAPON... not just the sabotage of their neuromonger infrastructure causing a resonance cascade..).