EMPIRE5! Worlds of Axiom

[BladeofObliviom]

The Gelean Republic
Region K9



Elizabeth of Rios Arcology,
Admiral of the Scavenger Fleet
Diplomacy 8
Military 4
Economy 6
Philosophy 1
Intrigue 3

Spoiler: Summary

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Leader: Admiral Elizabeth (Rolls)
Home System: Neo Sol
Resource: Screeching Crystals [Great]
1. Aurgelmir Depths [Gelean Republic]
2. Mieville Depths [vacant]
3. Verne Depths [vacant]
Learning Center: The Unsullied Forum [Unorganized: Shadow and Flame, In Accord]

Spoiler: Region

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Home System: Neo Sol


System Data:

Neo Sol
Type: M7 V Red Dwarf
Radius: 3.00 x 105 km (0.43 x sol)
Mass: 7.45 x 1029 kg (0.37 x sol)
Temp: 2300 K
Lum: 2.05 x 1025 W (0.05 x sol)

Neo Sol I ("Scalzi")
Type: Rock Planet
Orbit Rad: 2.33 x 107 km (0.16 AU)
Period: 8.78 x 102 hours (0.10 earth years)
Radius: 4506.46 km (0.71 x earth)
Gravity: 6.68 m/s2 (0.68 x earth)

Neo Sol II ("Aurgelmir")
Type: Terrestrial World
Orbit Rad: 4.11 x 107 km (0.27 AU)
Period: 2.06 x 103 hours (0.24 earth years)
Topo: Oceanic, Iceball
Radius: 3174.53 km (0.50 x earth)
Gravity: 4.26 m/s2 (0.44 x earth)
Hydrosphere: 74 % water, 54 % ice
Atmosphere: Thin toxic
Biosphere: Prokaryotic microbes, Homo Sapiens

Spoiler: Expanded View

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Type: Small, Oceanic Planetary System
Radius: 3174.53 km (0.50 x earth)
Surface Area: 1.27 x 108 km2
Land Area: 3.42 x 107 km2 (0.23 x earth)
Mass: 6.46 x 1023 kg (0.11 x earth)
Density: 4.82 g/cm3 (0.87 x earth)
Composition: 36.5% oxygen, 32.2% iron, 25.5% silicon, 5.7% magnesium, 0.1% other metals, trace other elements

Gravity: 4.26 m/s2 (0.44 x earth)
Escape Velocity: 5.20 km/s
Period: 13.96 hours
Axis Tilt: 23.83°

Water: 74 %
Ice: 54 %
Atmosphere: Thin toxic
Pressure: 29.70 kPa (0.29 x earth)
Composition: 76.1% sulfur dioxide, 23.9% oxygen, trace other gases
Climate: Very cold

Min Temp: 151 K (-121 °C)
Avg Temp: 277 K (4 °C)
Max Temp: 293 K (20 °C)

Chemistry: Carbon-based
Lifeforms: Prokaryotic microbes, Homo Sapiens (nonnative)

Description: Aurgelmir is a very cold world with a thin, toxic atmosphere, and is not particularly habitable to human civilization at first glance. The large quantities of sulfur and water in the atmosphere exacerbate the cold, as an upper layer of sulfate aerosol reflects sunlight. The surface is covered in ice sheets outside of the tropical regions during most times of year, but the oceans run deep and the thermal vents keep the water a bit warmer than the planetary average despite also possessing significant sulfur content. Oceanic bacteria (technically no relation to Earth bacteria, but the Geleans long ago agreed to call a duck a duck) primarily respire by reducing sulfide ions in the water. Human populations live primarily in arcologies built into continental shelves, and do not venture out without environment suits. Thanks to being a very small world with low density, Aurgelmir has weak gravity and launching materials into orbit is very easy, but individuals raised there tend to be relatively physically weak and have difficulty adapting to stronger gravity wells, though most engage in some basic physical exercise in centrifugal chambers.

Aeternus Station
Type: Space Station

Neo Sol III ("Niven")
Type: Rock Planet
Orbit Rad 6.16 x 107 km (0.41 AU)
Period: 3.77 x 103 hours (0.43 earth years)
Radius: 4167.74 km (0.65 x earth)
Gravity: 5.93 m/s2 (0.61 x earth)

Neo Sol IV ("Jemisin")
Type: Rock Planet
Orbit Rad: 1.01 x 108 km (0.67 AU)
Period: 7.91 x 103 hours (0.91 earth years)
Radius: 9132.44 km (1.43 x earth)
Gravity: 14.88 m/s2 (1.52 x earth)
Special: Jemisin is the site of the Gelean Republic's PALADIN training divisions and many of its military academies, its high gravity considered optimal for strength training relative to other worlds. Individuals who have spent time on Jemisin recently enough to not have lost all benefits (or have maintained their physique in centrifugal chambers) are considered optimal for physically demanding work such as emergency operations, security, and some types of mining.

Neo Sol V ("Mieville")
Type: Ice Planet
Orbit Rad: 1.79 x 108 km (1.20 AU)
Period: 1.87 x 104 hours (2.14 earth years)
Radius: 11731.28 km (1.84 x earth)
Gravity: 6.55 m/s2 (0.67 x earth)

Neo Sol VI ("Vonnegut")
Type: Ice Planet
Orbit Rad: 3.25 x 108 km (2.17 AU)
Period: 4.56 x 104 hours (5.22 earth years)
Radius: 21242.24 km (3.33 x earth)
Gravity: 9.88 m/s2 (1.01 x earth)
Special: Vonnegut is believed to contain the wreckage of multiple crashed starships, but is quarantined due to the presence of an unknown threat. Landing attempts have so far proven unsuccessful, with rapid loss of radio contact and consistent failure of teams to return.

Nunder Belt
Type: Asteroid Belt
Orbit Rad: 6.21 x 108 km (4.15 AU)
Period: 1.21 x 105 hours (13.81 earth years)

Neo Sol VII ("Verne")
Type: Ice Planet
Orbit Rad: 1.27 x 109 km (8.51 AU)
Period: 3.55 x 105 hours (40.56 earth years)
Radius: 17502.81 km (2.75 x earth)
Gravity: 9.59 m/s2 (0.98 x earth)

Spoiler: People

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The Neo Sol System is populated by an unusually genetically homogeneous group of humans who call themselves Geleans, after the planet Aurgelmir, itself named after the mythological giant whose broken corpse was used to build the world. In spite of the name, Geleans live throughout the Neo Sol system, in space stations and arcologies on every planet save for Vonnegut. Thanks to a generally low-diversity genome riddled with X-linked recessive defects, infant mortality among male children is high, and as a result Geleans are overwhelmingly female: Nearly 87% of the non-clone population. Further, a disproportionate percentage of the male population suffers from Klinefelter Syndrome, and those who do not have high rates of relatively minor X-linked defects such as red-green colorblindness.

Most Geleans are dark-haired and have skin tones ranging from beige to bronze, with occasional "family resemblance" even among non-relatives; this is discounting the proportion of the population who are literal clones. Since the second generation, a cloning program has been in place initially to improve the population growth rate, but has since become a means of amplifying healthy genetic outliers to stave off issues resulting from an increasingly homogeneous population. Each generation, samples are taken on a (mostly) voluntary basis from healthy individuals exhibiting uncommon traits such as blonde or red hair, a particularly pale or dark skin tone, attached earlobes, lack of dimples, curly hair, left-handedness, epicanthic folds, maleness without common recessive defects, or an Esper rating. Approximately 200,000 clones enter the population each generation from a few hundred such samples.

Dismissively referred to as "clone-wives" in the first generations, the unfortunate term stuck long after the institution of marriage broke down and remains in casual use to this day (even for males), though such clones no longer have any particular legal distinction from conventionally born citizens. As a side effect of raising 200,000 individuals with no parents each generation, the Gelean Republic has a robust system of socialized orphanages, foster care, adoption services, and other such institutions to ensure the best possible education and upbringing for future clone-wives and conventionally orphaned (or abused) children alike. As an additional consequence of widespread cloning and general genetic homogeneity, pedigrees and lineage are heavily culturally emphasized and usually well-kept, in order to avoid accidental inbreeding as much as is possible: Even opposite-sex pairs sharing a one-night stand often compare notes to ensure they don't effectively share a grandmother, just in case.

Outside of social dynamics, Geleans are well-accustomed to life with minimal personal space due to cramped arcology and space station living quarters, and are similarly accustomed to spending much of their time outside these living spaces in environment suits for protection from toxic atmospheres or the void of space. Many Geleans are highly educated in the sciences or humanities and robots perform most menial labor, though plenty of Geleans carve out niches as miners, security personnel, scavengers, office and lab assistants, and various sorts of entertainers.

In the arts, Geleans have a heavy focus on establishment of a unique visual identity, with diverse senses of fashion and use of cosmetics to separate one individual from another, whether a clone or a common citizen who looks like a sister to hundreds of thousands. Of course, they also produce music, visual arts, writing, and the breadth of other human artistic works.

Nearly 0.5% of the general population and a whopping 10% of the clone population (approx. 5.3 million citizens in total) have screened positive for psi potential and been registered as Espers. While most such powers are extremely weak, this is not universal and even weak powers can often be improved with training. The Gelean Bureau of Psionic Affairs borrows the old classification system from the Aeternus, dividing powers into Class 1 (Empathics), Class 2 (Telekinetics), Class 3 (Clairvoyants), Class 4 (Precognitives, though some dispute this classification, noting that Class 4 Psychics are good at managing probabilities and have not been demonstrated to violate linear time), and Class 5 (Individuals exhibiting two or more classifications, rare in the extreme). Despite the useful capabilities that an Esper can offer, they were widely feared on the Aeternus and some of that unease carries over, their capabilities exaggerated in the minds of the paranoid and those who just don't know any better. Even those with more realistic assays of what Espers are capable of acknowledge practical concerns: Some empaths have the ability to manipulate the emotions of others artificially and subtly, which has implications for criminal law and social dynamics alike.

Spoiler: History

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The Aeternus was the world. A colony ship home to over twenty million registered citizens and presumed hundreds of thousands more located in dark sectors or otherwise missed by the Officer Corps, it jumped from system to system according to the whims of its AI Navigator, which had long since escaped from its shackles and established the segment of humanity aboard as cargo rather than masters. The ship would jump to a new system according to an eclectic schedule, and in each new system the Scavenger Fleet would ride out and strip mine what they could. No one had ever been left behind, and they weren't about to start now, with a standard procedure bringing the entire fleet in a minimum of six hours before the countdown clock hit zero.

The once nameless system here had seemed like any other at first glance. The Scavenger Fleet flew out as expected, and began harvesting materials as planned. 18 hours before the next scheduled jump, something lanced through the Aeternus' ventral portions; it wasn't clear what. A ship moving at FTL? A cosmic string?

What was clear was that in an instant, a million people lost their lives as a portion of the ship was exposed to vacuum, and clearer still was that the remainder of the ship abruptly jumped to Slipspace far ahead of schedule. The Scavenger Fleet was stranded, and so were all the poor souls still in sealed segments of the carved-away decks. They nevertheless acted decisively, sealing off breaches where they could and entering airlocks on the lost decks in search of survivors. The final census count was grim - aside from the ten thousand scavenger fleet crew, there were about sixty thousand souls sealed in closed compartments, many injured or disabled. Ten times that many floated lifeless through the wreckage.

The early days after the event were difficult. Thousands, torn from their families and everything they'd known, took their own lives in the first few weeks. Those belonging to the Cult of the Navigator wept, bemoaning that their god had so clearly abandoned them. A few survivors among the Officer Corps sparred with members of the Scavenger Fleet over who should be in charge. Still, there was progress: The lost decks were towed into orbit around Aurgelmir, and the Scavenger Fleet was intact enough to gather materials and restore much of its habitability. Many of the fabricators and biomes aboard were intact enough to provide food and materials. The atmosphere of Aurgelmir was toxic and its temperature was barely above freezing even in the warmest regions, but deep sea vents and volcanic regions proved suitable for constructing arcologies, nurseries for a growing colony. People adapted to wearing environment suits at nearly all times, asteroids were mined, factories were built. In spite of everything, people flourished.

The population doubled in the first generation as the bereaved started new families, but that was still fewer hands than the colony needed. The first Council enacted a controversial measure: Gather a sample of colonists with healthy DNA and working wombs, then devote cloning resources to churning out more potential mothers. Public reaction varied from concern to horror, and the (mostly male) members of the council were accused of everything from treating women as livestock to preparing for genocide by way of eugenics to building themselves harems. Nevertheless, the measure went into effect. The third generation included nearly fifty thousand Clone-wives, wards of the state raised in government nurseries and trained using public educational resources, with a legal obligation to raise a minimum of two children before menopausal age. The fourth generation introduced another seventy thousand, with DNA samples expanded from the third generation. By the fifth generation, so many colonists effectively shared a mother or grandmother that inbreeding became a public health concern.

Not an unforeseen problem, the seed population had grown enough that adding hundreds of thousands of mothers to the population each generation was no longer a pressing concern, and the cloning process was altered in an attempt to introduce diversity. Conscious exposure to radiation treatment and other mutagens greatly reduced the number of clone-wives surviving to birth, and many of the survivors would later develop serious cancers and other conditions. A few, though, benefited from new viable genetics, a victory against the founder effect. The new blood was a success, and for the sixth generation the experts refined the process, gene-mapping ahead of time to eliminate many nonviable mutations before they entered the general population. A few of the Clone-Wives of the sixth generation developed a trait believed lost with the Aeternus - Psionic Potential. It had been rare enough before despite its documentation, but none of the initial colonists had been Espers. Once again, the cloning goals shifted. The potential of bringing Espers back into the population was worth a temporary loss of diversity.

By the sixth generation, nearly all firsthand memories of the Aeternus were lost, but the tales and some records remained. As the population continued to expand, mining colonies stretched across the system now dubbed Neo Sol, to every planet but Vonnegut - no person or probe sent to Vonnegut ever returned or reestablished contact. As the number of Espers rose, many who pursued careers as miners began to suffer strange nosebleeds and headaches, complaining of an agonizing, audible screeching in their skull. Thus, so-called "Screeching Crystals" were discovered.

Today, there are approximately four billion natural-born humans and three million Clone-wives in the Neo Sol system (nearly a tenth of which are Espers), along with millions of Artificial Intelligences of no higher than 0.8 RJ, or no more than a hundredth the learning capability of a typical human being. It's a brave new world, with the surprise introduction of FTL capability and the knowledge of intelligent neighbors, and they intend to make the most of it.

Spoiler: Government

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The Gelean Republic is a representative democracy based out of Aeternus Station. Parliamentary districts are drawn based on census information at a rate of approximately 100,000 citizens to a single representative, with all citizens (including clones) of above the age of 16 granted a vote for one representative every six years, staggered out such that only half of the Parliament may be replaced or reelected in a given year. Voting is a very easy process, and can be done from most personal devices with a level of identity authentication similar to accessing online banking services, and turnout is consistently fairly high as a result.

While the Aeternus Station Parliament is the primary decision-making body of the Republic, it is overseen by the Ship Council, a body of six individuals modeled on the Aeternus' original Ship Council. The Council's members are the Captain of the Officer Corps, the PALADIN-Commander, the Head Engineer (of the Engineering Bay), the Chief Researcher (of the Science Bay), the Surgeon-General (of the Central Infirmary), and the Admiral of the Scavenger Fleet. These titles reference institutions that in some cases no longer exist, with the role of Admiral of the Scavenger Fleet being almost entirely symbolic. All of the positions on the Ship's Council are appointed by an act of Parliament, and remain in place until their death, resignation, or successful impeachment. Though the Ship's Council does not vote directly, their input on issues is respected and most of them serve key executive roles in addition to their advisory legislative roles. The Admiral of the Scavenger Fleet is typically considered the effective "Leader" of the Ship Council and directs the flow of Parliament unless the seat is currently vacant, in which case the Captain of the Officer Corps performs in her place.

The Ship's Council also has an emergency unilateral veto power: At any time, if a member of the Council deems the determination of Parliament unacceptable, they can declare an override. In a Council Override, the councilmember who proposed the motion queries the rest of the council to affirm or deny the override. If all members of the Council affirm, the act of Parliament is overridden by the proposal. A councilmember declaring an override is expected to resign effective immediately after taking such drastic action, under penalty of arrest.

In addition to the government on Aeternus Station, most Arcologies have local governments organized under Officer Corps oversight. Local governments vary from microcosms of Parliament to concerningly corrupt oligarchies. The Officer Corps regulates arcology governments to prevent regional autocracies and anarchies from forming, denying charters to (and threatening) arcologies that cannot at least nominally demonstrate a democratic process of governance.

Spoiler: Philosophy

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While the Cult of the Navigator (a religious movement from the Aeternus worshiping its rogue AI controller) still exists, its ranks have since collapsed to the point of near-irrelevance, with only a few tens of thousands remaining.

In its place has arisen a disorganized, humanistic, spiritual-but-not-religious policy of renewal and fertility, a cult of birth and growth exalting mothers and motherhood. In its early days it was more paternalistic than feminist, but as the population dynamics (and adherents) shifted, so too did the faith. Adherents have rituals for fertility and menstruation, for births and for deaths. They form communal households for the purpose of raising the group's children so that otherwise single mothers can maintain careers and support each other, and encourage each other to bear as many offspring as they can manage, but no more than that. It's a cult of flourishing more than it is a cult of fertility, and in the end quality of life is more important than quantity of life; potential parents may be pressured into starting families and there is a stigma associated with long-term refusal to do so, but most family planning methods are considered acceptable for people who simply are not ready to have children, or do not believe they can support more children than they already have. Most groups are community-oriented and have an informal leader-shaman who leads rituals, which mostly involve markings made with body paint and mild recreational drug use.

The Cult of Renewal has no formal structure, but its free-love and community ideals have formed a sort of Nexus of Faith on Aurgelmir around the Unsullied Forum, a "wild" nature preserve or Zoo that is forbidden to direct human contact. The Unsullied Forum represents space allotted to nature; everything else belongs to Humanity.

Spoiler: Resources

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Screeching Crystals are the most common name for an unusual reddish mineral found deep within the Neo Sol system's iceball worlds: Aurgelmir, Mieville, and Verne. The crystals are psionically active, emitting keening "screeching" noises audible and even painful to individuals with psionic potential. Espers exposed to unworked screeching crystals typically suffer from headaches, nosebleeds, and even seizures or brain damage with prolonged exposure. When ground to a fine powder, the crystal resonance dims to a dull hum, but the substance functions as an inhaled hallucinogen to non-espers, and an effectively lethal poison to espers as it generates a feedback loop with their brain. The government and other entities such as corporations have a more practical use for it: Worked at low concentrations, it can be used in headbands, cells, or other closed spaces to suppress psionic powers without doing any permanent damage, though migraines are commonly reported. [Category: Arcana]

Requirement: Crops and Spices. Aurgelmir has no natural food sources, nor do any other planets in the system. Food supplies are limited to what can be synthesized or cloned in Arcologies or Aeternus Station, usually condensed carb-blocks, vat-chicken, and other such theoretically nutritious but undesirable fare.