Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Psi/Space] Irar, the Jewel in the British Crown

Prince Charon · 01-09-2021, 05:40 AM

The most tragic of the three planet entries that I've been working on.

Gormel

Major Civilizations
Gormelites (diffuse).

Great Powers
None, though the Commune of the Great Islands (feudal representative democracies, CR1-3) is a rising power.

World Data
TL: up to mature TL7^ in the most intact settlements (with TL8^ and TL9^-TL10^ heirloom tech), falling as low as TL0^ elsewhere; Mana level: None
Gravity: 1.2 G
Population: ~197,000 (estimated to have been 5-6 billion before the War, mostly the ancestral race, who are called 'Gormellians,' to distinguish them from the Gormelites)

Notes
This is an After The End world, that was still declining when the Irari discovered them. City-states are about the biggest polities on most of the planet, with few of them effectively holding more than a hundred square miles of useful territory (even if their territorial claims are sometimes much bigger), and those territories are mostly shrinking. Most of the population lives in small, walled villages (mainly made from the less bombed out and less radioactive pre-war settlements), or wandering as raiders and hunter-gatherers. The Gormelites are in some cases fascinated, in others angered or even frighted, by these other worlds whose libraries and universities never burned, and whose factories were never bombed to rubble - if they've heard of them at all, and are inclined to spare a thought for them from the daily job of surviving.

The Final War was thirty-five years ago, twenty years before the Irari found them. It is believed that the war started due to a computer error. Many of the oldest surviving Gormelites are desperately recording everything that they recall from before the Final War, and a number of others are carefully protecting the surviving records, but much has still been lost, and is still being lost, due to time, damage, raiders, and paranoia. The Irari estimate that if they'd found the Gormelites ten years later, they would have lost half the information that they currently have, and if they found them a hundred years later, nearly everything would be gone, and the Gormelites as a whole would be reduced to illiterate barbarism.

Due to the effects of the war, it is not unusual to find Gormelites who have lived to adulthood that have Resistances or Immunities to one or more metabolic hazards.

There were three belligerent factions in the Final War, none of whom can really be called 'the good guys':

The Royalists: A loose alliance of mostly a few big nations, most of which were constitutional monarchies (what legal limits the monarch had on power varied, but none of them were absolute monarchies, and all of them had either elected legislatures, elected judiciaries, or both), along with a few republics that were usually former colonies of one or more of said monarchies and still shared some ideology (or hated a nation in one of the other factions). They made the most use of genetic engineering, and were the ones to engineer the Gormelites. They were the richest faction, had the most religious freedom, and were the least racist (they cared far more about whether you were loyal and law-abiding, or how rich or poor you were, than the shape of your face or the colour of your skin or hair). Freedom of speech & the press were often limited in that one could not criticize the monarch beyond 'they listen to bad advice,' or criticize monarchy as a concept, though criticizing elected officials was usually permitted. They were the most democratic faction of the three, although slaves could not vote - OTOH, they had some other rights in the Royalist nations. In the last peaceful period before the Final War, when it looked like the Final War might not happen, the Royalists sold or gifted thousands of 'surplus' Gormelite children to several neutral nations, including the Commune of the Great Islands. Highest per capita gun ownership - in many Royalist nations the procedure was 'spend money, take oath to sovereign, get gun,' though you needed to make a new oath for each legal gun you owned.
The Oligarchs: A close alliance of many smaller nations with a shared culture (a form of what Infinite Worlds calls 'clan/tribal,' with the oligarchs being the leaders of powerful clans; many of the clans also served the roles of corporations, but did not operate like them, being more like family businesses writ large). This faction made the most use of robots and psiborgs, and the least use of strategic psychotronic weapons, generally preferring nuclear or chemical weapons of mass destruction. They claimed to be the most democratic faction, but were really more in the middle - one needed to be part of a clan to have citizenship, and thus to vote, and it was very hard to be adopted into or marry into a clan if you were not of the 'right' race; this was only faction where racism was important to their ideology. They genetically engineered a servitor race similar to the Helots (GURPS Bio-Tech p67) in the last few decades before the Final War (none are known to survive). Slaves' rights varied widely between the members of this alliance, though few gave them as many rights as the average Royalist nation. They had the lowest per capita gun ownership - your clan head owned the guns and decided whether you could have one, mostly based on how much they trusted you; of the three, they were the only faction not to have firearms training as part of standard education.
The Theocrats: A single large nation in which the priesthood and religious hierarchy of the state religion was the state: All military officers were the equivalent of chaplains or acting chaplains, all local and regional administrators were also the local or regional religious leaders (e.g. the village priest is also the mayor and the justice-of-the-gods-peace), et cetra. Priests and priestesses at each administrative level voted for the next level up. This faction had the largest population of the three (1.5 to 2 billion people), the poorest education & economy, and made the most use of nasty psychotronic weapons (some of them strategic in nature). No religious freedom: either you were part of the Faith and thus a citizen (no matter where you lived), or you were not part of the Faith and thus a foreigner who was required to Go Somewhere Else eventually (even if you lived there long before the Faith annexed your country), could not own land or run a business, could not marry a member of the Faith, could not adopt children, et cetra. They had many non-religious freedoms (as long as you were part of the Faith), and were the only faction to forbid & condemn slavery. Technically speaking, they had no crimes, only sins. The Faith forbade exclusive homosexuality and asexuality, but not bisexuality (since bisexuals would still 'do their duty' to contribute to the population). They were not strongly racist by the time the Final War happened, but racial divisions still clearly existed - one contributor to international tensions was that the 'right' race for the Theocrats was one of the 'wrong' races for the Oligarchs, and vice-versa; this got worse in both factions as tensions rose. Gormelites were considered abominations (genetic engineering was a mortal sin), and they tended to kill infants who showed genetic problems that in other nations would simply be corrected. The Theocracy was the least democratic faction, as only the priesthood could vote - in theory anyone who passed the tests and swore the oaths could join the priesthood, but in practice some of the tests were subjective enough that whether one passed or failed was open to interpretation; the families or friends of important priests & priestesses were more likely to be interpreted as passing than not. Second-highest per-capita gun ownership - the stereotype was that rural people owned guns & used them (mainly for hunting wild animals and fooling around at the shooting range), while urban people did not, but learned to use them in school.

For those of you wondering how a late TL9^ culture still had slavery, don't think of field hands picking cotton, think of the things that the victims of human trafficking are used for. (This is the least evil specific example of modern-day slavery I can find, and it's still evil.) They mostly didn't kidnap people, since they could buy them openly, often from prisons or to pay off debts; on the other hand, there were very few unemployed homeless in these nations, and those that were tended to hide from the authorities in fear of what would be done to them if they were caught. Chattel slavery was basically illegal in most of the Royalist nations, slaves there usually had rights and were often contracted to be freed after some period, or after their debts were paid off (and the tax agencies often monitored owners of debt slaves fairly closely to prevent cheating); no-one was born a slave in the Royalist nations, and no-one 'too young to work' could be made a slave (though what age counted as old enough to work varied). Chattel slavery sometimes happened in the Oligarch states, including children being born as slaves. Some slaves, mostly in the Royalist faction, had significant administrative jobs and high Status, like ministeriales in the Holy Roman Empire. Abolitionist movements never really took off in two powerful cultures, partly because by the time they could have, no-one wanted to look like they were giving in to the Theocrats (who expanded their nation partly by encouraging conversions to their faith, taking over when enough of the population had converted).

01-09-2021, 05:40 AM	#17
Prince Charon Join Date: Dec 2012	Re: [Psi/Space] Irar, the Jewel in the British Crown The most tragic of the three planet entries that I've been working on. Gormel Major Civilizations Gormelites (diffuse). Great Powers None, though the Commune of the Great Islands (feudal representative democracies, CR1-3) is a rising power. World Data TL: up to mature TL7^ in the most intact settlements (with TL8^ and TL9^-TL10^ heirloom tech), falling as low as TL0^ elsewhere; Mana level: None Gravity: 1.2 G Population: ~197,000 (estimated to have been 5-6 billion before the War, mostly the ancestral race, who are called 'Gormellians,' to distinguish them from the Gormelites) Notes This is an After The End world, that was still declining when the Irari discovered them. City-states are about the biggest polities on most of the planet, with few of them effectively holding more than a hundred square miles of useful territory (even if their territorial claims are sometimes much bigger), and those territories are mostly shrinking. Most of the population lives in small, walled villages (mainly made from the less bombed out and less radioactive pre-war settlements), or wandering as raiders and hunter-gatherers. The Gormelites are in some cases fascinated, in others angered or even frighted, by these other worlds whose libraries and universities never burned, and whose factories were never bombed to rubble - if they've heard of them at all, and are inclined to spare a thought for them from the daily job of surviving. The Final War was thirty-five years ago, twenty years before the Irari found them. It is believed that the war started due to a computer error. Many of the oldest surviving Gormelites are desperately recording everything that they recall from before the Final War, and a number of others are carefully protecting the surviving records, but much has still been lost, and is still being lost, due to time, damage, raiders, and paranoia. The Irari estimate that if they'd found the Gormelites ten years later, they would have lost half the information that they currently have, and if they found them a hundred years later, nearly everything would be gone, and the Gormelites as a whole would be reduced to illiterate barbarism. Due to the effects of the war, it is not unusual to find Gormelites who have lived to adulthood that have Resistances or Immunities to one or more metabolic hazards. There were three belligerent factions in the Final War, none of whom can really be called 'the good guys': The Royalists: A loose alliance of mostly a few big nations, most of which were constitutional monarchies (what legal limits the monarch had on power varied, but none of them were absolute monarchies, and all of them had either elected legislatures, elected judiciaries, or both), along with a few republics that were usually former colonies of one or more of said monarchies and still shared some ideology (or hated a nation in one of the other factions). They made the most use of genetic engineering, and were the ones to engineer the Gormelites. They were the richest faction, had the most religious freedom, and were the least racist (they cared far more about whether you were loyal and law-abiding, or how rich or poor you were, than the shape of your face or the colour of your skin or hair). Freedom of speech & the press were often limited in that one could not criticize the monarch beyond 'they listen to bad advice,' or criticize monarchy as a concept, though criticizing elected officials was usually permitted. They were the most democratic faction of the three, although slaves could not vote - OTOH, they had some other rights in the Royalist nations. In the last peaceful period before the Final War, when it looked like the Final War might not happen, the Royalists sold or gifted thousands of 'surplus' Gormelite children to several neutral nations, including the Commune of the Great Islands. Highest per capita gun ownership - in many Royalist nations the procedure was 'spend money, take oath to sovereign, get gun,' though you needed to make a new oath for each legal gun you owned. The Oligarchs: A close alliance of many smaller nations with a shared culture (a form of what Infinite Worlds calls 'clan/tribal,' with the oligarchs being the leaders of powerful clans; many of the clans also served the roles of corporations, but did not operate like them, being more like family businesses writ large). This faction made the most use of robots and psiborgs, and the least use of strategic psychotronic weapons, generally preferring nuclear or chemical weapons of mass destruction. They claimed to be the most democratic faction, but were really more in the middle - one needed to be part of a clan to have citizenship, and thus to vote, and it was very hard to be adopted into or marry into a clan if you were not of the 'right' race; this was only faction where racism was important to their ideology. They genetically engineered a servitor race similar to the Helots (GURPS Bio-Tech p67) in the last few decades before the Final War (none are known to survive). Slaves' rights varied widely between the members of this alliance, though few gave them as many rights as the average Royalist nation. They had the lowest per capita gun ownership - your clan head owned the guns and decided whether you could have one, mostly based on how much they trusted you; of the three, they were the only faction not to have firearms training as part of standard education. The Theocrats: A single large nation in which the priesthood and religious hierarchy of the state religion was the state: All military officers were the equivalent of chaplains or acting chaplains, all local and regional administrators were also the local or regional religious leaders (e.g. the village priest is also the mayor and the justice-of-the-gods-peace), et cetra. Priests and priestesses at each administrative level voted for the next level up. This faction had the largest population of the three (1.5 to 2 billion people), the poorest education & economy, and made the most use of nasty psychotronic weapons (some of them strategic in nature). No religious freedom: either you were part of the Faith and thus a citizen (no matter where you lived), or you were not part of the Faith and thus a foreigner who was required to Go Somewhere Else eventually (even if you lived there long before the Faith annexed your country), could not own land or run a business, could not marry a member of the Faith, could not adopt children, et cetra. They had many non-religious freedoms (as long as you were part of the Faith), and were the only faction to forbid & condemn slavery. Technically speaking, they had no crimes, only sins. The Faith forbade exclusive homosexuality and asexuality, but not bisexuality (since bisexuals would still 'do their duty' to contribute to the population). They were not strongly racist by the time the Final War happened, but racial divisions still clearly existed - one contributor to international tensions was that the 'right' race for the Theocrats was one of the 'wrong' races for the Oligarchs, and vice-versa; this got worse in both factions as tensions rose. Gormelites were considered abominations (genetic engineering was a mortal sin), and they tended to kill infants who showed genetic problems that in other nations would simply be corrected. The Theocracy was the least democratic faction, as only the priesthood could vote - in theory anyone who passed the tests and swore the oaths could join the priesthood, but in practice some of the tests were subjective enough that whether one passed or failed was open to interpretation; the families or friends of important priests & priestesses were more likely to be interpreted as passing than not. Second-highest per-capita gun ownership - the stereotype was that rural people owned guns & used them (mainly for hunting wild animals and fooling around at the shooting range), while urban people did not, but learned to use them in school. For those of you wondering how a late TL9^ culture still had slavery, don't think of field hands picking cotton, think of the things that the victims of human trafficking are used for. (This is the least evil specific example of modern-day slavery I can find, and it's still evil.) They mostly didn't kidnap people, since they could buy them openly, often from prisons or to pay off debts; on the other hand, there were very few unemployed homeless in these nations, and those that were tended to hide from the authorities in fear of what would be done to them if they were caught. Chattel slavery was basically illegal in most of the Royalist nations, slaves there usually had rights and were often contracted to be freed after some period, or after their debts were paid off (and the tax agencies often monitored owners of debt slaves fairly closely to prevent cheating); no-one was born a slave in the Royalist nations, and no-one 'too young to work' could be made a slave (though what age counted as old enough to work varied). Chattel slavery sometimes happened in the Oligarch states, including children being born as slaves. Some slaves, mostly in the Royalist faction, had significant administrative jobs and high Status, like ministeriales in the Holy Roman Empire. Abolitionist movements never really took off in two powerful cultures, partly because by the time they could have, no-one wanted to look like they were giving in to the Theocrats (who expanded their nation partly by encouraging conversions to their faith, taking over when enough of the population had converted). __________________ Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.