'Imperial Culture' (non-canonista)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I developed a lot of thought on the literary traditions of the people I set my story along.

One I developed was what is called a Totemic Saga. It is a biography of an object(not necessarily called Totemic because it is of ritual significance as such-but simply because "McGuffinite" sounds awful). It can be any object as long as it is reasonably "cool". Sometimes will follow this object from the hands of one hero to another and so on. But the most unique style is following it from it's actual production, then it's journey along long routes from trader to trader until it reaches a given destination. In the course of that journey many adventures will come, some mundane rigors of trading and sometimes fantastic adventures according to the authors taste.

Often a Totemic saga will be a spinoff from another format. In a romance, for instance, if the hero buys a bottle of expensive wine for the heroine a link will be placed allowing you to follow the bottle from a vinyard dozens of parsecs away. In a heroic epic, a heroes weapons will be followed the same way. Similar practices are common in various genres but this custom is most common among professionally produced pieces meant for the rich and powerful, or for public entertainment before a large audience; amateurs handle this sort of thing too.

As well as the spinoff style Totemic Saga, some are one-offs.

This tradition originated outside the Imperium but is becoming known among some fashionable Imperial circles.

You might want to know that in 18th century Europe there was a genre just like this. Many of the best ones were about the biography of a piece of money.