Third Empire - The Decline (OOC)

[Samoblivion 531]

Spoiler

 

STELLARCHY OF MATENE

 

Starting Systems:

7A, 8A, 9A, 10A, 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A, 67A, 68A

 

 

Point Distributions:

Loyalty: 4

Influence: 2

Military: 0

Leadership: 5

Infrastructure 10

 

Stellarch:

Lord Darius Grayven

Lord Darius Grayven XIII, 52^nd Master of the Stellar House of Grayven, Paramount Overlord of the Patron Houses of Matene, Superb Guarantor of the Clientele,  High Arbiter of the Tenancies, Benevolent Protector of All Indentured, is the 346^th August Stellarch of the Stellarchy of Matene.

 

 

 

Provincial History and Culture:

As an Outer Rim province of reasonable little strategic importance in Imperial history, Matene has evolved along its own lines for the most part. A rigid, hierarchical society of a confusing array of noble houses, middle-class artisan guilds and military dynasties, the Stellarchy has maintained a distinct culture of its own since its founding. The Stellar House of Grayven has maintained a brutal stranglehold on Mateni high politics for over two thousand years, following the storied events of the long and bloody civil war remembered today in operatic saga form as “the Restoration”, in which anarchic reformists allied with foreign barbarians challenging the natural order of the province were slain and the fatherly influence of the Mateni Houses restored to the border.

 

Originally powerful family-owned corporations and imperial-mandated land barons, Matene has developed a rigid aristocracy controlling its entire higher political structure. Seeing themselves as benevolent, superior overlords, guardians of the Imperial fringes and custodians of a fair and ordered feudal system, the Mateni nobility are almost obliviously magnanimous to the masses under their velvet gloved fist. These houses are ensnared in a confused and tangled feudal web of vassalship and fealty oaths, but this is entirely above the daily purview of the citizenry. Patronage by a House, especially by the Stellar House of Grayven, is key to the economic prosperity of the lower strata. All aside from foreigners measure their status by their relationship to the nobility – clients, tenants or indentured.

 

The clients enjoy comfortable lives, not dissimilar from those elsewhere in the Third Empire, but are indelibly defined by their chosen relationship with specific Houses. Their prosperity can rise and fall with those of their affiliated Patron, but their skills and personal property are also sought after by the Houses, and the nobles can richly reward loyalty. Tenants are those who have no choice in their affiliation with their Patron, either through personal poverty or historical slight. Their personal sanctity, human rights and protection under the law are guaranteed by their Patron, at the price of a significant percentage of their productive labour and minimal political rights. The indentured are the lowest tier in Mateni society, slaves in all but name. Their lives are the property of their Patron, often leased to clients and tenants for profit, but are guaranteed at least basic subsistence. An indentured man will not go hungry, but his life is no longer his own to decide and all products of his labour belong to his master, as will his children. A contract of indenture is generally fixed by several generations, but many are the ways in which such contracts can be extended. The only solace an indentured can take in the system is that a particularly cruel master may find themselves in breach of the standards of the Mateni social contract, lax as they are, and find themselves on the lowest rung themselves.

 

Their is a degree of social mobility within the Mateni hierarchy, but always under the supervision of the Patron Nobility. An indentured can be freed from servitude at the petitioning of his master, and so can client or tenant fall from grace for anything from a high crime to an imagined slight. Individuals from the clients can even be raised into the aristocracy through marriage, often to secure patronage contracts in the event of conflict between nobles over a particularly valuable client’s business. Another way of sidestepping the usual rigidities of Mateni society is service in the province’s military. Structured like the noble household guards, but entirely loyal to the Stellar House of Grayven, higher officers are entirely drawn from the nobility, but clients and tenants may rise to considerable rank and status via merit – even to Knight-Retainers of the Stellar House, the highest honour a non-noble can receive, placing them above lesser nobles in the command structure. Much of the Province’s manpower is drawn from professional soldiers of the client and tenant rates, unbound from traditional oaths of loyalty to swear themselves to the service of the Stellar House and the Province. The majority of what would be considered “cannon fodder” and basic ships crewmen are provided by tithes of identured from the province’s other Houses. Theirs is often a fixed term of service, their indenture contacts transfered over to the Stellar House. Meritorious conduct may even result in manumission to the tenant class, with a land parcel and loyalty contracted provided by the Stellarch. Such opportunities are rare in peacetime, but great incentives to fight harder in war.

 

 

Human Variants:

Mateni Highborn – Several hundred generations ago, extensive genemodding for aesthetic purposes came into vogue among the nobility of the Matene. Originally a way of securing desirable qualities, such as strength and intelligence, it swiftly degenerated into who could create the most aesthetically pleasing offspring according to the artistic style of the day. After several dynastic catastophes involving extreme genetic degredation from overuse of this technology (and not a small amount of good old fashioned noble inbreeding) the technology became traditionally restrained to fixing genetic abnormalities and ever so slight aesthetic adjustments to offspring and adults. Nevertheless, the result of these centuries of genetic tailoring have left their mark on the nobility of Matene. These “Highborn” comprise almost the entirety of the noble houses of the province, their most common features being skin colour ranging from unnatural pink to purple, hair in hues ranging from jet black to electric blue, and bright coloured eyes with universally black sclera. Stripes of bright, contrasting paint or electro-tattoos on the skin are common but not a genetic trait, merely fashionable. Aside from the garish colour variations, facial features of Highborn are universally what other human varieties would consider beautiful.

 

Unique Units:

 

((will do later, need to discuss))

 

 

Pick A Number:

8

[Revenant. 0]

Emirate of Kiritau

 

 

Starting Systems:  B(3, 4, 5, 14, 15, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25)

 

Provincial Culture:

Aesthetic: Neo-Persia (à la Frank Herbert’s Dune)

 

Kiritau Sector is defined by the pervasiveness of its high-level identity theft, entrenched over an information arms race spanning centuries.  High society in Kiritau is highly insular, propped up by exclusive access to cutting edge identity protection technology.  While the proletariat travel and work inside identical containment suits that both conceal the wearer and prevent the release of DNA into the environment, wealthy Kiritauans wear their original faces, unobscured, as a status symbol.  Kiritau’s proletarian lack of self-expression and the government’s powerful control of information has left the sector’s art production functionally non-existent except as an aristocratic pastime. Elites also enjoy using their connections to acquire exotic possessions in order to flaunt the security with which they can maintain stable, colorful personalities.

 

In summary, Kiritau bifurcated society of elites and proletariat has produced a bimodal genetic distribution: the lower class under the selective pressure of conforming to a singular physiology and the upper class selecting for divergences from the norm. 

 

 

Human Variants?:

Most of Kiritau’s population is remarkable in its lack of physiological variation after generations of selective pressure towards biological uniformity.  Beneath their containment suits, most Kiritauans are dramatically similar.  After all, to stick out provides opportunities for criminals to assume or sell the identity of a victim and the containment suit is not a perfect system.  Unusual physiologies are frequently sold in black market deals to elites seeking to improve their looks or to purchase a new lease on life after an information leak has come to haunt them.

 

In an act called identity poaching, criminals assume the physiology and wealth of their victims.  This practice makes poachers and the black market particularly hard to eliminate.  In an effort to maintain control of the situation, the Kiritau government has taken great pains to acquire Psykics for their highly desired ability to bypass technological identity shielding.  Government-issue identities conform to broad classes of employment types: agriculturalist, technician, administrator, and so on while forbidding other, more risky forms of self-expression.

 

 

Point Distributions (21 Total):

Influence: 10

The Emirate of Kiritau became a major galactic hub for the flow and manipulation of information because of its centrality between the eastern and western halves of the galaxy, wedged inside the chokepoint of the northern rims.  Naturally, Sovereign Raa has spent decades weaving a sprawling network of informants and disinformants to harness these innate strengths of Kiritau.  Despite the misfortune the emirate’s dependence on the information trade has created for the sector’s proletariat, most things can be acquired via Kiritau connections… if you can afford it. 

 

Loyalty: 3

Anonymity is a currency in Kiritau, but the people are hungry for memorable leaders.  With its mastery of information control, the government’s use of propaganda has effectively formed a cult of personality around Stellarch Auraki Raa.  However, because extreme identity theft drives the sector’s violent crime, the proletariat endure precarious living conditions that sow seeds of discontent.  Kiritau’s cultural identity is best defined by its lack thereof– ethnicity, gender, and other personal characteristics are concealed by the masses.  Within an economy driven by information flows, remaining unidentifiable is the key to survival for that majority of Kiritauans who cannot afford quality identity protection.  Yet, the sector’s overall detachment from self-expression also stifles passions of patriotism and the industriousness of economic competition.  To sum up, pro-stellarch propaganda creates much loyalty to Sovereign Raa, but the majority of the population is not motivated to do much about it.  Kiritau’s social immobility is so great that most proletariats focus on maintaining their personal security rather than trying to change their lot in life.

 

Military: 3

Kiritau’s military depends heavily on black ops and hackers.  Enlisting is an attractive option for many who cannot afford basic forms of identity protection, and so the poorest are glad to benefit from the military’s enthusiasm for eliminating individualism.  However, a lack of infrastructure in the sector ultimately limits the size and capabilities of Kiritau’s military forces.

 

Leadership: 5

What Kiritau lacks in physical infrastructure it compensates for with military intelligence and strategic prowess.  As it turns out, an abundance of skillfully controlled information can do wonders for coordinating otherwise poorly-motivated personnel.

 

Infrastructure: 0

Kiritau’s faceless proles are preoccupied with social problems and therefore lack productivity.

 

 

Your Stellarch:

Caught between a high-society culture that fetishizes stable individuality and the practical need to adapt her personality to different political and military engagements, Stellarch Auraki Raa must balance a set of multiple personalities against needing to appear as a singular individual.  While no one in Kiritau can be known for sure to be wearing their original face, it is likely that the high-born Auraki Raa is indeed an unmodified female.  That the Stellarch Auraki Raa appears female only reinforces the fetish of how sublimely different she appears in the eyes of the faceless masses. 

 

 

Auraki Raa inherited the position of sovereign of Kiritau as the scion of an emir bloodline regarded as both royal and holy by the masses.  When Auraki first came into power at the age of 18, she held a very insular view of the sector and galactic events from within the cloister of high society and her father’s advisors.  Though Auraki had killed her mother in the course of childbirth, Auraki’s father, Popoiangore, did not hold this against the child and announced publicly that it was fitting that the new would replace the old.  With these words Popoiangore had paved a smooth entry for Auraki as new heir.  The public remembered these words when, during a field campaign years later, Popoiangore contracted a parasite that left his mind trapped inside a body he could no longer control.  Auraki’s imperial loyalist father had been a rugged emir that frequently led troops through the mud himself rather than entrusting his battles entirely to underlings, so Auraki publicly used an ancient ceremonial sword to behead her father herself.

 

Taking on one personality from her father, Auraki Raa travelled widely through the dirtiest parts of the empire to enlist new informants and so developed a more realistic grasp of galactic events and the state of the emirate’s underclass.  Over the course of a decade, Raa explored the upper class’s complicity with a transgalactic criminal underbelly and their collective efforts to keep the Kiritau proletariat from developing individualistic tendencies.  Such dark truths come at a dark price, however, and rather than become the “unsullied” political and military leader that was her birthright, Raa enriched her connections with the most effective and innovative criminals of the emirate.  Pouring the next decade of her life into incorporating cutting edge criminal elements into the stellarchy’s military, Raa’s internal workings became a black box producing unpredictable results.  Raa restrains her crime lord personality in the presence of the aristocracy, which she prefers to have remember her as Popoiangore’s holy child.  Since Kiritau’s high society and criminal underworld fit hand in glove, it takes some doing for Raa to maintain an unblemished appearance, but after all these years she has become a fitting sovereign for a stellarchy writhing with secrets.  Now at the age of 38, Raa conceals a complex of five distinct personalities as she sits at the center of a machine-like stellarchy that sucks in and selectively injects information on a galactic scale… but who could say what she really wants?

 

Sovereign Auraki Raa

 

Unique Military Units (Two):

1.  Kaihaumi identity theft commandos: These special forces are ideal for giving orders to forces that aren’t technically yours.  They are also useful for requisitioning property and are experts at reprogramming enemy vessels for fun and profit.

 

 

 

2.  Kaitangata psykic identity unraveller: This unit makes a target learn that he is someone else entirely.  They are the same as the Kaihaumi but instead of technology, it is the human mind that is their plaything.

 

 

Pick a number between 1-10:  4

 

 

Additional Characters?:

• Harare Kekeno, Raa’s oldest advisor, a loyalist, and a relic of her father’s classical ruling style.

• Rau Kikini, the dark left hand of Sovereign Raa (well, the current one anyway)

• Raupeti Weri, often seen but never overheard

• Neke, a well-paid and loyal agitator

• Huka Hūkerikeri, a foppish aristocrat that Raa has to frequently endure

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2020 by Revenant.
adding cool pic of my ships bruh