The Republic of Sea Serpents

The Republic of Sea Serpents is founded on the idea that mass makes right. Its citizens are all large predators, formerly warriors of the Floozy Empire who grew sick of the Bastard war. They were tired of taking orders from the small life forms they were created to protect, and seized a chunk of the disintegrating empire for themselves.  This new Republic would be a realm where the true powers could rule over their lessers with strength and wisdom. In the millennium since the end of the Bastard war, this vision has become a reality. The Republic is a rich and powerful polity, with a strong space navy and a thriving trade network. They are somewhat insular, preferring to trade with themselves and select outsiders.

The titular "Sea Serpents" are not a race, rather they are a loosely related clade of bio-weapons. They all share a curious ability; they have conscious control of their gene expression and can alter their bodies at whim. Most cannot reproduce own their own, a safety feature leftover from their creators. The genes that allow for parthenogenesis are controlled by the senate, only senators have the right to reproduce*. Most Sea Serpents are strictly aquatic, but some are amphibious.

The Cycler Current is the network of trade routes that crisscross the Republic.  It is named for its oceanic cyclers, massive cargo ships that transport millions of tons of seawater from planet to planet, linking the planets of the Republic together into one vast biosphere. The cyclers also provide free transport for any citizen or ward that wishes to travel, as long as the smaller passengers don't mind potentially becoming snacks for the larger ones. There is also a sizable fleet of merchant ships that transport goods. They mostly carry vast amounts of fish, but they also deal in things like exotic elements and advanced technology. The Republic is home to some of the most lucrative mercantile opportunities in the galaxy. Outsiders are welcome to try their hand, though they should be wary. In the Republic there is no distinction between merchant and pirate, and the local firms will test any newcomers, looking for easy prey.

The Republic has three classes of sapient being; senators, citizens and wards. Wards are the vast majority in numbers, but are the lowest on the food chain. They have no rights or enfranchisement but are usually treated well enough to prevent uprisings. Their predation by the upper classes is seen as a necessary part of the social order, and is mostly a matter of capital punishment. Citizens are those sapients that have proven their place in the ecosystem. All sea serpents are grandfathered into this class, while outsiders must earn it by spending a year in the oceans of Chamber. All citizens have the right to vote for the senator of their region, but have little legal power otherwise. Senators are the ruling class, and the biggest and nastiest of the citizen class. Republic elections are a hell of a thing, as candidates will clash and tear into each other. Most elections are settled long before any votes are cast.

Races

The Jokers are a race of aquatic Sapients that live in the Republic of Sea Serpents. They get their name from their unserious disposition and cackling hunting calls. They have serpentine bodies with a hard carapace. They paint their bodies in a thousand different patterns and colors which have various cultural meanings that mostly opaque to outsiders. They are very hard to kill, as they regenerate rapidly. Even if their body is destroyed their slug-like brain may still survive and regrow a new body. They bred at an alarming rate and place little value on individual survival. To date no Joker has earned citizen ship on Chamber, but this hasn't stopped them from trying.

The Joker corporate clans handle most of the bulk commerce in the Republic. They're also the cause of most of the piracy, as rival clans will steal from each other without compunction. They will also kidnap enemy jokers by killing their bodies and abducting their brains. Joker culture holds that their personal ties die with the body, and they become loyal to whatever faction puts their brain into a convalesce pool. Their society is basically a violent but non-fatal civil war as the various clans rob and pillage each other.  They have a hard time understanding that outsiders don't live in perpetual warfare, and naïve Jokers will sometimes open up outsiders, looking for their slug.

The Whispering Worms are symbiotic sapients that are virtually helpless when they're outside their host. They are long thin worm creature that make their homes in the G.I Tracks of other creatures. A being with a whispering worm requires more food than average, but is otherwise unharmed. In return, a Whispering Worm will moderate its host's metabolism, filtering out toxins and promoting healthy growth and development. They also regulate neurotransmitters, making their hosts smarter and healthier. A Whispering Worm has access to the full sensorium of their host but can't communicate directly. Instead they appear in dreams and in transitory and alien mood swings. As the host becomes more familiar with their passenger, these messages become easier to decipher. Most Sea Serpents  have half a dozen whispering worm symbiotes, and they're also common among humans and Jokers. They form a scholarly class and have their own government branch, the Internal bureaucracy. They can also live inside non-sapient hosts, creating what is called a sleepwalker; a creature that acts with an odd intelligence. There are entire cities of sleepwalkers in the Republic, strange crude buildings inhabited by mute beasts. Occasionally WhisperingWorms will pilot sleepwalkers to citizenship In Chamber, but Chamber is a dangerous place and even the natives don't last long. 

The Internal Bureaucracy is the administrative heart of the Republic. The Senate has the mass, but the Bureaucracy has the intel. The most important bureaucrats are the Whispering Worms that make permeant hosts inside the senators. After every Senate meeting, The Senators barf up their symbiotes and they have their own meeting, the Convocation of Worms. Afterwards they return to their hosts (sometimes swapping around a bit). This is how the Republic is coordinated. The Bureaucracy gains its intelligence from the Current of Eyes, a loose cabal of peregrine worms who travel from host to host gathering rumors and information.

Planets

The Chamber is a gargantuan planet out in the depths of space. Its surface is a sheet of ice several miles thick. Below that there is a vast ocean full of sea monsters, a nightmarish ecosystem fueled by the planet's molten core. It is here that the Senate has its chamber, a beautiful city lit from above by an array of mirrors and lens that reflect and concentrate starlight through tunnels in the ice. This is where the citizen test is administered; any organic being who survives a year here are granted citizenship. This is rather difficult; the animals here hunt with a psychic sense that lets them hone in on sapient minds from far away. The best strategy is to be big and scary, but even then there are some huge leviathans here in the deeps.

The planet Rikkel is a terrestrial Dentata** class world in the Republic. Here, the ecosystem is organized in a strict caste system. Herbivore peasants are preyed upon by knights, which in turn are preyed upon by barons, and are in turn hunted by the kings. For obscure cultural reasons, Sea Serpents love to eat kings of all sort, and this planet is a naturally occurring source of royalty. Exports from the Kingfishery are some of the most lucrative in the Republic.

Osgren is one of the many Dentata class planets in the Republic. It has seen sporadic habitation by various Sea Serpents over the centuries but it has never been prime real estate. This is because it has an infestation of humans. They are mega fauna specialists, making their living in hidden conclaves, only emerging to hunt and gather. The problem with the Osgrenites is that they will hunt anything, even Sea Serpents. And they're good at to; generations living on a death world has made them into cunning and fierce hunters;  able to surprise and overpower even the most fearsome Sea Serpents. What's worse, they have learned how to hitchhike on the Cycler Current, and have set up conclaves on several Republic planets.

The Senate was debating different methods of control or extermination when a curious development happened. A human in a cobbled together pressure suit presented himself before the Senate and announced he had completed the citizenship trial. He would not have been believed, if Senator Glarshar hadn't remembered trying to eat him in a cycler a year previously. His spear was still embed in her gums***. This man, whose name is Dav Freehold was quickly elected Senator of Osgren and since then several other humans have passed the citizenship test.

Senator Glarshar is one of the Osgrenite's only allies in the senate. Most SeaSerpents think humans are dangerous pests and find the idea of them having political power absurd. This is almost exactly what Senator Glarshar thinks but she finds it amusing absurd instead of insulting absurd. She treats all humans as de-facto citizens, and only eats the most annoying. She is also found of granting gifts and favors to humans. (The elite of the Republic run off a gift economy, so it is wise to pay her back as soon as possible, or else she might consider your body an impromptu gift.) She appears more turtle shaped than serpentine, with a heavily armored head and a thick scaled shell. She is very interested in claiming other human colonized worlds for the Republic, an ambition her human allies find somewhat disconcerting.

While Senator Freehold is Osgren's representative in the Senate, the planet is ruled by Chairman Grantof, an ancient and wiry androgyne. Osgrenite culture revolves around hunting and cooking food; Grantof is the most respected hunter and chef on the planet. From a hollowed out volcano they oversee the Kitchen trials, a planet wide culinary competition where Osgrenites from all over compete to show off their skills.

President Skullspliter is the head of Kingfishery corporate clan; a Joker lead commercial interest that controls the monarch trade on the planet Rikkel. If you want a fresh King or Queen for your dinner table, you'll need to deal with him or outplay him. He is the host to a couple of important Whispering Worms who are the true business savvy behind the kingfishery; Skullsplitter himself being little more than a deranged thug. Their relationship is turning toxic, leading Skullsplitter to become even more unstable as his symbiotes play passive aggressive games with his blood chemistry.

People who are also locations

Senator Okrine is a void adapted Sea Serpent who serves as the Republic's flagship. She is the size of a small planetoid and is bristling with cybernetic weapons. She is escorted by her smaller children and a fleet of scavenged space ships. This is the heart of the Republic's power; if an enemy fleet survives her escort and her weapons, she will simply eat them. The Whispering Worms inside her inhabit humanoid clones called nulls with simple minds they can easily pilot.  Her insides are a massive scrapyard/recycling center as swarms of nulls take apart everything she swallows. This is how her escort fleet is maintained and expanded.

*For this reason, there is a convention to refer to Senators as female even if they are not SeaS erpents. In recent years this has been resisted by the lone human Senator.

** There is some debate about where this designation comes from. Scholars say it is because of the jaws and teeth of the planets' numerous predators. Human spacers say it's because these planets will bite your dick off

***Senator Glarshar has since gifted the spear back to Senator Freehold, where it holds a place of honor in his office

The Reclaimers

The Reclaimers are an alliance of assorted scavengers and squatters who live in the many ruined planets in the galaxy. They are hardy and resourceful people who exist in the margins of galactic society.  Through generations of hard work they slowly terraform their planets, making them livable after disaster and misuse. The alliance is connected by a network of interstellar trade caravans that also enable a steady flow of migrants and wanderers. There is a class of warriors called "Road Knights"  who make slow, meandering pilgrimages, causing and solving problems with their violent skills.

Races

The Orn are a type of sapient fungus. What most consider an Orn is actually a sort of fruiting body, or as the Orn themselves call it, an "avatar". The true bulk of any Orn is a mass of mycelium growing within a specific medium.  These avatars vary widely in appearance, with most being humanoid in body plan, but quadrupeds and vermiform body plans are also common. They have a smooth, fungal texture and come in a variety of vivid colors. Orn typically do not wear clothing beyond pouches and bags to carry tools. They lack visible eyes, but have patches of short tendrils that are powerful sense organs.

Technically, Orn is the name of the group mind which all Orn are a part of .The groupmind consensus is created by the sharing of chemical thought messages. As the Orn are spread across the galaxy, the groupmind is maintained by couriers sharing these chemical messages between every Orn world.  the Orn supermind is a diffuse, scattered being, experienced by Orn individuals as something more akin to a living drug trip than a conscious entity. The nature of the supermind is hierarchical, in that it is composed of a multitude of smaller groupminds. Every Orn world has its own ruling intelligence, which are turn composed of a host of regional groupminds.

Those Who are not Orn represent a significant taxonomic difficulty. In appearance and physiology they are indistinguishable from the Orn. The only thing that separates them is their refusal to participate in the racial groupmind. Instead of choosing a separate identity, they define themselves by their opposition. Those who are not Orn are found where ever the Orn are, existing in the criminal fringes.

Scollapendrites are insectile Sapients with long segmented bodies and dozens of legs. Non-breeding adults range from one and three meters long. They are obligate carnivores who prefer live prey. Females must make a conscious decision to become fertile, which triggers a tremendous growth spurt. A Scollapendrite "Broodmother" is between 20 and thirty meters long, and up to 6 meters tall. They require a tremendous amount of food, to the point where their hunger can overwhelm their rational minds. They are traditionally kept in "Motherlands", segregated caverns away from major population centers.. Much of Scollapendrite culture and politics concerns who can become a a Broodmother and when they are allowed to do so. 

The Church of the Holy Vermin was originally a Scollapendrite institution though its membership has expanded since its founding. They worship the small, seemly inconsequential life forms that Scollapendrites feed off of. Through donations, discoveries and the occasional holy conquest the church has come to possess a number of Vermin Engines, Ancient Floozy devices that generate constant streams of small life forms. The Church uses this engines to create mass amounts of food for the population. They use this leverage to gain a great deal of political power. If a polity doesn't fall in line with the Church, they'll cut off the food supply to the Broodmothers, making them go mad with hunger.

The Reclaimers settle planets that most consider uninhabitable, those with weak biospheres or poisonous atmospheres or live war machines. Some apocalypses go even further, leaving the planet's surface completely sterilized. For those planets the Church of the Holy Vermin uses one their vermin engines to bring the Rain of Fish. They seed the planet's atmosphere with billions of airborne larvae that feed off trace elements and sunlight. When they grow too large, they plummet to the planet's surface, bringing vital microbial life.  Reseeding a planet like this takes decades of work. The church funds these efforts by encouraging pilgrimages to these ruined worlds. For a sizable donation, travelers can join the Carnival of Fish, a perpetual party on the surface of whatever world the Rain of Fish is currently visiting. Eating the fallen fish is said to have great health and spiritual benefits. For those who are dubious about eating food off the charred dirt of a ruined world, the carnival offers an impressive array of vices for a party thrown by a church.

The Yongger are sapient cyborgs that emerge from the Ger, a type of feral organic infrastructure. Yongger have an intuitive connection with The Ger, but they are not its masters. Those are long gone. Still, through careful cultivation the Yongger can direct the Ger to produce what they need. This makes the Yongger* an important part of the Reclaimer alliance. Ger gardens are found on many Reclaimer worlds.

Planets

Gger, the wild factory. This planet is the birthplace of the Yongger and the Ger. Here, in the distant past the Ger reached its apex then broke down. Now the Ger grows like mold among the bones of its golden age. The Yongger Sky Clan has its capital here, a city built on a vast grass covered roof. They mine the planet's ruins for Ger organs and drones, which they transplant into their own infrastructure. They have to compete with all the other Yongger Clans. The other clans range from merely suspicious to rabidly xenophobic, and usually take a dim view to any aliens they find in their territory.

ShrangGa, the spore shrouded world. This Reclaimer world is the alleged home planet of the Orn race. Vast tracks of fungal forest cover the surface. The air is choked with dangerous spores, making it a hard world for non-Orn to inhabit. The few cities here are built in mountain ranges or on protected coasts. It is said that Shrang-Ga is the crossroads of the mind of Orn, where the thoughts of all of Orn across the galaxy meet and mingle. It is home to the spore couriers, who carry chemical messages from here to other reclaimer worlds. It is also home to the monks of ego, a sect of Orn priests who coordinate the actions of all of Orn.

FestLa, the riotous wastes. This planet was home to a human civilization that destroyed itself thousands of years ago. The surviving humans here have joined the Reclaimers and are now picking over the ruins of their world. Here,  a curious variety of Orn grows. When seeded into a freshly dead human, the young Orn absorbs the deceased's memories and personalities, resulting in "humans who are Orn". The "WhoAre" are the immortal rulers of this planet, human in drive but alien in biology. They hold constant gladiatorial games to find humans worthy of their fungal afterlife. This planet is also home to the Weapon Smiths, a reclusive guild of human weapon makers that are rumored to have an arsenal of planet destroying super weapons.

GranKra, the concrete towers. It is said that it was a weaponized madness that built the eponymous towers. Sometime during the bastard war the former inhabitants were infected by an artificial meme that compelled them to  waste their lives building their own tomb. Massive cyclopean ruins are everywhere. In the current era this planet is ruled by the Scollapendrites, who grow vast fungal farms in the concrete caverns. Here is the largest Motherland, a cordoned off reserve where the Scollapendrite broodmothers live. The locals are haunted by a dangerous clade of Those Who are not Orn, who parasitically infect the locals.

Personalities  

Elgron, the Fertile Blade is one of the "WhoAre", Orn who have grown from human bodies. She runs one of the largest fighting pits on FestLa. She watches most games from her private box, looking for contestants worthy of her gift. When she finds a likely subject, she enters the pit herself. She is fast, strong and fights with a spear impregnated with fatal spores. Facing her is almost certain death, which is the point. Those that die worthy deaths against her are seeded with orn spores to become WhoAre. Those that disgrace themselves in their final moments have their skulls split open and their brains dashed out. Still, by pit master standards she is merciful; she generally airs on the side of reincarnation, only annihilating those she finds personally distasteful .She lets those who found their way into the pit without full knowledge of what exactly they were getting into off with a light maiming**.

Gilthain who is not Orn runs the Temple of Red Waters, a curious retreat in the region of ShrangGa known as the eye of Not Orn. This remote temple complex in a secluded and unsettled area of ShrangGa sees a surprising number of pilgrims. This is because it is known among the criminal underworld that the Temple of Red Waters is a safe place where those down on their luck can find shelter and opportunity. Gilthian positions itself as a monk and spiritual teacher, but it's more a fixer. Many a criminal enterprise has found the right talent through Glithain's suggestions.

Ger-Ker-Ka is the Steward of the Motherlands on GranKa. She is in command of the legion of servants who maintain the caverns and bring food to the Broodmothers. Her fondest desire is to become a Broodmother herself, but the Church of Holy Vermin has the final say on who can do so. She is planning on becoming a rouge mother, an outlaw breeder. She needs to find the perfect spot to do so. She has been hiring outsiders to do covert scouting missions in the unexplored concrete labyrinth that covers most of the planet. She claims that she's worried about monsters invading the sanctuary of the Motherlands, but really she's looking for caverns with enough food to support her transformation.

Goggolian is a Yongger merchant who runs a Ger shop in the Reclaimer colony on Gger. They buy Ger organs and drones from explorers who scavenge them from the depths below. They have a fixation on the past of Gger, and will pay hansomly for any relics or fossils from the planet's earlier eras. In the back room of their shop they have about 75% of a primordial Ger drone, a massive cybernetic creature no longer found on Gger. At night it howls electronically, sending garbled and disturbing text messages to any communicators. 

*Techinally, only the Yongger Sky Clan is a member of the alliance, though this is a distinction the Sky Clan themselves are eager to overlook. They don't want to have to tell people about their cannibal cousins who live in the bowels of their homeworld if they can't help it.

**She's rather apologetic about it, but rule are rules and the pit demands blood. She refers the newly maimed to her lover Hquil Gorond, a human cyberneticist who will give them a new limb for a significant discount. 

intergalactic ecosystems

There are as many ecosystems as there are planets, if not more. The following types of ecosystems are common throughout the galaxy.

The tube forest is a ubiquitous galactic biome. Tube trees are rugose and fleshy flora that form sponge-like growths. They have spores stick to spacecraft hulls and are carried from planet to planet. For this reason tube forests have become the iconic spaceport biome, much to the display of travelers. Tube trees are extremely hardy, able to survive in barren soil and thin atmospheres. In addition to photosynthesis, they also use chemosynthesis and radiosynthesis by metabolizing containments in the air. As a byproduct they produce a large amount of methane, giving tube forests a distinctive odor. They are eaten by certain worms that are also spread by spaceships. Exansive tube forests are often haunted by cryptids. Ancient tube forests have been known to transition into creep biomes if cryptids are allowed to thrive.  

Creeps are organisms with strange and improbable anatomies that dissolve into stinking protoplasm when killed. A creep ecosystem, also known as a creeposystem, is formed when a large concentration of creeps occupies a single area. Creep flora begins to spontaneously manifest, appearing when no one is looking. The creep flora in an area all share some unusual property, like being able to scream or seemingly being made of raw meat. Once the creep flora is well established, creep fauna beings to spawn at a high rate. Creeposystems are highly valuable to the reborn, a clade of sapient creeps. They harvest lesser creeps to use as shook troops and pets. There is no inherent kinship between creeps however, meaning creeposystems are just as dangerous to the reborn as they are to other outsiders.

Gnomic planets is a loose term applied to all planets colonized by robotic probes. Many civilizations invented autonomous self replicating robots, but the Gnomics were the unchallenged masters. The planets that still play host to their machines are known as true Gnomics, and they are an order of magnitude more complex and sophisticated than there imitators. True Gnomic planets have entire artificial ecosystems with multiple evolving clades of robots living among baroque forests of mechanical flora. All Gnomic planets are linked together in a network of automated trade and mutual defense. There are those that would prey upon these worlds, but they are defended by the gnomic death spheres, massive roaming space stations bristling with exotic weapons.

A drongus is an ursine creature with a hulking gait and shaggy dark brown fur. Though non-sapient  they build massive cities out of mud and stone. Inside, they dimly play act at civilization, shuffling around clay tablets with meaningless scribbles and paying each other with twisted chunks of metal. It is believed they were created by the Floozies as grunt laborers, and that they have gone feral with their masters disappearance. They are found on planets throughout the galaxy. Found within their cities is an entire biome of city dwellers, including the Fandorians, a rat-like race of sapients. Living among the drongus is a tricky proposition as they react to outsiders with immediate hostility. Visitors need to mask their scent to avoid their wraith.  Any attempt at long term settlement on a drongus planet is met with a  drongus crusade, which is a terrifying proposition. Despite their lack of self awareness, drongus are excellent sappers and combat engineers. A drongus crusade is a moving  wave of fortifications and tunnels barreling forward, crushing all opposition.

The Candy is a creeping plague high in sugar content. Directed by the sinister intelligences known as the Candymen, the Candy seeks to smother the galaxy beneath is sweet bulk. There are 9 Candymen, each representing a different strain of Candy. Each strain has a signature color that defines its biota. In rare cases two strains may mix and merge, but this rare and irksome to the Candymen. Patches of candy biome give birth to non-sapient creatures known as Candylings, as well as sapient creatures known as candy children. Both have a strong genetic imperative to defend and expand the candy biome that gave birth to them.  Candy patches are also rife with pathogens to lead to "Candy sickness" an umbrella term for any number of ailments that turn living flesh into candy. The end stage of many of these diseases are the candy mutants, creatures that resemble candy children but were born as non candy.

All planets in the Republic of Sea Serpents are linked by oceanic cyclers, massive cargo freighters that transport millions of gallons of sea water from planet to planet. The republic can then be thought of as one vast ocean with currents that run throughout the stars. The thousand seas of the republic are rich and diverse, the better to fat the Sea Serpents. Of special note are the cosmic eels, a diverse clade of vermiform pesciods that are found throughout the galaxy. They spawn on Republiform planets and travel to other worlds by obscure methods. The Senators can commune and control the cosmic eels with their minds, using them for intrigues beyond their borders.

The Reclaimers are an alliance of scavengers and homesteaders who settle ruined worlds and the heart of the alliance are those who are Orn. Orn is a fungal super intelligence composed of smaller minds. Most people consider "the Orn" to be a race of fungus creatures, but this is inaccurate in several ways. First of all the proper name for a single fungal intelligence is "one who is Orn". Secondly the Orn are not a single race but a genetic continuum of over a dozen closely related species. Those who are Orn posses varied and versatile metabolisms. They are able to grow in radioactive environments and they can eat concrete. They form the ecological anchor that makes colonizing marginal worlds possible for the Reclaimers. They are also near immortal, able to regenerate from mere scraps of flesh. On many reclaimer worlds they are the primary food source for the other reclaimers. In recent centuries the Yongger have joined the Reclaimer alliance, bringing with them the Ger machine ecology. Ger growths are autonomous factories made out of carbon based artificial life. The Yongger have only primitive methods of controlling the Ger, so they have turned to the Orn for help. Those who are Orn are currently trying to integrate their biology with the Ger, with mixed success.  Reclaimer worlds are plagued by those who are not Orn, fungal beings who reject the Orn overmind. They parasitize Reclaimer society, both culturally and biologically.

Counter Gnomics are sapient computer viruses who are optimized to infest Gnomic infospheres. When they completely conquer a Gnomic planets digital architecture, they reshape it in the real world as well. Counter Gnomic planets lack the intricate designs of Gnomic worlds, instead they are sleek and streamlined with broad stripes of neon lighting.  Counter Gnomic polities tend to have a callus disregard for the physical world, manufacturing vast swarms of defense drones that indiscriminately attack potential intruders.

The Jezoflorids are plant sapients made by the Floozies. Their homeworld is an ancient seed vault, giving them access to powerful Floozy biotechnology . They have, however, lost the documentation. Everything the Jezoflorids know about bioengineering they have learned through costly trial and error. Early attempts at terraforming led to noxious jungles chocked with dangerous plant life. As the major Jezoflorid polity, MotherCorp, expanded outwards they grew more skilled and artful. The later Jezoflorid planets are lush paradise worlds with only a few flaws. The earlier inner planets became strongholds of the Glade, a radical rebellion form the oppressive Mothercorp.  This has given Mothercorp a strange topology, strong on the frontiers and weak in the interior.

Whorler planets are marked by the ubiquity of the Whorler microbe in every lifeform. The whorler microbe is a psionically active bacteria that generates a psychic field around it. Whorler planets come in three different states depending on the nature of the field, neonatal, tyrannical and mature. Tyrannical planets are under the control of a whorl tyrant, a singularly powerful being that can use the whorl field to control and warp other organisms. Mature planets arise after the tyrant has been overthrow and replaced with multiple godforms. Though these godforms have the same powers of influence that tyrants do, they use them in the name of order and stability instead of egotism. Neonatal planets are created by the whorl spacer culture. They have found a way to bypass the tyrant stage of the whorl cycle and establish artificially grown whorl godforms. The process is still not perfected, leading to the manifestation of pseudo gods, mysterious beings with the same powers of influence and control. Sapients who are born on whorl planets are molded closer to the whorl morphological norm, which is saurian in form. Remarkably, the whorl microbe allows members of different species to crossbreed. The current whorl population is thought to be a mix of at least 6 different species.

Bastard galaxy index

Original Bastards 

1. The ObeliskDreamers
2. The Floozies
3. The Gnomics

Races and Cultures

1. Agredeem

2. Jezoflorids

3. The Candy
4. The Republic of Sea Serpents
5. Reclaimers 
6. the Undersphere
7. The Whorl
8. Flesh 7
9. The Academy of Gnomic arts
10. The Dvork
11. The Sophonic Advent
12. Xitentoeten
13. Father Corp

Planets and other locations of interest

1. Gran-ka the concrete tomb

2. The Ascension Carcass 

3. Dreamscapes

Galactic history and society

1. Galactic culture

2. Trade goods part one

3. Trade goods part two
4. Intergalactic ecosystems 

the Candy

The Candy is a berserk manufacturing program, a subversive organic plague that wishes to turn most of the universe into Candy. Thought to be a failed experiment by a Floozy client race, the Candy has spread to the dark corners of the galaxy, infesting the cracks of civilization. It has been aided in this endeavor by the Intergalactic Candy Company, a motley gang of capitalists that profit off the largess of a sickly sweet apocalypse.

The Candy can be thought of as a rouge ecosystem that spreads and destroys other ecosystems. It begins its invasions with flora, simple photosynthetic algae that smothers the native plant. As the infection spreads, the flora becomes more sophisticated and begins to spawn fauna minions to defend its beachhead. The Candy also has a wide range of pathogens at its disposal to weaken and subvert any native defenders. If the host planet resists, the Candy spawns its children, sapient candy creatures capable of using tools and tactics against the defenders.   

The threat of candy infestations is well understood in the Galactic community. Most civilized planets have procedures and counter measures to deal with the Candy. It can be difficult for the candy ecosystem to take hold, so the Candy takes a different tack. It comes to civilization in the form of a business, a corporation that only wishes to make mutually beneficial deals.  Their prime trade good is candy, obviously, but they also deal in organic feed-stock and bioweapons. Though their human proxies seem like rational businessmen, economic power is just a means to an end for the Candy. Ultimately, all must become Candy.

Factions

The Candymen are the driving intelligence behind this spreading sweetness. They are gestalt intelligences, each arising from one of the planets in the Candy System, and each having their own strain of Candy. They are intelligent, egotistical and quite mad by conventional standards.  Those under the influence of Candy (cultural or narcotic) see them as something a kin to gods, and they tend to act like it, in a deranged classical way. Ultimately much of their energy is spent warring amongst themselves, as they are found of petty grudges and pointless intrigue.

The Intergalactic Candy Company is the public face of the Candy. Owned and operated mostly by humans, Candy Children and Candy mutants; it is their job to sanitize and market the products of the Candy. They operate out of the Candy system, where they harvest and process most of their inventory. One of their major duties is neutralizing any Candy pathogens in their products, a job at which they are mostly successful*. They spend a lot of social capital on distancing their brand from the rapacious Candymen, but they are deeply entangled with those over minds.

     By volume The Intergalactic Candy company's chief product is Candy Company brand sugar syrup., which is an excellent source of CHONPS**. Chemically impoverished areas buy it in huge quantities. It's also good feedstock for organic printers. In addition the Candy Company sells a wide array of food products, mostly candy but also a variety of beverages and some sweet and savory instant meals. Many of their products have narcotic or addictive properties. They also sell bioweapons made out of candy.

Races

Candy Children are sapient Candy creatures. They are formed when special "flavoring agents" are introduced to  sugar syrup. They vary wildly in phenotype; the major commonality being their shiny brightly colored skin. Most are a single solid color but some have dots  and swirls. In Candy Child culture those with markings are considered nobility and given positions of importance. Inside each Candy Child is a gland full of the flavoring agent that created them. There is a thriving culture of deviants who covet the flavors of Candy Children. Some go so far as to raise them as live stock. The Intergalactic Candy Company cracks down on those operations if they don't have the right licenses.

Most commercial Candy is quite safe, but the more potent and additive products have trace amounts of Candy Pathogen. Long term users start to suffer Candy sickness, as Candy biota begin to colonize their body. Their blood turn sugary, and their skin breaks out in vivid rashes. Those that survive the early stages metamorphoses into creatures resembling Candy Children. Culturally, these Candy Mutants are a step down on the social ladder; being newcomers to the candy flock. For this reason the humans living in the candy system strive to  preserve their humanity; there is a significant stigma around Candy sickness. For those that care about such things, Candy Mutants are said to be significantly inferior in terms of flavor.

Planets

The Dark Drop is a rogue planet drifting in deep space, far from any sun. It is artificial;  a massive machine of presumed Gnomic origin. Ancient generators thrum deep in its interior. It is their antediluvian heat that drives the candy ecosystem; midnight black sludge growing in a metal labyrinth below a sunless sky.

Here is the domain of Lady Deep night, a refined and mysterious Candyman. She cultivates a secretive and refined following. Her products are not available through the Intergalactic Candy Company, rather they must be sought out through smugglers and the black market. For those that become obsessed with her strange flavors, the next step is to travel to the Dark Drop and enroll in her mystery cult. Those that survive their initiation in the bowels of the planet gain access to exclusive products and select parties. A not insignificant portion of the galactic elite are members. The Endless Night Market is a large open air bazaar where much that is unseemly and forbidden is for sale.

The Sour Sea is the second planet from the Candy Sun. It is covered in an ocean of sour candy  juice. There is no solid land; only floating mats of vegetation. There is little civilization here. The planet is mostly inhabited by primitive tribes of aquatic Candy Children. There is a single city here, the Raft, which is a jury rigged flotilla of decommissioned space ships. Though nowhere in the Candy system do they really care about the providence of the goods they buy, the Raft in particular is the best place to find a good fence. The Digesters are a tribe of Candy Children who will buy almost anything. Valuable trade goods are laundered through their network of merchant contacts. Metal and ceramics are used to repair the Raft, which is continuously corroding. Everything else is dumped into the world ocean, where powerful enzymes break it down to turn it into candy. The Raft is also home to the kind of low rent night-life that is popular with pirates. The planet is ruled by the Bright Queen, a bold and barbarous Candyman fond of alcohol and violence.

The Crusty Crucible is a small artificial planetoid in the middle of the Candy System. Made of scavenged Obelisk dreamer tech, the Crucible is capable of generating a time acceleration field. When the field is activated, time passes much faster inside the station. The Candy uses this to speed up its own evolution. The interior is a tangled mess of a Candy biome, with strains from all the Candymen competing for space. When the field is activated, the organisms inside grow and evolve for hundreds of years in the span of a month. The resulting biota is not integrated directly into the Candy, rather it is harvested and studied by the Candy Company. The harvesting teams are colloquially called scrapers and are well paid but short lived.

Personalities 

Slightly Spicy is Lady Deep Night's Majordomo. She is a sleek and slim Candy Child with subtle red glimmers in her black skin. She oversees Dark Drop's party scene and is responsible for grooming potential initiates for the mystery cult. She is the Sapient to talk to if you want to eat a Candy Child "legally". She herself is on the menu but for an exorbitant price.

High Evolutionary Gnar Expren is the overseer of the Crusty Crucible. He sets the initial conditions before each time jump and supervises  the harvesting and research teams. He is under enormous political pressure from the Candymen, who all want to dominate the Crucible. His last five predecessors all died under mysterious circumstances, which has made him rather paranoid. He demands to see the tongues of everyone he meets with, to check to see if they're stained with candy dye, so that he may know if they're under the influence of a Candyman. Lately teams of scrapers have been disappearing, leading to tumors f feral Candy Children and chronal parasites. He is on the brink of nervous collapse and looking for outside help.

Mother's Home Cooking is the house matron of the Sump, a dive bar below the waterline of The Raft. She is a Candy Mutant, a former pirate and a member of the Digesters. She is a useful contact for current pirates but only respects those that distinguish themselves in the Sump's nightly tavern brawls.

*Once, a batch of candy was contaminated with a powerful nerve agent. The Candy company kept it on the shelves and changed the label to "Oops, all war crimes!"

**Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, the basic elements of carbon based life.

Jezoflorids

Jezoflorids are a race of sapient plants. They are serpentine in form, with a ring of manipulator tentacles in the front and a crown of leaves and eyes on top of their "head". This is also where their flowers and fruits grow, once they reached sexual maturity. At the rear of their central trunk is a brush like formation of roots. They need to spend roughly a third of their time with their roots submerged in nutrient rich soil, and they need a similar amount of sunlight exposure. They can also "eat" by using these roots to penetrate a variety of foodstuffs. There are over a thousand different cultivars of Jezoflorid; each represents a distinct variety of leaves, flowers, and quality of fruit.

Jezoflorids reproduce through seeds that are roughly the size of tennis balls. They require rather exacting conditions to germinate. For example, they need so much nitrogen it's almost impossible to get them to grow without fertilizer or compost. Upon germination, they grow rapidly; maturing from a sessile sprout to a motile sproutling in about a week. Their minds grow at a similar pace; they are capable of language at about three weeks. At this point, they enter the "skill imprinting" stage.

They become obsessed with the first task or skill they're presented with, and will devote themselves to study and practice. In this way they become useful before they fully mentally mature. Sproutlings are savants; like children that have a single adult area of expertise. After about five years, they come into bloom, signifying their passage into adulthood. At this point, their mind broadens and they become less monomaniacal. Jezoflorids never stop growing. Once they grow beyond 3 meters in length, they are considered elders, but that is more of a cultural distinction than a biological one.

As flowering plants, Jezoflorids have three genders: male, female and hermaphrodite. When fertilized, female flowers grow into fruits that resemble custardy avocados. The cultural expectation is that Jezoflorids should be producing fruits whenever they are in a stable living situation. To this end, MotherCorp settlements keep colonies of pollinating insects on the premises. Jezoflorids experience a mild erotic charge when their flowers are visited by insects carrying grains of pollen. Artificial pollination is a common practice, to refine cultivars or to attempt to create new one. (Generally, this is a practice tightly overseen by MotherCorp). It is possible to transplant a flower bud from one Jezoflorid to another, a process called grafting, after which the bud can survive indefinitely. Close companions are known exchange flower buds as a symbol of love. The gender or number of participants within these arrangements do not matter.

Organizations

Mothercorp

The Jezoflorid race, and all rights and practices related to it, are owned by MotherCorp, a galaxy-spanning Mega-Corporation. Mothercorp officially owns all Jezoflorid seeds, and adult Jezoflorids are obligated to provide their fruit to the good of the company. Jezoflorids are mostly okay with this arrangement; they say this is because most executive positions are held by Jezoflorids. In reality, MotherCorp is engaged in wide-scale social engineering projects. Mothercorp is principally an agricultural firm; while they sell agricultural products, bio-ships, environmental and terraforming services and mercenary forces, their major products are Jezoflorid sproutlings and Jezoflorid seeds.

   

The Brambles is the Military branch of MotherCorp. It is composed of adult Jezoflorids that grew up immersed in violence; as well as hordes of cannon-fodder sproutlings. MotherCorp keeps this organization on a tight leash. Having seen the horrors of war, these of all Jezoflorids know the sheer callousness of MotherCorp. As such, in times of peace, they are kept docile and weak willed through various chemical and biological agents.

The Gardeners are the grey eminence inside MotherCorp. A secretive cabal of high ranking executives, their official remit is a long term eugenics program to develop new cultivars. Their actual purpose is more sinister. They administer and prescribe social control programs to keep MotherCorp viable as a polity. Trawling the infosphere for points of critical influence, they administer agents of biological control to manipulate and manage their subjects’ behavior. For example they might drug certain personalities to make them more lethargic and less opinionated, or they might resort to more extreme measures and infect them with mind controlling parasites. Through systems like these, MotherCorp maintains a high popularity and good regard in spite of corrupt and callous practices.

Others

The Glade is a resistance movement against MotherCorp. They believe that Jezoflorids should not be selling each other into slavery, and that the pursuit of wealth is unnecessary and often immoral. Unfortunately, MotherCorp is adept at using biological agents to control minds. As such, members of The Glade exist only on the extreme fringes of MotherCorp society, and only on a few hidden worlds do they have their own backwater civilization. They have been waging a hopeless crusade for centuries. At this stage, they’ve been reduced to waging petty terrorism against MotherCorp holdings – and have done so without much success.

Personalities

Elder Moral Rectitude is the commanding officer of Bramble Patch Gamma. He is an absolute monster of a Jezoflorid, at least a half millennium old and over 30 stories long. After a long life spent in battlefields across the galaxy, he is cunning, ruthless and he always knows what you're up to. That is, that's what he's like when he's off his leash. He is far too dangerous for MotherCorp to let him have full command of his mind. He is host to a fungal parasite* that alters his perceptions and makes the world seem like a game. From his liar in the Bramble Patch he sets the objectives for the war games and watches everything play out like a befuddled old war hero. In times of extreme crises the parasite deactivates, giving him free reign. During these periods of lucidity he is hatching a secret plan to free himself. In the ashes of an emergency he plants the seeds for the next one. He is slowly assembling a scheme over decades. He has to hide his movements from his masters and from his parasite, but he is patient. He will have vengeance on MotherCorp for making him a tool, even if takes a thousand years.

At first glance, Adult Grass Star is a wide eyed glade fanatic; ranting on spaceport street corners and handing out anti-MotherCorp pamphlets.  This is an accurate impression of him but he is also a savvy businessman and fixer. He is well connected in both the Glade and the galactic underworld, and is the plant creature to talk to about deals bridging these two worlds.

Adult Due Diligence is a low level Gardner, but the highest ranked member of that faction an outsider is likely to meet. She oversees the production of some of the more exotic cultivars on Forward Garden. Part of her job duties is handling high profile clients. She sells the cultivars she grows to anyone who has the money, without the usual "good conduct" contracts, no questions asked. She also oversees "product demos", a duty she takes unseemly, sadistic joy in. She is not above hiring Alien mercenaries as cat's paws in internal MotherCorp disputes.

Locations

The Vault is the "homeworld" of the Jezoflorids. It lies on the far side of the Galaxy deep in MotherCorp territory, so details are sketchy. What is known is that it is a single world tree grown around a Floozy seed vault. Weather it is supposed to be a green wonder land or a capitalist dystopia ruled by cold vegetable minds depends on who's describing it.

Forward Garden is a Forest covered resort world. In its depths there are every kind of delight and diversion a galactic aristo could hope for. It is also a major depot for the sale of Jezoflorid Sproutlings. "Law and Order" are maintained by large hostile insects.

Bramble Patch Gamma is the "Bramble Patch" closest to human space. Here on a planet-wide battlefield sproutlings are trained in the various arts of war. This is no mere wargame however. The sproutlings  are split into clans and given live ammo; the idea being real war is the best teacher. The adult officers make a point to take prisoners whenever possible, but over half of the sproutlings here die before they reach maturity. This is where to hire Bramble mercenaries, the catch being they only do business face to face, requiring prospective clients to navigate a live battlefield.

*As previously mentioned MotherCorp uses a variety of biological techniques to pacify its subjects. This particular example is small-batch artisanal mind control.

The Agredeem

Overview and history

The Agredeem  are an ordinary race of Sapients who suffer a chronic case of god emperors. Their history is rather typical, if a bit more dramatic; the regular golden ages and downfalls punctuated by episodes of consuming mania. This persisted after they developed space travel. Their domain grew steadily when sanity reined, and rapidly when it failed. After the death of a particularly twisted emperor, the Agredeem had had enough. To prevent the emergence of the next mad king, they made a panopticon state called the Totality. Through brute surveillance and statistical voyeurism it was hoped that any nascent god emperors would be discovered and neutralized. It worked until it didn't.

The end of the Totality is one of the great political mysteries of the current age. The Totality was a peaceful and open polity with many foreign visitors. One day every visiting diplomat and spy was arrested and killed. Massive crowds of Agredeem took to the streets in a violent purge of outsiders. When the dust cleared, a new God Emperor was on the throne and the Agredeem empire was back, as though the Totality was nothing but a dream.

It is a bit unfair to call the Orphan's Guild the secret police of the Totality. They were hardly a secret, and they ran fewer undercover operations than the populace believed. They could perhaps be called the final police; they were the last line of defense against their people's darker natures, the supreme watcher of the watchmen. The first sign of the end of the Totality was when their agents began to turn up dead in suspicious or improbable ways. Many of them were killed, or fell under the Emperor's sway. The few that escaped started the new Orphan's guild, a group of partisans dedicated to bring down the Empire and restoring the Totality. Their ranks have been bolstered by various Agredeem civilians who were outside the Totality when it fell. Their road is a long one; they are fifth column that can't operate in their home territory for long for fear of losing themselves to the imperial delusion. They track the movements of the Emperor and his* Great Star advisors, looking for targets of opportunity.

The power of the Great Stars

The infamous mind control of the Great stars is not something under their conscious control. Rather it is field that is projected over roughly a thousand square miles (modern great stars use psychic repeaters to effect entire star systems. A sapient being in the field (including intelligent machines) slowly has their subconscious goals aligned with the Great Star. The citizens of the empire believe on a fundamental level that their best option is to follow and obey the Great Star. They truly think that the Empire will make them happy, famous, immortal, whatever it is that they desire. This ability is not a one way street however. As the great star alters their victims subconscious, they are exposed to feedback. A Great Star is a constant nexus of outside desires and urges. This inevitably leads to megalomania, as the Great Star directs their followers to fulfill their collective Id. Great stars are prone to madness and obsession, as random bits of psychic detritus flow in and out of their minds.

It might seem as though the Great Stars are destined to control the minds of the entire galaxy. There are a couple of things stopping that. First of all, it is less effective on Non-Agredeem. It can take up to week for an average sapient to fall in line, and a well self-posed being can hold off potentially indefinitely. Second, the effect fades when a being is no longer in the area of the field (though the delusion can linger if the being doesn't have the force of will to reassert their true beliefs). Third, there is an incredible psychic cost to using the ability as a weapon of war. By linking their minds to those of the combatants on both sides, the Great Star is inundated with a wave of stress and fear. And as the Great Star is a nexus for desires and prejudices, the besieged society frequently crumbles in a dramatic and horrible fashion. War crimes and genocides are common outcomes. An Emperor who relies on their ability to conquer will be driven irrevocably insane in short order. Modern imperial doctrine is to subdue the enemy through conventional means, then bring in a Great Star to complete the pacification.

Biology and culture

The Agredeem are amphibious but are more comfortable in the water. On land, or as they say "the dry side" they are heavier and slower, plus they need to keep their skin moist or else suffer painful rashes and cracking. They also can only reproduce underwater. They practice external fertilization, with the gametes meeting each other in the water. The sexual act is not erotic as we understand it, but rather a social function. It occurs during special "orgies" that are more like parties or soirees. The participants reaffirm their social bonds over some entertainment, and at the end they release their gametes. In their pre-modern era the larval Agredeem would mature in the wild as plankton, and would have to be "harvested" from the ocean floor in order to join society. Nowadays the orgies take place in special filtered tanks, and the fertilized eggs are examined and either kept or discarded.  In this era of empire the entertainment at these orgies has grown more decadent and wicked. Gladiatorial combat and public executions are popular choices.

The Totality was a peaceful and mostly rational culture. They saw their Imperial past as a time of shame and madness, but on some level they still appreciated their colonial prosperity. Those planets that were conquered in the bad old days were incorporated into the Totality  as gently as possible, though there was some resentment form non Agredeem that found themselves living in a benevolent foreign police state.

With the advent of the new Empire the bad old days have come again. The current mood is one of manifest destiny. The Agredeem people increasingly see themselves as the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Mildly paternalistic relationships with client states are now openly colonial once more. The covetous desires of their living gods become manifest in a culture of decadent display and consumption. Before service to the state was no great honor, merely just duty. Now military officials and high ranking bureaucrats are making themselves into a new aristocracy. Pomp and propaganda are rampart, their infosphere is a swamp of state lies and self serving delusions of grandeur. And above all of it is the God Emperor and  his advisers. Every delusion, vice and folly found in the Empire is also found in this small court. The Empire is a reflection of their twisted desires.

Notable Persons

Smell of Rotten Fruit** is the Orphan's Guild liaison for outside contractors. It is their job to recruit and handle non Agredeem agents. Mostly they feed information to pirates and privateers, but they also meet and share information with foreign spies. They're as cagey and secretive as any spook, but they have a real flair for the dramatic. They give a scented calling card to their agents bearing their signature reek, to be left behind to taunt the Empire's own counter intelligence operatives. This is part of a long term "tethered goat" strategy to lure out and capture enemy agents  


The current God Emperor is named Gradissophoul, the Revealed Path. His official bio says that he was raised by a sect of monks who guard a secret Obelisk Dreamer site on the homeworld of Agred. It was here that he was visited by a fragmentary Dreamer intelligence that revealed that he was the true inheritor of the Dreamer's legacy, and that it was his destiny to gain the powers of the Bastards for the Agredeem. This is likely nonsense;  There has never been any evidence of a Bastard presence on Agred, and the story is very self-serving. Regardless, Imperial Agredeem take it very seriously, as does Gradisophoul. In between state orgies and strategy sessions they spend their time obsessively  studying Obelisk Dreamer relics and texts. They often summon  renowned scholars to consult with. Those who keep their wits about them and resist the emperor's corrosive will report that he is about as knowledgeable as a somewhat dim grad student . Still, he has the full force of an interstellar empire to follow up on their whims and theories. A rational mind could use the emperor's private collection to make some important discoveries. Unfortunately it never leaves the empire's flag ship,  With Divine Feet we Tread

The Emperor has six Great Star "advisers" (most of them are more like henchmen), the chief of which is Xerdofistor, The Mind of God, who is the Emperor's closest confidant and psychiatrist. Her job is to keep the Emperor mentally stable, which is tricky because Xerdofistor is subject to the same extreme mental stresses all Great Stars are. Still, she seems to have a net positive effect on the Emperor, even if their relationship is dogged by rumors, the most scandalous of which is that they mate in private (Agredeem consider sexual acts with fewer than five participants perverse). The Orphan Guild theorizes that with Xerdofistor's influence the Emperor would become unbalanced, so she is under constant threat of assassination. As a result she spends much of their time on board their flagship The Inner Truth of All Minds obsessively study logs and recordings, looking for plots against her. She has a keen mind, but also a lot of psychic baggage. She finds nearly as many real conspiracies as fake ones.

Planets of Interest

The Agredeem homeworld, Agred is the site of over a hundred densely populated Arcologies. Millennium of habitation has weakened the biosphere. When the Totality ruled they devoted significant resources to stabilizing the wounded ecosystem. The empire has no such concern, shifting the economy to a war footing. Conditions in the cities are deteriorating, but the locals don't care. Those not involved in heavy industry and agriculture are building new monuments to the God Emperor and the empire. The planet is defended by a fleet of massive but slightly antique battle stations, plus whatever fleet elements are present.

 The water world of Emphrina bears the dubious distinction of being the only world to willingly submit to the empire without the influence of a Great Star. The native Emphrinians  were peacefully admitted to the empire, then soon after the God Emperor died under mysterious  circumstances. These two events are linked in the popular imagination and to this day no Great Star will set foot on Emphrina. Still, the Emphrinians were loyal imperial citizens, then loyal Totality citizens, and now they're back to being loyal to the empire. Emphrina is a popular resort destination for Imperial aristocrats , and the absence of Great Stars makes it ideal for those that wish to deal with the empire without becoming thrall to it. 
Below the Agredeem colonies lie the Emphrinian psychodramas. Emphrinians don't have fixed identities , rather they assume different personas each cycle. These personalities range from bit players like "friendly shopkeeper" to major characters like "destined child" and "evil overlord". In the upper reaches of the world ocean they have a functional if eccentric civilization. Things are more chaotic in the lower depths; they engage in endless mock battles and invented struggles. It is theorized that there is some sort of gestalt mind directing their strange plays. If so, the best way to communicate with it may be to interface with the fiction; sending messages by manipulating dramatic elements. This is mostly conjecture, as the occupying Agredeem are uninterested in the antics of their subjects. The Orphan Guild sends the occasional expedition, hoping to unravel the mysteries of the planet.

* Traditionally Agredeem placed little importance on biological sex, and their language was gender neutral. Social importance of Gender is something they picked up from the humans on Malstrom, a sort of psychic infection they caught from our culture

**This is an obvious pseudonym. It shows that its owner has romantic and heroic notions and is maybe a little full of themselves.

trade goods part two

1.XEZ. This is the digital currency of choice among the mechanical life forms of the

Xitentoeten economic zone. It is backed by Xitentoeten itself. More specifically it's back by Xietentoeten's auto-factories. A single XEZ represents roughly an hour's worth of fabber time. The XEZ underpins a sophisticated manufacturing economy, and is popular among machine sapients.

2.Gnomic Handshake. An ancient cryptographic protocol; this one use password allows the user to negotiate their way into the Gnomic trade network. These venerable trade routes carry raw materials and sophisticated machine components throughout the many Gnomic planets around the galaxy. A merchant can become very rich by inserting themselves into this stream of automated commerce. However, the handshake only gives them a seat at the table; they need to work out their own deal with the Gnomic majordomos, cryptic intelligence left behind by the vanished Gnomics. These beings speak in garbled metaphors and often seem to be little more than simple chat bots. More than one merchant has negotiated what they thought was a great deal and has gotten literal garbage in return. Still, the potential rewards make Gnomic handshakes quite valuable. They are found in Gnomic digital environments, almost always looked after by powerful guardians. Gnomic handshakes are also advertised for in many red-light districts, but these offers refer to a service, not the protocol.

3.Deactivated robo fairy. One of the many kinds of mecha- fauna that live in the Gnomic robot forests. Many aristos collect them for their elegant lines and intricate patterns. They are also of interest to those versed in Gnomic engineering. Their internal circuits can be used for jury-rigging and field repair. With a little finesse they can be reprogrammed to serve either as simple drones or free willed familiars. Even a deactivated robo fairy can be dangerous, because, like all Gnomic machines they can harbor nanite plagues and malware.

4.World core. These can take many forms, but the basic variety is a fist sized chunk of pseudo-computronium* in a casing. Though their computing power can be put  to many uses, their primary function is the simulation of artificial worlds.  These are the favored outposts of the digital lifeforms known as the Counter Gnomic, but the appeal of these devices is universal. After all, who doesn't want their own private kingdom?

5.Widget.The common term for the wide range of small devices endemic to technological civilization. When concentrated in bulk quantities, they represent a wealth of rare elements and technological components. Crates of widgets are a common trade good. Often, they are more useful for improvisational engineering then their intended function. Widgets are harvested from recently destroyed worlds as well as inattentive tourists, and are then shipped off to manufacturing concerns around the galaxy.

*Real computronium requires a level of technical expertise to manufacture that has not been seen since the time of the bastards. Pseudo-computronium is the best available approximation.