The Floozy empire was based on a sort of benign expansionism, colonizing lifeless worlds and uplifting non sapient life forms. Each new sapient race would be incorporated into the empire as equals. In this way the empire spread across the stars, growing in diversity and complexity. The Neo Floozies see themselves as the heirs to this vanished empire, but they fall far short of their predecessor's noble ideals. In this more crowded galactic era bloodless expansion is not possible. Instead of seeding new worlds they seek to reconquer old Floozy planets. New arrivals to the empire are greeted with feudal oppression instead of egalitarianism.
The Neo Floozies have a professed aversion to technology. They believe that things like computers and robots can lead to moral decline if used without discipline. In practice this means all advanced technology is in the hands of the Imperial Bureaucracy. There is a sharp divide in the standard of living between citizens and officials. Conditions on Neo Floozy worlds are primitive by galactic standards. All high tech industry and manufacturing is in the hands of the empire, as well as all major businesses and commercial interests. Imperial citizens are generally well fed but otherwise impoverished. The only accepted route out of this poverty is imperial service.
In theory, the Empire is meritocracy, with the most qualified sophonts given the highest positions. The problem is that this merit is assessed by the Judges of Worth, a deeply political and corrupt body. The judges are responsible for assigning literal merits for attributes such as intelligence or charisma that make their recipients eligible for various positions. Having the right list of merits only gets the foot in the door; the position's immediate supervisor selects the applicant. Outside of the application process, positional authority is more important than merits. Often an official will have more merits than their superiors, which can led to insubordination*. The Judges also assign hidden demerits which are only visible to employers. Demerits are disproportionately given out to client races for being uncultured, ideologically unsuitable or just kind of funny looking
The Neo Floozy empire see its mandate to reunite all planets and stations formerly under floozy control. This has brought them into conflict with other former floozy polities such as the reclaimers and the Republic of Sea Serpents. The Empires wars against these major powers have proved mostly fruitless, so they have refocused on unaligned planets. All it takes is some dubious star chart or a local tall tale of ancient alien contact for the Neo Floozies to declare a planet part of their empire. They don't have the patience or technology to terraform dead worlds like their namesakes. They are working on uplift techniques, but that technology is still in its crude and grim early stages.
Core Races
The OverCrabs have no record or any real proof that they were uplifted by the Floozies. Neither the less they were so sure of their descent that they founded the neo Floozy empire. Outside observers might doubt this founding myth, but they are sure the OverCrabs were genetically engineered. They have massively redundant internal organs, hyper efficient musculature and incredible anaerobic metabolisms. An OverCrab can survive 2 hours in hard vacuum and can live for a day without a head. Outside the empire it is believed that they were created as soldiers. Inside the empire the state mythology is that the OverCrabs were made to be the perfect successors to the Floozies
As r-selectors, OverCrabs lay hundreds of eggs at a time. Historically, many of these eggs and young would be eaten by aquatic predators. In the modern era, protected creche pools have led to an unprecedented number of OverCrabs surviving until their juvenile stage. They have compensated by forming the "Child Brigades", military divisions formed entirely out of pre adult OverCrabs. They are used as shock troops and borders. More than one space ship has fallen beneath a tide of armed toddlers. Surviving a term of service in a brigade earns them a decent amount of merits, giving them a head start in adult life.
The PondScum people are another race that is definitely the product of genetic engineering. Their brains have been miniaturized allowing them to be both fully sapient and microscopic. Other than their intelligence, they resemble typical freshwater microorganisms. Their technological civilization was destroyed during the fall of the Floozy empire, and they have only just painstakingly rebuilt. To intricate with the world at the scale most sophonts exist at they build vast** mobile cities complete with manipulator arms. Due to a loophole in the merit system, a city is considered to be a single entity with all the merits of its denizens. There are only around a thousand PondScum cities in the empire but they occupy many positions of power.
The EverSnakes are the cultural heart of the Neo Floozy Empire. They have a racial memory of belonging to the original Floozy empire. This is because they pass identity and memory from one generation to the next. This ability is under their conscious control; when they are gravid they can make the decision to imprint the egg with their ego***. This leads to a sort of royalty; the older the mind, the higher rank they occupy. Neo Floozy merits are also passed along this way and indeed the merit system is an outgrowth of EverSnakes tradition.
Planets
The planet Ingav, also known as the Pond is the homeworld of the PondScum people. Nowhere is the technological divide more stark. Not only do most of the planet's 7 trillion inhabitants not have access to information technology, they lack basic metallurgy. The planet is covered in an intricate series of artificial marshlands that are home to a million small underwater cities. Each of these cities belongs to a domain which is ruled by a single mobile capital city. What they lack in modern technology, the stationary cities make up for in agriculture. By using domesticated beasts thousands of times their size, they have turned the entire planet into farmland. Inglav is the damp bread basket of the empire. The stationary cities resent their mobile overlords are constantly plotting to overthrow them. If they succeed, they take over the domain and become the new mobile capital. Mobile cities spend most of their time off planet, ruling by heralded decree, only returning to enforce their will through force of arms.
Arlot, also known as The Pit is the ancestral homeworld of the EverSnakes. Though the surface biosphere is fairly anodyne, the extensive cave network beneath the surface is home to a strange ecosystem leftover from the old Floozy days. The whole thing acts like a supercomputer, processing information and spitting out results. Unfortunately, the user interfaces have mostly been either lost or destroyed. The EverSnakes treat the subterranean world with mystical reverence, see omens and signs in its churning cycle. The deeper the site, the more holy it is, and the older the ego that guards it. The "upper crust" of the EverSnakes is found in the deepest recesses.
The planet Ortle, popularly called The Pool, has had its surface ravaged by the internecine wars of the OverCrabs for millennia. Only with the advent of the Neo Floozy empire has the planet had a brief chance to recover. But now, instead of war, Ortle is plagued by industry. The Pool is the most technologically advanced planet in the empire, and most of its inhabitants are members of the Imperial Bureaucracy. Shrev port is the largest city and spaceport on the planet, and it's here the empire sees most of its foreign trade. While the itself is a decent trading partner, business here is hampered by the local customs officials. Derisively known as the sea lice, they are infamously corrupt and hostile
Personalities
Ovpherton the 67th is a high ranking EverSnake who's domain includes an important site deep in the Bowels of the Pit. The droning oracle is a spherical mass of beetles that makes a slow circuit through a maze of tunnels. Its buzzing song contains vague prophecies and bits of destiny relevant to the listener. Ovoherton has an ancient charge to keep the path to the oracle "relatively safe****." The problem is that the Oracle has begun to speak of the empire's doom. As an official of high standing, Ovpherton has a vested interest in suppressing this doomsaying. He has begun to create illegal forks of himself. His own personal bandit army waylays all potential pilgrims, while he fabricates beast attacks. It's only a matter of time before someone realizes they haven't heard from the oracle in a while.
Phrax is an OverCrab who owns the cloudy cave, a fighting pit off the coast of Shrev Port. The main attraction are the baby fights, where various contenders have to fend off swarms of low class OverCrab babies. He pays the survivors based on how many babies they've taken out, so a skilled fighter can make a quick buck. Plus, it’s a good way to see how many toddlers you could really take in a fight.
Phrenkle city is a mobile city that serves as an ambassador for the Neo Floozies. They have built a luxury resort in the heart of their domain on the Pond, where they wine and dine foreign politicos. The resort boasts sweeping vistas of the marshlands, first class dining, and special spa treatments where visitors have every inch of their bodies tended to by PondScum. The stationary cities in the domain have been planning a revolt by breeding massive turtle-like creatures.
*Which in turn leads to swift and decisive disciplinary action. A "merit flasher" or "flasher" is someone who has an inflated sense of their own importance due to their merits and they are not tolerated.
**vast on their scale. The largest cities can be 3 meters tall and have half a billion residents
***Every EverSnake is allowed to do this exactly once, though this is a law and not a biological limitation. Criminals who violate this sanction are known as forkers.
**** Potentially dangerous encounters with the local fauna is seen as a necessary test for receiving the oracle's wisdom
No comments:
Post a Comment