Solomani Preserve
The Solomani Preserve is a mostly Solomani enclave in, and dominating, Zhiaqrqiats Sector.
Society and culture
While the Preserve does not have nobility like the Third Imperium, it has more informal high society like any polity. Social mobility is somewhat easier.
Widespread availability of natural anagathics from Anagathica is the most notable difference. While not everyone can (or wishes to) take advantage, many do; for the poor, accumulating enough income to afford this is a common lifelong goal. Non-age-related reasons are the top causes of mortality. As of 1105, the oldest known citizen is 547 years old, though there are rumors of older people who have shed former identities - with name, face, and sometimes further changes - in order to distance themselves from past misdeeds. A popular legend is of a dedicated government servant, who was among the original crew of the Phoenix 2800, who "dies" every few centuries in order to absorb and resolve public anger at this or that necessary government action.
History and background
Flight of the Phoenix 2800
The 5 year voyage of the Phoenix 2800, and the ships it acquired for its fleet, is a well known Galaxiad sequence. As the Second Imperium lay dying, some Solomani grew fearful that the Vlani would seek to re-establish the First Imperium (which technically happened by means of the Third Imperium, though only after the Long Night, and rather than the Vlani-dominant culture envisioned, would see a thorough blend of Vlani and Solomani inheritances, both culturally and biologically). In response, they hatched an ultimately successful plan to establish a colony on the far side of the Vargr Extents, using them as a shield to keep the Solomani and their descendants safe from conquest. Starting with just a single ship and several thousand people, they traded, hauled passengers and freight, and went on several adventures to keep themselves in maintenance and, more importantly, grow their fleet. While exact census records fell by the wayside, it is estimated their fleet had grown to over a hundred thousand people by the time they founded Havensmith.
That they were able to get a few thousand colonists and a single ship to start out was a small miracle of fortuitous timing: their voyage started in -1690, when the Rim Province was forced to decommission most of their already trimmed fleet due to severe budget shortfalls. Among the decommissioned ships were the Phoenix 2800, a mobile manufacturing ship that the colonists would spend much of the early part of the voyage fitting out with low berths and equipment for their new colony, the Surfing Lighthouse, an observatory ship that would prove critical to safe navigation, and the Secure Rapid Arrival (usually just called "S.R.A."), an armed cargo ship. As with all ventures of this size and nature, it had less of a true start date than a slow agglomeration of resources over time: by the time the Rim Province formally released these three ships to the colonists, negotiations had been taking place for over a year, ever since it became apparent that the Rim Province would soon need to release part of its fleet. The deal was mostly verbal, and not recorded other than the final formal release of ships, but early captain's logs state that the terms were, "Promise to make good use of these ships and take care of their maintenance, and you can have them." That said, the formal start is almost always designated as the Phoenix 2800's launch from Terra with its colonists in late -1690; while the other two ships were waiting at Flanders, legends note that the fleet had but a single ship for its first few jumps, since title transfer for the other two ships did not happen (and thus, the other two ships were technically not yet colonist property) until the colonists reached Flanders.
While many who have barely heard of the Phoenix 2800 concentrate their attentions on the many dangerous jumps through the Vargr Extents during (technically just after) the Vargr Pillaging, in truth that is less than half of the trip, and in some ways the more boring part. By the time they hit vargr space, they had already spent over two years powering through from nearly the rimward extent of the Second Imperium to the coreward side, then Corridor and Deneb sectors to boot. They could and did speak and trade with human populations; with the vargr, exposure risked being shot on sight, so much effort went into avoiding interaction.
Still, the entire trip was a heroic adventure, so it is no surprise to see mostly-accurate representations in the Galaxiad. The most glaring difference, according to historians, usually lies in what happened during the jumps and at most systems, where no specific adventures occurred (whether in human or vargr space). This, by definition, accounts for the vast majority of the time the colonists spent. The Galaxiad depictions tend to gloss over this: wilderness refueling is wilderness refueling, and the fleet just knew which way to go. Historical accounts lay bare that lie.
During most jumps in the Vargr Extents (between Taekhoengsegzo and Thaethouvu), the command ship was abuzz with sophontologists, astrogators, and other specialists wringing every possible clue from what deep space data they got during their last refueling stop in order to detect lack of gas giants, likely fortifications or high volume of patrols, and other conditions that would make jumping into a given system extremely dangerous. The other ships entrusted their astrogation - and with it, their very lives - to these people; there are many recorded instances of captains of these other ships leading actual prayer sessions directed at the command ship's astrogators. Even in human space, many of the jumps were into systems with low or no population, to avoid attention - especially in the immediate aftermath of the "raid" on Vland (world)Vland, when the colony fleet incorrectly thought they would soon be pursued by warships bent on recapturing the rescued solomani prisoners (who had merely been exiled from Vland (world)Vland, and were waiting for the bureaucracy to decide where to exile them to).
Refueling, too, was a buzz of activity. The first actions were to make sure everyone made it (fortunately, only one misjump happened during the entire migration - commonly known as Phi's Betrayal - and that only after leaving the Vargr Extents), then to see if they were detected (they almost never were; the few exceptions are well known and documented) as they set up in stationary orbit on the dark side of the gas giant they had targeted, then for any ship that could to gather unrefined fuel and deliver it for processing. This processing was largely automated but took the bulk of their time between jumps. While this processing happened, fleet communications were opened up (always tightbeam), crew transfers happened as needed, and occasionally nearby asteroids were surveyed, with any mineral-rich ones swallowed whole for processing during the next jump. All this time, sensor crews across the fleet would scramble to gobble up every bit of data about systems on their projected path (and alternate paths, just in case).
Very rarely do Galaxiad representations detail any of this. Many presume psychic navigators who just knew what the safest routes were, and if they detail the refueling at all, most often show it as a kind of party (to be fair, there was a celebratory aspect each time the fleet broke out of jumpspace and could once more see each other). To be clear, while none of the navigators had been tested for psychic potential, none were historically noted to have displayed it, and in any case interstellar range clairvoyance was unknown in Charted Space at the time.
Grand Survey of the Preserve
Upon arrival in -1685, almost all of the colonists were quite happy to swear off further jump travel for life. They had endured for years (even if the majority had done so in cold sleep), and had finally reached the rough paradise they had hoped for. The early years on Havensmith are familiar to anyone who has watched documentaries on colony setup, save for the lack of interstellar trade.
That said, some small part of the crew had adapted to a life in flight. The break started just before the fleet reached Havensmith: the crew of the Surfing Lighthouse elected to stay behind for a couple of weeks, ostensibly to survey the empty parsec (but actually to deploy and test a jump bridge seed they had been working on, see below). Once it arrived at Havensmith, the Surfing Lighthouse was pressed into work surveying the planet, but it was not really made for such a task. Colony management struck a deal with those who wished to fly on: once initial survey was complete and a basic starport set up, the colony would provide fuel and supplies for the science ship to survey nearby stars, ostensibly with a primary mission of making certain the colony really was all alone or to return with information about the neighbors.
Nobody was expecting to find natural anagathics two parsecs away. "Hold the jump", a common Preserve expression, stems from a science officer's exclamation upon finishing his initial analysis of interesting flora on Anagathica as the Surfing Lighthouse was heading toward the 100 diameter limit to jump out.
Jubliation and concern greeted their return with the news. Nobody seriously questioned the sudden need to colonize and develop the newly-christened Anagathica, but this was the first step toward becoming an interstellar polity. Further, there were already calls to set up a trading route back to the Vargr Extents, which the Surfing Lighthouse's crew had anticipated, and revealed that they had deployed the seed for an automated jump bridge, which would refuel any ship with the right codes (and destroy any approaching ship that did not transmit said codes). The seed needed a few years to set up fully, but they expected limited service to already be available. A quick jump confirmed that everything was proceeding as planned.
Setting up a jump bridge was cheating and treason to the very point of the Preserve. On the other hand, had they not surveyed, Anagathica would have remained unknown for many centuries. In the end, the crew was "sentenced" to their original mission, with an addition: establish defensible borders. They took this seriously, deploying further jump bridge seeds and surveying for colonizable spots in every system they felt worth claiming.
Once VoidBridge 1 was fully operational, occasional Jump-3 traders would follow the newly christened Cheaters' Route back to the Vargr Extents, taking precautions to make sure no vargrs were able to trace their route back - but they need not have bothered. Relations grew frequent and friendly over time, until in -1648, the first vargr trader was allowed to reach Havensmith (with human astrogators and engineers, who kept the codes for VoidBridge 1 off of the vargr ships' computers, though this precaution was relaxed at some point in the -1500s).
It would take over nine centuries before serious colonization of Preserve space beyond Havensmith, Anagathica, and Vapor began (by then the Preserve was accepting vargr immigrants; Bath in particular was set up for them). Even then, progress was slow, so it was not until 1 - ironically, just months after the Third Imperium was formally established, not that anyone knew it at the time - that the Preserve finally made contact with Bridgeholm, which the Surfing Lighthouse (in its final report to Havensmith) had requested no other Preserve ship visit until all the other worlds it had designated were settled, then took off to set up their own colony there. It was a mixture of honor and luck that saw every Preserve ship traveling near Bridgeholm honor that request for over 1,600 years, although it lasted about 200 more years than necessary: a widespread misperception had arisen that Bridgeholm was to be left alone forever, until a historian examined the preserved logs of the final report. Only then did the Preserve discover the Surfing Lighthouse had withheld information about the Preserve's neighbors.
Meeting the Yaskoydri
The Surfing Lighthouse had indeed stuck to its mission, surveying system after system and setting up jump bridge seeds to make an artificial main out of the whole thing (anticipating that cheap Jump-1 ships might be desired by certain merchants, and wanting to not let that cut off parts of the Preserve from each other), and had come to the conclusion that they really were alone when they had two systems - Talienda and Bridgeholm - left to survey. The captain had just made this resigned pronunciation in his log when they broke out over Talienda and nearly crashed into a scout from the Yaskoydri Technocracy, which had been en route to Rzakki sector for a near-ritual 100-year check on some survey beacons.
Fortunately, both ships' highest priorities were to establish communication, and both ships had Gvegh speakers - the Surfing Lighthouse from its earlier travels, the Yaskoydri ship from the Technocracy having monitored and decoded centuries-old radio broadcasts from rimward. After sorting out dialect differences, they began a frank and open exchange of information, the kind that give security-minded politicians and military officials nightmares.
This gave the scout confirmation of something the Technocracy had wrestled with for over 5,000 years: there was no sign of Yaskoydray, and while Droyne were known in Charted Space, the civilization the Yaskoydri had come to recontact was no longer extant. The treasure trove of information on legendary Terra, which the Ancients had told the Yaskoydri they were from, was quite appreciated as well. In exchange, the scout gave the Surfing Lighthouse technology and equipment to set up a colony despite their small population, and a promise that the scout's descendants would aid the Solomani Preserve once the Preserve was large enough to make use of said aid. The next year, after the Surfing Lighthouse's crew had completed their survey and were setting up their colony on [[Bridgeholm], the Technocracy sent a follow-up expedition to help them set up and exchange further information.
Records of these contacts were left in the preserved hulk of the Surfing Lighthouse, in orbit around Bridgeholm. Of the colony itself there was little trace: cleared areas, agriculture abandoned centuries ago, and relics going up the technology level scale, the youngest that could be dated placed at around -590. As far as could be determined, Bridgeholm hit the Singularity and left with all sophontic life, as well as almost all its infrastructure. The cleansing appeared to be deliberate, the few remaining relics having been merely overlooked, leaving the Surfing Lighthouse to allow fulfillment of the ancestral promise but nothing further. After establishing a small archaeological colony to explore the planet for any further signs of the previous colony, the Preserve set up an expedition to the Yaskoydri Technocracy, commanded by a refurbished Surfing Lighthouse.
They were expected, their colonization progress having been monitored. Relations were amicable, and the Technocracy generally agreed with the plan of waiting beyond a "break" of uninhabited worlds. The Pirians had a representative at the meeting, and agreed to help implement the breaks before anyone asked. Thus began a 3-way cultural and technological exchange that would benefit all three polities, and their neighbors, for just over 1,000 years. Colonization of the "empty" systems between the three was encouraged, and accounted for most emigrants from the polities during this time; in particular, no Preserve emigrant are known to have gone trailing or coreward, and the only rimward emigrants went all the way over the break to the Vargr Extents.
Empress Wave and Reconstruction
Peace and prosperity were finally broken in 1043 when the Empress Wave arrived at Talienda. At first it was not clear what was going on: ships jumping in simply never returned. Eventually the Wave passed; ships were able to arrive, observe the lingering insanity, and leave with word of it.
Word spread quickly, and it was soon determined to be a psychic phenomenon. At first it was assumed to be a one-off event, until Aethrie and Summergust experienced the same in 1044, and word came tat the Technocracy was having the same problem. Analysis of the affected words across a sector-plus-wide baseline revealed the nature of a traveling wave; by setting probes in Rzakki and Datsatl sectors, scientists were able to triangulate the source to somewhere around the ancient Yaskoydri homeworld near the galactic core. That was about as far as their analysis got; surviving the Wave was a far higher priority.
Many citizens were temporarily evacuated to rimward or coreward colonies on large ark ships while the Wave passed. Many more elected to wait in large vaults of low berths; unfortunately, these were often breached and the helpless inhabitants massacred by those who refused such measures, whether out of denial or due to fear sparked by heavy handed coercion to convince citizens to take to the vaults.
When the Wave finally passed, most of the Preserve's colonies were no longer viable - if anyone still remained at all. The ancient capital of Havensmith, with by far the highest population, also had the longest to prepare and observe what did not work, by lucky virtue of being the most coreward world in the Preserve. Aid had started being dispatched to affected worlds even before the Wave fully passed. The Cheaters' Route was suspended when the Wave passed over some part of it, but Voidbridge 1 only had simple robots and the other links did not have even that, so the Wave left no further lingering problems until it hit the Vargr Extents, the closest of which were well warned by Preserve traders. Unfortunately, word did not spread far from Kiden; if it had, much of the devastation could have been prevented.
Now all that remained was to rebuild, and so rebuild they did. Colonies that needed imports of technology or supplies were abandoned, their survivors relocated - with the exception of Anagathica, its crop too vital not to harvest, even though large swathes had been altered and were now useless. The Preserve refused to give up any worlds within its grip, and still officially claims the abandoned colonies, even if it imposes restrictions on visitors - generally recognized as equivalent to amber zones - to prevent looting and preserve the worlds for eventual recolonization.
This was the state of the Preserve when an Imperial scout with connections to the Travellers' Aid Society, following up on rumors, reached Kiden, followed the Cheaters' Route, and stumbled onto Havensmith. In the chaos of reconstruction, the scout managed to dock at the highport, obtain a complete sector map and historical database, and make it almost to the 100 planetary diameter jump limit before traffic control realized this was the long-feared recontact from Imperial space. No one was able to stop the scout from jumping with its prize, but when challenged, the scout at least sent back a historical database and sector maps showing the Preserve was in no danger of imminent invasion from the Third Imperium.
Reconstruction was still occurring when word of Virus reached the Preserve (fortunately not on an infected ship, and well ahead of the first vampire fleets). The Cheaters' Route proved a blessing, tripping up Virus ships that had learned of this means to cross the rift; Voidbrige 1 was turned into a fortress, quarantining communications from incoming ships until a canary detected no threat of infection. Thus was the Preserve spared the worst of the Collapse, though the Wave had done enough damage. Havensmith would subsequently be counted as a strong world, anchoring the renewed Preserve.
Major historical events timeline
- -1690: Start of colony flight
- -1685: End of colony flight, Havensmith established, Voidbridge 1 seeded
- -1683: Anagatica and its natural anagathics discovered
- -1682: Grand Survey, remaining Voidbridges seeded, Yaskoydri Technocracy contacted in secret, Bridgeholm colonized
- -777]-205: colonization of Grand Survey systems
- 1: Bridgeholm recontacted, formal contact with Yaskoydri Technocracy
- 1043: Empress Wave passes over Talienda
- 1057: Empress Wave passes over Havensmith
- 1103: IISS scout reaches Havensmith and gets away with maps
- 1134: Word of Virus reaches Preserve, Voidbridge 1 converted to fortress
Politics and diplomacy: 1105
Government and politics
Most laws are specific to a system or significant division thereof (such as a major city), but there are a number of Preserve-wide laws on subjects such as taxation and travel. Starship-related laws in particular tend to be Preserve-wide, for uniformity and to enforce Preserve authority. This has roughly the same effect as the Third Imperium's starport extraterritoriality policy: starships and their crews are largely exempt from local regulations so long as they stay near the starports and stick to approved traffic paths.
Preserve-wide governance is handled by a Senate of elected representatives, one per world. In some matters they have equal votes; in others they have votes based on their population, which effectively means the senator from Havensmith dominates, though by tradition this senator abstains from voting on matters of no importance to Havensmith.
As of 1105, the primary political division is whether to focus on rebuilding the surviving colonies, or to re-establish the infrastructure needed to support the abandoned colonies first. The former group has a majority of votes in the Senate even when Havensmith's senator abstains, to the despair of the substantial number of displaced citizens of abandoned worlds who fear they can never go home again.
Military and intelligence
As there are no other nearby polities, the Solomani Preserve does not maintain a strong military. It has 100-ton scouts perform occasional patrols of Zhiaqrqiats, in particular the "break" worlds that it insists remain uninhabited; any colonies it does find are ordered to leave, or razed via orbital bombardment if they fail to comply.
Most government ships are police, or privately owned construction or cargo ships on a government contract. The Preserve does maintain bases for its scouts, and two bases (at Havensmith and Dredgelund) to maintain and organize its police ships.
Anagathica is the closest the Preserve has to an organized ground military. The entire world is run and ruled for the benefit of the Preserve.
In 1134, Voidbridge 1 is converted into a fortress to screen incoming Virus ships, but this is a static defense with little effect on the rest of the Preserve.
Territorial Holdings
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References and contributors
Sources |S1= Author & Contributor: User:Atymes }}