Tijian Khaganate
The Tijian Khaganate is an empire located between the Yaskoydri Technocracy and the Pirian Domain.
- It is near the very edge of Charted Space.
- It is also known as the Tijian Khanate (though that form is rarely used inside its borders).
[edit]
| Polity Astronavigational Codes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polity | Survey | Code | Type | Remarks |
| No polity | Pre-Imperial | No standard code | None | |
| Tijian Khaganate | 1st Survey (300) | TK | 2-ltr code | None |
| Tijian Khaganate | 2nd Survey (1065) | TiKh | 4-ltr code | None |
NOTES: The Khaganate was unknown to the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service until 1104, but following standard practice, the above codes were retroactively added upon the Khaganate's discovery.
Description (Specifications)[edit]
A human minor race polity unknown to Charted Space until 1104, occupying most of the worlds in the Tijia Subsector. A single person, the khagan, rules the entire polity, appointing khans to rule worlds or portions of worlds.
Officially, the khagan has been the same man ever since the polity's founding in 297, with genetic tests to prove his identity. The official myth paints him as a tinkerer-warrior-administrator hero: a brilliant inventor, an undefeatable military leader, and a fair-handed legislator and judge. He even changed his name to Tiji upon founding the khaganate.
Many, especially outside the khaganate, suspect the leader has been a series of clones and/or body doubles with faked tests (his genetic material being abundantly available), with access to advanced technology (estimated around TL-17, less than the six TLs threshold for a true Technologically Elevated Dictatorship) and a lack of opposition bigger than the occasional pirate he has more than enough forces to smash - though even his critics concede that he apparently tries to rule with the interests of his subjects in mind, his rare failures looking more like mistakes than malice.
Culture & Society (Ethnology)[edit]
The khagante is bound together by what can best be described as hero worship. One common prayer recorded in 1052 (as part of the exhortations to build low berths to ride out The Wave) goes as follows:
Teal-haired Tiji, eternal khagan of his khaganate, resplendent in his battle dress.
Tiji the elder, many centuries old yet still healthy and active, whose sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters weave us together.
Tiji the statesman, navigating politics with precedent and solutions from his hundreds of years of leadership, trusting his khans and revoking their titles should they abuse his trust.
Tiji the scholar, who has dabbled in so many fields that his fount of insightful connections never runs completely dry - planting seeds to let someone else follow up and earn the glory for, as he is busy ruling.
Tiji the generous, whose wealth is his peoples', as he says while governing to maximize their wealth, suffering few to endure true privation.
Tiji the robust, perfect of body, impervious to blade, laser, and nuclear fire. No injury can stop him from leading his beloved people.
Tiji the tactician, whose navies sweep all opposition from the sky, and whose armies win by force of arms unmatched by the target followed by force of civility unprecedented in the target.
Tiji the wise. Tiji the powerful. Tiji the righteous. All hail Tiji!
While details vary from world to world, there is an emphasis on living together but controlling from afar. Each world concentrates most of its people into a single city (though this is typical of non-high-population worlds anyway). Belt mining is promoted in each system with an asteroid belt, and every world sees heavy automation of resource extraction. The most common career is robot management, followed by design and maintenance, then transport pilot - starship or other fast transport, where robotic autopilots will not suffice. The general ethos (as promoted to near-propaganda levels in schools, immigration bureaus, and tourism concerns) is of taming what the galaxy provides for the benefit of self and society.
(Those unable to work are minimally provided for, but even they are encouraged to try to conquer whatever is holding them back, so as to contribute to society in some manner. Those suspected of being unwilling - not just unable - to do so are given easy makework tasks to demonstrate that they are willing to work within their capability. Those who do not even attempt the tasks are considered "souldead", in the manner that someone on life support with no detectable brain activity is considered "braindead", and are traditionally left to starve to death unless they do the tasks.)
They style themselves as expansionist, but have not claimed any new worlds since 483, instead concentrating on developing and expanding the frontiers in the systems they have - though see the Tijian Expanse, the support and expansion of which consumes a significant portion of the khaganate's economy from 1047 through the mid 1200s.
For most of the khaganate's existence, genetic samples of Tiji have been made available to the khaganate's citizens. The primary use is to tweak the germline DNA of any human male that wants to have "Tiji's" children. Human females may inseminate themselves with these samples (though it is preferred they mate with an altered male instead), in addition to tweaking their own DNA in similar manner. (Several minor side effects, usually beneficial, have been reported; most medics insist these are psychosomatic, but Khaganate medics quickly follow up that the effects are no less real for it. As one specific example, those Tijians who seek to get Tiji's DNA and believe in the Traveller Gene, almost universally say he has it and they want it; many of them subsequently find the courage for their first trip to space - sometimes to another world, or even another system - and credit it to the Traveller Gene, when more detailed studies consistently link this to the medical institutes sharing a list of "enhanced" patients with firms that provide tourist trips to space, getting around medical privacy laws by claiming this is part of post-enhancement counseling, an arrangement that has not been seriously legally challenged since it began.) The resulting children are culturally treated as Tiji's, though legally they are just ordinary children of whatever mother (and father, if any) were involved (there have been many attempts to get Tiji to pay child support this way, all failed).
Notably, this DNA has not been shown to impart any measurable psionic capability; Tijians claims he does not need it. This forms the basis for the khaganate's treatment of psions: tolerated, but with a subtle bias against putting them in positions of power. There are two psionic institutes, one on Tijia and one on Bulgan; as of 1105, both are still damaged from the Empress Wave (mostly from the collateral damage when most of the prototype psi-tech devices reacted to the Wave).
Almost all residents of the Khaganate have ancestry tracing to the Pirian Domain and/or the Yaskoydri Technocracy (in many cases, back thousands of years to before these polities split apart), with a tiny minority having immigrated from the Solomani Preserve. Non-humans, whether from the various races among the Yaskoydri Technocracy or vargr from the Pirian Domain, form less than 5% of the population. Officially, Tiji welcomes them so long as they comply with and are able to function within human norms; unofficially, they are sometimes subject to racism and seen as outsiders, though the fact that the main "opposing" polity - the Pirian Domain - is primarily human helps diminish this.
History & Background (Dossier)[edit]
According to official history, the man who would become Tiji was one of the team that defeated the Mobile World in the Yaskoydri Technocracy's Fourth Doctrinal War. He took the blame for slaughtering an entire civilization - even if all that remained of said civilization had dedicated itself to the extermination of the Yaskoydri, so no one who survived blamed him. Still, unsettled from what he had done, he retired from military service and sought enlightenment.
Decades later he found it, reborn anew into "perfect immortal form" (a term that often evokes eyerolls, or the cultural equivalent, from outsiders upon hearing this claimed history), and lead several followers to Tijia. There he declared his new khaganate (and changed his name to Tiji) in 284. Through a combination of diplomacy and military force, he conquered the world over the next 14 years. The rest of the 1105 khaganate worlds were annexed one by one over the next 199 years, the last one formally surrendering in 483 though it had long since been conquered in fact.
Since then, the primary instability has been of this or that faction seeking to take over - which has usually meant attempting to assassinate Tiji. No such attempts have succeeded (officially) There has been steady technological and economical advancement, briefly reaching TL-16 on Tijia just before the Empress Wave hit, though projects to solidify that progress were abruptly abandoned (resulting in backslide of effective technology level) in favor of building a large number of low berths to protect the population. Once the Wave passed and the population revived, these berths were shipped to the next most rimward words, used there until the Wave passed them, and so on until the Wave was completely out of the khaganate. (Aftereffects from the Wave would plague each world for 11 years after the Wave passed, but the colonists themselves were spared.) The berths were then sold off, scrapped, or recycled to help build the ships that colonized the Tijian Expanse. Visions of the fruits of TL-16 would taunt Khaganate scientists for generations.
Historical documents from the Yaskoydri Technocracy and Pirian Domain agree that a hero of the Fourth Doctrinal War changed his name to Tiji and went on a conquering spree, out in the wilds beyond either polity's borders, for a couple centuries (with official questions as to whether "Tiji" was the same individual by the end) before settling down (possibly due to another "Tiji" taking the helm). Neither polity made much more extensive inquiries, up until the Pirian Domain expanded to the khaganate's borders, at which point a peace treaty was signed such that neither polity would expand into the other, recognizing that more worlds lay in other directions and they were both better off not fighting over what had been claimed.
Language & Letters (Communication)[edit]
Anglic is their official language. Given their proximity to the Yaskoydri Technocracy, Oynprith is a common second language.
Worlds & Sectors (Astrography)[edit]
This polity can be primarily found in the following areas:
Charted Space:
Capital/s: 1105[edit]
The capital/s of this polity is/are located in the following location/s:
World Listing: 1105[edit]
The following systems and worlds are a part of this polity:
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References & Contributors (Sources)[edit]
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- New Traveller: Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society 6 (Mongoose Publishing, 2019), 2.
- Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
- Author & Contributor: Adrian Tymes