#Echor Archives

[green-eyes-and-orange-ties]

So I did a thing ... I made a collection on AO3 that anyone can add to. The idea is to gather a collection of TMA style statements but based in Echor and eventually maybe I'll get round to reading them podfic style but life is busy so who knows

[green-eyes-and-orange-ties]

It's been a year (I think)

I've been publicly unhinged about Night Shift for a year... 12 months of shameless posting about this podcast ... 52 weeks ... 365 days ... 583 posts (and counting)

So

any ideas on how I should celebrate?

don’t think i can call it a hyperfixation anymore fam im afraid im just long term insane about this piece of media

[echoric]

It is the end of Whumptober, so to celebrate I wrote 4k+ words of married IceMav during the Top Gun Maverick mission <3

Summary:

He heard footsteps behind him, but didn’t bother with opening his eyes or standing up straight. There was no need. Ice knew who it was without looking, he would be able to pick out those footsteps in a crowd of a million. Hands landed on his waist with a firm but familiar touch, sending a warm, grounding sensation through him. He smiled softly to himself, then opened his eyes to see the ocean gleaming under the sun. “Hello, sweetheart,” he murmured, daring to break the silence of the ocean. “Hi, Ice.”   aka a married icemav top gun maverick au <3 Whumptober Day 31!

Notes:

Prompt: "Take it Easy"

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

you play the victim perfectly holding your beating heart

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/dIKmpn8 by echoric “I don’t recall paying for a circus act,” Dick called out as he effortlessly blocked another punch, returning it with a sharp jab of his own and bringing the man in front of him to his knees. “Well consider this a freebie then,” Wally shot back; a crackle of electricity illuminated the dark alley briefly before another man dropped. “You should be happy, birdie, not just anyone gets to see this level of fabulous.” “Fabulous doesn’t save you from a bullet,” Dick muttered under his breath, his tone had a hint of exasperation, but Wally simply laughed it off. (birdflash takes over for Whumptober Day 11) Words: 2323, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 11 of Whumptober 2024 Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Dick Grayson, Wally West, Bruce Wayne Relationships: Dick Grayson/Wally West, Dick Grayson & Wally West, Bruce Wayne & Wally West, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: Minor Dick Grayson/Wally West, Protective Wally West, Hurt Dick Grayson, Accidents, Electricity, Speed Force, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson Loves Wally West, Wally West Loves Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Protective Bruce Wayne, Good Parent Bruce Wayne, Betaed, by the amazing Icechild best batfam author in the world, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Tags Are Hard, Whump, Whumptober 2024 read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/dIKmpn8

[tanadrin]

What are the (in-universe) politics of climate change in the world of Sogant Raha?

Climate change as such isn’t a major political issue in any era of Sogant Raha’s history, because industrial civilization with a population in the billions isn’t really a thing in any era of its history. The politics of environment and ecology, however, have been very important.

The first human civilization on the planet was technologically advanced but small; in the wake of the destruction of the Ammas Echor, they had to rebuild an industrial base on the planet, which took centuries and was never sophisticated as the one the ship had provided. Sogant Raha did not have as extensive and as accessible coal and oil deposits either, and certainly not in the regions of major human habitation during this early phase of settlement.

The major conflict when humanity arrived at Sogant Raha was, loosely, between those who wanted to approach the project of colonizing an alien world in an extremely conservative fashion, shaping human civilization to suit the environment as it existed, and those who believed that changing the environment was inevitable, and that it was both possible and desirable to seek a new equilibrium between humanity and the planet. Both factions were by our standards very environmentalist! With their religious background it could hardly be otherwise. But they disagrees (nearly to the point of civil war) on the actual program of settlement, and to what extent Terran species in the Great Record should be brought back.

That conflict was mediated by the Archive, in the form of Praxis, but this compromise lasted only as long as there was a unified political structure on the planet. That structure was based on the Ammas Echor and collapsed when the ship was destroyed. In the aftermath, colonization was unregulated and chaotic, a situation neither faction would have been happy with. Inevitably, humans profoundly altered their environment (and had to adapt themselves in turn). During the difficult centuries that followed, ecological concerns were only one of many different competing concerns for the fragmented polities of human civilization.

By the time of the Fifth Thalassocracy, a major industrial base had been rebuilt—think early 20th century, with zeppelins and steamships and railroads, though a much smaller global population, heavily concentrated in one hemisphere. But centuries of human population growth were provoking strange reactions in the native biota. New epidemic diseases were sweeping through the population; there were repeated attacks on the frontier by wild animals that nobody had ever seen before, some of which seemed like strange versions of Terran organisms; and the general feeling, especially at the margins of civilization, was that humanity was under siege by the alien ecology beyond its borders.

This period coincided with the second Continent-Archipelago War, which on its own would have been devastating; the use of new superweapons made it even worse. The war culminated in the unauthorized use of an experimental weapon that harnessed the latent energy within the Nexus strain of native microorganisms, and provoked a chain reaction in which the metabolism of native life went haywire. The disaster that followed, called the Burning Spring, was essentially a mass extinction. More than 90% of all land life died over the course of a couple thousand years. This death triggered atmospheric changes—carbon levels spiked for instance—but terrestrial life exploded to fill the vacated space left behind. But the rapid environmental change (and the devastation of war) also caused human civilization to collapse again, to a thoroughly preindustrial state.

The societies that eventually arose millennia later largely did not remember the history of what had gone before. They did not remember this was not the planet they were native to, and it would have been hard to notice. The actual native biota were confined mostly to slowly-shrinking refugia in the continental interiors, which were dangerous to approach—in the borderlands of those refugia, strange monsters roamed, virulent pathogens that caused hemorrhagic fevers and fulminant cancers were common, and almost everything that lived there was incredibly toxic to humans.

Ecology went from a matter of specific political concern to the background rhythm of thousands of different cultures. Each had their own way of thinking about the environment they lived in. Some saw themselves as stewards; others, as pragmatic exploiters. New urban civilizations with sophisticated modes of production would and did develop. Some even rediscovered some of their ancestors’ advanced technologies. But they were on a smaller scale, and while they might be intensely concerned with their local environment, global matters were not something they were in a position to understand or significantly affect.

(The Lende Empire, for example, was in its last centuries just starting to industrialize. But it wasn’t connected to a truly global system of trade, and while it had religiously-motivated environmental concerns, these were of a much smaller order than global carbon emissions. And they were expressed differently than how we would express our environmentalism: less ‘preserve natural ecology’ and more ‘don’t desecrate this sacred mountain range.’)

[nightshiftpodcast]

Cities have souls. This is something we know intrinsically without ever having to think it. We burden them with our memories. With our stories.

These are the stories of Echor City, a place caught in turmoil between nature and progress. Between magic and science. A place where secrets and mysteries tangle together in ways that are impossible to unravel.

My name is Sebastian Fen, and I want the truth.

Join me every two weeks and delve into the shadows of Echor City, right here on the Night Shift podcast.

Night Shift: An Urban Fantasy Audio Drama is a 16-episode LGBTQ+ fiction podcast, set in a world inhabited by people with extraordinary powers both natural and artificial. For lovers of mystery, magic, thrillers, found family and triumph against all odds.

Listen to our show here!

Episode 1: Angelo Volta

Episode 2: The Shade Serial Killer

Episode 3: Gone Girls

Episode 4: Shadows

Episode 5: The Fall

Episode 6: Ink

Episode 7 coming June 1st!

If you enjoyed Welcome to Night Vale, The Penumbra Podcast, The Magnus Archives, The Black Tapes, or Limetown, we’d love for you to give us a chance! You can also find us on all your favourite podcast apps with our RSS feed.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Chapters: 12/? Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types Rating: Mature Relationships: Aragorn | Estel/Boromir (Son of Denethor II), Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf, but that's more in the background/subtle Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boromir Lives, Fix-It, everyone has their issues but it's nothing worse than in My Land is Bare, Boromir pOV, Grima POV, Grima lives, Family Issues, (it's Denethor guys), less disassociation than in the previous work, Grima is a little more grounded, Boromir is ready to set everything on fire Series: Part 3 of swimming through fire Summary:

The latest installment of the Boromir-Lives LOTR rewrite. Helm's Deep has concluded and we are on to the Return of the King.

Boromir and Gandalf are off to Gondor to see what they can do to help. Aragorn, because he likes to take the most whack routes possible, is to drag the remainder Fellowship through the paths of the dead. No one signed up for this.

With our Rohan compatriots: Grima continues to be a hot wreck who is actually managing himself not half-bad, all things considered. Eowyn just wants to really, really fight the baddies. Theoden thinks everyone needs to cool it for ten seconds. Eomer has never heard the word "chill" in his life.

Anyway - things continue to go pear shaped.

--

Obligatory excerpt: 

Morning sky begins red and bleeds redder with fire.

Boromir sits on his horse on the road between Osgiliath and Rammas Echor eating an apple.

‘I told you to let me set it up,’ Ingbold says, retrieving a flask from his saddle bag. ‘We all deserve a drink.’

‘I think we did marvelously,’ Boromir replies. ‘All of you are to be commended to my father.’

Ingbold grins, ‘Will this get me out of guard duties at the northern front?’

‘No promises,’ Boromir takes the offered flask, ‘but I always said you were wasted up there.’

A second explosion trembles earth beneath foot and hoof. What little of the garrison that remained crumples down. A graceless, exiting bow of stone.

[therapardalis]

warhornofgondor‌:

-

“Good morning.” The greeting was warm and friendly but lacking in enthusiasm. Homesickness had settled in his stomach though he was only but feet from the gate. There was no certainty of returning, a thought that hung heavily in his mind.

“Our route is as planned. At least through the Gap. We will try and remain on the North-South Road, but it is long since anyone journeyed on that and updated a map from the archives. We will have to stay on our guard.”

There was nothing more to do besides take one last look at the city and be on their way. Many leagues lay between them and Imladris.

Boromir set out at a slow canter. The dark bay steed, Callon, felt the eagerness of his rider and was happy to comply with the pace. It had been too many days since he had gone faster than a trot. His hooves chewed the golden ground as the pair flew over the Pelennor, through the north gate of Rammas Echor, and into Old Anorien.  The land was empty save the few settlements like Crithost where Boromir wished to stop to see if there was any news  of the northern roads.

“How are you faring? Are you missing the Houses yet?”

Mithril took it upon himself to misbehave. Strategically, it would seem, at least to his rider who knew him well. Already he had sensed the urgency and chafed at the pace, unaware that Callon, though a fine steed, could probably not keep up with an Elven horse’s stride. More than that, as well, he chose to suddenly toss his head and snort at shadows whenever Thera’s thoughts began to drift.

She startled back each time, the same flash of annoyance at the gelding changing to one at herself; it was proving just as well, wasn’t it, that she was not out here on the roads alone, and she would have to pick herself up. But still a nagging hollow chewed under her ribs, worry and anticipation and the gnaw of helplessness that she despised most of all.

“I fare well enough.” Not completely a lie, but only brushing against the truth. She couldn’t claim to be at the top of her game, but for what she had ‘well enough’ would suffice. “And,” More heartily, the sentiment being more whole, “I am not missing them in the least.”

The open air may have been tainted somewhat by concern, but it was still open air - the miles still miles, free of the daily grind. She did not miss the Halls, and if ... matters unfolded as she feared, it was unlikely that she would ever return to them again. “I’m glad to be on this road, rather than staying behind.” Her gaze on Boromir perhaps lingered, was pulled sharply away.

“Crithost, you say? That can’t be much further ahead.”

[echoric]

Summary:

The day had been hell. Maverick had been called in to the base because an inspection of his jet had found a ‘modification’ that wasn’t allowed. In the end, it had all turned out to just be an inexperienced inspector who hadn’t known the difference between his old F-14 and the new F-16 he had been assigned to. Regardless of how easy it was to prove the inspector wrong, Maverick had still had to get up and get to base on a day he was supposed to have off to relax with Ice. It had been frustrating, and Maverick was about one red light away from throwing traffic laws to the wind. aka Maverick gets in a crash on his way to what is supposed to be a relaxing night for him and Ice Whumptober Day 28!

I still don't know how tumblr works but this was inspired by a post here that I can't find now so I wanted to share just in case the OP happens to see it <3

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

you play the victim perfectly holding your beating heart

by echoric “I don’t recall paying for a circus act,” Dick called out as he effortlessly blocked another punch, returning it with a sharp jab of his own and bringing the man in front of him to his knees. “Well consider this a freebie then,” Wally shot back; a crackle of electricity illuminated the dark alley briefly before another man dropped. “You should be happy, birdie, not just anyone gets to see this level of fabulous.” “Fabulous doesn’t save you from a bullet,” Dick muttered under his breath, his tone had a hint of exasperation, but Wally simply laughed it off. (birdflash takes over for Whumptober Day 11) Words: 2323, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 11 of Whumptober 2024 Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Dick Grayson, Wally West, Bruce Wayne Relationships: Dick Grayson/Wally West, Dick Grayson & Wally West, Bruce Wayne & Wally West, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: Minor Dick Grayson/Wally West, Protective Wally West, Hurt Dick Grayson, Accidents, Electricity, Speed Force, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson Loves Wally West, Wally West Loves Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Protective Bruce Wayne, Good Parent Bruce Wayne, Betaed, by the amazing Icechild best batfam author in the world, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Tags Are Hard, Whump, Whumptober 2024 via https://ift.tt/dIKmpn8

[tanadrin]

What type of genetic engineering have the humans of the Sogant Raha universe done to themselves for the long ship journeys? For example, I could imagine tweaks like can "produce vitamin C" (and maybe other vitamins) or "increased production of essential amino acids" would help with a lot of dietary problems (which would also be supplemented by engineered food sources). Anything else (visual spectral acuity, mutation resistance)?

A big class of genetic alterations necessary to survive particularly in the interstellar phase of civilizations involves low-gravity adaptation and a slower metabolism. The human body being able to develop properly in microgravity and not suffer precipitous loss of bone density means you don't have to have large rotating sections on your spaceship, which makes building interstellar craft much easier from an engineering standpoint. And it makes them much lighter, which is important when trying to cover massive distances using rockets! Other important genetic alterations are going to include resistance to non-infectious diseases (infectious diseases are pretty easy to control when your environment is entirely artificial), like cancer and degenerative diseases of the brain and nervous system.

Depending on the branch of humanity we're talking about, and how far into the exile, some of the alterations were more dramatic--radiation resistance, adaptation to low-pressure environments, major morphological adaptations (say, toward something more resembling our arboreal cousins, handy in low-gravity environments), and optional or even obligate parthenogenetic reproduction. Some, but by no means all of these genetic alterations would be reversed or the underlying genes silenced during the planetary phase of civilization. By the late exile, genetic engineering is skillful enough in some branches that you might have human populations for whom extended periods in microgravity automatically triggers a reactivation of spacefaring adaptations.

When it comes to the people of Ammas Echor specifically, a couple of generations after the ship had been launched from Rauk, almost all of its inhabitants were adapted genetically and physically to spacefaring life. This was mostly down to records of genetic engineering technology preserved aboard its predecessor Gyandamantu, which meant that the Ammas Echor's passengers didn't have to rediscover all of that themselves, but it was also down to a heavy utilization of cybernetic augmentation in addition to genetic alteration--these augmentations improved strength, helped regulate the metabolism, allowed for long-term hibernation to conserve resources, and helped to both avoid and heal major injuries, such that most of the ship's crew enjoyed a healthy lifespan centuries long, and many longer.

But few of these changes made it into the planetary population of Sogant Raha, since they represented overspecialization toward life in space--during the last century or so of final approach, the Archive considered reverting toward the more baseline form that had been common at Rauk. Attention also had to be paid to areas which had been long neglected by the genetic science of the Exile, like the immune system. Ultimately, the last couple of generations raised as they approached Kdjemmu were in some ways significant throwbacks--they possibly erred in reverting too far toward the baseline, but they were understandably worried about having children that would be totally unsuited to life in a complete, naturally-evolved biosphere.

The spacefaring type didn't go extinct overnight, though. Besides being long-lived, the Archive needed members to remain aboard the ship while it was in orbit and keep things running even as colonization began, and it was projected that the Ammas Echor would be the center of Sogantine civilization for a few centuries at least. Those Archivists who did venture to the surface had to do so in heavy environmental support suits. And when the ship was lost, the handful that remained would have lost the ability to maintain those suits if they broke down, much less create new ones.

Once the final Archivists of the spacefaring type died out, the Sogantine population would have been pretty close to present-day humans for the most part, with some key differences. Visually, they did not resemble any particular phenotype familiar to us. They lacked a propensity to most common genetic diseases familiar to us (though some of these, or new ones, might show up again in subsequent centuries). They were better adapted to childbirth--this is something Exile geneticists had worked hard at fixing, and weren't about to inflict on their children again--meaning much lower baseline maternal mortality rates. And the frequency of really negative recessive traits was reduced, meaning that despite being pretty genetically homogeneous during the Settlement period, the small population size was not as deleterious to long-term health as might otherwise be expected.

Sixty thousand years is a long time--long enough for plenty of new phenotypes to arise and for a moderate degree of divergence between widely-separated populations--but even quite late in the timeline, Sogant Raha mostly has less genetic diversity than Earth does today. Not that there aren't exceptions--the Dappese are outliers, far enough removed from other populations that pairings with them produce markedly lower fertility rates, and I haven't even begun to touch on the Cloud-Faced People.

[tanadrin]

The History of Sogant Raha I: Landfall, collapse, and the First Thalassocracy

[Map: Landfall and the primary human settlement (filled dot), secondary settlements (circles), and scientific outposts (triangles) in the first decades of human settlement.]

The landing of the first humans on Sogant Raha did not happen immediately upon arrival in the system. Ammas Echor had been traveling through interstellar space at a small but appreciable fraction of lightspeed; the deceleration required to to enter into a stable orbit around the star Kdjemmu took around two years; it was months more of maneuvering to finally come into a low orbit around Sogant Raha itself. During this time, engineers were hard at work surveying the planet and the star system as a whole, and deciding how best to put people on the surface. Since there was no launch infrastructure available below, the first volunteers risked a permanent one-way trip if anything went wrong; they descended in what was essentially a small passenger pod with a detachable deceleration thruster and a large parachute.

But since the surface proved not only habitable, but eminently hospitable, soon many more followed. A complex problem lay before the exiles: how to transition from an extremely specialized space-based mode of existence to a much more generalized planetary one. Everything was in question, from old social and political norms (highly traditionalist, in a society that had been effectively static for millennia) to cultural and religious (what did the old beliefs mean, now that Paradise had really been found?). A major philosophical division arose among the people that coalesced around two opposing camps, the Instrumentalists and the Renewalists; for a short time, there was the very real possibility of violence.

The Archive, a guild of sorts that comprised the guardians that had shepherded the Ammas Echor through its long flight, stepped in to broker a peace: a new institution was created, called Praxis, to manage human settlement of the planet and to arbitrate disputes of significant public concern. Praxis had judicial and regulatory functions, but it was also a kind of philosophical-religious body, charged with safeguarding Sogant Raha, and ensuring present generations did not squander the wealth of future ones. Like many institutions of the Exile, it took a long view in most matters, and deliberated any innovation or deviation from established rules thoroughly before taking action.

In the years following landfall, the location that had been selected for the first landing became the primary settlement site. It developed into a de facto administrative center, and was the home of orbital launch facilities used to ferry people and goods into orbit. Smaller settlements--many no more than mere villages--sprang up in the surrounding region, connected to the capital by ship or aircraft.

[Map: Dark orange: the region of primary human settlement 300 local years after Landfall. Pale orange: the region to which human settlement was restricted by Praxis.]

Establishing infrastructure on the planet took time, of course. The colonists were helped by the fact that the exile had required the development of sophisticated on-demand fabrication techniques and space-based resource harvesting technology. It was anticipated that, for some time, the nucleus of all really sophisticated industry would remain the Ammas Echor. Smaller craft were built to conduct asteroid capture and mining operations, and even (once the resources could be spared) conduct some exploration of Sogant Raha's small moons, and the other planets of the system. Small, valuable commodities, like computer chips and sophisticated medical equipment, were manufactured in space and shipped to the surface. A great deal of engineering and scientific work was also done on Ammas Echor, including planetary surveys, the design of new aircraft to aid exploration and cataloguing native flora and fauna, and the deployment of weather and communications satellites.

Praxis's long-term plan was to keep the vast majority of the planet wild. It was felt that by carefully managing human settlement, and only gradually expanding it (probably ultimately to encompass no more than the western shore of the continent, up to thirty degrees north or so), disruption of the ecosystems of the rest of Sogant Raha could be avoided. But even a fraction of this world felt like incomprehensible abundance: it was projected that perhaps within a few millennia, the colony might number hundreds of millions of souls, a number not seen on an inhabited world at any point in recorded history. The desire to preserve the wilderness was not only the result of religious feeling toward this new world; although now a very ancient and vague memory, the exiles still believed that their homeworld had been lost to them long ago through human malice. They were terrified of repeating the same mistakes again.

Despite Praxis's careful management of the colony's development, the population boomed quickly. Air, water, and food were incredibly abundant. Between the lack of native pathogens that could infect humans and the high quality of medical care available, the death rate remained low for centuries. Plans were made for a new city, in the heart of the pale of settlement, and for a powerful beacon that might call out to other exiles, far off in the darkness, to invite them to join their siblings in Paradise.

Alas, catastrophe struck. A new variety of tahar appeared, at first only in the endoflora and endofauna that were used to feed and support the colony, but eventually in humans as well. It seemed harmless at first; but then, without warning, it suddenly began to cause a strange new disease in much of the colony's population. Symptoms included fever, aches, delirium, nightmares, hallucinations, tremors, altered memories, seizures and, in many cases, death. Praxis attempted to maintain calm; but ultimately the disease spread to the Ammas Echor itself. There it seemed to burn through the population with special fervor; and finally, driven by madness, the Archivists aboard crashed the ship into the sea.

In the aftermath, chaos reigned for a time; many fled the larger settlements, faring contagion. Praxis collapsed; Landfall and a few other sites that had been important supply distribution hubs were ransacked and abandoned. Some organized coordination across the remaining towns was attempted, but this proved difficult in practice. Many basic resources were now in short supply, and all of the infrastructure that had been maintained from orbit was likely to soon stop working.

[Map: The region of human settlement 800 local years after Landfall.]

Insofar as anybody might think to ask the question, the humans of Sogant Raha remained one people; without Praxis, or any kind of central coordinating mechanism, settlements fell back on basically strictly local administration, if they had any formal system of government at all. Although the human population had been growing quickly, it still numbered less than one hundred thousand.

Determined to stave off total collapse, the last remaining Archivists banded together to copy and preserve every record, scientific and historical, that they could find; even if much of this knowledge was no longer of immediate use, they would preserve it until it was needed. They undertook also to disseminate it, and inducted new members into their nascent order to build schools, publish books, and maintain the remaining methods of long-range communication.

The region of settlement grew outward slowly; no longer restricted by Praxis rules, some ventured well beyond the old Pale, and brought with them many varieties of endobiota. Some enterprising scientists were even able to continue transcribing new species out of the Great Record, until the necessary technology broke down and could no longer be repaired. And this was, in many ways, a period of growth.

It might be tempting to view the early period of human settlement, when there were no large cities and the population was very low, as analogous to, say, the late Neolithic, where civilization was at best inchoate. But the comparison is unapt: though few in number, and with their standard of living greatly reduced, the colonists still had access to a great deal of information on science, history, sanitation, medicine, and engineering. Even as specialty expertise degraded over time (quite rapidly, in fact), no-one had to reinvent germ theory, or the ideal gas law. Even if individual settlements could not maintain their own educational institutions, they could often depend on specialists of the Archive.

As a consequence, though their mode of living in some ways resembled the dispersed settlements of prehistory, in others it was very different. The pace of life was slow, there were no significant economies of scale, and the dominant activity was agriculture. But mortality, especially child mortality, remained low and lifespans were long (both of these phenomena were also no doubt partly attributable to minor genetic tweaks made at different points in the Exile), and though it was small in volume there were still long-distance trade routes that linked together some of the most distant settlements.

[Map: The region of human settlement 2,000 local years after Landfall.]

Two thousand years on, the scope of human settlement had expanded considerably, both in terms of the region it occupied and in terms of population. The total number of humans on Sogant Raha was now a little over fifteen million; this was large enough to support real cities, primarily on the coast and near the original settlement zone. At the frontier, new modes of living emerged; some communities branched out into lower-density modes of subsistence like pastoralism.

On the coast, dense populations began to organize themselves in more structured ways. The need to support markets, to structure rules on property, to settle disputes before they turned violent, and to try to undertake major public projects resulted in the emergence of entities that, while not quite states in our own sense of the word, had some similar characteristics. Without exception these authorities justified themselves, not by divine right or by popular sovereignty, but by ideological (even personal) continuity with the leadership of the original colony, and a desire to return to, and fulfill, the original mission of the colonists.

Even the most developed of these polities was little more than a city-state with a small hinterland. As they grew, though, disputes between neighbors led to conflict and sometimes small-scale violence. The desire to avoid open war led to the evolution of new norms of diplomacy and even a system of what might be termed international law. In the 2200s, this system was explicitly adopted by a league of major settlements that vowed to uphold its principles among all their trading partners and dependencies. Because most of the settlements involved were coastal, and its power and influence was linked to trade routes and the ships that traveled them, this league became known as the First Thalassocracy. Its golden age would last about three hundred local years.

[tanadrin]

Biomes of Sogant Raha: Xenogrowth and Xenogrowth Mix

[Map: major xenogrowth belts in central Rezana, showing full xenogrowth in red and xenogrowth mix in orange]

The recent biogeographical history of Sogant Raha can be divided into two major phases. The first of these phases concerns the planet as it was when the first Exiled arrived in orbit from a distant star. Driven by a soteriology that had grown up between legends of a lost paradise from which they had originated, and a future paradise embodied in a far-off exoplanet, whose atmosphere betrayed signs of a rich biosphere in its spectroscopic signature, an immediate debate began on what form human settlement on the new world would take.

This debate coalesced around two major ideologies that were in concurrence on many major issues, but which differed on a subtle but important point. The Instrumentalists sought to integrate humanity into this alien biosphere; they believed that human and Sogantine life should co-exist. The Renewalists sought to conform to the rigors of the Sogantine biosphere; they believed that the stewardship of Paradise was the highest priority. Both factions were extraordinarily conscious of the dark myths which stretched back into the first days of the Exile long ago, that said humanity was driven to flight, and the first Paradise laid waste because of the works of human hands. Both recognized that, in a cosmos in which living worlds seemed to be painfully rare, this was an opportunity that must not be squandered.

But despite the apparent consonance between these groups, the tension on what degree of importance to grant the human settlement of Paradise rapidly grew, and nearly resulted in civil war aboard the Ammas Echor. Two events prompted reconciliation. First, a joint surface expedition returned with the news that the native biosphere was safe for humans to inhabit, with little risk of disease spreading from humans to the xenobiota or vice-versa. Second, the Great Record, a genetic encyclopedia containing the whole genome of a vast number of Terran lifeforms and information on how to reconstruct living organisms from that data, was discovered carved into the bones of the Ammas Echor. This second discovery in particular threw the plans of both the Instrumentalists and Renewalists into confusion, and the Archivists, a third faction consisting of the heavily genetically and cybernetically altered caste responsible for shepherding the Ammas Echor during its millennia-long flight between the stars that had until then remained aloof, stepped in to broker a peace.

Under the watchful eye of the Archive, human settlement of the surface would begin, and steps would be taken to start the rebirth of terrestrial species that had been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years; but both would proceed along highly controlled and extremely cautious timetables, confined to small designated areas of the surface. Thorough computer simulations and carefully controlled ecological experiments would be undertaken before any expansion was considered; and the human population would remain tightly controlled for centuries to come. This was understood to be a price well worth paying to safeguard against the possibility of dealing irreparable harm to a unique world.

But not all the settlers were happy with this outcome. In particular, a small circle of radical Instrumentalists, augmented by geneticists and ecologists who felt that the Archive was suppressing legitimate scientific inquiry to keep the peace, began a rogue program of species-resurrection, believing that they could accelerate the Archive’s timetable considerably, without seriously endangering the native ecosystem. Working at Khoda Station, a weather observation post far to the southeast of the human colony, they started with various flowering plants before moving on to insects, birds, and (their crowning achievement) bottlenose dolphins. When this rogue operation was discovered, the Archive arrested everyone involved and ordered the destruction of Khoda Station and the sterilization of the surrounding land, to prevent the escape of any potential invasive species. One scientist who refused to evacuate was killed; but the dolphins, partially forewarned by the agitation of the humans, escaped into the open sea.

Further disruption to the program of settlement occurred two generations later; an epidemic of delirium, delusion, and madness began to sweep through first the planetside colonists, and then those who remained aboard the Ammas Echor as well. Only too late, the microbiologists of the Archive realized they had incompletely misunderstood the biosphere of Sogant Raha. Besides the familiar orders of cellular life, which resembled the biology of terran life in their structure, if not their particulars, there was a second order of life that was radically different. Non-cellular, chemically distinct--and in fact much more akin to human biology in composition--this order was principally microscopic, was found as a commensalist throughout the native biosphere, and had begun to colonize the endobiota, humans and the resurrected terran species. What was benign in the xenobiota that had co-evolved with the acytic clade had, for unknown reasons, begun to cause adverse reactions in humans. Led by a brilliant scientist named Kaituro, the Archive’s microbiologists raced to solve the underlying biological mysteries before the plague claimed the lives of the entire colony.

One morning, Kaituro’s colleagues awoke to a mystery: they found Kaituro in an isolation chamber meant for sterile experiments, hooked up to monitors for his vital signs; his body was alive and breathing, but he was brain-dead; the structure of his cerebellum had been destroyed, essentially liquefied, and replaced with a thick slurry of acytic microorganisms and neural protein. An IV in his arm indicated he had injected himself with a compound dangerous to humans but known to promote acytic growth, and a data feed connected to a port in his arm suggested he had been monitoring the activity of the acytes in his bloodstream for an unknown reason; but the data recorder was damaged, and the information unrecoverable. Whatever experiment he had been running was a failure; his body was incinerated that evening.

In subsequent months, the plague reached a fever pitch. Madness claimed the Ammas Echor itself, whose pilots drove it out of orbit and into the sea, a colossal loss for the colony which was still extensively reliant on the technology and fabrication facilities the ship provided. The planetside Archive strove to maintain peace, but panic and anger eventually caused a total political collapse; humans began to spread out across the planet, no longer unified by a single plan or purpose, and they brought with them various resurrected endobiota, which began to integrate themselves into the native ecosystem.

This is the essence of the first phase: a continuous history with the pre-human ecology of Sogant Raha, albeit with the gradual introduction of new endobiota. Although the technology used to resurrect endobiota was lost within a few centuries of the Ammas Echor’s destruction, by that time a huge portion of the Great Record had been transcribed, as it were, into living species. Some endobiota subsequently went extinct, outcompeted by xenobiota that were better adapted for Sogant Raha’s climate and soil, while others found new niches all their own. Oceanic endobiota were much less successful on the whole; besides the bottlenose dolphin, some species of kelp, and various species associated in coral reef ecosystems (which thrived in Sogant Raha’s warm, shallow seas), most oceanic endobiota simply could not compete with native life, and were not successfully resurrected.

Among some endobiota, a curious change occurred: some--but by no means all-organisms colonized by the acytes began to undergo radical changes in their morphology and behavior, changes that failed to be passed on to the offspring if the acytes were purged from them at an early stage of embryonic development. Rumors of monsters in the wilderness were followed by captured specimens of strange and dangerous beasts; and eventually, these were followed by bloody live encounters with humans. The natural world seemed to be turning against humanity.

Worse was to come: for a long time, it seemed that the human body had adapted to the presence of the acytic commensalists that had caused the original epidemic of madness; however, some centuries later, this epidemic returned in a new form. Now tending to cause primarily ataxia, tremors, insomnia, and mood swings, new outbreaks of acytic disease began to occur in a way that suggested they were caused by proximity, though no infectious agent could be identified besides the acytes themselves, which were present in the healthy and the sick alike.

At the same time, tensions were rising among states in the south of the world; investigation of the acytes showed that they had evolved a complicated signalling mechanism that stored a fantastic amount of energy, meaning that if they could be concentrated together in a high enough density, primed with the right signals and fed on the right substrate, they could be made into a powerful weapon.

Although this technology was abandoned as too difficult to control, and likely to promote vicious reprisals from competing states, knowledge of the technology spread to a transnational political faction that had come to understand the native biosphere as wholly hostile to continued human existence. Reports of ghostlike apparitions and many-limbed monsters composed of cold fire killing hundreds and shattering buildings were now becoming commonplace, coming where the new epidemic was most concentrated. Building on that earlier research, and using what was left of the sophisticated technology of the first colonists, they attempted to construct a machine that would permit them to selectively turn the acytic signalling mechanism against the native biosphere of Sogant Raha.

They succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations--in fact, they set off a cascading reaction that could not be stopped, and which began to destroy all native life on the planet. This era, dubbed “the Burning Spring,” resulted in countless acres of dead savannah and jungle that were consumed by wildfire, throwing thick smoke into the planet’s upper atmosphere, releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, and resulting in the deaths of millions due to famine and sickness. But as the Burning Spring passed over the world, endobiota--and endoflora in particular--seemed to revel in the destruction, rapidly claiming the territory yielded up by the native life.

It took many millennia for the global climate and human population to stabilize again; by the time it did, humanity could scarcely remember a time before, and the planet’s surface was now utterly transformed. This is the essential portrait of the second phase of Sogantine biogeography: instead of being dominated by xenobiota, with a small presence of endobiota and occasionally dense pockets surrounding human settlements, endobiota dominated the land-based biosphere, with significant intrusions into the ocean along continental shelves and in the upper water column, while the xenobiota was confined to dwindling refugia, mostly in the continental interiors, and the deep sea.

In the many thousands of years since the Burning Spring, the size of those refugia has continued to shrink. As they have dwindled, they seem to somehow become more conscious of the threat the alien intruders represent, and more unsparing in their defense. In those regions of xenogrowth mix, which seem to spread outward from and be supported by, the unmixed xenogrowth regions in their hearts, human life is impossible for any length of time. Both endo- and xenoflora here are unaccountably toxic, unusual and aggressive animals are found that are known nowhere else, novel viruses cause fulminant cancers and keratinous growths on the skin, and acytes within the human body seem to go haywire, causing neurological disruptions, hallucinations, and necrotic abscesses. It is rumored that beyond this nightmarish borderland, the heart of these refugia are tranquil and beautiful in comparison--remnants of a world once yearned for by humanity and now long-forgotten. But few have survived long enough to explore these regions.

Since these regions represent areas not available to use or exploration by humans, maps of Sogant Raha’s climate and biomes usually do not differentiate between types of xenogrowth or xenogrowth mix; the same colors represent forestlike, savannahlike, and grassland-like conditions.

[tanadrin]

The Nine Intolerable Crimes

The Varonar Period, which in its most expansive definition runs from about 50-49.5 TYA, was the last era in which we can speak of an approximately global civilization on Sogant Raha, at least until the rise of the Issaranian mercantile empires millennia later. Although many histories frame it as the last gasp of the post-Settlement civilization, the Varonar period was also a renaissance. Though marked by major ideological conflict and war, especially in southern Vinsamaren, trade routes linked all major regions of human settlement (all in Vinsamaren and Altuum at that time), smaller states were rapidly federating into larger polities, and, at least until the Burning Spring, the global population boomed.

Two major impulses dominated international politics in this era. The first was the continuation of the Settlement legacy. Although the form of the institution had radically changed, the spiritual descendants of the Archive still did their best to maintain intellectual and historical continuity with the inheritance of the Exile, and were influential in both political and academic circles. This strain of thought positioned Varonar-period states as inheritors of a rational, humane, and pluralist tradition. The foundational texts of this tradition were the Settlement Agreements that brokered peace between the Instrumentalists and Renewalists, the collectd works of the Kirkana College theorists, and--though by then at a very great remove--even the prophetic texts of the Janese, which included fragments from earlier in the Exile that are possibly more than 75,000 years old. That age is important, because even though knowledge of the Exile and the earlier phase of human civilization was scarce in the Varonar period, the authority of the Settlement legacy came in part from its antiquity, and in part from the technological marvels of the Settlement period ancestors that now seemed to be out of reach. Under this legacy, the collective human presence on Sogant Raha bore with it certain collective responsibilities, ecological, social, and moral.

The second major impulse that dominated this period I will call for the sake of convenience the "sovereignty movement." While hierarchical political organizations with statelike characteristics were not at all new on Sogant Raha, under the Settlement legacy they were framed as self-determining communities that were themselves part of a larger human community, whose autonomy was limited both by responsibility to members and by responsibility to the rest of human civilization. Parodas Tsi has argued convincingly--and I agree--that this viewpoint was essentially an extension of the Exile. In the hostile planetary environments of the Exile (to say nothing of life in deep space!), where interdependence was high, absolute self-sovereignty of either the individual or of any community within the interdependent whole, was impossible. Certainly some societies that enshrined these values during the Exile did exist; equally certaintly, none of them survived long, and they either transitioned to a different mode of existence, or perished. At the same time, though, conformity could not be enforced through overly authoritarian means. Killing dissenters would waste valuable manpower in an environment where every life was precious; simple exile, of course, was impossible. Thus, these societies developed elaborate conflict-resolution and deescalation techniques, many of which survived as part of the package of social technology which the people of the Ammas Echor brought with them to Sogant Raha, and which were maintained as valuable tools for centuries after.

But Sogant Raha was not like other planetary environments. Though alien and presenting its own unique dangers, it was possible in principle for independent human communities to exist. Humans did initially disseminate themselves widely over the planet, especially after the collapse of the initial colony and the destruction of the Ammas Echor. But as a mode of interaction, a degree of communitarian spirit continued to frame inter-community relations.

The sovereignty movement was the culmination of various philosophies of government that had sought for generations to elucidate an ethic of political independence, and which criticized or outright rejected the communitarian framework of the Settlement legacy. In the Varonar period, using philosophical justifications as diverse as democratic self-determination, utilitarian greater good, and divine right of princes, some states began to assert their fundamental sovereignty, under which view political power was monocentric, exclusive, ought to be free from outside interference or abrogation, and could be enforced by arms.

The opposition between these two perspectives dominated the course of the period, and was one of the fundamental axes along which the Continent-Archipelago conflict was formed. This opposition also created innovations in international law, by which I mean both the law governing relations between states, and the common understanding of law as shared between jurists in those states.

One very influential product of this period was an attempt by some sovereigntists to express certain Settlement-legacy ideas in a sovereigntist framework, both to provide a compromise position, and to assure their opponents that sovereigntism was not merely a plea for interstate anarchy. The Opali legal framework, which was very influential in the Varonar period, elucidated in particular "intolerable crimes," crimes which no state could permit and retain its legitimacy. By virtue of failing to prosecute these crimes, a state ceased to be a state, and thus its sovereignty ceased to function; and it became incumbent on other states to intervene for the common defense of human life and values.

The Opali laws do not survive in their complete form, but they became foundational to the customary law of many southern Vinsamaren societies after the Burning Spring and the Varonar Collapse. Many different interpretations of the concept of "intolerable crime" thus exist; one especially influential version was that framed by the Ghimali jurists, which was adopted throughout the Edayken coast region.

In translations of the Ghimali codes, the nine intolerable crimes are usually translated as murder, imprisonment, rape, arson, dikebreaking, well-poisoning, abjection, ostracism, and humiliation. None of these (except perhaps dikebreaking and arson) map neatly onto how we might frame these concepts, so some elucidation is required.

"Murder" in Ghimali is any act of taking human life. A terminological distinction between killing and murder was not observed by the Ghimali, which is not to say that in all cases was killing unlawful. Self-defense or defense of the community, especially against one of the other intolerable crimes, was legal. But the Ghimali were somewhat pacifistic in their outlook, prizing a principle of nonviolence wherever possible, and thus did not countenance official killing by the state: "lawlessness cannot answer for lawlessness" was a common Ghimali saying. "Imprisonment" covers all deprivations of physical freedom, including kidnapping, slavery, serfdom, or forced labor. Likewise, the word usually translated as "rape" in Ghimali was not particularly sexual in connotation and includes all violations of the physical body: torture, forced brands or tattoos, violation of the body with weapons, nonlethal poisoning, and so forth. These first three crimes together were the "crimes against persons," and important constituitive elements of other kinds of crime, even crimes which other legal philosophies framed as crimes against states or communities, like war and genocide.

Arson, dikebreaking, and well-poisoning were the so-called "crimes against property," and were different from the crimes against person in that intent was much less important. This is because these crimes derived their status from the fact that they endangered the community as a whole to some degree. Fire spreads from building to building, flooding covers all the low ground, and the contamination of a water source threatens all who rely on it. Since the perpetrator of these crimes could not realistically limit the damage they caused, and even if they caused no immediate deaths they were likely to cause suffering or death in the future, by virtue of depriving individuals of shelter, or by causing shortages of crucial goods like food and water. Thus, while what other societies consider "property crime" was mostly a civil matter, in Ghimali law, it was criminal, but it was restricted to crimes which contained one of these three crimes (or acts very similar to them) as fundamental constituitive elements. Although the Ghimali had a much smaller industrial base than their ancestors did, they did have some industry, and both pollution and monopolization of natural resources were prosecuted under these laws.

The last three of the intolerable crimes in Ghimali law were called "crimes against morals." We must be very careful when translating that phrase! They were not the equivalent of obscenity laws--the Ghimali had no such laws--nor were these crimes held to be crimes simply because they offended decent sensibilities or lowered the character of public discourse. A fundamental element of intolerability, as a class of criminal act, was and has always been an actual endagering of human life. The Ghimali word for "morals" is used in two distinct senses: one, akin to ethics or fundamental moral philosphy, and two, day-to-day conduct. In the sense used here, "crimes against morals" might be translated more aptly (but more verbosely) as "criminal matters which concern conduct [that might appear not to immediately endanger human life]."

In this context, "abjection" (also translated "contempt" or "slander") is not merely to insult someone or lie about them. It is to speak of someone in a way that cuts them off from the common body of humanity or deprives them of fundamental dignity, and to do so 1) to a third party, 2) publicly, 3) forcefully. Insulting someone privately, or to their face, was never a crime in Ghimal. To say in public that someone ought to be beaten to death, however, was. Abjection was the verbal or written counterpart to "ostracism," which was not merely to refuse social association (again, private interpersonal matters were never considered a matter for Ghimali law), but any attempt to actually physically deprive someone of the material necessities of life, or access to the common public support. The easiest cross-cultural example would be actual exile; but as this is often a legal sanction rather than a forbidden, the analogy is inexact. Another example might be someone so reviled by their neighbors that all in the vicinity refuse to do business with them, to sell them the common necessities of life or to give them aid in times of hardship. But it must be emphasized that Ghimali law strongly preferred that crimes contain an active element. Simply passing by someone in need, however cruel, was rarely criminal. And while it might seem that, in a society like Ghimal, one would have to live in a small, poor, and isolated place indeed to make ostracism a serious crime, it was occasionally punished even in major towns. In practice, it seemed to function as anti-discrimination legislation, in commercial transactions, in the provision of amenities, and in employment, especially in contexts where the transactional association in question was in principle available to all.

The last of the interolable crimes was "humiliation." While abjection contains a third-party component (insulting someone to their face is not abjection), and ostracism contains a public component (refusing personal association is not ostracism), "humiliation" could in principle occur entirely in private. "Humiliation" was not merely deliberately embarassing someone, of course; nor was it generally verbal, except in extreme cases. Where abjection and ostracism involved portraying to others that someone was outside the common body of humanity, humiliation concerned trying to cause someone in themselves to understand themselves to be outside that body. It grouped together forms of torture that did not involve violating the body--sleep deprivation, for instance--acts of public humiliation, certain kinds of abuse of power, and domestic abuse. Physical abuse could be important evidence for prosecuting humiliation, but was not at all a necessary component of the crime. Harassment and intimidation were prosecuted under statutes against humiliation as well.

The crimes against morals were considered fundamental not only  to certain kinds of social violence, like domestic abuse, but also to mass violence like pogroms and genocide. As dehumanization was understood to be an important precursor to violence in Ghimali culture, the existence and prosecution of these crimes was an attempt to fortify Ghimali society against these disasters. The closest analogue in many Varonar societies to the north might be laws concerning public discrimination, blasphemy, slander/defamation, and hate speech, but it is important to understand the difference between these categories of law and Ghimali crimes against morals.

First, slander and defamation, where criminal, were matters of individual reputation. Ghimali society was fairly egalitarian and individualistic, and thus did not have an elaborate concept of public status and honor; whereas the Estalese and Hastani laws on slander were an outgrowth of a hierarchical honor culture that eventually came to include dueling. In all known law codes which prosecute slander as a criminal matter from the Varonar period (none are extant for the following eras), an ironclad defense to the charge was that the victim had no public reputation to speak of, or was too low status to matter. Second, Ghimal had no established religion, and neighboring societies with blasphemy laws usually framed their blasphemy laws either as a defense of the truly sacred (only one privileged established religion which the law protected), or as a way to prevent violence in a pluralist socity. Ghimal, while fairly pluralist, considered freedom of expression a virtual absolute; occasional pushes by moralizers to criminalize blasphemy and obscenity usually broke on this shared principle. Third, antidiscrimination law (at least in the Varonar period) was usually legally constructed as principled exceptions to actions that would otherwise be legal (public association, public speech) necessary to maintain order; the crime was one against the dignity of the fellow citizen, or a nebulously conceived harm to public morals. In Ghimal, such legislation would have been shot down as far too wishy-washy. Ethnic, religious, or cultural discrimination, as regulated under the crimes against morals, were regulated for the obvious reason that they were a prerequisite to the shedding of blood, and that if not counteracted long before blood was actually shed, the momentum of mass violence would be too great to stop.

Parodas Tsi links the Ghimali crimes against morals to the tradition of dispute resolution from the Settlement legacy, and this is correct as far as it goes. The specifics of Ghimali statues and the various legal sanctions which were pronounced on offenders makes it clear that Ghimali jurists and judges clearly had elements of this legacy in mind when crafting these laws. But there were also practical reasons for the statues to be constructed as they were, and for the crimes against morals to be seen as a backstop against bloodshed. Ghimal, along with neighbors like Jaracoa and Sagna, experienced protracted economic contracton and was riven by major ethnic tensions in the aftermath of the Varonar Collapse, with refuges and long-term trends in migration causing conflict in the eastern border areas, and landowners in these regions attempting to exploit social upheaval to strengthen their political power. An attempted coup by a reactionary faction led to at least one major civil conflict in Jaracoa, with spillover into Ghimal. These laws had a solid theoretical underpinning in Ghimali culture, but they were developed in a practical environment, where a new balance had to be found as demographics shifted in the pluralistic Ghimali state.

The three principles foundational to Ghimali legal theory were the freedom of the individual, public safety, and equality before the law. Very many legal theorists and legislators linked these three principles to the three categories of intolerable crime: crimes against the person violated the principle of individual freedom, crimes against property endangered the community, and crimes against morals violated fundamental egalitarian principles. Together with the theoretical basis, the Ghimali law codes proved influential. After 49,250 TYA or so, variations on the Nine Intolerable Crimes are found throughout southern Vinsamaren, and occasionally beyond; eventually, a changing climate and several plagues led much of Southern Vinsamaren to become depopulated, but there is speculation, backed up by tenuous but intriguing evidence, that the Ghimali legal outlook influenced cultures furthern north for many thousands of years. Sura Rakaras argues that the long-term absence of slavery from eastern and southwestern Vinsamaren is a legacy of Ghimali law, and that this zone might have even extended as far north as the Plains region, before subsequent migrations moved the border back south.

--Ibadar Tarassi, Historical Developments in Law, University of Presh.