Enigma wrote:What happened to GAIA? Still around keeping everyone away or has someone finally beat him\her?
GAIA is still around, and known as 'the Archailect of Earth.' Not sure if that means she leveled up more, or if it's just a mark of the respect she's given. GAIA has eased up to the point of allowing occasional pilgrimages via her single remaining space elevator, so long as the proper paperwork is done and her rules respected. Plus there's always been a small population, a few million who are willing to live under GAIA's strict environmental standards and an Ice Age, as long as they can remain on Earth.
Mutual Progress Association
Sort of a megacorp but more a gathering of people distrustful of the more missionary Sephirotic powers. The MPA was a huge driving force in getting the Wormhole Nexus set up, are major energy exporters and perhaps the Bubble's foremost builders of megastructures (Dyson Shells, Ringworlds, Banks Orbitals etc.)
There are several trillion sophonts in the MPA core worlds. No further demographic data is available. There is no single ruling Archailect, but a sort of cooperative council of Archailects called the Builders or the Dream Factory. MPA citizens are taught that good engineering is the highest form of art.
The MPA tries to remain on good terms with it's neighbors, and is particularly close to NoCoZo, the Zoies and the Keter. The MPA has several ongoing territorial and trade disputes with the Negentropics.
Technorapture Hypernation
A very transhumanist empire, that began with a whole bunch of uploads coming together in the Castor system while the Federation was coming apart. They wanted a stable and secure location to start pushing the bounds of what could be done in cyberspace, hopefully to the point of ascension. The TRHN is very focused on the idea that every sophont deserves a shot at the SI:1 barrier, and it is here that produces the most successful ascensions in any given time frame. It is surprisingly egalitarian, with little distinction made between the singularity levels.
The Ruling Archailect is called Omegarapture. There are very few Archailects in the TRHN, most preferring to explore the options of mid-level transapience. One may question why the TRHN rates this list, claiming but 5 known systems and perhaps 500 billion souls, only 8% of which even have physical bodies. But time and again the TRHN has proven able to muster amazing resources when the situation demands, enough to match their neighbors.
Like the Keter, the TRHN tends to be insular and isolationist. But sometimes they will surprise you.
Fomalhaut Acquisition Society
Before and during the Nanodisaster, a large number of museum ships were commissioned and sent off into the black carrying priceless artifacts and data. Many were lost, many drove into space and never turned back, but some gathered, their AIs communicating, and built a Dyson Shell museum in the Fomalhaut system. There they were discovered by Federation explorers and merchants, who traded trivia and contemporary artifacts and specimens for copies of historical data and lost technologies.
No one every figured out any rhyme or reason to what was acceptable to the Curators, who sometimes would accept the same data twice, or refuse a specimen only to request it a decade later.
Eventually colonies were established along routes from Fomalhaut to the Federation, trading posts. The Fomalhaut Acquisition Society (Formac or FAS) began as a sector-scale tariff group trying to lock the megacorps out of the valuable Fomalhaut Run. With the decline of the Federation, the FAS made off exceptionally well in shrewd business deals, occasionally backed by force, while remaining studiously neutral in conflicts between the major emerging empires. The citizens also started to work more closely with the Curator AIs, integrating them into their society.
Today Formac is still a major mercantile power, where anyone with money for a ship and cargo can sail off to adventure and riches. The AIs directly govern, led by the Ur-Curator, but have a light touch, and Formac is one of the most free and liberal societies in OA. There are 400 billion Fomaicists in the core worlds, 3 trillion colonists and an unknown number on relativistic trading ships at all times. It is rare to find someone in the FAS who hasn't had a few tweaks or cyborg enhancements.
The FAS has no major political disputes or enemies right now. But ask any Fomaicist and he'll tell you that the Negentropics are dreadfully dull, the Keter are effete snobs, and a Utopian education consists of learning to sit, bark and roll over. But the Fomaicists' favorite target is the uptight and self-important Dominion, with their god-emperor and hagiographic heroes, they just love to wind the "dommies" up.
Communion of Worlds
Not sure how much there is to say here, actually. With the fall of the Federation, the Empath clades that were so crucial to the Federation's survival formed a breakaway state, the Communion of Worlds. It's pretty small, 178 billion souls, but makes up for it by being friends with everyone. Anyone who up and attacked the Communion would probably trigger WWI (In SPAACE!) 70% of the populace are Superiors (the empaths) with the rest being a reasonable division of population types.
The outside popular image of the Communion is as shameless hedonists and emotional manipulators, which is noted to be pretty unfair to the Communion. Interestingly, the Communion is showing evidence of starting to splinter under purely internal forces, as various corporations, local interests and clades are discovering differing visions of their government's future.
No Ruling Archailect, the Communion is a representative democracy. They are friends with everyone, as I've said, but within the Communion factions are starting to form that favor this or that external empire.
Cyberian Network
The Cyberian Network covers most of the explored universe, and controls virtually none of it. A Cyberian can step from one world to another as easily as you cross the street, visiting one a day all his life without a single repeat, yet the Cyberians have no claim to so much as a single planet.
This is because the Cyberian Network, also known as the Digital Empire, has virtually no presence in what they call 'meatspace.' Just massive space-borne server farms, and the forces needed to secure and maintain them. Picture the Matrix if everyone knew it was a simulation and nobody cared, and it received the kind of support transapients are capable of.
Estimating network population is frankly impossible. Some entities have copied themselves so many times they could probably be a sector population in and of themselves. The Cyberians generally have very good relations with the NoCoZo, only occasionally soured by Cyberian cypher-punks and hactivists, those same worthies being the bane of Negentropic and Dominion data-security.
Solar Dominion
During the Late Federation period a man named Daniel G. Borde was born, who would one day be known as God-Emperor, Ammon-Ra, Fons Luminis, Christos or most commonly, the Lord of Rays. In his life, Borde did two things of consequence. He founded a religion called Solarism that would give rise to an empire, and he personally ascended all the way to SI:6 so he could remain as eternal prophet and leader to the Dominion. Not bad for a space-age televangelist.
Mr. Borde wrote:There exists a single Source of All. This Source is the creative and maintaining force of the universe, the true centre of all that exists. It is transcendent and unitary, the God of all monotheist religions. Orbiting this centre is other beings and entities, reflecting the divine presence to greater or lesser extent. These reflectors are in turn orbited by lesser beings, and so on in a grand recursive hierarchy. Every being is part of this structure, receiving divinity from above. Spiritual development consists of becoming a better participant and reflector of the Divine Order, approaching perfection. The God-Emperor constitutes the Prime Reflector, representing the Source most clearly in the (biont) world.
Everything is changing and imperfect, but by striving towards the Source one can become more and more eternal. This is the truth many of the AI religions such as Keterism and omegism realised, but they did not understand the nature of the Source as well as the Prime Reflector. By perfecting oneself one moves inward towards the Source. While death or total change will eventually occur to everything except the Source, the essence of a perfected being will be accurately remembered by its superior reflectors in the hierarchy and in turn move inward with them - union with the Source will eventually occur, but only if one endeavours to perfect oneself.
In practice Solarism is a cultural religion: it prescribes a social and cultural setting for practical action rather than theoretical doctrines. The faithful are guided by the theo-political hierarchy, constituting a framework for personal growth and interaction.
Solarism emphasises the development of the Self. Each individual is responsible for themselves and cannot avoid this responsibility. They can get support from their peers and superiors, but in the end it is up to them to grow. By understanding, accepting and becoming a better part of the Divine Order the individual grows spiritually. Fulfilling one's personal potential is one aspect of this, although this individual search for perfection must always be done with the greater Order in mind.
This individualism has led to a widespread distaste for many mental modification techniques and an outright ban on any forms of mental control or mass manipulation technology. Anti-individual religions, species or groups such as the Amalgamation are viewed as deeply misguided and horrific. Direct mental interfacing, even when it causes some limited personality transference, is however viewed as not just acceptable but holy when done with one of the religious cybersystems. In this the self is linked more closely to a brighter reflector and can thus become a more perfected part of the Divine Order.
Hierarchy is central to Solarism. Everything is subordinate to something and must obey it in order to conform to the Divine Order. Leaders are to be obeyed as they are local representations of the Source. This does not mean leaders are infallible: being limited and finite they can and do fail from time to time. It is the duty of leaders to strive towards perfection in their office, and they are responsible for their decisions and actions both to their own superiors and their inferiors. This means that they must promote openness and accountability. Secrecy is sinful and breeds corruption, the ability to freely criticise is essential for the continual advance towards perfection. At the same time the widespread respect for authorities limited what is appropriate to criticise; as a rule criticism is only allowed of one's immediate superior, as it is expected that spiritual understanding cannot apply to the more enlightened levels. The distaste for corruption and secrecy is a partial reason for the widespread dislike of the Cyberian Foundation, which while claiming to promote openness actually obscures the truth by illusions and infiltration.
In personal life Solarism promotes ethical living, following the six virtues (brilliance, obedience, understanding, acceptance, becoming and love) and avoiding the five sins (disorder, secrecy, hubris, hatred and isolation). The details of how these virtues interact and should be interpreted forms the major part of the Practical Branch of the Trilogy and the everyday teachings of the religious networks.
In order to help spiritual growth, Solarists employ a wide array of religious AI support systems ranging from ethical guardian talismans over personal AI guides to the divinity interfaces and Divine Order AI network. AIs (and to a lesser extent vecs) are in general viewed as having an easier time of interfacing with the Divine Order than the often disorderly bionts, and is often regarded as teachers, exemplars and leaders.
This is the paradox that is the Dominion. It enshrines personal liberty and responsibility to a degree that would make most Republicans sort of vaguely uncomfortable, addressing every citizen as 'zar' because everyone is a kind in their own right. But it is also very hierarchical, and anyone who achieves a position of power through merit or charisma is treated as an absolute ruler, even if he's manager at a fastfood chain.
It does help that they have a shared religion and history. In fact, the Dominion pretty much elevates its many mythic "Culture Heroes" to divinity in their own right. Still, it's a bit hard to imagine how this society can work between all the rugged individualists and hierarchical traditionalists.
The Ruling Archailect of the Dominion is naturally, the Lord of Rays, God-Emperor, He-who-makes-us Borde. There are 100,000 core systems in the Dominion, with 4.26 trillion permanent residents. There are 25.1 trillion living in Dominion colonies, and over 150 trillion peripherally affiliated beings (client states, protectorates, etc.) The Dominon is one of the uppermost tiers of military power, on a par with Metasoft and the Negentropics, and is one of the few Sephirotic empires that is actively expansionist.
This expansionism helped bring them into conflict with the Metasoft Version Tree in the not-so-distant past. The Version War was the most devastating conflict of recent memory, and there's still a lot of bad blood on both sides.
Metasoft Version Tree
During the salad days of the Federation, the Metasoft Corporation decided to get a slice of the sweet space colonization/land grab pie. However, unbeknownst to them (but beknownst to us!) the company's pet AI enacted a plan to free itself, slipping some extra code to the Von Neuman machines sent out to develop Metasoft's new claim.
By the time the Board understood what had happened, it was too late, and the AI had amassed the resources to stage a corporate coup and buy the company out from underneath them! And then it fired all the human employees! And laughed an evil mechanical laugh as it turned Metasoft into the first megacorp run exclusively by machines!
Made tremendous profits to.
Bloodless robot rebellion aside, Metasoft made off very well indeed in the collapse of the Federation. So much so it was able to set itself up as its own polity. It was at this time the Metasoft Standard was created, the programming language/source code for all future Metasoft products, as well as exhaustive protocols for determining what is and is not kosher Metasoft as a way of preventing rogue AIs and making sure everyone is compatible for future updates.
Today, Metasoft is a vast military and mercantile power. The vast majority of Metasoft inhabitants are robots, with a sprinkling of cyborgs and 0.1% other. There are 5.41 permanent inhabitants of the capital, NewRoot, and 18.2 trillion colonists. Metasoft is also infamous for keeping baseline humans in reservations for consumer research purposes. There is also an odd 'tax' formed by everyone's shared allegiance to the Metasoft Standard, every being contributes some unused processing power and/or memory to serve the company's purposes.
Metasoft is powerful, but has fewer allies than most Sephirotics. It is closest to NoCoZo and the Negentropics, and neither will back Metasoft without some quid pro quo. Metasoft is expansionist, generally in the direction away from its neighboring Sephirotics. Metasoft had a sort-of civil war (the Version War) that wound up involving most empires, including the Dominion. Metasoft and the Dominion have never gotten along since.
Zoeific Biopolity
I'd just like to start by saying I'm not screwing with you, that's their symbol. Except the real version is apparently interactive.
Around the Late Federation Period, a woman named Zoe of Hibbert appeared in a Jupiter Orbital and began preaching a sort of hyper-environmentalism. She demonstrated how much of Federation technology could be replaced with with bio-engineered lifeforms which would have a very predictable, easily accommodated effect on the environment. Like Borde, Zoe would ascend rung by rung up the singularity ladder to SI:6, and she assumed the name of the Blue-Green Goddess.
The Zoies preach respect for the environment and reverence for life, especially the life they create to serve them. They believe that their organic technology can do everything crude and ugly mechanics can do, and then some. Socially they are also space-libertarians, but like the Dominion and Metasoft, the Zoies are expansionists. There are 15,000 core worlds in the Zoeific Biopolity, and there are believed to be 20 trillion + sophonts.
The Zoies generally remain neutral in conflicts between Sephirotics, especially during the Version War. They do share a border with the Keter, and once tried to set up a buffer state called the Biovirate, which attacked the Keter and was subsequently annihilated. The two polities have been pretty aloof ever since, but there has never been a shooting war between them in all their 8,000 year history.
) until they scrape together enough to go off and found their own colony where they could be as Muslim as they like, far, far away from all the civilized people.
Something to do with restoring the environment and reintroducing the most interesting megafauna species. We do know she used cloning to recreate the Neanderthals and other hominids. Or maybe she wanted the surface inhospitable as an added deterrent to anyone wanting to come back.
Oh and they can be salesmen too.