Ghanj-Rho
21-07-2007, 15:43
OOC: As anyone who has ever read it will soon notice, Ghanj-Rho is my experiment in creating a nation based on one of my favourite things of all time: the hard-military-science-fiction-comedy webcomic Schlock Mercenary. Specifically, Ghanj-Rho, just after our heroes packed up and left. For those of us who haven't read it, read it. But until you do, I've presented a history and tried to make it as comprehensive as possible. I welcome reviews and constructive critiscism from both Schlockers and non-Schlockers.
This shouldn't matter, but yes, I am, in fact, Nova Boozia, recently returned from the among the deated. Nova Boozia will be posting soon, but until then, savour some Schlockness.
History
Ghanj-Rho was originally home to an intelligent race of humanoids named Bradicor. They were noy linked to the Galactic Wormgate Network, and thus not truly space-faring, but grew sufficiently advanced to master, economic sub-light space flight, among other sophisticated technology.
One notable achievement was the unique memory units used in their machinery: these were biologically grown, and became quite intelligent. Another was a treatment which ended, permenantly, all the obvious effects on the mind and body induced by aging.
Unfortunately, just as utopian civilisation was getting going, everyone figured out the catch: the treatment gave a two-day fertile cycle in several millenia.
Naturally, the population wasn't going anywhere and slowly but steadily dwindled, leaving immense cities ruined and abandoned. As the population dropped to the triple digits, the survivors, having clearly seen that immortality as individuals led to mortality as a race, decided to leave the planet to their "rightful successor": the increasingly advanced amorphous memory beings, or Amorphs, who were nudged on to sentience and had sustainable sources of non-natural organs bio-engineered for them (eyeball trees, mostly).
Numerous amorphs lived in iron age tribes across the surface when the Wormgate arrived at sublight speeds, guided by probes that had located the Bradicor. Disappointed at finding them nearly gone, Wormgate Corporation neglected the node, and it soon became something of a pirate haven.
A small cartel of human slavers first had the idea of selling amorphs as slaves. They moved among them, posing as scientists and socially engineering the tribes to be easy prey. Competition soon sprang up between humans and Unioc pirates and smugglers. Three Unioc clans set up operations there: the Cho and Chev on the ground, establishing a smugglers port in the ruins, and the Gamm in space, as a hide-out for wanted ships.
This increased activity soon brought businessmen seeking to get their hands on free real estate in the unclaimed system. Crude space stations filled with former criminals and poor citizens of overcrowded worlds soon sprang up. To regulate the pirates, the Tenancy Council, an organisation that represented the Gamm and the various space-station communities and granted them voting power based on both standing in the system (more representatives) and length of tenancy (more votes for each of them).
Eventually, however, after the Teraport became widely available, a small, slef-owned band of down-on-their-luck mercenaries stopped off, looking for eyes for one of their noncoms, a former Amorph slave named Schlock. While their, they broke the power of the pirates, revealed the human slavers, who were no waging all out guerilla war on the Unioc with well-armed Amorphs, and, with the help of their company lawyer, tricked the Council into extending tenancy to the planets.
Too late, it became apparent that not only the Cho and Chev, but also the Amorphs and the last five Bradicor had become citizens, and given that the Bradicor had been living in the system, personally, for thousands of years, they effectively became benevolent oligarchs.
Currently, the Bradicor are mostly siding with whoever has the majority of votes otherwise, meaning that Amorph interests are predominant (the amorphs are the most prolific and second longest-settled), with a lot of nudges from the Bradicor. The declared objective of Amorph politician Frapp is a democracy fairly representing the races of Ghanj Rho (although almost certainly one in which Amorphs remain dominant and Bradicor have disproportionate levels of power).
Politics
The Tenancy Council, until recently, held all Executive power (which wasn't much, given that the "state" owned almost nothing), and the legislative power as well. Judicial power was retained by the individual participants in the Council, the differant stations, who were mostly run as dictatorships of the land-owners, appointing their representatives or sitting in person.
The recent Motion for the Seperation of Powers and Motion for the Creation of Supreme Law and Courts changed all this. The former divided the government into three branches as part of steps towards democracy. The Tenancy Council remtained its legislative power, but it was radically re-organised: each "organisation" (stations, clans, and the Amorphs and Bradicor, the Amorphs having resolved to remain united as a political entity) was entitled to one representative, plus one for each ten-thousand registered citizens, which left the balance of power among the organisations intact, but hugely expanded the Legislature.
The Motion also specified that while the varying number of votes assigned to each seat was kept for the time being, the practice of granting half a vote per decade was frozen. The seats would now keep the same number of votes until a new motion changed this. And most importantly, all representatives had to be democratically elected by at least half of their registered constituents.
Although the Bradicor retained the last word, this was a major change from the citizens perspective, giving them a genuine vote.
With regards to the executive, a president is to be elected by a two thirds majority of the legislature, and appoint a cabinet of however many members he chose. Any member could be vetoed by another two-thirds majority. After the Supreme Law Motion was passed, the same applied to the three Supreme Court Judges.
The Supreme Law Motion was another big change, as it gave them not only the gauranteed right to a proffesional judge and lawyer and randomly selected 15 member jury, but also a right of appeal to a supreme court of three judges appointed by the president and nine jurors.
Planned changes over the next ten years include giving a single vote to every seat in the legislature, having species replace organisations as the basic sub-division of the system, replacing the land-owners power (which was diminshed early on when they were made more subject to the decisions of the central government) with devolved executive and legislative bodies, and having the President elected directly by the people. Eventually, the Judicial system will be expanded and revised as the population grows, creating racial High Courts between the Supreme and Local Courts. This system is already being implemented among the Amorphs.
Economy
Ghanj-Rho only recently began to levy taxes, and is just begining to take responsibility for expenses. Individual incomes are being taxed at as low a level as possible, while taxes on companies are deliberately low, to encourage the entry of foreign business and the establish of private enterprise, the former to look into renovating the broken Bradicor infrastructure and the latter to exploit abundant raw materials with the remarkable physical characteristics of amorphs. This means that while the state's income is low, it isn't being obliged to pay people.
So what money there is can be invested in setting up vital infrastructure: education, especially for Amorphs, who are mostly illiterate, medicine, and law enforcement. Both the former are not terribly well funded and are considered last resorts for those who cannot afford privately run schools and hospitals. Overall, the whole system is designed to help private enterprise. The military is a new but growing concern in such a vicious galaxy.
Technology
Shields are gravitic in nature: they warp space around them, so the only way to punch through them is with missiles equipped with shield of their own: "breacher-missiles". In theory, at least. In practice, even the most powerful ships can't hope to block against an attack with enough energy: a sustained barrage, or a really big one, will blow out shields temporarily.
Drives and many weapons (gravitic or "gravy") guns are also based on changing or creating local gravity, to move objects or simply tear them apart. Other popular weapons are graviticly-guided plasma lances (short-ranged, but about the best way to get through grav-shielding), missiles (mostly, smart, FTL-capable breachers), lasers (long-ranged and good for point-defence), masers (scramble electronics and can also wear down shields), and heavy quickfire railguns which are well suited to finishing off a vessel with downed shields.
Power for all these systems is derived from annihilation reactors, "annie plants". Not only can these generate huge amounts of energy by converting the mass of neutronium grams directly into energy, but they can also suck in background junk, break it down to particles, extract the neutrons, and fuel themselves.
This principle of particle breakdown and re-assembly, performed by nano-machinery, is used in fabricators, which can be packed down to very small sizes. All they require is power and matter, but they are complex and expensive.
In the field of medicine, almost any organ can be grown and attached artificially. A de-capitated head, preserved in a stable container by medical nanites, can, if placed in such a container with ten minutes or so of "death" (for humans), be used to rebuild the whole body. Although humans and other species now live longer, eventually brain decay will kill them in the usual way. It is of course possible to transfer sentience to a machine, but this will be a copy: from the perspective of the biological mind, they're still dying. Thus, this technique is only used by those who feel there is something they must still accomplish before their final death.
Most species can be heavily "boosted" for greater physical development. Similar mental procedures have been tested, but so far have much too severe side-effects to be used. Repair and preservation nanites in the blood-stream, combined with extensive boosting, make for formidable soldiers.
Artificial intelligences can be created bound to unchangeable principles, to unquestionable masters, or "unfettered" and free. Their sophistication varies, but the best are sentient beings who can think at incredible speeds and experiance a full range of emotion.
Faster-than-light travel is today mostly accomplished by "teraports", which rip the traveller apart, convert them into gravitic waves, and shove these through microscopic wormholes. It is fast and efficient, and can be used by an individual holding it in the palm of their hand, but has a significant disadvantage: any disruption of the gravitic waves destroy the traveller. This can be done by weapons fire, but most interdicters simply close the wormholes as they open. Both methods destroy the target, but both are limited in area and can be "spammed". Combining both, the casulaties involved in "spamming" are too heavy to be worth it in almost any circumstances.
Teleportation uses only one wormhole, big enough to fit the object through as a whole. It can't be blocked, but requires energy levels beyond ridiculous: it's not a practicle possibility.
As a final note, as well as advanced weapons, the humble bullet is still important in small arms combat. A very popular weapon is a combination gausse/gunfoam carbine, which can fire bullets (quick, safe aboard space ships, high-explosive) against unarmoured targets and for bigger bangs, or gausse weapons that can breach armour.
Military
TBA
This shouldn't matter, but yes, I am, in fact, Nova Boozia, recently returned from the among the deated. Nova Boozia will be posting soon, but until then, savour some Schlockness.
History
Ghanj-Rho was originally home to an intelligent race of humanoids named Bradicor. They were noy linked to the Galactic Wormgate Network, and thus not truly space-faring, but grew sufficiently advanced to master, economic sub-light space flight, among other sophisticated technology.
One notable achievement was the unique memory units used in their machinery: these were biologically grown, and became quite intelligent. Another was a treatment which ended, permenantly, all the obvious effects on the mind and body induced by aging.
Unfortunately, just as utopian civilisation was getting going, everyone figured out the catch: the treatment gave a two-day fertile cycle in several millenia.
Naturally, the population wasn't going anywhere and slowly but steadily dwindled, leaving immense cities ruined and abandoned. As the population dropped to the triple digits, the survivors, having clearly seen that immortality as individuals led to mortality as a race, decided to leave the planet to their "rightful successor": the increasingly advanced amorphous memory beings, or Amorphs, who were nudged on to sentience and had sustainable sources of non-natural organs bio-engineered for them (eyeball trees, mostly).
Numerous amorphs lived in iron age tribes across the surface when the Wormgate arrived at sublight speeds, guided by probes that had located the Bradicor. Disappointed at finding them nearly gone, Wormgate Corporation neglected the node, and it soon became something of a pirate haven.
A small cartel of human slavers first had the idea of selling amorphs as slaves. They moved among them, posing as scientists and socially engineering the tribes to be easy prey. Competition soon sprang up between humans and Unioc pirates and smugglers. Three Unioc clans set up operations there: the Cho and Chev on the ground, establishing a smugglers port in the ruins, and the Gamm in space, as a hide-out for wanted ships.
This increased activity soon brought businessmen seeking to get their hands on free real estate in the unclaimed system. Crude space stations filled with former criminals and poor citizens of overcrowded worlds soon sprang up. To regulate the pirates, the Tenancy Council, an organisation that represented the Gamm and the various space-station communities and granted them voting power based on both standing in the system (more representatives) and length of tenancy (more votes for each of them).
Eventually, however, after the Teraport became widely available, a small, slef-owned band of down-on-their-luck mercenaries stopped off, looking for eyes for one of their noncoms, a former Amorph slave named Schlock. While their, they broke the power of the pirates, revealed the human slavers, who were no waging all out guerilla war on the Unioc with well-armed Amorphs, and, with the help of their company lawyer, tricked the Council into extending tenancy to the planets.
Too late, it became apparent that not only the Cho and Chev, but also the Amorphs and the last five Bradicor had become citizens, and given that the Bradicor had been living in the system, personally, for thousands of years, they effectively became benevolent oligarchs.
Currently, the Bradicor are mostly siding with whoever has the majority of votes otherwise, meaning that Amorph interests are predominant (the amorphs are the most prolific and second longest-settled), with a lot of nudges from the Bradicor. The declared objective of Amorph politician Frapp is a democracy fairly representing the races of Ghanj Rho (although almost certainly one in which Amorphs remain dominant and Bradicor have disproportionate levels of power).
Politics
The Tenancy Council, until recently, held all Executive power (which wasn't much, given that the "state" owned almost nothing), and the legislative power as well. Judicial power was retained by the individual participants in the Council, the differant stations, who were mostly run as dictatorships of the land-owners, appointing their representatives or sitting in person.
The recent Motion for the Seperation of Powers and Motion for the Creation of Supreme Law and Courts changed all this. The former divided the government into three branches as part of steps towards democracy. The Tenancy Council remtained its legislative power, but it was radically re-organised: each "organisation" (stations, clans, and the Amorphs and Bradicor, the Amorphs having resolved to remain united as a political entity) was entitled to one representative, plus one for each ten-thousand registered citizens, which left the balance of power among the organisations intact, but hugely expanded the Legislature.
The Motion also specified that while the varying number of votes assigned to each seat was kept for the time being, the practice of granting half a vote per decade was frozen. The seats would now keep the same number of votes until a new motion changed this. And most importantly, all representatives had to be democratically elected by at least half of their registered constituents.
Although the Bradicor retained the last word, this was a major change from the citizens perspective, giving them a genuine vote.
With regards to the executive, a president is to be elected by a two thirds majority of the legislature, and appoint a cabinet of however many members he chose. Any member could be vetoed by another two-thirds majority. After the Supreme Law Motion was passed, the same applied to the three Supreme Court Judges.
The Supreme Law Motion was another big change, as it gave them not only the gauranteed right to a proffesional judge and lawyer and randomly selected 15 member jury, but also a right of appeal to a supreme court of three judges appointed by the president and nine jurors.
Planned changes over the next ten years include giving a single vote to every seat in the legislature, having species replace organisations as the basic sub-division of the system, replacing the land-owners power (which was diminshed early on when they were made more subject to the decisions of the central government) with devolved executive and legislative bodies, and having the President elected directly by the people. Eventually, the Judicial system will be expanded and revised as the population grows, creating racial High Courts between the Supreme and Local Courts. This system is already being implemented among the Amorphs.
Economy
Ghanj-Rho only recently began to levy taxes, and is just begining to take responsibility for expenses. Individual incomes are being taxed at as low a level as possible, while taxes on companies are deliberately low, to encourage the entry of foreign business and the establish of private enterprise, the former to look into renovating the broken Bradicor infrastructure and the latter to exploit abundant raw materials with the remarkable physical characteristics of amorphs. This means that while the state's income is low, it isn't being obliged to pay people.
So what money there is can be invested in setting up vital infrastructure: education, especially for Amorphs, who are mostly illiterate, medicine, and law enforcement. Both the former are not terribly well funded and are considered last resorts for those who cannot afford privately run schools and hospitals. Overall, the whole system is designed to help private enterprise. The military is a new but growing concern in such a vicious galaxy.
Technology
Shields are gravitic in nature: they warp space around them, so the only way to punch through them is with missiles equipped with shield of their own: "breacher-missiles". In theory, at least. In practice, even the most powerful ships can't hope to block against an attack with enough energy: a sustained barrage, or a really big one, will blow out shields temporarily.
Drives and many weapons (gravitic or "gravy") guns are also based on changing or creating local gravity, to move objects or simply tear them apart. Other popular weapons are graviticly-guided plasma lances (short-ranged, but about the best way to get through grav-shielding), missiles (mostly, smart, FTL-capable breachers), lasers (long-ranged and good for point-defence), masers (scramble electronics and can also wear down shields), and heavy quickfire railguns which are well suited to finishing off a vessel with downed shields.
Power for all these systems is derived from annihilation reactors, "annie plants". Not only can these generate huge amounts of energy by converting the mass of neutronium grams directly into energy, but they can also suck in background junk, break it down to particles, extract the neutrons, and fuel themselves.
This principle of particle breakdown and re-assembly, performed by nano-machinery, is used in fabricators, which can be packed down to very small sizes. All they require is power and matter, but they are complex and expensive.
In the field of medicine, almost any organ can be grown and attached artificially. A de-capitated head, preserved in a stable container by medical nanites, can, if placed in such a container with ten minutes or so of "death" (for humans), be used to rebuild the whole body. Although humans and other species now live longer, eventually brain decay will kill them in the usual way. It is of course possible to transfer sentience to a machine, but this will be a copy: from the perspective of the biological mind, they're still dying. Thus, this technique is only used by those who feel there is something they must still accomplish before their final death.
Most species can be heavily "boosted" for greater physical development. Similar mental procedures have been tested, but so far have much too severe side-effects to be used. Repair and preservation nanites in the blood-stream, combined with extensive boosting, make for formidable soldiers.
Artificial intelligences can be created bound to unchangeable principles, to unquestionable masters, or "unfettered" and free. Their sophistication varies, but the best are sentient beings who can think at incredible speeds and experiance a full range of emotion.
Faster-than-light travel is today mostly accomplished by "teraports", which rip the traveller apart, convert them into gravitic waves, and shove these through microscopic wormholes. It is fast and efficient, and can be used by an individual holding it in the palm of their hand, but has a significant disadvantage: any disruption of the gravitic waves destroy the traveller. This can be done by weapons fire, but most interdicters simply close the wormholes as they open. Both methods destroy the target, but both are limited in area and can be "spammed". Combining both, the casulaties involved in "spamming" are too heavy to be worth it in almost any circumstances.
Teleportation uses only one wormhole, big enough to fit the object through as a whole. It can't be blocked, but requires energy levels beyond ridiculous: it's not a practicle possibility.
As a final note, as well as advanced weapons, the humble bullet is still important in small arms combat. A very popular weapon is a combination gausse/gunfoam carbine, which can fire bullets (quick, safe aboard space ships, high-explosive) against unarmoured targets and for bigger bangs, or gausse weapons that can breach armour.
Military
TBA