Imperial Life (Embers)
At its height, the Empire spanned dozens of star systems, but since the decline of the Empyreans, it has had to withdraw from the outer reaches. Now the Empire only really exists as a set of thirteen core star systems, thirty worlds in total, trying to keep the original six homeworlds in contact through the ever-dwindling Empyrean fleet.
Life on the core worlds continues much as it always has, although Imperial society is now haunted by the notion that soon all connections between worlds will be lost, leaving the Empire in disarray or worse.
Contents
Domesticated Animals
Livestock
As the borders of the Empire expanded, so too did the available sources of food, and meat is a primary component of the average citizen's diet, coming from a variety of sources.
Bison, oxen, mammoth, and boar are the main staple "red meats", with ostrich, dodo, and chicken as "white meats". Milk, eggs, leather, and other commodities are often gained from these animals as well, though obviously not from all of them. Some also served as pack animals in the past, and still do that duty in the more rural areas of the Empire.
Pets
There are numerous creatures kept as pets in the Empire, both large and small. The most common are bandercats (otherwise known as cats), pocket-sized felines descended from the predatory big cats of Kennet, and various breeds of dog, with the original species coming from Langstroth.
Less common but still prevalent pets include potsloths from Wilton (the clingy but amiable diminutive cousins of the larger sloth species), ernjapossums from Kituo (inquisitive and nocturnal, with a habit of ticking like a clock when happy), and kaphyas from Zulimar (amphibious and warm-blooded, covered in silvery blue hair).
Others may keep birds, fish, even insects for company.
Games and Sports
Throughout the Empire, games and sports provide a welcome distraction from the daily grind, and also from the stark reality of the dwindling fleet. They also keep people fit, in both body and mind, and can also allow them to develop important life skills.
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people engage in a contest using only their fists. Both amateur and professional boxing are widely popular across the Empire since the sport was introduced from Langstroth.
Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds. The result is decided when an opponent is deemed incapable to continue match by a referee or if an opponent is disqualified for breaking a rule, resigning by throwing in a towel, or by judges' scorecards at the end of the bout.
Professional boxing is separated strictly by weight classes, with the Zan holding a weight class all by themselves, due to their powerful pair of upper arms giving them a serious edge.
Gridball
Gridball is the shortened term for gridiron basketball, a combination sport that arose after the foundation of the Empire. It is played on both a professional and amateur level, with many team leagues and large tournaments.
A gridball court is 102 feet by 40 feet, marked by yard lines that are numbered (in feet) every five yards. Play begins with both teams at the center line, the 45 feet line, with the aim being to get the ball through the basket at the opposing team's end zone.
If a team has possession of the ball for twenty seconds, they can call a down, meaning both teams rally around the nearest numbered yard line and begin play again. This can be an advantage in pushing the opposing team back, but can leave the friendly half of the court more open. After 15 minutes of play, both teams can take a three-minute break before play resumes, once again starting at the 45 feet line.
Players are not allowed within the end zone of the opposing team unless they have possession of the ball. Scoring in the endzone gains the team six points, and scoring outside the endzone gains the team three points. Upon scoring in either fashion, the ball is returned to play in the hands of the opposing team, and both teams return to the 45 feet line.
In professional gridball, teams are comprised of fourteen players, only seven of which are on the court at any one time. The point guard is the player who begins with possession of the ball at the start of play. The other positions - power forward, center, defensive forward, receivers - are assigned depending on the strategy of play. Only the point guard is required, meaning most teams have two, in order to prevent exhaustion.
In casual games of gridball, positioning and team numbers do not matter as much. Most games are 3v3 or 4v4, and can even be played on a half-court that only has one basket.
Palo
Palo is a palonik sport played between two teams of six. Two players on each team act as the balls, curled up tightly, and the other four are the "chuckers". The chuckers must get both of their team's balls into the other team's goal, before the opposing team can do the same. The goal is a painted circle four feet in diameter, each one at opposite ends of a pitch sixty feet long and thirty feet wide.
While a chucker is holding a ball from the same team, they can turnabout, with the chucker becoming the ball and the ball becoming the chucker. Because the chuckers on a team outnumber the balls, this allows for some interesting tactics, such as the double reverse guard and fake turnabout.
Each match is played to a best of five setup, meaning the first team to three successful goals wins. Each time a goal is scored, the teams must return back to their starting positions, inside their team's goal.
Poker
Poker is the most popular card game played with a standard imperial playing card deck. There are 52 cards in four suits: Spring (blue), Summer (green), Autumn (red), Winter (black). The cards in a suit are numbered 1 to 10, with the 1 referred to as the ace, and three additional "face" cards. In order, the face cards are Squire, Knight, and Judge.
Cards are referred to by their suit first and their ranking second, such as "Summer Knight" or "Winter's Ten", with the exception of the aces, which are always referred to as the "Ace of" the suit.
Government
The Empire is a constitutional democratic republic made up of a High Senate and a Low Senate. The Low Senate is comprised of representatives elected by the public, numbering in the hundreds. The High Senate is elected from the Low Senate by the senators themselves, and is limited to nine members.
The Low Senate oversees more domestic matters, such as by-laws and public facilities/transportation, while the High Senate makes more wide-reaching policy decisions. However, any member of the Low Senate can call a vote of no confidence on a member of the High Senate, essentially holding a new election for that position.
There are a number of political parties that senators belong to, although one in four senators are classed as "independent". The largest political parties are the Constitutional Party, the Expansionism Party, the Progressive Social Alliance, and the Worker's Unity League. Each party has a selection of policies that they agree upon and vote for, although any senator who disagrees with the direction of their party can resign and move on to a different party, or become independent.
| High Senate Party Affiliations | ||
| Worker's Unity League | Constitutional Party | Constitutional Party |
| Independent | Progressive Social Alliance | Expansionism Party |
| Expansionism Party | Expansionism Party | Adevarist Party |
There are certain limits imposed on political parties by the constitution, including restrictions on donations, although a lot of powerful corporations ease their way around these rules to do their best to influence senators into voting in the best interests of their business.
Learning Institutions
Education is compulsory until the age of 15 in the Empire, but there exist many paths to further education, and none of them are limited by age.
The Ember Institute
The Ember Institute was founded on Kennet, the homeworld of the teega, but has established branches on almost every world in the Empire. It was formed after the discovery of the Emberspore, to further the research and study of the Embers. Its remit is wide, stretching from palaeontology to theoretical physics, trying to not just understand the technology of the Embers, but also their society and culture. In recent years its funding has been increased vastly, and provides scholarships to promising researchers and engineers.
Fleetwood University
Located on Kennet, Fleetwood University is the most prestigious university in the Empire, famed for its technical wing that has educated many of the most skilled tele-operators. It is home to the largest mainframe in existence, Initial Three, a repository of almost all the knowledge of the Empire. Any tele-operator who graduates from Fleetwood can pretty much name their price when it comes to getting a job, due to the reputation of the school, but drop-outs can exploit this as well. Any tele-operator who was kicked out of Fleetwood was good enough to get accepted in the first place, after all.
Imperial Peace Academy
There are no known races outside the touch of the Empire, and Empyreans are not designed for aggressive purposes in any case. But the law needs to be kept, especially in these troubling times. The Imperial Peace Academy is on Cheterin, homeworld of the ensiferi, where the martial disciplines are taught. Graduates can go on to become peace officers, commonly called "bluecoats" due to their uniform. However, not everyone aims for obtaining the badge of a bluecoat. Private security firms will often recruit graduates, tempting them with higher salaries.
Pondersloth Medical College
Pre-dating the Empire by several centuries, Pondersloth Medical College on Wilton is one of the oldest learning institutions around, with a grand history of pioneering medicine. Much of the teaching staff of other medical schools are graduates of Pondersloth, spreading knowledge across every world of the Empire. Even so, many doctors wish to study at Pondersloth itself, or at the very least have a journal of theirs kept within its vast library, which has given the place a reverential reputation as the "home of medicine".
Major Corporations
Coalition for Scientific Advancement
A think tank operating out of Kituo, the CSA is in the business of cutting edge research and development, especially when their research studies coincide with the positions of those who fund them. Despite this well-deserved reputation, they are actually capable of producing actual scientific advancement, although their main areas seem to be consumer goods.
After working hard to forge ties with big businesses, the CSA has begun pushing into areas of homegrown rocket design and theoretical physics, perhaps hoping to find some way around the seemingly inevitable collapse of the Empire.
Malone Alternative Communications
Founded by J. C. Malone, a teuthid businessman with big aspirations, Malone Alternative is one of the larger telepiary providers in the Empire, with a significant presence on every world. It was the first company to exploit the Imperial Fleet as a means to set up satellites, a practice that was hurriedly adopted by its rivals, but a little too late to quell the surge in market dominance.
In recent years, Malone Alternative has put considerable time and money into increasing data shipments between planets, working on a vast bank of databases to ensure that information from all over the Empire will continue to be available all over the Empire, regardless of its origin. For a nominal fee, of course.
North Frontier Trade Company
Founded early in the Empire's development, before it had even progressed beyond the teega, the North Frontier Trade Company is an aggressively expansionist corporation that seeks to exploit new worlds for their resources in order to raise the standard for living for every citizen of the Empire, as well as their stock prices. This has brought them into conflicts with Adevarist interests on numerous occasions.
Their high profits have let them buy their way into government policy on numerous occasions, as well as get archaeological teams out to planets beyond the border to undertake private searches for Ember artifacts.
Six Star Shipping
Before the Empyrean vessels began to disappear, Six Star Shipping lobbied heavily for the privatisation of the Imperial Fleet, citing that full government control over the only means of interstellar travel was a monopoly that was impeding the market for companies such as itself. Since the disappearances, however, they have changed their stance to one that full government control is causing the disappearances and the only solution for the ongoing survival of the Empire is to release the remaining Empyreans into private ownership.
Besides making press releases and so forth, Six Star Shipping does engage in the practice of shipping, both on-world, through its fleets of aircraft and cargo ships, and off-world, by buying up cargo space on Empyreans. There is a perennial rumour that 6SS has a hundred-million-dollar bounty on a new Emberspore for their private use, acquired by any means necessary, but the company has officially denied this on two separate occasions.
Money
Imperial coinage is based off the dollar, a currency that derives its value from the stability of the government. Because of the growing instability, the economy has taken something of a hit, but all efforts are being made to keep the Empire out of a recession.
Each dollar can be divided up into one hundred cents, and coins of one and ten cent, and one dollar denominations are widely used in small transactions. For greater transactions, paper money is used, available in five, ten, fifteen, fifty, and one hundred dollar denominations. Electronic transfer via the telepiary has become much more common in recent years, however, making the stock market even more fast-paced and hectic.
Some of the more far-flung worlds of the Empire, while they officially still accept the currency, may be more open to trading basic goods, especially with the few Empyreans vessels that reach them. Interplanetary finance has almost faded out of existence everywhere but the core worlds.
Religion
Many religions on the homeworlds did not survive past the twin shocks of discovering other people amongst the stars, or the existence of the Emberspore and the concept of the Embers themselves. Since then, three have risen to be the most prominent.
Adevarism
Adevarism is the acknowledgement of the Embers as the progenitors of all galactic life, and that their unspoken desire was for the peoples that came after them to follow in their footsteps. Adevarists consider that the path to transcendence lies in emulating the Embers, although since most of the history of the Embers is guesswork, debates on how to emulate them are frequent. The general consensus lies within tranquillity and friendship, due to the Empyreans (as products of an Ember artifact) lacking in aggressive design or capability. Some staunch adevarists believe that ecological harmony is important, due to the Embers leaving no trace of their civilisation behind except that which they meant to be found.
Ophianity
Ophianity teaches that the universe operates in an eternal cycle of history, signified by a snake biting its own tail, and that correcting the mistakes of past cycles is important. The Embers are seen as both the beginning and the end, the predecessors of the last cycle and what the people of the galaxy will eventually become. The question "What would I do?" is considered to be the sole commandment of the religion, to consider the actions of one's past and future selves, and how they may have a knock-on effect to change the flow of history. The disappearances of the Empyrean vessels is seen as one of these knock-on effects, with the cause either in the past, or quite possibly the future.
Zen Oru
The Oru believe in a cycle of reincarnation that sees a static amount of life-force in the universe that flows from one form to another, referred to as dal. The Embers are therefore still around in the forms of those alive today, as echoes in the dal. Zen Oru places an emphasis on attaining enlightenment through philosophy and meditation, in order to "harmonize the dal" — that is, to reach for social perfection. Though their advances made the dal very harmonious, Oru teachings state that as a singular race, the Embers lacked the means to progress any further, and had to create diversity through their descendants: the current population of the Empire. Philosophy and strength of character are important to the Oru, who feel that life is the only thing in the universe that makes concepts such as mercy and justice possible.
