locarno24 said:
You could just 'move out'. You become an adult around 16.
Not really. As you've defined it, each extended family is sort of a mini-nation unto itself. You'll really, really be screwed without the economic and influential base of the paterfamilias and assorted hangers-on.
You usually start your career working for a family
other than your own. If you did a decent job you could always return to the family you started with. This does not mean that have to become part of the family. It just means that you work for them. Usually working and teaching relationships do develop into part of ones extended family.
If you were a real outsider type, you could 'hitch-hike' your way around the Empire. Staying in a different strangers house every few weeks and helping out around the house, farm, shop, market, factory etc. Young people usually live like that for 2 years between their first graduation at 16 and the official start of their careers at 18. This is done so that they aquire a vide variety of skills in a real working environment and decide what kind of job they want to do in life (at the the start anyway) Also so they can determine where they want to live and to experience different cultures and train under different masters.
Child abuse is also non-existant in their culture.
Highly unlikely.
With the vital signs of every child in the empire being monitored 24/7 and a physical checkup every week, child abuse would be very difficult to conceal.
Proven child abusers are quietly murdered and their bodies never found.
Much of the setting is fine - if you can genuinely sustain yourself in luxury on 20 hours a week work, and that's with no imbalanced pressure on anyone else, either, then you can probably get a stable society. You rarely have a civil war between guests in luxury hotels.
One big observation - what exists outside this pocket empire? The big driver on work pressure is usually competition - to translate, I could work 20 hours a week and live in comfortable luxury, but if the workers of a neighbouring state/corporation work 25 hours a week they'll make more than 125% of my income - there are increasing returns in the early stages of this - and quickly dominate international trade/get the juicy government contracts. So I need to at least match them and ideally beat them at 26 hours a week. And so it goes on.
If the Empire says that it needs 100 air-rafts a week, then you give them 100 air-rafts a week not 110. If they needed 110 air-rafts per week they would have told you so. There is no harm in reporting an additional production capacity however. What you might do is allow people to work a few extra hours a week, provided the quality remains perfect, then take an extra month off at the end of the year.
As long as the quotas are being made, the family operating the factory will be judged on:
The quality of the final product.
The increases in the skills and training of the workers.
The satisfaction of the workers.
A safe working environment.
New improvements and inventions.
Environmental considerations.
With other states, the Empire sometimes trades for raw materials, exotic foodstuffs, artwork, and hand crafted items, but they generally don't trade for manufactured goods because they find them to be of inferior quality to their own.
If the empire has a superabundance of resources and exists in effective isolation without economic or social 'predators' of significant size it can evolve to a much greater level of stability. It's sort of an political equivalent of madagascar and the galapagos - take away pressure and you can find all sorts of unusual structures evolving.
There is the pressure of a much larger nearby enemy empire, (an Aslan sub-species called the Kzan) whom they were enslaved by for more than a century, before finally uprising and liberating a dozen worlds. This was accomplished largely by orchestrating and economic collapse that resulted in a Kzan civil war. This is the primary reason they do not have a monetary system in their infrastructure economy.
[Note: The Order of the Creche was origionally created to breed, reer, train and protect the secret army that that was used to overthrow their captors. At the time of 'The Great Uprising' the secret army consisted primarily of children between the ages of 6 and 16, many of whom were slaughtered in the uprising. The Order is still trying to pay the debt for this grevious sin even to this day. This largely explains the Orders utter fanaticism with protecting and nurturing children. Their current mission is to reer, teach and safeguard ALL children. No sane person in the Empire would ever cross the order on any matter reguarding the safety of children. The word 'fanatic' is a complete unterstatement when describing The order of the Creche. They are just fracking CRAZY when it comes to the the protection of children.
Pregnant mothers leaving their homes are assigned an armed guard.
A childs playground is a fortress. If a child is injured because a Creche Guardian was not paying attention and it led to a child being severly injured (Children are allowed to explore and hurt themselves within limits) two Creche Guardians would tackle the the Creche Guardian responsible for the error to prevent her from killing herself with her 'Creche Knife' and two others would attend to the injured child.]
There is also the incentive to invent and create new things. Creating a new invention or a fantastic work of art is a great way to increase ones social status.
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Each person has two Social Statuses an
actual social status and a
perceived social status.
Your actual social status is your Name (The actual length of it)
Your percieved social status is your Fame (or Infamy, which usually fades over time) This may fluctuate above or below your actual social staus.
Given no other factors your Fame equals your Name
Modifiers to ones Fame (or Infamy) tend to deminish over time until ones Fame equals ones Name.
Some things that can modify your fame:
The reputation of your family.
The reputation of your parents.
Your behavior. (John's Fame is -1 because he acts like a wanker all the time.)
Inventions.
Great performances.
Heroic deeds.
A high Fame easliy translates into material wealth and benefits: Party invitations, interviews, gifts etc. The painting/dress/widget you made also goes up in value when you are famous so you can trade it for better stuff at that time.
A non-standard currency
does exist, but is completely unrelated to whether you eat, have a car, or a place to live.
(See the previous posts for a clearer picture of this)
A very rough average of the yearly per capita income of a person in Imperial credit terms can be found in the following chart. This is based on the persons Name and temporary Fame:
Note: This does not include basic food, clothing, vehicle, general living expenses, a home or an apartment, basic weapons (energy pistol and rifle, non energy pistol and rifle, sword and dagger) or armor (battle dress or vacc combat armour, plus body armor) or education which runs into the multi millions of credits per student per year and tapers down after their first graduation at age 16. These things are provided to everyone reguardless of their social status. (except soc 0 and 1)
Soc 00 1,000 (Shite) [Person has dishonored themselves while committing a henious crime]
Soc 01 5,000 (Ptah) [Persons has dishonored themselves]
Soc 02 25,000 [Ages 10-15] (Creche Child/Creche Student) [Family name plus given name]
Soc 03 50,000 [Age 16] (First graduation) [Third name]
Soc 04 75,000
Soc 05 100,000
Soc 06 125,000
Soc 07 150,000
Soc 08 200,000
Soc 09 300,000
Soc 10 400,000
Soc 11 500,000 (Knight/Dame) [Town]
Soc 12 1,000,000 (Baron/Baroness) [City]
Soc 13 5,000,000 (Marquis/Marquess) [Continent]
Soc 14 10,000,000 (Count/Countess) [Planet]
Soc 15 50,000,000 (Duke/Duchess) [Subsector]
Soc 16 100,000,000 (Emperor/Empress) [Empire]
This chart does not represent a
salary, but the average level of additional goods, services and other benefits availible to a person of a certain social standing or 'Name'.
For instance. An artist might offer to paint the portraits of the Baron and Baroness of his local city. If these are displayed in the Barons home then this will bring him fame and increase the value of his paintings. He will then be able to attract more apprenticeses. If His aprenticeses gain noteriety that that bring even more fame to himself and his own paintings.
===============
Something I forgot to mention in previous posts is that ALL APPOINTMENTS AND ELECTED POSITIONS ARE HELD BY MARRIED COUPLES. This is one of the reasons why family honor and who you marry are so important in the Empire. If you elect the Emperor his wife
automaticaly becomes the Empress with equal, if not divided, powers. Thus it is possible to have two Emperors and two Empresses, Dukes, Counts, etc., appointed to the same position. This is written in the Emperial Constitution to ensure equality of the sexes.
The House representatives are one male and one female (a married couple) from each family. The Planetary representatives are one male and one female (a married couple) from each planet. (in these cases you can vote only for a married couple.)
At the start of the Empire women had little representation. After the immediate threat to the newly birthed Empire's boarders were dealt with, a Suffragette type movement started. After all it was the
women of The Order of the Creche that raised and trained the army that overthrew their oppressors (and watch them get slaughtered), and it was
women who were considerd 'of no consequence' by the Kzan that were the main operatives for intelligence and the planting of the virusses that caused the Kzan economic collapse. They demanded equal right and representation under the law.
After several decades with little or no progess, the female elected themselves a 'Queen' who started a passive resistance campaign where women began moving out ouf their households into armed 'female only' communes. Women still worked as usual but always travelled in groups of three or more and heavily armed, at night they returned to their communes. Every women in the movement made a pledge to not bare children until equal rights were granted and took year long birth control pills to ensure it. "Equal rights or our race stops now!" was their motto. In many areas this even escalated to the point of denying the male gender sex. The Queen was eventually killed (assassinated) which touched off a shooting war between the genders. The Kzan got wind of this and started to assemble an invading force near the boarder. The female population led by the battle hardened and hard hearted Order of the Creche, defeated the ostracized male population by attrition. The males simply could not stomach killing their sisters, mothers and wives. They were commiting genocide with each rifle shot bringing their race closer to extinction. (Which also led to a civil war within the male population.) This was not so much of a problem in the female population because they were waging a defensive war with orders to only shoot if fired upon. The males finally realizing that the empire, and their entire race was in peril of being extinguished or captured into slavery by the Kzan, finally capitulated unconditionally.
The assembling Kzan battle fleet (They were still fighting a civil war) was defeated by the newly unified Emperial fleet.
Females were given control of one third of the Emperial fleet as stipulated in the male surrender agreements. One day they secretly assembled (with only female crewman) and jumped out of Emperial space.
But that is another story...
.
