Tom Kalbfus said:
An idea of what this would be like. Imagine an Imperium that was more like classical Rome with a cruel Emperor sitting on the Iridium Throne, with bread and circuses, and of course the Arena. Then there are the slaves, gladiators and rebels. Any other ideas?
It's important to remember that Rome did not just do terrible things, it also did great things. It's this combination of great and terrible acts, some of the greatest strivings of humanity combined with of the most amazingly ruthless things that makes Rome have an allure to Western Civilization to this day.
Now you can combine the Roman Empire with the Vilani Empire for something pretty unique. Like an ancient empire, thousands of years old, based on ancient, seemingly unchanging tradition, Vilani castes, technological advancement slowed outside of the military, and so on.
Slavery. If you don't think slavery works in the far future, you need to think just a slight bit more outside of the box. For instance, the Imperium doesn't consider intelligent machines to be sophonts - eg; they're not accorded civil rights but are treated as things. Perhaps as a method to make humans relevant in a high-tech society, they've kept in a lot of elements that we've automated people out of even in the 21st century. There's a lot less "black box" and "no user serviceable parts" technology in this Empire, unlike our modern day. So they need lots of people as technicians to repair stuff. In a lot of worlds, they use slaves; humans who are snatched up, and have many parts of their bodies removed and have durable metal cybernetic parts attached to them. The operation is cheap and routine, since it has been perfected over centuries. The parts outlive the slaves themselves; when the 'meat' part of a cyborg grows unable to do its job, it is euthanized and a new slave purchased and plugged in. The important part is the human brain, which along with a series of more simple computers creates a very flexible device that can be used for a variety of jobs using its own initiative and responding well to spoken orders. With less meat bodies, they don't need to eat and drink as much, electrodes in the brain can induce sleep while they're still standing, and so on. As they have enough of their bodies to no longer be considered humans they are things - slaves. Of course, as they are "cyborgs" they're not chattel slaves either. Like the Roman Empire, the widespread use of slaves stymies the development of a lot of "industrial" technology and retards progress, however, "progress" isn't important to this Empire. If a cyborg is only as good as half of a dedicated industrial robot, well they have thirty cyborgs where that came from. The wars of the Empire are fought to secure more sophonts to make cyborgs out of. Manumission of slaves involves the cloning of new body parts to allow an independent existence without cyborg parts.
Robots. Yes, there's robots and high tech. However, these are the hallmarks of the very rich and powerful, speeding by on their anti-grav cars and gravbelts through the air while the hoi polloi walk or take hydrogen burning ground transport.
