captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Code:
While searching for anomalies I encountered some absolute horrors of legal worlds in my 100K planet datafile (). Here is one of them, a Bad Neighborhood indeed.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present The Hive of the Last Sun:
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A world-spanning neolithic religious dictatorship, the hive of the last Sun is a teeming lost colony, isolated from known space early in the long night shortly after its foundations as a MegaCorporation's highly specialized Agriplanet.
Blessed by a remarkably stable and constant main star, with little or no seasonal variation, large expanses of shallow wetlands and very low background radiation, Last Sun's life had developed no further than an analogue of the late Precambrian period of old Terra (more properly identified as mid Neoproterozoic), differing in that life (such as it was)had spread to the land (such as it was). Once the biooxygenation of the planet was complete, life puttered along, in simple undifferentiated and unchallenged equilibrium for perhaps .5 to 1.5 gigayears
The world was perfect for agriculture, with a gentle temperate earthlike climate, vast shallow beds of organic silt, landbased organic soil, and an extremely static and and fragile native life that was completely unable to compete with Terran imports.
Within the first century, the local ecosystem was entirely supplanted by Terran geneered food plankton, so quickly that a feared deoxygenation event failed to occur. The shallow seas had become vast aquaculture farms, primarily specializing in plankton based food products; land based food production similarly scoured the land of native life (mainly amphibious Ediacaran analogues), although land based production was never as profitable or extensive as New Suns aquaculture. This much is known from records salvaged from other worlds, and the Imperial trade archives referencing the now vanished Agricorp responsible for the planet.
With the collapse of the second Imperium all contact was rapidly lost, and New sun's local population is believed to have been overwhelmed by several waves of refugees fleeing failing and hostile ecosystems in nearby systems. The highly specialized and externally dependent technology of the agricolony almost certainly failed within a few decades, and little exploitation of the planet's resources was possible, lacking minimally advanced technology. Fortunately, the nutrioPlankton(tm) had already aggressively spread throughout the water ecosytem, effectively turning the planet into a vast monoculture of edible plankton. Some land farming was possible, but no draft or domesticated animals survived the collapse. As a result, technology withered away, but the population boomed, reaching a current high of 41 billion (with several suspected diebacks) , technology remained essentially neolithic but culturally highly sophisticated. No records or oral history survives from the earliest post collapse time, and most population information is based upon studies of comparative genomics of the population.
With one main (if almost entirely marshy) supercontinent, a warm unvarying climate, abundant food, and no competition, human survival was perhaps too easy. For the next 800 years life on new sun was easy, primitive, and unfortunately, extremely violent. While on the surface a primitive paradise, the limited and artificial ecosystem coupled with the loss of all other higher lifeforms has produced a situation where the only source of a variety of vital nutrients is other humans. Accordingly, cannibalism has become a fixed and unavoidable part of all local societies; and few, if any, are known to practice it on a voluntary basis. The entire post collapse history of the planet has been marked by constant violent aggression, on a tribal level initially, and later organized warfare, as nation states evolved around dryer rocky areas of the continent. The last 200 years, have seen the formation, spread and eventual triumph of a world spanning superreligion which dominates the hordes of petty, and entirely subordinate polities of the continent. The key to the New Suns success has been firstly in instituting largely ceremonial conflict between states for prisoner/food gathering (avoiding large scale economic disruption typical of actual conflicts) and secondly, creating a highly charismatic and ritualized worship around the act of sacrifice and consumption of humans; this has evolved to the point where many of the victims in the strongest and largest polity are volunteers, spending a set period in hedonisitic luxury, and then giving their lives as a sacrifice to the new sun, which must be constantly fed; and incidentally giving their bodies to ceremonial feasts.
New Sun has no knowledge of an outside world beyond the main religions teachings that humans fled a great war of the gods from beyond the sky, which is essentially hell. The sun is a disinterested deity who must be placated and kept sleeping with human sacrifices, lest he leave or consume the humans.
Culturally, new Sun presents an incredibly varied set of advanced neolithic cultures, which defy easy categorization, except that they are generally insular, xenophobic, violent and agressive. The genetic bottleneck of the initial population, plus a millennium of increased selection by tribal violence, and unfortunately, sub-domestication of groups of humans as food animals has produced a genotype which is inter-fertile with solomani humans, but physically quite distinctive. This factor, coupled with the intensely clannish and xenophobic slant of most cultures [i]and [/i]the dominant religion, complicates the already difficult task of discreet observation by the scout service. All observation is currently carried out by remotes.
A small scout base specializing in the study of long term tech zero cultures has been established on one of the few islands in the planet's major ocean. It is a subsector and quadrant mecca for cultural and phsicial sophontologists studying the local cultures, and clinical sociologists attempting to develop integration plans.
Currently The Hive of the Last Sun is fully interdicted by the scout service, and is classed as a red zone by the TAS. It is noted that unlike most primitive cultures which are interdicted for safety, on this world, it is the visitors who are unlikely to survive contact.
Any other examples to compete for the prize ?
For maximum fun and challenge, they need to be actually generated by a semi randomized worldgen system; and then described [i]Without turning this into a UWP/Worldgen bashing fest, PLEASE ![/i]
We have enough of those, thank you...
Oh yes. Note also that this is not a request for a massive critique of each example, so lets not scare off others with overinvolved debate.
Have fun.
Cap
