Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Core League
Made up of Elven polities and planets that favor a stronger central government, the Core League is set up as a confederacy in which each polity has one vote and a 2/3 majority is required both to elect a Hegemon and to pass any binding laws. The result is that no Hegemon has been elected in 223 years, and only non-binding suggestions have passed for 188 years. In the meantime, a series of weak Acting Hegemons have sought to keep the League intact, with varying success.

Verge League
The Verge League is committed to independence and armed neutrality, and bands together only for mutual defense and to present a united political front against the other leagues, particularly the Core League. Weak by design, the League only elects a Hegemon during times of war and only seats its representatives every 10 years. In the meantime, any neccessary decisions are made ad-hoc. This decentralization makes the Verge League both difficult to control and difficult to defeat.

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House Ignin
Ruled by an autocratic Lord Ignin, though restrained by both tradition and an elected Council of Notables, House Ignin is the largest and among the most traditional on the Council. While the exact power varies from lord to lord, with some being more despotic than others, all assert their divine right to rule and are generally in favor of stronger union among the Great Houses, with themselves as first among equals, of course.

House Etamor
Baron Etamor is a toothless figurehead, with power being officially held by a fully democratic Thing. In practice, though, the Thing is controlled by the numerous businesses and financial concerns in Etamor space. The concerns of commerce and industy have made the Etamors very wealthy, easily the wealthiest of all Great Houses, but their mercantile spirit disgusts many of the others on the Council. They are often accused of trying to buy friends, and some maintain that their democratic facade wavers when confronted with horrifying conditions in their mining concerns.

House Diment
A full vassal to the Heavenly Empire, Archduke Diment is a puppet with a seat both on the Dwarven Council and the Heavenly Emperor’s personal cabinet. The Archduke therefore constantly pursues policies meant to unite the Great Council with the Heavenly Empire. The benefit of their close relationship, access to the Heavenly Navy, keeps them in power despite widespread discontent with their rule.

House Borol
Earl Borol is elected from among the male-line descendants of the founder of his house by an assembly of notables, and the last four Earls have been tough, politically-minded royals with an eye toward external expansion as a route to unifying their people. With wide territorial claims that overlaps with many others, Borol is sometimes accused of being a swollen garrison state.

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Herenids
Descended from Dame Herren the Wise, the Herenid halflings are known for their pursuit of research and knowledge. This makes them stereotypically excellent scientists but also hoarders of information and, occasionally, brokers in stolen secrets. Notably, the Imperial Librarian of the Heavenly Empire is a Herenid halfling.

Sollians
Descended from Lady Sollia the Fair, the Sollians are typically regarded as being appearance-obsessed and fashion-conscious, with a taste for the finer things in life and a weakness for creature comforts. While this is a generalization, Sollian halflings do own and operate the famous bespoke tailor Waschbaer of Procyon.

Grishnekhs
Descended from Mother Grish of Nekh, halflings of this lineage are often tarred as thieves, criminals, and gangsters. Mother Grish was famous for telling her children “do what is neccessary,” and the stereotypical Grishnekh does just that. Most major crime families on Nekh to this day descend from Mother Grish.

Lananids
Descended from Madame Lana, halflings regard Lananids as being predisposed to mystical careers as religious leaders, seers, fortunetellers, and the like. Madame Lana herself was a powerful psionic, and many halflings skilled in those arts are of her line. The great halfling stage magician Mungo Moudin is a direct-line Lananid, for instance.

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Green Fleet
The largest and most powerful of the goblin fleets, Green Fleet is primarily a mining and merchantile fleet with a powerful security arm. Currently in the process of extracting minerals from the ring system of Ados VI, Green Fleet is large enough that it has several sub-fleets deployed at any one time to advance goblin interests in the galaxy at large. Green Fleet operates on a strict social credit system, with various duties required of members to build up credits to spend on personal advancement or luxuries. Most Green Fleet members operating independently do so to accumulate credits to spend when they return.

Blue Fleet
The goblin Blue Fleet operates on the fringes of the known galaxy, charting and claiming planets and systems that are then sold on to other interested parties. It engages in limited mining, usually for highly valuable materials in easily accessible deposits, but is focused more on scientific inquiry for profit. The fleet does have a strong defense element, especially its midsize escort corvettes. In terms of governance, Blue Fleet is best described as a meritocracy with strongs attached, as most promotions and appointments are made by committees that are open to outside influence.

Red Fleet
The most scattered of all the goblin fleets, Red Fleet rarely gathers in strength except at a congress once every ten years. All other fleet business is managed through interstellar communications. Red Fleet specializes in mercenary work, with a large complement of agile fighters and other such small craft. They are not above the occasional piracy or protection racket, though the Red Fleet’s command prefers plausible deniability in such circumstances. By far the most egalitarian of the fleets, Red Fleet is socialist and communalist, with officers elected by their subordinates and most day-to-day business being handled by small committees, which report to larger ones, all the way up to the powerful Fleet Board.

Yellow Fleet
Yellow Fleet is made up entirely of goblins who have chosen to remain associated with the orcs, albeit no longer as slaves but ostensibly as equals. Reviled as traitors and worse by other goblins, they nevertheless are widely respected by other sapients for their skills in cargo transportation. Indeed, close to 50% of all orcish cargo is carried by Yellow Fleet, even though goblins make up less than 10% of the sapients in orcish settlements. Yellow Fleet is structured like a corporation, though it does include a military component, and about 60% of its managers and executives are orcs despite nominal goblin oversight-proof, detractors say, of Yellow Fleet being a puppet to such interests.

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Dashhur School
Living by the precepts of Dashhur Ik-Nomi, this school is rigidly utilitarian and defines its philosophy as bringing the greatest happiness to the greatest number of orcs. As such, it is governed as a direct democracy, with every community member having a say in decisions. However, there are no minority rights among Dashhurites, which leads them to tolerate sometimes deplorable conditions for some under their control if they perceive it as improving quality of life for others.

Saqqua School
Saqqua Nya-Nar taught that the individual was the most important part of society, and that any restraints imposed on an individual represented a grievous miscarriage of justice. Therefore, in Saqquan territory, there are few if any laws limiting individual behavior: regulations are sparse and murder is often legal. However, as Saqquans themselves are free to point out, freedome from rules does not mean freedom from consequences, and the fallout from hasty actions can be devastating. This often leads to a very harsh situation that nevertheless offers many opportunities for advancement and profit.

Aamana School
Aamana Dis-Ath taught that the physical world is an ephemeral illusion, and that the only true structure in the universe was the mind. As such, Aamanans place a great deal of importance on mental acuity and tend to be ascetic in their daily lives, sometimes to the extreme. Monasteries with draconian personal rules are common, and even less-observant Aamanans tend toward fasting and a rejection of ornamentation.

Ur-Ulum School
Ur-Ulum, who abandoned their family name as part of their teachings, believed that the cosmos in general and the Cassandra Galaxy in particular represents a single, living being. Seeing to the health and harmony of that being is of the utmost importance, as its sickness or death would lead to the end of the universe. Therefore, Ul-Ulamites are environmentalists who shun many modern conveniences and use others only sparingly. Some go so far as to reject all FTL travel, while others will only purchase but never build ships or shelters. Through this wide variety of practices, though, the central tenets remain firmly established.

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Goblins are slight of stature, roughly equal to halflings, but with larger ears not unlike the elves and chloroplast skin similar to their orcish cousins. The orcs hold that goblins are a product of interbreeding between halflings or dwarves and orcs themselves, while the goblins believe themselves to be the heirs of the extinct, and possibly mythical, gnomes. In either case, they embarked on the same exodus from the Garden World as the orcs, only to soon find themselves reduced to menial labor with no rights, enslaved by the very fellow-slaves that had emancipated them.

A major series of Goblin Rebellions shook the orcish people for nearly two centuries, with the result that the majority of goblins broke away and asserted their own culture. A significant minority, perhaps 10%, still live among the orcs, though their social standing has increased and most orcish settlements have banned chattel slavery.

The remainder now have their own settlements and colonies, though the majority of goblins live itinerantly in one of several large fleets that establish temporary colonies and infrastructure for a decade or so before moving on. This is done both for self-defense, to prevent a feared orcish counterattack, and to forestall any future attempts at conquest. Even those goblins living on other worlds among other sapients or in permanent colonies owe allegiance to a fleet, being able to call upon its local representatives or ships in a mement of need.

Goblin fleets all contain megastructure-class colony ships, mobile wildcat resource extraction platforms, and a number of other passenger and military craft. Each major fleet is named after a color, with Green Fleet, Blue Fleet, Yellow Fleet and Red Fleet as the main operational units.

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Orc legend holds that they and their cousins the goblins were created-bred, or genetically engineered-as the servants for another group on the Garden World. Who exactly their former masters were varies with the telling, but all orcish traditions agree that they were overthrown, with the orcish people leaving the Garden World soon after.

Generally larger and more powerfully built than other sapients, orcs tend to be more comfortable on worlds with higher gravity. They also have skin that is saturated with chloroplasts, enabling them to derive about 25% of their daily energy intake from the sun under ideal conditions. This quirk often leads them to arid, sunny worlds, though a sun lamp or tanning bed will work just as well.

Orcs tend to shun organized religion, claiming that their prior enslavement was legitimized by painting their oppressors as their gods. Instead, orcish settlements tend to follow philosophical schools of thought, with many aspects of their life and culture centered around choosing a set of tenets to hold to. Though the major schools of Orcish thought are often compared to nation-states, and sometimes act as such, they tend to be more fluid and informal except in times of unsettled conflict.

Some of the major philosophical schools among the orcs include the Dashhur school, the Saqqua school, the Aamana school, and the Ur-Ulum school.

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Bulagean humans
The largest group in the Empire, with about twelve million souls as of the 50th year of the Emperor’s reign. The inheritors of the defunct Holy Verdant Empire, the Bulageans make up the majority of large landowners, most chairs in the Imperial Diet, and a plurality of the nobles and major generals. This is due to the former hegemony that the Bulageans held over all others in the Holy Verdant Empire, but represents a major decline in power from the previous era. The Emperor himself hails from the House of Llothrin, and is of mixed human and elven descent, though the Aodilli are fond of pointing out that 9 of his 10 most recent ancestors were human.

Aodilli elves
About ten million elves live in the Empire as of the Emperor’s golden jubilee, the vast majority in their heartland of Aodil. The Emperor reigns over the Aodil as their Primarch, and in many official Aodil publications is referred to as Emperor-Primarch. Though outnumbered by humans in empire-wide bodies like the Imperial Diet, elves feature strong majorities in their own independent assembly, the Chorus. They are the only group, other than the Bulageans, with their own assembly and guaranteed representation. The elven Yeagers, an independent part of the Imperial Army, are also under the elves’ control except in times of war, another hard-won concession.

Khieke dwarves
With close to six million souls living in and around the spine of the Trondvald range, the Khieke dwarves have long been vassals of the Bulageans. In fact, there has never been an independent dwarven kingdom or state, something that has sat increasingly poorly with the dwarves in the Empire as industrialization has increasingly relied on the toils of majority-dwarf miners. Foreign funds have been alleged to be behind increasingly strident dwarven calls for autonomy and an equal stake to the Aodilli. While dwarven troops are present throughout the Imperial Army, they are primarily employed as artillerists and airmen.

Waya and Kelu orcs
Three million Waya orcs and two million Kelu orcs reside in the Empire as a result of its acquisition of lands from the dying Panorcias state to the south. Though they speak different languages with independent (and often adversarial) streaks, they are typically recorded as Waya-Kelu in the Imperial census. As the latest addition to the Empire, the orcs are often restive and violence against Imperial authorities are common. Nevertheless, they have produced several luminaries, including the highly decorated General Umet. A large number of orcs serve in the Imperial military as infantrymen and laborers, as well.

Huash goblins
About four million Huash goblins were forcibly incorporated into the Empire following the dismemberment of their homeland in the Peace of Muisyle, a fact the goblins note with some bitterness as it was the late arrival of goblin heavy arquebusiers that turned the tide in the Empire’s favor during the Secong Great Panorcias War. Nevertheless, the goblins have been forbidden from speaking their language within the Empire, and have been granted no autonomy of their own, with the administration of their lands split between the humans and the elves. Despite their small stature, goblins are renowned marksmen, and the industrial era has provided them with ever more sophisticated firearms with which to hone their skills. As such, they are often used as snipers, scouts, and light infantry by the Empire.

Ukelan halflings
Three million Ukelan halflings live in areas once part of the Great Khanate, the halfling empire that conquered and rules the known world for nearly a hundred years. They as a people have fallen far from their former glory, and due to their close kinship with both humans and elves, halflings are disproportionately targeted for integration and assimilation into Bulagea or Aodil. Many with halfling ancestry choose to conceal it, and avoid speaking in their ancestral tongues, in order to gain advancement as a human or an elf. When they are employed as discrete army units, halflings are usually infantrymen but their small statue has earned them some favor as pilots.

Maniya gnomes
With a population of two million souls, the Maniyan gnomes are found scattered in multiple small enclaves throughout Imperial territory, without any one area in which they constitute a majority. Once itinerant herders and pastoralists, they have never been an independent polity much like the dwarves, and the increasing mechanization of Imperial agriculture has led to gnomes increasingly moving to major cities in search of industrial work. As the smallest sapients in the Empire, they are rarely used as front-line troops and instead normally serve in logistical roles as drivers, cooks, quartermasters, and the like.

Shuu beastfolk
The one million Shuu, known as the beastfolk for their reputed resemblance to and descent from wild animals, are the lowest rung of Imperial society. Forbidden from any labor other than menial work, even in the army, the Shuu are relentlessly exploited, stereotyped, and degraded at an official level, thanks to religious teachings that hold them to be the twisted descendants of particularly vile sinners. This, in turn, has led to many of them being increasingly drawn to political extremism. A Shuu assassin’s bullet ended the life of the Emperor’s grandfather, his immediate predecessor.

Ibbari dragonbloods
The great Ibbari drakes of old no longer sit on their hoards in the Trondvald, but they have left their mark on many who once served them as vassals and thralls. Close to a million claim dragonblood in their ancestry in the Imperial census, but the real number is likely far higher as many conceal their ancestry to avoid discrimination. In addition to being able to manifest certain draconic gifts, such as fiery breath or, rarely, the ability to assume the form of a great drake themselves, the dragonbloods generally are content to either keep to their own close-knit communities or to conceal their ancestry.

Halfbloods and mixed parentage
It is generally held by those with modern scientific leanings that all sapients in the Empire share a common ancestor, and as such intermarriage and the birth of mixed-parentage children can occur. Cultural taboos generally prevent this, but over time large self-identified populations of up to half a million have accumulated in larger urban centers. Due to the strong social (and often religious) stigma against them, even those who openly claim mixed parentage on the census often conceal the fact in their daily life, and only the largest cities can be said to have anything approaching a distinct culture.

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Most sapients on the Garden World were not able to interbreed, with sterile “mules” being the restult of any inter-sapient relationship. But the close relationship between the humans and the dwarves on a genetic level meant that some of their “mules” could bear children in turn. Over time, this people of mixed human and dwarven ancestry became a people in and of themselves, called “banshen” by the Heavenly Empire and “halflings” by the dwarves.

Halflings tend to form insular subcultures within other sapients’ colonies and settlements; they evacuated the Garden World along with both humans and dwarves. Though there are and always have been halfling-only settlements and colonies, the majority of their peoples live in other territories to this day.

That is not to say that they meekly submit to the rule of others, though. Halfling culture obeys what is called the “rule of the sun:” the sun rules what it controls, when it controls it, but it is powerless to stop the moon from shining. In practice, this means that while halflings submit to the laws and rules of others when they must, they also keep their own parallel traditions, legal systems, and traditions that hold sway. These tend to be organized around a broad community consensus, with descent in a matrilineal line from a notable sage past or present being a frequent, but not firm, requirement. Conflicts are settled by assemblies of such local notables if possible, with learned matriarchs’ advice sought out on matters both practical and esoteric.

This it could be argued that the halflings follow a semi-hereditary, semi-democratic matriarchal oligharchy, but as with all sapients this is an oversimplification. Notable lines include the Herenids, from Dame Heren the Wise; the Sollians, from Lady Sollia the Fair; the Grishnekhs, from Mother Grish of Nekh; and the egalitarian Lananids from Madame Lana.

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In the old days, the great and wise Sun brought all birds to it and told them that they were to elect one bird to be leader over the others. When that bird died, another election would be held, and that bird would receive dominion.

The birds soon fell to squabbling over what qualities would qualify one for election. The strong birds argued for strength, the quick birds for speed, and the heavy birds for weight. But the great patriarch of the cardinals suggested another route: that they ought to elect, in turn the birds that most resembled the wise and holy Sun. He suggested a bright yellow warbler as the first candidate, as their fine yellow feathers were as the noonday sun.

The others agreed to this readily, especially as it promised them all an eventual turn in order of their likeness to the great Sun. The cardinal was also the only bird to have suggested a candidate other than himself, which gave him an air of detachment and neutrality.

After a number of other birds had been lord and ruler of the others for the span of their short lives, the cardinal declared that a cardinal should be next, as their red feathers were as the setting Sun. The other birds agreed, and the cardinal patriarch was told that he had been elected soon after.

He demurred, however, declaring that while he was honored, he was not the cardinal that had been the candidate. It was, in fact, the cardinal’s son, then just a stripling coming into his red. There was some grumbling, but the birds agreed that they had elected the cardinal’s son to be their lord until his death.

In time, the cardinal’s son was taken by a bobcat and his life ended. The patriarch, who lived still, declared his grandson to be the new ruler. The other birds objected, calling for a new election and proposing a tanager as a new candidate.

But the cardinal patriarch pointed out that the election had been won by “the cardinal’s son.” His grandson, then, was indeed the cardinal’s son and the ruler, and whenever a man-egg was laid and hatched, another cardinal’s son arose with an equal right to rule.

The other birds balked at this, but could not fault the patriarch’s logic. They begrudgingly agreed that the cardinals were their rulers, if only in name, until their line failed.

This is why, to this day, all cardinals continue to bear many sons. For when their line fails for the last and final time, they will lose their place and their dominion over all other birds.

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