#worldbuilding history

[pandoramusicbox]

Neptonian rulers

the Neptonian empire is old and has had a number of rulers throughout the milleniums. in part due to the extrodinairly long life spans of even the regular sea folk, not to mention the pink blooded that are the traditional rulers of sea folk have nearly doubled the length of their lifespans. name of emperor/emperress, length of reign (date of reign) -other notable information.

1. Neptunia, (v453-v432) 21 years- the empress who united the seven sea kingdoms to form the empire.

2. Paio (v432-v93) 339- suspects to have been the empress who's blood made the imperial crown and rumored too have made the sword jiné as well.

> the year of chatastrophy. The sudden death of the previous empress threatened to cause the empire collapse back into the five kingdoms as no one took over the throne. and a civil war threatened to break out.

3. Talia (v91-v1) 90 a notable empress for being the first violet blooded empress and was the granddaughter of neptunia, she reunified the empire and got two more nation states to join.

4. Delphine, (0-215)  - the empress that established the Delphine calendar, the modern calendar used by the Neptonian empire 

5. Oceanus (215-699) 484 years- expanded the size of the empire. Is also known for having a harem of six different pods, { one pod has between 3-10 individuals in them on average, and most people only have one or rarely two pods they stay with}

6. Bay (700-1388) 688 years- a half dragon half neptonian that had the longest reign in history

7. Seatulin [aka lil] (1389-1470) 89 years- standardized the writing system (previously been four different systems) and established higher learning institutions and built the first colosseums. Had a son who was the Astoria of Capricorn.

8. Biny (1470-1684) 224 years- transitioned from a male emperor to an empress during her reign. Established an alliance with several siren kingdoms and established several new cities.

9. Anglerfish (1685-1750) 66 years- is known for her successful and very prominent campaign of privateering, created a froth relationship between the the islands of Thero and Thera as well as the kingdoms of Gargoraqin continent. Was eventually caught privateering a ship with her pod and was executed by a king of Thera.

10. Philipia (1751-1840) 90 years- she established the current capital for the empire daughter of anglerfish, she had to creat safety nets and hiding places for her subjects to not be terrorized by the land people.

11.Bo (1841-2286) 446 years- a very religious emperor who introduced the ayasi faith as the state religion, though it didn’t stick as the state religion the ayasi faith is commonly practiced in the empire.

12. Minnou (2287-2309) 23 years- brought two mermaid kingdoms into the empire, one through Marriage and one through force. Undid the ayasi fate as the state religion.

13. Conwhani (2309-2331) 22 years, depicted with a great pair of horns as she had vicker blood in her, sought to establish a precisen of tolerance for hybrids with the empire, under her time the economy with the land people flourished

14. Eal (2331-2721) 390 years transitioned empire to and emperial republic, and established voting for representatives for the congress and the collation.

15. Posidon (2721-2857) 136 years- first mermaid emperor, student of astronomy and alchemy and had many places of learning built as well as having hand in the making of the architecture that allows for their modern cities with accessibility for creatures of all shapes and sizes.

16. Merrow (2857-2906) 49 years, reformed rather draconian law system to be less in corporal punishment

17. Cari (2907-3014) 108 years - switched the capital to nessrosa ( means water roses)

18. Crab (3015-3088) 74 years - emperess who established about half the laws on the books

19. Dawnturtal (3088-3492) 404 years- won the throne through a javelin throwing contest. Was a lover of nature and created the first emperial ecosystem parks. So nature could be enjoyed by all their citizens, now and in the future. Expanded voting rights. Fought and won a war against a few United sea gorgon hives.

20. Scillia (3493-3750) 258 years- mermaid who reorganized the military and military service

21.Hipocampi (3751-4229) 479 years- a mermaid empress who established extensive healthcare and public works systems throughout the empire

22. Cybircma (4230-4263) 34 years a rare sea witch. Won the throne through a game of wits.

23. Phillia (4264-4377) 114 years- the emperor who established the lily codes, a set of codes of conduct on several things, proper ediquet, how nobles should treat non-nobles [like people], how to properly introduce their culture to conquered lands and the proper way to do some traditions in court. Several of these things where already established but written down in the lily codes, that are still kept up to date to this day.

24. Shark (4378-4627) 250 years - empress that conquered the iles of heaven waters as part of the neptonian empire

25. Hydra (4628-4639) 12 years- empress that negotiated for the union of 13 additional sea kingdoms to join the empire

26. Sonrax (4640-4738) 99 years - created hundreds of amphitheaters, learning squares and libraries, also responsible for a narsin siren genocide

27. Oaraiora (4739-4796)158 years- switched the capital back to phillhimestarn (means moon princess mist)

28. Thnami (4796-4875) 79 years - conquerer gargoraqi waters for the empire and established seaside colonies

29. Serina (4876-5045)169 years- a rare neptonian duelo, who’s alternate self was a red blooded mermaid. Started to grow insane by the end of her reign due to paranoia. Lots of deaths.

30. Orka (5045-5114)69 years- lead a violent revolution against previous empress, died in a violent revelotion by the people to install next emperor

31. Fil (5114-5243) 129 years -outlawed slavery within the neptonian empire boarders, and created a process for removing empresses and emperors less violently

32. Darb (5244-5293) 49 years- tried to unify traditions and religious practices failed missably. Though some of the court songs and rituals they established have stuck around. Also fought a war with some thero heroes.

33. Elumiga (5294-5355) 61 years a violet blood who took over after her sister died to the Theron heroes. Negotiated peace and a treaty that the empire could only go so far into Theron and Theran waters.

34. Clam (5355-5541) 186 years - made a guarantee of civil rights for all neptonian citizens

35. Kimopheia (5543-5857) 314 years known to have turned into a demon at the end of their reign as they tried to extend their life to live forever. Also imposed unfair laws against mermaids but not sirens or finfolk, ignoring ruling’s established by clam the previous empress

36. Perigenia (5857-5921) 64 years- saw the eastern mermaid kingdoms leave the empire

37. Borsesis (5921-5933) 12 years - killed hiers to the throne, was seceded by her cousin. Violently.

38. nemorin (5934-6248) 314 years - violently conquered eastern mermaids, cousin to Borsesis

39. nemora (6248-6381) 133 years- daughter of the conqueror nemorin, was a tyrant who killed of any potential heirs to the throne

40. Nautelus, 64 years but ongoing (6381-current year 6445 ) - the current reigning empress, she fought in the mermaid revolution and was part of an organization known as the nypon-rose

[cyansconlangs]

How do y'all worldbuild religions? Cause I've been working on an idea founded on the principle of a tunguska-level meteor explosion over a capital city that convinced everyone to shed their old identity and wear animal masks.

[prokopetz]

On the one hand, it's true that the way Dungeons & Dragons defines terms like "sorcerer" and "warlock" and "wizard" is really only relevant to Dungeons & Dragons and its associated media – indeed, how these terms are used isn't even consistent between editions of D&D! – and trying to apply them in other contexts is rarely productive.

On the other hand, it's not true that these sorts of fine-grained taxonomies of types of magic are strictly a D&D-ism and never occur elsewhere. That folks make this argument is typically a symptom of being unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons' source material. D&D's main inspirations are American literary sword and sorcery fantasy spanning roughly the 1930s through the early 1980s, and fine-grained taxonomies of magic users absolutely do appear in these sources; they just aren't anything like as consistent as the folks who try to cram everything into the sorcerer/warlock/wizard model would prefer.

For example, in Lyndon Hardy's "Five Magics" series, the five types of magical practitioners are:

Alchemists: Drawing forth the hidden virtues of common materials to craft magic potions; limited by the fact that the outcomes of their formulas are partially random.

Magicians: Crafting enchanted items through complex manufacturing procedures; limited by the fact that each step in the procedure must be performed perfectly with no margin for error.

Sorcerers: Speaking verbal formulas to basically hack other people's minds, permitting illusion-craft and mind control; limited by the fact that the exercise of their art eventually kills them.

Thaumaturges: Shaping matter by manipulating miniature models; limited by the need to draw on outside sources like fires or flywheels to make up the resulting kinetic energy deficit.

Wizards: Summoning and binding demons from other dimensions; limited by the fact that the binding ritual exposes them to mental domination by the summoned demon if their will is weak.

"Warlock", meanwhile, isn't a type of practitioner, but does appear as pejorative term for a wizard who's lost a contest of wills with one of their own summoned demons.

Conversely, Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Legends of Ethshar" series includes such types of magic-users as:

Sorcerers: Channelling power through metal talismans to produce fixed effects; in the time of the novels, talisman-craft is largely a lost art, and most sorcerers use found or inherited talismans.

Theurges: Summoning gods; the setting's gods have no interest in human worship, but are bound not to interfere in the mortal world unless summoned, and are thus amenable to cutting deals.

Warlocks: Wielding X-Men style psychokinesis by virtue of their attunement to the telepathic whispers emanating from the wreckage of a crashed alien starship. (They're the edgy ones!)

Witches: Producing improvisational effects mostly related to healing, telepathy, precognition, and minor telekinesis by drawing on their own internal energy.

Wizards: Drawing down the infinite power of Chaos and shaping it with complex rituals. Basically D&D wizards, albeit with a much greater propensity for exploding.

You'll note that both taxonomies include something called a "sorcerer", something called a "warlock", and something called a "wizard", but what those terms mean in their respective contexts agrees neither with the Dungeons & Dragons definitions, nor with each other.

(Admittedly, these examples are from the 1980s, and are thus not free of D&D's influence; I picked them because they both happened to use all three of the terms in question in ways that are at odds with how D&D uses them. You can find similar taxonomies of magic use in earlier works, but I would have had to use many more examples to offer multiple competing definitions of each of "sorcerer", "warlock" and "wizard", and this post is already long enough!)

So basically what I'm saying is giving people a hard time about using these terms "wrong" – particularly if your objection is that they're not using them in a way that's congruent with however D&D's flavour of the week uses them – makes you a dick, but simply having this sort of taxonomy has a rich history within the genre. Wizard phylogeny is a time-honoured tradition!

[canisalbus]

What if I told you that RoobrickMarine went and wrote an entire novella starring my 16th century dog couple? It's very canon-adjacent, well researched and thoughtfully put together, has inspired me a ton during these past months and it's now publicly available at AO3. I highly recommend it.

✦ Separation ✦

[fox-teeth]

Hundreds of years in the future and thousands of light-years away, Mazu from Three-Hills practices her culture’s ancient art of sculpting spirit guides for the dead. But when technology from beyond the stars encroaches on her people’s lives—and deaths—what will happen to her art?

Read the rest of my new graphic novella "The Maker of Grave-Goods" this October exclusively through ShortBox Comics Fair--the innovative all-digital comics convention! @shortboxcomicsfair

[ghostbsuter]

"What exactly are halfas?" Constantine asks, cigarette lit and leaning against the table.

They were in the justice league, having attended a meeting previously and now just lazed around.

Batman loses focus on his laptop screen and openly looks at the two, interested.

Green Lantern, Hal, jerks up at the question, looking between everyone still in the room and trying (and failing) to seem uninterested.

Zatara is glaring daggers at Constantine's back, eyes narrowed.

While flash had no context, having just arrived back with his food to sit with the rest, he appropriately tenses as well, from just one glance around the room.

Superman and Wonder woman aren't different from batman, not as discreet as some are trying to be and just staring at the two.

Slightly amused, Danny decided to entertain the question.

"Unlike ghosts and the undead, halfas are created and not born." He explains, looking at the man when he writes it down.

Who knew the infinity realm were this closed off that John Constantine had to get information from the source itself just to keep updated?

"Care to elaborate?"

Clicking his tongue, he does so.

"Halfas get created during extreme circumstances, it has to be right place, right time and correct amount of ectoplasm." Danny catches the lollipop that Batman throws at him, sending the bat a quick smile.

"Not everyone can become a halfa, our race is a rarity amongst the dead."Constantine raises a brow, pursing his lips. "There are only 3 of you right? Is that a normal amount in the realms?"

Another click. "No, thousands of years ago, when our kind reached its peak of over hundreds of people, Pariah Dark happened."

He briefly shares a glance with Martian Manhunter, he wonders if anyone here sent out a message of phantom story time? Why were they all lounging around?

"It was genocide. He killed off an entire species just because he felt threatened." He shrugs.

Constantine jolts, eyes clear as if he'd just connected the dots.

"So his downfall wasn't only because of rights of conquest but— the reason no one joined nor fought between you and the old King was because it was a revenge kill."

Danny ponders the words over, nodding. Yeah that sounds right.

"Many aren't surprised that Pariah Dark went berserk. It was kind of predictable, considering his soul was brought to the Infinity Realms after he'd died in the Phantom Zone as you know it."

Hal straightens up, Batman tenses and Diana leans forward.

"This previous King of yours– he was a past prisoner of Aethyr's Mind?"

The halfa nods, uncertain now that he'd stumbled upon unknown territory.

"Yes, the Phantom Zone and the Infinity Realms are sister spaces. Were you not aware?"

They were not, he quickly finds out.

Fumbling with his words, mind working overdrive as he sorts through information, he speaks again. "They are the two sides of the same coin, Phantom Zone being non-habitable while the Ghost Zone is filled with unalive."

He briefly struggles with his words, genuinely taken off guard with the lack of knowledge.

"Aethyr isn't just a being, but someone who is connected to the realm itself. Its similar to my position as King of the ghost zone." He summons his crown of ice to simple gesture.

"Besides! Phantom Zone, Zero Zone? Anti-infinite? That's literally the opposite of the Ghost Zone, the Infinite Realms!" he exclaims, throwing his hands up.

"Could you tell us more of your realm?" Superman asks, voice gentle and non threatening. "Some of us have been in the Phantom Zone, so hearing that there is a place being the complete opposite?"

The halfa nods in understanding. "Sure, why not?"

Three simple words yet everyone feels the trust put on them with such information.

"The entire realm is an ever shifting space, we categorise eith the sectors of each afterlife. From the Greeks to the Yetis and different eras."

—

(The tale of his realm lasts longer than expected, it is only when Hal started to get ready to leave does Danny address a certain area in his zone.

"The... Emerald Space is also a sector of the Infinity realm. The sector itself is formed in a sphere like form, we aren't sure what's inside since the fallen lanterns keep to themselves rather."

Hal froze, eyes catching the ghosts, and looked away again. He'd tell OA of this, but now he was going home.

Danny watched him leave and declared it down for now, free for more question the next time and left just as fast.

At least Constantine and Zatara can update their books now.)

[whereserpentswalk]

People don't realize how liminal it is to be a time traveler. How you don't ever really feel like you're in the time you are. Even when you're in your own time, everything is off, your coat was something you bought in interwar France, the book you're reading on the train is from a bookstore you had to visit in Victorian London, even your necklace was given to you by a Neolithic shaman, from a culture the rest of the world can never know. You find yourself acting strange even when in the present, much less in the past you have to work in.

You remember meeting a eunuch in 10th century China, and having him be one of the only people smart and observant enough to realize you were from a diffrent time. You could talk honestly with him, though still you couldn't reveal too much about your time. And it was still so strange hearing him talk casually about work and mention plotting assassinations. You're not allowed to but you still visit him sometimes.

You remember that the few times you were allowed to tell someone everything it was tragic. You knew a young woman who lived in Pompeii, who you had gotten close to, a few days before she would inevitably die. On your last day there you looked into her eyes, knowing soon they'd be stone and ash, that the beauty of her hair would be washed away by burning magma. And you hugged her, and told her that you wanted her to be safe, and told her she was wonderful and that you wanted her to be comfortable and happy. And you let her tongue know the joy of 21st century chocolate, and her eyes see the beauty of animation, knowing she deserved to have those joys, knowing it wouldn't matter soon. And you hugged her the last time, and told her she deserved happiness. And when you left without taking her it was like you were killing her yourself.

You want to take home everyone you're attached to. There's a college student you befriended in eighteen fifties Boston. And you can't help but see him try to solve problems you know humanity is centuries away from solving. And you just want to tell him. And it's not just that, the way he talked about the books and plays he likes, his sense of humor. There's so many people you want him to meet.

You feel the same way about a young woman you met on a viking age longship. She tells stories to her fellow warriors and traders, stories that will never fully get written down, stories that she tells so uniquely and so well. She has so many great ideas. You want so dearly to take her to somewhere she can share her stories, or where she can take classes with other writers, where she can be somewhere safe instead of being out at sea. She'll talk about wanting to be able to do something, or meet people, and you know you're so close to being able to take her, but you never can, unless she accidently finds out way too much then you can't.

You remember the longship that you met that young storyteller on. You were there before, two years ago for you, ten years later for the people on it. The young woman who told you stories wasn't there ten years later, you had been told why then but you only realize now, her uncle, who ran the ship, had been one of the first people to convert to Christianity in his nation. He killed her, either for not converting or for sleeping with women, you're not sure, but he killed her, and bragged about it when you met him ten years later.

You talk to the storyteller on the longship, ask her about the myths you're there to ask her about, the myths that she loves to tell. You look into her eyes knowing it's probably less then a year until her uncle takes her life. You ask her if you think that those who die of murder go to Valhalla. She tells you she hopes not, she doesn't see Valhalla as a gift but as a duty, she hopes for herself to go to Hel, where she wouldn't have to fight anymore. You slip and admit you're talking about her, telling her that you hope that's where she goes when she's killed. You hope to yourself you'll be forced to take her to the twenty first century, you're tempted even to make it worse, you want to have ruined her enough to be able to save her.

[serpentface]

how do you come up with the ways cultures in your setting stylize people/animals/the world in general in their artwork, i.e. jewlery, rock carvings, statues, etc? Each culture in your world seems to have a very unique "art style" and I love it a lot - makes them seem that much more 'real'. This is something I struggle with a lot in my own worldbuilding and I'd love to pick your brain if possible 😁

I think a starting point is to have a research process based in the material realities of the culture you're designing for. Ask yourself questions like:

Where do they live? What's the climate/ecosystem(s) they are based in? What geographic features are present/absent?

What is their main subsistence method? (hunter gatherer, seasonal pastoralist, nomadic pastoralist, settled agriculturalist, a mix, etc)

What access to broader trade networks do they have and to whom? Are there foreign materials that will be easily accessible in trade and common in use, or valuable trade materials used sparingly in limited capacities?

Etc

And then do some research based on the answers, in order to get a sense of what materials they would have routine access to (ie dyes, metal, textiles, etc) and other possible variables that would shape how the art is made and what it's used for. This is just a foundational step and won't likely play much into designing a Style.

If you narrow these questions down very specifically, (ie in the context of the Korya post- grassland based mounted nomads, pastoralist and hunter-gatherer subsistence, access to wider trade networks and metals), you can direct your research to specific real world instances that fit this general idea. This is not to lift culturally specific concepts from the real world and slap them into your own setting, but to notice commonalities this lifestyle enforces - (ie in the previous example- mounted nomadic peoples are highly mobile and need to easily carry their wealth (often on clothing and tack) therefore small, elaborate decorative artwork that can easily be carried from place to place is a very likely feature)

For the details of the art itself, I come up with loose 'style guides' (usually just in my head) and go from there.

Here's some example questions for forming a style (some are more baseline than others)

Are geometric patterns favored? Organic patterns? Representative patterns (flowers, animals, stars, etc)? Abstract patterns?

Is there favored material(s)? Beads, bone, clay, metals, stones, etc.

When depicting people/animals, is realism favored? Heavy stylization? The emotional impression of an animal? Are key features accentuated?

How perspective typically executed? Does art attempt to capture 3d depth? Does it favor showing the whole body in 2 dimensions (ie much of Ancient Egyptian art, with the body shown in a mix of profile and forward facing perspective so all key attributes are shown)? Will limbs overlap? Are bodies shown static? In motion?

Does artwork of people attempt to beautify them? Does it favor the culture's conception of the ideal body?

Are there common visual motifs? Important symbols? Key subject matters?

What is the art used for? Are its functions aesthetic, tutelary, spiritual, magical? (Will often exist in combination, or have different examples for each purpose)

Who is represented? Is there interest in everyday people? Does art focus on glorifying warriors, heroes, kings?

Are there conventions for representing important figures? (IE gods/kings/etc being depicted larger than culturally lesser subjects)

Is there visual shorthand to depict objects/concepts that are difficult to execute with clarity (the sun, moon, water), or are invisible (wind, the soul), or have no physical component (speech)?

Etc

Deciding on answers to any of these questions will at least give you a unique baseline, and you can fill in the rest of the gaps and specify a style further until it is distinct. Many of these questions are not mutually exclusive, both in the sense of elements being combined (patterns with both geometric and organic elements) or a culture having multiple visual styles (3d art objects having unique features, religious artwork having its own conventions, etc).

Also when you're getting in depth, you should have cultural syncretism in mind. Cultures that routinely interact (whether this interaction is exchange or exploitation) inevitably exchange ideas, which can be especially visible in art. Doing research on how this synthesizing of ideas works in practice is very helpful- what is adopted or left out from an external influence, what is retained from an internal influence, what is unique to this synthesis, AND WHY. (I find Greco-Buddhist art really interesting, that's one of many such examples)

Looking at real world examples that fit your parameters can be helpful (ie if I've decided on geometric patterns in my 'style guide', I'll look at actual geometric patterns). And I strongly encourage trying to actually LEARN about what you're seeing. All art exists in a context, and having an understanding of how the context shapes art, how art does and doesn't relate to broader aspects of a society, etc, can help you when synthesizing your own.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Early Forms of Handwriting

MAJUSCULE

Relatively large letters generally contained within a single pair of imaginary horizontal lines; now usually called capital letters.

The Greek and Latin alphabets were both originally written in this way.

MINUSCULE

Relatively small letters whose parts often extend above and below a pair of imaginary horizontal lines; now usually called small letters or lower-case letters.

Minuscule writing was a gradual development, known in Greek from the 7th–8th centuries AD.

UNCIAL

A form of professional writing used in Greek and Latin manuscripts during the 4th–8th centuries AD.

The style consists of large (the name means ‘inch-high’), simple, rounded letters.

A later development, now known as half-uncial or semi-uncial, prepared the way for modern small letters.

Half-uncial is often found in early manuscripts from the British Isles, where the style of writing developed an ‘insular’ character of its own.

CURSIVE

Handwriting in which the characters are joined in a series of rounded, flowing strokes, which promotes ease and speed.

Often now known colloquially as ‘script’ (US) or ‘joined-up writing’ (UK), it was widely used from the 4th century BC, and eventually replaced uncial and half-uncial as the handwriting norm.

DUAL ALPHABET

The use of capital letters and small letters in a single system.

This development took place during the renaissance associated with the reign of Emperor Charlemagne (742–814), as part of the script which was later called Carolingian minuscule.

Carolingian writing, promoted throughout Europe, was an important influence on later handwriting styles.

For example, modern Roman printed letters derive from a classical style, based on the Carolingian, introduced in Italy by humanist printers in the early 15th century.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References ⚜ Worldbuilding ⚜ Typography

[apathetic-kiss]

Kerch History Museum (Section 2B, Ketterdam Artifact Archives)

Photograph of Inej "Wraith" Ghafa and an unknown individual crossing the rooftops of Ketterdam. Ghafa was infamous due her ties with the Dregs and her association with Kaz "Dirtyhands" Brekker, but would later go on to become one of the most renowned pirate captains known for taking down hundreds of slaver ships and rescuing thousands of kidnapped individuals being trafficked to Kerch under exploitative indenture contracts. (For more information, see Exhibit 21: Indenture Laws & Kerch's History of Slavery, Exhibit 23: The Dregs & Other Notable Ketterdam Gangs, and Exhibit 26: Sankta Inej & Other Modern Saints) Obtained from an anonymous donor 4.25" x 3.14" Photographer Unknown Artifact #24383

[writingwithcolor]

My alternate universe fantasy colonial Hong Kong is more authoritarian and just as racist but less homophobic than in real life, should I change that?

@floatyhands asked:

I’m a Hongkonger working on a magical alternate universe dystopia set in what is basically British colonial Hong Kong in the late 1920s. My main character is a young upper middle-class Eurasian bisexual man.  I plan to keep the colony’s historical racial hierarchy in this universe, but I also want the fantasy quirks to mean that unlike in real life history, homosexuality was either recently decriminalized, or that the laws are barely enforced, because my boy deserves a break. Still, the institutions are quite homophobic, and this relative tolerance might not last. Meanwhile, due to other divergences (e.g. eldritch horrors, also the government’s even worse mishandling of the 1922 Seamen's Strike and the 1925 Canton-Hong Kong Strike), the colonial administration is a lot more authoritarian than it was in real history. This growing authoritarianism is not exclusive to the colony, and is part of a larger global trend in this universe.  I realize these worldbuilding decisions above may whitewash colonialism, or come off as choosing to ignore one colonial oppression in favor of exaggerating another. Is there any advice as to how I can address this issue? (Maybe I could have my character get away by bribing the cops, though institutional corruption is more associated with the 1960s?) Thank you!

Historical Precedent for Imperialistic Gay Rights

There is a recently-published book about this topic that might actually interest you: Racism And The Making of Gay Rights by Laurie Marhoefer (note: I have yet to read it, it’s on my list). It essentially describes how the modern gay rights movement was built from colonialism and imperialism. 

The book covers Magnus Hirschfeld, a German sexologist in the early 1900s, and (one of) his lover(s), Li Shiu Tong, who he met in British Shanghai. Magnus is generally considered to have laid the groundwork for a lot of gay rights, and his research via the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was a target of Nazi book-burnings, but he was working with imperial governments in an era where the British Empire was still everywhere. 

Considering they both ended up speaking to multiple world leaders about natural human sexual variation both in terms of intersex issues and sexual attraction, your time period really isn’t that far off for people beginning to be slightly more open-minded—while also being deeply imperialist in other ways.

The thing about this particular time period is homosexuality as we know it was recently coming into play, starting with the trial of Oscar Wilde and the rise of Nazism. But between those two is a pretty wildly fluctuating gap of attitudes.

Oscar Wilde’s trial is generally considered the period where gay people, specifically men who loved men, started becoming a group to be disliked for disrupting social order. It was very public, very scandalous, and his fall from grace is one of the things that drove so many gay and/or queer men underground. It also helped produce some of the extremely queercoded classical literature of the Victorian and Edwardian eras (ex: Dracula), because so many writers were exploring what it meant to be seen as such negative forces. A lot of people hated Oscar Wilde for bringing the concept to such a public discussion point, when being discreet had been so important.

But come the 1920s, people were beginning to wonder if being gay was that bad, and Mangus Hirschfeld managed to do a world tour of speaking come the 1930s, before all of that was derailed by wwii. He (and/or Li Shiu Tong) were writing papers that were getting published and sent to various health departments about how being gay wasn’t an illness, and more just an “alternative” way of loving others. 

This was also the era of Boston Marriages where wealthy single women lived together as partners (I’m sure there’s an mlm-equivalent but I cannot remember or find it). People were a lot less likely to care if you kept things discreet, so there might be less day to day homophobia than one would expect. Romantic friendships were everywhere, and were considered the ideal—the amount of affection you could express to your same-sex best friend was far above what is socially tolerable now.

Kaz Rowe has a lot of videos with cited bibliographies about various queer disasters [affectionate] of the late 1800s/early 1900s, not to mention a lot of other cultural oddities of the Victorian era (and how many of those attitudes have carried into modern day) so you can start to get the proper terms to look it up for yourself.

I know there’s a certain… mistrust of specifically queer media analysts on YouTube in the current. Well. Plagiarism/fact-creation scandal (if you don’t know about the fact-creation, check out Todd in the Shadows). I recommend Kaz because they have citations on screen and in the description that aren’t whole-cloth ripped off from wikipedia’s citation list (they’ve also been published via Getty Publications, a museum press). 

For audio-preferring people (hi), a video is more accessible than text, and sometimes the exposure to stuff that’s able to pull exact terms can finally get you the resources you need. If text is more accessible, just jump to the description box/transcript and have fun. Consider them and their work a starting place, not a professor. 

There is always a vulnerability in learning things, because we can never outrun our own confirmation bias and we always have limited time to chase down facts and sources—we can only do our best and be open to finding facts that disprove what we researched prior.

Colonialism’s Popularity Problem

Something about colonialism that I’ve rarely discussed is how some colonial empires actually “allow” certain types of “deviance” if that deviance will temporarily serve its ends. Namely, when colonialism needs to expand its territory, either from landing in a new area or having recently messed up and needing to re-charm the population.

By that I mean: if a fascist group is struggling to maintain popularity, it will often conditionally open its doors to all walks of life in order to capture a greater market. It will also pay its spokespeople for the privilege of serving their ends, often very well. Authoritarians know the power of having the token supporter from a marginalized group on payroll: it both opens you up directly to that person’s identity, and sways the moderates towards going “well they allow [person/group] so they can’t be that bad, and I prefer them.”

Like it or not, any marginalized group can have its fascist members, sometimes even masquerading as the progressives. Being marginalized does not automatically equate to not wanting fascism, because people tend to want fascist leaders they agree with instead of democracy and coalition building. People can also think that certain people are exaggerating the horrors of colonialism, because it doesn’t happen to good people, and look, they accept their friends who are good people, so they’re fine. 

A dominant fascist group can absolutely use this to their advantage in order to gain more foot soldiers, which then increases their raw numbers, which puts them in enough power they can stop caring about opening their ranks, and only then do they turn on their “deviant” members. By the time they turn, it’s usually too late, and there’s often a lot of feelings of betrayal because the spokesperson (and those who liked them) thought they were accepted, instead of just used.

You said it yourself that this colonial government is even stricter than the historical equivalent—which could mean it needs some sort of leverage to maintain its popularity. “Allowing” gay people to be some variation of themselves would be an ideal solution to this, but it would come with a bunch of conditions. What those conditions are I couldn’t tell you—that’s for your own imagination, based off what this group’s ideal is, but some suggestions are “follow the traditional dating/friendship norms”, “have their own gender identity slightly to the left of the cis ideal”, and/or “pretend to never actually be dating but everyone knows and pretends to not care so long as they don’t out themselves”—that would signal to the reader that this is deeply conditional and about to all come apart. 

It would, however, mean your poor boy is less likely to get a break, because he would be policed to be the “acceptable kind of gay” that the colonial government is currently tolerating (not unlike the way the States claims to support white cis same-sex couples in the suburbs but not bipoc queer-trans people in polycules). It also provides a more salient angle for this colonial government to come crashing down, if that’s the way this narrative goes.

Colonial governments are often looking for scapegoats; if gay people aren’t the current one, then they’d be offered a lot more freedom just to improve the public image of those in power. You have the opportunity to have the strikers be the current scapegoats, which would take the heat off many other groups—including those hit by homophobia.

In Conclusion

Personally, I’d take a more “gays for Trump” attitude about the colonialism and their apparent “lack” of homophobia—they’re just trying to regain popularity after mishandling a major scandal, and the gay people will be on the outs soon enough.

You could also take the more nuanced approach and see how imperialism shaped modern gay rights and just fast-track that in your time period, to give it the right flavour of imperialism. A lot of BIPOC lgbtqa+ people will tell you the modern gay rights movement is assimilationalist, colonialist, and other flavours of ick, so that angle is viable.

You can also make something that looks more accepting to the modern eye by leaning heavily on romantic friendships that encouraged people waxing poetic for their “best friends”, keeping the “lovers” part deeply on the down low, but is still restrictive and people just don’t talk about it in public unless it’s in euphemisms or among other same-sex-attracted people because there’s nothing wrong with loving your best friend, you just can’t go off and claim you’re a couple like a heterosexual couple is.

Either way, you’re not sanitizing colonialism inherently by having there be less modern-recognized homophobia in this deeply authoritarian setting. You just need to add some guard rails on it so that, sure, your character might be fine if he behaves, but there are still “deviants” that the government will not accept. 

Because that’s, in the end, one of the core tenants that makes a government colonial: its acceptance of groups is frequently based on how closely you follow the rules and police others for not following them, and anyone who isn’t their ideal person will be on the outs eventually. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have a facade of pretending those rules are totally going to include people who are to the left of those ideals, if those people fit in every other ideal, or you’re safe only if you keep it quiet.

~ Leigh

[prokopetz]

The trouble with self-consciously edgy urban fantasy RPGs which are explicitly set in the real world is that they always get fixated on the Second World War, and there's literally no good way to speculate about whether Hitler was a vampire or whatever – not only is it tasteless, it's done. It was cliché even in the 1990s, and it hasn't become any less cliché since. Like, at least switch up the war – I want to see an edgy urban fantasy RPG whose Secret History™ revolves around the proposition that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was from space.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Has anyone asked George what's the tax policy of any of the asoiaf kings (and queen)?

You haven't read the books, have you. Does the dwarf's penny mean nothing to you? Bran in ACOK and Manderly's silver? Littlefinger and his embezzlement? Cersei in AFFC and the Iron Bank? Dany in ADWD and the olive trees and the fighting pits? Tywin and his relationship with Aerys, who raised taxes and tariffs despite Tywin's objections, then blamed his Hand when lords and merchants complained and lowered the taxes so that they would praise him? Alton Butterwell and Edwell Celtigar, hugely unpopular masters of coin because of their taxes? King Jaehaerys and his "Lord of Air" Rego Draz? Rhaenyra aka "King Maegor with teats" and Bartimos Celtigar, murdered horribly for his taxes? No, seriously, have you read anything at all?

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[elbiotipo]

Worldbuilding: Galactic Empires

My only complaint about the Prequels is that they needed MORE politics

If you've watched Dune recently, you must have noticed the whole Emperor and space noble families thing. And yes, it's likely you heard that in WH40k too… and I HOPE you know that's where the God Emperor came from, since WH40k took "inspiration" from everywhere from Dune to Star Wars. Which also has a Galactic Empire. Like so many other science fiction franchises.

In fact, if you're a science fiction fan, it's very likely that you're familiar with space or galactic empires, they seem to be common as dragons in fantasy. Despite the fact that an empire doesn't sound very futuristic, does it?

Where did all these Galactic Empires come from? Are they just a narrative tool or are they an actual possibility? How would states and societies work in space? Let's find out, and maybe I can give you some ideas on how to write fun galactic "empires" from both a narrative and plausibility perspective.

This is going be a long post. Perhaps my longest yet. But I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Click down to continue.

First of all, where did these space emperors come from? In another post, I've talked about the influence of the idea of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in English-language fiction. However, in science fiction, I would say the influence is more direct. The Foundation trilogy of Isaac Asimov, one of the foundational (lol) works of science fiction, was intended by the author, very explicitly, as a retelling of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in a science fiction setting. He probably wasn't the first to think about a space empire, I'm very sure the term is older, but he certainly popularized it as a staple of science fiction. Now, if your contact with science fiction comes from movies, when you hear Galactic Empire you're of course thinking about Star Wars. But yes, Star Wars is also the same retelling, because Lucas was inspired in both Asimov AND Gibbon, even though I think we should appreciate Lucas' ability to bring it to life in the screen. Certainly, Isaac Asimov wasn't the first or the last to take inspiration in history to tell stories about the future.

The most influential science fiction work of all time.

At this point you're probably telling me (or not, I don't know you) about all other sorts of science fiction works that DON'T have galactic empires, or better yet, those that don't just transpose historical societies into the far future and imagine something entirely new (my personal recommendations on this area are Banks and LeGuin). And you'd be right. But the concept of a space empire seems popular and long-lived, much like feudalism in the fantasy genre, everyone has a picture of a sorts when a videogame or a book talks about a "galactic empire" or "galactic republic" or a "federation", an "empire" much like a shorthand name for "a country In Space", regardless of the presence of an actual Emperor or not. And so, it's worth exploring how this trope could, or not, work, so we can see the possible alternatives or more fun ways to approach it.

Besides, that's the title of the post. Galactic Empires.

So, let's approach this from the perspectives of Space, Time (or to keep with the theme, Spacetime) and Technology, and lastly, the most fun part, we'll explore some fun variations on this idea of galactic empires and societies.

Space:

Space is big, and I won't quote the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy here, it would be groanworthy at this point. Let's do a quick exercise instead. Let's image a "modest" space empire, not even galactic, 2000 light-years across. Sounds quite big, it encompasses most of the visible stars we can see from Earth… however, if you project it into a galactic map, it's actually a very small piece of sky, actually 2% of the entire galaxy which is about 100.000 ly across. Now, according to the Atlas of the Universe, there are 600 million stars in a 5000 ly radius from the Sun. Jesus Christ. This is actually hard to estimate accurately as the true number of red dwarfs and brown dwarfs, the dimmest stars, are hard to count, but we already know those have planetary systems as complex as our own Solar System, even planets that could bear life. Let's scale back to our 2000 ly across space empire, again, just a small cozy corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, something that would look like a small, even tiny, nation in any setting of a galactic scale. This gives us 240 million stars (from the estimated 200 billion stars of the galaxy) in this space, which is still completely insane but let's work with that.

From Atlas of the Universe, so you can compare and contrast, the stars 2000 ly from the sun (ONLY the brightest ones), and the entire Milky Way. Notice how small 2000 light years truly are at that scale.

Even if I just told you that all of those systems might be as complex and rich as the Solar System, let's rather arbitrarily say only 5% of those 240 million are worth of note. Not necessarily having life (no way I'm getting into that yet), just worth visiting or living in for the resources or the views or the cantinas… whatever. That's 12 million star systems. Okay, let's refine this further. Let's say of those 12 million, most of them are the equivalent of gas stations or farmsteads, a couple thousand people at most. The REAL places where the action happens are the systems or worlds where millions of people live, and those are few and far between (this makes both common and narrative sense, as people tend to cluster in population centers where trade, resources, etc. are). Let's say, and let's refine this further so I don't get outrageous numbers, the average population of those systems is 100 million (about the size of Mexico, Vietnam or Japan. Many sci-fi works throw worlds of billions like Earth like nothing). And those systems are… uh, like 2% of THOSE 5% 'systems of note' (a flimsly concept already but play along). That's 2% of 12 million. We got 240.000 systems or worlds the population size of entire countries, with all that implies (economy, culture, politics). Of course, 240.000 multiplied 100 million gives this speculative fictional empire a total population of… (Jesus Christ, not the scientific notations), 2.4e+13, or TWENTY FOUR TRILLION PEOPLE.

Let's wind back and remember I tried my best to make a "small" empire for a galactic-sized setting, 2000 light-years across, that's just from here to Orion's Nebula for Gagarin's sake! A trillion people is just outside the realm of my imagination, or pretty much anyone's. Can you imagine any kind of goverment system that would be enough to provide any kind of meaningful governance to 24 trillion people? In the case of a space empire, can you imagine a single space emperor, a single person, deciding over them? Keep in mind that emperors don't rule on their own (we'll talk about that), they need bureacrats to make their will done, and vassals to govern their territories in their stead. This would apply even in democratic systems, you need representatives and civil servants and more.

Let's scale back a bit before I go insane. Instead of assuming territory, let's go with population. Assume a spherical cow space empire of… 40 billion people, that's reasonable right? You can picture that in your head? Five times the population of current Earth, no biggie, we can work with that, it's all cool. Now, how big would a goverment for such a population would have to be? We actually have reasonable answers. China has about 10 million civil servants for a population of 1.4 billion people, but that's only the administrators, not including all the teachers, healthcare workers, security forces, laborers, etc. employed by the state. India has 6.4 million for about the same population. Okay, so easy math, let's say that this space empire has 6 million bureacrats for 1 billion people, for our empire of 40 billion people, that gives us a total of 240 million… just bureacrats, nothing else. Yes, you could reduce that with technology by say, half. It still means an entire Mexico-sized country of bureacrats. Imagine.

Entire worlds of this.

NOW I WILL STOP THROWING NUMBERS AT YOU, and let's just think about what this means. If we assume a space empire like the ones common in science fiction, or just any kind of… goverment at all, we're talking about, at the lowest estimates, entire countries worth of state employees, if not whole EARTHS of bureacrats. You can guess how things can get really weird fast. Current goverments as we know them just won't work at all it even if technology gets more powerful. Leaving aside, for now, things like god-like AI adminstration (yeah, have you seen what they are like now?)… to exhert ANY kind of control, FTL or not (more on that below) you would need a very, very autonomous empire, to the point it might as well not exist at all. Why take orders from A Guy who is not only far away but also has no hope at all of actually enforcing them in any meaningful sense? Why call yourself part of his "empire" that not only cannot enforce anything upon you, but also cannot benefit you in any way? Big question, of course, the benefit of a galactic or even smaller empire, but we'll discuss that later.

What could work, however, is that instead of a centralized state like we concieve it today, or even a loose confederation, even loose alliances, even pretty much anything… 'empires' (as in 'countries') In Space could be "united" by common ideas and culture instead of any institution. Perhaps not even a written delcration or constitution, but shared ideas: a culture, a religion, an ideology. Lots of different strong mini-states (that might mean billions of people…) that all claim to be part of the same "civilization", but share no goverment at all at all, just the same 'idea', in a looser way that even the most decentralized goverments you can think of. You can say "well all countries are made up" but these would barely qualify as even that. Not even the Holy Roman Empire was this fake.

Perhaps even a single person as a symbolic focus point of unity? Which would be actually a score for the proponents of galactic empires in the most literal sense. But at the same time, such an Emperor would be completely powerless to interact with the entire galaxy. His plans for, I don't fucking know, education reform or tax breaks, would have to be filtered by literal millions of bureaucrats and vassals that at that point might do whatever the hell on his name. Military-wise, his armies would count as nations of their own. However, the overall guidance of a single person (or constitution…) as a symbol might make otherwise disparate worlds to collaborate on the same causes, being part of the same greater whole no matter the distance. So maybe, instead of a Galactic Emperor, a Space Pope?

OH MY GOD-EMPEROR WAS THE IMPERIUM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? Probably not, but also yes, let's keep talking.

By the way, I'm sure you're tired of big numbers now, but I did one possible calculation for the whole galaxy, a true Galactic Empire. Asuming just 0.2% (400 million) of the 200 billion stars are populated, with an average population of one million, the size of the smallest countries that aren't micronations. The total galactic population would be 40 trillion, or 40,000,000,000,000. Five thousand Earth populations.

Time:

Or rather, space-time. We'll talk about both, because what concern us is the speed of information and trade, and that also limits the size of our empires.

I'm sure you know by now faster-than-light travel is impossible. Most of space based science fiction has it, of course, for narrative purposes. We don't want Our Heroes to spend two thousand years to get to the lair of the Evil Space Tyrant, I don't either, and I'll discuss FTL soon. But let's start with no-FTL here, just like in real life, and a smaller "empire", much, much smaller than my previous examples. A mere 250 light years across. Let's not even calculate population now.

This, quite logically, means that the fastest your communications would flow is at light speed. So if your emperor issues orders to a nearby world, say, 5 ly away, you will get an answer 5 years later. For a more reasonable distance of 60 ly, you would know the results 60 years from the descendants of those who recieved the order (now, assume however they keep in constant conversation, just with a 60 year delay), and by then, things there would have changed 60 years from the capital. You get the idea, Einstein sucks, don't need to elaborate more. At first glance, this might be another point for old-style feudal star empires, though. What better way to guarantee your empire is working well over centuries than by having an hereditary class of nobles loyal to you, no matter how much time passes (results may vary). Of course, how would you even enforce that? Rebels might overthrow them and you'll learn about it a century later, and you'll have to send ships to quash the rebellion… or would you?

Is there a point to send ships to conquer other worlds in such a situation? What kind of resources (ah, the lifeblood of empires) could you control with such an empire where transport takes decades and industry is so developed you could, theoretically, make manufactured goods yourself? I'm assuming you can, because you can build spaceships to get there in the first place (not unreasonable), but what would justify creating an interstellar goverment controlling people, trade, resources, over light-decades? Normally, it's at this point where sci-fi authors make up Something (what Atomic Rockets calls "McGuffinite") to justify interstellar trade. In Dune, for example, it's Spice, which is kind of like, to steal a joke, petroleum mixed with cocaine. But otherwise, in a no-FTL setting (so, real life as far as we know) there isn't really the incentive to conquer or even form a goverment of any but the looser kind with other worlds. Trade, maybe, but those are long-term investments, it's difficult to think what kind of good or service would be so in demand would justify it. Especially when you consider that light-speed is your upper limit, and ships might be actually way slower than that. And I'm not even gonna begin to touch relativistic effects.

I was going to make a joke about blowing a quarter of your GDP in Star Destroyers, but have you heard of the South American Dreadnought Race? One of our dumbest moments down here, surely.

Add FTL, and things change, of course. Even very slow ships, that would take months to transverse a dozen light years, would be able to justify trade in luxury goods and passengers, for instance. This is not too far from real-life either, after all, European colonial empires had travel times in the months, and they had to install local administrations such as viceroys because of this, yet rhose places they were considered part of the same empire (most European empires could be rather considered a collection of "countries" and colonies, look at all the divisions of the Spanish Empire for instance). Faster and cheaper ships would of course, mean even more trade (here, I'm using 'trade' as 'communication between worlds', not necessarily implying capitalism, it could be mercantilism or even a command economy) between worlds, even perhaps the classic trope of agrarian and mining worlds feeding the rich core worlds. The Open Veins of Latin America In Space. Fun.

The speed of your ships and communications not only determines trade, but the power projection of your state (we can discuss 'stateless' societies too, there's plenty of fun to be had). If, again, your Galactic Emperor makes a Galactic Proclamation from the Galactic Palace near the Galactic Core (let's roll with that) and he has no FTL communications of any kind, it means that his commanding voice would reach the outer edges of the galaxy 100.000 years after, that is, almost ten times the history of agriculture on Earth. If he, however, has access to ships that can cross the galaxy in say, months, yes, perhaps he can have a series of vassals all over the stars (perhaps, we'll see…), and the faster things are, the closer they resemble our current fast-paced society, but not quite, given the available resources and space in… SPACE and the possible population, as we discussed above. As you can see, the speed of your FTL or lack of it determines everything.

There is another, more *realistic* option. Instead of individual FTL ships, you could have wormhole portals connecting worlds. This is more realistic in the sense that it's theoretically possible (though we have no idea on how to make one), but it also has some interesting implications. First of all, there is an implication that such a wormhole network would be expensive to build and maintain, requiring highly complex technology, material (I'm not sure what the hell exotic matter really is) and production methods, well, more high than what you'd expect from the usual. Second, it would be something preferably fixed, with hubs, planned routes and regular transit (and for writers, it easily allows you to map your universe). Such networks would be vital pieces of infrastructure, built and maintained by central authorities, drawing routes and transport hubs in space. Yes, indeed, almost like… space railroads.

OH MY ASTRAL EXPRESS WAS HONKAI STAR RAIL REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (last joke I promise)

There is also a very strange effect about wormhole networks. Time is relative, as you know, and this is not a metaphor, it literally "flows" differently on how fast you're moving. The "universal" "speed" of "time" "seems" to be the speed at which matter moves in an expanding universe (red-shift and blue shift) as I understand it, but as you approach light-speed, time flows differently in your frame of reference. Wormholes are strange in the sense that they connect space AND time, the observable time in both sides of a wormhole would be the same, and as such, places connected by a wormhole network will "be" at the same "time". This has been talked about by some authors who have considered about wormholes in the context of space civilizations, and it's called (STOP!) Empire Time. So a space empire might not only imply a state ruling over a population and a territory, but also over a time. I have no idea how this works and it frankly makes my head hurt, but here is an analysis of transversable wormholes if you want to indulge or hit your head against a wall.

Technology:

As an extension from the previous section: Of course there is no working FTL method known in real life, as far as we know, light-speed is the upper limit for everything. Instead of constraining you as a writer, this can be one of your biggest assets.

Because if you're doing a space setting, the existence of faster-than-light travel and its speed is the most important decision you can take about it.

Got that? Did I emphasize that enough? You don't need to actually explain HOW your FTL system works, you can do some research and invent something, but you need to be clear, in your head, what it can DO: How far and how fast it can take you. A FTL system that takes months to go from star to star will be very different to one that takes hours to span the Galaxy like the hyperdrive of the Millenium Falcon. A FTL system that is cheap and can be installed in any tiny ship like in the Elite videogame would be different from the ones in Dune where interstellar travel requires enormous motherships and lots of drugs, or a wormhole network that needs massive infrastructure maintainment and probably a railway starway worker's union, or the case of no FTL at all. This is, again, the most important decision you could make for your setting, bar none. Got that? Let's continue.

FTL is perhaps the only place in science fiction where I don't care about how it works, only about how fast it goes

Now, technology. Space empires, are of course, not possible without space travel being cheap enough (not talking about FTL, just regular space travel): shipping stuff to space should be about the same as shipping stuff by airliner or, well, ships. This is not unreasonable. Efforts are being made right now to lower the cost to access space, and while space agencies like NASA might look expensive, they are not NEARLY as expensive as the money wasted in say, stealth jet fighters or fucking advertising (people who say 'why spend so much money in space when we could fix our problems on Earth' seem to forget about that all the time. But I digress.). A technologically advanced, wealthy (as in production, not literal dollars) society could easily afford as much space exploration as they wish with no real effect at all in their quality of life, indeed, it would improve it. Space isn't as expensive as it seems. At its very, very core, a spaceship is just steel and propellant.

And steel and propellant are very, very easy (once you got the technical research to do it) to get in space. Asteroids are MADE of iron and metals, a single asteroid is richer than all of Earth's mines combined. Hydrogen is literally the most abundant element in the universe, and water is on plentiful supply (no need to steal planets for water) on comets and icy asteroids and moons. Carbon is apparently widely available in carbonaceous asteroids, and in our own Solar System, Titan, the moon of Saturn, is basically covered in hydrocarbons (yes, OIL IN SPACE). All those resources could be very much in demand for manufacturing on a planet like for example, a future Earth that has taken its industry up to space. What's more, it's only bringing stuff up from Earth/an Earth-like or more massive planet (fun sci-fi term for you: "down the gravity well") that's really expensive. Once you get there, you can get anywhere with enough acceleration and propellant. Once there is space infrastructure and industry (and I get a feeling that it might get up fast, given that space technology would need to be very autonomous and reliable), it can sustain itself without a mother planet. In fact, if there's something I imagine would be considered a luxury in spacer life, it would be truly organic things; plants, wood, meat, wool, and so much more.

i am average astronaut man i work 15 hours in the asteroid mines to buy one burger

Which brings us to the big question; what kind of life would be out there? After all, I gave you numbers of millions and millions of worlds, it's hard to imagine at least a few of those don't have alien life. This is the biggest outstanding question in astrobiology currently and so I won't pretend to even try to answer it (my personal opinion, if you must, is that complex Earth life is extremely rare, but by sheer number of planets, it might exist by hundreds of thousands in our galaxy alone). Instead, let's try to see how science fiction looks at it.

Heinlein, another of the foundational writers of science fiction as a genre, saw alien worlds as just another frontier to be settled. Rich alien fruit, fertile arable lands, and huntable or tameable creatures just waiting to be exploited, and alien species to trade exotic goods with (or conquer). While Heinlein was not the only and probably not the first to write this subgenre, he certainly got it popular, and lots of works on his same vein follow this "frontier spirit" kind of writing, where space is seen as the last frontier to be tamed by hardy colonists in a very yeehaw cowboy western setting, and you can actually see this replicated in many modern science fiction like Firefly and the more cowboy-ish parts of Star Wars. And yes, this is balantly an expression of the 'manifest destiny' Usamerican imperialist worldview.

lots of Politics all over this Science Fiction Adventure

And yes, this idea of 'habitable' planets ready to be colonized like in a 4X videogame is also not very realistic either. We haven't found any alien ecosystems yet, but as a biologist I can tell you they would be very different from us in ways you probably won't expect. We can discuss how convergent evolution could be, a world with oceans would probably have equivalents of 'fish', 'algae' and 'worms' (I can GUARANTEE there will be A LOT of worms), we could even find very, very similar life to our own down to the body plan. However, we most probably could not eat them at all (which might sound silly at first glance but is needed to have you know. agriculture.), or perhaps even live in the same planet as them. We live in a society planet where most of the plants and animals which evolved with us can't be eaten, and many of them are toxic. It's possible, entirely likely, that the alien equivalents of carbohydrates (ever heard of L- and D-Glucose?), proteins and other substances would be indigestible to us, allergenics, or outright toxic, probably in ways we can't even think off. It's likely we won't catch alien diseases, but that's because our cells (if they even have cells) are completely incompatible with their diseases, just look at how different animal, plant and fungi cells are, now imagine whatever the fuck might evolve in a completely different biochemistry from us. There would be no farmsteads and cowboys like Heinlein wrote, living in Mars would probably be more pleasant that living in a world where everything might be toxic, not because life evolved to be toxic, just because it didn't evolve with you. If anything, these' habitable' worlds would be treated like giant nature preserves instead, you can look but don't touch.

(In one of my own settings, I sidestep this by proposing panspermia, that is, the idea that life spreads across the universe by means such as comets (or aliens) and thus shares similaritites and can eat the same stuff. A bit of a cop-out, but it does allow one to get with similar kinds of life.)

NOOO ANAKIN DON'T EAT THAT PEAR IT EVOLVED HIGHLY TOXIC ALKALOIDS IN A DIFFERENT EVOLUTIONARY CONTEXT NOOOO

But humans, if the biophilia hypothesis is right, will need nature in their lives. This is where orbital habitats come in. You know, like the ones in Gundam? Orbitals such as O'Neill Cylinders, Standford Torii (yeah, that's the plural for Torus) as well as bigger and more complex thingmajings I will write their own post about someday, have been proposed since the 1970s with technology available then, and there is no reason why a civilization with an advanced space infrastructure wouldn't try building them and even be better at it. What's very nifty about orbitals is that you can really make them your own personal custom miniworlds. Designs like the O'Neill cylinder are big, able to house hundreds of thousands, even millions of people if build to the top, but why do that? Mess with the lightining, the rotation, or the interior to make them a winter wonderland or a tropical paradise. I expect that they would be built to feed space communities at first with food that isn't imported from Earth or grown in hydroponics, and later as places to live and customize however you wish; perhaps a community would pool resources together and say, hey, we want to make an habitat that looks like a Colombian cloud forest, or the Okinawan Islands. Once they get cheap enough, and given how abundant resources are in space they might be not even as expensive as most engineering projects here on Earth, I expect actually many, many people would want to live in them, and it could be probably be very affordable, and just natural for the people who are born and raised and live and die in them. Another thing about habitats is that they are mobile. Like I said, as long as you got enough propellant and propulsion, you can move anything anywhere in space. Even whole habitats could move and cluster together depending on the local politics. Perhaps, much like city-states were the basic building block for countries in antiquity, in the future, the basic organization bloc would be the Orbital. You could have alliances of orbitals forming complex political intrigue inside a single solar system (yes, like in Gundam).

OH MY PLASTIC MODELS WAS GUNDAM REALISTIC ALL ALONG? (I lied)

This all might make space empires pretty much an unnecessary anachronism. Habitats can grow their own food and resources are plentiful once you have the right technology. They can also be mobile, so they could act like migrating cities at will, choosing to stay with like-minded "constellations" or strike out on their own without the dictates of a central state. It almost looks like an ideal anarchist society.

Or does it?

There is something very important to keep in mind about life in space. The technology, that is, habitats needed for life in space will require lots of maintainance and resource management, which implies there must be strong coordinating bodies with very, very strict rules so that shit doesn't blow up and you lose all your air into space, or the resources of an habitat are mismanaged and you end up with a food or water or even oxygen crisis. There is a reason why space exploration is done by state agencies or corporations with huge state backing. Another of Heinleins's favorite tropes, Libertarians in Space, would be impossible in such a situation. Actually, in ANY space situation, and this is why this section is in technology. Living in space requires you to be able to maintain complex technology and manage resources. None of this can be done ad-hoc or be left to individualism, you have to have Rules and follow them to the letter. And also, the effect of living in your 'own little world' would probably mean people have a strong indentity sense towards their home habitat. This will mean a more communitarian attitude. But before you think I'm waxing poetic about utopian habitat cultures, keep in mind that this also can mean an authoritarian mindset. After all, cults and authoritarian regimes do have "strong communities" too. An habitat could be everything from a well-managed place with responsible citizens who look for the welfare of all, to a closed society where everybody does as they're told as long as the tech works. On the other hand, I doubt habitats in a single star system would stay isolated. They'll probably trade and communicate with other habitats, forming constellations and power groups, that would prevent this 'closed system'. However, I doubt they would be too amenable to interstellar authority. Who the hell do those people from another freaking star think they are to tell us what to do in our habitat?

To be serious for a moment, habitats can be really cool places in science fiction. Especially if you imagine they could host all sorts of enviroments, from the tropical to the polar.

As an addenum… what if you really want to live in a planet? In places such as Mars or the Moon, things would be… pretty similar to orbitals actually. Habitats separated by vast expanses of barren nothingness, only now a planet instead of space (better for maps, at least). But that isn't what you're thinking, right? What if you wanted to feel the open wind and sky instead of a canned world? Well, this is where terraforming comes in. Transforming whole planets is something theoretically possible, but that would require massive investments of resources, more massive than anything we can imagine, and time, centuries at the very, very least. So stupid ideas like "terraform Mars to escape Earth", which as far as I know is only held by dumbasses like Musk, just don't make sense. It doesn't mean that terraforming itself is a worthless idea, it is a very appealing one. No matter how cool you can make your habitat, it won't ever be Earth. It won't ever be a self-sustaining biosphere with its own ecosystem that could last millions of years. For that reason, terraforming is attractive, it's something way more than an artificial "can" orbital, it's a new living world. There is a certain mystique into bringing lifeless worlds to life, but I expect that instead of the dumb Musk "ESCAPE EARTH" idea, the motivation for terraforming would be to recreate Earth, perhaps for conservation reasons (you could have whole planets as natural reserves), perhaps for tourist reasons, perhaps for spiritual reasons or even artistic reasons. On the other hand, the methods you can use to terraform a lifeless planet can also be used to 'terraform' living planets, as we've long seen in our own world… this could be done with hostile purposes. I would expect us to be better than that, but we simply don't know.

To close this section and give this post an conclusion, I think that, since there are no real borders in space, then empires, countries, polities, whatever you wish to call them, will be formed by stacking building blocs in loose alliances or confederations. The most basic would be habitats, then constellations of habitats, then inhabited planets (though I doubt any but the most populated ones would qualify), and then star systems, but little above that, and I expect up to a certain, difficult to calculate limit of population and area (though way, way below even a fraction of a speculated galaxy), things would be just impossible to manage. The effort in bureacracy, infrastructure and state control needed to project power out of a star system and the sheer scale of space probably won't ever justify empires, much less galactic empires, but you could have very interesting variations on the theme.

Fun Stuff!

So, let's play a little with what I've told you. I'm going to write a few short scenarios that might be fun takes on the "Galactic Empire" or "Space Empires" you might be familiar with already:

The Poleis Model

When the Greeks established their colonies around the Mediterranean, they didn't do it with the expectation they would be part of the same state or empire. They founded new poleis, new city-states, based on the constitution of the mother city (hence metropolis) but fully independent. The Phoenicians were much the same, with some of the daughter cities (Carthage means literally "new city") eventually becoming new cultures far from their home cities. Similarily, why should interstellar exploration mean the spread of a united state with a capital and all? Imagine that when interstellar ships depart, they do with the idea that they are going to create a completely new home, a new poleis, not an extension of the nations or organizations that sponsored them but rather more of a 'child' culture light years away from their motherland. As they develop in mostly isolation from each other, they will become new cultures on their own, while retaining ties to the ones most similar to them. This is, in my opinion, the most realistic scenario without FTL. With FTL, however, things get more interesting, as of course, Greek and Phoenician and other poleis didn't remain isolated light-years from each other, they had permanent contact. With FTL they could organize in leagues, perhaps even alliances for the ocassional military campaigns, trade and exchange of ideas, tourism and industry, and of course the Olympics.

The Wormholes Always Run In Time Model

As I've said, wormholes are pretty much like space railroads. Railroads, like other big infrastructure projects, need a centralized authority to be built and maintained. And once you are the central authority that does so, you're already in charge of the biggest arteries of trade and communication. Which makes you basically an empire, officially or not. In fact, this is the closest I imagine a space society would resemble the states we're familiar with here on Earth. If you have control over transport and the hubs of trade and politics, and that transport and communication network allows you to implent your policies, your rule might go very far indeed, and indeed, your main hub might be a great capital, the main station of known space. Now, perhaps you might be imagining a literal space empire with nobles and all that. Why not instead something else? The Socialist Interstellar, connecting the many worlds of the galaxy through a five hundred year plan of railroad wormhole construction in the path to communism... However, this would mean that people outside of the wormhole network might develop in different ways, perhaps the equivalent of nomads to the great settled empires of antiquity. And given what I've briefly touched on Empire Time (*breakdances*), the expression "the portals always run in time" might imply even more than just an aphorism.

The Civilization Cluster Model

I'll admit this is taken from Poul Anderson, as quoted in Atomic Rockets, to which I owe an inmense debt for this post and so much more. The idea is this; space is big, as is well established. Even with FTL to shorten the distances, even if you could cross the galaxy in a few weeks, the sheer number of stars is still insanely massive. Why should any civilization 'colonize' those stars dot by dot, what value is there in invading or colonizing planets with incompatible biochemistries? And how could even begin to think how to administer a thousand different worlds, each one as complex as Earth itself, let alone an entire galaxy? In this case, civilizations, instead of spreading across the galaxy, would mostly remain in their own 'civilization clusters'; even with FTL, there are so many issues closer to home that the idea of projecting power outside is ridiculous. There would be trade, exchange of ideas, and so much more between these clusters, but never constant enough and never with the authority necessary to create a "Galactic Empire"… the worlds are too many, too diverse, too populated and too far away for that. An interstellar traveller could roam the Galaxy for years exploring these clusters spread away from each other, with their own unique idiosyncracies and civilizations inside, and then a vast expanse of mostly nothing outside them. Basically, space is too big. I like to see them as constellations among the dark sky, hence the artwork.

The No Man's Sky Model

To live in space, you need complex technology, but also resilient and durable technology ready for any kind of situation, easy to repair and replace. So eventually, I believe designs would be standarized so much that every astronaut will carry or own a collection of standarized tools (somehow this reminds me of prehistoric tool cultures). Now, even with FTL, there's perhaps little material incentive for people to leave their comfortable homeworld or habitat to live in cold space. But some will, perhaps because of the sheer thrill of it, perhaps very small bands of families or friends. With a standarized tool kit for any ocassion, these small bands would spread across space, much like ancient humans spread across the world. But instead of creating space empires, without a fixed industrial base, they would be nomads. Which doesn't mean they would roam aimlessly, they would be seeking new biospheres, new resources and new cultures, and gathering in temporary or permanent market places, festivals and pilgrimages. Perhaps they could even be the majority of humans in space, while most others stay cozy on Earth.

...

This was a very long post and it took a lot work to make, so I hope you had as much fun reading it as it was for me to write it. If you did, and if you would like to see more, I would be very, very grateful if you donated to my Ko-Fi below. Anything helps a lot especially since my country is not doing great at this time governed by a libertarian idiot (not even the fun space kind), and even a little tip encourages me to post more, I'm always working on your suggestions! You can also contact me by DM or asks if you need any help with your worldbuilding or just want to rant with me a bit! See you next time, and thanks for reading.