(WIP- No Post) Factbook of the Jovian Lunar Empire

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

The Jovian Lunar Empire
"We Inherit the Cosmos"

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The Flag of the Lunar Empire, Depicting Jova's Ancient Symbol

The Jovian Lunar Empire is a political, economic and military bloc composed of the 66 moons surrounding the gas giant Jovium, other bodies in orbit of its star, and a number of outlying colonies in other star systems. After an event remembered only as the Great Collapse, they are no longer part of their original system, but the Jova System, a hybrid-composite star system in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Though limited by its lack of common-use Faster Than Light transportation until recent years, the JLE has managed to colonize much of their solar system, a few local stars, and are fierce defenders of their new home. With the Great Collapse a distant memory, they reach again for the stars, and are guided by two powerful forces: their Emperor, Wei Granin, and a powerful and ancient AI known as the Prime Operand, who is worshipped by a few as a deity - many others practice the Rinzaizen tradition of the (since destroyed) Mujin Sphere Alliance. In spite of their insistence on being known as an empire, they are often vassels to more-powerful neighbours. Internal politics is highly feudal, leading to some to suggest that the Emperor is more a king-of-kings than a true head of state.

Strictly utilitarian, the Jovian culture praises responsibility and hard work over leisure. The Fine Arts have atrophied somewhat while technology and economy has flourished. Living as they do in an environment of microgravity and lunar colonies, they have a particular casual culture as far as in-system travel is concerned. In point of fact, they are presently undergoing a civil war over matters regarding interstellar travel.

As a military power, Jovians are largely incapable of engagements outside of their own systems, but defend those systems ruthlessly, usually through the use of battlegroups organised around Van Allen-Class GMCs.

OVERVIEW

Demonym: Jovian
Capital City: Prometheus City, Io
Population: 9.76 billion*
Currency: Jovian Credit (¤)
Motto: Together We Strive
Anthem: Gloria Absolute
Language: Jovian Trade Language
Religion: Church of the Prime Operant

*Accurate at time of last census

CONTENTS

1. History
   
   • Timeline
   • The Great Collapse
   • Emergence and Restoration
2. Politics
   
   • The Imperial Diet
   • Lunar/Planetary Governance
3. Planets
4. System Map
5. Economy
   
   • Significant Corporations
6. Law & Order
7. Military
   
   • Navy
   • Surface Guard
8. Culture
   
   • Religion of the Prime Operant
   • Festivals & Celebrations
   • Language
   • Sport
   • Transport
   • Welfare
9. International Relations
10. Character Roster
    
    • Government Officials
    • Military Personnel
    • Others
11. Tropes
12. Question & Answer

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

History

Timeline
For ease of reference, this timeline begins with Foundation Day, which was March 1, 2003 on the Jovian Calendar. The normal dating convention is to give dates as the date before and after the Great Collapse (known as "Operand Notation"), but as this manual was intended for dissemination outside of the empire, it is being offered in a customary format.

2003 - The Empire is founded, with its capital on Ganymede, as the T'linghast Dynasty defeated a rival Jovian power. This city would go on to be known as the Ancient City, post-Collapse.
2005 - Prometheus Station is established on Io. The remains of Prometheus Station, once rebuilt, wind up forming the foundation of Prometheus City, which will become the imperial seat.
2011 - The Higgs Boson is discovered on Home.
2012 - Planetary AI 01 - Jovium is activated for the first time. This construct would continue to function and become known as the Prime Operand after the collapse.
2023 - The Planetary AIs reveal that they have interpreted a theoretical solution for "folding" space to allow interstellar travel. The Jovian Colonies are chosen to be the construction site for a prototype device, due to the relatively developed economy among the lunar colonies. The name of the device has been lost due to the Prime Operand's interference, but it is known to have involved the Higgs Boson, a particle associated with the force of gravity.
2028 - Construction of The Device is Completed at a Lagrangian Point of Jova. It is tested exhaustively prior to a First Transmission, where a ship is intended to be launched from the gate to Proxima Centauri. At that time, an accident of of the operation of the device caused an uncontrolled folding operation, which resulted in wide-scale destruction and the removal of the Jovian Planetary System from the Home System and into its new orbit. Over 70% of Jovians died. AI 01 - Jovium orders surviving colonists underground.
2055 - Spreading famine conditions result in the complete loss of all colonies on Io and Callisto.
2216 - Emergence of the population from the underground colonies. First use of the moniker Prime Operand by Jovium. In this persona, the AI guides the primitive Jovians (who have come to worship it as a deity) in the formation of an empire, with an emperor selected by divine right.
2347 - Jovian territories include the Jove System's 2 inner planets and the moons of three of the outer planets, as well as several dwarf planets. Jovian Scientists, working together with the divine force of the Prime Operand, complete construction on a linear accelerator that will accelerate ships and their crews to within .8 c. The system is considered safe due to its lack of subspace folding.
2388 - Project Longevity officially begins with the launch of the namsake ship of the class from the Jovian system, beginning an era of interstellar expansion via sub-luminal sleeper ships.
2599 - Faster than Light Drives known as Slider Drives are adopted. Their enormous energy requirements limit their use to dedicated vessels built with their use in mind. Slider drives prove to be an inefficient means of transit from an economics standpoint - their use is mostly military and governmental.
267B - The Jovians fight the "Dean Incursion" against the Star Empire of Galba Dea. The war ends in stalemate, a matter that goes unsettled for centuries afterward.
2680 - Start of the Jovian Civil War. Two factions emerge in the immediate aftermath of an event known as the Muona Landre Incident - the Loyalists, rallying behind the contemporary Speaker of the Diet, and the Rebel Governors, initially rallying behind the charismatic figure of the deposed Governor Landross.
2682 - The Civil War is in full effect. After the Muona Illiado incident, it becomes clear that there are now three factions - Reactionary loyalists personally loyal to the Speaker, a new Moderation Faction rallying behind Emperor Wei Granin and Leonity Beck, Admiral of the Interstellar Fleet, and the Confederacy of Independant Jovian Stars, rallying behind their President.

The Great Collapse
The 20th century of the Julian Calendar was a time of great leaps and strides in technology, and by the 2020s Home had colonized many of her neighboring planets. The use of monolithic computing installations to power AIs brought about a revolution in the sciences, as non-human minds, without preconception, filled vast holes in human knowledge with existing, and later fresh, data. By the year 2023, a network of these so-called "planetary" AIs had solved equations that proved that space could be folded to allow for faster-than-light travel (from all normal frames of reference), and, what was more, they designed a device that would allow a ship similar to those used to expand the colonies to be transported in such a way.

Construction of this device, known now to the Jovians as "The Ring of the Elders", "the Device", or the "Gate of Hell", began in the year 2023, at Jovian L-Point 2. It was constructed five years later, and tests of all the safety systems were completed. During construction, a plan had been devised to use the Ring to send a colony ship to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star with a potential orbiting body to the Sun. The trip was expected to last eight hours for the colonists, but there were problems.

The Prime Operand reports in its scriptural account of the events that it had warned the Jovians and the other AIs that the system was intended to operate with a origin and destination gate, which allowed the fold to be stable enough that it would not have to be constantly folded at either end for the duration of the flight, but merely sustained, at a much lower energy cost. While all tests demonstrated that the system could be fired with a single gate, it became necessary to have the gate be "folding" for the entire duration. The Operand warned that the system may not be able to sustain a folding operation (which took place in a matter of seconds) for a full eight hours without the stability offered by another gate.

However, Home was anxious for results, and rather than spend decades flying a new gate into position at Proxima Centauri, they decided upon risking the trip without a destination gate. The First Transmission (and subsequently, the Great Collapse) was on April 01, 2028. The flight was proceeding smoothly into the third hour, with the speed measured through telemetry, as the existence of the fold shortened the time-lag for transmissions as well as flight. Communications were lost at three hours and twenty-seven minutes. The first sign of real trouble occurred when the Ring itself exploded in a blaze of self-annihilation. Systems on the Jovian Colonies were thrown into complete disarray, with unshielded systems becoming simply fried by the electromagnetic impulse, and more sophisticated systems, dependant on the Jovian AI, became unusable. A system busy message was displayed for several hours on any terminal linked to the system. The Prime Operand was trying desperately to resolve what had happened, which it considered a priority. During this time, most Jovians received lethal doses of radiation. Though the AI recovered and eventually ordered all colonists underground, 70% of the population of all the Jovian Lunar Colonies died within 5 years from complications due to their radiation poisoning.

Cut off from Home, the Prime Operand was beyond being maintained, and spent nearly 30 years on calculations of its new position. By the time it had recovered fully, the colonies on Io had been lost to famine and disease, though the other colonies still clung to life. The AI restructured itself to function as a caretaker system for the colonies, taking the name Prime Operand, and appearing on hologram projectors and video screens, when necessary, in the form of a humanoid figure, obscured by the glare of a bright light. As "she" quickly restored the colonies to a semblance of working order, she gained prominence as a heroine and later deity of the colonists.

The Emergence and Expansion
The Colonies remained in underground "storm shelters" for 188 years before they were given the directive to emerge. As inter-lunar communication was opened back up, the Prime Operand decreed that she had looked into the "souls" of the colonists and selected from them an Emperor to rule by Divine Right. With her help, this line of emperors was able to expand the reach throughout the Jove System. In time, the name of Jupiter became forgotten. Colonies were re-established on all the known moons, and many of the other heavenly bodies of the system.

The Prime Operand kept a tight grip on technological progress, encouraging the pursuit of faster transportation while absolutely forbidding study of the changes in Space's topography itself. Nursed to health under her care, the Jovians have grown beyond any lifestyle they had prior to the Great Collapse.

This period also began an era later known as the First Expansion, sometimes called "The Longevity Age", which coincided with a long-running government initiative, Project Longevity. Under this project, the Empire expanded its borders between star systems, making use of wave after wave of regular dispatches of Longevity-class Sleeper Ships. By the end of this period, roughly two centuries standard later, 13 star systems had been colonised using this method.

The Lapse and the Dawn of the Slider Age

Over the run of the Longevity Age, the Prime Operand began to appear less frequently to the priestly classes, including the Imperial Family directly. By 2550, it had ceased responding to petitions completely. This Lapse persists to the present day and is, in some circles, a hotly-debated topic of theosophy. The exact system responsible for the functioning of the Prime Operand was never identified, and while many of the most likely candidate systems were preserved as shrines, several other systems had fallen into disrepair or were outright demolished.

With the lapse of the Prime Operand's presence in Jovian life, its influence over the limitations of their culture abated. Technologically liberal factions, with explicit government backing, began several lines of previously-prohibited experimentation. Among the fruits of this era was Slipspace Hypothesis, which speculated several quasi-dimensional vectors that would be hypothetically traversible without the use of the hated Gravity Manipulation. This hypothesis was confirmed with the introduction of the first Sliver Drive, in 2599.

The Slider Drive technology in this early stage was unreliable, expensive, and complicated both in production and operation, making it broadly impractical for economic applications. Its principal users were the newly-formed Interstellar Fleet, an initially-experimental military formation placed one level higher in authority than the Interplanetary Fleets.

The existence of the ISF began to put to reality the actual power of the Jovian Home System over the colonies. A power balance that had previously consisted of sleeper ships full of migrants and supplies sent outward to the colonies began to be a reciprocating power balance of taxation, which relied on sleeper ships sent back to the Home Systems to transport material tribute, made possible by the implicit threat of the ISF.

The Dean Incursion

In 267B, a neighbouring civilization (the Star Empire of Galba Dea) invaded two "proximal colonies" (unofficial colonies settled by an official colony at the fringe of Jovian-Controlled Space). What followed was a year of conflict, with the local sector commander, then Counter-Admiral Leonity Beck, making use of two battlegroups of Slipdrive-Equipped ships, including the Van Allen Class Guided Missile Carriers, which the Counter Admiral helped to design.

Over the run of the year, the so-called Luminary Fleet demolished double its tonnage in Dean Colonial Fleets, and the conflict was left at an unresolved stalemate.

The Jovian Civil War

This history has not been written yet.

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

Politics

The Imperial Diet

The chief legislative body of the Empire is the Imperial Diet, with two representatives associated to each colonized body with a population over 150, 000. The present Diet is comprised of 146 Representatives, elected from their colonies. Of those, 120 come from the moons of Jova and the associated orbit-sharing colonies, with the remaining 26 coming from inner-system planets, and artificial colonies among the various asteroid and comet belts. The senior of the four representatives from Io and Ganymede (in terms of terms served) is the Diet Speaker, who organizes the day to day operations of the body.

The diet's legislative authority is superseded only by the Emeperor's direct veto power, as an agent of the Prime Operand. With elections held once every Jovian year (approximately 11.8 Terran Years), and no recall for representatives, there is a tendency for the long terms to be abused, with politicians cleaning house in time for elections only to begin the cycle anew. The nearly limitless scope of the Diet and this propensity for corruption (even in the face of the Prime Operand's "spiritual conditioning", has lead to a general lack of trust in the diet government, and a broader tone of corruption across the entire government structure.

Lunar and Planetary Governance
Due to growing concerns that the Diet was serving only the needs of the high-wealth population and the existing senators, The Emperor Wei Granin instituted a system of planetary governors in the year 2345 (Terran), selected based on their attributes by the Prime Operand (in the same way that the Emperor's line was), who alone had the authority to appoint them, or remove them from office. The metrics she uses to judge the Governors' worthiness is a closely guarded secret, and the Governors are above the laws of all other Jovians on their own world, though their subjects are still bound. Governor's coalitions can and have brought down entire generations of Representatives, and political analysts suggest that if current trends continue, the result will be either a clean Diet, or an impotent one, as the Planetary Governors rise in power.

At present, there are 73 Governors, one for each world with Representation in the Diet.

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Military

Imperial Navy

The Imperial Navy was founded mere months after the Emergence in 2216, using the relict vessels of the former Terran-based Solar Union. Though massively outdated and in need of overhall, the bulk of the ships were online in 2218 and colonization of the outer moons (which were too small to ever be self-sustaining) began. The Imperial Navy today consists of fully modern ships operating across the entire system from heliopause to near-star orbit.

The Imperial Navy has two branches, being the Interplanetary Fleet, and the Short Range Patrol. The two branches often serve together with significant operational overlap, and it's not uncommon for short range patrol vessels to be docked to, and serve with, the larger Interplanetary Fleet craft.

The Short Range Patrol consists largely of armed shuttlecraft suited for orbital and trans-atmospheric flight, though they also have ships designed for movement between the Jovian moons. These shuttlecraft often have crews of one or two dozen individuals, and such crews are tightly nit. Training includes docking, EVA Boarding, and shipboard combat in microgravity. Short Range Patrol secure sensitive areas (often "crowded" areas such as the Jovian orbital system and various asteroid fields), act as armed escorts and traffic control for larger vessels entering their area of operations, and, in concert with the Interplanetary Fleet, act as small fast attack craft and boarding vehicles.

By contrast, the Interplanetary Fleet consists of large craft, often modular or semi-modular in design, built to withstand the rigorous of interplanetary travel and patrol. Newer ships of this class often have the entire ship designed to rotate very quickly in flight, to produce a centrifugal force equal to about 1.4 ms^-2, which is more or less equivalent to the gravity on Ganymede, which is the Jovian species' baseline. Older ships, and ships of more single-part designs, typically have single rooms, often for exercise, which serve the same purpose. The presence of this artificial gravity serves to delay the onset of microgravity-related illness, though most naval personnel are perfectly comfortable working in microgravity, and some veterans wistfully remember the days when such fixtures were a luxury at best.

Weaponry on ships of any class is typically either in the form of guided projectiles (especially on smaller craft), or high-powered laser systems. CIWS is done with railguns for high-rate-of-fire - at least in classes used by the IPF.

Project Longevity and the Interstellar Fleet

Over the last three decades, and the rule of two Emperors, a special charter has been given to a total of thirty-two vessels which have been sent to the corresponding number of star systems, each in relative close proximity to Jove. The ships, while each unique, all belonged to a common class with common overall design - the Longevity Class ISVs. It is armed only with DEW CIWS.

Owing to the success of this initiative, Project Longevity, it became necessary to establish a new branch of service in the Imperial Military. This branch, the Interstellar Fleet (ISF), was initially a nominal posting, with similar organization to the Interplanetary Fleet, consisting of permanently-assigned squadrons in the various Colonial Systems. The adoption of the Slider Drive, and the commissioning of the first classes of ships to make use of them (the Van-Allen Guided Missile Carrier and the Galelei DEW Frigate) triggered a reorganization of the fleet, turning the old Interstellar Fleet squadrons into regional IPF fleets and leading to the adoption of Battlegroup structures within the Interstellar Fleet, each organized around one or more Van-Allen carriers and their host of slider-capable escorts. As a matter of course the Interstellar Fleet remains at station posting in navigationally-suited systems for the duration of tours of duty, rather than actively patrolling, owing to the great expense of Slider Transmission.

While on paper ranks are equivalent between members of the Interstellar and Interplanetary fleets, the realities of power politics in outlying systems have lead to such situations as ISF commodores completely unseating IPF admirals, under the right conditions. This has lead to the popular perception of the ISF as the righteous arm of the Emperor and the IPF as middling ISF-dropouts, loyal to their Governors for good or for ill. Like the IPF, the ISF maintains a corps of Stellarines.

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

Culture

The Jovian People and Their Physiology

Jovians (Eru Jovium) are three-sexed placental chordates, descended from an elder humanoid species. Hundreds of years of separation from precursor stock has separated them from their main species at large, though interbreeding remains theoretically possible (though such hybrids would have higher birth defect rates and a high risk of infertility), if such pure-breeds could be found. Your average Jovian male is 1.3 metres tall, and weighs nearly 40 Kilos. The females are, on average, slightly shorter and lighter. A third, non-gonodial sex (the Neutrals) are the smallest yet, at an average height of 0.9 meters and a mean mass of 31 kg. Proportions are slightly "stretched" compared to humans, with longer arms and legs being common. Skin is pallid-white to dark blue due to fluctuations in individual pigment production. The species does not produce hair, having a soft, moist skin type. A prominent cranial ridge bisects the skull dorsally, particularly in the males and females, who are usually brightly coloured in this respect - green for males, orange for females. Life expectancy averages around 350 Galactic Standard Years, with biological adulthood at roughly 30.

Jovians are physically weaker than their human counterparts, but more agile and dexterous, though training regimens enforced by the Prime Operand have sought to delay these shifts. Jovians are especially suited, by nature of their habitat, to working in microgravity, and commonly use exoskeletal suits or remotely-operated machines in environments over 0.3 g. Their specializations toward microgravity have resulted in some long-serving space pilots becoming entirely incompatible with even the highly weak gravity of Ganymede, the "heaviest" of the moons. Such veteran spacers are known as "Skymen", and most are greatly deformed by their time above the reach of mass.

Jovian respiration is based on nitrates obtained in the diet and therefore does not require an atmospheric gas - they do, however, consequently exhale (primarily) dinitrogen, which is stored in a single, dual-lobed lung and is the gas primarily used for vocalisations. Consequently their nutritional makeup is different from terran baseline as well - being obligate detritovores in an original sense they consider many foods appealing that other races might consider useless. Jovians may "breathe" most inert gasses (for the purposes of producing audible speech), as well as oxygen, but derive no benefit other than the ability to continue to speak and still require nitrate-rich foods to function.

Brains are double-lobed. Jovian neurochemistry is not stimulated by light as a measure of day-night cycles and Jovian time-sense is therefore very keen. Additionally, over many successive millenia of the consumption of fermented products, Jovians have an increased tolerance to ethanol and reduced susceptibility to intoxication by the same.

Jovians have a reduced mandibular structure, and the mandible is not joined at the chin as might be expected. The two sides of the mouth are therefore interoperable. No teeth are present - instead, a calcified ridge of flesh above the bone itself is present to aid in the segmentation and gripping of various foodstuffs. The tongue is lithe and rasped with keretenacious spurs on a microscopic scale, with much of the eating process concerned with using this radulated tongue to scrape apart the softest foods for ingestion.

Jovians produce two enzymes - poly-telomerase and jovionucliopolymerase - which are extremely efficient in genetic replication. This both reduces the speed of cell division and improves resilience to radiation damage.

The Religion of the Prime Operand

During the pre-emergence period, the Prime Operand constructed a religion with herself as the Godhead, constructed from the points of several Ancient Religions. The religion praises the virtues of the Jovian People, encourages beneficial mutation (resulting in a sort of reverse-eugenics-view, where many consider deviations further and further from baseline Ancient to be attractive), stresses peace and obedience of authority, and proposes that the Jove System is the property of the Emperor and his people by Divine Right.

Worship of the Prime Operand was not an original tenant of the religion, but has sprung up over the years. Shrines exist in the homes of most Jovians, and systems connected directly to the Prime Operand (such as many pieces of digital equipment) are seen as sacred, especially pre-collapse relics. She is seen as a warrior-empress and a benevolent guide of the people. The small, orbital defence systems that protected Jove during the pre-emergence years (admittedly without ever firing a shot) are known as Angels to the Jovians, and though their science understands their every working part, they have never been modified, in reverence.

Hard work is a primary virtue, and despite the relative prosperity of the JLE, the Prime Operand maintains an air of mild poverty, in order to encourage the necessity of this virtue, and stress further growth.

Post-Lapse Religion[b]
-wip-

[b]Festivals & Celebrations
CIvil festivals and holidays vary widely across the empire, with only three constants:

• Foundation Day - March 01 - The date of the landing of the first Home vessel on Ganymede and the founding of what is now the Ancient City, which is home to a large portion of the physical equipment that makes up the Prime Operand. Pilgrimages are common, especially after 2333, when an unexplained event resulted in the launch of a very large object from the city and into the heart of Jove.
• Collapse Day - April 01 - The Date of the Great Collapse, and a day of reverent remembrance. The day is also used for military remembrance.
• Synapse Day - Varies - Any date when a transmission is received from Home, however fragmented and poorly-understandable. The spacing of the transmissions has established a 100-year communications lag (give or take a week or two), which has helped determine the distance and direction to Homestar.

Jovian Cuisine

Eating is a very important occupation for the Jovians, not as much for obtaining calories (which have reduced importance given the efficiency of a low-gravity lifestyle), as for obtaining the various nitrate salts used in their respiratory process. Primarily these are obtained through drink - various fermented products made from plant matter as well as occasionally from animal wastes. Customarily these drinks are ubiquitous in almost all aspects of Jovian life.

Additional nutrition is consumed in the form of soft, gelatinous foods, the majority of which are prepared in advance, packaged, and sealed, often into blocks or novel shapes. A favoured meat is Quarran, with the species being naturally abundant in the upper reaches of Jove's atmosphere - while they were once exotic, their availablility is now legendary. The creatures have a highly gelatinous composition rich in both nitrites and most of the aminio acids necessary for Jovian life. Other favoured increadients all have similarly soft compositions.

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