This is, ultimately, a place holder post, the very beginning of another monster thread/collection of threads (which will be linked in the sticky to save time and energy on everyone's behalf...) detailing the Sci-Fi setting that has been brewing in my skull and on paper for some six years in three countries and counting.  

While I have not the time nor energy to go in depth with this post, I would like to save the time of a great many people in highlighting the salient details.

It is our world, our galaxy, some four thousand years into the future... perhaps a bit farther than necessary for what I do with it.

There are no aliens of note. Earth is not long lost. The science is not restricted to what is possible today, or even necessarily theoretically possible today but I still hope mostly believable.  

There are no psychics, and no one uses 'blasters', though lasers are common for the Fedcom. Most everyone else agrees that for day to day use throwing a chunk of  metal through a man at supersonic speeds is more than adequet and efficent.


Hrm... maybe a bit more before I close this post for the night> Mankind has expanded through the galaxy in a rough sphere some three hundred light years in any direction from Earth (note: One day I will sit down with an astronomer and really fucking hash this out, its the fuzziest detail I have yet...).  Many worlds were settled by forced exiles from an overcrowded earth in the Diaspora, pre-Lightspeed, though most of those were eventually returned to the fold by the first intergalactic government from Earth post-C. Earth is no longer the heart and soul of Humanity, but shares her time as a spirtual shrine world for the oldest religions and home to massive estates of the insanely wealthy... a 'paradise' for those who can afford to live there... or those who work for them.

There are three methods of FTL travel. The R-Drive, originally named for it's creator but now called the recipical drive, which is the diesel engine of space, slow, powerful, bulky and indestructable (or at least, easily fixed on the go)... and more or less essential as it also forms the heart of most gravitic technologies (used to, say, escape orbit, keep feet pointed one way and more).  Its slow (5C is the very top end after three millenia+ of development). The S-Drive (also once named for its creator, and now called the 'Slip Drive') is 'Fast FTL', some ten times faster than R-drives, but very inflexible in use.  S-Drives are fire and forget, you hit go and stop, that's it. Of course they are incredibly useful in weapons technology (S-Torps being the primary ship killer of the day). They are solid state devices, almost impossible to fix and prone to breaking, but relatively small, so many ships will have a backup or two.  S-Drives are common among the Fedcom and the Fringe worlds, but not the Empire.  Jump Drives are Empire only technology and utilize advanced understanding of Quantum physics beyond the reach of the FedCom (though, note that outside of Quantum Physics the Empire tends to lag on the technology curve, even severely... the empire STOLE R-Drive technology once introduced to it...). Jump Ships are massive, static space stations that bring smaller ships with them through Jumps.  Jump is dangerous and a significant percentage of people (Not, however, ships or cargo... just people) never make it to the other side of a Jump.  Note that while a Jump Ship can cross the totality of human space in a few weeks, it takes six years to get from Earth to the out fringes of the Galaxy by S-Drive...

The major powers are the Empire (made up of a lost Diapora era colony that 'fell' through a wormhole, and thus explaining their knowledge of quantum physics, though they had a long dark age after planetfall... its detailed... don't worry) and the Confederation of Earth (the sixth or seventh major power to control that region of space...), which is actually ruled from a world named 'Sanctuary'. Representatives from each world are appointed or elected for life from their home world due to travel times, though the method by which they are chosen depends upon the form of governance of their homeworld and its 'Charter'.   The big unifier of the Confederation is the Fedcom, the military branch which is essentially a 'charter world' without an actual world.  

There are vast cultural differences between the two, and a major source of conflict is the Fringe worlds created by the Exodus (post C expansion of people from Earth and her colonies... though an ongoing process it is tradionally considered a historical event covering a period of roughtly a century or two after the invention of the R-drive, with a less well 'known' Exodus following the invention of the S-Drive some time later).   The Empire has a good understanding of robotics and computing but a cultural disdain for them, with a strong martial bent, glory and heroes are important, work is important... so on and so forth.

The Fedcom uses micro-tanks and drone wings, among other things, controlled by AI's but directed by human pilots (a tank squadron will have one manned tank, for example), and a 'legacy tech' from a previous era in the Fedcom Marines, convicts mostly who are surgically altered and enhanced to serve as shock troops.  Once a marine, always a marine, though it is possible to volunteer. Marines, by tradition, use the only projectile 'small arms' in use in the Fedcom, a guass rifle using a variety of 'darts', typically expanding fired at insane velocities.  The traditional Fedcom grunt uses instead a laser rifle. The barrel of which is disposable and is also the magazine containing hundreds of one-use superconducter capaticance loops to power the shots.  Fedcom grunts are very much 'spray and pray' marksmen, preferring to leave the heavy lifting, and danger, to the machines.  Traditionally their 'armor' was a cushioned vest to stop frags and conventional small arms supported by refractor gas dispersal to ablate laser shots away.  In the two plus centuries of 'hot and cold war' against the Empire they have beefed up their tradtional armor.

The Empire's military is far less uniform (complex analysis of regimental vs duty assignments, and the nature of Imperial logistics too complex for this post... but available, oh yes...).  Swords are shockingly common, as Empire soldiers love to come to grips with their enemies, though of course they often die vainly in the attempt.  Small arms tend to be projectile based, though units designated as 'Lancers' use very high power, slow firing energy weapons (lasers), but are uncommon.  Given their prediliction for close engagements, pistols are favored firearms, though large bore rifles (often using gauss or, more commonly, coil magnet propulsion) are not uncommon. Some units prefer unguided micro-rockets.  To counter the mini-tanks, it has come increasingly common for units to feild (one per squad is the average) a 'Knight' wearing some form of powered armor, an advance only three decades old and still gaining favor.  The 'skin' of this armor is an advanced laminate of molecularly bonded layers (that is, each layer is a single molecule, artificially created). The energy required to break the atomic bonds of the molecule are high, but achievable, but the laminate layering requires one to individually breach hundreds of layers.  The suits are quite advanced in other ways but appear to lack a proper power supply, having only enough conventional power to run a portion of the subsystems.   While typically mounted with larger versions of the conventional arms used by their unit, they also use 'frictionless' blades, halberds most commonly, along with the only noted military use of drone technology in their 'micro-rocket' defense systems.

Frictionless blades use a series of solid-state diode emitters to produce a form of 'force field' along the blade itself, with two fields intersecting at an angle to make the edge. While the edge itself is only marginally sharper inherently than a conventionally sharpened edge, the fact that such 'forcefields' as people insist on calling them do not suffer drag when punching through stuff that gives them their 'edge'.  Primarily a novelty device when first introduced outside the empire, their use by the Knights against heavy armor (augmented by powered muscle, obviously) has given the Fedcom a new respect for their barbaric potential.


Caught 'between' these two powerhouses are the independent worlds and small alliances (the largest of which is a half dozen worlds united by a shared faith (islam) and a hatred of the Empire (which has committed several atrocities in the name of their faith against Islam, historically and recently...)





Obviously, I have lifted ideas whole cloth from other sources, some of which will be more obvious as I expand upon the rough outline above.  The Empire, despite it's name is not truely a fuedal society, the Confederation is what it says it is.

Ships of the Confederation and the Empire tend to be 'space only' with dedicated landers.  Empire 'landers' do tend to be multipurpose (space and lander). Fringe worlds tend, almost universally, to build multipurpose ships due to a lack of infrastructure to support pure 'space only' fleets. The Fringe is where it's at, baby!

Given time this can easily dwarf the Spike's World thread. There is a LOT of shit to cover, and unlike Spike's World, most of this has already been written down locally in one form or another so I won't be spinning it as I type so much as explaining what I already know.

Hope you guys enjoy it as much as you have enjoyed Haven!

Quote from: Spike;282419Hope you guys enjoy it as much as you have enjoyed Haven!

I'll enjoy it a lot more, because I don't get Fantasy, but I DO love SF!

-clash

Ya, for me the problem will be distilling and, essentially retyping, six years and more of notes and ideas and trying to keep it all straight and accurate.  With my shitty memory for proper names and the like, and my tendancy to grab single word descriptions as names...

... well I guess the names are the coolest part of anything I make up anyway.. or I hope not!

While I was deeply tempted to jump right in to in depth analysis of each of the various 'powers' of the galaxy... that is their culture, political layouts and even detailed histories, I thought maybe I should take it a bit slower than that and start with something that appears integral to the human condition... faith.

In many ways the spiritual landscape is much as our own. Faith endures and there hasn't been any great changes to the nature of faith in general... no evolutionary movement like the change to monotheism and so forth. On the other hand things are quite different.  The fringe cults of today may be the primary faith of millions, or billions, tomorrow.

The Confederation, holding to its charter and the ideals that came to dominate Earth during the Diaspora Era, does not have an official faith, or in fact any real faith based instituitions at the Confederate level. The Fedcom is almost aggressively atheistic, viewing religion as a superstition, and individual member worlds may instituite religious laws with a fairly free hand within the very broad limits of the Charter.  Faiths derived from Christianity  are dominant coreward due to a popular belief that came about in the second millenium regarding a 'real' heaven... God resides at the core of all things. While that particular belief has long since fallen out of favor among the organized churches it still is strongly reflected in the cultures of those worlds that lie coreward of Earth.   Spinward worlds have more mixed faiths, with a strong muslim derived presence competing with what could only be called buddist derived faiths in some sectors.  Groups such as Mormons, Ba'hai and Sikh's have all settled new 'homeworlds' and spread from there.  The Sikh faith found a new resurgance in space flight, particularly during the 'Exodus' era, and have abandoned Earth officially.   If you see a spacer with a beard its almost always a Sikh.

Interestingly, no major new subsects of faith sprang up in the Confederate territory of note. Various prophets and cults, derivatives of the main faith groups came and went, many migrating with their followers to the Fringes or being absorbed back into the fold over time. The strong tendancy for religion to be sidelined for secular movements has always been a dominant factor in Earth Colonies... those more inclined to deep spirituality tended to migrate away over time.

A common 'fringe' religion... though hardly unified by any stretch, is a sort of ancestor worship focusing on Earth itself and events of the migration that led to a world being settled. Obviously each colony group would have their own faith of this sort.  The FedCom, which predates the Confederation it serves, is ruthless in destroying these home grown religions when a world is given provisional membership in the Confederation, a sticking point that leads to very slow assimilation proceedures for newly conqured worlds.

There are a few diehards of various faiths, Jewish, Muslim and Catholic Christians particularly, that still regard Earth as Holy, and there are enclaves of 'throwbacks' that still occupy Earth, though under the provisional governance of the Confederation itself (Earth is not a charter world, lacking enough 'citizens' to be a full member, its essentially a 'preserve') to keep violence down.  

The Empire is a vastly different place, spiritually.  The original colony was highly fractious, being settled by political prisoners from a dozen different nations across Eurasia and parts of Africa, mostly agitators and nationalists that opposed the rise of a World Government.  

Scientific and Technical knowledge remained only with the descendents of the crew who could be called a 'Mystery Cult', calling themselves FOST (Fraternal Order of Scientists and Technicians... pronounced Faust), which shares many trappings of faith to outsiders.

The rise of the Emperor, several centuries later to pacify the entire world led to his enshrinement as a God. While in real terms there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of people occupying the throne, the faithful of Domu (the homeworld of the Empire)... believe that there is only One Emperor, and that he merely changes appearances from time to time.

There are acutally two competing faiths springing from this unification war, intertwined heavily and even sharing a single religous book.  The original Emperor was served by a soldier of unsurpassed skill and, unlike the Emperor himself, a man(?) of deep and abiding faith in an unnamed deity.  The two spoke frequently, recorded by the Emperor as the 'Dialogs' on matters of civil behavior, governance, military matters and even the nature of Faith. After the war Mithras (the soldier) disappeared, some suggest murdered by the Emperor over a long running dispute over what happened after they won.

Mithra's (common varient spellings of Mithras include Mitra, Mithra, Mita and more...) followers, fanatic warrior aesetics primarily, opposed the Emperor for a long time, though diplomacy and common purpose preserved the fledgling empire, and eventually became the Ascetics, without a true church, though they have 'priests' in the form of military chaplains and often may form small monastic orders where each 'monk' strives to find the path closer to Mithra's perfection. Ironically, by the modern era the Ascetics, or less commonly, monastics are far more closely aligned with the Emperor than the 'Temple' Mithrans.

The Veneration of the Emperor as 'Gods' chosen ruler, and the author of the Dialogs put the Emperor into a position not unlike the Pope, the infallible ruler of man, and the voice of God.  Those who were devout followers of Mithras but were not inclined to fanatic warrior ideals were far more comfortable in more traditional faiths and veneration of the Emperor, with Mithras being God's Angel sent to serve.  The first Emperor used this faith, built over thirty or more years of unending war, to solidify his gains, and promptly ignored them after setting up a hierarchy of priests to run the temples.  Now they are a powerful political force that often opposes the sitting Emperor, selling their support for greater power and wealth... that the Emperor has the legal and spiritual authority to tear the Temple apart matters little if the faithful tend to follow the priesthood.. viewing the Emperor as a distant figure of veneration. It doesn't help that over the last few centuries the priests have started to raise doubts over the legitimacy of the successive emperors quietly, banking on deteriorating quality of those rulers in recent ages, along with their general passivity. The newest Emperor is a more dynamic, beloved figure but this hardly matters.

The Empire has never restricted the religious freedoms of the people as official doctrine, though obviously the Mitrasts have the direct support of the Empire itself. However there are two important caveat's to that:

Despite the common man in teh Empire being 'Free Men', the democratic process is not used in the Empire in any way, being viewed as a heretical religion for reasons dating to the antiquity of the Unification wars.  One of the very first Imperial Decrees, predating even the end of the wars was that men may either do as they wilt or they might appoint one among them to lead them, but they may not squabble amongst themselves as children to make rules to bind with, for that leads to wars of brother against brother.  Thousands of years later 'casting a vote' is viewed much the same as 'murdering your father'... an unforgivable sin.... and incidentally a capital offense.

The second religious issue is with the various Islamic faiths. There was a large group of muslims on board the original colony ship and by the time of the unification wars they occupied several aligned kingdoms covering a large percentage of the land.  WHile they were not the most stubborn kingdoms to fall to the Emperor's wars, they fell back to less open forms of resistance.  When the treasons, assassinations and bomb throwing threatened to end the newly minted peace he had won the Emperor sent in a group of men called 'the Left Hand'. Every woman and child of the Islamic faiths was murdered over a year or so of bloodshed, leaving the men alive to watch their religion and culture die with them.  This atrocity eventually came to be known by co-religionists the galaxy over as it was well marked by the Imperials ever since.  A small number of muslims do live on Domu, but in accordance with the ancient Imperial Decree that led to the Left Hand's work, they ritually castrate themselves upon decreeing their faith so that they will not accidentally violate the Decree by having families. They incidentally revere the emperor in a strangely fatalistic way... God Willed that he test them, and so it was done.

In the empire, those faiths that have adopted veneration of the Emperor into the old dogmas of the faith are referred to as 'Orthodox'. Orthodox Muslims are permitted to set foot on Domu, while traditional Muslims (from other worlds) are forbidden on pain of death... for their families if not themselves.

There are no 'Orthodox' Catholics. If one were to be considered such one would be 'Orthodox Christian'.

In the five centuries since the Empire and the Confederation first met, and by extension the various Islamic worlds learned of the ancient genocide of the Emperor's Left Hand (a group whispered to still exist, waiting to be unleashed again... an apocrypha chapter to the Dialogs popular in some regions of Domu suggests they are the dark counter to Mithras, and thus less than men, or more), and in many cases declared Fatwa's against the Empire. They are not a powerful force in the FedCom or even the Senate of the Confederation, but they do not help the peace process.  Recent events (three decades old, or right after the new Emperor(ess) took the Mask and Sword (regalia) helps illustrate the often religious motives behind recent politics.  As a 'warning' against FedCom agression, after the destruction of a 'stealth' invasion fleet, the Emperor's Dagger was 'crafted', a wedge of worlds taken by force from Fedcom using the vast majority of the Imperial Army (they do not seperate army and navy) happened to include four officially Islamic worlds near the border of Empire space. As a peace gesture all the worlds of the Dagger were eventually repatriated to the Confederation... except those four, which are heavily blockaded and embargoed.  Rumors of genocide and forced conversions abound, but the truth is unknown. Fedcom forces sent to break the blockades found that the Empire is quite serious about keeping these worlds, and with their advantage of maneuverability are quite happy to prove it.  As a gesture of their seriousness they have not been shy about using their secret weapon, a ship killer that many suspect of being a 'mason field generator', despite knowing that every time they unleash it they increase the chances of the FedCom working out a successful defense.  That FedCom has not unleashed their experimental counter is telling.


The last religious note of worth is the semi-mythical world of Apotheosis, and the Apocalypse Blockade.  An unknown time ago, said to be during the pre-charter era when planetary governers were kept on a tight leash by a powerful Republic... though not so long ago that they were ruled by Earth (three or five governments ago...) a world experimented with AI, mind linking, advanced drone research to include nanites and 'biomorphing'... that is induced mutation for vanity and utility on demand, and accidentally (deliberately?) unleashed a post-Singularity hell, a world with one mind and body made up of all the millions of inhabitants, and fully capable of incorporating the minds and bodies of those unfortunates who landed to investigate the disaster.  Conventional weapons were too weak to destroy it and more destructive weapons (nukes) were somehow stopped by the new world/creature.  A fleet was formed, and eventually self sustained in system, to prevent it from leaving, having to destroy probes and small craft occasionally launched from the surface.  It is an ancient secret, highly kept... and yet people manage to migrate to that system from time to time as if drawn there.  Over the years priests of the world/god have been uncovered, occasionally sporting unusual, and extensive, bionic reconstruction and other more exotic alterations.  Followers claim that they dream of a paradise where all are one and nothing is lacking.  

Naturally the Charter signed by planetary governors restricts researches into such technologies, particularly synergistic researches. While the Confederation has a much greater technological and industrial base than the Empire, they can be very conservative around tech that might lead to another Apotheosis.

As the larger and more influential of the two major power blocs in the galaxy, I feel it would be best to discuss how 'business is handled' within the Confederation.

The Confed is a something of a debased political organization, the core political center of an ancient decayed regime.  Evidence of this decay are prevelant all throughout the structures of the Confederation, though amazingly some of the oldest elements of its body are some of the most vital and healthy.

To understand the Confed it is somewhat necessary to understand its history, its origins. I will not blur this post with excessive detail, but the Confed is nothing more than the cobbled together remanents of power from the two previous groups of people who have run all of space.

No, you want more, I can tell.

Very well.  When the old Alliance of Earth finally collapsed due to excessive corruption and inefficency, a new government was formed on a pleasant, highly terraformed 'garden world' which was renamed  Sanctuary.  The various governors of the various worlds were, at that time, still primarily political appointee's from the old alliance, power had flowed down from earth to the various colonies in those days.

The new Republic invited these member worlds to participate as equal partners, rather than as subordinate colonies, something they were quite eager to do, and the various governors were happy to appoint representatives from their worlds to act as their ambassadors and voices in the Republic Senate.  Some might say this was the fatal flaw in the structure of the Republic, that the Governors had too much say in what happened in Sanctuary.

The Republic, in keeping with its ideals insisted that some level of democratic process was used in the selection of Governors, which was not an onerous burden.  Over centuries it came to pass be that once elected it was quite common for a governor to rule his world for life thereafter, perhaps due to the fact that in some cases a short term governor might find his appointed representatives arriving on Sanctuary years after he had been unseated. This created a measure of stability in the Republic, as it was quite uncommon for seats to change hands in any given year, even with hundreds of member worlds or systems.

Eventually the Governors broke the yoke of the Republic, enabling themselves to determine the limits of their own rule within their worlds.  Not every world fell to this level of corruption, not by a long shot, but the Republic collapsed into ineffectualness, and Sanctuary became a backwater world that issued public decree's that no one cared for.

The most powerful worlds reformed the government eventually, calling themselves a Federation, though its purpose was to strengthen their own worlds, enrich their own coffers. The Governors were the defacto powers then, many uncontested lords of their own worlds, and they brooked no interference from outside, not even their fellows.  This was the origins of the FedCom and the original Charters, granting power to the Governors over their worlds. It also formed the basis of adding new worlds to the Federation that continues today. Previously the Alliance of Earth, or the Republic after it would invite a world to join, offering powerful blandishments in the form of technology and infrastructure, though the Alliance had no problems with the more traditional colonial practices of conquest in their day.  The FedCom used a process very similar to the colonial practices, taking worlds by force when they couldn't bribe them, but added a new twist. Voluntary membership gave the world more rights in the new Federation, while Conquered worlds were given an appointed governor who was encouraged to pillage the world for his own, and the Federation's, profit until they were fully compliant. A newly assimilated world could expect centuries of second class status within the federation, compared to the mere decades a volunteer world could suffer... then too the twist, you never knew when a Fedcom fleet would appear in orbit for conquest instead of trade, bringing a new government with it.

The Governors reveled in their power for a long time, though eventually the offenses, the hereditary powers grew too much for the more civilized worlds to bear and the FedCom was subborned by these rebel worlds during a long bloody civil war to restore order.  The peace process resulted in, not several charters but one Charter, The Charter, outlining the basic rights of citizens, curbing the excesses of the previous era. Peace was bought dearly, however. Few governors wished to sacrifice their power. Lending their wealth to the Rebels cause they ensured they had a say in the form of this new body, the Confederation.  Each world, each Governor is a power unto himself, bound loosely by the Charter he 'signs'. The Confederation government is therefore quite weak, able to make galactic policy but not planetary policies. Compared to the bill of rights, for example the Charter is quite weak and full of loopholes, not least of which is the simple fact that Non-Citizens do not have nearly the protections of citizens.  THe greatest strength of the Confederation is that the Charter compels certain concessions, such as the support of the FedCom military by levy, each world must provide a certain minimum of appropriate recruits, most of whom will never return. The Confederation government, of which FedCom is a large part, recieves a tax from each world as well that can not be abrogated, and while Senators are lifetime positions, the Charter demands that all citizens have an equal say in their appointment.  This does not prevent abuses of the system typical of member worlds like Avalon, who's population is largely made up of non-citizens with only a tiny minority of enfranchised 'citizen' rulers, but such worlds are thankfully rare and often frequently 'blockaded' by the FedCom Navy when ever an excuse presents itself.  It helps that commonly levies from those worlds come from the vast non-citizen bodies, with a built in hate for the status quo of their former homes.

Most taxes are in form of goods rather than actual monentary wealth. Avalon, for example, provides grains and exotic ores, while Hendez's Folly provides advanced AI software routines and advance computer parts to support them.  While there is a monetary standard in the Confederation, the economic disasters leading up to the Diaspora Era, and even after during the Colony Era has moved away from inflationary economics in favor of what is known as Rakeem-Hikaru "Real Goods" Economics models, though this hasn't ended financial ups and downs.

Life expectancy for citizens ranges from two to five centuries, limited only by degeneration of the brain. Such degeneration may be overturned by medical science, but at the cost of memory and personality... such rejuves are legally considered 'new people' and the process is virtually unheard of outside of a few deeply religious groups where people still fear for their immortal souls.

People in the Confederation are frequently masters of filling their ample leisure time.  Many worlds are heavily industrialized, with most industries run by robotics and AI's, leaving the people well off and bored.  Some worlds have turned to 'life beds', where the population is controled by artifical breeding, and the citizens occupy a digital wonderland by choice, with a few unfortunates unwilling or unable to participate performing menial tasks to keep them out of the way, often involving double-checking the work of the machines that run their lives.  There are movements against such worlds, fearing another Apotheosis or the elimnation of mankind as necessary to the functioning of society...  ironically such movements have a great deal in common with the Empire.

It would be extremely easy to point out that there is an Emperor, and below him lies the nobility then everyone else.

It would also be a gross misrepresentation of the facts.  

To understand the Empire there are to salient facts that can not be misunderstood. The first of which is what is known to outside political scholars as the Doctrine of Universal Soveriegnity. That is, simply, that there is no such thing as a soveriegn power outside the Empire. This is not a convienent political fiction, they actually mean it.  The entire Confederation is simply a massive, vested, criminal enterprise in defiance of Imperial will.  It does make diplomacy... difficult. The Empire does not have citizenship, it does not have ambassadors, and only immedeate necessity causes them to treat with outsiders with anything other than the arrogance of people who know they are in the right.  

The second fact is not only key to grasping the basic tenets of Imperial politics but also salient to understanding how universal soveriegnity works.  It is found in the very first Imperial Decree, and in the first line of the Dialogs, with the entire first chapter of that book being nothing less than an exposition of the point: All Men are Born Free.

From the highest in the land (Children of the Emperor) to the lowliest of the low (the children of Serfs), all infants are automatically Freemen, the largest class of 'citizens' of the Empire.  In the earliest days of the Empire all Decrees were worded so they only granted rights, never restricted them.  The infamous Left Hand decree only gave the right to murder without reprisal those who muslims, rather than attempting to abridge the rights of the Freeman muslims who opposed the Emperor. Recall that while the Dialogs themselves are nothing more than a guide, the discussions within can be used as the very basis of Imperial Law, as precedent and to understanding intent.  If the Imperial Judicial system were like our own, lawyers would make great hay trying to establish who's voice in any given chapter was the most important....

But we digress.  

At the very core of Imperial Law is the idea that one 'buys into' governance. There is some restriction that make exception, after all the Emperor was enforcing a world wide peace, and granting everyone the right to go off willy-nilly made running things chancy.  But we will treat with those as they become relevant.

The freemen are the largest group of people in the Empire, and technically all without the Empire are Freemen as well.  They have chosen not to buy into Imperial culture, which (within limits) they are FREE to do so.  Freemen do not pay taxes, do not have to have ID cards or licenses for a wide variety of tasks and so forth.  They may chose to get licenses, for example, to provide a measure of legal insulation from reprisals.

However, as no man can be required to care for another man (Imperial 'English' does not have seperate words for genders barring medicine and science. This is thought to be due to the Emperor's own use of only masculine terms throughout the Dialogs, though the English of that era was wildly different, and supposedly not his native language.), so those who refuse to provide for themselves may be made into serfs, who are property of the Emperor, and are cared for in return for their lack of freedom.

Before one continues, it must be understood that part of being born free is a core idea that there is no such thing as inheretance. No title, no wealth, no possessions are inherent to birth. All things revert to the Emperor upon death... the implications to Imperial Culture are profound.  Recall that the Nobility is not hereditary as we progress.

At the top of the Imperial pyramid is, naturally, the Emperor himself (herself currently). THe Emperor has no name and no face, wearing an iron warmask as the primary 'crown' of Empire.  The people of the Empire keep the polite fiction that the Emperor is immortal, though for reasons long forgotten the term 'Immortal Emperor' is extremely taboo. (The fifth Emperor, taking advantage of advance medical science available from FOST reigned for several centuries under that moniker until insanity forced a quiet coup... many of the wildest tales of Imperial cruelty are traced to that era. Now the Emperor is (secretly) forbidden from using such technology... by Imperial Decree, no less...)  The Emperor's primary source of political power, aside from tradition, is the ancient law decreeing that only the Emperor could lend money.. that is the Emperor is also the Empire's only legal bank!  Yes, there are criminal enterprises involving illegal money lending... and informal money lending does, occasionally, happen.

Nobles are those people who have recieved, and can request, an Imperial Loan.  Legally, thats the sum total of it, though we will discuss the various lesser details in time.

Below the Emperor is the Imperial House, which consists of both 'Imperial Nobles' and 'Imperial Freemen' and all the serfs in the Empire... incidentally. Some of the freemen are quite powerful (the Seneschal is a freeman and is responsible, traditionally, for running the Imperial City, the Mayor if you will, and has some say in the economic policies).  Running an empire of 60 odd worlds is quite intensive even with a very 'small' government with little need for proper administration, and the Imperial House fills that role.  The highest noble title available aside from Emperor is restricted to this House (Prince, reserved for blood family, and strictly a formal title, their actual political power is non-existant... they can, however, recieve loans from the Emperor...).  Traditionally the Emperor picks a successor from the House, but never a Prince, though in the last millenium particularly the Princes have been the only inheritors of the Mask.  The Emperor, sans Mask, is referred to as Prince so and so, even if they weren't a prince before....  The Imperial Color is White (which is also the color of Death, but that is neither here nor there), though there are very few restrictions on its use outside.

The nobility are people who have convinced the Emperor that they have the ability to make money, and thus secured a 'business loan', and a certain cachet, a fief if you like, to turn to their profit. By ancient law they owe on third of its value to the Emperor in return for this loan (which they can never really get out from under as long as they hold their title...). Note that it is illegal to try 33% or some variation. One Third as in the original decree. Traditionalists, you know...

Exception: Kings. There existed on Domu three 'kingdoms', generally small nationstates that for various reasons (each is storied in and of itself) where allowed to retain their hereditary kingdoms by swearing fealty. While only one remains today, the number of kings swelled immedeatly after the expansion into space so that there are a grand total of 5 current 'Kings' in the traditional Nobility. Kings are responsible for the tribute from their kingdom and typically do not have business concerns.

Dukes may be responsible for the wealth of an entire planet, building industries and so forth, or they may be responsible for trade fleets from a Jump Ship...

the lowest rung, Knights, are often little more than successful shopkeepers, though a few try their hand at running 'serf' shops, that is 'renting' the Imperial Serfs for manual labor (commonly including janitorial businesses or garbage pickup services, where the Serfs do the heavy lifting and the renting noble is responsible for their upkeep (food, housing and uniforms).  Knighthood is often viewed as a 'honorary noble' title.

Groups of nobles form 'Houses' with shared economic interests, useful to maintain continuity when a title changes hands... the favor of a House can be essential to a successful petition for a give title, as it increases the chance that you'll make enough money to pay back your perpetual interest. There is no legal obligation for a new title holder to join the previous holder's House, but failing to do so can make business difficult.

The Emperor has final say on who gets, and keeps, titles. However, Dukes may hold lesser titles that they may disberse to others, though technically they are loaning the money and collecting the tithe, they are acting on behalf of the Emperor when they do so, and are the ones held accountable for the totals... this goes down the chain, though in practice its unwise for anyone below a count to try it... and ONLY the Emperor may create titles, including knights.
To be cont...

Sorry to cut the last one a bit short, but I had to leave on short notice.

Sadly, once the thread of thought is gone it is hard to pick up exactly where one left off.

Lemmee see....

I think I've given you all a decent taste of the ground floor of imperial culture but how does it work?

Well, remember that people essentially chose to 'opt in' to Imperial governance.... officially anyway. All self proclaimed citizens of the Empire are naturally quite proud of it and find systems that do not work inside the Imperial Decrees to be primative and savage, so they don't feel at all bad about forcing other to adapt... you are, after all, setting them free.

The Emperor is essentially it when it comes to policy and momentum. Previous Emperors were fairly lazy and the Empire just sort of toddled along, the nobles coming up with their One Third and the Army protecting the established boundaries and pretty much everyone reacting. Internally things have been a mess for some time, and they just kept going.

But with an active Emperor things happen. The Emperor says 'go take this world' the Army does it. The Emperor appoints a new Duke and tells them to make some barely habitable fringe world profitable... it happens.

Inside the Empire itself things haven't changed too much.  There are very few laws, not even things like 'thou shalt not kill' and so forth.  Treason and other violations of Imperial decree are the only actual 'crimes'.

Instead if one is wronged by another, or feels like they've been wronged, you hire investigators, licensed if you want good work, unlicensed (or do it yourself!) if you are cheap.  The Imperial House has a decent police force which can be hired at high rates for their investigative skills... and the cachet their seal brings to the subsequent arbitration... hiring them means you are serious, and their investigations are above official reproach. Given that one of the few capital crimes in the Empire is 'governmental corruption', they are essentially unbribeable, or at least MOSTLY unbribeable... every so often the galaxy gets a look at the creatively barbaric execution methods the various emperors have divised over the eons.

Anyway: Evidence of 'wrongdoing' is taken to a magistrate, which is ONLY a member of the Imperial House. The Magistrate weighs the evidence and levies a fee. If you pay the fee and the accused does not pay the (typically much higher) fee to oppose the judgement the Magistrate will assign an approved punishment and will swear out a warrant.  For most crimes and warrants you then hire an Archon (who should be, but not always are...) licensed to bring the person to justice... that is, collect monies owed, stolen property, or even haul them in chains to a stocks or to work a Serf gang for a set period of time...whatever the magistrate approved and you were willing to pay for.

For some crimes (murder and other gross offenses) the magistrate may authorize executions, which means hiring an Executioner. Hiring an unlicenses executioner is a great way to find yourself under a warrant for wrongful death... and executioners charge appropriately for services rendered.

Licenses are approved by the same branch of the Imperial House that provides the Magistrates.  

Nobles do not require licenses to do business of any sort... having a title is akin to having a universal licenses.   As stated licenses are essentially stamps of approval more than required permissions.

Note that the Nobility has absolutely no say in governance itself officially. What they do have is lots of money, which they use to fuel the Empire which lets them make lots of money, and a good network to capitolize on their money. Unofficially a coalition of Nobles can virtually garuantee 'their man' gets the nod from the Emperor (though the current Emperor is a bit contrarian, as is her right) for a title, and can shape policy in other ways.  For example the current Duke of the Jump Fleet Celexsis (er... must rename now that DH has half stolen my name!) managed to secure an Imperial 'liberation' of a world from FedCom 'assimilation' by presenting not only a battle plan but a business plan for how adding that world would strengthen the Empire....  Nobles, or even people who aspire to be nobles, shape policy by suggestion rather than official word.

Now: As stated there is no inheritance in the Empire. There are 'blooded' families who have 'produced' large numbers of nobles, through contacts as much as anything else, and naturally the children of priviledge have a leg up as always, but the lack of Inheretance has largely kept the long term aggregation of wealth to a minimum. However, no system is perfect and over a millenia ago a few clever blood families started figuring out ways to pool their resources over generations, this was the foundation of the Clans... which some see as the saviors of the Empire and others (including the Empress) see as it inevitable demise.

It is common for the elders to sell to their children, cheaply, their homes and businesses so that such things stay in the family. Obviously, if the owner dies in an accident this can be devestating. While families tend to be reasonably small, the number of generations under one roof can be extreme.

The Clans made an art out of this sort of generational 'spreading the wealth', and subsequently using their economic power to twist the Emperor into keeping certain noble titles in 'the Clan'. They even go so far as to adopt outsiders who gained Clan Titles whenever possible.  There are dozens of clans, many of them very rich and very powerful, members or sole owners of great Houses, they have their own fleets, and many accuse them of 'cooking' sale papers to prevent accidental deaths from stripping them of any assets at all. Typically there is one, or as many as three or four, core 'blood families' that run the clan, with the rest of it made of assosiated families of freemen who serve in traditional family businesses within the clan, ensuring a measure of continuity and profitability even if said business eventually leaves Clan hands.

While the Emperor could destroy any given clan, or even small alliances of Clans quite easily, such an open move would surely provoke all the clans to band together against the Emperor, which would provoke a true civil war. As much as a third the Empire might side with the Clans, though the Army itself is mostly free of their influence... while many soldiers and officers might have some allegiance to their Clan of birth, one simply can not last long in the army with that divided loyalty, certainly not prosper and get promoted.  Only a handful of Generals in the entire history of the Empire have been proud 'clansmen', and only one currently serves.  His loyalty is not in question in this regard, and even so, the bifurcated military structure is designed to eliminate treachery at the highest levels.

That the Clans can present a credible military threat without the aid of even a portion of the Army is but one of the many problems they present the Emperor.

Ironically, most, if not all the Clans are just as proud to be Imperial as they are to be Clansmen and even the scions of the Clans believe they are doing the right thing, though they are not necessarily privy to the mindset of their ancestors.



Off the cuff, the average lifespan of an Imperial is only 120-130 years old with many more dying before that due to accident or violence.  Imperials have a cultural aversion to life extension technologies.  As such it is rare enough to be too expensive for most, and those who can afford it are subtly encouraged to believe that they will forfiet their positions if they go for it.


One thing to keep in mind about the Empire is that very little of its original structure, particularly some of the more enduring traits, were entirely accidental.  It is a well established fact by Imperial Historians that the First Emperor had a very keen idea of what he wanted the Empire to be, and was ruthless about creating it.  Given that it is known (if only to those rare scholars who study such things) that he murdered his own son to ensure the succession was not by blood, it is a sure thing he would be appalled by the last thousand or so years of largely dynastic transfers.  He may have even supported the Usurper out of disgust. Ironically, the well known fate of his son makes the actual identity of the Second Emperor one of the great mysteries of the age... less is known of the second than the first (and at teh end of the day... what do they really know about number one? Certainly not his name, face or even precursor nation of birth.)... some even suggest number 2 was Mithras returned... certainly his reign was longer than the firsts and much 'better' as historians might judge such things, with greater prosperity and peace for all, and none of those embarrassing decrees that mar the histories around him. No left hands for him, nor 'Rose Parades'...

In general, I like it. What system do you propose?
 
On FTL travel, tho

Quote from: Spike;282419There are three methods of FTL travel. The R-Drive ...snip... The S-Drive ...snip... Jump Drives ...snip...

I don't exactly get why 3 types of drives, nor how they work into play. Could you expand a bit?

One factor that slows posting here is trying to determine exactly which of the dozens of possible things I could talk about I should be tackling next.  Right now I could launch into detailed analysis of the FedCom military, the Empire military, the structure and nature of the Empire's serf class, Empire Commandos, FedCom Marines... or I could hit left feild and tackle 'Black Worlds'.... I could touch upon the Caliphate, Pirates in the Fringe (and elsewhere), Spacer Colonies and fleets, linguistics and more...

I could talk more about Apotheosis and the Apocalypse Blockade. I could talk about the mysteries of 'Sector 127' and what's really going on. I could talk about organized crime, slavery and other ills of humanity.  I could talk about the methods used by the Confederation to bring worlds into their sphere, the relative military mights of each power.






So, spinning my random mind I thought I'd discuss the Empire's military structure, specific to Regimental vs Battalion structure.

As stated earlier there is no division between Army and Navy in the Empire. All forces are essentially 'The Army' and a soldier can serve ship side or dirt side with equal chances, a general can be promoted from the Infantry to commanding a Jump Fleet and is expected to perform equally well in either catagory.  

While the Empire does have dedicated armor and artillery branches, they are small and poorly staffed compared to their counterparts in the FedCom, due to the culture of the Empire.  Given the nature of ground warfare this isn't a crucial failing. Ground battles tend to be quick affairs, take and hold key installations to support a simultanious fleet engagement in orbit, rather than set peice battles of yore.  The organic support within the companies and platoon levels is sufficent.

There is a very shallow rank structure in the Empire.  Common soldiers rarely get promoted, only demonstrated leadership results in advancement, and there is little push to be promoted.  Ability on the battlefield is held in higher esteem than the ability to lead others.  Ironic, really, as the gloryseeking is viewed as a means to acheive wealth (promotion to the Nobility) which is actually more common for demonstrated leaders. All Generals have the equivency of a Dukedom, though less priviledge than the civilian noblity.

Every soldier is inducted into a Regiment upon graduation from training.  Most of the time entire classes are divided between only two or three regiments, though at times dozens may recruit. Regiments are not tactical organizations but more social clubs, often staffed by retirees.  Rank in the Regiment is seperate from actual military rank, and it is not unheard of (though uncommon) for a Soldier to outrank a General at Regimental functions.  Regiments are very status concious, and most soldiers are eager to bring glory and honor to their Regiment. Accolades and awards to 'units' are held primarily at the Regiment, rather than in the unit that acutally served on the battlefield.  It is uncommon for a soldier to leave his Regiment for another, but in some cases a particularly excellent soldier is assigned to a Regiment with a bad reputation and the soldier may be extended an invitation to a more prestigious Regiment as a reward for heroics.  The most common method of leaving one's regiment in this fashion is to be invited one one of the few "Imperial Regiments", which are notable for extensive use of white in their Regimental Insignia.

On the flip side, most Soldiers are expected to serve in different 'Units' on the battlefield throughout their careers.  Any given unit will have typically three or more Regiments making up its body.  Typically there are set regimental affiliations within various units and 'orphans' who are sent to units without a traditional affiliation with their regiment are viewed as unfortunate.  

Quite often, however, the commander of a unit is a member of a non-affiliated Regiment, along with his staff, to keep favoritism to a  minimum and reduce the ability of the Commander to abuse his authority (turn traitor, though this has rarely been an Issue in the Empire, it was a real worry during the Unification).  

Equipment, to include uniforms, are provided by the Nobility. Many Nobles pay their annual tithe to the Emperor by providing goods and services, such as supplying a unit. Its a point of pride to many military minded nobles (or blooded families with members in the Military) by equipping a unit. Naturally the man paying the bills has a lot to say in how that money is spent.  Thus you might have a 'Lancer' battalion using powerful laser cannons as primary arms due to a Noble having concerns with industries that provide lasers, or simply because he likes the pretty lights.  Poorer units might have a hodgepodge of gear from a mess of lesser nobles unable to field an entire unit.

Soldiers may also draw equipment from their regiment, though such equipment is provided by charitable donations (regimental affiliation is highly prized even among civilians. The only way into a regiment other than service is material support, though with enough support one can acheive a high rank within the Regiment in question.), though this is typically reserved for those unfortunates sent to poorer units.  Again, units funded directly by the Emperor are the elite, with the best equipment and plum assignments.  Strangely there are no 'dress uniforms' at the unit level. On occasions where soldiers are expected to 'dress up and be there' they are expected to use their Regimental Colors.  There is some standardization, but as Regiments are not restricted to military regulations this can be tossed out the window.  

As you can imagine, logistics is something of a mess in the Empire military. Each unit is expected to see to their own logistical support, and soldiers with non-standard equipment are ALSO expected to see to their own needs.   Units are expected to be self sufficent in other ways, having their own medical support for example, feilded from within the unit itself.  Naturally, rather than a centralized logistics system, each unit is expected to liaison with their supporting nobility to ensure they are properly supported.


An unusual position within the Empire Military is the Strategoi.  At the battalion level a commander is expected to be handling logistics, morale and politicing for assignments.  Commanders are expected to be very active in running their units, not coordinating the battlespace. That is the role of the Strategos (singular) of the Unit.  The Strategoi are not promoted from within the ranks but, much like the Chaplainsee, they are a seperate parallel structure. They are expected to coordinate with each other and the commanders at the various levels to ensure smooth interaction of units at all levels.   They have no actual authority over the commander or the unit, a Strategos does not give orders but suggests actions that will be in concert with higher headquarters and other units on the battlefield, and are responsible for ensuring units do not engage in friendly fire incidents.  Over the centuries the Strategoi have become so ingrained to the Military mind that all inter-unit communications are handled through their office. Two commanders, rivals and competitors for glory, will not generally meet face to face but let their Strategoi coordinate and negotiate for battlespace rights... with the polite fiction that those worthies will actually negotiate rather than making the decision based on the needs of 'tactics' or 'Strategy'.

Note that this does imply that commanders are poor tacticians, this is somewhat in error.  Certainly they rely heavily on the Strategoi for their specialized knowledge, but for moment to moment battlefield actions there is rarely time to consult higher ups, and commanders are ultimately held responsible for their success.  No soldier gets promoted who can not handle simple tactical freedom.  In the Imperial Army the only real sins are failing to win or die gloriously or killing fellow Imperials.  A soldier who accidentally kills another Imperial soldier, regardless of why, is expected to commit suicide to erase the stain of his dishonor from his Regiment, though this is not universal.  

This is a matter of some difficulty for the Chaplains, mind.  There is an incident on record, and discussed but never resolved in the Dialogs, where Mithras killed a soldier who had obeyed an order from the Emperor in a rage. The incident is quite famous (leading as it did to the formation of one of the famous Three Kingdoms of Domu), though only in the military do people actually discuss the theological implications of Mithra's murder. Most people just focus on the famous Duel against the Duke Boetia, the only man to face Mithras on the battlefield and 'win'. A few believe the Emperor's interference (by archer) to be the important factor.  As the duel happened late in the Unification, some hold that Mithras felt regret for the murder of the archer and his disappearence was due to guilt, though this is a matter of pure speculation on the Chaplainsee.  Only in the Army is suicide held as appropriate. Among the civilian populace it is believed that if one can not handle one's affairs (suicide) then one should submit to the care of the Serfs, and at least be useful to the Emperor.  That doesn't mean suicide doesn't happen, just that many would be suicides instead 'join the serfs', to the point where the term has become synonimous with suicide... it may be necessary to ask for clarification if you hear the phrase.  For a soldier, however, joining the serfs (for real) is unacceptable, and in fact, inappropriate.

As a matter of note: All Soldiers are at least Noviates of FOST. Those who come from FOST families are often considered Iniaties of the Technicians, and those assigned to Fleet duties, Armor units or simply made responsible for maintenance of their units equipment often acheive higher ranks within FOST. The ties between the Army and FOST date back to the Unification and conspiracy theorists in the Empire love to speculate who the Generals REALLY have loyalty too... the Emperor or FOST?  Note that all Generals are personally promoted by the Emperor at the recommendation of the Army, FOST and the Strategoi... generals may be promoted without those recommendations (and have) but such political appointees frequently find themselves receiving a friendly fire incident... even with the death sentance that implies for the soldier who does it.   One of the open secrets of the Army is the respect such sacrfices command within their Regiments.

Quote from: BillDowns;282848In general, I like it. What system do you propose?
 
On FTL travel, tho

 
I don't exactly get why 3 types of drives, nor how they work into play. Could you expand a bit?

I don't do Systems in these threads, though I have been tempted to create a system for this setting in particular.  Personally, I'm fond of GURPS or maybe Traveller... really whatever you are comfortable with.

Eh... to answer the FTL question:

In Confederation territory and the Fringe (thus the vast majority of space) only the R-Drive and the S-Drive are important.

How it works:  A ship in orbit uses the R-Drive as a conventional drive, drawing on stored energy to 'get up to speed'. It is impossible to cruise at sublight velocities except by inertia mind you.  Most ships have sufficent capacity to hit C (light speed) twice over as a redundancy.

Once the ship has gotten close enough to C (say, above .9, just for convience), resistance has hit the point where the Drive is drawing more energy than its expending (not creating the energy, but converting it from the gravitic resistance encountered as one approaches C), and begins charging its capacitance banks back up.   At this point there is enough power that the ship becomes cocooned in a sort of gravity bubble created by the Drive (and the Web throughout the ship that feeds the drive) that is roughly a few meters away from the hull, with larger ships having a wider bubble.  The ship CAN cruise at this point indefinitely, and can accelerate faster from this point to their maximum speed.

Note that acceleration couches are not strictly necessary, nor is there a limit to how fast the ship can accelerate. Like 'Warp' the ship is, in physics terms, not strictly moving at all.  

Now, at FTL speeds, one can not look out a window and 'SEE' other FTL vessels, though the ship can still interact with other objects in space.  Typically the ships computer will, with gravity based sensors, handle all interaction with the outside (manuevers etc) though many pilots like to see themselves as being in control of their ship directly.

Once the capacitors are fully charged, or earlier in emergencies, a ship can activate their S-Drive. This drive interacts through the Web by design, rather than being wired into its own subsystem throughout the ship.  Once in 'Slip' one is essentially only partially in the normal 4th dimensional universe.  Its not 'hyperspace' per se, the ship is still in the physical universe, can be tracked by outsiders, yadda yadda. Steering is impossible, but largely unnecessary. It takes a lot of power to enter Slip, and somewhat less, but still a lot, to exit Slip, but the distance travelled is largely unimportant.  

Note that ships can be 'trapped' in Slip, and many people report queasy feelings when they look 'outside'.  Spacer myths include 'ghosts' in the Slip, and jettisoning a person in Slip is held as the worst punishment possible.   The limit to distance traveled then is the ability of a ship to sustain its crew (life support) over the duration of the trip.  In realspace, that is sidereal time, the lenght of time a trip takes is a simple computation based on distance traveled in light years vs the speed of that given S-Drive (approaching 50C), while the time spent onboard ship is significantly less due to light speed dialation (I do NOT have the math for this.... I use a ballpark that Spacers frequently live a third their sidereal ages or more... and much of that time is spent in realspace, dirtside).

Jump is a radically different process.  One flys a ship within range of a Jump Vessel, it Jumps and anything within its feild goes with it.  It happens instantly. One person in a thousand will go into epileptic seizures immedeatly after Jump (which is instant and unnoticable to most people) unless heavily sedated before hand, and it is believed, but not proven, that they are the lucky ones... first time jumpers have a tendancy approaching 1 in 300 of not appearing on the other side, with unsedated Jump Sick prones having a tendency of about 1-5 of not arriving.  Repeat Jumpers are still prone to disappearing, but the rate is is less than one hundreth of that of first timers.

Jump Ships are incredibly massive, miles long cylinders.  Most jump less than once a week, and until the Dagger incident it was believed that they could only jump once a week. As military vessels however, they are much more flexible than that. However, frequent jumping is extremely draining on the passengers and crew, and increase 'incidents' exponentially. Obviously there is some redundancy in crews to make up for the more or less random disappearances.  Most ships that accompany Jump Ships do not have S-Drives, not that it really matters.  

Until recently the Empire used magnetically launched projectiles, though the difficulty of engagine FTL ships with sublight projectiles is obvious.  Since adopting the R-Drive wholeheartedly, however, they have also adopted S-drive torpedo launchers.  JumpShips, at least some, are known to have some sort of 'field creator' that is absolutely lethal to ships, killing even heavily protected crews instantly and destroying most ships systems, though leaving the bulk of the ship intact.  It is believed to be a Meson Gun, though this is conjecture.  Due to their size and the thickness of their hulls (typically layerd with meters thick rock, pulverized asteroids), and the fleets that typically accompany them, no Jumpship has been destroyed in battle yet, though at least one has been forced to flee, abandoning much of its fleet.  The FedCom does not do boarding operations (the Empire, however...), so there has not been a serious attempt to capture one.

Spike, any more?
 
I'm getting antsy to hear it

Piracy:

Piracy is common in the fringe, less so in the confines of the Confederation and virtually unheard of in the Empire.... Depending upon the definition of Piracy used.

The most common version of Piracy, the definition we will use to discuss it today, is relatively straight forward, though not necessarily simple.

Pirates are spacers, obviously.  Less clear, the majority of pirates, by choice or by force never return to civilized worlds, never enter gravity. The impetus for piracy is not to make a fortune but to get basic survival necessities without returning to grav wells.  They are exiles and frequently madmen.

The method of piracy is simple. A ship traveling in system is detectable some time out by even low quality sensors, its trajectory and expected arrival point are reasonably easy to predict.  As arrival points are, or tend to be near the far edge of a system for safety reasons, the pirates can simply stake out the arrival point with little fear.

A ship returning from Slip is momentarily helpless. They are low on power, moving at sublight velocity on a predicable trajectory and essentially blind until they recalibrate. The window of weakness is only a few minutes, but a skilled pirate can use those minutes to make sure the fight only goes one way.

There are two main tactics that are used. Blow the ship and pick up what remains. Its wasteful but safe and easy.  The second tactic is to send a fleet of unmanned drones until a manned remora shuttle can clamp on and board.  Usually such boarding vessels are crammed to the gills with pirates. The first waves are the young and stupid, poorly equipped and prepared, while the older, more successful crew follow later, more heavily armed and armored.  They do not take captives, typically, though they might leave crew and passengers alive and adrift in a stripped vessel, hoping for rescue.

Piracy is driven by survival needs, and any given fleet, existing as they do in the black between stars, will have radically different cultures.  Most are patriarchal, though exceptions exist, and many are quite degenerate.  Their ships are ramshackle, food, water and air are highly recycled and contaminated.  They raid to replenish their supplies, building up stockpiles that will carry them to their next hunting ground, they raid for repair parts or to add ships to their fleet, and ironically, they raid to reduce their own numbers, to thin the herd.

Raiding Empire space, for such fleets is virtually impossible. S-Drive equipped ships are virtually unheard of, and those that do exist are typically heavily armed and have secondary power arrays to reduce the downtime of Slip... never mind that 'boarding' and Empire vessel is virtually suicide, even non-military Imperials tend to be quick with a blade or pistol and full prepared to defend themselves.  Jump Fleets are unpredictable, undetectable until they've arrived and require a massive naval fleet to stop. This doesn't mean that some sort of piracy doesn't occur, rival business concerns are more than willing to raid each other for an edge, though its less straightforward than conventional piracy.

The FedCom takes a dim view towards Piracy within Confederation space. Most established worlds will have well equipped system defense fleets who have nothing better to do than hunt pirate fleets through the black, and quite often they establish 'lanes' for all officially approved traffic, so there are friendly ships waiting to escort trade vessels into the system.  Less established, even provisional colonies, rely on a powerful FedCom fleet presence, though it is up to the individual fleet Admirals to decide how much effort they want to expend on controlling piracy versus maintaining order on the new Confed world.

Thus, not unexpectedly, Piracy mostly flourishes in the Fringe.  Most Fringe worlds can not afford to maintain strong SDF's, or simply don't want to bother, and lack the control of their own space that comes from being part of a massive, ancient alliance. There are no official traffic lanes, and simply recreating the system without the economic network already in place in the Confederation would simply drive smaller traders to less controlled systems.  Of course, they could always invite the FedCom to clear pirates out of their space, but this is a temporary solution at best and at worst is the first step to becoming a Provisional Colony.  

Most systems will offer bounties on pirates, ranging from small amounts for 'heads' of pirates with proof that they are pirates... it is very easy to prove as anyone boarding your vessel by force is legally a pirate, and larger bounties on destroyed ships, with a slightly higher standard of proof, obviously.

Small Fringe alliances, such as the Caliphate, offer better bounties and engage in more efforts to keep their space clear.  There are looser alliances, networks of worlds that engage in frequent trade but otherwise have no ties, that have formed anti-pirate coalitions to protect their lucrative trade streams, with the side effect of reducing the chances of FedCom intervention in their home worlds.

While I really would like to discuss economics, trade and the Spacer Nations it occured to me that people interested in a space setting want to know about the ships! Oops!

Thus the priority is to get people usable information.


Ships from Confederate space are typically manufactured in space by nano-assembler arrays. The hulls are seamless cigar shapes when first made and the interal wiring is largely integrated or planned for.  Weapons, sensors and other 'modules' are grown seperately according to standardized templates and added to base hulls in the form of 'pods', which can resembled giant blisters on the hull.  

The pods are unpressurized, designed to work in hard vacuum and entirely automated. A 'hit' against a Fedcom ship has a good chance of hitting a pod instead of the hull, tearing the pod away and destroying it instead of the hull itself.

The R-Drive is typically the core of the vessel, in the spinal region, allowing a uniform Webbing design, with a primary and back up S-Drive mounted on opposite ends of the Spine (note that the S-Drive could be anywhere on the ship).  For traditional reasons the Webbing is tuned so that the outer hull of the ship is 'Down', and mechanics working the R-Drive would always have the drive itself 'overhead', walking around it.  Typically automated drone labor handles the hard labor parts of maintenance, repair and even damage control under the supervision of human officers.  

Confederation ships are incapable of landing, though they do frequently dock with orbital stations. Larger vessels will have a 'Pod' with lander craft in a bay, smaller vessels will have a 'Pod Lander', where the pod IS the lander.

Primary offensive weaponry is exclusively the S-Torp, with laser equiped drones and Point Defense providing the primary defensive weapons.  The FedCom does not practice doctrinary Boarding, and a compliment of Marines are used to repell boarders, and would presumptively be the 'first in' in a attempt to board enemy vessels.  Civilian Confederation ships often replace the defensive drones with sand casters or can jettison their water supply in an emergency, and rarely have torpedo launchers, relying on any defensive weaponry they are allowed (laser batteries typically).  Many hulls 'universal', thus the same size hull can be used to provide a battleship or a mid sized cargo hauler.  


The Empire ships are built 'by hand' in space and on planetside.  Jump Ships are, as stated earlier, essentially space stations of massive size, but their support fleets (and independent vessels) are self sufficent, capable of atmospheric operation (landing) and orbital/deep space operation, particularly since the acquisition of R-Drive technology.   There are no standard hull designs, though the Imperials like aesthetics, their ships tend to have swooping lines, arcs and points, often resembling strange animals or birds in a way.  Its incredibly inefficent, but their vessels tend to be extremely well made for all of that.   The Empire uses many of the same techniques to defend their ships as the Fedcom but reinforced, making their ships remarkably durable. On the other hand they do suffer somewhat in the offensive department, have fewer S-Torp launchers per ship, slower torpedoes (not less lethal but easier to avoid/deflect) and a slower rate of fire. They also lack the screening Drone Fleet, less an issue in a FTL dogfight, though they do pack sandcasters.  In fleet to fleet combats, the Empire relies on an unusual strategy of using banks of rapid fire Gauss chainguns to fill space with hard to detect near-C projectiles. While this rarely results in direct hit ship kills, even using advanced AI predictive software and extremely proficient gunners, the strategy involves laying down 'lanes' of these projectiles, often from several ships working in concert, and herding enemy vessels into the deadly hail.  The FedCom refers to this weaponry as 'Pushcasters', treating them as a bizzare hybrid of sandcasting. Individual shots are not much threat to modern vessels due to the mechanics of Webbing and emitter arrays, but the volume of fire and the tendency of Fedcom vessels of have thin hulls makes it lethal when correctly employed.

Of course all military vessels include a compliment of dedicated boarders.  An Imperial Boarder uses a hybrid craft, part R-Drive ship/missile, part heavily armored, powered, space suit.  Casualties from boarding operations are incredible, but the glory to be won is extreme.  Each soldier expects to take an enemy vessel single handedly, which is mostly fantasy but it does mean that predicting their actions based on coherent tactics can be challenging.  Success means a promotion to 'Ship Captain', running the newly captured vessel, often a title as well, which help motivate the troops.

Obviously, most Imperial ships work in concert with a supporting Jump Ship, which is virtually impregnable and heavily armed, including a 'Ship Killer' that is speculated to be a working 'meson field generator'.   Current Fedcom Doctrine is to pull Imperial Fleets away from the Jump Ship, rather than try to engage the JS or remain within its primary weapon ranges... the Imperials have been known to jump away taking part of an attacking fleet with them and destroying them in detail.  There is a strategy being formulated to 'take' a jump ship but its exact details are unknown.  As the proposed crew of a Jumpship falls into the millions range it may be unfeasable.

All Imperial ships use a universal Down, which does occasionally inform their fleet tactics. This is in part due to the unusual development of an artificial gravity system that was used prior to the advent of the R-Drive and the Webbing in Imperial Space.   Since this system is still used on Imperial ships and is essentially 'built' into the ship decking, the gravity bleedoff from the Webbing is exclusively used for defensive purposes.  

The shape of Imperial vessels combined with the use of Emitter Arrays and armor ironically makes them much 'harder' on the attack. Attacks from the front arc of the ship, even from S-Torp direct hits are extremely likely to deflect past the ship, several times more likely than they are from the broadside hits that the FedCom prefers to take, with decreasing probabilities as one moves around the ship.  This was not deliberate by the Empire so far as anyone knows, but simply an outgrowth of their design philosophy, and each ship will have a different deflection profile.


In the fringe each world can produce its own ships, or must buy them from worlds that can. There are few standardized designs, mostly limited to larger Fringe alliances, otherwise each world produces its own.  As the space born nanoassemblers or the massive manpower available to the larger powers is not found in the fringe, the ships made out there tend to be more ramshackle affairs.

As few fringe ship captains can afford to maintain seperate lander vessels, they rely on their R-Drive's Webbing to assist them in landing and take offs, sort of a brute force application of 'anti-gravity'.  This is highly effective but does tend to result in extensive down times in orbit as they get their capacitors back up to speed, and many 'docks' make good money charging up ships so they can take off. This is particularly ironic given the energy market...  Less ironic is the selling of repair parts and general maintenance facilities.  Many fringe worlds have bought into the CommNode technology from the Confederation, and ships earn a small commision bringing updates from other worlds.


Universal Truths: Ship Systems

All ships, regardless of origin, use some standard technologies. There are variations, of course, which can be addressed in detail where appropriate.

Ships Computer/AI:  Even in the Empire, which puts a strong emphasis on the human element, powerful computers are necessary to handle FTL operations.  The Confederation ships have the best computers by far due to their industrial and technological base, and the ships primary Computer, a distributed network gestalt typically, is afforded a name and rank, and if advanced enough, provisional citizenship.  There are rumors and legends of computers going 'rogue', the fodder of horror stories mostly, as the hard coded architecture of standard AI software, not to mention the failsafe technology makes it extremely unlikely that a ship's Computer COULD go rogue. Even if it did, many systems are controlled by seperate 'dumb' computers.   Fringe Ships tend to use similar technology and software, often bought from Confederations sources, but rely on older, proven reliable, systems. Most use a large bank of hardware in a central node, often near the cockpit, and it is often used purely as a data source for the pilot, with limited control over steering and weaponry (if any) as needed for FTL traffic, not out of paranoia as much as cost.  Empire computers use a different technology base, using organic crystal computers that are powerful, bulky, and stupid.  Ships computers never have personality matrixes and rarely have the grasp of 'fuzzy logic' that seperates even Dumb AI from conventional computers.  THey are essentially very powerful calculators with limited control over the ship systems.  Confederation scientists have studied Empire computers and determined that they were a branch technology of limited value. SImple enough to reverse engineer but with little need to do so.

Webbing: All R-Drive equipped ships have Webbing, even Empire ships, as it is a core element of the R-Drive itself.  The most conventional form of Webbing is thick fiberous cables, roughly four inches thick (ten centimeters) that runs along the inside of the hull, under the deck plates and to the R-Drive itself. It serves two primary purposes, the redirection of gravitic force to teh engine itself and the controlled bleedoff of excess gravitic force both internally (artificial gravity) and externally (bubble around the ship that deflects debris and allows 'contra-grav' lift offs from large stellar bodies). Most warships can turn off internal gravity, redirecting all excess power to the bubble, increasing defense. Empire ships do this by default and some captains use a 'glide' maneuver, coasting on inertia and redirecting all non-essential power to the Web at the cost of manueverability.  A skilled 'Webber' used on some warships (that is, a crew member whose primary duty is controlling the web flow) can use fluctuations of the Bubble's size and strength to baffle incoming fire.  Recall that FTL sensors are gravity based, the actual ship's position within the bubble is invisible in a dogfight. Combine the warping effect of incoming weapons fire with an uncertain dimension of the target vessel (combined with potentially erratic flux during weapons flight within the bubble due to a expansion/contraction phases... should that occur during the microscopic window of penetration to impact) and a good Webber can increase the life of his ship in combat ten fold.  Fedcom ships rely on their computers to do this, efficent, effective and unfortunately predictable, while Empire ships have several dedicated crew. Fringe warships are rare and, as with all things Fringe, unique to their homeworlds.  Combat Web fluxing is not universal within Fedcom fleets as the doctrine for their use is that weakening the bubble (necessary for contractions... which are necessary for further expansions) weakens the defense of the ship.

Confederation ships and Empire ships both tend to 'hide' the webbing in the design of the ship itself.   Fringe Ships, barring the richer alliances, tend to have the stuff just bolted where needed, as do most spacer ships.  Empire ships are unusual in that they use much thicker strands than the standard, and only route them along the outer hull, using their own home grown artificial gravity technology for interal use.

Empire A-G technology is a headache inducer for most scientists.  It draws no power, produces none, and how it is actually employed is a mystery. What can be said is that in form it resembles fist sized spindles of some glowing purplish crystal (that, incidentally, can make a singnificant percentage of the population nauseated if they look at it too long, the sensation is best described as 'motion sickness'.  Incidentally, that population matches very closely the rate of 'Jump Sickness' to include disappearences).  Some have a neutral bouyancy while others appear to, by some means yet undetermined, produce a feild of gravity that is tuned some how.  These are not, however, actual crystals, and any 'damage' to the structure causes an explosive disintigration of the artifact, leaving no physical residue.  It is theorized that they are some sort of realspace flaw that is artificially created and stablized, though this is pure conjecture.  The crystals are quite durable and are found scattered throughout empire ships, typically out of sight.

Sensors: Due to the prevelance of R-Drive and Webbing technology the primary ship sensors are gravitic in nature.  Simple, powerful and effective given the technology base.  Active scanning increases the 'target profile' of a ship, just as expanding the Web bubble does, and is avoided in combat.  'Stealth' ships reduce their web bubble to zero (at great risk to their ship from debris and weapons fire...) or keep to sublight velocities. A 'static' ship, one not moving or moving 'slowly' is virtually invisible in the chaos of a dogfight and makes an excellent ambusher, though if they can't get up to speed after being detected they are 'toast'.  There are other, more exotic sensor systems in use in the Galaxy, but they are rarely used by ships.  There are conventional sensors (ladar, visual and so forth) that are used rarely, as at FTL speeds they are essentially worthless.  To date no one has come up with a sensor system useful in Slip, however.  THe Empire has a small advantage in conventional sensor technologies due to their late adoption of the R-Drive compared to the Confederation, but even they prefer to rely on standard gravitic sensors and predictive software.

Emitter Arrays: The Bubble is not a perfect defense against space born debris and weapon's fire.  It essentially relies on warping objects around the vessel itself rather than stopping impacts. Emitter Arrays are the second line of defense and are used in one form or another around the galaxy.  Confederation technology and Fringe adopters (many fringer's emigrated from the Confed or its predecessors at some point) is not to dissimilar from Imperial technology here, though again, without acess to R-Drives the Empire made greater strides in this technology earlier in their history.  

Emitter arrays are essentially banks of solid state 'force feild' projectors with ranges measured in inches.  To be sure, pure 'force feild' technology does not exist, at their best an 'emitter' by itself can project energy a few inches in an 'umbrella' maybe ten times the diameter of the projector... at best.  The strength of the feild is quite weak, a strong man with a hammer could break a single field, though given that its enegy once the integrity of the field is lost it releases destructively.  Most applications of fields rely on overlaping fields and their frictionless 'surface' as defense.   Confederation fields tend to be fragile, the emitters fail regularly, and are destroyed by breaches, meaning they must be replaced often.  Obviously a hull breech of any sort will destroy the entire array (which are sold as flexible sheets roughly a meter long and half that wide that are glued to the hull.. non-standard sizes are available, and some clever sorts even developed a sort of paint!), and a common sight as ship docks (space or ground) are crew members or drones replacing arrays that have burned out too many emitters or were simply destroyed by impacts that got through.  Empire arrays are built right into the hull as part of the ship, using a very durable crystalline structure related to their computer technology. Fedcom scientists have been working to reverse engineer the leap from 'crystal computers' to 'crystal emitter arrays' with little luck... metals impregnated with emitters tend to look as if they've been embedded with some dark sand and then polished.

Since it is the central component of virtually all space going vessels I felt a monotopic post on the R-Drive was called for.

Invented by a terran scientist after the Diaspora during the Jovian War, the R-Drive was the first and some say only example of true gravitic manipulation in the Galaxy (disputed by scholars of Imperal technology, of course).  Its principle of operation is essentially that it takes the resistance encounted by moving a physical body closer to light speed and converts that resistance into energy directly.  While it does not actually violate the laws of thermodynamics, the R-Drive remains the most effiecent energy generation device in use, supplying far more energy than it consumes.  The variety and scope of spin off technologies is staggering, far outstripping that of its closest competetor in 'world altering scientific breakthroughs' the S-Drive.

The R-Drive is a massive object. The smallest ones (practical, not actual) are the size of a small car, the largest are big enough to walk through. Selim Huiriput, the inventor of the Slip Drive, famously called them "Brute Force Solutions to a simple problem", and while rather biased, he does have a point: THe R-Drive simply generates enough power to force a vessel through space at FTL speeds, it is the means by which it does so that is so useful.  

R-Drives are long spindle shaped, often conical, with a rotating shaft full of metallic breadboards, called Plates in common parlance. These plates can fracture under the stress, burn out or otherwise be rendered useless during operation, but the standard design of a drive has more plates than strictly necessary for operational needs, and they are simple enough to replace, and if one has access to the right equipment, manufacture or refurbish.  The largest engines tend to be open on one end (conical) and the rows of rotating plates might resemble a jet engine, perhaps, though this is an incidental similarity, the openness allows for air cooling of the plates. The outer shell counter-rotates, and usually only consists of the first third to half of the drive. The end (the narrow end of conical ones) is where the Webbing connects to the drive. Most drives have multiple mount points so that additional sections of web can be mounted independently, while a few 'performance' drives use a single mount and a fat webbing cable that branches to the rest of the web, but those are prone to burning out faster than more traditional designs.

Logically, larger vessels require larger drives.   The Empire, behind the curve on R-Drive physics, have experimented with oversized drives on their craft but it doesn't work that way. The mass of the vessel must be increased or the speed must increase to influence the amount of power available, larger drives are simply capable of handling larger loads, though there is a point of diminishing returns that is hit once the ship's mass hits around 2 to 3 hundred tons, and getting progressively worse as the ship gets larger.  THe largest cargo vessels, carrying many times that in cargo alone use multiple drives, never cross the C threshold using R-Drives and are still prone to devestaing cascade failures of the drives themselves.

Any ship's mechanic/engineer worthy of the name can build from parts a functional R-Drive, even if they don't understand how it actually does its thing(which, to be honest, only a handful of experts can honestly claim, and a few hundred more can fake with reasonable success. Empire scientists are still baby-stepping their way through understanding the math, their home built drives are virtually identical to the Confederation drives they acquired centuries ago, just bigger and uglier).

The Webbing is how the R-Drive draws in the gravitic resistance to acceleration, and it is how the drive bleeds off the energy created, both to create motion and, incidentally, for other uses.  Some argue that Thaddius Rackham, the inventor, greatest success wasn't the drive at all, but the webbing.  Like the drive, the webbing is relatively simple to manufacture from raw material, and like the Plates, it tends to burn out with disturbing frequency, depending upon the quality of the manufacturing process.  A ship's crew can spend as much time tracking flux and leakage from the Web as anything else they do aboard ship, the fact that most vessels will have miles of webbing doesn't help.

The actual placement of the R-Drive in the ship is entirely a matter of choice. It does tend to be centrally placed for logistical purposes, irregular lengths of Web tend to make a ship difficult to maintain and even control under extreme circumstances.  The spinning howl of a drive is somewhat distracting to passengers and crew, but many pilots and ship captains find it soothing and like being able to hear the drive in operation as a means of monitoring the ship's health.


As stated earlier, the R-Drive is the only means of power generation that produces more energy than it consumes.  Early R-Drive equipped vessels used conventional engines alone to build up to the speed necessary to 'spin the drive up', and consumed fuel (typically liquid hydrogen, though other fuels were used as well).   However, one of the early advances in technology driven by the existance of the R-Drive were better means of energy storage and release, batteries if you will.  This proved particularly important in the development of the Slip Drive, which is sufficently energy hungry to begger traditional energy generation techniques.

R-Drive ships have banks of batteries, sufficent to power the ship up to speed, or when fully charged to enter and leave Slip.  Many captains, particularly free trader types, keep 'fuel rods' plugged into the system to charge up these removable battery mechanisms.  A few fully charged fuel rods on board can mean the difference between life and death for a ship out in 'The Big Open', or worse, trapped in Slip with insufficent juice to Transition out.  Free Captains can trade off the fully charged rods for a decent income, sufficent to pay for berthing fees if nothing else, a fully charged rod having enough power to keep a small settlement going for weeks by itself.  Some worlds have experimented with R-Drive 'comets' continually orbiting their systems charging larger batteries, but no one has managed to truly power a world through this means.

The Confederation uses 'Credits', the Empire uses 'Dinars' and the Fringers use whatever (mostly Credits... they know where the money is...)







Oh... you want more? Ok.


The Confederation of Earth Aligned Worlds has used the Credit since well before its founding and this 'coin' has never been minted.  To be fair, most worlds in the Confederation have their own planetary economic systems and may, in fact, have minted money, though by Confederation law, such money is worthless outside the juridiction it was issued by.   The Credit was designed originally as simply a means of measuring value of trade goods exchanged by the various powers, rather than as a true monentary system. That was, however, a couple of millenia ago.   To be fair, economics on the individual level is pretty damn screwy in the core worlds of the Confederation. Fedcom doesn't even pay its troops per se, joining Fedcom is not unlike some sort of 'cradle to grave' commune.  This doesn't always work as planned, as troops tend to acquire credits on the black market or by doing favors for civilians, though the value to the soldier is minimal given that the R&R facilities don't accept credits either...

Many core worlds are so heavily populated and industry is so heavily automated that the vast majority of the populace exists on a sort of dole system. Those whose lives, within the Confederation, are ruled by credit income and outflow are wealthy by default, and the truly wealthy trade in the original Credits themselves (that is, on the planetary scale...).

To say that it doesn't work is an understatement.  Inflation is rampant, power and wealth tends to flow from 'real things' rather than numbers on a dataslate, bounced around the CommNode system.   Luckily, given the decentralized government, it doesn't have to work, so long as the governors can make it work on their own worlds.  

The Fringe mostly trades in Credits, in fact the exact same credits used by the Confederation. How do they manage given the insane lack of standardization used within the Confed?

Simple: The Confed, or more acurately, the FedCom enforces a standard value to the Credit set by the Confederation Senate some millenia ago and never updated.  The FedCom 'buys' things from Fringe worlds at the old value, which it is authorized to do, and thus forces a single standard value for the Credit found throughout the Fringe.  The FedCom then sells goods, like CommNodes and other products of industrial systems, back to fringe worlds using the same level of exchange, reinforcing the value and addicting Fringe worlds to the Confederation system.  Ironically, once a world has a provisional government, they lose that source of stable value and enter the chaotic mess of the Confederation economic system, and since most Provo worlds are nothing more than shattered piggy banks for greedy political appointee's.... well.

Some Fringe Alliances, large enough to not need (or necessarily want) Fedcom aid, have stable economies and their own wealth. By this standard, the Empire is simply an overgrown Fringe Alliance, which isn't necessarily a bad way to look at them.

The Empire uses the Dinar, which is not related to the old Earth Dinar but is, or was, a bastardized version of the word 'Dinner'. One Dinar is worth one meal, as decided by the Emperor long ago. Recall that the first Emperor was a mercenary commander, and during the chaos of the Unification the easiest way to recruit more soldiers for the war was to promise to feed them.

The Dinar is a minted coin of silver. Domu is rich in the metal compared to many worlds, and while trade in Dinar outside the empire might result in greater value per coin than a single solid meal, the fact is the Empire cares more about the tradition than the value of hte coin itself.  There isn't a secondary silver market in the Empire itself to give silver value.   Almost all transactions in the Empire are done with hard coin, and by the economic math of the Empire, a place to sleep costs the same as a meal.  There has been drift, of course.  Technically, the Dinar is expected to pay for three square meals and a roof over one's head, and a single Dinar is the lowest value of coin, the smallest one can be paid.  This has led to significant oddities in selling of goods, and 'lines of credit' are a frequent means of doing small business.  One pays one Dinar at a bar and drinks, over one night or several, until it has been fully spent, for example.

Controlling inflation is challenging, and has been rather famously handled in the 'landlord scandal' and other incidents (incidentally, the landlord scandal resulted in the still true today fact that all properties in the Imperial Capital 'belong' to the Sceneschal of the Imperial Palace, there are no fiefdoms in the capital since that day.).  

Incidentally, the Ministry of the Coin suggests that a single Serf costs the Imperial House only two thirds of a Dinar per day, thus 'renting' them to Nobles for the 1 dinar per day is a profitable enterprise, though this makes it hard for those nobles who run 'serf businesses' to make a good enough profit to justify the effort, as hiring serfs for 1 dinar a day is a waste of good money when a real Freeman can be hired at the same rate and will presumptively do a better job. Obviously the economics of scale and bulk play a role here.

Note that the exchange rate of the Dinar is translated. Domu has a much different day than the Earth Standard.  Three seven hour periods, two of 'work' and one of rest make up half a day. As Domu has a very regular orbit and no axial tilt, day and night are even.  Note that even the length of the periods is off, as hours don't translate exactly.  Adjusting to the Imperial clock is quite challenging, as is getting used to the work patterns of the average Imperial Citizen.  

The Empire does not have an exchange rate with the Credit, though many fringe worlds do set their own exchange rates. Again, the obstinate perspective of the Imperial mindset (the Univeral Soveriegnity Doctrine) makes dealing with them difficult. The one advantage of dealing with an Imperial Jump Fleet compared with their FedCom counterparts is that you know they aren't there as a preliminary to an invasion. If the Empire is going to invade you then their troops will be the first thing you see of them.   A secondary benefit, aside from their sense of honor, is the simple fact that they will often clear pirates from the system 'for free'... viewing it as 'sport' or 'practice' for their gunners.  Of course, it is important that you don't ASK them to do it... then they feel obligated to charge for the service.