The Castaways of the Loop (SEV)

[The Snark]

Castaways of the Loop

Capital Region: The Great Western Waste (Region 62, Veehra)

History

Two hundred years ago, a small Imperial research station was established to study a small spatial anomaly deep in the deserts of Veehra. Over time, a small town grew up around it to see to its needs, a mixture of offworld settlers and locals hoping to benefit from offworld wealth. Deep groundwater taps and hydroponics farms allowed life to flourish in the wastes, and a massive synthglass dome shielded them from the planet's harsh weather - a tiny, artificial oasis.

Forty-six years ago, something went horribly wrong. Nobody living knows exactly what happened, but the resulting explosion leveled every structure outside the dome and scorched the land for dozens of klicks around. Only Dometown itself survived... after a fashion. The town was caught in a time loop: a perfect sphere approximately twenty klicks in diameter, repeating the 7 hours, 43 minutes, and 2 seconds leading up to the accident over and over again. The Loop, as it has come to be called, appears to be absolutely inviolate: nothing can enter. Nothing changes the events within. The people trapped inside live the same seven hours over and over, wholly unaware of the world outside.

However, the inverse is not true. Light escapes the confines of the Loop, else its contents would not be visible. More importantly, seventeen people left the dome over the course of those 7 hours. Every time the Loop resets, they emerge again, only to find themselves in a stranger and more hostile world: their home gone, visible but forever out of reach.

The first Loop-born struggled to survive, abruptly stranded in the Veehran desert with nothing but what they happened to take with them out of Dometown. Dune buggies and cargo haulers made for adequate improvised shelters, though not proof against the worst storms, and some of the groundwater pumps in the remains of outlying towns were salvageable; starvation, however, was an ever-present threat in those first years. Some left, hoping to find asylum among the desert nomads or the mountain-dwellers to the north. Most stayed, either unable to bring themselves to leave the remains of their home, or unwilling to abandon all of their time-displaced future selves. What began as a makeshift camp grew into a sprawling shantytown. Today, newly emerging Loop-born are greeted by a flourishing - if somewhat ramshackle - city populated by familiar faces: their own.

Geography

"How do you know when you've reached Flatland?"
"When you look around and there's no landmarks visible in any direction."

The Great Western Waste - sometimes referred to as Flatland by its current inhabitants - is a victim of Veehra's climate and topography: trapped in the rainshadow cast by the northern mountain range, the unbroken dry expanse offers no protection from the planet's scouring winds. Without vegetation, the winds soon strip the region of topsoil, which in turn makes it even harder for plants to gain a foothold; this vicious cycle has persisted since the War of Eternal Bombardment, if not before. Most of the wasteland ecosystem is underground: mycelial networks, burrowing animals, and strange tuber-like sporophytes which reach the surface every few years to flower and scatter their seeds on the wind.

The most distinctive landmark by far is the Loop itself: a perfect half-sphere spanning nearly twenty klicks, replaying the events of a single day over and over without end. On clear days, Dometown itself is the main attraction, a deceptively delicate-looking glass bubble filled with lush green gardens and gleaming steel buildings. By night or in stormy weather, the sight grows stranger: the sky in the Loop is always clear and sunny, a peculiar bubble of blue against a backdrop of stars or dust. Then, of course, there is the spectacle of the last few minutes: spidery cracks spread through the air, followed by an explosion at the Imperial research lab, engulfing most of the town in increasingly slow motion before coming to a halt. The Loop lingers there for a minute, a firestorm trapped in time, before abruptly resetting to seven hours, forty-three minutes, and two seconds earlier.

Outside the Loop is the oldest and largest settlement of the Loop-born, called Anyport. In stark contrast to the clean lines and shining metal of the buildings caught inside, Anyport is a sprawling hodgepodge of makeshift shelters, cobbled together from scrap metal and repurposed vehicles. Closer inspection reveals that many of them are assembled from the same three cargo haulers, copied over and over again by the Loop. The farther one travels from the Loop, the newer the buildings get; most of these are partly or wholly underground, offering better insulation from storms and the nighttime cold.

To the northwest, the Great Western Waste gives way to the foothills of the lower Khassian range. Here the land is more forgiving; though rocky and arid, plants grow here, and the occasional river flows out of the mountains (before sinking underground when they reach the dusty plains). The Loop-Born have established three small outposts in these hills: two are attempts to establish a more stable agricultural base, with limited success so far, while the third is a small mining operation.

People

The majority of the Castaways are the Loop-born: the seventeen people who, over the course of the seven hours before Dometown was trapped in a time loop, left the confines of the dome. Every time the Loop runs, another set of the same seventeen people emerge, identical down to the molecule. These seventeen people are as follows:

The Seventeen

• Todd Stevens was a junior maintenance technician at the Imperial research station inside Dometown. The title may not sound impressive, but Todd's supervisor was an offworld appointee with more connections than actual ability; everyone in the lab knew that if you wanted something fixed, you went to Todd. Todd is skilled at maintaining a number of machines, ranging from power generators to dune buggies to esoteric devices for measuring kinds of radiation he's never heard of; just as importantly, he's got a knack for figuring out how to work machinery he's not already familiar with.
  
  Todd is vital to the Castaways; it is not an exaggeration to say that they would not exist today without the hard work of many Todds. However, Todd is also kind of an ass. The Loop-born need Todd; they do not need ten thousand Todds. Ten thousand Todds is a lot. For his part, Todd has more than a bit of wanderlust, and many Todds are happier setting out into the wider world to seek their fortune rather than settling down among their fellow Loop-born.
   
• Rasha Isak was a geologist, departing on an expedition into the deep desert. The daughter of an Imperial scientist who married a local, Rasha sits awkwardly between two worlds: her Imperial heritage and education among the mostly Ophon-born researchers leads most of the locals to think of her as another offworlder, despite being born and raised on Veehra's surface. Conversely, actual offworlders - including most of the research staff - tend to see her as a local putting on airs. There's a reason she went into a field that involved lots of long trips away from civilization.
  
  Rasha's education was not exactly aimed at overseeing large-scale mining and excavation operations, but she's used to operating some of the relevant machinery, which is more than any of the other Loop-born can say. On top of that, she has valuable experience dealing with other cultures - most notably those of Ophon (by way of her upbringing) and the nearby desert nomads (by virtue of having encountered them a number of times on survey). As a result, she is one of the Seventeen's first choices when it comes to diplomacy, despite not having an especially conciliatory personality.
  
  Though she arguably has a claim to Imperial citizenship, Rasha rarely if ever seeks to pursue it: the older ones hold a personal grudge against the Empire for not sending any support in the desperate early years, and the younger ones feel more connected to their Veehran roots and fellow Loop-born than any distant Ophon relatives who might still be alive.
   
• Margaret Gibbs, better known as "Marge from accounting", is a no-nonsense woman in her mid-50s. On paper, Marge was a senior clerk for the Dometown municipal authority; in practice, she was their institutional memory. If you had a fiddly question and you didn't know where to look, you went to her, and she'd either know the answer offhand or tell you who you should be talking to instead. After the Loop, she transferred her organizational talents to the task of keeping the Loop-born fed and housed. Many Marges work with the Logistics and Rationing Group, and those that don't tend to do similar work on a smaller scale.
  
  Marge had a couple of kids back in the Loop, both grown; she doesn't talk about this much, preferring to keep herself busy with work.
   
• Dave Simmons was a postal worker out doing his daily rounds. He left a wife and kid back in Dometown, expecting to get back in a couple hours after dropping off some packages in the neighboring towns. And he did - but his thousands of time-clones found themselves locked away from their families forever. It tends to hit him pretty hard; many of the Loop-born struggle with depression and grief, but Daves are more prone to it than most.
  
  As the only person trained to pilot an aerial vehicle of any kind, Daves tend to end up in piloting jobs. They like to complain that spacecraft and cargo jets aren't really very similar to their old mail skimmer, but it's more than anyone else starts with, and the truth is that Daves usually like flying.
   
• Rhonda Morris drove a long-distance cargo hauler. Even in the future, someone's gotta move things from point A to point B. Rhonda was one of those someones. It's not a job you go into if you mind being alone, and indeed, Rhonda is a fairly solitary, private sort of person. Nobody else among the Seventeen knew her before; she didn't have a lot of friends, if any, and she never talks about her family. But while some Rhondas seem content to remain alone, many of them blossom in the admittedly bizarre social environment of the Loop, forming tight-knit bonds with a small group of people.
  
  Rhonda is an experienced hand behind the wheel, and at operating a freight waldo. Like most haulers, she's also proficient at basic vehicle maintenance; in the post-Loop world, this translates to an unexpected facility with construction work, since many of their buildings are made out of the rigs she's spent her life workng on and in.
   
• Gerald Malone also drove a long-distance cargo hauler. Unlike Rhonda, he's a gregarious guy, with a girlfriend at home and a circle of friends at every pub and truck stop on his route. Of all the Loop-born, Geralds tend to have the easiest time adjusting to their new life: they make friends easily, they're not inclined to dwell on the past, and they firmly believe that their family and girlfriend and all their old buds would want them to move on and be happy as best they can. (Not that this isn't true of many other loved ones lost to the Loop - but it's one thing to believe it in your head, and quite another to believe it with the heart.) While it's healthy for him, this attitude is sometimes grating for people who are struggling to process the loss; some Geralds learn to be tactful about this, while others remain oblivious.
  
  Gerald has the same skills and inclinations as Rhonda, but tends to be more outgoing and less perceptive.
   
• Jamie Collins wasn't a cargo hauler by trade; they were just here to pick up supplies for their tiny off-the-grid commune in the hills. Hailing from outside Dometown puts them in an usual position among the Loop-born: on the one hand, it means they lost everyone they knew in a single swoop, without the dubious hope and comfort offered by knowing they're still alive inside the Loop. On the other hand, without that eternal reminder Jamie is probably better-equipped to move on than anyone else. They're over fifty and lived in the desert; they're no stranger to loss.
  
  Jamie has an eclectic skillset that includes but is not limited to driving a cargo rig. Out of all the Loop-born, they were probably the best-suited to rebuilding society from scratch, and the Castaways' present society owes much to Jamie's experience living in a small non-hierarchical collective.
   
• Doris Caldwell was a retired septegenarian, heading out to visit her niece in the next town over. Prior to retirement she was a nurse, an extraordinarily valuable skill in the post-Loop world; unfortunately, her age and frailty make it difficult for her to continue working, but her medical knowledge is the foundation of the Castaways' health care industry.
  
  Doris occupies a peculiar social position among the Loop-born: they're fond of her, but not many are close to them. The unfortunate truth is that, because of her age, Doris isn't around for very long - few live more than ten or twenty years - and she rarely strays far from the baseline. Most people have known and lost a Doris, and it takes a hardy sort of soul to let themselves get close to another one.
   
• Hudson Wilson, Meredith Wilson, and their two children Tina and Oliver were a family of four who left Dometown on what was supposed to be a relaxing family vacation. The Wilsons are among the most stable of the Loop-born, a fact that sometimes serves to isolate them from their fellows - those who left everyone behind in the Loop find it hard not to envy or resent them for having their closest loved ones with them. The Wilsons themselves are aware they could have it worse, but they don't consider themselves lucky to have to raise their children in what might as well be a post-apocalyptic world.
  
  Meredith was a plumber; while not glamorous, this has proven incredibly practical in the post-Loop world. Hudson, on the other hand, was a manager at a general store, a skillset that doesn't have an obvious application when it comes to rebuilding society from scraps in the desert; they frequently struggle with feelings of inadequacy as a result, with varying degrees of success.
  
  Being children, Tina and Oliver vary more than any other Loop-born. At thirteen and nine, respectively, they don't have careers, and their personalities are still very much in flux. The only thing keeping them even remotely similar is the influence of their parents, but even so, any two Olivers are more likely to come off as siblings than clones - an impression very much reinforced by the fact that young Tinas and Olivers tend to spend a lot of time amongst one another, since there aren't many other children among the Loop-born.
   
• Sadie Carter and Mary-Anne Wells were a young couple who left Dometown on a romantic getaway. Like the Wilsons, they were lucky enough to avoid being separated from their partner; unlike the Wilsons, they left a toddler behind with a babysitter. Most of them cleave tighter together in the wake of the loss, but it's not uncommon for them to break up under the pressure. The other Loop-born encourage them to bond with other people rather than withdrawing into each other, which seems to help - the success rate of the Sadie/Mary-Anne relationship has gone up in recent years.
  
  Sadie is a gardener; though she specialized in growing ornamental plants and luxury foodstuffs rather than industrial agriculture, she's more than capable of operating a hydroponic farm... provided they can find a way to keep it working in Veehra's harsh weather, a difficult task without the bubble that protected her work in Dometown.
  
  Mary-Anne worked at a pharmacy, a skillset of sharply limited use in a society that doesn't have the technology to synthesize drugs with the press of a button. Older Mary Annes have a diverse skillset as a result, while younger Mary-Annes often contend with feeling like they're a burden on everyone around them. The usual route suggested is to apprentice themselves to a Doris and learn to practice medicine in a more low-tech environment, and Mary-Annes have accordingly begun gravitating towards medical roles in greater numbers.
   
• Carl Kent was a pest control and contamination specialist, one of the people tasked with keeping unwanted Veerhan organisms like fungi and burrowing insects from getting a foothold in Dometown. He's meticulous, detail-oriented, and laid-back. He left a husband back in the Loop; though one of the least likely to give up on his Loop-bound partner, Carl is usually good at putting that part of his life on hold and coping with the company of new friends.
  
  Carl's skills are useful, but not so useful that they need thousands of people working at it; Carls tend to branch out into whatever related field seems most useful at the time, whether that be architecture, hunting, or designing vacuum seals.
   
• Janice Shaw was a receptionist at the local city hall. She's chipper, outgoing, and endlessly patient, both by inclination and because it was her job; these qualities make her an invaluable social lubricant amongst the Loop-born. Helping other people cope with their trauma helps ease her own... but it's not always enough, and she has an unfortunate tendency to downplay or ignore her own emotional needs in favor of others.
  
  Janice is also a bit of a werewolf, being the granddaughter of an Ishtahn trader who married a local and settled down. She hasn't inherited much, other than her height, sensitive disposition, and a tendency to grow claws and body hair in sunlight, but she was close with her grandfather and many Janices attempt to reconnect with their heritage in one way or another.
   
• Jeremy Carlisle was going to interview for his second ever job as a tech support in one of the outlying towns. Barely an adult when he was suddenly cut off from his family, friends, and society, Jeremy struggles more than most to find his footing in the post-Loop world. How he turns out is largely dependent on the people around him; he has a tendency to emulate the people who support him, and older Jeremies often end up diverging drastically from one another in personality and skills.
  
  Jeremy's technical skills are mostly confined to software; this was of limited use in the period immediately following the Loop, but it's become more and more useful as the Castaways get a proper manufacturing base up and running. This alone makes it easier for modern Jeremies to adjust.

All of the Loop-born are disoriented and traumatized when they first emerge. In the beginning, grief and loss were forced to take a backseat to the basic necessities of survival. These days, the Castaways can afford to take better care of their younger time-clones, and a not-inconsiderable chunk of Loop-born society is aimed at easing their transition into the post-Loop world. They have enough resources that they can give newcomers time to grieve before asking that they contribute to the community's needs. Morover, they've become expert at predicting how the seventeen particular people who comprise their society will react to trauma, and how best to help them recover and move past it (to the extent that any of them ever move past it).

Although they share experiences for the first ten to seventy years of their lives, the Loop-born are distinct individuals - no two Todds or Rhondas are exactly the same. The extent to which they identify with their time-clones varies amongst the Seventeen; Gerald, Doris, and the Wilson children are famously friendly with their other selves, treating them as old friends even if they've never met, while many Rhondas actively avoid the company of their fellows. Most fall somewhere in between the two extremes. It's reasonably common for younger Loop-born to try to radically distinguish themselves from their template, in a loose cultural equivalent to teenage rebellion.

Early on, the Loop-born tried distinguishing themselves via nicknames and variants, but quickly realized this was unsustainable and settled for appending numbers to their original names: Todd 3932, Janice 41226, Rasha 818, and so on. Some still try to pick different names, particularly those hell-bent on differentiating themselves from their template; somewhat awkwardly, though, name preferences are frequently shared, and most Loop-born who try to rename themselves find that their first few choices have been used multiple times.

Not everyone among the Castaways is Loop-born. Children are not common: Dometown's people had contraceptive implants as a matter of course, allowing conception to take place with a routine medical procedure but rendering them otherwise infertile, and until two decades ago this procedure was not trivially replicable for the Castaways. Even now that the option exists, few take advantage. Of the Seventeen, three are too old to have children, four are mourning partners and/or children left behind in the Loop, and three don't typically want kids; of the remaining seven, three are related by blood. Romance is a tangled and difficult matter even before introducing the prospect of kids. Many of those who accept their families are gone and decide to start over choose to emigrate, so that their new lives and families don't have to exist in the literal shadow of their old one. And finally, there simply aren't enough different people for the descendants of the Loop-born to establish a stable breeding population without becoming uncomfortably incestuous within a couple generations.

Nonetheless, uncommon is not nonexistent; around ten percent of the Castaways are children or grand-children of the Loop-born. More than half of them are descended from the Wilsons. It's not common for Meredith to have a third child, but it's not unheard-of either; the younger siblings of Tina and Oliver enjoy a vast cohort of older brothers and sisters of varying ages. Tina herself is among the most likely of the Loop-born women to want kids, though her dating life is sometimes made complicated by the fact that most prospects either a) knew her when she was a kid, or b) are freshly emerged from the Loop. (Oliver is similarly afflicted; third-generation children find their romantic prospects even more cramped.) Aside from the Wilsons, Gerald, Janice, and Jeremy are the most common parents.

Most of those descended from the Loop-born emigrate eventually, and not just because of how difficult dating is. The Castaways are fundamentally built around a small community of seventeen, writ large; it is precisely targeted at their needs and designed around their capabilities. They all know and trust one another, to some extent, even if they've never met. No matter what they do, the Unlooped never quite fit into this dynamic.

Immigrants are by far the smallest demographic among the Castaways. Merchants who sense opportunity in the Loop-born's desperation and obsession, traders who fall for a local and marry in, and a few people drawn to study the bizarre phenomenon that is the Loop... it takes a peculiar sort of person to look at the Castaways' society and decide that that's where they want to live, but it happens.

Government

The Loop-born are better described as an overgrown commune than a traditional government. Though initially they made all decisions as a group, the population quickly grew too large to feasibly let everyone have their say in important decisions; it was decided that each of the Seventeen would elect one of their number to serve as a governing council, a policy that has continued even as their numbers swelled from hundreds to tens of thousands. For some of the Seventeen, this position is hotly contested, involving complex multi-stage election processes, delegate rotas, or (in one case) an extremely labyrinthine questionnaire and spreadsheet. More disinterested individuals generally choose a spokesperson by lottery from the few willing to take on the job. The Group of Seventeen is responsible for making decisions that affect the entire community, such as rationing or interfacing with foreign polities; outside these capacities they have no formal authority.

Below the Group of Seventeen exists the Logistics and Rationing Group, responsible for apportioning and distributing scarce community resources - most notably food, but some medicines and a few hard-to-manufacture devices fall into this category too. Every so often, people express concern over the Logistics Group's near-absolute authority over basic necessities... but the truth is that somebody has to worry about these things, and the Logistics Group has thus far done a fairly good job of being even-handed. Right now, most of the Castaways prefer to trust Logistics to work in good faith, rather than saddling them with more bureaucracy and oversight - trying to keep everyone fed and alive is a thankless job already.

Outside of these areas, the Castaways are largely left to sort themselves out. The primary unit of local government is the domicile: quite literally, a group of people (usually between 5 and 20) who share the same living space. Some domiciles have detailed codes of 'law' governing social norms and conflict resolution, while others get by with nebulous guidelines and compatible personalities. When disputes within a domicile - or between domiciles - prove intractable, the most expedient solution is often for one or both parties to move to a distant building; shelter is one resource the Castaways have aplenty, and most grudges will cool when given a few klicks of space.

Crime is quite rare among the Castaways; some of the more philosophically inclined among them debate whether this is due to shared hardship, shared identity (the prospect of thousands of your clones expressing disapproval, embarrassment, or anger is a nontrivial deterrent), or lacking most of the socio-economic factors that give rise to crime. Rare, however, is not nonexistent. Violent altercations are far from unheard of, as scarcity and cramped conditions inflame tempers; fortunately these are usually no worse than a fist-fight, and unless serious injuries result the matter is left for individual domiciles to resolve. Food theft is a more serious matter, and one which remains highly divisive among the Seventeen - though thankfully rare these days, many of the older Loop-born remember bitter arguments on the subject of what penalties they have the right to enact, the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent, and the balance between necessary actions and moral ones.

Faith

The population of Dometown was not particularly spiritual. Sheltered from the desert for generations by Imperial technological largesse, faith in Mother Serpent or the blessings of the Sun faded into secular indifference. What need had they to fear the storm, or beg the aid of the heavens?

The advent of the Loop changed that. Faced with hardship and loss, people seek comfort in some notion of a higher power, and the Loop-born are no exception. The Loop is something akin to a dark miracle, destroying their lives and saving them at the same time. It cannot be explained; it cannot be fought or placated or reasoned with. It simply is.

So far, this fledgling faith is more akin to a support group than a church. Its adherents gather periodically to share stories of the loved ones and home they lost, and hold a ceremony of remembrance on the anniversary of the cataclysm. There are no moral teachings, no hierarchies or trappings; only the belief that pain shared is pain lessened, and voicing anger and grief weakens their grip on the heart.

The Requiem for the Loop is a plurality: common, but not yet universal. There is a minority of the Church of the Benevolent Sun, consisting mostly of Janice and a few non-Loopborn with Ishtahn heritage.

Resources

Resource: Todd (Specialist/Exotic Matter)
Todd Stevens was a junior maintenance technician at the Imperial research station inside Dometown. The title may not sound impressive, but Todd's supervisor was an offworld appointee with more connections than actual ability; everyone in the lab knew that if you wanted something fixed, you went to Todd. Todd is skilled at maintaining a number of machines, ranging from power generators to dune buggies to esoteric devices for measuring kinds of radiation he's never heard of; just as importantly, he's got a knack for figuring out how to work machinery he's not already familiar with.

Todd is vital to the Loop-born state; it is not an exaggeration to say that it would not today exist without the hard work of many Todds. However, Todd is also kind of an ass. The Loop-born need Todd; they do not need ten thousand Todds. Ten thousand Todds is a lot. For his part, Todd has more than a bit of wanderlust, and many Todds are happier setting out into the wider world to seek their fortune rather than settling down among their fellow Loop-born.

Desired Import: Food
Though starvation is no longer the ever-present threat it was in the early years, the food supply is neither as plentiful nor as reliable as they'd like. Rationing remains in effect, and variety is scarce.

Technology

Aclaustrophobic Psychiatry: If there's one thing the Loop-born excel at, it's co-existing with the same ten people in an enclosed space for long periods of time.
Dust Hardening: The Loop-born are accustomed to living and traveling in the deep desert.

On terminology

Castaways of the Loop describes the society that has sprung up around the Loop. This is the most inclusive term; when in doubt, use it, it may not be the most precise word available but it's rarely wrong.

The Group of Seventeen is the formal name of the polity, used mostly on official paperwork and when conducting international diplomacy. It's also the name of their ruling body; this is sometimes confusing to outsiders, but the Castaways hardly ever describe themselves as a state this way when talking amongst themselves.

Loop-born refers specifically to the people who are copied over and over again by the Loop. It's often used as a shorthand for the culture as a whole; this isn't technically accurate, as it excludes both the descendants of the Loop-born and the few people who choose to immigrate, but that doesn't stop people from doing it anyway.

Non-Loopborn living among the Castaways are sometimes called the Unlooped, Unique, or Individuals. However, none of these terms are without controversy: the first is alienating to the children of Loop-born, who don't always care for an exonym that highlights the thing that sets them apart, while the second can be a gut punch to younger Loop-born struggling with the existential crisis brought on by discovering you have ten-thousand time-clones (most of whom are older and more experienced than you). Non-Loopborn is the safest, most neutral term, but it hasn't really caught on.

 

 

Edited April 19 by The Snark (see edit history)

[The Snark]

Ruler and Heir

Current Ruler: the Group of Twenty-Three (various pronouns, they/them as a group)
Starting stats: Diplomacy 4, Military 3, Economy 3, Faith 2, Intrigue 4
Current stats: Diplomacy 6, Military 3, Economy 4, Faith 2, Intrigue 5

Specials used:
Specials available: D5, I5

Heir: none

Past Rulers:
the Group of Seventeen (rounds 1-7; Diplomacy 10, Military 6, Economy 10, Faith 2, Intrigue 4)

Territory

Regions owned
The Great Western Waste (region 62, capital)
The Orochon Shieldplains (region 63)
The Empty Sea (region 60, colony)
Arbor (region 134, colony)

The Great Western Waste (region 62, capital)
Government Support: Owned
Mercantile Support: Owned
Media Support: Owned
Claim: Integration
Resource: Todd (Specialist/Exotic Matter)
Desired Import: Food (currently satisfied)
Religion: Cult of the Mother Serpent (plurality), Fascination (minority), Requiem for the Loop (minority)
Other: dust desert

The Orochon Shieldplains (region 63)
Government Support: Owned
Mercantile Support: Owned
Media Support: Open
Claim: Confederation
Resource: Veehran Wheat (Fruits and Vegetables)
Desired Import: Fabrics and Textile Products (currently satisfied)
Religion: Eternal Recurrence (majority), Cycle Breakers (minority), Death's Wheel (minority)
Other: dust desert

The Empty Sea (region 60, colony)
Government Support: n/a
Mercantile Support: n/a
Media Support: n/a
Claim: none
Resource: n/a
Desired Import: Fuel and Power (unsatisfied as of round 5)
Religion: Requiem for the Loop (minority)
Other: ancient terraforming equipment, dust desert

Arbor (region 134, colony)
Government Support: n/a
Mercantile Support: n/a
Media Support: n/a
Claim: none
Resource: n/a
Desired Import: Chemical Reagents (unsatisfied as of round 8)
Religion: Requiem for the Loop (minority)
Other: zero-G

Diplomacy

Claims
Region 62 (Integration)
Region 63 (Confederation)

Reputation/Favors
Imperial Court: Rep 0, 0 Favors
Pan-Tekhum Worker's & Trader's Union: Rep 2, 1 Favor
Basu-Rahman Group: Rep 1, 0 Favors
International Renown: Renown 3

Organization Bases
None

Embassies
The Iron Masquerade

Military

Unit Cap: 5/9

Ground Units

• Anyport Defense Militia, led by led by Commander Rhonda 27317
• Orid-clan mercenaries, led by Amun Orid
• Sakar-clan mercenaries, led by Qatin Sakar
• Orochon defense militias

Space Units

• Drone flagship First to Fly, helmed by Captain Tina 21135

Government Supports
Region 62, Region 63

Commanders
Irin Sakar (General, Mil 9)

Fortresses
None

Perfected Tactical Doctrines
None

Military Technology
 

Currently Equipped Technologies

Active Ground Front Techs:

• Man-Portable Weapons: Soom-Pattern Rayguns (+1 to battle rolls, UNPOWERED)
• Infantry Equipment:
• Combat Drugs and Medicine:
• Armored Vehicles:
• Field Fortifications:
• Engineered Combat Organisms:

Active Space Front Techs:

• Detection and Rangefinding:
• Ship to Ship Weapons:
• Orbit to Ground Weapons:
• Crew and Maintenance:
• Armor and Shields:
• Spacecraft Propulsion:

Active Cross-Front Techs:

• Electronic Warfare and Countermeasures: E.O.N.S. Projector (+1 to maneuvering rolls, UNPOWERED)
• Special Forces:
• Logistics and Morale:

 

Economy

Treasure: 3
Treasure cap: 5
Passive treasure income: 2

Trade Posts

Trade Post	Resource	Use	Support	Rate
16.2	Senkar Medicae		Unowned	1
42.1	Charmed Textiles	Desired Import (Region 63), powering Tesseractic Storage	Unowned	1
62.a	Todd	Powering Hyperlight Transceivers	Owned	2
62.1	Todd		Owned	2
63.a	Veehran Wheat		Owned	2
65.2	Veehran Aurochs	Desired Import (Region 62)	Unowned	1
73.3	Silver Serpents	Powering Antigravitational Rail	Unowned	1
104.2	Solar Panels	Desired Import (Region 60), powering Thaumonuclear Reactor Cores	Unowned	1

Total trade posts: 8
Effective trade posts: 11

Merchant Supports
Region 62, Region 63

Arcologies
Stevens Research Institute (Region 62, +1 to Investigations)

Trade Routes
None

Civilian Technology

Technology	Type	Effect	Requirements	Met?
Aclaustrophobic Psychiatry	Starter	None	None	Yes
Algorithmic Imagination	Starter	None	None	Yes
Arcane Amplification	Starter	None	None	Yes
In Vivo Modification	Starter	None	None	Yes
Nuclear Fusion	Starter	None	None	Yes
Xenolinguistic Cataloguing	Starter	None	None	Yes
Badalian Megadirigibles	Regional	Ground units can cross the Cloud Sea	None	Yes
Dust Hardening	Regional	Ignore penalties from dust desert regions	None	Yes
Wet Navy Ships	Regional	Ground units can cross water	None	Yes
Android Industrialization	Tier 1	Allows a three-action Great Project to gain the effects of Industrial Investment	Algorithmic Imagination; Conductors and Circuitry or Industrial Machinery	No
Anti-Gravitational Rail	Tier 1	+1 to Buyouts	Ores and Alloys	Yes
Hyperlight Transceivers	Tier 1	Once per round, reduce the distance penalty on one non-battle action by 1	Exotic Matter	Yes
Minor Precognition	Tier 1	Once per round, +1 to defend on an opposed roll. When used, takes a conversion action towards Telepathic Transcendence in a random owned region (+8 bonus). Cannot be used on battle rolls.	XQI	No
Shrewd Business	Tier 1	+1 to Impress Merchants; +1 to buyouts you support	Honeyed Words, Fabric and Textile Products	No
Smart Space Colonizer Suits		When you explore an uninhabited region, gain a +1 bonus to Colonize it next turn. On a great success, you may Colonize it next turn as a non-action	Vacuum Adaptation; Conductors and Circuitry, Fabric and Textile Products (may be the same resource)	No
Tesseractic Storage	Tier 1	Reduce distance penalties on Economy actions by 1	Pseudogravity Engineering; Magical Items	Yes
Thaumonuclear Reactor Cores	Tier 1	Allows travel beyond the Great Gulf into the outer system	Arcane Amplification, Nuclear Fusion; Fuel and Power	Yes

Faith

State Religion: Requiem for the Loop
Religion size: 1
Faith bonuses: none

Media Supports
62

Artifacts
None

Holy Orders
None

Miracles
None

Intrigue

Espionage Agency
None

Contacts

Updated as of round 7 end

Edited May 8 by The Snark (see edit history)

[The Snark]

Round 1 actions
Round 2 actions
Round 3 actions
Round 4 actions
Round 5 actions
Round 6 actions
Round 7 actions
Round 8 actions

Edited May 9 by The Snark (see edit history)

[The Snark]

The Orochon Shieldplains (Region 63), Veehra
 

Geography

At the western edge of the northern highlands stands the ancient shield volcano of Mons Orochos, the tallest mountain on Veehra - indeed, the tallest in all of Tekhum, barring some colossal peak hiding in the outer system. Despite this, Mons Orochos is not impressive to look at; it's simply too big for the human eye to properly grasp its scale, save perhaps when looking down from orbit. Stand at the lip of the caldera, and the base of the mountain will be beyond the horizon. There are no jagged peaks or breathtaking clifftop vistas, as one might expect to find among Sansar's violent tectonic upthrusts, just hundreds upon hundreds of klicks of the land sloping ever upward.

Like many of Veehra's mountains, Orochos offers a refuge from the desert. The dust storms that plague the open plains are buffered by the slope and gentled by the thinning atmosphere; the higher one rises, the weaker they become. Fog, rain and snow are common at higher altitudes, as the mountain catches whatever moisture escapes from the northern oasis, and ancient glaciers nestle on the upper slopes, feeding rivers and streams. Barren dust gives way to rich volcanic soil. With water and soil comes life: the native flora and fauna of the Orochon shieldplains must adapt to thin air and bitter cold, but adapt they have. Gnarled trees and thick brambles form a girdle of sorts around the lower slopes; burrowing mammals make nests in snow and soil; flightless birds stalk the rocky scree. Humans dwell here too, farming the fertile slopes during the warmer seasons and huddling in underground communal dens when winter comes. Notable flora and fauna include:

Wildlife

• The rootspine tree bears bears more resemblance to an oversized creeper vine than a typical tree. It rarely rises above head height; its woody trunk grows along the ground rather than standing upright, resulting in a sprawling, knotty mess of thorns and branches. Its namesake roots extend downward to pierce the earth in a dozen places, fixing it in place against the storms and allowing it to draw more nourishment from the soil. On the upper slopes these trees are uncommon, as the locals cut them down to make room for farmland, but on the lower slopes it grows wild, forming a thick, thorny girdle around the mountain - an impromptu wall against desert raiders.
• The redthistle plant is a local staple crop, better known as Veehran wheat; see Resources for details.
• The olmy is a rangy red-furred omnivorous scavenger about a foot or two long. Known for their intelligence, their eerie high-pitched cries, and their disquietingly floppy-looking limbs, olmies are capable of squeezing their bodies into crevices far narrower than their body, which helps them both to elude predators and hunt down small burrowing creatures. Some of the locals keep them as pets, but most regard them as pests - they're very hard to keep out of places where they're not wanted, such as granaries and poultry pens, and nearly impossible to train.
• The yddrik is a predatory flightless bird close to the size of a human, alarmingly fast and agile on the boulder fields and rocky scree that make up its hunting grounds. Fortunately for the locals, these are solitary creatures, and generally prefer to avoid humans... though wise humans avoid them in turn, especially if traveling alone.
• The pygmy mastodon is a docile creature used as a beast of burden by the local farming communities.
• The whitefin is a massive flightless bird akin to an oversized penguin... if penguins were terrifying ambush predators. In summer, it hibernates above the permafrost line. When the winter snows arrive, it ventures downslope to hunt, burrowing beneath the surface of the snow and waiting for prey to venture close before bursting forth to seize it, maul it with its cruelly barbed beak, and drag it under the ice.

The highest reaches of the mountain are uninhabited, save for lichens and one implausibly hardy species of microscopic arthropod; the atmosphere here is too thin to sustain human life without an oxygen mask. The stars are visible even by day, the blackness of space creeping into the meager sky. The caldera itself contains a frozen lake; Loop-born surveyors suspect it is artificial, given the total lack of rainfall at this altitude, but no trace is left of whatever city or aqueduct it might have once fed.  Strange fish and algae live in the depths, many as yet uncatalogued by Tekhum's scientists.

History

Like most of Tekhum, the Orochon Shieldplains suffered badly in the War of Eternal Bombardments (referred to in local stories as either the Eleventh or Fourteenth Great War). The glittering domed cities of High Orochos were easily shattered by orbital strikes, dooming hundreds of thousands to death by suffocation and exposure; carefully targeted bombardments of the great glaciers unleashed catastrophic floods on the densely populated middle slopes. A few escaped unscathed by taking refuge in the massive bunker complex buried beneath the mountain, built for just such a purpose - among them the very lords and princes whose hubris had brought the sky's wrath down in the first place. Yet even they had only delayed their fate. The war lasted longer than they ever imagined it could, and over the course of decades starvation and infighting thinned their numbers to nothing, leaving only a mausoleum dedicated to their past and future glories.

The story of Orochos since the war is one of long, slow decay. Though the people were nearly wiped out, the land itself remained alive. The survivors regrouped and rebuilt as best they could. City-states arose in the ruins, dreaming of reclaiming the glories of the lost age... but the trade networks that had allowed the metropoli of the pre-war era to flourish were gone. The devices of the old world became precious relics, hoarded jealously and passed down from generation to generation until something broke that they had not the knowledge or resources to fix. Ancient steel buildings wore away to nothing under the endless assault of rain, snow and dust, to be replaced by stone huts and underground warrens. Petty kings and would-be tyrants fought with spears and slings as often as guns - and as the long centuries passed, even that grew rarer. Mons Orochos passed into a twilight era, its people content to eke out humble lives beneath the great glaciers...

... until outsiders began to visit - not to rob and plunder, but bearing precious metals and furs as gifts, and offering word from beyond the sky. Some of the Orochons are wary of the newcomers, believing that this is the first step on the road to the next great war. Others believe the long night has passed, and it is time for Orochos's people to wake and join the wider world again. The wise suspect both may be true.

People

Most of the inhabitants of the Orochon shieldplains live on the middle slopes, high enough to avoid most dust storms, but below the snow line. They are akin to their desert-dwelling neighbors in form: human, or close enough that it's hard to tell the difference by sight. Unlike the desert clans, they are not nomadic: the bitter cold and rocky terrain makes traveling arduous, while the rich volcanic soil is fertile ground (literally) for agriculture. Small towns and villages dot the mountainside, each one laying claim to dozens if not hundreds of terrace farms.

Violent conflict is much less common among the Orochon tribes than their desert-dwelling neighbors. Food and water are plentiful, removing the need to fight over basic necessities; conversely, they lack the technology to easily travel long distances. Trade is arduous, conquest difficult. No polity claims more territory than they can walk across in a day or two. Some of the lower villages feud with one another, engaging in ceremonial raids to seize captives and luxury goods. These ritualized clashes bear little resemblance to the life-or-death raids of the open desert, but they do keep some semblance of a martial tradition alive, which is useful on the occasions when desert marauders make their way onto the slopes. The higher villages shun these customs, believing the mountain herself frowns on it - tradition holds that she will bury her children in snow to stop them from fighting one another.

The Orochon communities are primitive by Tekhum standards; although not wholly unfamiliar with modern science, they have almost no industrial capacity of their own. What little technology they possess is either salvaged from ancient ruins, or made by hand: water-driven mills, flintlock rifles, electric heaters, solar power collectors. They favor simple, sturdy tools that anyone can take apart and put back together with a little trial and error. What good is a fancy calculating machine if you have to travel a thousand klicks to find the parts needed to keep it working? Better to rely on something the local smith knows how to make, using what can be dug out of the mountain. Their knowledge and history is passed on largely through oral tradition; writing is impractical without paper or parchment.

There are stories of people living above the snow line, inside ancient sealed habitats. Most of these sound more like fanciful tales than historical accounts: ancient warlords biding their time until they can unleash their nightmarish war machines on the world once more, savage frozen-hearted marauders who kidnap unwary or disobedient children... Of particular interest to the Castaways is the tale of the City-in-a-Bottle, which on the eve of the war sealed itself away from the world; legends say that they relive the halcyon day before the war endlessly, although whether they saved or damned themselves depends on the teller.

Government

There is no unified government among the Orochon shieldplains; each community has its own leader, typically either a chief or a council of elders. How much power these rulers hold, and how they choose to exercise it, varies widely. Some villages pass authority down family lines, while others select based on merit (typically determined by contests of wits, strength or skill) or by polling the leaders of respected local families. None can claim leadership over more than a handful of towns or villages - the difficulty of traversing the slopes without vehicles or beasts of burden (both in short supply) makes it hard to exert authority farther than a day's walk or so. The days of kings and empires are long gone in Orochos, and most of its inhabitants feel that's probably for the best.

Faith

Like many cultures on Veehra, the Orochon people revere the land around them and the cycle of death and rebirth; but where their lowland neighbors see Mother Serpent as the embodiment of the land, the Orochon focus on the mountain herself and the slow passing of Veehran seasons. Snow yields to rain; flowers bloom and rivers run; crops spring from the ground and bear fruit, then wither again; rain yields to snow. Human history is no different; its arc is longer than any one person will live to see, but no less inevitable. What once was, will be again. Everything that may happen, has already happened. To think otherwise is folly.

Though the Orochons lack any formal religious structure, every community has at least one Storyteller, responsible for keeping the oral history of their people. These histories are extraordinarily long and detailed, though they do not always agree with one other across communities; the Orochons themselves simply shrug and say their neighbors have remembered the same events from a different cycle. Storytellers are also the keepers of practical knowledge - few Orochons are literate, and the basic principles of electronics, metallurgy and agronomics must be encoded in song and verse alongside myth and history.

Most of the Orochons regard the cycle of history as an inevitability, to be celebrated or at least accepted with good grace. A few disagree, viewing the structure of the cosmos as inherently cruel and injust. What comfort is there in knowing all the tragedies of the past will inevitably repeat? A few - mostly those living among the majority faith- rage against the cycle but see no hope of escape. Others believe in a promised path to freedom: that if the right people undertake the right actions at the right time, the shackles of history can be broken forever. This messianic belief is typically in the few towns where this is the majority view. Unsurprisingly, the two sects get on poorly; there hasn't been (much) overt violence in the last hundred years, but wars and pogroms have been waged on both sides in the past, and neither side has forgotten.

Resources

Veehran Wheat
Though the volcanic soil found on the slopes of Orochos is richer than anything outside Veehra's greenlands, not many plants can withstand the thin air and the bitter cold. The most useful of those plants is the redthistle plant, colloquially known as Veehran Wheat. The grain it produces is small and bitter-tasting, but edible; as a result it is widely farmed, and forms the bulk of the local diet.

Veehran Wheat has an unusually high mineral content, due to the iron-rich soil it grows in; this often leads to long-term health problems among the Orochons. Loop-born scientists speculate that it was one of the base organisms the Sorcerers of New Kildora altered to create their famous Silver Serpent crops.

Desired Import: Fabrics and Textile Products
Thin air and frigid temperatures are a constant hardship on Mons Orochos, especially in winter. Orochon homes are well-insulated, built into the mountain itself and heated by fire or electric heater... but eventually, one has to venture outside. There are few local animals large enough to yield useful furs, and the flax-like plant the Orochons use to weave most of their clothing is poorly insulated. The best cold-weather clothes they have use downy feather linings to keep body heat in, but there's rarely enough of these to satisfy demand.

Edited May 9 by The Snark (see edit history)