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Kingdom of Atarashī-Matlock (habitat and I suppose Faction?)

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Mon, 2012-10-29 13:55

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

Kingdom of Atarashī-Matlock (habitat and I suppose Faction?)

The Kingdom of Atarashī-Matlock Main Stations: Atarashi-Matlock (Main Belt), New-Hastings (Main Belt), Orkney-Skye (Main Belt). Memes: Constitutional Monarchy, Long-Term Planning, Privacy, Uplift Rights, Techno-Progressivism, Government Transparency, Direct Democracy, Morphological Freedom Settled by a joint effort of British and Japanese citizens who wanted a monarchy in 5BF, they also attracted people who found the idea wonderful (and, for some strange reason, Orkney-Skye was settled by a load of Irish and Scottish people, right next door within 2 years. Nobody really talks about why, they just snicker about the entire subject). While Monarchy implies inheritance of a position of power, this is not really the case in Atarashī-Matlock. Instead, Nobility is a title and job given by the Monarch. The process is this: the stations are split into Districts of around 5,000 citizens. Each District has a Noble representative, selected by the Monarch from a list submitted by the Citizens of the District. Nobles are held accountable to their District, and get titles based on how well their area does. All government officials must lifeblog their working hours on a public feed, with the only exceptions being for when they are currently dealing with classified matters. Recordings of those times are viewed by an oversight committee dedicated to that type of classified material, which is selected by Kingdom-wide public vote. The Monarch must be approved by a public vote of all Citizens and Nobles. The Kingdom's founders believed that a Constitutional Monarchy offered the best combination of the short-term flexibility of Democracy and the long-term planning and stability of a Monarchy. Their Charter is geared towards guaranteeing privacy, basic access to food, water, and shelter, Uplift Rights, and basic medical care (including resleeving if your current morph dies). Spimes are limited to public areas, with records being available for public review. Spimes inside residences are either turned off or routed into a private network that requires hard-wired authentication. Businesses can offer access to their internal cameras for a fee or for free, but must post a public notice that they are doing so at the entrance. Privacy mode and Privacy Cloaks are rather common, but most people will not bother with them in typical situations, as they know that they can retreat into privacy when they wish. Currently, the Kingdom is well known for the company Idirghníomhach Gan Teorainn (Interactive Unlimited), producers of the popular MMORPG [i]Tales of Honor and Glory[/i], especially their habit of sending a team of infomorph admins to other habitats to watch over the servers, apply updates, and provide real-time trouble-shooting. Other companies are known for producing excellent crypto schemes, visual entertainment deliberately done in an old style known as Anime and produced for various audiences, and several are engaged in researching nex-gen implants and producing versions of popular uplift-morphs that are capable of independent breeding. There are also some companies that are trying to break out into the Fashion arena, but that's not going so well outside of the Kingdom. Stations: Atarashī-Matlock: 1000meter diameter Torus. Capitol of the Kingdom. 50,000 citizens. Primary Languages (In order of most speakers): Japanese, English, Gaelic New-Hastings: Cluster. 35,000 citizens. Primary Languages: English, Gaelic, Japanese Orkney-Skye: 1500meter long O'Neill cylinder. 25,000 citizens. Primary Languages: Gaelic, English, Japanese As a Faction: Crown Loyalist You believe that a good solid government combines the short-term flexibility of a democracy with the long-term stability of a monarchy. Of course, it also needs to be held accountable and not snoop in the lives of its citizens. +10 Any Skill +10 Language English/Japanese/Gaelic +10 Interest: Conspiracies +10 Networking: Crown Loyalists 1 free Encryption program

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Somebody is using bad science! Snark, facts, snark. Your body is corrupted: Cool, do more science to it. Your mind is warped: That's nice, want a cookie? What do we say to the God of Death? Not today!

Mon, 2012-10-29 14:45

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Sounds eminently reasonable.

Sounds eminently reasonable. Of course, this being EP, the interesting question is what dark things are going on behind the scenes. A boring standard explanation would be that there are one or two English or Japanese super-rich moving playing power behind the throne. A more unusual thing might be that it is an Interstellar Intelligence-supported experiment in culture stabilization: they are gently holding their hands around the Kingdom to get valuable information about the viability of this particular kind of society, very quietly rebuffing outside interference. They might not even have originated the thing, they are just hanging on to it (like their other projects across the system, which all end up in very dry and very expensive reports they sell to the other hypercorps. If only the Conquest of Bread queer anarchists knew who has been supporting them all along...)

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Mon, 2012-10-29 15:07

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

I'm going to be writing more

I'm going to be writing more of it up, once I manage to free up the processing power for that. I'm not sure what dark things are going on (well, there are rumors that the high-quality muses that they produce are actually modified forks... and that they also do work on recreational nanodrugs). And there are accusations that they engineered taking over New-Hastings and Orkney-Skye, and are trying to do the same thing to other nearby habitats. Just rumors though...

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Mon, 2012-10-29 21:25

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

RustedPantheress wrote:I'm

RustedPantheress wrote:
I'm going to be writing more of it up, once I manage to free up the processing power for that. I'm not sure what dark things are going on (well, there are rumors that the high-quality muses that they produce are actually modified forks... and that they also do work on recreational nanodrugs). And there are accusations that they engineered taking over New-Hastings and Orkney-Skye, and are trying to do the same thing to other nearby habitats. Just rumors though...

Hmmm. How about the original founding monarch secretly takes over the identity of each elected monarch (what's that strange nanotech inside that crown)? How about a weakness in the public health system during the fall led to widespread Watts-McLeod infections? The inhabitants are increasingly becoming the poster children for the word "eccentric" and their obsession with privacy is somewhat self serving in this regard.

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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Mon, 2012-10-29 21:32

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Or to steal an idea from a

Or to steal an idea from a certain novel, that the Kingdom is actually a very peculiar and comfy prison for a certain individual.

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Mon, 2012-10-29 23:18

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

Maybe it's a subversion of

Maybe it's a subversion of the trope, where the dark secret is that there is no dark secret. (maybe. I'm kind of joking)

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Tue, 2012-10-30 22:41

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

RustedPantheress wrote:Maybe

RustedPantheress wrote:
Maybe it's a subversion of the trope, where the dark secret is that there is no dark secret. (maybe. I'm kind of joking)

:D I like that idea a lot! Everyone gets along really well but they're frantically manufacturing all kinds of intrigues so they don't look like a bunch of parochial n00bs to the rest of the system. After all you're not a *real* nation till you have at least two ancient enemies, a history of embarrassing atrocities and have lost at least one war. Right?

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2012-10-31 00:04

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

OneTrikPony wrote

OneTrikPony wrote:
RustedPantheress wrote:
Maybe it's a subversion of the trope, where the dark secret is that there is no dark secret. (maybe. I'm kind of joking)
:D I like that idea a lot! Everyone gets along really well but they're frantically manufacturing all kinds of intrigues so they don't look like a bunch of parochial n00bs to the rest of the system. After all you're not a *real* nation till you have at least two ancient enemies, a history of embarrassing atrocities and have lost at least one war. Right?

I'm starting to like this idea... Okay, there actually is no dark intrigue going on. There is however, some subterfuge where they pretend that there is intrigue. And the [i]gaijin[/i] can always be counted to make up entertaining stuff. It's pretty much the local sport to see who can come up with and maintain the most awesome conspiracy. Not that any [i]gaijin[/i] get told. Being told about this is the sign of being accepted as one of the group. Of course, there are the inevitable conspiracies about how the conspiracies are covers for conspiracies. Firewall both loves and hates it, while Oversight freaks out over it. CID and Fleet Intelligence don't know what to think. In keeping with the Kingdom's right to privacy and their willingness to pretend there are conspiracies everywhere, secure VPNs are, well, everywhere. It's been estimated that over 50% of all mesh activity there takes place over these secure VPNs and that they have some elaborate security procedures bordering on the humorous side of paranoid (everybody expects secret conspiracies to take themselves seriously! Thus, the subversion). This actually leads to excellent practice grounds to test new crypto algorithms and security procedures before they are released onto the market.

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Wed, 2012-10-31 16:01

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Perhaps the time is right for

Perhaps the time is right for your enclave to have a "civil war". Nothing will get the attention of the big trading partners like an internal division that looks like it might give them an advantage. And other nations love betting on the outcome of someone's civil war like gambling addicts love a coin flip. It would be like "Wag the Dog" but in reverse. LOL

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Wed, 2012-10-31 16:15

#10

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

Nah, that takes too much

Nah, that takes too much effort. Although there are a few actual conspiracies hidden around. One group is trying to get a few other habitats to wage civil war so they can nick their resources.

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