by Trevor Wyatt
“Tyreesian Politics”: this is an expression that refers to the application of extreme cunning, tricks and sleights of hand to politics, much like what is obtainable in the worlds of the Tyreesian Collective.
Reznak Empire
Physical Description
They are a telepathic humanoid race with lightly furred bodies. They have a tail and two antennas on their forehead that resemble studs. They are tall and have a light bone mass, making them high jumpers, extremely athletic and very flexible. The females are distinguished by their whiskers, that many other species find attractive and in some cases arousing. The females also have a very powerful lower body. This is the major reason why Reznakian women are very highly priced as sex workers in some worlds. They possess well rounded eyes and mouth as well as a delicately sculptured snout.
NOTE: Though telepathic abilities vary, they are mostly very weak. There are some, however, who are able to exercise great telepathic powers.
Anatomy/Physiology
They have the usual systems: respiratory, circulatory, nervous etc. They have sexual organs much like any other humanoid race and hence are sexually compatible with them. The telepathic ability of the average Reznakian is weak and is only effective for a short range of a few yards. Also, any form of metal shielding can hinder this ability.
There are some Reznakians with telepathic abilities that are infinitely more powerful; these Reznakians form a secret order that answer only to the ruler of the society.
Culture
The Reznak Empire is very peaceful and peace loving. They are naturally calm and reasonable. They have an equal opportunity system that makes it possible for anyone, regardless of gender or social status to rise to any height within the Empire. Nevertheless, noble blood always gets priority.
The Reznak Empire has a very vast and powerful military. They are also a very prosperous people that have established trade programs with a number of other species. Most of the worlds within the Reznak Empire are beautiful and vacation destinations for many.
The Reznak Empire is also highly advanced in science and technology. They particularly have an expertise in matter transubstantiation, which is one major source of their extreme wealth as they have been able to produce in large transubstantiation facilities some of the ores and minerals that other races have to mine.
Till date, no other species has been able to replicate this technology. The Reznakians have not revealed the science behind this technology. It is said that only a handful of people actually know the science behind the technology—these are all members of the Royal Family.
Politics/Governance
The Reznak Empire runs a monarchial system of governance, with a monarch known as The Supreme, who rules in utter surety over the Empire. Each world within the Empire is ruled by a viceroy, who is a member of The Supreme’s Cabinet. Major sectors of the Reznak Empire are overseen by appointees of The Supreme. The Prime Minister is the one who directly oversees the different aspects of the day to day running of the Empire. The Prime Minister is the most powerful person in the Reznak Empire, second only to The Supreme. The Defense Minister is also extremely powerful and commands the entire military arm of the Empire, including all its internal security organs. Usually, the offices of the Prime Minister and Defense Minister are held by The Supreme’s offspring, which limits the distribution of power to within the Royal Family.
The Supreme may be male or female, depending on who is in the line of succession. A research conducted by the Royal Academy, the foremost, premier college of science in all the Empire, revealed that more Reznakian women than men have held the crown. This does not come as a surprise because the population of females is as high as four times the population of males. The current monarch of the Reznak is female and she is loved by all her people. Her first son is the Prime Minister, while her first daughter (the second child) is the Defense Minister and Commander of the Royal Fleet.
Irivani Hegemony
Irivan is a moon circling the gas giant planet Majriti in the binary Upsilon Andromedae system. It is the third planet of the F component star, Titawin, formerly Upsilon Andromedae A. Irivan is about 44 light years from Earth.
Physical Appearance
Physically the Irivani resemble tall (seven feet in height is not uncommon), thin apes with six limbs: four upper arms and two legs. Each limb ends in a hand: the upper hands and the “feet” have three fingers and a thumb, whereas the middle hands each possess four fingers and a thumb.
They have a pelt of short hair over a softer undercoat that serves to insulate them against the cold. They wear no protective clothing, save when they venture to the icy Irivani poles or out into space. They commonly wear belts bearing weapons, pouches or sporrans.
Physiology
The Irivani are warm-blooded oxygen breathers. They are triploid mammals, the three sexes being male, female, and irimale. Males and irimales are very difficult to tell apart because they comport themselves similarly. Each sex contributes one of three sets of chromosomes to the young, which are born alive.
World Geography & History
Irivan is a cloudy and rather cold world about the size of Mars, though extensively forested, with an atmospheric pressure nearly twice that of Earth. There are no seas, and only a few large lakes. Smaller bodies of water are common, however, and there are several long rivers.
The planet is not tectonically active; earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are rare, though there are major seasonal rain and snow storms.
Politics & Government
Civilization arose in several places on Irivan, always organized around a ruling king or queen who was often the most physically powerful member of a given tribe. Early societies based on hunting and gathering gave way to agricultural settlements, often in a feudal system presided over by a single monarch. Dynasties were common in certain regions, though some kings were overthrown in coups designed to establish proto-democracies. These experiments never lasted long; the Irivani have no taste for, nor skill, at democracy.
Irivani governments were theocracies for centuries. Although there were one or two exceptions of an essentially communist nature, most Irinavian states were headed by religious authorities, primarily Veddists (see below). Having pushed the theocrats out, however, liberal reformers have pushed the world’s governments to adopt universal Irivani rights. See below, Science & Technology and Society, for a more detailed discussion.
Society
Arboreal for most of their evolutionary history, the primitive Irivani descended from the trees following an asteroid strike that precipitated a worldwide catastrophe, killing off 99% of the moon’s forests. The pressure to survive in a post-apocalyptic environment set the Irivani on the road to intelligence.
Their religion was based on the worship of the Great Ved, who had created the universe and subsequently retired to live on Majriti (known to the Irivani as Veddash).
Though the distant stars—excepting Titawin itself—were only occasionally visible through rifts in the clouds enveloping their world, nearby Veddash was a constant presence in Irivan’s night skies. The moon’s forests returned slowly, but by the time they had returned to their original glory, the Irivani no longer wished to return to their primitive beginnings, although their mythology is full of pastoral tales. Instead, they established a thriving metropolitan culture in the trees, with outposts and settlements linked by a system of aerial roads and paths.
Fascinated by the flying abilities of the forests’ abundant avian organisms, the Irivani pursued their dream of flight until they perfected balloons, gliders and later, powered heavier-than-air flying machines. The moon’s thick atmosphere assisted in their efforts. Once able to rise into the relatively clear upper reaches of their atmosphere, Irivanian astronomy and cosmology began in earnest.
There had been clashes among the faithful for many years because fundamentalist Veddists would not relinquish their view of the stars. Even after the first expedition to Arrikiden returned to Irivan bearin
g rocks with strange devices embedded in their matrices, as well as the fossilized remains of alien creatures, the fundamentalists insisted that the fossils were fake, and that all reports of an ancient culture on the exoplanet were hoaxes. All members of the expedition were put to death.
This provoked a furious uprising of the Reformers, who massacred fundamentalist leaders and worshippers in their temples. A religious war exploded across Irivan, that did not burn itself out for nearly twenty standard years. When at last hostilities ceased, the Reformers were triumphant. From that time on, science and liberal thinking drove Irivanian life. However, the near-total extermination of irimales had lasting effects; the population plummeted, and the recovery to its vitality was slow. Irimale children were cosseted and protected, and often hidden away from public view by fearful parents. Regarded as chattels, a family’s irimales were forbidden to mix with greater society, and were jealously guarded and forced to procreate only with mates specifically chosen for them by family patriarchs.
Conservative forces have made great strides in the past century, however, with heads of state across Irivan becoming more beholden to Veddists ostensibly working for change but secretly working to return the entire planet to theocratic rule.
Science & Technology
Though there were no planets in the Titawinian system capable of supporting life like theirs, the Irivani were soon able to voyage to the binary system’s smaller component—an M-type red dwarf about 750 AU from Titawin itself. It is much farther than the distance from Sol to Uranus (just over 19 AU), but considerably less than the distance from Sol to Alpha Centauri (273,196.8 AU).
The first expedition found no intelligent life on the small, rocky worlds of Upsilon Andromedae B. But there were, to the astonishment of the expedition’s scientists, buried traces of an ancient civilization that had once flourished on one world—a now-lifeless rock named Arrikiden. This discovery energized the Irivanian scientific establishment, and spurred the development of technology that would enable explorers to journey to other, more distant, stars.
Moreover, the revelation that there had been other forms of intelligence in the universe, even if none existed now, provoked a backlash among faithful followers of the Great Ved, known as Veddists, many of whom were irimales. They believed that the Irivani alone were the pinnacle of creation. There could be no other advanced races; to suggest as much was heresy. Even to admit that there were other worlds beyond Irivan and Majriti was to invite scorn and approbation among the stricter Veddidts.
The holy writings of Ved—which were collected before the piercing of their atmosphere’s thick veil—taught that Majriti and its attendant satellites were the only other worlds in creation. The stars, glimpsed on rare occasions through rifts in the eternal cloud cover, were thought to be the sparks raised by the sacrificial fires lit by Ved on Majriti, as he slew his enemies by casting them into the flames. Soon, this belief was abandoned; the upper reaches of the atmosphere were explored by intrepid Irivanian aeronauts, systematically investigated by scientists and the true nature of the lights in the night skies were revealed.
Nonetheless, a schism developed between hardline fundamentalists and a more liberal group of scientifically minded Reformers, who were prepared to reconsider their position on the superiority of Irivani to all other life. Clearly, the fact that other intelligent life forms had developed a technological civilization hundreds of thousands of years before the Irivani even discovered fire meant that there could be other such races elsewhere in space. It was thought that there might even be beings whose cultures were far more advanced than the Irivani, and that these beings, could be receptive to evangelical efforts on the part of the Irivani.
Seyshallian Nation
Seyshall closely circles a non-variable red dwarf star, and has a year that measures less than a tenth of Earth’s. There are seven other planets in the Seyshallian system, none of which are capable of supporting life.
Physical Appearance
The Seyshallians are descended from cephalopod-like creatures. They resemble four-foot-tall lizards with four tentacle-like upper limbs. In form, they are similar to the Drupadi, though smaller. Some scientists speculate that the two races spring from a common ancestor, perhaps brought to both worlds as pets by the semi-mythical Precursors in ages past. Due to the low ambient light, their huge, tarsier-like eyes are particularly sensitive. On worlds with larger suns, they must wear protective lenses.
Anatomy/Physiology
The Sayshallians are cold-blooded egg-layers. The females are physically indistinguishable from males, save for the females’ ability to change their appearance through the use of specialized cells. Females have retained their ancestors’ ability to adjust the color, opacity, or reflectivity of their skin. They are prized as spies and scouts in battle.
Home World Geography & History
The Seyshallians’ ancestors were forced onto land when the oceans on their native world shrank drastically in the wake of a stellar cataclysm. The pressure to survive also kicked their intellectual development into high gear, intelligence being the key to their survival. Over a period of several thousand years the Seyshallians went from seaside-dwelling primitives, reliant on the ocean for their food, to sophisticated builders of monuments and tillers of the soil.
Politics & Government
Their primary form of government is feudalism. Each nation or state is ruled by a single powerful lord or king to whom lesser nobles swear fealty. These royal families are dynastic and can last for many centuries unless overcome from without or overcome from within. Many kingdoms are stable, while others are constantly under threat because of changing accords, often as a result of kinship or marriage. The line of descent is through the female.
Society
Seyshallians are naturally aggressive. After several disastrous early attempts to come together in large cities as their population expanded, their settlements never grew any larger than two or three hundred individuals. They have remained this size throughout their history. Consequently, their planet is dotted with many small villages and towns, in regions analogous to duchies. These duchies or principalities are overseen by rulers (see above) who scheme and strive and engage with each other in ever-shifting pragmatic alliances. Great lovers of ceremony, Seyshallians put on many festivals and have numerous holidays.
Having evolved into their current amphibious form, the Seyshallians live a partially land-based existence, with considerable time spent underwater. On land, they engage in mercantile and scientific pursuits, whereas beneath the oceans they hunt and grow their crops.
A Seyshallian rite of passage entails a young male venturing into the deeper oceanic rifts in search of a ferocious, sightless predator that lurks there. Many of these eager hunters never return. Those who do are rewarded with the girl of their choice from their native village. The females have nothing to say about this, and some are not happy to be thus chosen by the triumphant youth, who often comes back maimed from his trial and may need to be cared for. As a result, spousal homicide is not unknown, and the wild lands outside of some settlements have become a haven for females fleeing vengeful families. Determined males (or their families) will sometimes pursue the females even there.
They are also fanatical traders, and a Seyshallian is never happier than when he thinks he has wrangled a deal for himself.
Science & Technology
Masters of the biological sciences, Seyshallian sometimes attack enemy territory by means of engineered sea life, including flying jellyfish and specially grown carnivorous algae.
The Seyshallians, from the early days of their civilization, were fascinated by the possibilities of powered flight. Seyshallian scientists, through the pressures of war, developed powered rockets relatively early, when their overall culture was about on the same level as Earth’s in the Middle Ages. Though they never discovered the transistor, the Seyshallian nevertheless managed to claw their way into space using the computational power of a vacuum-tube-based te
chnology.
A favorite saying among Seyshallian scientists is that their first great leap was on to dry land, and their second was into space. They discovered other star-faring species almost at once, through contact with the Children of Zorm and, through them, the Reznak Empire. Warned by the Children of possible negative effects on their psyche by Reznakian telepathy, the Seyshallians were prepared for withdrawal from contact but the oppressive mental emanations of the Reznakians had no effect whatsoever on the Seyshallians’ minds. Intrigued by the problem, the Seyshallians are conducting research into the effect.
Culture
Seyshallian are known to be skilled physicians and many find employment in the life and medical sciences. Some exiled females (see above) have even managed to win berths on starships, often at great peril to themselves, because it is not unknown for vengeful male relatives to follow them and even infiltrate a starship’s crew in order to kill the wayward female. These killings are regarded by the Seyshallians as purely family affairs.
Children of Zorm
This race of gentle bipeds is not based on a planet. The entire species--over two million individuals—live in a flotilla of ships and a swarm of hollowed-out asteroids circling 18 Scorpii, a main sequence G2 star about 45 light years from Earth. Zorm is one of only two worlds circling 18 Scorpii.
