Crucible of Freemen

Crucible of Freemen
Adjective: Freeman
Government: Indirect Democracy
Current Model Citizen: Claryse Garalson
Ethos: Materialist; Fanatic Individualist
FTL: Warp
Ship Weapons: Missiles, supplemented by crude ballistics
Capital World: Home (Continental)
System: Haven
Language: Various. The Lingua Franca and official language is a creole language known as Nastur.
Description: The Crucible of Freeman is an indirect democracy that focuses on supporting freedom, which includes having a capitalist economy. The official leader is the Model Citizen, equivalent to a president, and is popularly elected via instant-runoff voting.

The upper house of the bicameral legislature is elected via party-list proportional representation, while the lower house is elected via single-member voting districts with instant-runoff elections.

The Revolutionary Committee is a small group consisting of the original founders of the government serving the purpose of guiding their thought-child. The Revolutionary Committee can veto laws by unanimous vote and act in emergencies, but is mostly inactive at the moment due to the current lack of any pressing situations or foreign nations. The Revolutionary Committee originally consisted of all the top figures of the revolution, but due to abandonments and deaths, the small group has been whittled down to only three members: The Executive, the Herald, and the Knight. The titles of the members hold no merit and are merely for show; they are selected by themselves and are approved by the other members. All members of the Revolutionary Committee are equal to one another (unless they are incapable of participating such as due to leaving the Committee or holding high office). Technically new members may join the Revolutionary Committee if approved by unanimous vote of the incumbent members, but no one has ever achieved such a feat, especially due to the Herald's zealous condemnation of the idea of birthright and hereditary offices.


History: Unbeknownst to the inhabitants, they are not native to their Home. Millennia ago, humans lived on a planet known as Earth. The people of Earth established a colony on the world of Home. The colony's location was likely picked for mining purposes, as there is a relatively abundant supply of uranium left on the planet. For reasons only known to lost artifacts hidden deep in the underworld and heavens of Home and Earth, the colony collapsed.

In the post-apocalypse, people resorted to becoming bands of scavengers, raiders, and hoarders. Over time, all technology was lost and forgotten by the humans of Home. The collapse of infrastructure meant no power for computers and machines, no computers and machines meant no access to data or manufacturing, no access to data or manufacturing left them with empty guns and pointy sticks. In short, the final situation left humanity at their first situation: tribes.

Eventually, they worked their way up to civilizations and gradually figured out science and technology once more. They've finally reached a rough equivalent to mid-20th century Earth.

However, more recent history is not much more peaceful than the beginning of Home. During a massive series of wars called by many names, the Endless Empire annexed many smaller nations and eventually conquered even its rival superpowers. The world was united under a single banner, with controversial appeal. It provided free healthcare, welfare, work benefits, and many other beloved things to most people, but covertly spiked the drinking water of ethnic groups that were too dark, light, or otherwise declared less than ideal with spermicidal compounds and other sterilizing agents. They also vigorously pursued moral cleanliness and social authoritarianism, hammering propaganda into children at a young age and silencing anyone spreading "bad morals" or anything else not toeing the line.

Despite the benefits of the global regime, a global resistance movement was started by a disgruntled director who was banned from making his unsuccessful experimental films that exalted individualism. It took almost ten years, but eventually the guerilla operations of the revolution managed to collapse the government, publicly execute the royalty, and establish a new republic founded upon individualism. Specifically, it was one day less than ten years after the global unification that the government was replaced, as an intentional act of spite towards the Endless Empire by making the "endless" empire last less than a single decade.

The new government was initially shaky as it was the first democratic government to rule the world, but the first Model Citizen was stubborn enough to keep everything together long enough to stabilize. The current Model Citizen has not done much of note and has been letting the legislature do most of the governance.

Humanity has recently discovered an ancient object in orbit, presumably a ship or space station, that contained advanced technology and information from before the collapse. It has not been as useful as would be expected due to several factors, including the lack of advanced materials to replicate the devices, the majority of provinces banning the "alien" recordings, and simply the age of the ship. However, there have been some success at primitively reverse-engineering the FTL communications and FTL drive, even if scientists don't understand the physics principles behind quantum entanglement and spatial distortion yet. There also have been translations and remakes of the media on the ship, cashing in on the goldmine of previously untold stories.

Humanity once again stares at the inky void and throws out its arms, welcoming the adventures of the void with nervous anticipation. The Crucible of Freemen has a basic space station and is preparing to unveil the "first" spaceships to explore the stars.


Species
Collective/Singular/Plural Names: Humanity/Human/Humans
Adjective: Human
Traits: Natural Engineers; Quick Learners; Resilient; Slow Breeders
Homeworld: Earth (Continental)
Description: Humans are bipedal mammalians who are mostly hairless and have various oddities, but do have prominent hair on their scalp and have various minor patches of hair for heat retention or nonverbal communication assistance. They have various eye colorations for light levels and have unusually prominent sclerae that assist with body language. They have red iron-based blood which shows through their skin in some ethnicities, resulting in various red hues to the skin in some ethnicities and only yellow hues being visible in others, but the skin color generally does not have a very high saturation value. What little hair humans do have comes in hues of yellow and red, and varying levels of saturation and brightness. The hair color varies much more wildly than the skin color, and is generally a more noticeable color as well such as a shiny black or flaming orange compared to the beiges, browns, and off-white skin colors. During old age, humans tend to lose connective tissue, resulting in skin sagging and wrinkling. They also lose hair pigmentation or even the hair itself, resulting in grey-white hair and even further balding.

They are also particularly endurant for a mammalian of their size, as they evolved as pursuit predators. They can cover almost absurd amounts of ground compared to other animals, which they evolved to literally out-jog animals to their overexerted deaths without a fight. Another similarity to "movie slashers" is that they can withstand wounds that would be certainly fatal for other animals and keep on functioning, and ludicrously so while particularly determined or intoxicated. Speaking of intoxication, it's even an almost universal custom in humans cultures to deliberately ingest poisons for recreational purposes. There even used to be a hypothesis on old Earth that human civilizations first formed so that they could grow enough crops to ferment into poisons for this recreational usage, as hunting and agriculture were capable of sustaining individual families' need for food without the grand schemes of civilization.

A difference between the humans of Home and their Earth counterparts, however, is their stature. Due to some sort of genetic technology in the ancient past, all males and all females of Home (outside of deformities and childhood malnutrition, of course) have the same proportions and body type, with males being 1.80m (5'11") tall and females being 1.75m (5'9") tall. This is results in mass production of goods becoming much easier, including the knight-style plate armor that is vital to the modern military of Home.



Power Scale
Military: 1 (3-4 for army; 0-1 for navy)
Economy: 5
Technology: 1
Diplomatic: 3
Cultural: 4

Questions and comments welcome. I spent all day today and a good chunk of last night writing this up, so I hope it's all up to par.

Very interesting backstory you have there. I look forward to opening communications with you.

Finally someone not spiritualist. Should be fun dealing with you, especially as I am a collectivist-spiritual country currently residing on Earth.

Come on Spiritualist is always fun, JOIN US,  In all seriousness though looking forward to roleplaying with this...

Caspoi wrote:Very interesting backstory you have there. I look forward to opening communications with you.

Same. You muckledarned alien cultists.  

Zuko Darkborn wrote:Finally someone not spiritualist. Should be fun dealing with you, especially as I am a collectivist-spiritual country currently residing on Earth.

"What's a hoomin?" -local human
"This has ominous implications. Why did we develop on Home, and why is the Earth destroyed? What has caused these events? Is this some sort of punishment from a spiteful galactic empire in the prehistoric past?" -Model Citizen
"FUCKING SPACE COMMIES AND THEIR SLAVE MORALITY!" -Herald

Joe Joerson wrote:Come on Spiritualist is always fun, JOIN US,  In all seriousness though looking forward to roleplaying with this...

Yup yup. The presence of all these Spiritualists will be amusing, given the antitheistic Herald and atheist Model Citizen. It'll also be amusing to see the interaction between the advanced cultures like your own that have amazing technology but aren't very vigorous about applying it to everything and then the humans who look at a cellphone and apply the principles of its microwave broadcasting to everything from cooking to riot control and military sensors.

EDIT: Also, speaking of "JOIN US" in regards to Spiritualists, I just remembered an idea I had a while back for humans being nomadic space vikings who get drugged up and horrify aliens with their obscene endurance (described above) combined with PCP-type drugs in combat. I even borrowed their religion idea for some ceremonial deism in the Crucible of Freemen, but that bit hasn't been mentioned yet due to it not being an important detail. Oh well, lost opportunity since I already have a group of humans, but maybe I'll use the idea later if Home gets conquered/destroyed and the humans have to go into exile.

Offizier Necro wrote:

Caspoi wrote:Very interesting backstory you have there. I look forward to opening communications with you.

Same. You muckledarned alien cultists.  

How insulting! And accurate.

Offizier Necro wrote:Yup yup. The presence of all these Spiritualists will be amusing, given the antitheistic Herald and atheist Model Citizen. It'll also be amusing to see the interaction between the advanced cultures like your own that have amazing technology but aren't very vigorous about applying it to everything and then the humans who look at a cellphone and apply the principles of its microwave broadcasting to everything from cooking to riot control and military sensors.

It will be very interesting indeed though it is less that they aren't very vigorous about applying it and that they might link such things to some of the worst atrocities in their history. Fun times that is going to be having that conversation.

"And then there is this *thing*."

"Oh yeah we used to have these."

"Why don't you have them now then?"

"Last time we had these someone used them to kill millions of people."

"..."