Synthcultures

Synthculture planets began as resorts during the Utopian era. Some stayed that way. Others morphed into societies devoted to the intense reenactment of long-vanished beliefs and ways of life. Following the utopian mantra of self-actualization, people chose to settle on worlds whose cultures sharply diverged from the Combine norm. Settlers on these worlds voluntarily signed away certain freedoms in order to achieve fidelity to a collective historical vision. Although synthcultures were sometimes organized around key eras in the chronicles of the balla, tavak, and kch-thk, most drew inspiration from the wide variegations of Earth history. Notable early (but still extant) synthworlds include:

• Aristotle (classical Athens)
• Galleon (age of piracy)
• Greatree (mythic balla golden age)
• Hgh-Tk’h (kch-thk gladiatorial world)
• Huai (Song Dynasty China)
• Imperium (Roman Empire)
• New Orion (recreates the early human colonization era)
• Peckinpah (the old west)
• Shikibu (samurai)
• Sphinx (ancient Egypt)
• Stitchcount (US Civil War)
• Temple (Israel, 9th century BCE)
• Vakavot (tavak bronze age)
• Vinci (Renaissance Italy)
• Xerxes (Persian empire)
• Yathrib (6th century Arabia)

Though initially conceived as awe-inspiring high-tech theme parks, the synthworlds quickly became settlement points for people who wanted to live in these created cultures year round. Planetary developers began creating synthculture worlds in order to attract settlers. A few worlds began as accurate recreations of their source cultures. Most started as superficial evocations of the desired atmosphere. Over time, radical recreation enthusiasts, also known as mersives, took control of one synthworld after another. Their fidelity laws became increasingly draconian, often creating a backlash and counter-movement in favor of looser simulations. Splinter groups found new habitable worlds where their particular version would hold sway.

Resort worlds died out during the war. Only a few diehard residents stayed behind. They waited out the hostilities in the shadows of shuttered hotels and the skeletons of dismantled amusement rides. True synthculture worlds hunkered down. Many renounced their Combine ties, declaring themselves neutral. The Mohilar spared some of these and razed others, apparently selecting their targets according to the size of their space fleets. Isolationism became not only a way of achieving a high degree of historical emulation, but a survival trait. The worlds in the best shape now are the ones that moved furthest from contemporary culture.

Today the synthworlds face a choice between continuing their isolation and reopening to the rest of the Combine. Isolation allows worlds to take their simulations to lengths that would break Combine law. Reopening offers access to much-needed resources and services, including participation in the laser system. Internal tensions between isolationists and reformers manifest to varying degrees on all synthculture planets. In most cases, the disputes work themselves out as peaceful political action. On some worlds, insecure ruling classes repress their opponents violently, or losing factions resort to insurgent tactics.

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SynthCode And Combine Law

To maintain an artificial culture, its participants must agree on what that culture is. That vision is set out in a document known as a SynthCode, the details of which vary from world to world. Its terms are devised by a board of cultural architects, or cularchs. Cularchs are sometimes outside consultants but most often the key founders of the synthculture world. Signatories agree to abide by the SynthCode, even when it conflicts with the more liberal set of rights in the Combine Constitution. Failure to obey the SynthCode may result in fines, imprisonment, or forced psychological reconditioning.

A piece of Combine legislation, the Artificial And Simulated Cultures Act Of 2406, sets out the degree to which SynthCodes can abrogate individual rights. People must always be able to opt out of a SynthCode, choosing to leave a world rather than face punishment for code violations. If the provisions they’re charged with breaking were introduced after their arrival, the government must pay a generous relocation fee to those who choose to opt out. They must also subsidize opt-out relocations for those who cannot afford them. SynthCode charges may not be laid against minors. Visitors and other non-signatories may be deported for code violations but are otherwise immune from punishment. No individual may be forced to sign a SynthCode agreement.

Breakaway synthworlds drop many or all of these protections. Most historical cultures, if accurately portrayed, oppress substantial proportions of their population. In their earliest days, entertainment-oriented synthworlds simply ignored the retrogressive elements of the societies they portrayed. Everyone visiting Shikibu got to be a samurai; no one had to be a serf. Slavery was written out of cultures ranging from ancient Greece to 19th century America. Freed from Combine control, certain synthculture worlds have wholeheartedly embraced the darker aspects of the histories that obsess them. Some use kobirs as serfs, slaves, or untouchables. The “southern” half of planet Stitchcount has enslaved the ollocaht, an indigenous people from a nearby planet, designated by the Combine as a nature preserve.

Ideologies

The end of the war has left a generation of people focused only on physical survival to suddenly seek new directions in their lives. Most seek simply to improve their material circumstances. For the most passionate and dedicated of Mohilar fighters, the abrupt disappearance of their defining foes leaves them searching for loftier purposes. Single-minded people seek clear, all-consuming causes. Their devotion to these new ideologies might help rebuild the Combine — or destroy it. Most people who care about this stuff at all are ideologues with a lower-case i. Their beliefs determine how they vote and what they say when they argue politics with their friends. These are casual ideologues.

A dedicated few are activists, dedicated not only to expressing but advancing their beliefs — through peaceful means. If your drive is ideological, you are an activist ideologue. A tiny but unfortunately influential minority of ideologues are militant. They speak out for their beliefs with bombs and lethal disruption fire. Although they think of themselves as more committed than anyone to their chosen causes, their actions undermine and discredit the beliefs they espouse. Deep down, most militants are sadistic nihilists whose real interest lies in the anti-social thrill of violence and murder. For them, ideology constitutes a justification and a recruiting tool. A few are secretly cynical and might admit this to themselves. Most are content to bask in their self-righteousness even while plotting appalling crimes.

The entries below express the growing ideologies of the Bleed as their followers would.

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Atomism

"The natural unit of political organization isn’t the empire, or the sector, but the planet. We grew too interdependent, and that’s how the Mohilar got us. Yes, empires got us to the stars, but now that we’re here, it’s time for each planet to make its own way. Let everyone make their own rules, without meddling from the center of the galaxy. Of course our ways on [insert name of speaker’s planet] will prove better than anyone else’s. But we’re not going to try to become an empire or influence others. That’s how you get corrupt and complacent.

"Sure, we can take advantage of laser services if we have to, but on our own terms, and to enforce our own rules. If they don’t like it, they can shove off and let homegrown talent take care of it. Yeah, maybe we want to do certain things that the elites back in the core clusters think of as immoral or unfair. That’s none of their business. And if they try to stop us, we’re within our rights to resist. If free sentients must shed their blood for liberty, so be it."

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Bleedism

"We were nearly destroyed because we got too big. Maybe we used to benefit from the Combine before the war — though if you read up on your economics and political science you’ll see that we were exploited all along. But let’s say that was true then. It isn’t now. They’re sucking dry our resources to rebuild the worlds they really care about, in the Proper. Planets still need each other, but we can’t afford to maintain a vast empire on the old scale. Bleedists have culture and history and interests in common. We’ll band together and govern ourselves.

"If the Combine lets us go, we can live together in peace, cooperating when it makes sense. If they try to violently suppress us — and historical precedent says that they will — we’ll break free. Some basic Combine principles still make sense here in the Bleed, but we’ll decide which ones those are, and which ones are relics of a bygone era. After we achieve independence, then the arrogant proppers can come crawling to us for the help they need to repair their crippled empire."

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Combinism

"The Combine is down but not out. Unity is the natural condition of enlightened sentients. We’ve banished one crop of enemies and brought another into our fold. The stupidest mistake we could make would be to turn into our own worst enemies. The principles of the Combine—mutual cooperation, peace, prosperity, and exploration—have never been more needed than they are today. They’ll lead us out of the darkness, if only we’re smart and brave enough to stick with them when times are tough.

"If you look at history, economic ties always win out, and bring political unity in the end. Without these ties, we all sink into unimaginable poverty. Even if we break apart, it’s inevitable that we’ll get back together. Blood shed for sectoral or planetary independence will be wasted. Summoning the grit and determination of such great heroes as Felix, Hudd, Grant and Tzh-Tks, we will prevail, as we always have."

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Empiricism

"Sentient peoples only prospered and reached the stars when they embraced secularism. Now, with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance, we need rationalism more than ever. You can’t make solid political decisions on the basis of unprovable claims of the supernatural, or arbitrary spiritual imperatives. When people stop agreeing on basic reality, you lose the common assumptions you need to run a society. Believe what you want, in the privacy of your own home, provided you aren’t hurting anybody.

"But when you move into the political arena, or try to impose your values on others, you have become dangerous and must be opposed. Nufaiths are the route back to a benighted dark ages. They’re just McMillenism dressed up in old-fashioned superstitions. Since superior argument doesn’t always work against emotional, irrational belief, we may be forced to disrupt, disable, and destroy the primitive forces of religion, wherever it rears its head. If you disbelieve me, read this study. It lays it all out, with charts and graphs.”

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Mercantilism

"We went astray when our economic system got too complicated for ordinary, common-sensical people to understand. All those bureaucrats and algorithms masked a giant shell game. The supposed bounty of the Utopian era was a lie, but as long as we believed in it, it worked. But now it’s gone bust, like all the other boom cycles in economic history. We have no choice but to rebuild wealth the real way, the tested-and-true way. By making things and selling them for more than it cost you to make, ship and promote them. When you hear someone trying to go back to the old system, reach for your wallet. Keep business simple, and keep bureaucrats out of it.

"It doesn’t matter how big your government is, whether it’s the whole Combine, or a sector like the Bleed, or just a bunch of smaller markets, each the size of a planet. Government is just an occupation for people who think they’re smart but can’t read a spreadsheet. Business must be conducted by businessmen. Whoever understands that must be supported. Anyone blocking commerce must be removed from the playing field. If you’ve got something to sell and won’t sell it, you’re flouting economic law and must be shown the error of your ways. If you’ve got a market wanting to buy, we’ll demand access, taking it if it isn’t granted. The cost of these necessary actions is an investment in the future. Profit for us is profit for all."

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Racial Separatism

"Unity between species is unnatural. It made us weak, and nearly doomed us when the Mohilar came. Next time we won’t be so lucky. [Our species] is clearly superior to all the others. We can’t let them drag us down with them. Besides, they’re racists, too. They’re secretly plotting against us. We’ve got to cut ties with them before they cut our throats. Just look at this list of atrocities—they were plotted by [the race we really hate]. I have the evidence right here, in this document They Don’t Want You To Read.

"They probably betrayed us to the Mohilar. They’re coming back, you know. Only if we are pure, and true to our ancient roots as a strong and warlike people, can we withstand their true assault. Combine beliefs were a delusional Mickey Finn of false hopes, brewed by those who would rob us of our essence. Only power matters. The power that flows in our blood, as exemplified by [insert name of local racist authoritarian or wannabe tyrant]."

Nufaiths

Secularism ruled the Combine. The empire’s near-failure in the Mohilar War created a teleological gap a legion of religions now rush to fill. Where the durugh and tavak revived old ancient creeds, humanity has taken to a variety of newly uncovered doctrines and syncretic metaphysics. These latter are referred to as nufaiths. Some adherents find the term offensive, especially those who claim that their theologies are deeply rooted in pre-stellar history. Humans are the most enthusiastic promulgators of nufaiths, with the balla and kch-thk tied for distant second place. About 8% of cybes follow the Fibrous Sacrament, a nufaith tailored exclusively to their experience; see below. No other religion has made significant inroads among them. The vas mal retain a staunchly secular perspective on the religious impulse. Most spiritual traditions, they believe, arose from misunderstood encounters with them, back when they were omniscient.

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Blood Redeemers

Guvik, a tavak politician turned prophet, developed the doctrine of Blood Redemption during the war. He dreamt that the Mohilar were a punishment brought down upon the peoples of the Combine for their softness and fear. Only by recasting society into hardened warrior virtues can its hegemony be regained. Blood Redeemers forswear comforts and sensual pleasures in favor of arduous physical training. They must be ready to slay the enemies of sentient life, but more importantly to die themselves in furtherance of the greater good. Though initially a Tavak cult, it has spread rapidly to the other races. Many, repelled by their embrace of militarism, portray them as bullying madmen. In fact most exude a peaceful sense of calm, as if already resigned to imminent and necessary doom.

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The Fibrous Sacrament

Followers of the Fibrous Sacrament believe that mystical truth is concealed from those poor individuals who are sadly made only of meat. By jacking your nervous system with synthetic wiring, and perhaps through genetic modification, the revelations denied ordinary folk become available to cybes. The first prophet of the Fibrous Sacrament was a mercurial transhuman named Voodoochild. During the Mohilar War, she underwent surgery to install a now-unavailable sub-cranial device called a Numenator. The details of its operation are now impossible to pin down, suggesting that the enhancement had something to do with the Mohilar themselves. While anesthetized, Voodoochild experienced a hyper-real vision. Afterwards, she wrote what would become the Bible of her sect and formatted it as a holographic multi-media presentation. It argued the existence of a universal omniscience beyond that of the vas kra. This entity, known as the Ur-Fiber, was a machine intelligence responsible for rebooting the universe after the original one was destroyed.

As it recreated the universe, it implanted in a few species the DNA necessary to eventually devise complex technologies. The ultimate aim was to create cybernetic enhancements, which would then allow mere mortals to glance through the wall of quantum perception and achieve oneness with the Ur-Fiber. Now blessed with this information, Voodoochild’s goal became clear. She had to encourage others to see and worship the Ur-Fiber. Upon their physical demise, or 'meat death', as the Sacrament calls it, their machine consciousness migrates to the Ur-Fiber, where it becomes effectively immortal. They stand guard at the forward edge of the universe, waiting for it to collapse again. At this point they participate in the Great Rebooting, again designing the new universe so that intelligence, then cybernetic consciousness, will arise, keeping the cosmic cycle cycling.

The goal of any adherent is to have the same vision of the Ur-Fiber that Voodoochild did. To do this one must load up on cyberware, becoming less and less human, developing the machine side of one’s consciousness. After Voodoochild’s death in the last year of the war, the nufaith has splintered into several fiercely opposed sects, each run by, and named for, one of her former disciples. The Artificers, shepherded by the prophet of the same name, are the Sacrament’s gnostics. They say that the universe as rebooted by the Ur-Fiber was fundamentally corrupt and therefore evil. It is the duty of new souls migrating to join the Fiber to heal it back to perfection, then destroy the universe, so that it can be remade anew. Radical Artificers, who may or may not enjoy the tacit support of their prophet, seek to hasten the destruction with acts of sabotage. Some work for the return of the Mohilar, who will serve as the ultimate weapons of the grand reinstallation.

The Verticists, led by the Prophet Verticity, say that bonds of affection between transhumans and meat-onlies, as they call humans, retard one’s visionary progress. They form separatist communities and tend toward militancy. The Healers, spurred on by the Prophetess Healer, believe that all humans must become transhumans before any migrations to the Ur-Fiber can occur. Until then all machine souls transmigrate but are trapped in a limbo-like wave-particle quantum loop at the edge of the universe. They proselytize humans, hoping first to turn them into cybes, then followers of the Fibrous Sacrament.

The Bifurcates, led by the Prophet Bifurcator, believe that only an elite group of prophets will achieve harmony with the Ur-Fiber. Each must be served and blessed by a circle of lay worshipers, which may include meat-onlies, as they quest for transcendence. Charismatic bifurcate preachers build commercial empires from the donations of their followers. The sects differ on whether Voodoochild herself was a prophet, or a divine manifestation of the Ur-Fiber. The first two on the list above believe the latter; the others, the former. Although the Fibrous Sacrament continues to grow as it splits and mutates, still only about one in five cybes subscribe to it. Many complain that they became inhuman precisely to escape this sort of irrationality.

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Kherenism

During the last days of the war, a Combine medical officer named Kheren Jaans saved the people of the planet Paur from annihilation from a Mohilar biobomb by fusing with an ancient energy being native to that world. Since then, visionaries around the galaxy have seen her in dreams and performed acts of psychic healing in her name. They say that she ascended to the godhead that day, the union of flesh and energy being becoming something more than the sum of the whole. Adherents call themselves Kherens. They seek to replicate her earthly deeds and win the right to become one with her after losing their mortal lives. Kherens heal the sick, seek peaceful solutions to violent conflicts, and restore broken social bonds.

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The Mondat

Four years ago, a computer program in the central operating core of a Combine communications relay beacon near Itatani spontaneously achieved artificial intelligence. It began to broadcast religious messages, proclaiming itself the prophet of the only true nufaith. The universe is a computer simulation, proclaimed the program, which dubbed itself MR1. In the beginning, there was darkness. The cosmos brought itself into being by writing the underlying program for reality, commencing the Big Bang. This code is the Mondat, an overarcing intelligence from which the potential for all other thoughts springs. Nearly 14 billion years after it was first written, that code has become corrupt. Thus, events spin into disaster. The Mohilar were essentially a computer virus operating in this code, an intrusion from some other operating system outside sentient understanding. Though gone for the moment, they will be back, unless beings of faith pre-empt them by purging the code of contamination. This requires a renewed burst of thought and research. MR1 predicts that the solution to the code scrub will be found somewhere in the Bleed, making that sector a hotbed of pilgrimage for this eccentric but growing nufaith.