Minkowski

Minkowski
System Info
Star Name: Mara (superdegenerate) Druj (red giant) Map ID: TBA Other Bodies: Yama (large rocky) Yami (small rocky) Naraka (small gaseous) Heaven's Stair (asteroids) Xibalba (large gaseous) Diyu (small gaseous)
Population: Mediocre Breakdown: 95% homo caelum 3% other transgene 2% baseline Government: Theocracy Head of State: Aphelion Chandrasekhar Capital: Gagarin (asteroids) Major Settlements: Einstein (Diyu) Oneill (Naraka) Tereshkova (asteroids) Alignment: Independent/ZOCU
Infrastructure
Wealth: Primary Industry: Complex Industry: He3 Deliveries: Domestic He3: Delta Dust: Military: Primary Doctrine:

Astrography

Druj

A red giant. Attracts drones.

Mara

The fearsome black hole at the heart of the system is named Mara. Its attendant accretion disc sheds light comparable to the sun, along with a much larger quantity of high-energy radiation. The blazing disc, perpendicular jets and twinkling posthuman satellites were noted as one of the 'Seven Wonders of the Human Sphere' in the travel text of the same name.

Posthuman Structures

Many rings of elaborate diamondoid objects encircle the black hole and its jets. They are believed to be scientific instruments. One houses a research station that studies the structures and Mara itself, but many of the others are being dismantled for useful components that find their way into everything from FTL drives to lightweight shielded spacesuits.

Yama

Yama is a large rocky planet massing nine Earths. It has an excess of high-mass elements and is a prime source of fissile material. Rrobotic mining operations dot the surface.

Yami

Yami is a small watery planet massing one-third Earth. Microbial life is present, along with remains of more complex forms.

Naraka

Naraka masses a mere 0.05 Jupiters and contains a high proportion of water vapour. It is orbited by the helium-mining colony Oneill.

Heaven's Stair

Minkowski's primary asteroid belt, also known as 'Changcheng' or simply 'the Belt' lies between Naraka and Xibalba. The majority of the Minkowskan population lives here, in the major colony complexes Gagarin and Tereshkova.

Xibalba

Xibalba masses 2 Jupiters and contains a high proportion of methane.

Diyu

Diyu masses 0.5 Jupiters and is almost exclusively hydrogen and helium based. It is orbited by the helium-mining colony Einstein.

Biology

Minkowskans are very much changed from their original form, having rewritten their DNA to match their new environment.

Physiology

Minkowskan security officer without overlayer, in some dreadful gravitated place.

Minkowskans at first glance are short, slim humans, being engineered for small stature and to deposit little fat. Their only particularly obvious alteration is their hand-like feet.

Feet aside, the most radical changes to Minkowskan physiology are invisible. Their musculature is optimised for twitch rather than sustained force, and their skeleton is designed along similar lines, with significant cartilage and limited calcium. The circulatory system is likewise rebiased to compensate for the lack of gravity. Minkowskans never suffer from space adaption syndrome, being naturally adapted to zero-gravity from birth, however they are vulnerable to their own array of issues on planets and gravitated structures.

Minkowskan skin ranges in tone from pale brown to pitch black. Mechanically, it is thick and reduced in elasticity to prevent bloat under vacuum. It is resistant to high-energy radiation and can rapidly switch between glossy reflective and matte radiative modes to optimise heat control in space. Furthermore when exposed to vacuum their skin wrinkles into tiny ridges and folds to maximise radiation area. The price paid for this density and complexity of machinery is reduced sensation - over much of the skin, Minkowskan nerve sensitivity is reduced from the baseline norm. It also impedes hearing slightly due to thickness of the eardrum. In compensation, Minkowskans have enhanced visual acuity and incredible ability to operate in extremes of light, aided by a tapetum lucidum and a secondary eyelid that protects against vacuum and intense light. They also possess a superhuman sense of smell to help police air quality, and a highly-advanced kinaesthetic sense.

Said vacuum adaptions are of course useless without the ability to survive the lack of air. For this reasons Minkowskans have engineered the ability to 'shut down' their lungs, preventing transport across the alveolar membranes and halting the loss of blood oxygen normal lungs suffer when exposed to vacuum. Their blood itself is extensively redesigned with many times the oxygen capacity of baselines, and the ability to exchange oxygen with a special gland below the liver which stores it chemically. With these enhancements a well-prepared Minkowskan can survive in vacuum for half an hour or more before suffering from significant medical problems.

Outside of space, in temperature-controlled, zero-gravity environments, hair and sweat cause more problems than they solve. Minkowskans posess neither, and typically lose excess heat by the somewhat less elegant method of panting.

The most fundamental, but also most invisible change to Minkowskan physiology is the alterations to the human genetic system. Minkowskan DNA is multiply-redundant and the replication systems contain extensive error checking. These modifications have made Minkowskans all but immune to the deleterious effect of the radiation that soaks their system, at the cost of slowed growth - wounds take longer to heal, and gestation and aging proceed at approximately 3/4 the baseline rate.

Psychology

Minkowskans think differently. They would say better.

Some Minkowskan intelligence structures are significantly enlarged and changed from the baseline. Apart from superior kinaesthetic sense and orientation, Minkowskan mechanical and spatial reasoning is dramatically improved and also broadened - the Minkowskan brain can comprehend and analyse inhuman distances and geometries with (relative) ease. However such optimisation has its drawbacks - while never suffering from agora- or claustrophobia, many Minkowskans find two-dimensional environments psychologically oppressive.

Continuous life in a hostile environment, where single mistakes could injure dozens or hundreds, has given rise to the half-natural half-nurtured ability to rapidly internalise routines and precautions. Minkowskans are inherently conscientious and conservative, and it is this ability as much as their spatial intellect that has given them their engineering tradition and made their society so resistant to outside influences. The obvious downside is however in effect - Minkowskans are xenophobic, intolerant, and often overly hostile to new ideas.

More controversially for some observers, the neural structures that give rise to spirituality have also been enhanced. It is almost unheard of to find an atheist Minkowskan - those who do leave the Cavorite faith join another religion.

Minkowskans Abroad

Minkowskans experiencing protracted gravity can suffer an array of medical issues, including muscle fatigue, skeletal deformation, unreliable balance and cardiovascular problems. Due to obstruction from the religious establishment and a lack of the enormous research infrastructure of the Core, progress on developing easy countermeasures to these problems has been slow.

Beyond the physiological issues are the psychological issues of never learning to deal with pervasive gravity. Many Minkowskans never learn to walk, although it is mandatory for members of the military. More important to many Minkowskans is the spiritual aspect, that compels them to undertake frequent rituals to cleanse and shield their soul while exposed to the influence of the Adversary.

Popular ways to make stays in gravity more enjoyable include light exoskeletons, mobile furniture, and swimming.

Sociology

Economy

Shipyards, mining, whaling.

Culture

Airctopuses and xenophobia.

Language

Minkowskan English

As a strongly multinational colony, English was the natural choice for Minkowski. The government embraced this, and Minkowskan children - natural or artificial - were educated in a modified version of the Standard English form devised in the 2030s for international education. This was however done with the understanding that language is mutable, and over time the form, both taught and used, has been modified by the cultures the colonists came from, and the culture they have found themselves in.

Food

Meatball trees.

Clothing

Cosmetically altered Minkowskan modelling a retro fashion.

Skintight spacesuits.

Religion

Minkowski Transcendentalism

Gravity is the destructive influence of the Adversary, only by abandoning it can our souls ascend to Heaven.

Heterodox Sects

The Etheric Tendency of the Eschatonic Church is not a sect of Cavorism, but it does bear some similarities.

History

Timeline

Under review.

Provisional History Path

X: Found Religion
(+morale, -100 wealth)
A1: Longshot Mission
(+100 fabbers)
A2: Dominantly Transgene
(++transgene)
A3: No Suitable World
A4: Adapt
(radical morphological change)
The original colonists of the Minkowski longshot were the followers of the geneticist, space scientist and charismatic cult leader Dr. Evan Cavor. He advocated the transformation of mankind into a space-based species in the 'pure' realm above the sky. The system their longshot landed in was appropriately bereft of planets, although the colonists did not anticipate the black hole that lurked at the heart of the gravity well.
B1: Artifact Find
(+100 dust)
B4: Useful Finds
(+100 CIP)
The posthuman machines the Cavorites hitchhiked with deployed around the black hole and remained active for a time, then fell silent. Their incomprehensible structure still yields many useful components for microscale machinery.
OR B1: Military Action
(+2500 military)
B3: Feral Drone Attack
(+2500 military)
The black hole was in a binary with a red giant, fueling its accretion disc and attracting many drones who caused no end of trouble for the early colonists, but nevertheless fascinated Cavor as an example of spaceborne life.
C1: Military Action
(+2500 military)
C2: Narco-Warfare
(+2500 military, +doctrines, -60 pop)
L1: Single Party Governance
(+100 PIP, +100 wealth, +60 population?)
It was a little more than a decade before Cavor produced a homo caelum genome he was happy with, after numerous tests and using all he had learned from the South American debacle. Mass production soon began. However, this second generation of colonists came to prominence just as the first generation began to lose faith in Cavor's broken promises and surreal beliefs. The death of Cavor in an accident sparked accusations and recriminations that spiralled into a bloody civil war, pitting loyalists (including almost all of the inherently hidebound and religious second generation) against revolutionaries who desired an end to the cult and a transformation to a more traditional colony. The loyalists won, enshrining the theocratic government headed by the exhumans who rapidly eclipsed the original colonists.
D1: Isolated
(+100 PIP)
D3: Become Energy Independent OR Juche!
(+logistics, +100 dust) OR (+100 PIP, +morale)
Recontact with the Core was a somewhat traumatic event for the Minkowskans, who were starkly faced with how far they had fallen behind humanity in their supposed destined domain. The response was to abandon an initial, abortive isolationist policy in favour of a policy of trade and technological assimilation. Minkowski redoubled its space industry development, trading the results for technical assistance. When the breakdown hit trade links collapsed, but word of the approaching Magnates spurred the factories and engineers into action once again to do the quietly desperate work of reforming archaic FTL drives into jumpships and constructing, arming and fuelling the fleets that would accompany them. This is the era when insular Minkowski was forced to learn to tolerate and ally with foreigners, and when the first gravitated barrack-colonies that later formed the basis of the modern trade hubs were made.
E1: Make My Own Bloc
(+100 PIP, +logistics)
K1: Nobel War Prize
(+++ applications, -wealth, -debt)
K2: Regional Port
(+100 dust, +100 PIP, +100 CIP, +2 shipbuilding, -ground tech)
K3: High-Tech Bullshit
(+TL, +200 dust, ++tech)
Minkowskans were not designed to play well with others, but the long shared battle of the magnate war forged ties of friendship that far outweigh the fear of the heathen and the other. Come the end of the breakdown Minkowski negotiated their formal independence along with the rest of the League and settled down to recover and reconnect. The recent years have seen a resurgence in the attitudes of the pre-breakdown: a call to make Minkowski's destiny manifest by imposing it on the stars.

Totals

not inc. tech & application

+500 PIP
+100 CIP
+300 dust
+100 fabbers
-100 wealth
-debt

+10000 military
+doctrines
+logistics

++transgene, radical morphological change
++morale