Surface
Send us somewhere interesting.
If you're traveling in the north of the Sphere, it might pay to spend some time on Surface, especially if you're intruiged by the Precursors and the Posties. A garden world par excellence kept pristine over the course of colonisation, it's home to one of the most extensive constellations of mysterious Posthuman structures in the Sphere and caters to tourists who want a more active holiday experience. Every planet has its wilderness adventures, but I never got the opportunity to track and hunt like it was 8000BC until I went to Surface.
The Place
Technically speaking Surface is a moon, even if it is slightly bigger than the Earth. It's the fourth moon of the gas giant Sargasso, and they both orbit 51 Basis, all nestled away in that uncomfortable strip of stars between ZOCU and PACT. The contrivance of orbital mechanics give Surface one of the most spectacular night skies in the Sphere, but as a warning you might want to bring a sleep mask because it's going to be brighter than you're probably used to. Basis gives off a lot of light system and the amount of light and Surface's slightly different and thicker atmosphere refracts light around the horizon. On top of that, Sargasso's blue-violet bulk dominates the horizon and it's magnetic field sends auroral ripples from pole to pole. Other moons hang in the sky at different times of the year and what constellations can be seen in the bright night seem more precious somehow. If you ask a true believer they'll tell you that whole thing had to be set up by the Precursors and I'm not sure I disagree.
If you're swinging in via Corrigedor or Tempest, make sure to have a sweater at the bottom of your suitcase because it can get pretty cool on Surface, and a lot of the planet will get snow at some point of the year. I mean there's a decent chain of tropical islands in the south but didn't you just come from Corrigedor or Tempest? You've seen beaches. You're not on Surface for beaches. Surface has two main draws: the breathtaking examples of mysterious Posthuman architecture (the towers floating above Xanadu are a personal fave) and what has been described to me as 'perfect hiking scenery'. If you're from an urbanised, high density society, Surface can be a breath of fresh air.
See, there are no 'cities' on Surface - at least, none built by humans. What passes for centralised authority on Surface, the Emberi, is based out of a variety of Postie complexes. These aren't really buildings with usable interiors as such, just structures with open spaces that the Emberek chose to inhabit sometimes. This is all very awe-inspiring given the scale of Postie technology, but a word of warning the definition of 'occupational health and safety' on Surface is a little warped so watch your step. Few people live permanently within the cities, and are instead based out of personal, self-sufficient homesteads. I hear they rely heavily on virtual offices and telepresence for day to day business. Incidentally, living on a homestead is the best way to experience Surface. Get yourself hosted by an established Ember and not only will they make sure you're looked after and take you on adventures, so be sure to pick a host with the most exciting sounding hobbies. Zodiac Student Travel offers some really affordable packages, but just make sure you're upfront about the kind of relationship you're interested in while you're there.
If you fancy yourself an amateur political scientist I also recommend going to vita/gyűlés at least once. Surface is a distributed direct democracy where decisions are made by building consensus through discussion. The system is simplicity itself, a bunch of people together in a place and talk at each other, and it can get entertainingly messy, like a debate out of The Iliad. The importance of personal charisma, rhetorical force and elegant logic means it can get pretty exciting.
The People
Collectively you refer to the people of Surface as the 'Emberek'. It's Hungarian for 'humans' which is endearingly stupid, but it and the spread of place names speaks to the Hungarian influence in the original longjump, and most people on Surface speak a variant of Hungarian. Mind, the original longjump wasn't a national colonisation effort: it was private, and driven by a group from the early 21st century called the Frontier Society. The founding members were a bunch of like-minded futurists from a variety of backgrounds: athletic, scientific, entrepreneurial. Their core belief was the idea that global society was becoming increasingly small and increasingly flat: that as the pace of our technological development increased people were becoming sedentary and disconnected from the world they lived in. Considering the world permanently damaged by industrialism and in the process of being damaged by the current political landscape, the Frontier Society attempted to foster activities that would give people 'space to breath'. This ranged from acts as simple as funding youth hiking expeditions to investing in the early waves of transhuman technology. In short they wanted to improve humans as humans. Predictably this was a total failure. The Frontier Society was something of a minor international fixture, but there was no way it could counter global trends and its popularity was waning in the mid-21st century. As Omoikane emerged into the world, and more Posties after that, fewer and fewer people were interested in the natural world, and fewer still were interested in self-actualisation.
Like a lot of idealistic organisations made up of naive elites with a lot of money, the inner circle of the Frontier Society decided that the best solution would be to bankroll a colonisation expedition and ask one Posthuman or the other to fling them out into deep space. So they could start over, you dig. Unlike a lot of idealistic organisations made up of naive elites, this actually worked.
The ideals of the Frontier Society persist amongst the Emberek. I'm just going to boil them down to 'a healthy mind in a healthy body in a healthy environment'. They're really interested in exotic forms of modification, experimenting with Dust and theotech, trying to find new ways to expand themselves as people, which they will assure you is substantially different to the approach of most transgenes. See, there's this persistent belief that the Emberi is carrying the flame lit by the Precursors, which has been passed down to them by the Posthumans. Surface was, maybe still is, home to an entity named Olympic who has occasionally become involved over the course of the colony's history. Apparently in a pretty big way during the Breakdown, but for outsiders it's a whole lot of conjecture. they're pretty serious about this sort of thing, and it drives a lot of their involvement in the Sphere.
The population of Surface is almost 100% augmented. Baseline immigration is not unknown but very uncommon, and it has the expected spread of immigrant transgenes given its proximity to the Union. The great majority of Emberek come from one of Surface's homegrown templates, the Héja and the Kolibri.
Héja
Chances are if you've met a Héja your first thought was 'wow you're tall' followed closely by 'wow you're hot'. Wannabe historical transhumanists tend to assume that the Frontier Society's first proprietary transgene template was based on the original Atlas data from way back in the 21st century, but by all accounts the first Héja was an early Ishtar variant. Funny how things turn out, seeing as the average Héja stands well over 7 feet and the average Ishtar is just really leggy. It's easy to get stuck on the size thing, but don't assume they're just scaled up humans: under the hood they've got honeycomb bones and two hearts and five times the photoreceptors of a baseline and all the other modcons. Stauss and Kaser spin in their graves.
Héja are typically stereotyped as hyperconfident, oversexed, outdoorsy types. I've heard a lot of unfair stereotypes in my time and this isn't one of them. I guess it's just how they're socialised, but be warned that your first time meeting an Héja might be a little intimidating. Just remember that they're fun-loving extroverts and just want to show you a good time. They're good conversationalists too given their cultural philosophy about inheriting the will of the Precursors through the Posties, but be careful because some of them will really chew your ear off. If you really want to endear yourself be ready to debate. Nothing gets an Héja going like a challenge.
Kolibri
If you're from PACT or ZOCU and don't do much traveling then this is probably the face of Surface for you: five foot nothing and cute as a button. See, when the Frontier Society first arrived in-system it was still the 21st century, so they took their burgeoning Héja template and scaled it right down to get smaller, lighter, more efficient astronauts that needed less in the way of life support. Early transgenics were a heady time, but after seven template revisions the people of Surface are in a comfortable position: Héja are poorly suited to the confined space on-board most spacecraft, sometimes to the point of mild claustrophobia, but Kolibri are a different matter entirely. Kolibri represent 70% of Surface's population, but represent 90% of crews of spacecraft commissioned in-system.
There's some sociologically complex stuff going on in the relationships between Kolibri and Héja, complex stuff which differs from tribe to tribe and even from homestead to homestead, but the wider interstellar community has decided that it all just boils down to every Héja having three or four Kolibri boyfriends and girlfriends. That's not inaccurate, especially among young people, but it's best to not say anything like that. Kolibri are much more sensitive than their cousins. In any case, most Kolibri have attached themselves to an established Héja as part of a psychosocial comfort thing. Stauss-Kaserist firebrands love this because 'psychosocial comfort thing' sounds really dodgy, but every star sailor needs a port in the stormy metaphor.
Incidentally this need for comfort created a considerable misunderstanding during the Breakdown. With Kolibri crews trapped far from home, they began turning to non-Héja to fill the role. Rumours of a planet full of harems of demure submissives spread about as well as can be expected during the Breakdown, but even so as long-distance interstellar travel opened back there was a wave of sex tourists who were disappointed to discover that in most cases they were distinctively second best.
The Play
Surface isn't a military active world, but if you've heard of anything regarding the Emberi military, it's probably the unorthodox tactics of the almost entirely Kolibri Vadász scout units and their Színfalak All-Range Mobility Array. Consisting of a couple of hundred metres of nanowire, some intermolecular force grapnels, an exquisitely balanced harness and a foam phase hydrogen vernier, it is hyper-accelerated gear that lies beyond the event horizon of the climbing singularity. Within the intensely vertical environments of Postie architecture the ability to climb is highly prized, and finds use in the towering forests and cliffs and mountains. Színfalak is the ultimate extension of this, and allows for Kolibri and Heja to live up to their names. I've seen ARMA in action and it's pretty much the most dangerous thing I've ever seen, so it should be no surprise that it has been adopted by Tempesti Rangers for high speed jungle recon. If you're really game there are plenty of places that offer touristy training courses that can give you the experience (if not the actual skills). Don't even worry if you're an Atlas! There are rigs out there made for Heja who usually weigh over 300 pounds ... just be ready for frustration, it gets harder with mass.
I've already mentioned getting along to see some lively debate, but there's a pretty strong performance culture on Surface. A lot of experimental small scale theatre, a real different feel from Kanonian opera. There are thousands of amateur rock bands and jazz acts. Lectures and book readings and discussion circles about lectures that were on book readings. Obviously these sorts of things aren't unknown, or even uncommon, on other worlds, but the emphasis is different. Having rejected commercialism and materialist culture,
Television
BLACK is Surface's entry in the 'big budget military extravaganza' genre of visual fiction. It's based on the memoirs of the same title of a real Hussar, Mariska Agota Halasz, who served in the squad of the most famous Black Army officer, the Brolga (if you're from Londenium you probably know her better as 'the Hessian'). The BLACK Production Committee spent an obscene sum to ensure the involvement of the visionary director behind 2186's production of Der Ring des Nibelungen: Jansci Varga Dobai. The series was an absolute catastrophe and is wildly unpopular on Surface. Halasz' memoirs were popular and widely read due to its extensive critique of the Black Army and how the Emberi handles military affairs, and also because of its controversial portrayal of the Brolga who remains one of the most divisive figures of modern Surface. For a culture with few war stories it was their war story: uniquely Emberek. Dobai, already controversial in theatre circles due to imperialistic politics, took the opportunity and the immense funds available to construct a parable about the importance of violence, or rather of the Black Army doing violence to others and the manifest destiny of transgenes to rule the universe.
BLACK received critical praise on Tempest for the convincingly jaded acting, though the expose Darker than BLACK revealed that this had less to do with acting and more to do with the cast feeling trapped in roles they literally hated. By all accounts production of the second season was essentially a warzone, with lead actress Aniko Garai Grof at one point physically tearing down a lighting tower in an attempt to kill Dobai. Production was halted some time after that and no episodes were released, despite a degree of what is considered to be inexplicable success in foreign markets. The series birthed a number of enduring memes, most particularly 'Jozef's hammer', referring to a character's exotic siege hammer weapon. Though an actual real weapon, it was depicted with increasingly ridiculous special effects, to point where in the final episode of the first season it is used to shatter an entire skyscraper. Animated snapshots of the hammer in action have been used to highlight absurd claims across countless Cloud hang-outs.