Settlement of the Empire

The Seps Coalition is something that can’t really be talked about without talking about how the Empire was settled and then coalesced or about the main religion of the Empire. When the second Exodus happened, the sai branch of the people of the First Colony landed somewhere near the core worlds. They decided they wouldn’t settle the entire population on an Ajiri planet like they did before. Instead they set about creating their rules for conservation of natural planets and the mining, use, and otherwise exploitation of sub-par human life planets or asteroids or what have you.

Part of the idea of not straining one Earth-like planet too much meant that after a while, they’d need to find a different system. So, they did. As soon as they were settled enough and had enough resources, ships were sent out to several different solar systems (three?) that had been found on scopes, where people thought they might be able to find Ajiri planets.

By the time a scout ship made it to a system, the people on the Homeworld (Second Colony) were older and wiser and had maybe forgotten about their colony ships. Well, maybe not. They would have sent out another batch as soon as their supplies reached a certain critical mass and once they saw their population becoming a problem. Although, with the low birth rates, that would have taken a very long time indeed. Also, at this time, they were in the process of banning all further genetic modification of people. So. Much fun. Go forth and colonize.

The first scouts found their targets and either confirmed them as viable for life or didn’t. The ones that didn’t have true Ajiri planets would still be tagged for later Barbican installation, to use the resources of the worlds like ice and metals and even solar power. So new Barbs were set up, having been part of the cargo the scout ship had taken with it. Once a sufficient solar collection was made to start the Barbs, it could be activated and linked to the Homeworld. At which point colonists came through, settlements were made, and the whole process started over again.

The goal was never to get much over (what’s the pop Victorian times) population on any one Ajiri planet before a new system is colonized. Of course, they are trying to time colonization to happen in the next system before the critical limit is reached in the old one. This isn’t counting the population of mining stations, settled asteroids, HAB cities on inhospitable worlds, and whoever decided they want to float around in a spaceship touring the system for the rest of their life. Ajiri conservation is all, and it’s almost a religious pillar in the Navlad culture.

After a certain number of systems were settled, someone found a system they liked better and moved the base of government to that. But also at this time, as more and more colonies were sent out from EACH colony, the politics got complicated. There was the original system, which was still populated, but not by the highest up. There’s the ‘new homeworld’ system that the progenitors for the first colonies moved to, and then all the colonies. Also, as each system hit its population mark over and over, it would send out even more colony scouts, further and further afield.

So, a colony twenty Barbicans out might be affiliated or grown from the Home colony, while one twenty jumps in was connected to one of the secondary colonies or even third tier colonies. Their political affiliations started to have more to do with the most recent colony seed than they did with the original first colonies. Some decided to program their Barbicans against the new Homeworld, claiming independence from their rules. Some decided to band together and call themselves a nation-state. Others wanted more and more support from their parent colony. And then of course, if they mined out the system looking for enough metals to make more Barbicans and more colony ships, then the political base had to move.

Left behind on the original, very first colony world, still there but no longer part of the action as far as the rest of the settlers were concerned, were the people who had either angered the Colonial government, wanted nothing to do with them, or weren’t considered valuable enough to them to bother moving. (Lower class, nonsai, jens, and remnants of the soldiers who’d decided to come with the sai instead of going with the Kuchen and). These people faced the same problems as the Colonials. They were going to run out of space and out of resources. Some moved out to the colonies that had been established from this hub. Others, disgusted with the way the Colonials were venerating the bloodlines and the sai and the way they kept trying to breed more, decided to get out. Others were members of old religions that had survived the wars on the First Colony (later to be known as Underhill).

They wanted out, away from the influence of the Colonials. Somehow, at some point, the religious and left over jens (extremely modded people who had bred mutated, physically and mentally), decided they needed to go somewhere. This happened about the time that the Colonial government realized that it was losing political control of their branches of the Barbicans. They weren’t so much worried about people, but about the possibility that transportation would be cut off.

When the Colonials started making a concerted effort to take back the system and consolidate power all in one spot. Using breeding programs, jenmals (which hadn’t been banned, although modding humans had been forbidden since the first settlers hit the colony worlds. The lesson of the First Colony had been learned. Modding humans is asking for trouble. Instead, they’d try to breed to their strengths) were used to help hunt and subdue hidden populations or set to roam the surface of planets where people couldn’t go, keeping them penned in their HAB cities and other settlements.

The people left on the Second Colony saw all this happening and decided they didn’t like it, especially since so many viewed the continued breeding of sai as a risky endeavor. Sai were the ones who had such horrible pregnancy and birth rates. Some saw this as the Colonists trying to breed themselves out of existence. Others saw it as a violation of natural laws. Still others were against it on principle of religion.

When the Colonies came back for their first planet, the planet fought them off. Once they got the attackers beaten back, the survivors decided they didn’t ever want to have to do that again, so they disabled their gate. (Both gates? Was another gate set on the incoming route from the first Colony? Wouldn’t this need to be fixed then? If Syrus and his people are going to come back after book three? Or this gate isn’t disabled, and it’s believed that all the people had left the old system. Or…gate melted. Syrus team given the coordinates of the next gate along the lines.)

The Seps maybe decided that dismantling their gates weren’t enough. After all, ships could come the slow way. It would be years. In fact yes, the Seps thought they were safe. But the Colonies eventually noticed them anyways, and came for them again at the end of the consolidation spree, after most of the Empire had been brought in under one government. Someone remembered them. Decided it’s about time to do something about this. It’s almost the closest system to the political center, and they can’t be left to fester there. Someone else was sent the slow way. But they get pushed back. The Seps didn’t want to give up this system entirely. It’s their home. It’s hard to make people give up a home.

They squashed the Fleet and send out a message via the Barb before they shut it down again. In essence, it says ‘sure, keep coming, slow or fast, we’re dug in here and all we have to do is send a bug through the Barbicans. We don’t even need to blow our own Barb. We can infect the whole system and cut everyone off from everyone else. Think hard before you decided you want to bring us to heel.

Because the Colonies (by this time the Navlad), might have more systems to bring to bear as far as military might goes, but the Barbicans are needed for travel and trade and pretty much everything else, considering how relatively thin the population is spread. This occasions a system wide update of the Barbican locks and keys, the first of many as various extensions, splits, and political fissures occur.

The Seps system was lost for a while, maybe? It cut itself off from the Network and kept its Barbican dismantled for a long time. But it couldn’t escape the population issue, so eventually they had to send out new colony ships. They did. Two at a time, one in either direction. As far past the known bounds of the Navlad territories as they could reach. Much, much further than they’d sent anyone before.

As each colony ship went and sent out a Barbican, and then needed to send out a new one, they unlinked the physical transmission of their Barbican to the last ones in the chain. The result was that they could transmit to each other and keep in communication, but each planetary system is self-sufficient as far as resources go. When they overload a system, they contact the chain and move people down the line at prearranged openings in the Barbs to send out a new colony ship.

This happened because eventually, the capabilities of the colony ships were outstripped by the size of the Navlad, now an Empire. Research was started on better ships, better cryo, and mounting a Barb that could be flung out ahead of the ship onto the hull of the ship itself. (Wow. I need to work on the logic of some of this.)

Eventually, some of the Seps planets were found by the Navlad. The same warning was given. Back off, stay out of our systems, because we can still infect the Barbican network. It had become a thing. Even while the Seps network stayed on its own, it had people sneaking into the Navlad system to check up on the coding updates to the Network. There’s the base code buried under all that, but new code languages have built over top of it and nobody can really force the old stuff out because it’s built into the construction of the Barbs themselves, not just software. New updates in new code languages keep coming, but the Seps have the original code, so they’re good. At least for a while.

Eventually, the Navlad got a spy in to the Seps and found out where the physical components of the Barbs were held that kept anything more than communication from passing through the Barbicans. They destroyed these, figuring that if they could cut the Seps off, then they could take over the planets. What they didn’t realize was the policy of separation the Seps planets had, even with each other. They couldn’t go back in the chain of Seps planets to the original one, and the previous planets wouldn’t open their Barbs unless the correct key was given in the OLD code language.

The Navlad were stuck with having to find these old systems the slow way, and the current Seps were cut off from the original planet because their copies of the code and the physical components were destroyed. A ground level resistance was fought, and enough military resources were dedicated to the system that when someone finally got control of the Barbican and threatened to implode it, a significant chunk of material assets were considered too valuable to lose. It didn’t hurt that the rebels had gotten to all three systems in a close enough area to slow travel to that they could keep the Navlad from crossing that area for a great many years. It was too far for their ships to hop without a waystation of some sort and there would be nothing to settle anyways.

A truce was reached. The Seps system would have its planet. Nobody would be allowed in or out except as the Seps allowed. They in turn, would keep their Barbican updated to the most recent key code. They agreed to the incoming Barbican, but as the population hit max later on, they had to split again. Navlad wouldn’t have possible insurrectionists and frankly, not many of the Seps WANTED to be part of the Navlad. Another split was made, a new colony ship sent out. It was agreed that the Seps would have a chain of colonies that were untouched by the Navlad. Which meant not being part of the Net later on.

In the meantime, the original Seps planet kept its codes, and could hold the threat. But as the Navlad moved further and further out and their focus turned from consolidation and conquering to building up the infrastructure and getting rich, along with breeding more and more sai, the Seps system fell to the wayside and eventually because a footnote in history. The people on the system itself haven’t been heard from in a long time, and it’s unclear if they fixed their population problem, found better ships to take their colonies in the opposite direction from Navlad expansion, or even went back to the First Colony system.

Only thing sure is that they had the base code, and a great many secrets for how the Barbs were made and the history of the Navlad and Kuchen peoples as a whole.

In book three, when the betrayer on Shezza’s team aims the ship for the original Seps planet, maybe he misses and, since First colony is in roughly the same direction, hits that instead? (no) Original colony lost to Gatekeepers, current Seps? Think that the Capitol system was the first system, so they went looking for the original code there and struck out? But everyone knows that they came from SOMEPLACE, so they decided to go looking for the origination point of the second exodus.