[2400AD] The Muan Gwi and the Pentapods
Apr. 7th, 2003 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe Muan Gwi are the Vegans of Traveller. The Pentapods are from 2300AD: five-legged amphibians, one metre high, with a bony bullet-shaped head topped by five eyes on stalks. Pentapods are fascinated by humans and trade bio-engineered products for human technology. They see themselves as machines; each is genetically tailored for its occupation, and those allocated to human contact have pleasing colours and textures. Pentapod technology is almost entirely based biotechnology.
***
First contact with the Pentapods and the Muan Gwi was made by the VEASE Europe Neuve in 2254, when this European exploratory vessel arrived in the DM+41 2147 planetary system. The existence of some sort of high-energy technological civilization at DM+41 2147 had been suspected since the 22nd century: long-range spectroscopic examinations revealed a suspiciously high number of worlds with nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres, while sensitive infrared scans suggested extensive activity in space. On arrival, however, the crew of the Europe Neuve was quite surprised that not one but two sentient species inhabited the DM+41 2147 planetary system, the product of an ancient interstellar union.
The Muan Gwi evolved on the planet Muan Gwi, a planet with a surface gravity only 50% of Earth's orbiting a bright yellow dwarf star. Their ancestral species was a race of browsing herbivores who were adapted to a relatively cool and arid climate. The modern Muan Gwi species is upright, bipedal, and bilaterally symmetrical, averaging 2.2 meters in height, being bisexual, homeothermic oxygen breathers with an average lifespan of over 200 years. Muan Gwi psychology remains relatively similar to that of homo sapiens sapiens given the common origins of the two species as hunter-gatherers, though the Muan Gwi are relatively more passionless and controlled than their human counterparts, and tend not to discriminate against each other on the basis of biological sex.
When the Muan Gwi developed their first sedentary civilizations circa 7000 BCE, they quickly associated in tuhuir. These were cultural and social entities marked by distinctive shared customs and traditions, each initially corresponding to an individual city-state or region. As Vegan civilization became technically more adept, many tuhuir merged or otherwise accomodated themselves to sharing a particular sovereign territory. Currently, tuhuir have memberships of at least several million Vegans dispersed over a world, often marked by some sort of occupational or ecological specialization; before the 1st millennium BCE, however, tuhuirs were self-sufficient entities and inter-tuhuir violence was frequent. It was only with the acceptance of the Covenant--a constitution of sorts which defined interactions between tuhuirs on a secondary continent of Muan Gwi and gradually spread--that Muan Gwi society became peaceful. By the time that the first Pentapod slowboat interstellar vehicle arrived in orbit above Muan Gwi in 202 BCE, Muan Gwi had become a politically united world beginning to establish financially sustainable operations in local space.
For the Pentapods, contact with the Muan Gwi represented a distinctly new stage. The Pentapod race's early history on their homeworld of DM+43 1953 a remains unclear; little data appears to have been exchanged even with the Muan Gwi. Pentapod biology does suggest that the Pentapod race was originally aquatic, and that basic genetic engineering was common as a form of self-adaptation to different environments--first to different oceanic extremes, then to life on the surface of their homeworld. This process of eugenic breeding appears to have marginalized the Pentapods' sense of individual identity, but it did give their race as a whole unprecedented flexibility. The Pentapods modified themselves to such an extent that they were able to ascend to space using engineered organisms, living rockets that made their own fuel and consumed spacebased resources. The Pentapods' interplanetary era lasted several centuries: long-period missions to the other worlds of their solar system were launched using low-energy orbits which, although fuel-efficient, took decades to run their course. On arrival at the different destination worlds, however, the Pentapod probes either discovered lifeless worlds or ice-world moons with limited aquatic biospheres.
Disappointed, the Pentapods built versions of themselves which were long-lived enough to make interstellar trips to the worlds of DM+41 2147 b and DM+46 1635 a, known to be worlds atmospherically and climatologically similar to their own homeworld, and then turned inward. The Pentapods' interstellar probe to DM+46 1635 a arrived in the 6th century CE, some eleven centuries after its launch. On arrival, the Pentapods disembarked on the planet and began to establish a satellite civilization, communicating the news back to the Pentapod homeworld by radio. The Pentapods in both planetary systems remained in regular contact with the Pentapod ship travelling to DM+41 2147, fully expecting that this ship would establish a second satellite civilization.
The Pentapod discovery of the Muan Gwi shocked both species. Neither species had seriously considered the possibility of foreign intelligent life before the actual arrival of the Pentapods in orbit above Muan Gwi. Both species were terrified: the Muan Gwi feared the sheer bulk of the Pentapods, while the Pentapods were disoriented by the sheer numbers of Muan Gwi (some six thousand million upon first contact). The first exchanges were carefully conducted, and could easily have resulted in catastrophe, but the innate conservatism of the two species allowed regular communication to soon be maintained. The two species observed that in many ways they were complimentary: while the Pentapods specialized in biotechnology and were adapted to an aquatic existence, the Muan Gwi specialized in mechanical technologies and were adapted to a land-based existence. The seeds of the Condominium emerged from the first collaborations, as Pentapods settled in Muan Gwi's oceans while Muan Gwi made use of Pentapod biotechnology to establish self-sufficient closed ecologies on outposts and colonies scattered throughout the DM+41 2147 planetary system. The Pentapods went on to ecopoeticize several ice moons orbiting the two gas giants with Muan Gwi assistance, in exchange helping the Muan Gwi ecopoeticize their homeworld's Mars-sized moon of Muan Kwoyen. Almost without noticing, the different Pentapod groups and Muan Gwi tuhuirs intermingled, establishing alliances and even friendships that transcended racial boundaries. A unified biracial community emerged, defined by custom and tradition as much as by law.
The development of starflight technologies at DM+41 2147 proceeded rapidly enough. Neither stutterwarp or jump drive were developed, limiting the Muan Gwi and Pentapods to sublight speeds. By the 1st century CE, however, the Muan Gwi had developed laser-launch technology capable of accelerating massive spacecraft to substantial fractions of the speed of light, reflecting photons from near-star solar-powered laser arrays off of their solar sails, while Pentapod biotechnology was certainly capable of sustaining these spacecraft for decades at a time. Muan Gwi emigrants began to leave their home planetary system, heading first to DM+46 1635 a where they built a bispecies civilization similar to that at DM+41 2147; at DM+43 1953, the Muan Gwi were much more thoroughly assimilated, going so far as to be partly-adapted to aquatic life.
In the end, despite the two species lack of stutterwarp and the consequent limits placed on physical contact, the Muan Gwi and Pentapods built up a civilization based on a profitable synthesis. Great Pentapod slowboat starships (upgraded with Muan Gwi nuclear-propulsion units) made their way from the Pentapod homeworld to Muan Gwi and Muan Issler while swift Muan Gwi laser-launch starships likewise visited the other worlds. The Muan Gwi at DM+41 2147 used their laser-launch systems to propel sublight probes to neighbouring stars, but the paucity of habitable worlds in the region of space limited their interest. At any rate, the more distant worlds could be reached only in millennia, while ecopoeticizing the marginal moons and planets available to the two species would take centuries, and so the two species concentrated on developing their own civilizations.
First contact with the League transformed both cultures. The Muan Gwi quickly assumed the main role in interactions with the humans and the Sung, owing to their humanoid physiology and psychology; the Pentapods preferred to remain behind the scenes. To the Muan Gwi and the Pentapods, stutterwarp drive was a miraculous invention, and after the technology was purchased in 2259 stutterwarp-drive vehicles proceeded to establish a true interstellar community and to explore neighbouring planetary systems. In most other areas, however, they were already at technological parity with humanity; exports of Pentapod biotechnologies and biotechnological goods were a major source of foreign exchange, in fact. Contact with the League quickly intensified over the remainder of the 23rd century, as a human minority community developed on Muan Gwi while on the European Confederation's marginal colony world of Crater a Muan Gwi immigrant presence led by some expansuionist tuhuirs established itself. The accession of the Pentapods and Muan Gwi to full membership in the League of Nations in 2287--using the Sung precedent, as a single entity, with a permanent seat on the Supreme Council--marked the species nominal integration with the League.
Increasingly, however, the Muan Gwi and Pentapods were wary of human expansionism, and of the potential for human exclusiveness. The First Kafer War terrified both species; while the Muan Gwi contributed their own substantial military forces to reinforce the European Confederation's defenses at Adlerhorst and Kimanjano, they and their partners were very concerned with the Confederation's aggressive defense. The Second Kafer War only reinforced these fears, culminating in the dispersal of the Berenices Plague and the decimation of Kafer populations in most of what would be called the Trans-Arcturus Sector. It is as yet uncertain how responsible the Muan Gwi were for the creation of the Interstellar Federation and the Beta Canum Arm's secession from the European Confederation--there were underlying tensions between colonials and their colonial power long before the Kafer War--but the fact remained that the Federation was a strong ally of the Muan Gwi and the Pentapods, inclined to agree with their articulated foreign policy. This bispecies civilization also took care to develop contacts with other non-human species, with neo-squids closer to home, with the Sung and the Ylii further afield, and with second-generation human stutterwarp powers like China, Mars and America, the better to encourage a diverse astropolitical arena.
The modern Muan Gwi and Pentapods remain enigmas. They are, clearly, a power to be reckoned with, but unlike the Sung or even the Ylii they have remained self-contained; apart from the Muan Gwi and Pentapod settlements in the Interstellar Federation, neither species is present in large numbers in the League as a whole. Pentapod-owned corporations and conglomerates staffed by Muan Gwi have a major economic presence in the whole coreward segment of League space, extending as far as Earth and Mars. On the eve of the 24th century, it appears that the two species will remain as distinct from the rest of interstellar society as they are intermingled with each other.
Comments?
***
First contact with the Pentapods and the Muan Gwi was made by the VEASE Europe Neuve in 2254, when this European exploratory vessel arrived in the DM+41 2147 planetary system. The existence of some sort of high-energy technological civilization at DM+41 2147 had been suspected since the 22nd century: long-range spectroscopic examinations revealed a suspiciously high number of worlds with nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres, while sensitive infrared scans suggested extensive activity in space. On arrival, however, the crew of the Europe Neuve was quite surprised that not one but two sentient species inhabited the DM+41 2147 planetary system, the product of an ancient interstellar union.
The Muan Gwi evolved on the planet Muan Gwi, a planet with a surface gravity only 50% of Earth's orbiting a bright yellow dwarf star. Their ancestral species was a race of browsing herbivores who were adapted to a relatively cool and arid climate. The modern Muan Gwi species is upright, bipedal, and bilaterally symmetrical, averaging 2.2 meters in height, being bisexual, homeothermic oxygen breathers with an average lifespan of over 200 years. Muan Gwi psychology remains relatively similar to that of homo sapiens sapiens given the common origins of the two species as hunter-gatherers, though the Muan Gwi are relatively more passionless and controlled than their human counterparts, and tend not to discriminate against each other on the basis of biological sex.
When the Muan Gwi developed their first sedentary civilizations circa 7000 BCE, they quickly associated in tuhuir. These were cultural and social entities marked by distinctive shared customs and traditions, each initially corresponding to an individual city-state or region. As Vegan civilization became technically more adept, many tuhuir merged or otherwise accomodated themselves to sharing a particular sovereign territory. Currently, tuhuir have memberships of at least several million Vegans dispersed over a world, often marked by some sort of occupational or ecological specialization; before the 1st millennium BCE, however, tuhuirs were self-sufficient entities and inter-tuhuir violence was frequent. It was only with the acceptance of the Covenant--a constitution of sorts which defined interactions between tuhuirs on a secondary continent of Muan Gwi and gradually spread--that Muan Gwi society became peaceful. By the time that the first Pentapod slowboat interstellar vehicle arrived in orbit above Muan Gwi in 202 BCE, Muan Gwi had become a politically united world beginning to establish financially sustainable operations in local space.
For the Pentapods, contact with the Muan Gwi represented a distinctly new stage. The Pentapod race's early history on their homeworld of DM+43 1953 a remains unclear; little data appears to have been exchanged even with the Muan Gwi. Pentapod biology does suggest that the Pentapod race was originally aquatic, and that basic genetic engineering was common as a form of self-adaptation to different environments--first to different oceanic extremes, then to life on the surface of their homeworld. This process of eugenic breeding appears to have marginalized the Pentapods' sense of individual identity, but it did give their race as a whole unprecedented flexibility. The Pentapods modified themselves to such an extent that they were able to ascend to space using engineered organisms, living rockets that made their own fuel and consumed spacebased resources. The Pentapods' interplanetary era lasted several centuries: long-period missions to the other worlds of their solar system were launched using low-energy orbits which, although fuel-efficient, took decades to run their course. On arrival at the different destination worlds, however, the Pentapod probes either discovered lifeless worlds or ice-world moons with limited aquatic biospheres.
Disappointed, the Pentapods built versions of themselves which were long-lived enough to make interstellar trips to the worlds of DM+41 2147 b and DM+46 1635 a, known to be worlds atmospherically and climatologically similar to their own homeworld, and then turned inward. The Pentapods' interstellar probe to DM+46 1635 a arrived in the 6th century CE, some eleven centuries after its launch. On arrival, the Pentapods disembarked on the planet and began to establish a satellite civilization, communicating the news back to the Pentapod homeworld by radio. The Pentapods in both planetary systems remained in regular contact with the Pentapod ship travelling to DM+41 2147, fully expecting that this ship would establish a second satellite civilization.
The Pentapod discovery of the Muan Gwi shocked both species. Neither species had seriously considered the possibility of foreign intelligent life before the actual arrival of the Pentapods in orbit above Muan Gwi. Both species were terrified: the Muan Gwi feared the sheer bulk of the Pentapods, while the Pentapods were disoriented by the sheer numbers of Muan Gwi (some six thousand million upon first contact). The first exchanges were carefully conducted, and could easily have resulted in catastrophe, but the innate conservatism of the two species allowed regular communication to soon be maintained. The two species observed that in many ways they were complimentary: while the Pentapods specialized in biotechnology and were adapted to an aquatic existence, the Muan Gwi specialized in mechanical technologies and were adapted to a land-based existence. The seeds of the Condominium emerged from the first collaborations, as Pentapods settled in Muan Gwi's oceans while Muan Gwi made use of Pentapod biotechnology to establish self-sufficient closed ecologies on outposts and colonies scattered throughout the DM+41 2147 planetary system. The Pentapods went on to ecopoeticize several ice moons orbiting the two gas giants with Muan Gwi assistance, in exchange helping the Muan Gwi ecopoeticize their homeworld's Mars-sized moon of Muan Kwoyen. Almost without noticing, the different Pentapod groups and Muan Gwi tuhuirs intermingled, establishing alliances and even friendships that transcended racial boundaries. A unified biracial community emerged, defined by custom and tradition as much as by law.
The development of starflight technologies at DM+41 2147 proceeded rapidly enough. Neither stutterwarp or jump drive were developed, limiting the Muan Gwi and Pentapods to sublight speeds. By the 1st century CE, however, the Muan Gwi had developed laser-launch technology capable of accelerating massive spacecraft to substantial fractions of the speed of light, reflecting photons from near-star solar-powered laser arrays off of their solar sails, while Pentapod biotechnology was certainly capable of sustaining these spacecraft for decades at a time. Muan Gwi emigrants began to leave their home planetary system, heading first to DM+46 1635 a where they built a bispecies civilization similar to that at DM+41 2147; at DM+43 1953, the Muan Gwi were much more thoroughly assimilated, going so far as to be partly-adapted to aquatic life.
In the end, despite the two species lack of stutterwarp and the consequent limits placed on physical contact, the Muan Gwi and Pentapods built up a civilization based on a profitable synthesis. Great Pentapod slowboat starships (upgraded with Muan Gwi nuclear-propulsion units) made their way from the Pentapod homeworld to Muan Gwi and Muan Issler while swift Muan Gwi laser-launch starships likewise visited the other worlds. The Muan Gwi at DM+41 2147 used their laser-launch systems to propel sublight probes to neighbouring stars, but the paucity of habitable worlds in the region of space limited their interest. At any rate, the more distant worlds could be reached only in millennia, while ecopoeticizing the marginal moons and planets available to the two species would take centuries, and so the two species concentrated on developing their own civilizations.
First contact with the League transformed both cultures. The Muan Gwi quickly assumed the main role in interactions with the humans and the Sung, owing to their humanoid physiology and psychology; the Pentapods preferred to remain behind the scenes. To the Muan Gwi and the Pentapods, stutterwarp drive was a miraculous invention, and after the technology was purchased in 2259 stutterwarp-drive vehicles proceeded to establish a true interstellar community and to explore neighbouring planetary systems. In most other areas, however, they were already at technological parity with humanity; exports of Pentapod biotechnologies and biotechnological goods were a major source of foreign exchange, in fact. Contact with the League quickly intensified over the remainder of the 23rd century, as a human minority community developed on Muan Gwi while on the European Confederation's marginal colony world of Crater a Muan Gwi immigrant presence led by some expansuionist tuhuirs established itself. The accession of the Pentapods and Muan Gwi to full membership in the League of Nations in 2287--using the Sung precedent, as a single entity, with a permanent seat on the Supreme Council--marked the species nominal integration with the League.
Increasingly, however, the Muan Gwi and Pentapods were wary of human expansionism, and of the potential for human exclusiveness. The First Kafer War terrified both species; while the Muan Gwi contributed their own substantial military forces to reinforce the European Confederation's defenses at Adlerhorst and Kimanjano, they and their partners were very concerned with the Confederation's aggressive defense. The Second Kafer War only reinforced these fears, culminating in the dispersal of the Berenices Plague and the decimation of Kafer populations in most of what would be called the Trans-Arcturus Sector. It is as yet uncertain how responsible the Muan Gwi were for the creation of the Interstellar Federation and the Beta Canum Arm's secession from the European Confederation--there were underlying tensions between colonials and their colonial power long before the Kafer War--but the fact remained that the Federation was a strong ally of the Muan Gwi and the Pentapods, inclined to agree with their articulated foreign policy. This bispecies civilization also took care to develop contacts with other non-human species, with neo-squids closer to home, with the Sung and the Ylii further afield, and with second-generation human stutterwarp powers like China, Mars and America, the better to encourage a diverse astropolitical arena.
The modern Muan Gwi and Pentapods remain enigmas. They are, clearly, a power to be reckoned with, but unlike the Sung or even the Ylii they have remained self-contained; apart from the Muan Gwi and Pentapod settlements in the Interstellar Federation, neither species is present in large numbers in the League as a whole. Pentapod-owned corporations and conglomerates staffed by Muan Gwi have a major economic presence in the whole coreward segment of League space, extending as far as Earth and Mars. On the eve of the 24th century, it appears that the two species will remain as distinct from the rest of interstellar society as they are intermingled with each other.
Comments?
