NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drothgery" data-source="post: 6098450" data-attributes="member: 360">(ignoring the 'how weird should aliens be' talk for a bit)FWIW, I really didn't have a lot of concept fleshed out for my 'Victorians'; for my purposes, the similarities with Imperial-era Britain could be superficial at best. I probably should note here that I envision that it is possible for 'barbarian' subjects of the Empire to become full citizens (not easily, because they want to make sure anyone they let vote supports their society). It's difficult but attainable for a 'middle class barbarian' (something like you have to be fluent in Imperial, pass a citizenship exam, pay a fee of about a tenth of what a 'middle-class' 'barbarian' makes in a year or serve a term in the Imperial military, and swear fealty to the Throne -- noting that there are things that are capital treason for citizens that are not for mere colonial subjects ... at which point you and your heirs will be a full imperial citizen with all the rights and responsiblities thereof. Conversion to the Imperial Church is _not_ required; unofficially, if you want to reach the higher ranks in the Imperial military or other government service, it's very difficult without taking that step, and only achieved by truly extraordinary individuals).How about this:About a century before the Enemy was encountered, a colony was started by a group of wealthy investors and somewhat eccentric academics who had managed to acquire rights to a surprisingly earth-like world in a very resource-rich system (though on the periphery of human space in the 29th century, and on the other side of 'human space' than the Enemy). The colony had just about achieved self-sufficiency by the time the war started, and while the college that would later become the Imperial University was already developing a reputation in certain circles and drawing off-world students, it was one of thousands.With the war cutting their contacts with the rest of the universe to a trickle, and then off completely, they were forced to build their own industry largely from scratch -- although with a solid base of theoretical knowledge in a wide variety of fields. The colony gained its independent interstellar capability while most of the galaxy was expereincing the chaos of the aftermath of the war. When pirates -- not some last remnant of the Enemy fleet or some other aliens, but human scavengers -- seized an aid convoy they sent to one of their neighbors and massacred the crew, their perception of their fellow humans was radically altered. Guilt over having avoided the ravages of the war and a desire to help now that they could was infused with the notion that they could not let things like that happen again now that they could do something about it. Compared to the ships that fought the war with the Enemy, the fleet they sent to bring order to the system where their humanitarian aid convoy had been lost was hopelessly primitive, and the people that crewed it had no real experience. But it was the product of an intact industrial base, and establishing that protectorate was the beginning of the Empire.</blockquote>

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