The Triumphants are famed for their dueling custom, which allows for single combat but not warfare. Hence, to fight their wars, one champion would be outfitted with cybernetic power armor of absurd splendor, larger than a battleship, and go trample the houses and towers, groves and gardens of the enemy, until met and halted by a champion in panoply of like weight and power.
THIRD SWEEP 37 th Millennium
58 Eridani—Neodamode
A highly militarized and organized society known for its peaceful, disciplined, and highly industrious populations.
Rho Cancri [a.k.a. 55 Cancri]—Sciritaea
A highly militarized and organized society riven by continual tumults, intrigues, and civil wars.
47 Ursae Majoris—Vital Delectation
The Delectables maintain a vicious custom of dueling, assassination, small-scale warfare, and ghost worship. The rumor that their women are raised as beasts and not taught language until captured and tamed during courtship is absurd and false.
83 Leonis—Uttaranchal
The society is variegated into extremely fine nuances of a biotechnological caste system so that each family and each individual within the family knows his exact degree of rank. Ruled by the ghosts of the original two surviving settlers, from whom all populations are descended. Immigrants not adopted into the family are enslaved.
Alpha Mensae—Land of Hungry Needle-Necked Wraiths
Despite the name, a pleasant world of perfumed glades, cheerful lakes, and mountains carved into cathedrals and ziggurats. Famed for its hanging gardens.
18 Scorpii—Unsuit
Ruled by the descendants of the original terraformers, who keep the landscape so delicately tuned, that all houses with walls are outlawed.
Epsilon Reticuli—Determined Endpoint Project
Ruled by a ruthless caste called Fiduciaries. Children are born in debt and must earn manumission from their parents.
44 Boötis—Schattenreich and Rime
Schattenreich is a hemisphere of erosion-flattened hills opposite a hemisphere of deep and tideless waters. It is famed for its ghost population, which far outnumbers its living and are malign.
Rime is a cold and light-gravity world, adorned with natural ice towers. Flocculent Man, descended from the Hibernals of Yule, have ousted all other races, except that the Reticents from Xi Boötis who occupy spires and mountains through nerve-war praxis have imposed a set of geas rather than laws. The geas forbids no deeds nor acts, but instead certain mental states, as vulgarity, waggish familiarity, and peevishness. The Reticents are Hierophants famed for their obsessive self-reliance and myriad tradesman personalities crowding their psyches, giving them competence at every art, science, and profession.
Arcturus [a.k.a. Alpha Boötis]—Nightspore
A rare case of double colonization: populations were deracinated from Euphrasy of Xi Boötis and from Joyous of Beta Canum Venaticorum.
Torn during its early days in civil war between Shapingmen (Joys who favored pantropy dwell in the south) and Crystalmen (Reticent terraformers dwell in the north) the Nightsporeans have created two equal and opposed biospheres (Muspel-life and Niffle-life), no creature nor plant of which consumes nor is consumed by the other. Summer Kings rose to power here and have since attempted to quell the ferocious earthquakes and vast, malign tempests and tornadoes, but with limited success. Cities and towns are particularly vulnerable to weather-control sieges and retaliations, and so have been outlawed. The system of semi-independent multiple specialized mental functions called internals was developed here.
51 Pegasi—Chrysaor
A utopian world of fertile fields, small cottages, hedges, canals, eight-sided windmills. Vegetarianism and strict ahimsa, absolute nonviolence to all living things, remain from the harsh terraforming regime of the early Myrmidon settlers.
85 Pegasi—Geryon
A hell-world of boiling oceans, volcanoes, rocky archipelagos. Originally ruled by shape-takers whose women were lobotomized at birth and used only as breeding livestock, the repugnance of these customs persuaded the Starfarers Guild to assign assassins to destroy their leadership. The assassins learned the art of shape-taking and blended so well with the natives that no one was aware when the last native was killed and replaced. The endless and anarchic war of all against all has achieved a cliometric halt-state and cannot foreseeably be resolved.
Rasalhague—Penance
A planet famous for its abundance of gems and geodes, many of which are unobtainable elsewhere in human space. The Penitent adopted a rigorous system of asceticism to prevent their wealth from corrupting them.
Gamma Pavonis—To Prevail
Colonized by Splendor of Delta Pavonis. The Prevalent retain the strict hierarchic culture of the ancient Splendids.
FOURTH SWEEP 53 rd Millennium
Regulus [a.k.a. Alpha Leonis]—Here Be Monsters
A vegetarian world with no fauna at all. Cannibalism frequent among the aristocracy. An odd custom is that all boy children are raised blind until a mate is selected for him so that the first sight he sees is his bride. Dominant race is Anthropovores.
Zeta Leporis—Svartalfheim
Atmosphere entirely black and opaque. Famed for its thick and dense asteroid belts, remnants of several exploded gas giants.
Hamal [a.k.a. Alpha Arietis]—Mystery of the Second Creation
Predominant race is Seers from We See a Strange Dawn.
HR 2622 in Monoceros—Qailertetang
The most ambitious project of terraforming known: a molten world cooled by terraforming to pleasant subarctic conditions. Ruled by a cabal of weather-control architects called Winter Queens.
Gliese 31.5 in Tucana—Shumisen, also called Mountain of the Lovely Peach Trees
This world has never known war or murder. All children are subdued by a program of addiction to soothing drugs and electronic signals. The population is preoccupied with intrigues revolving around a set of worldwide cybernetic dreamscapes. Roughly one-fourth of the population eventually succumbs to some form of assisted suicide due to associative disorders. Cliometry indicates this is a halt-state.
Pi Mensae—Onwardness
A world where human emotion had been outlawed except on Sabbath days. The local gas giant planet interrupts the habitable zone, producing alarming tides and quakes.
Zubenelgenubi [a.k.a. Alpha Librae]—Aaru, also called the Field of Reeds
Terraformed eccentrically, with a single river reaching from pole to pole. The northern hemisphere is the debris of an interplanetary collision and has not yet settled into spherical shape. The sole source of oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere comes from river plankton, and so the airs outside the single long river valley are inhospitable. Inhabited by Giants, Nicors, Foxes, ruled by the ghosts of the original colonists.
Xi Scorpius—Bloody Water Poisoned Air
As the name implies, terraformed poorly. The gravity is high, and the Bloods have been modified to withstand it: they spend their afternoons in highly salted baths.
HIP 12961—Land of the Young
Dreaded Immortalist colony. It is rumored that any traveler departing from the local Forever Village is treated against his will and cannot thereafter die.