Re: OT A question regarding a culture I\'m working
 

No actually what I meant was that basically if they are under fire from a house they destroy the house, they don't risk their own soldiers to try and get the Terrorist OUT of the house before blowing it up and they wont always risk going IN to clear said terrorist nest out.

If under fire from a house they destroy it, unless they are 100% SURE there are hostages in there.

So in the end if you let terrorists use your house as a base you lose your house, its sad but it saves Icaran lives.

Likewise they would blow up Mosque/Church/Graveyards/etc if there were terrorists using them as bases of operations, the average Icaran soldier might feel guilty but they wouldn't let it stop them. And the state as a whole wouldn't feel bad about it.

There are always innocents caught in the line of fire sadly, its just Icarans wouldn't let a few innocents deaths change their ENTIRE warfighting policy to the extent of say the US where it wont even let them chase known enemies into certain regions.

Actually this makes a lot of sense from even a modern political viewpoint, YOUR Citizens are more important then someone else's ESPECIALLY if that someone else is attacking your nation.

Its no more self centered then any other country they are just much more open about it and admit it fully.

Well like I said Icaran responses tend to be rather proportional to the amount of resistance they get from your world when the fighting is done.

Basically if they land and take out your military (or your military surrenders) and your people are willing to submit then you get treated rather well, your kids get taken to school for six months out of the year (full course) and then for every other week for the remaining six months (half course). They get to see their family and the culture is slowly assimilated into the Empire.

If however you continue resisting THAT is when they take your kids, steralize your population and wait for you to grow old and die and your kids to take over as proper Imperial citizens.

As far as the "blowing up markets etc" goes that wouldn't work on Icarans because like I said they pretty much leave a conquered population alone aside from certain requirements, the conquered world doesn't see a massive influx of actual Icarans so they'd only be blowing up their own people instead of Icarans.

On a world that fought hard enough to earn the "punishment" I described basically all the Icaran facilities would be mini fortresses that are practically unaproachable with anyhting but a nuke or armored regiment....including the "schools" which would be ON BASE.

And Icarans are patient, they've been bred to be and trained to be so twenty years, thirty, even fifty would simply be seen as a waiting game to a population with SUSTAIN level lifespans. Eventually the dissident population will die off or be too old to be effective, and then your new generation can come in and take over.

And if you ask any Icaran born citizen then they KNOW their life is secondary to the survival of the Empire, and that the ENEMY is even lower down the list. It's not some hidden state secret or conspiracy it is simply the way it is to them.

And as I said I think you over-estimate their eagerness to take life based on the fact they don't respond the same way to threats as we would. They will destroy any armed resistance yes but then again so does any good soldier, they even take POWs when possible. But the survival of THEIR culture is paramount so if another culture has to die then it will.
But that's really no different then any country if it is threatened with its very survival, if it comes down to an "us or them" its usually "them" that get wiped out.

The Empire is a culture of assimiliation, they'd much prefer to let any rebellious elements grow old and die then to actually have to fight them. But at the same time any rebellious element that threatens Icaran lives has to be destroyed.

Aye this is true but they have less then lethal weapons, and bomb sniffers that would help with this if someone was dumb enough to blow themselves up in a crowd of their own people that are working for the same goals as them.

FedSec is a single "police" force they are controlled by the Imperial government not local governors (constables are controlled by local governors and are responsible for most petty crimes while major crimes fall under FedSec jurisdiction) so they wouldnt likely open fire just because a local governor flips out and says to.

Basically as far as the GOVERNMENT is concerned all's forgiven, you still have to prove to your fellow citizens that you learned from your mistake and are willing to grow and move on.

And like I said they actually DO take you for analysis after punishment (like the drunk driver being taken to hospital so they can clean him up) and try and make you "better" if possible.

And actually btw there are cultures that DO still practice public beatings and it is quite an effective means of stopping minor crime as most people dont want to face their peers with the same sort of crime again.

As far as your statements regarding the Neo-Buddists, in a population of billions there are only a few thousand of them left so their overall numbers contribute about jack squat to the strength of the Armed forces. So honoring their "act of pennance" is not difficult.

And I think you misunderstood the government a little, yes the Praetor and High Lords are pretty much absolute but the Nobles themselves are not so much and are answerable to several authorities (the military, the High Lords and Praetor and to some extend their own populace).

So any governor seen as betraying Icaran honor would not likely end up dead.

They are ALL raised to the same standards, noble and citizen, all in the same schools together all taught the same, and for the most part you have to EARN a noble title you cant just walk up and ask for one.

And yes noble families are liable for a draft just like any other fit young Icaran, and they face the same 25 years service.

Even the Praetor's family (except for first born son) and High Lords families are liable for draft and service (in fact it is strongly encouraged for a noble child to serve their Empire).

Re: OT A question regarding a culture I\'m working
 

Ok, I see where you're coming from. However I do think you underestimate the extent to which people will resist, even in the face of utterly hopeless oppression.

But no-one will submit, and any military worth its salt would fight to the very last to resist the Icarans if they knew what was in store for them. You say "people will be treated pretty well" but I have yet to see single thing in the Icaran Empire that is in any way superior to the system I am living under now. If I feel that way, why should the members of a space-age society of a comparable tech-level to the Icarans feel any different? They are probably quite happy with their lives, they don't need some squad of totalitarian fascists to come down and impose their twisted utopia. People might even, you know, resent that quite strongly.

You also have this bizarre notion that people will regard having their children sent away to be "educated" (ie indoctrinated into an offensive, alien mindset) as a good thing. Imagine your kid coming home in the evening.
Mum: "Hey Billy, how was school?"
Billy: "Great! Today we learned that the Emporer is supreme and that the blood-drenched subjugation of the galaxy is his god-given and inevitable destiny."
(Mum gives Dad a worried look.)
Dad: "Uh, right. You know Billy, that's just one point of view. Some people might say that..."
Billy: "Ha! Teacher said you might be traitors! You'll have your tongues cut out for this, rebel scum!"

have you made any effort at all to see this from the point of view of the victims?

Suppose someone conquered your country and said "Your culture and way of life are obselete. We will eradicate it and replace it with our own. You will not raise your children in your traditions, they will be raised in ours. You may not reproduce without our permission. You may no longer practise your own religion. You *will* respect our megalomaniacal supreme dictator. You will obey every order given to you because the authority of our Emporer is absolute. You may no longer vote, voice dissent, have any say in your own public life or gather in public for political purposes. You and your children will serve in our military so that we may use you to impose similar barbarity on other peoples elsewhere. Icaran life is more valuable than yours. All of this will be enforced with dispassionate violence, surgery, abduction and brainwashing administered by a bunch of cold, aloof foreigners who will live in gated communities and make no effort at all to understand you, learn about you, or make any compromise to your way of life. Resistance is futile. Have a nice day."

Would you submit and say "oh well, at least I get free heathcare and a job?" Or would you flip them the finger and devote yourself to driving the bastards out of your homeland and back to where they came from? Would you, reading all this in a story, respect anyone that simply rolled over without a fight? Would you feel anything but hatred for the invaders? By all means write the Icarans that way, but don't expect anyone to like them, and don't for a minute suppose that they would be welcomed anywhere.



But let's take a scenario where the Icarans conquer a world of people who do roll over. Maybe the Icaran system isn't so different to the one it replaces, so the Icaran propoganda merchants managed to persuade 99.9% of the population to just accept a new portrait on their currency, call themselves Icaran and get on with life. On a planetary scale, the 0.1% remaining represents a significant number of people who will resist.

So some fighting breaks out. Maybe an icaran soldier or policeman gets shot. maybe an Icaran facility or convoy is blown up. Maybe a high-profile collaborator has his family kidnapped.

The Icarans attempt to deal with the situation the only way the know how: With uncompromising oppression. Except they don't really know who to target. Maybe they catch a few people, but there are plenty more who get away.
So they start being a bit less precise in their methods: Any one of the locals could be an enemy, so let's treat them all as suspicious. Impose a blanket curfew on everybody, take out entire buildings from afar rather than risk sending someone in to take out the few targets in there. I mean we're Icarans now, and all Icarans are equal, but some are more equal than others, right?

Some of the pacified people who submitted will inevitably suffer, find their meagre remaining rights being stripped away. Maybe their children get taken away, maybe their uncle gets blown away as collateral damage in a raid on a suspected resistance hideout, maye a brother gets beaten for breaking curfew, maybe a cousin gets taken away and "has an accident" after looking at a policeman funny. It becomes gradually more and more apparent just how much local life is worth compared to Icaran life.

You might like to think that the locals will blame the resistance for stirring up trouble, but that's not how it works. People will compare how it was before the occupation and how it is now. They will blame the person pulling the trigger for the shooting of an innocent, not the activist who the Icaran gunman thought he was aiming at. Suddenly some of those passive people are no longer passive, suddenly they choose not to submit. And the more of their family members are killed, the more homes are destroyed, the more lives ruined, the less they have to lose. They take up arms. The resistance continues, the oppression is intensified, more people are disaffected, the cycle escalates.

Before long what was a relatively quiet world with a minority of troublemakers is an utter hell-hole in a state of perpetual war. Uttely ungovernable and completely incapable of producing anything in the way of useful industry.

I think I've put forward my case pretty strongly that there WILL be resistance- substantial and determined resistance- on pretty much any planet they invade.

So how do they deal with resistnace? Well...

Take a look at Iraq. Most of the people dying in suicide bombs aren't americans- they are Iraqis. Do the insurgents really think they can kill all of the thousands of well armed soldiers and tanks the US have over there? Are they even trying to do that? Hell no, and they know they don't have to. All they have to do is cause enough noise and news and expense and death and misery so that staying just isn't worth the Americans' while.

All warfare boils down to economics. The invader wants your natural resources, your industry, your infrastructure, your workforce. However, the value of those assets has to exceed not only the cost of the invasion, but also the cost of maintaining and defending the assets post-invasion. So your Icarans, having conquered a people, can't just steal the children and leave the rest to die out- or they could, but then all they've done is to snatch a load of children and lose everything else. They will emerge from their bunkers fifty years later to find an anarchic wasteland, all industry and infrastructure long ago destroyed by sabateurs determined deny it to the enemy. What is the cost of rebuilding all that? What is the cost compared to simply glassing the world in the first place and re-colonising it with native-born Icarans? Presumably they don't have any kind of reproductive crisis, and so don't actually *need* to steal babies in order to perpetuate themselves. What is the cost of glassing and recolonising an occupied world compared to simply colonising an empty one?


It's not enough to sit in a bomb-proof bunker and guard that bunker. They might as well never visit the planet in the first place. No, once they've conquered a people, they need to police them, collect taxes and resources, supervise production and prevent the locals from plotting liberation. They will have no choice but to send in troops to guard factories, offices, bridges, power plants, mines, ... they will have to send in administrators to and rub shoulders with the leading figures of local industry and production, make sure that facilities are being run properly and that their output os all accounted for...

Those troops and administrators will cost money, and will be exposed to danger. Sure, they can draft in collaborators to do much of the work on their behalf, but collaborators will be far more exposed than any 'true' Icaran, and there will also be serious issues of trust.

Even if their troops and administrators and trusted collaborators are nigh-invulnerable in super high-tech body armour, you're still left with the problem of protecting an entire planet of infrastructure from an enemy within. On budget.

My point (finally) is that I can't help think that invading a population and then attempting to deal with their violent (and justified) resentment by sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING" isn't quite such a straightforward solution as you think.

Of course, this all ignores the possibility that the Icarans don't invade for economic gain, but because they can't stand the thought of someone out there who isn't like them, and isn't under their control. That, of course, is highly irrational and as such requires no further justification, but if they are prepared to incur massive costs on unprofitable holy wars, how the hell are they not bankrupt already?

Re: OT A question regarding a culture I\'m working
 

Hmmmm well I might have overstated some of the hostile responses of Icarans.

Like I said primarily they try and assimilate a culture and slowly convert it over time with the children and leaving things as intact as possible with as few "true" icarans as possible on planet.

And if you look at (of all things) Hitler's germany you can see how seducing the young people of a population can help to secure your hold over a people and bring them into line.

And for joe schmo on the street whos smart enough to realize their vote doesn't count for all that much anyway (as was proven by Bush winning for example) then losing the total vote of who is your leader doesnt make much of a difference.

Also free health care, assured of a job and livelihood, assured of equal treatment under the law yeah a lot of people would find that nice.

Re: OT A question regarding a culture I\'m working
 

Also an important thing to remember is I am writing a society that is slowly evolving as well, some of the brutality is slowly replaced because as THEY assimilate cultures they are also changed slowly.

I wont spoil to much because I still haven't fully fleshed it out but if you've read my short stories posted here then you'll see what the Empire is STARTING to become (which is a more culturally diverse and just society although still rather mono-religious and still xeno hating).

They'll never be a culture WE would want to be thrown into as their justice system is still based on public flogging and humiliation for crimes (which they consider merciful since you can get back to life while WE would throw you in jail for years).

They'll still always be "state-centric" where children are raised in school as much as at home to be loyal citizens and good citizens (including helping and supporting one another).

They'll always be the "master-race" mentality when it comes to humanity vs aliens, and when it comes to their exercize regimes and fitness demands.


But they do have some very good sides as well and I think Dogscoff your just sort of blowing some of the 'badness' out of proportion BECAUSE it is a culture you wouldn't like.

For example the fact they consider their own citizens more valuable then other nations, well DUH every nation feels that way or else whenever a war started both sides would pillow fight for fear of hurting the OTHER guy's people.

The fact they respond to terror WITH terror is alien to us, but to them its a matter of "Show no fear and break them" where we have the "OH MY GOD YOU KILLED SOME OF US WE QUIT!"

Like i said I probobly misphrased some of their responses to make it sound overly cruel but for the most part they are just a tough people that believe there is no compromise with an enemy because so long as that enemy state exists it will make war on you again and again until one or the other side is destroyed.

As far as religion goes they see that as a major source of strife and hatred, so the state religion and a handful of others (all mono-theistic mostly Christian/Jewish in heritage and not taught in school) are the only legal ones to prevent people from fighting their fellow citizens over doctrine and destroying the Empire.

I mean thats the thing Dogscoff you seem to want to think just because they are raised state-centric and community-centric they are all mindless drones, thats not true and doesn't HAVE to be true either.

You also consider anti-demonstration laws to be OMG HORRIBLE but if you think about it how many "peaceful protests" turn into riots that kill people? Their government just doesnt want to deal with it and neither does the average citizen.

You also treat the draft as OMG HORRIBLE but there are nations today that have mandatory service FOR ALL CITIZENS (as in EVERY single ONE) but those people are hardly abused and simply consider it a service to their people.
So what the Empire might knock on your door some day and say "loyal citizen you must serve 25 years in the Armed Forces" in a society where you live to be 300+ 25 years isnt so bad.

As far as the sterilization goes, BFD there are countries today that impose severe penalties for having more then a certain number of children, the Icarans just see this as part of life (you have 3 kids as a citizen, 1 is automatically drafted when they hit 16 the other two can go on with life and you are steralized to prevent further children) the process can be undone if you lose a child or if an exemption is made on your part so all it really is is that you dont have to remember birth control every day for the rest of your centuries long life. When your average citizen lives for CENTURIES population growth MUST be controlled.

Re: OT A question regarding a culture I\'m working
 

That is an important thing, I'm glad you've taken it into consideration- not because i think the Icarans need to be changed, but because change is interesting and change is what drives storytelling.

Well yeah, but there are still certain standards to which we today expect other enemy's people to be treated. Now obviously your Icaransd would never have heard of the Geneva convention but the principles behind them- and the consequences in terms of morale, escalation and so when those standards aren't adhered to- would still apply.

Not alien at all. I've lost count of the amount of times in this thread I've had to stop myself making comparisons with Iraq. I think I'll just add this to the pile.

[quote]
want to think just because they are raised state-centric and community-centric they are all mindless drones[quote]

Perhaps not mindless drones, but certainly heavily indoctrinated with state progoganda. I would imagine a conversation with an average Icaran to be much like a conversation with a USSR-era Russian: Most of the time it would be like talking to anyone else, but when you get on to certain subjects, their opinions would seem oddly divorced from reality.

A very tiny percentage. What's more, a lot of those that do turn nasty do so because the police (under orders from the gov) provoke violence and then blame it on the protestors. It's a standard tactic.

But even so, I gladly accept the risk of rioting as a price to pay for the right to demonstrate. Freedoms almost always come with risks attached. Still, its irrelevant how *I* feel about it, the point I was trying to make is that it is another sign of a totalitarian regime, and as such the Icarans would not be welcomed everywhere. But we've covered that ground.

Actually, I would support some kind of national service (as long as everyone was offered a non-military option.) I think it's a good way to halp people appreciate their public services. The only times I mentioned the draft were (a) to point out that one section of society being exempt is likely to cause friction and (b) point out that if it were enacted on conquered people, then that would be unpopular among those people. It's one thing to be forced to serve in your own military, it's something else altogether to be forced into somebody else's.

Yes there are. That doesn't make it right.

Also, and this is just me looking at realism again, are such measures really necessary? Population does have a way of balancing itself out, look at the falling birth rates in the world today in industrialised countries: As people become more wealthy and the cost of raising children increases, people have less children. They want to make money and travel and have fun and establish their careers before having kids, so that when they are ready they can provide all the modern comforts to their offspring. What comforts are available in Icaran society, and how long does it take to earn them? Maybe people would wait until they get their military service out of the way first, not wanting to have a child until a significnt risk of orphaning it has passed. Also, a person might be an adult at 13 or 16 the eyes of Icaran law, but would society really consider them ready for adulthood, when they have 200-odd years of fertility left to them? More on that later.

Obviously your long life spans make a difference, but even with 200 - 300 years of fertility, I don't find it unlikely that most couples would limit themselves to a handful of kids, especially with advanced, high-tech contraceptives that are less prone to failure(*) than the methods we use today. After all, with all that time, there's no rush. You could have one child and devote all your time and attention to it until it's well into adulthood - although this means the child would be without siblings of a similar age, with such long windows of fertility there's no reason why a child couldn't be born at the same time as scores of its cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. Family members might even plan to get pregnant at the same time, so that the kids can grow up together.

There would be exceptions in either direction, of course, but an average of four or five kids per couple over 3 centuries doen't seem improbable- bear in mind that by the time you hit 250, you'll have more great grand children than you can count anyway, so you won't feel the need to have more of your own, you'll be happy sharing the your child-raising expertise with younger generations of parents.

(*) To be fair, I believe most of today's 'contraceptive failures' are down to user error rather than a fault in the actual technology, but user error is still something that could be countered with better technology.)

Also bear in mind that societies not facing immediate resource shortages tend to encourage higher birth rates: More people=more productivity. It's not as if your Icarans have only one world with limited resources to share between their entire population, like we do.

Just out of interest, regarding the state control of reigion and procreation, are these things derived from their links to today's China?

Something else that I find interesting about your Icarans is that they consider people adult at age 13. It seems strange that you've extended adulthood massively for your Icarans, and yet shortened childhood. Given the massively expanded lifespans, in conjunction with it being such a patriarchal society (patriarchal in the sense of deference to heirarchy and authority, not necessary in the mysoginistic sense), I find this a little strange. Most 40 years olds I know today would regard a 13 year old as immature, and that's in a very open-minded environment compared to, say, 100 years ago. How do you think a 240 year old would feel? Even if Icaran law says 13==adult, I think older Icarans would definitely treat people so young with a certain amount of condescension, and all but the most exceptional adults under the age of 40 would have difficulty getting people to take them seriously. Maybe there could be different 'levels' of adulthood, enforced by tradition rather than law, with 'coming of age' rites of passage at various stages through life/ life events (parenthood, grandparenthood, 25 years service in the military or some other job.)

Re: OT A question regarding a culture I\'m working
 

(the Icaran Empire of today btw doesn't come from an alternate history but rather 7,000 years in the future when the story begins with them set in a modern industrialized world and developing FAST with rival nations still on their new homeworld)

Aye http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I think so too which is why I've made this thread I want the evolution to seem natural and "necessary" rather then contrived and forced.

For example at their earliest stages on their home world they would be brutal and cruel as a NATION but it would be out of necessity for survival but as they spread out their "conquests" become more and more political rather then military and they slowly assimilate rather then brutally exterminate rival human cultures.

The one thing that I wont have change in the forseeable future is their hatred of aliens.

Aye this is true but we today see MASSIVE violations of the Geneva convention on both sides of any war right down to the kind of ammunition used (Designed to wound horribly rather then kill swiftly).

And to a people 7 millenia and hundreds of wars seperated from Geneva and on a world where your rivals are equally brutal and cruel in warfare the concept would probobly seem naive at best.

Well WE consider it bad THEY consider it normal which we would find rather alien.

Actually the Police Force, civil engineers, shipyard employees (ALL space based construction is government controlled and monitored) and even teachers are considered public servants.

And given that if by 16 you dont even show efforts at looking INTO a job you can find yourself pretty much placed in a job even if you'd hate it. And if you quit said job you must have a good reason or a new job lined up.

Also you made it sound like the government would be hard pressed to CREATE jobs for people, this is not entirely accurate as they don't OUTSOURCE ANYTHING to other nations which means millions of jobs that we today would outsource to other countries because it's cheaper they would keep at home out of a matter of LAW. Add that to the fact that when they finally do reach space they hit an industrial boom like we couldn't imagine today and you have tens of millions of jobs opening up that would ALL go to Icarans.

To answer the first part of your question, it would benecessary to control populations because:

1) Icaraverse space travel is still expensive and time consuming with the smallest interstellar ships being the size of a Yamato class Battleship and the largest being multi-kilometer constructs.
2) The Government controls ALL immigration and you have to sign up with the Colonial Division before you are even considered for colonization. (this is to control the potential spread of disease among other things).
3) Colonization is a rough industry a lot like those of early pioneers, with many colonies taking YEARS before they are made fully habitable.
4) It ensures the population doesn't outgrow economy so that you dont have millions of people born into a world with no jobs or industry even possible for them for decades to come.

So adding these together a world with a population of say 7 billion people (the poulace of the Empire when SUSTAIN was discovered) ALL OF WHOM have at least 300 years of life expectancy and most of whom are going to be having children and with space travel being expensive and time consuming population control IS necessary. And the sterilization IS the ultimate form of Birth control (especially since it is reverseable by time it is taken into practice with loyal citizens).

IRL yes, in-universe no. In universe this was born because of an event in human history (about 22nd century AD) known to Icarans (and many others) as "The Second Fall of man" or "The great damnation" or "The darkest age" where population explosions stripped the Sol system of vital resources and religious wars and the attempt to exterminate religions to "prevent the religious wars" caused the home star system to basically burn its self out. (The Icarans among others are the few "pure" humans that remained by this time and when they discovered a lightspeed drive in the early 23rd century they pretty much hauled arse out of SOL before the last great wars erupted) so its sort of burned into their psyche. The irony is the lightspeed drive didnt get a chance to work for the Icarans.

Well yeah in the eyes of the law they are now legal adults, but they are still seen as having a lot of growing up to do (just like we look at 18-25 year olds today)

But yeah as far as what you say goes I was thinking of it kind of like that, given the lifespans getting your first job is a first stage of adulthood, then as you grow up and find better jobs or join the armed forces your seen as maturing.
When you marry that is seen as another step in the maturing process, then children and grand children.

So LEGALLY at 13 your an adult, but you have a LOT of growing up to do and you are taught all through school to listen to and learn from your elders.