12:03 pm - Revisiting older projects: The Jihad Universe 4
Revisiting older projects: The Jihad Universe 4
Taking a short break from Fenspace, so if this concept bores you go check out Fenspace. It's got lots of neat stuff in it, I promise.
Anyway, this was something I dreamed up around 2005ish as a variant continuation of the Jihad Universe. At the time I was hip deep in the (not abandoned, only dormant) Jihad Universe 3 project, the future of which is outlined roughly in my AEGIS of Stars worldbuilding setting.
JU3 is nice. It's a strong work, even unfinished as it is, and I like it. But I never really imagined it to be the end-all of the Jihad Universe (even though as the group drifts back into somnolescene it may very well happen). Back when enthusiasm was high for the JU in general, my original plan was to have JU3, then a series of alternates where the situation diverged into different settings, in order to increase the appeal of the concept.
(This doesn't include JUR, incidentally. JUR/Pridwen is a reboot of the Jihad concept, taking it back to first principles and building up. The JU# settings I had planned would start from the Jihad Universe timeline as written down in the worldbook and diverge from that point.)
That said, on a whim the other day I went back and took a look at some of my notes for the Jihad Universe 4. This was a High Space Opera setting based on the Jihad Universe. The original notes were a bit sparse, to say the least, and some of the ideas I've cooled on since the time I first put these down. Still, there's potential here, and so I'm going back and seeing what can be salvaged.
Beginnings
JU1 is pure kitchen-sink camp; JU2 is modern occult adventure; JU3 is modern apocalyptic; JU4 is far future science fantasy. And when I say "science fantasy" I'm aiming for a point somewhere between the Culture and Fading Suns. Advanced technology, humanity spread out all over the damn galaxy... you know the drill.
So the question becomes, how do we get from our start point (JU2, safely anchored in the now-distant year of 1999) to our end point of JU4 in the year umptywhatever?
The original JU4 notes suggested using a scenario I found in a Pyramid article titled "'...and I Feel Fine:' A Multi-genre campaign world for GURPS" that had this rather remarkable opening paragraph:
Most Space Operas have humanity embracing all kinds of complex new technologies but never any of the logical social changes that would go with them. Princesses, warlords, decadent aristocrats, loyal peasants, corporate raiders with shocktroops on the payroll, all rub shoulders with heroes or heroines who are either a) 1950s beat drifters in spacesuits; b) Wise-cracking dames right off the old MGM lot; or c) a group of Prince Valiants and Lady Pendragons in spacesuits; little of which makes sense in a starfaring society developed out of 20th century Earth. Still, many of these things are fun. I’ve got a way to realistically have your fun, high-tech, princesses (and princes for the ladies) whose hand in marriage really gets you the kingdom, superspies, knights in armor, corporate baddies, and lost kingdoms, Oh My. The only thing you need to do is destroy the Earth. A small thing that.
You can see the appeal. By blowing up the Earth and scattering the species all over the damn place, we get a premade interstellar setting that has fun stuff like legends of the lost homeworld or backwards variant societies thrown about.
Something in a similar vein that came along after I wrote & abandoned the original JU4 notes is the Eschaton universe created by Charles Stross in Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. The Eschaton stories are harder sf than "I Feel Fine," particularly in the nature of FTL travel, communications and time travel, and the dispersion mechanism is very different (Earth isn't destroyed, for one thing), but the ideas are similar in nature. There's also Firefly, which I won't use as a source because Joss Whedon makes me itch and Firefly fanboys make me want to hurt people.
Broken down to basic points, the idea is something like this:
And there you've got your setting, or at least the basics of it.
So where does the Jihad Universe fit into this? As a secret organization, the Jihad can continue to fight the good fight sub rosa pretty much anywhere in theory. The highly centralized organization of the Jihad in JU2 unfortunately makes it a lot more brittle construct in the initial catastrophe phase of the backstory. If TRES Corps is broken up inadvertently so that one company is on Planet X and another company is on Planet Z halfway across the galaxy and the headquarters battalion is on Planet W somewhere else, without reliable communications (which wouldn't be available in the early stages at least) the chain of command is broken. Each TRES group would have to act completely independently from each other.
The same (sort of) goes for the Enemy. On the one side, while the Lyrans have their own interstellar capability they now have to find and infiltrate hundreds (possibly thousands) of planets instead of just the one. On the other side, there's only one Barney, and while the spongification infection can be spread through artifacts (DVDs, toys, etc.) it can't be reinforced properly without laughing boy's presence.
This poses an interesting set of problems for both good guys and bad guys. How do we deal with these problems? We'll work through that as we go along.
(tbc)
Have the Enemy be somehow responsible for whatever the catastrophe is and let the Jihad be the primary agents (we likely have the most spaceships) of the evacuation and subsequent scattering. Because we have technology, know-how at least on a theoretical level for space colonization, and enough plasma weapons to impose our will we become the governing authority of various settlements. Let TRES Corps be broken up along with the rest of the Jihad and, in the readjustment period, each fragment becomes its own principality or republic or whatever. Zeta Squad or one of the other r&d groups with some of the few original Jihaddi who'd live that long builds up a little faster and in trying to figure out what happened with everybody else, maybe finds hints of continuing Enemy action. They have a lot harder time trying to track humans down than before, being inhabitants of Earth was central to the threat we posed but they're still afraid of us and they'll wipe us out wherever we're found. So reunification has to happen a little faster than it otherwise might've, some planets have either forgotten the Jihad completely or somebody's just gotten used to being king and likes it that way and even the ones who want to reunify in some way are wary of all the others.
And, of course, at some point in the course of exploring somebody comes across the ruins of a dead colony built around a statue of Ayn Rand, because that's just the way we do things around here. ;)
The Jihad-as-evacuation-leaders makes sense, considering they're our protagonists and we ought to at least give them a leading role. Jihad-as-rulers I'm not entirely sold on. It *could* work, depending and maybe in isolated cases, but Planet of the Dobermans or whatever should be more the exception than the rule. The Jihad's a secret organization, after all, and some habits are hard to break.
Speaking of method of evacuation, the VR magic wormhole tech seems like the obvious choice of widget to make it happen. Beats spaceships all to hell, and if it's lost or restricted after the catastrophe that makes the intervening cultural change that much more apparent.