Sova

(adj: Sovan)

History

• Really recommend rereading the Gunstar version, but the short version is it's the deep mining and 'projections of the dead' place in both.
• The original Sova brought many mortal tribes together, and did again when he came back as an Alchemical (though she killed two of those who didn't because fuck 'em).

Culture

• Alchemicals: “Sova is currently a nation of hard-line patriots and steel-eyed nationalists. While the other seven nations are only beginning to suffer under the hard times that have arrived, Sova has already borne the first blow. The patropolis of Ixut is gone, and Sova’s Champions have resolved that its tragedy shall not be repeated.
• They prepare themselves, then—for war, for travel and to do whatever it takes to preserve their nation. Several long-lingering Champions have already gone in to finally refit themselves as Colossi, while others research extreme and borderline heretical solutions to the current crisis. Sova will act soon, and none of its neighbors can be quite sure what it will do.”
• “As the saying goes, a Sovan is like a steam vent; you don’t want to be near the exhaust of either. Touch on the wrong subject, insult a Sovan’s family or belittle their accomplishments, and bloody retribution follows.”
• “Small metal icons of famous family members, ascended to near-deific status in regard, are carried on the wrists of every Sovan. The only remnant of their tribal past, family—nuclear and extended—is considered all-important. The crèche system seen elsewhere in Autochthonia never truly took hold in this nation of tribes. Relatively few Populat and Tripartite claim no familial membership; even those that disdain the complex webs of feud and vendetta still trace their descent. As a result, the Caucus—arbiter of family feuds within Sovan society—holds enormous influence.
• Sovan names place surname before given, reflecting their primary descent from the eighty-six tribes conquered by the Sova. It is considered impolite to address a Sovan by their surname or given name alone, and Sovans are nothing if not impeccably polite, even as they are prone to impolitic fits.”
• “Fathers and mothers hold dominion over their children, and limited authority over cousins and siblings; usually, the eldest surviving member of the families holds a great deal of power.”
• Age is respected, arranged marriage is mandatory. Though they are polite, feuds are not uncommon and often violent, involving whole clans.
• “Sovans have turned to formalized martial duels and teams of combatants in sports in order to address their societal need for vengeance. Many branches of martial arts have found root in the exurbs, with idle youth spending much of their day practicing katas; teams of families compete in elaborate ballgames, slamming into one another with barely-restrained hostility. When Sovans challenge one another to a formal duel, they’re strongly encouraged to resolve their differences on the field of sport.”
• Malki are a unique selling point, and the 'Those Left Behind' is an semi-interesting sidebar, but I imagine feuds are a smaller thing in Gunstar.
• “The National Tripartite Assembly of Sova is subject, at least in part, to the parliament of families known as the Caucus. Election into the Caucus is considered a family matter—each abiding by their own customs of nomination—but the fifty-nine families each have a representative (called a genarch) in the government who is traditionally excused from other caste duties. As the Olgotary and the Theomachracy are nominally above partisan familial politics, the Caucus is a forum in which grievances beyond sport and vendetta may be voiced. It is here that the systemic power imbalances in Sovan society are addressed.”
  • There's more info on the Caucus in the government section of Sova (p. 63), it's a decent read, vital if we use it in Gunstar.
• Dudes practice cannibalism because they reason the thoughts and emotions are left behind in the flesh, wacky.
  • “Thaumaturgically-bred for the purpose, the fecund honeyrats roam the hot under-places of Sova, consuming petroleum byproducts and various exotic chemicals missed by recycling technologies. Inside the honeyrat’s heat-resistant flesh, the chemicals fuse into a sticky-sweet acidic substance, not unlike the long-gone samples of honey Sovans carried from Creation. The rat’s abdomen swells with this honey-like substance, rendering the rodent a vivid orange-gold and leaving it largely immobile inside vast warrens of wire and tubing, nestled between the cities of Sova. There, they are easy prey for Harvesters, who gingerly comb the warrens with buckets and wicked-looking syringes, manually extracting the substance from the rat’s glands before setting the relieved animal free again. The honey-substitute is a rare and treasured delicacy in the Sovan diet and was an incredibly valuable export in the days before Ixut, but a slim majority of it goes to the tombs of the ancestors.”
• They replace the blood with honey, they're not MONSTERS, then they eat 'em on the centennial anniversary of death called Mitlan-Cinerea.
• “Centuries of hot-bunking and heat have obliterated traditional notions of modesty in Sova; fashion in the steamy clime trends towards machined cloth kilts and extensive piercings, with loose items held in packs and bags. With so much exposed skin, tattooing—of both standard and bioluminescent ink—is common, pictoral glyphs richly describing an individual’s accomplishments, immediate and extended family, and even caste and political affiliations. Many families, expect a Sovan man or woman to receive appropriate markers signifying important events in their lives, such as the birth of a child or the death of a significant other.
• Sovan food tends towards extreme spiciness; in the hot nation, citizens value the sweating reaction such spices produce, much to the chagrin of visitors. The engineered spice goes beyond all but the harshest of peppers from Creation. Spiced and fried cockroach shells are baked with nutrient slurry to form traditional Sovan dishes. Indeed, cockroaches comprise a much higher percentage of the diet here than in the rest of the Octet, rats being unwilling to tolerate the extreme heat in much of the nation.
• Recreational hallucinogens have been prized for millennia, even before the journey to Autochthonia—along with the thousands of relics from the time before the Sova, stores of dried mushrooms were carried into the Maker’s maw. Absent the malki and mellification, hallucination is the preferred method of communing with one’s ancestors, and the preferred method of ripping away the veil of consciousness to see what seethes beneath. These have long since given way to narcotic enemas, alchemically derived from careful study of the irreplaceable mushroom samples and dispensed in public houses run by Surgeons.”
• Towns in Autochthonia (p. 67) is a pretty good sidebar, I just don't know really where to put.
• Sova contains the most replicated relics of Creation of any nation.
• Gunstar: “While the siphon-tubes are Sova’s most obvious form of industry, most of its populace is employed in the nation’s other greater enterprise—the Malki Archives. Soulsteel chambers deep beneath the patropolis of Imtu house the malki, gestalt material intelligences synthesized from the personalities and knowledge of the Realm’s dead. Specially-trained Luminors oversee the the transfer of psyche-imprints from soulgems into the material intelligences, while Populat curators assist visitors in navigating the vast stores of data held in the collective minds of the malki. Within the halls of the Archives, Celestial savants debate the finer points of metaphysics with ancient scholars and philosophers, while young Dragon-Blooded are schooled in Primordial battle strategy by ancestors who fought the titans firsthand. The topmost layer of the Archives houses the Sagacious Council of Fallen Stars, a revered council of malki composed from the memories of fallen Celestial Exalted. Each of these malki contains the personas of every inheritor of a single Celestial Exaltation. It is considered traditional for the newly-Exalted to meet with the malki of their past incarnations, standing as equals before the flickering screens.”

Physical Descriptions

• “Once, massive mining skiffs deployed into twisted shafts of brass and iron, lancing beam siphons down into valleys glowing cherry-red in the darkness. Essence shields shimmered electric blue against the heat of a molten river of orichalcum, separating miners from a roasting death. Prayer consoles received the murmured devotions of the criminal and the desperate aboard the platforms, keeping the rigs aloft by sheer adoration.
• The cities between the great smelters were calmer, but no less deadly. The breathing room afforded by a heretical municipal technology allowed the wholesale clearing of cramped community living spaces in favor of food courts livened by fountains of liquid Essence, jade statues dedicated to Sova’s progressive glory, and opulent plazas.”
• “Sova is the third most populous nation in Autochthonia, and geographically the smallest; unlike other nations, it possesses a warm atmosphere, some of which is inhospitable to human life. The nation rests in a dense expanse of metal, pierced by dozens of titanic hollow vertical shafts, each of which ranges from a half-mile to a mile wide and tens of miles deep. Sova’s historical riches stem from vast pools of the Magical Materials that lie molten in the depths of the shafts.
• Elegant columns spiral alongside the shafts, granting them a winding, spiked look. Twisting paths lead to smaller, cooler tunnels between the shafts, where the Sovans build cities and exurbs. The tunnels themselves are heat-stressed metal, porous with the appearance of rotted and mined-out rock, usually cramped with low ceilings. The pervasive calidity is further intensified by cramped conditions; the nation’s habitable area is but a tiny sliver compared to Claslat or Yugash. The sultry troposphere and teeming life of the nation leave Sova uncomfortably hot.
• Sovan cities are close affairs, packed tight to accommodate Sova’s famous fecundity. Far less populous are the siphon-towns that hang above the fiery abysses of the shafts, serving as docking ports for mining skiffs. But the nation’s chief feature—and, perhaps, its doom—is a unique experiment in Autochthonian municipal technology. Exurbs are sprawling urban areas without an Alchemical municipal core; what would be the dark places between cities in other nations are instead filled with homes and factories. Visitors walk the cities and exurbs drenched in sweat, surrounded by open-air plazas and ceiling-scraping ziggurats honeycombed with apartments and dorms, with native Sovans nearly naked in comparison.”
• “In the earliest days of Sova, heroes traversed the tunnels between shafts, building crude siphon pipes and vacuum devices to garner Magical Materials from the molten basins of the cylinders. Even with the advent of the municipal era, the practice of mining was no less dangerous. Siphon-towns exist on the very edges of the cylinders, their field-insulated catwalks stretching out over horizons of molten metal and bottomless pits of flame, connecting enormous flanged spires lined with webs of the Magical Materials, their deep points glowing white-hot.”
• Gunstar: “Sova’s metropoli lie above an ocean of molten metal that flows through the veins of the Maker, a sea of liquid gold and boiling jade that rise up through the titanic shafts that pierce the nation’s landscape. Under Exalted reign, this industrial pyroclasm has become a source of untold wealth and resources. Huge tubes of red jade and adamant extend from Sovan cities down into the shafts, pumping the molten magical materials into the distillation factories of Municipal Charms. Citizens work in the siphon-factories as technicians and engineers, performing routine maintenance on Municipal Charms and refining the harvested magical materials through complex thaumaturgical processes. The actual physical labor of extracting the minerals has been replaced by automated machinery, obsoleting the dangerous mining-skiffs once used to gather precious minerals. However, this is not without is own perils. When lava surges or solid mineral deposits obstruct the siphon-tubes, crews of Populat laborers must descend through access tunnels to clear the blockage, braving the heat and poisoned air to do so. Sometimes, they must even fend off attacks from metal elements unwittingly caught in the siphons, or from invading gremlins.”

Cities

Ixut: (Patropolis)

• “In life, Ixut lived in one of the largest tunnel-chambers between the Sovan shafts. The city was three gargantuan plates elevated one above the other, encircling a thick central spire with elevator and tube trams linking the structure into the exurb surrounding it. Networks of maintenance platforms were suspended below the plates. Streets and corridors stretched over the surface of the rings, connecting the above-air buildings with the honeycomb of structures within.
• Based at a critical juncture of resources and transport, Ixut was remade into the metaphorical heart of the conurbation projects, and ultimately boasted a conurbation population exceeding many cities of other nations.”
• Filled with wailing after death, it's dotted with Blight and gremlins but still a pilgrimage site for Sovans to understand their history and their pride.
• “Surrounding Ixut like a great floor-to-ceiling ring with a radius of twenty miles is Greater Ixut, once most splendid of the exurbs. Unlike most exurbs—which are, literally, glorified towns—Greater Ixut has grown up around the progenitor municipality, and is at once representative and atypical of conurbation. The streets of the exurb have no ceilings but the high one of the chamber, superheated air waving above. Before Ixut, their streets shone with light that rendered the illuminated indefatigable, and their air was pure and clean, thanks to Municipal Charms scattered throughout the exurb.”

Imtu: (Metropolis, originally Inspiring Monument of Virtue, Jade caste?)

• “Built into the hardened slag of a cold, dead shaft, Imtu is not only the national capital, but the heart of Sovan culture—and the seat of every dynasty of prominence. Enormous cylinders of jade, etched with stories-high pictographic murals depicting Sova’s founding, stretch between the walls of the shaft, criss-crossing it from top to bottom. The tall, thin buildings of Imtu stretch vertically from and between these horizontal columns, threading between ore formations repurposed into glittering arcologies. Trams and air traffic suffuse the shaft with a soft glow, cloaking the city in dim light during every shift. The highest buildings pierce the top of the cylinder, boring straight out of the nation and serving as a series of ports and security checkpoints for immigrants. It is difficult for visitors to grasp the entire city laid out below them, as they drop from the checkpoints in adamant-bottomed levitating trams; more than once, an invasion of the city has been halted when Imtu simply removed the checkpoints with explosives, letting invaders plummet miles to their deaths.”

People of Note

Jacoren Dyson: Current Sova, former autocrat.

• “A white-haired fireplug of a man fancies himself more demagogue than leader. He deeply enjoys stirring the nest of cockroaches Sova has become.”

Stern Whip of Industry: 'The People's Hero,' Jade caste

• Even-tempered, virtuous, and diligent, Whip was famous as a cultural icon, so focused on a life of work and the satisfaction of a job well done that he is known for taking over shifts in overworked factories.
• “His response has been to attempt to redouble his labors on behalf of the state. When mortals have asked his advice, he has counseled clear-headedness, decisive action, unity and a firm focus on resolving the problems of today to reach the shining glories of tomorrow—all traditional Sovan values.”
• However, Sova sits on a fulcrum, and Whip must prove his patriotism while keeping his moderation, a task few Sovans have managed post-war.
  • Scroll: Stats on p. 155.