Who the Dominion IsNariac is either the oldest or second oldest of the meta-empires, and the longest to maintain a consistent government style; for much of Nariac's history, it was a collection of syndicalist unions united under a single federal government referred to as the Body Soviet or simply the Soviet. After the Meikko invasion and Nariac's civil war, it transitioned to what it is today: a constitutional dictatorship, with one of the best known dictators in the whole Verge and Bleed, Ahmed Saminov, at the head of the government, which consists of a federation of dictators of varying degrees of competency, all of whom distrust each other too much to try to unite and take on Saminov directly. Saminov also maintains a massive cult of personality powered by a mixture of conspiracy theories, disinformation, and the ability to constant change his face, using the Party as a scapegoat. As a result, Saminov is usually at odds with the Party, with the leadership, and with the government, which would be a problem were he not the Party, leadership, and government.
Dominon IdealsNariac has a federalist form of government, with each political entity within Nariac - called vilayets or rayons, depending on their legal status - having slightly different organizational styles. Each vilayet and rayon is lead by an elected dictator who serves under Saminov; the only reason this structure is meta-stable is because the various dictators fear one another too much to unite and take on Saminov, and no one single dictator is capable of taking on Saminov by themselves. There are exceptions and information is notoriously difficult to get out of Nariac, who seem to operate off the principle that reality is multiple choice and Nariac can simply choose what answer best fits it at the time, but this seems to be the general rule. However, Nariac does have some very clear values that it promotes, even if those values are values that would otherwise be alien to Jorge Konstantinovich and Qasim Soliyev, the two men (both long dead or missing) that founded Nariac on syndicalist principles.
|
|
An AR-assisted gaslighting campaignWhile Saminov controls all of Nariac with an iron fist, he appears to have little interest in ruling over much of the Republic and outsources the responsibility of ruling over the various vilayets to various Party officials. Make no mistake - questioning Saminov is a fast way to vanish, even for the most high ranking official. and every high ranking official lives in absolute fear that they might be talking to a Saminov fork instead of a friend or relative - but Saminov lavishes all of his attention on the people in the Zov Tigra, and according to some inside reports, the results are nightmarish. According to these reports, augmented reality inserts and DNIs are mandated for the population of the Zov Tigra. This is because there is no natural lighting in the Zov Tigra; Saminov has turned off all the lights so the only way to see is through augmented reality. All of the AR inserts connect directly to a computer network that routes through a server controlled completely by the State Affairs Commission, done for "security purposes," but the end result is that Saminov has total control over the sensory input of every citizen in living aboard the Zov Tigra. He knows exactly where everyone is, what they're doing, what they're sensing, and possibly even what they're thinking. Since Saminov controls their sensory input, Saminov can control what they experience. This is further complicated by the fact Nariac uses AR to help digitals interact with biologicals; to biologicals, these digitals appear as if they are completely real. This is done in most cities, but aboard the Zov Tigra, this is taken to horrifying extremes: biologicals are just expected to accept the fact that a building can have an infinite number of rooms, for instance, because it can in a digital reality. "Figments" are used to; these are programmed illusions that the population experience that can be anything from a single person to an entire city block that will exist one day and be gone the next; and what's worse, the citizens know that Saminov use them. It makes it less suspicious when people simply vanish because they have been figments. Or they were real people who angered Saminov. Nobody can know for certain, so nobody bothers looking. There are also rumors that Saminov resets the servers that the digitals run on. This means that from time-to-time, AGIs and digitals will repeat things, like actions, or they'll stutter, because Saminov reset the server. Or maybe because they're figments. Or maybe they've been replaced with Saminov's agents, who are very real but use AR to look like something very different. Saminov uses anti-Nariac memes to lure people into traps that he set up, and those people are almost never seen again, and neither are their families. Saminov can use these illusion to create entire fake families for some people. Their entire lives may be built on a lie and they'll never know until on day, after they've been vanished and they wake up, they're told that everything - their friends, their family, their kids, their spouse - all of it was fake. Nothing about what the reports say contradict what what AR and DNIs are capable of doing, so it's entirely possible - indeed, very likely - that Saminov is doing at least some of the above, if not all of it, making the Zov Tigra at least a horrifying place. |
Nariac history
Little can be said for certain regarding Nariac's history; much of it is erased or edited to fit Saminov's narrative, and Saminov's narrative is so power that it warps reality in many ways. However, there are a few things that are know for certain, and there's a great deal of educated assumptions that can be made about Nariac's history that are likely anchored in history.
Nariac was part of the Grand EurAsian-Cygnus Fleet; after the EAC Fleet lost its flagship at 61 Cygni, the crews of the fleet - the largest fleet of the six that were sent out initially - fell into disagreement. This disagreement eventually fragmented the fleet; the EurAsian-Pavonis Fleet left for Lacaille 876 and eventually HR 7703 and Tendal, while the EurAsian-Aquila Fleet left for Epsilon Indi. Disagreements within the EAA Fleet reached a head after the fleet left Fomalhaut and made for a world named Murat. Once they arrived in the Regency System, the EAA fleet split in two, with the EurAsian-Cepheus Fleet heading for Arrai; they would eventually become Nariac.
The EACph-Fleet kept the flagship, McKendree cylinder, and largest spaceship and habitat ever constructed in their ranks, the Zov Tigra. The Captain of the Tigra, Jorge Konstantinovich, was a dedicated transhumanist and anarcho-syndicalist; when they arrived in Arrai he thought about staying but his right-hand man, Qaseem Soliyev, convinced him to travel to a star named Naria (HD 219623), where there was likely an inhabitable planet. They arrived to discover a largely uninhabitable world they would call Paannejää. The Zov Tigra was brought into a stable cycler orbit around Naria, and Soliyev, along with Konstantinovich, set about creating the Nariac Syndicalist Party and establishing syndicalist unions across numerous planets. This was largely successful, although the wormhole layer would eventually block Nariac in after establishing an interstellar cul-de-sac, which is likely why Nariac has remained so stable. A contentious vote was held on whether to terraform Paannejää; by this time, there was a considerable number of digital citizens and Nariac had already taken on the pro-cybernetics cast that it would hold into the present. The vote to terraform narrowly won, and the project began. Konstantinovich would remain in power over Nariac for much of this time, acting as the GenSec of the Syndicalist Party. However, it can be inferred that there were problems terraforming Paannejää, and at some point, Qaseem Soliyev put himself on the opposite end of the party over the issue. That Nariac received trillions of infogees during the Ascension Crisis did not help. During the Verge War, the Meikko were right on Nariac's doorstep; Konstantinovich made a deal for military aid at Arrai but Bluefall failed to come through, and Konstantinovich was killed. Rather than elect Qaseem to fill in, the Party nominated and elected a party loyalist named Ahmed Saminov instead, and while Saminov would go on to win, rename the Syndicalist Party to the National Republican Party, and reform Nariac into what it is today - a viper's den far removed from its original purpose, under the leadership of a single dictator.
Nariac was part of the Grand EurAsian-Cygnus Fleet; after the EAC Fleet lost its flagship at 61 Cygni, the crews of the fleet - the largest fleet of the six that were sent out initially - fell into disagreement. This disagreement eventually fragmented the fleet; the EurAsian-Pavonis Fleet left for Lacaille 876 and eventually HR 7703 and Tendal, while the EurAsian-Aquila Fleet left for Epsilon Indi. Disagreements within the EAA Fleet reached a head after the fleet left Fomalhaut and made for a world named Murat. Once they arrived in the Regency System, the EAA fleet split in two, with the EurAsian-Cepheus Fleet heading for Arrai; they would eventually become Nariac.
The EACph-Fleet kept the flagship, McKendree cylinder, and largest spaceship and habitat ever constructed in their ranks, the Zov Tigra. The Captain of the Tigra, Jorge Konstantinovich, was a dedicated transhumanist and anarcho-syndicalist; when they arrived in Arrai he thought about staying but his right-hand man, Qaseem Soliyev, convinced him to travel to a star named Naria (HD 219623), where there was likely an inhabitable planet. They arrived to discover a largely uninhabitable world they would call Paannejää. The Zov Tigra was brought into a stable cycler orbit around Naria, and Soliyev, along with Konstantinovich, set about creating the Nariac Syndicalist Party and establishing syndicalist unions across numerous planets. This was largely successful, although the wormhole layer would eventually block Nariac in after establishing an interstellar cul-de-sac, which is likely why Nariac has remained so stable. A contentious vote was held on whether to terraform Paannejää; by this time, there was a considerable number of digital citizens and Nariac had already taken on the pro-cybernetics cast that it would hold into the present. The vote to terraform narrowly won, and the project began. Konstantinovich would remain in power over Nariac for much of this time, acting as the GenSec of the Syndicalist Party. However, it can be inferred that there were problems terraforming Paannejää, and at some point, Qaseem Soliyev put himself on the opposite end of the party over the issue. That Nariac received trillions of infogees during the Ascension Crisis did not help. During the Verge War, the Meikko were right on Nariac's doorstep; Konstantinovich made a deal for military aid at Arrai but Bluefall failed to come through, and Konstantinovich was killed. Rather than elect Qaseem to fill in, the Party nominated and elected a party loyalist named Ahmed Saminov instead, and while Saminov would go on to win, rename the Syndicalist Party to the National Republican Party, and reform Nariac into what it is today - a viper's den far removed from its original purpose, under the leadership of a single dictator.
Nariac Culture
Classifying Nariac into cultural sphere is often a waste of time; few meta-empires manage the feat of being as culturally uniform while remaining as culturally diverse as Nariac does. A better way to think about Nariac is to think about Nariac as a meta-culture in addition to it being a meta-empire; the upper strata of Nariac culture, shared across the entire dominion, sits atop the subtle differences in local cultures, which as is often the case usually blend together to form a cohesive whole the further out one goes. This is in part because Nariac has not expanded to include other territories and is functionally trapped in a wormhole cul-de-sac and has been since Konstantinovich developed the Republic. This has allowed the various elements of Nariac to remain in close communication, making the sort of federal model that Nariac possesses possible.
This, however, has not stopped some from trying. When sociologists look at Nariac culture, they usually see and interior culture and an exterior culture, with the exterior culture being more influenced by external cultures. The dominant interior culture, meanwhile, remains true to Nariac culture as a whole. Accordingly planets like Turan and Farghan are classified as being the most divergent from Nariac culture since they have the most contact with external entities (an irony, given both of them are the oldest inhabited bodies in the Republic). Not everyone agrees, however. Sociology of NariacEconomically, Nariac emphasizes post-scarcity dirigisme and a belief that urbanization is a hallmark of civilization. This serves is a sharp shift away from the original post-scarcity communitarianism that Nariac originally practiced before the civil war and the Meikko invasion, but those wars changed things, and not for the best, and as a result, Nariac was forced to consolidate. This consolidation resulted in a post-scarcity dirigisme that exists to this day.
Nariac, as noted above, is ontologically conservative, but this is as a result of their blending of the different realities. While this makes Nariac ontologically conservative by default, it also sort of eliminates much of the argument between ontological conservatism and ontological pluralism all the same, with Nariac seamlessly fusing the digital and the biological to produce a combined reality that is both at the same time, while never really being wholly either real nor digital. |
Sobornost and PoshlostKey to understanding the national character of Nariac lies with understanding the concept of "sobornost" and it's related concept, "poshlost." These two Russian words characterize much of how Nariac views itself and the outside world. However, these two words are notoriously difficult to translate accurately, and linguistic drift and new applications haven't helped. At its heart, sobornost is the idea that people should work together and maintain unity at the expense of individualism on the basis that opposing groups focus on what is common between them. As a theological term, it describes a sort of religious community or community of shared religious values that embrace one another. Through sobornost, differences in communities can be transcended and "progress" only happens when groups are pitted together, weakening them both. In Nariac, the term also acknowledges the history of these communities, unhappy or not, and given it's Nariac, that history is rarely happy. This is why Nariac's national motto is Leo Tolstoy's quite "Happy people have no history." "Poshlost" is an even harder term to translate, but it usually captures something to the effect of "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity" or "self-satisfied inferiority." As a term, it's often applied to the current Party, usually to describe the Party as incompetent or obscene and in bad taste, is trashy, is an imitation of what the Party was under Konstantinovich, or is a cheap knock off the original ideology of sobornost. However, poshlost is often used to describe the meta-empires outside of Nariac, painting them as self-serving and venal. This is an image further helped by the national myth that Nariac fought the Meikko alone and were abandoned to their fate. There is a cultural war against poshlost in Nariac, rooting out the vulgar and the imitation, and much of Nariac culture rails against the concept. Where sobornost implies community and unity, Poshlost can imply a sort of individualist usurpation of that concept; abusing the community for the good of one's self. Progress, then, becomes a type a poshlost according to some interpretations and progressives, liberals, and socialists all tend to embody poshlost as a core of their ideology, since they promote progress. |
Dominon CUlture and Memes
Nariac is often seen as a single, hegemonic cultural entity that is unified by a single, strong central state. And while this is precisely how Nariac - or, rather, Saminov - wants to be seen, this is far from the truth, and even Nariac has varying cultural movements and shades.
Cyrrealism
Type: Cultural Movement
Cyrrealism is a type of mysticism that grew out of the apophatic understandings of God and Christ, and have since spread throughout Nariac. These are often seen as a type of Gnosticism, and while that's correct, that doesn't capture the whole story. They believe that there are multiple realities and each reality has a different element of Christ and God to it and by exploring and meditating on these realities they can achieve a greater understanding of the silence and absence that is God. Furthermore, they believe that digital realities don't arise as a result of computers; they believe these realities exist independent of computers, and that computers are the only way for individuals who aren't God to access them. As a cultural movement, it is strongest on Moravec, where an entire alien computer network exists that is poorly explored. Cyrrealists tend to overlap with Hesychasists in some places, seeing the biological world as the most inferior of the worlds. Naturally, this conflicts with Nariac's position as ontologically conservative, but so far, little has been done and the cultural movement of all realities being part of understanding God and Christ is rapidly growing.
Dolgism
Type: Academic/Historiographic Movement/Political Movement
Dolgism is a movement that arose as push back against the New Dialectic in Nariac historiographic circles; the primary focus of Dolgism is to analyze not the role that sociological trauma, war, and the like play in creating nations, but the idea that nations are machines that produce and manage debt on a large scale people people and their leaders, and tend to view history through the lens of debt, obligation, and the ability of nations to honor that debt or obligation. Dolgism applies a common precept of post-scarcity dirigism to historiography - that the nation must manage the debt of itself and its population responsibly and that national debt in particular is neutral, neither bad nor good. While still primarily a historiographic movement, it is spreading out into the political sphere, influencing some elements of the Party to look at Nariac's strengths and weakness through the lens of debt and historical debt management, which has added a new angle to Nariac's "Socialism in One State" policy.
Hesychasism
Type: Religious Movement
Hesychasism is an outgrowth of the Hesychasm mystical tradition of contemplation in the Orthodox Church. The first Hesychasists emerged during the Nariac Civil War or right before, and they were the dominant polity on Turan that turned Turan into a massive planet-scale fabrication facility. According to the Hesychasist belief, the flesh of the body gets in the way of proper communion with God, and while one finds God only in the stillness of non-thought and non-existence, the presence of a biological body inhibits the worshiper from getting close to God. Since Jesus transcended the physical body to the divine, Hesychasists seek to do the same, rejecting biology in favor of machinery. They are a common religious clade of cyborgs in Nariac, often dressing in religious garb and robes while brandishing obvious and inhuman cybernetics, a way to reject the flawed nature of humanity in favor of the inward stability of machinery. The first Hesychasists were declared heretics by the Orthodox Church, but with the replacement of the Partiarch of Iraj, they have been more widely accepted, if not viewed as slightly unhinged.
Islandism and Fusionalism
Type: Architectural Style/Artistic Movement
Islandism is a type of architectural style that combines aspects of reality and digital programming to produce an "island" - that is, something that "is land between worlds." Digital programming is necessary here, and owing to augmented reality inserts, the outlandish and unrealistic styles of Islandism merge seamlessly with the physical and very real styles of the "real world," resulting in a "fusion" of two worlds. This means that to fully make sense of Nariac buildings, one must have augmented reality, and be able to navigate with augmented reality; otherwise, they will have no way to fully understand. It also means that physicals sometimes walk into walls, which is another reason why it's referred to as "is land." When practiced as an artistic movement that produces art blending the two realities, it's called fusionalism.
New Dialectic/Nariac Dialectic
Type: Academic/Historiographic Movement
Throughout much of the Verge and Bleed this is referred to as a the New Dialect, but it's more properly called the Nariac Dialect, and it's one of the most successful exports that Nariac has ever lent to humanity. Pioneered by Nariac Historiographers Yermolovo Kusma Antonovich and Khajasta Anoushirvan but fleshed out by a host of philosophers, the New Dialectic is a slight modification of the Hegelian dialectic but that rejects Marxist materialist dialectic on the ground that much of humanity no longer experiences a materialist existence, being wholly digital. This places the emphasis back on subjective experiences and how those subjective experiences affect reality, and how conflicts between contrasting subjectivity results in a synthesis that is removed from either subjective experience. The best synthesis is one brought about by experiencing the subjectivity of both parties so they can merge their experiences, usually through an experience playback method but also through VR, AR, and other related technologies. A side effect of the rejection of dialectic materialism is that history is no longer seen as being related to material circumstances and so the methods of defining humanity based on class no longer apply, and according to the Nariac Dialectic, never applied to begin with: class was as not a material condition, and to justify this, they point towards the later United States especially and note that class and race were inexorably linked, and race was not a material condition but a pseudo-biological classification; to be "White" meant being middle class, while being "Black" meant being poor and impoverished, and even the lowliest White individual still had some preferential treatment that wasn't awarded to others. Meanwhile, even the poorest individual in the United States had a lifestyle that was superior to the elite of the elite in previous eras of history, and that's still largely true. Thus, any factor played by material conditions can be downplayed or erased, and class was not the product of material conditions but instead the product of other, immaterial conditions: one's nationality, one's pseudo-biological status, one's gender or sex, one's age, and the like. The New Dialectic also argues that nations aren't the product of a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis precisely; rather, the antithesis (or antitheses, since the New Dialectic holds that there is rarely one antithesis that applies at a time) is capable of erasing any identity within the thesis, and the synthesis is capable of looking nothing like either the antithesis or thesis, and so this means that nations are not fixed things that evolve with time towards a specific goal but instead change suddenly, sometimes violently, erasing their previous identity and arising out of these violent and unpredictable changes; the best way to prevent the nation from changing is to hold onto history and community; the stronger the community and the better one understands history, the more likely the nation is to survive the unpredictable effects of its antithesis. This is likely influenced by the Nariac national character of Sobornost, but the New Dialect as it's known throughout the rest of the Verge and Bleed tends to solely focus on the rejection of the nation-state as the product of natural evolution over time and instead the product of sudden and violent changes, while overlooking or leaving out the elements that focus on the "immaterial dialectic."
Zadacha
Type: Artistic Movement
Zadacha is an underground movement that has gained traction throughout man of Nariac's populated areas; it's a type of music, an act, and the creation of a shared reality that fans and those who partake in the experience undergo. The idea is to create a consensual, shared reality where everyone agrees with what happens, often through the use of various drugs and naroalgorithms, combined with music and repeating patterns of lights designed to hack the brain, and within this shared reality, the population can achieve a sort of objective reality that they otherwise can't achieve in parts of Nariac where the reality is controlled by the government through AR and the like. Originally this grew up as an anti-Saminov movement, but many from inside Nariac note that the movement's already been co-opted, with the narcoalgorithms and drugs used by the Zadacha movement designed by the government, prompting government-approved experiences.
Cyrrealism
Type: Cultural Movement
Cyrrealism is a type of mysticism that grew out of the apophatic understandings of God and Christ, and have since spread throughout Nariac. These are often seen as a type of Gnosticism, and while that's correct, that doesn't capture the whole story. They believe that there are multiple realities and each reality has a different element of Christ and God to it and by exploring and meditating on these realities they can achieve a greater understanding of the silence and absence that is God. Furthermore, they believe that digital realities don't arise as a result of computers; they believe these realities exist independent of computers, and that computers are the only way for individuals who aren't God to access them. As a cultural movement, it is strongest on Moravec, where an entire alien computer network exists that is poorly explored. Cyrrealists tend to overlap with Hesychasists in some places, seeing the biological world as the most inferior of the worlds. Naturally, this conflicts with Nariac's position as ontologically conservative, but so far, little has been done and the cultural movement of all realities being part of understanding God and Christ is rapidly growing.
Dolgism
Type: Academic/Historiographic Movement/Political Movement
Dolgism is a movement that arose as push back against the New Dialectic in Nariac historiographic circles; the primary focus of Dolgism is to analyze not the role that sociological trauma, war, and the like play in creating nations, but the idea that nations are machines that produce and manage debt on a large scale people people and their leaders, and tend to view history through the lens of debt, obligation, and the ability of nations to honor that debt or obligation. Dolgism applies a common precept of post-scarcity dirigism to historiography - that the nation must manage the debt of itself and its population responsibly and that national debt in particular is neutral, neither bad nor good. While still primarily a historiographic movement, it is spreading out into the political sphere, influencing some elements of the Party to look at Nariac's strengths and weakness through the lens of debt and historical debt management, which has added a new angle to Nariac's "Socialism in One State" policy.
Hesychasism
Type: Religious Movement
Hesychasism is an outgrowth of the Hesychasm mystical tradition of contemplation in the Orthodox Church. The first Hesychasists emerged during the Nariac Civil War or right before, and they were the dominant polity on Turan that turned Turan into a massive planet-scale fabrication facility. According to the Hesychasist belief, the flesh of the body gets in the way of proper communion with God, and while one finds God only in the stillness of non-thought and non-existence, the presence of a biological body inhibits the worshiper from getting close to God. Since Jesus transcended the physical body to the divine, Hesychasists seek to do the same, rejecting biology in favor of machinery. They are a common religious clade of cyborgs in Nariac, often dressing in religious garb and robes while brandishing obvious and inhuman cybernetics, a way to reject the flawed nature of humanity in favor of the inward stability of machinery. The first Hesychasists were declared heretics by the Orthodox Church, but with the replacement of the Partiarch of Iraj, they have been more widely accepted, if not viewed as slightly unhinged.
Islandism and Fusionalism
Type: Architectural Style/Artistic Movement
Islandism is a type of architectural style that combines aspects of reality and digital programming to produce an "island" - that is, something that "is land between worlds." Digital programming is necessary here, and owing to augmented reality inserts, the outlandish and unrealistic styles of Islandism merge seamlessly with the physical and very real styles of the "real world," resulting in a "fusion" of two worlds. This means that to fully make sense of Nariac buildings, one must have augmented reality, and be able to navigate with augmented reality; otherwise, they will have no way to fully understand. It also means that physicals sometimes walk into walls, which is another reason why it's referred to as "is land." When practiced as an artistic movement that produces art blending the two realities, it's called fusionalism.
New Dialectic/Nariac Dialectic
Type: Academic/Historiographic Movement
Throughout much of the Verge and Bleed this is referred to as a the New Dialect, but it's more properly called the Nariac Dialect, and it's one of the most successful exports that Nariac has ever lent to humanity. Pioneered by Nariac Historiographers Yermolovo Kusma Antonovich and Khajasta Anoushirvan but fleshed out by a host of philosophers, the New Dialectic is a slight modification of the Hegelian dialectic but that rejects Marxist materialist dialectic on the ground that much of humanity no longer experiences a materialist existence, being wholly digital. This places the emphasis back on subjective experiences and how those subjective experiences affect reality, and how conflicts between contrasting subjectivity results in a synthesis that is removed from either subjective experience. The best synthesis is one brought about by experiencing the subjectivity of both parties so they can merge their experiences, usually through an experience playback method but also through VR, AR, and other related technologies. A side effect of the rejection of dialectic materialism is that history is no longer seen as being related to material circumstances and so the methods of defining humanity based on class no longer apply, and according to the Nariac Dialectic, never applied to begin with: class was as not a material condition, and to justify this, they point towards the later United States especially and note that class and race were inexorably linked, and race was not a material condition but a pseudo-biological classification; to be "White" meant being middle class, while being "Black" meant being poor and impoverished, and even the lowliest White individual still had some preferential treatment that wasn't awarded to others. Meanwhile, even the poorest individual in the United States had a lifestyle that was superior to the elite of the elite in previous eras of history, and that's still largely true. Thus, any factor played by material conditions can be downplayed or erased, and class was not the product of material conditions but instead the product of other, immaterial conditions: one's nationality, one's pseudo-biological status, one's gender or sex, one's age, and the like. The New Dialectic also argues that nations aren't the product of a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis precisely; rather, the antithesis (or antitheses, since the New Dialectic holds that there is rarely one antithesis that applies at a time) is capable of erasing any identity within the thesis, and the synthesis is capable of looking nothing like either the antithesis or thesis, and so this means that nations are not fixed things that evolve with time towards a specific goal but instead change suddenly, sometimes violently, erasing their previous identity and arising out of these violent and unpredictable changes; the best way to prevent the nation from changing is to hold onto history and community; the stronger the community and the better one understands history, the more likely the nation is to survive the unpredictable effects of its antithesis. This is likely influenced by the Nariac national character of Sobornost, but the New Dialect as it's known throughout the rest of the Verge and Bleed tends to solely focus on the rejection of the nation-state as the product of natural evolution over time and instead the product of sudden and violent changes, while overlooking or leaving out the elements that focus on the "immaterial dialectic."
Zadacha
Type: Artistic Movement
Zadacha is an underground movement that has gained traction throughout man of Nariac's populated areas; it's a type of music, an act, and the creation of a shared reality that fans and those who partake in the experience undergo. The idea is to create a consensual, shared reality where everyone agrees with what happens, often through the use of various drugs and naroalgorithms, combined with music and repeating patterns of lights designed to hack the brain, and within this shared reality, the population can achieve a sort of objective reality that they otherwise can't achieve in parts of Nariac where the reality is controlled by the government through AR and the like. Originally this grew up as an anti-Saminov movement, but many from inside Nariac note that the movement's already been co-opted, with the narcoalgorithms and drugs used by the Zadacha movement designed by the government, prompting government-approved experiences.
Cultural Familiarity in the Nariac
Nariac has a long tradition of being a unified culture, from the moment it was settled until Saminov took over and put himself in control of the Republic. Nariac manages to be more unified than the Imperium in many ways, but mostly because it's smaller. As a result, Cultural Familiarity (Nariac) is valid and common. Unlike some of these other meta-empires, Nariac doesn't have divergent cultural spheres; all of the cultures are largely the same, so each planet - for instance, Cultural Familiarity (Zov Tigra) or Cultural Familiarity (Turan and Farghan) - defaults back to Cultural Familiarity (Nariac) at a -1 penalty. The sole exception is the Yordam Socialist Republic, which defaults at the typical -3, owing to it being from an entirely different culture. In all cases, the cost for each Cultural Familiarity is 1 point.
Nariac Digital States?Given the high percentage of the population who are digital - upwards of 30% of all infogees who escaped the Ascension Crisis wound up in Nariac - one might be forgiven for thinking that there are digital domains or vilayets. However, this betrays a fundamental ignorance about how Nariac operates. Nariac does award full citizenship and rights to digitals - one of the few meta-empires to do so openly without any qualms - but Nariac is not ontologically pluralistic. Instead, Nariac blends the digital and the real together using augmented reality illusions; citizens with the proper augmented reality inserts can interact with their digital neighbors as if their digital neighbors were "real" in the physical sense. The technology to do this is not new, but Nariac takes it to the next level, with many urban areas in the Dominion featuring this technology. Thus, Nariac doesn't have to find bodies for the majority of its people; it uses augmented reality to trick them into assuming they have bodies. Because of this, Nariac does not need separate digital vilayets; the digital population live side-by-side with their real counterparts in most urban areas. |
Viyalets and Rayons
Nariac is not a large meta-empire, but it does have a number of sizeable districts that are comparable to some developing stellar nations, such as StarMech or the Australis Union. These are not members in the sense that they are otherwise independent entity; Nariac is a federal republic, so a centralized authority manages aspects like monetary policy (to the extent that Nariac has a monetary policy; it relies mostly on Reputation), foreign relations, and various inter-vilayet disputes. Like most federal republic, Nariac's capital, the Zov Tigra, is considered a distinct and separate district.
The distinction between a rayon and a vilayet is one that requires a detailed understanding of Nariac Federal Law in order to fully understand, but in the broadest of strokes, vilayet governments are supervised by National Republican Officials but individuals elected to positions within those governments don't have to be Party Officials. Within a rayon, meanwhile, elected officials can only come from the National Republican Party owing to complex legal reasons. Rayons also tend to be less flexible than vilayets in terms of certain judicial and legislative rights.
The distinction between a rayon and a vilayet is one that requires a detailed understanding of Nariac Federal Law in order to fully understand, but in the broadest of strokes, vilayet governments are supervised by National Republican Officials but individuals elected to positions within those governments don't have to be Party Officials. Within a rayon, meanwhile, elected officials can only come from the National Republican Party owing to complex legal reasons. Rayons also tend to be less flexible than vilayets in terms of certain judicial and legislative rights.
Amvrostiv
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Being home to the Nariac Technocracy Movement Bakapasa
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Its charismatic and colorful traditional dictator Iraj
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Being the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church Khalastas
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Being the irradiated former home for an extinct alien species Paannejää
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Federal Rayon Best known for: It's nomadic culture that exists outside of Nariac control Turan and Farghan
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Being Nariac's shipyard and the gate to "Fotress Nariac" Yerian
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Nariac's current terraforming project Zov Tigra
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Federal Rayon Best known for: Being the largest O'Neill cylinder in the Verge and Bleed |
Asraq
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Federal Rayon Best known for: Being part of the former Yordam Emirate Ijat
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Its gulags, isolated prisons, and rumored hell simulations Kerensky
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Government Status: Vilayet Best known for: Being the only garden planet in Nariac space Moravec
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: The global remains of an alien computer network Prax
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Home to the Olgoi-Khorkhoi culture Yekiti
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Vilayet Best known for: Where Kurdish Libertarian Socialists fight "American" Nazis Zaybaybalski
Type: Subunit of the Nariac Federal Republic Status: Federal Rayon Best known for: Its odd derivative of Spacer culture Let me tell you a story, about a young man on the Zov Tigra. He was young, and angry. But one day, he met a beautiful woman. They fell in love; they had a family. All the while, the young man continued to attend meetings at a local bar. Meetings against the Party, against Saminov. His influence within these anti-Nariac groups grew. Then, one night before he went to bed, his wife told him that he should not do anything rash. He was confused, but he fell asleep anyway. |
Vilayets and Current Events
It's important to keep in mind that information is notoriously hard to get out of Nariac; information present here is information gleaned from those who passed through are close enough to the system, or those who watch these systems from on far, and thus, the information may be outdate.
Amvrostiv Vilayet
Current Events: Amvrostiv is currently the home of the Nariac Technocratic Movement, which is one of the largest movements against the Party that exists in Nariac. However, NATEM isn't just against the Party, it's also against Saminov, and as a result, this makes Amvrostiv one of, if not the, largest breeding grounds for anti-Saminov sentiment in the entire Dominion. Ijat Vilayet
Current Events: Ijat is functionally isolated from the rest of Nariac, since it's Nariac's answer to Siberia. Rumors of the Eastern Orthodox Church running Hell simulations on Ijat are common but proof of this is scarce, although Ijat being used as a gulag and labor camp is likely. What they're working on remains unknown, and is the subjec to much speculation among some in and out of the federal republic. Khalastas Vilayet
Current Affairs: Ongoing research into the extinct aliens species on Khalastas is a major effort, with much of the Vilayet devoted to that research project. However, due to the dangers of exploring the world, very little has been recovered and very little is unknown. The overseer of the Vilayet is pushing to try and get more information about the alien species, though, and may start cutting corners to achieve it. Prax Vilayet
Current Affairs: The Olgoi Khorkhoi (OK) subculture has developed into the dominant culture on the planet, and as a result, the desert world is now overrun with a complex culture of AGIs who see themselves as being sand worms. Meanwhile, the dictator general of Bakapasa continues to exert influence on Prax, encouraging support for him and not the Party by propping up and celebrating the unusual culture Yerian Vilayet
Current Affairs: Yerian is currently Nariac's ongoing terraforming effort, sponsored by the Eastern Orthodox Church, who want to move their capital from Iraj - a cold world - to Yerian, a world that would a much better home for Nariac's largest reserve of Baseline humans. Yerian is also notable for the large Armenian influence on the world, which is working to make a distinctive culture. |
Asraq Rayon
Current Events: Asraq is an exception to the general rule about information from Nariac being hard to come by. Native to the planet Murat, Asraq is current locked in a violent civil war with the Yordam Protectorate, the Selbin Socialist Movement, and other groups as they battle for the remains of the Yordam Sultanate. The Asraq Rayon is one of the strongest of the players. Iraj Vilayet
Current Events: Iraj is the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and home to elaborate cathedrals and the like. The church is currently in the process of exerting more influence than ever over the local Party, and the local Party officials have recently condemned atheism as a position and are moving in a direction that is more sympathetic to the church. Also home to Nariac's largest baseline population. Moravec Vilayet
Current Affairs: Moravec is a water world that hosts a large computer simulation that is in the process of being thoroughly explored by the governor of the Vilayet. So far, it's estimated that less than 1% of the overall simulation has been explored after more than 10 years of in depth exploration, but efforts to understand the simulation, the Moravecians, and figure out if any Moravecians are still alive in the sim are ongoing. Turan and Farghan Vilayet
Current Affairs: Fortress Nariac has recently expanded outwards, adding more ports and more defensive structures to the system. By most accounts a militant culture is being fostered within the vilayet, which supposedly includes support for suicide bombers who, given the fact that most Nariac members are digitals, can carry out multiple possibly successful Kamikaze or suicide attacks. Zaybaybalski Rayon
Current Affairs: Zaybaybalski Rayon is currently under the administration of the General-Dictator from Paannejää, who is exerting his influence in a characteristic way and irritating the otherwise deeply independent culture of spacer-influenced or spacer-offshoot that already called the rocky planet home. Many quietly hold that perhaps Soliyev was right, and they did make a mistake, and wonder how to fix it. |
Bakapasa Vilayet
Current Events: Bakapasa is best known within Naraic for having a human cartoon as a dictator; this bombastic figure influences not only Bakapasa but several neighboring Vilayets, and there are rumors that he is growing his influence among the Vilayets so that he can instigate a coup that will overthrow Saminov and put him in charge of the Federal Republic of Nariac. Kerensky Vilayet
Current Events: The Kerensky vilayet is currently in the process of working to stabilize and maintain the only naturally occurring garden world with Nariac, often with strict access restricting the surface in the interest of maintaining environmental and ecological stability on the planet. This is bringing them in conflict with Iraj, since the EOC sees environmentalism as paganism. Paannejää Rayon
Current Affairs: Paannejää hosts a large population of wanderers across the surface who are out of reach of the Governor-Dictator of the rayon. Similarly, there are rumors that the arean world - which is already scarred from the failed terraforming efforts - is being further engineered into a ecological catastrophe through Nariac weapon experimenting in isolated areas on the surface. Yekiti Vilayet
Current Affairs: the libertarian socialists Kurds of Yekiti have been locked in a battle with the American Nazi Movement from the Iron Mountain synthworld for the better part of 8 years, and while they're holding their own, the ANM is getting better at understanding their technology, which is reducing their advantage and making the ANM even more dangerous than they already were. Zov Tigra Rayon
Current Affairs: Nobody has any concrete idea what is going on aboard the Zov Tigra McKendree. However, some reports suggest horrifying experiments and a nightmarish reality (see "An AR-Assisted Gaslighting Campaign," below). Saminov runs Nariac from his personal offices aboard the Zov Tigra, which remains Nariac's pride and joy and the larges cylinder in the sphere. |