Olympos

The Olympos system revolves around two suns, the first a G-type star and the second F, both yellow.  Each of them draws around it, its own set of celestial bodies, occasionally stealing them from one another before kindly giving them back a few thousand years later.

These two kindly suns make the Olympos system particularly welcoming for life in general.  After the initial surveys carried out by scout craft, humans arrived en masse in the system 388 years ago, parsing in with a thousand-strong colony fleet led by the K8 Class cruiser Hellene.  

They decided to adopt the name of the flagship to describe themselves, and founded several key system-wide institutions in an act of pan-humanism that would ensure peace and prosperity for all.  Until they actually landed on the inhabitable planets, and began to deploy the deadly, but oh so human combination, of individuals' thirst for power and the relative scarcity of resources that is nature's slap in the face of their ego.  

As well as setting up a host of mining colonies on asteroids and above gas giants, the Hellenes occupied five planets, which in alphabetical order they named Argolid, Attica, Boetia, Krete and Laconia.  They also settled a sixth planet, Troy, which stands culturally far apart from the others.

 

Mnemosynê and the Dynasts 

Mnemosynê is the defining characteristic of the Olympos system, compared to all others settled by human populations; it never caught on elsewhere, for reasons that will soon be apparent.  The technology was born in the Panhellenic Research Station around two hundred years ago, and it was a game changer.  It became possible to implant any human being, upon birth or at least very shortly afterwards, with a biological recording device, that would literally become the mirror of their mind and soul.  Upon death, the device could be removed, and reimplanted in any willing candidate, in which distinct personalities would then exist, never coalescing, but able to draw upon one another, simultaneously perpetuating wisdom across generations, and ensuring a theoretically unlimited lifespan.

Fairly quickly, it was decided for both ethical but also for reasons of neuro-genetical comptability, to restrain the reimplantation procedure within family lines.  This extraordinary technology produced an astounding set of psychological and then social shifts, and was generally considered to be the best thing since sliced artos.  It did lead to a few quarrels about which sibling would get to carry Mum around forever in their head - or not, as the case may be - but various social and economic mechanisms dealt with that quite comfortably.

As any film buff however knows, at some point, someone at the family reunion makes a snarky comment, and all hell breaks loose.  The more guests, the greater the chaos will be.  So it turned out with mnemosynê.  As of the third generation, people started to go mad, the symptoms ranging from twitching eyeballs to berserk and literally bloodthirsty rage.  As entire civilisations began to gaze upon the failing of their virtual immortality, and fall apart at the seams, various attempts were made to deal with the flaws of the process, from pre- and post-implant personality hacking, to intermittent or permanent shutting off of implants, but nothing worked, and the problem worsened to the point where cannibalism outstripped heart disease as the primary cause of death.

Only a handful of individuals, or more accurately, family lines proved capable of integrating the personalities of innumerate ancestors with no apparent psychological fallout.  The more enterprising of these rented out their services, legal issues notwithstanding, to absorb personalities from outside their lineage.  They made ludicrous amounts of money doing so.  Some did eventually go mad, suffering from the mental equivalent of exploding at the seams, but a select few survived.

With wealth came, naturally, power, and the Dynasties were born, supplanting whatever political organisation had preceeded them.  Other, more physical, culling processes narrowed the Dynasties down to one or two on each planet.

Once these had accrued enough wealth and power to move entirely under their own steam, they ceased offering their mental mettle to the hoi palloi.  Obviously they did not proceed with too blatant a disregard for those who had set them upon their thrones : instead, the Dynasts declared - acting together in one of the very rare occasions of their history - that for the good of humanity in the Olympos System, all newborn would still be implanted with a mnemosynê device, but that mnemosynê reimplantation, or transfer, was no longer permitted, outside (naturally) of the Dynasties themselves.  Of course, rather than dashing all hope of immortality and provoking dramatic unrest, they took a firm grasp on it, wrapped it up in symbolism and mysticism, and projected it into a far distant, but nonetheless curiously certain future.

As of that day, when an ordinary human died, their recording devices were extracted, coated for preservation in a solid circle of metal plating bearing a symbol of their home planet, and placed in their mouths. The body was then wrapped in a shroud, and launched into space, where the guidance system embedded in the coin-shaped metal would propel it to its destination.

That destination was a planetoid named Tartarus.  All of the dead, no matter their home planet, would congregate there, hundreds, then thousands, eventually millions.  The Dynasts assured everyone else that they would labour tirelessly to one day perfect the mnemosynê technique.  When that inevitable breakthrough occurred, the dead would rise and be liberated. Hope is a powerful ally when it is on your side.

In the meantime, to guard against the inevitable temptation, the Dynasts - working together once again - surrounded Hades with an artificial belt of micro-asteroids, each bearing a proximity mine.  Portrayed as an encompassing river in popular representations, the stochastic movement of the micro-asteroids that made up the Styx interacted with the software in the coin to offer safe passage only to those who bore one, and that could only be someone who was dead.  Anyone and anything else was reduced in short order to dust and a floating red smear lost in the immensity of space.

 

In the Olympos system, it is the era of the Dynasts.  They are often quite sprawling families, but at their head is a basileus, who either carries the mnemosynê, or will inherit if the previous basileus is alive, which happens when one abdicates.

Mnemosynê does not work as the latest personality ingesting his predecessors.  Reimplantation is a psychically painful experience, as all the memories and personalities stored in the mnemosynê are, as it were, played through as fast as neuronal synapses will allow.  After that, any of them can be actively accessed, but they do not form a sort of sitting council in the carrier's mind.

Instead, personalities contained within the mnemosynê will assert.  When this happens, the mind that belongs to the current body takes a back seat, still conscious and able to observe what is going on, but devoid of any form of will.

The prevalence of any personality's assertion depends on a complex interaction between its strength, the degree of relationship to the current mnemosynê bearer, how recently the personality was integrated, the relationship of major events in the bearer's current existence to the history or skills of the personality, and to some extent, on the affinity between the two.  The bearer's actual will is of little consequence, the asserting personality forcing its way to the fore.  However, the mnemosynê bearer's desire to reclaim (or not) the control of his or her own will is definitely a factor in how long the asserting ensures.  It may last mere seconds to years at a time.

Assertion need not be an unpleasant experience.  The Dynasts are past masters in both modulating it, and using it : sometimes it is just better if an ancestor takes over for a while, if his particular skill set is better adapted to circumstances, and some individuals to whom power has come more by chance than by merit, might actually prefer to leave things to others, at least until they learn from observing their ancestors in action.  Basilei are actually referred to by the prevalence of the different persona they carry.  The current ruler of Boetia, for example, is Antigone, who also happens to be the foremost personality expression.  Her full title is Antigone#Oedipus#Cadmos#Eteocle.

In each Dynasty there is one main mnemosynê line, passed down from basileus to basileus, and basically serving as a crown.  Collateral dynastic lines may blend their persona in to the main mnemosynê line - a symbol of prestige - or they may also maintain their own.  Last of all, it is worth noting that all main mnemosynê lines include hundreds, sometimes tens of thousands, of personalities, from the time when the first proto-Dynasts stepped forward to sell their unusual abilities to the common man.  Some have secretly sought to have these now extraneous minds suppressed, but it always fails, and the price of failure is madness and death. 

 

 

So it was, the Dynasts had settled in to reign.  The Hellenes continued to work together through their Panhellenic institutions, which didn't stop them invading each other now and then, whenever peace became too tedious and the urge to blame someone else for one's problems too strong.  This unusual combination of disinterested cooperation and intensely brutal fighting should no doubt be considered the second defining characteristic of the Olympos System.  It did help ensure that no matter how excitable politicians or military leaders got, nobody actually resorted to dropping nukes or deploying other doomsday weapons, which was more than could be said of some.  

Civilisation happily ticked over, and on the whole progressed, until 66 years ago, when the Divine popped unannounced and unwelcome into local space, and the sneaky tendrils of Chaos effectively cut the Olympos system off from all other stars.  Skata really hit the fan, and that fan just keeps on spinning. 

 

The Divine 

The disk's intrusion into the system had some pretty amusing gravitational effects.  The direct impact on the six planets was feeble, although astrophysicists are still scrambling (the notion of a 66 year scramble is very astrophysical) to update their models on possible and unfortunate interactions between said planets and wandering asteroids.

The Hellenes' theologists, philosophers, poets and theopsychologists believe, based on reported sightings and interactions, and also behavioural patterns, that there are thirteen Divine in the Olympos system, of whom only six were in being when they initially appeared.  Although bio-diviners theorise that there is a notion of "family" amongst the thirteen, it seems to be of an exclusive nature, that is to say, it determines who is not one of them.  There is considerable rivalry among the Olympians.  Although the lack of interstellar contact makes comparative data difficult to assemble, the Olympians do seem to be particularly quarrelsome, and often prone to direct violent opposition.

Zeus is prominent among the Olympians.  He manipulates electromagnetic fields with ease, creating solar flares as easily as lightning storms.  Although there was much confusion in the early days after the arrival, there is fairly hard evidence for an extremely potent additional entity that has been named Cronos.  There was definitely some sort of violent struggle within the walls of the disk-world, after which Cronos blinked out of existence.  Examination of the data has led to the suggestion that Cronos somehow rendered five of his six colleagues impotent, but the sixth - Zeus - somehow avoided this fate.  He must have then freed his brethren, overthrown the despot, and taken his place.  Theopsychologists suggest that Cronos was actually Zeus' father, which is why the divinity is such an angry entity to this day.

Not withstanding his temper, Zeus does seem to have a certain fondness for humans.  There are numerous human women with particularly gifted children of no obvious father, who claim the Olympian is their progenitor.

Hera is held to be both the sister and, as far as such a notion might hold among the Divine, the wife of Zeus.  The numerous claimed human offspring of Zeus are characterised by a degree of poor fate and a high death toll that has been found to be statistically significant, fueling the notion that some sort of  jealous paredre must be going after them.  The famed corsair Herakles claims that whenever something goes belly up in his endeavours, Hera is behind it.  On a more positive note, all human societies in the Olympos system show signs of useful external social engineering, in which a certain patterning has been detected, and this ability is attributed to Hera.

Astrobiologists frequently observe anomalies identified as Poseidon, who appears to favour the interstellar void as his habitat, rather than the Olympian disk.  Accompanied by a cohort of lesser entities - who have been detected and classified by sensors and telescopes - he can shape gravity waves and summon unstable space-time phenomena such as wormholes, doing so with little regard for anything that might be in the immediate vicinity.

The Olympian named Hades can recreate the electromagnetic signature of any living being.  The double-state negative quantum theory explains why he only does this when the biological processes in such a being cease to function.  It is uncertain if this is done systematically for all humans (and as to why...), or if this power is directed only at a select few, with the process leaving behind a sort of animated echo, commonly called spirit or ghost.  A powerful sect has grown up around Hades, linking his ability to the quest for the revival of mnemosynê.     

Demeter can intercede in the biological processes of any living thing, through genetic manipulation or chemical stimulation or interdiction.  Her powers appear to be limited - perhaps thankfully - to the more simple DNA combinations, essentially to the plant world.  In the upheaval that the Arrival created on worlds to whom autarcy was an alien notion, her intervention is actively sought after. 

Hestia is a more abstract concept than the preceding Olympians, and took longer to identify and classify through human observation.  She seems capable of exerting some sort of dampening effect on the powers of her fellows, ensuring that their passions do not accidentally consume all human life in their fire.  Her constant and unchanging wave signal has become a focus for the hope that Hellene civilisation to burn on through the worst disasters and current upheaval.  She is symbolically present in a growing number of homes, in the form of an eternal-burning fire-cube. 

 

A new generation of Olympians was brought into existence shortly after the Arrival.  Their genesis is clearly defined in the quantum record, and provides a rich insight into the essence of the Divine that will fuel the research of generations to come.  The astrobiological evidence, coupled with the mathematical modelling of their actions, makes it highly likely that the following seven entities were born in order to provide some sort of link between humans and Olympians; put otherwise, they have functions.  This process has been reported in all other solar systems with whom contact has been sporadically maintained.

The function of Apollo is almost certainly to provide humanity with a certain degree of understanding of the plans and actions of his fellow Olympians.  He achieves this is by activating the latent psychic powers of certain humans.  Human cultures have always documented the existence of psionic powers in certain individuals, and there was a growing corpus of scientific evidence of the phenomenon.  Some say that governments covered up their reality, but if that were true, it would mean that only a very small number of individuals were active.  That has changed dramatically in the last 80 years.  All psykers have the primary ability - often uncontrolled - to understand the present in a particular light and to predict the future; or perhaps more accurately, to define and anticipate the link between actions and consequences.  The activation of this power often leads to the development of secondary abilities of various natures and intensity, ranging from psychokinetics to thought control.  It also tends to develop higher brain functions, so that many activated individuals acquire the specifically human genius that that produces artists, musicians, poets and those that shape civilisation.  Whether as an intended effect or as a by-product, Apollo guides human progress. 

Artemis is Apollo's twin, and indeed the study of their quantum entanglement has allowed some extraordinary scientific advances in recent years.  It is theorised that Artemis draws ressources from wild and untamed nature, be it the vast expanses of forest on Thebes, or the chaos at the heart of a gas giant.  Her passage always leads to a favourable evolution in these biotopes, of great benefit to the struggling economies of the post-Arrival period.  Artemis also has a darker nature.  Like her twin, she seems to participate in human evolution, but in a negative way, removing individuals - or sometimes entire cultures - that have taken an undesirable path.

Ares is a thuggish deity, who seems to be passive at most times, generating the notion prevalent in many stories that the other Olympians despise him.  He awakens, or is awakened, when Chaos intrudes into the material fabric of the solar system; in such unfortunate times his tendency to throw out the baby with the bath-water has lead to widespread and indiscriminate destruction.

The poets say that Athena was born directly from the skull of her father, Zeus.  She is the ghost in the machine, able to influence directly the artificial intelligence systems that human civilisation is dependent on.  Several AI have famously taken to worshipping Athena in the past decades.

The unfinished nature of Hephaïstos as compared to other Olympians, is quite plain in the quantum data, and although nobody truly knows why, the story goes that Zeus and Hera quarreled over him.  Despite his apparent limitations, he is the solar systems alchemist, drawing on the vast power of cosmic systems - his metaphorical forges, in the legends - to tinker with atomic structures, giving birth to elements of immense potential for human technology.  

Aphrodite exerts a powerful influence on the hormonal systems of all living entities, exacerbating passions, desires and impulses.  Her will irresistibly pushes human beings away from choices and into actions even if they go against their own interests, or that of their families or societies.  

Whereas Apollo founds the guidance of human society on free will, Hermes takes a more direct approach.  He manifests directly, in the form of a young man or woman wearing a cloak, a winged helmet and winged boots, and carrying that strange emblem that is assumed to be the Olympians "flag".  In a voice that cannot be disobeyed, he issues the orders of whomever has sent him.  When he is not running such errands, he is often abroad on his own account.  He is known for his playful nature, and is though of as the most "human" of the Olympians.

 

The Ostracised

A certain number of crimes in the Olympos System, which also depend on the social status and age of the perpetrator, and also to a certain degree on political whim, are punished by ostracism.  It was, at least initially, a sentence of living death, for the ostracised are shoved outside of the hospitality system that is of immense social importance, basically depriving them of the protection of law.  Anything can be done to such a pariah, without any fear of repercussions.

The ostracised whom, given the often political dimension of their judgement could be quite influential people, banded together for survival, forming communities that were convenient scapegoats for unscrupulous politicians in difficult times.  With the rise of the Dynasts came increased tension between the habitable planets, and the Ostrakoï - at least, the best organised and better led among them - became useful.  To avoid these mercenaries being hired by individuals or groups outside of the system of power, the Dynasts developed a clever and highly codified system.  Instead of paying these mercenaries for their service, with drakma that anyone could get their hands on, they instead (or rather, as well) offered them kudos, which was contractualised, registered, specific to a given planet and even inheritable, and which, when the required amount was amassed, could be traded for citizenship, and thus an end to ostracism.  As they became more and more useful, the Ostraka negociated a way around the ridiculously high cost of said citizenship, by allowing individuals to pool their kudos, and offer it to the most meritorious among them, generally by vote; this had the consequence of tying less tightly a given group of Ostrakoï to a given Dynasty.  The same individuals pooled their resources too, and there are now certain Ostrakoï who number in the hundreds, boasting a small fleet of starships to their name.  Certain individuals who have acquired enough kudos to become citizens in their own right, continue nonetheless on their path, preferring glory and an everlasting name to a more comfortable existence.  A perfect example of them is the corsair Herakles, whose countless adventures have become popular fiction. 

The Ostrakoï also tend to attract to them other people whom, although not actually ostracised, have professions or situations that place them outside the ordinary structures of society, and whose association with the pariahs of society can offer both protection and opportunity.  Examples include wandering thespians or philosophers, young Spartans during their rite of passage, and the Furies, that peculiar type of bounty-hunters that charge themselves with avenging certain unpunished crimes.

 

Timeline

-700 : Humans begin to explore their native star system

-334 : first interstellar jump.  Colonisation of other star systems begins

-322 : the Hellene and its cohort of colony ships arrive in the Olympos system

-320 : founding of key Panhellenic institutions, such as the Areopagus Assembly and the associated Olympic Games; the Research Centre; the Delphic Sanctuary, and the Furies.

-119 : Mnemosynê technology becomes viable

-114 : [Boetia] Cadmos arrives in the Olympos System from his home star, in pursuit of his sister Europè.  Shortly afterwards he takes over the Dragon Syndicate in Thebes. 

-102 : [Boetia] Cadmos becomes President of the Boetian Coalition and marries Harmony.  He is the fountain head of the future Labdacide Dynasty. 

-60 : Polydoros becomes the carrier of the future Labdacide mnemosynê. 

-53 : After previous isolated cases, mnemosynê madness sweeps the star system with epidemic intensity  

-42 : The first Dynasty rises on Attica, replacing its democratic government.  Similar arrangements follow on all other planets except Troy.

-39 : [Boetia] Labdacos becomes President of the Boetian Confederation, then founds the Labdacide Dynasty.

-38 : Under the impulsion of the Dynasts, an extraordinary session of the Areopagus (known as the 71B) bans mnemosynic transfer outside the Dynasties themselves.  Beginning of Tartarus and creation of the Styx.

-36 : The 72nd Areopagus codifies the kudos system used by the Ostracised.  Birth of Dionysus, and [Boetia] murder of Dionysus' mother Semelé by her sister Agavé and her husband Echion.

-31 : [Boetia] Death of Labdacos.  His son Laios is driven into exile whilst the Dragon Syndicate makes an unsuccessful strike for power 

-22 : Dionysus leaves Boetia and sets out on his wanderings 

-20 : [Boetia] Birth of Jocasta 

-15 : [Boetia] Birth of Creon 

-14 : [Boetia] Return of Dionysus to Boetia; death of Agavé and Pentheus 

-6 : [Boetia] Laios becomes basileus, and marries Jocasta

-3 : [Boetia] Birth of Oedipus

0 : The Arrival

4 : Coming into existence of the younger generation of the Divine 

16 : Birth of Herakles 

21 : [Boetia] Beginning of the Sphinx Uprising 

33 : [Boetia] Oedipus accidentally kills Laios, whom he does not know to be his father.  He arrives in Thebes, quells the Sphinx Uprising and marries Jocasta, his own mother unbeknown to them both.  Birth of Eteocle.

34 : [Boetia] Birth of Polynice, birth of Antigone 

43 : [Boetia] Oedipus hailed as basileus of Boetia, behind Creon's back.  He becomes the bearer of the Labdacide mnemosynê.  This brings about his downfall and Jocasta's suicide.

45 : Oedipus at Colonna.

46 : [Boetia] Eteocle becomes basileus of Boetia

58 : War of the Seven Against Thebes.  Argolid backs Polynice against his brother Eteocle.  Both brothers and thousands of Argives perish.

60 : Antigone forcibly removes Creon as regent of Boetia, and becomes basileus. The strong personal bond between Antigone and Theseus is the genesis of the Attico-Boetian alliance.

66 : Present Day 

 

 

 

There are many other concepts plucked from Greek myth that I wish to transcribe into the Olympos solar system, and the list is as follows.  The Dictionnaire de la Mythologie is a useful resource !

Acheloos, Acheron, Asclepios (and Asclepiades, Epidaure), Atlantis, Cerberus, Corybantes, Cronos (and Titans), Cyclops, Delphes (see Apollo), Dryades (and Hamadryades, Meliades, Naiades, Nereides, Nymphes, Oceanides, Oreades), Eidolon, Elysian Fields, Erinyes, Gorgones, Grées, Hecate, Moires, Muses, Nyx, Olympic Games, Pegasus, Phénix, Protée, Scylla and Charybde, Troy 

Troy 

There is a sixth planet in the Olympos system that is fit for habitation, but it sits completely without the political and social system that is everywhere else prevalent.  The Trojans rejected mnemosynê from the outset, on moral grounds.  The other Hellenes considered that by doing so, they were condemning millions to an unnecessary death, which on moral grounds was unacceptable.  The very notion of immortality was the apple of discord that sparked off the Trojan War, which has continued on and off ever since.  When the other planets realised Troy was probably right all along, the resulting truce was quickly undermined by the future Dynasts, who saw in all the dismay a wonderful opportunity and Troy an obstacle to it.  When the dust had settled upon all that, Troy was looked upon by all the Dynasts as a permanent threat.  Did it not stand resolutely apart, organised along ancient lines, a dangerous reminder to all that the Dynasts were neither the first, nor the only means, by which humans could choose to be governed.

In consequence, Troy, behind its firewalls, has basically been under siege for decades, with no immediate hope of the stalemate being broken.  Unless of course the Divine decide to take a hand in it... 

Prometheus

When the Divine came to this corner of the galaxy, there was already one sentient race present, precisely in the Olympos System, whose grasp on the fundamentals of the universe was sufficient to have given them space travel, and a pretty solid understanding of how everything hung together, and indeed what the Divine actually were and how Chaos most likely functioned.  It is rumoured that these Titans did much to help seed the thirty-odd less one other systems with sentience, in accord with the wishes of the extraordinary beings that now resided among them.  They obtained, in return, a unique relationship with the Divine.

The story goes that as primitive civilisations began to spring up among the stars, the Titans brought some of their members to the Olympos System, to place them in benevolent environments, and study them in perfect anonymity, aiming to improve the lot of what they increasingly and inevitably saw as their creation.  This was in sharp contrast to the Divine of Olympos, who at best thought of this collection of creatures as a sort of zoo.

There came a time when the Divine of Olympos, following their own mysterious compulsions, decided that the time had come to manipulate their creatures to some ungodly end.  Well, not ungodly, obviously, given their nature.  The Titans protested, then got really uptight when they realised, belatedly, that the ethereal beings they had teamed up with did absolutely not consider themselves partners, equal or unequal, and were simply going to do as they pleased, when it pleased them.  

This was why one of the foremost amongst the Titans, named Prometheus, somewhat foolishly decided to act.  To the emerging Hellenes he gave knowledge that they should not have possessed.