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Daffy
Galactography > Civilized Galaxy - Sephirotic Empires > Negentropy Alliance
Galactography > Systems and Worlds > Systems & Worlds C - D
Galactography > Systems and Worlds > Systems & Worlds C - D
 Image from Steve Bowers |
Daffy | |
| Star | Psi Serpentis |
|---|---|
| Class | G5V (This star is a close orbiting binary pair; the luminosity figure is for both components combined |
| Companions | Psi Ser B class M red dwarf(at 60 AU) Psi Ser C Psi Ser D Psi Ser E (dwarf stars at varying distances out to 6000 AU) |
| Combined Luminosity of A binary component | 0.85 x Sol |
| Distance from Sol | 46.9 ly |
| Affiliation | Negentropy Alliance |
History Psi Serpentis II was terraformed by Lander Geotech, starting at 1991 and becoming habitable in 2080. The colonisation rights were sold to FreedomWorld Inc., a colonisation corporation aiming at attracting dissidents, freethinkers and independent-minded individuals to the new world. They hoped to engineer a local renaissance of avant-garde thinking, in turn making the colony truly hot and profitable. They named the planet Daffy after the trickster duck in classic mythology and marketed it broadly across the Inner Sphere.
Engineering renaissances was not a developed science in the early Empires era, and the project largely failed. Although Daffy did attract many groups that were creative or interesting, their societies did never cohere into anything. Daffy remained a chaotic, occasionally troublesome, but mediocre planet. In 2556 FreedomWorld got a lucrative offer from the TakiCorb subsidiary Serpens Development Blast for the colonisation rights, and they sold the right to the planet. Development Blast quickly set to "renovating" the planet for other kinds of customers, not renewing the environment leases of the inhabitants. However, evicting a population of 130 million turned out to be infeasible and the corporation had no intention of waging any kind of war with them. Instead they were given the opportunity to sign up as an indigenous population, living for free on the planet but not given any services or holding any land rights except for designated "native zones" encompassing their major cities.
 Image from Steve Bowers |
The Psi Serpentis Solar System The worlds of the Psi Serpentis planetary system were named after classical 2-d 'cartoon' icons; these moving graphic images are much prized in the Negentropy Alliance, especially those that predate the Interplanetary era. Unfortunately a large proportion of these 'cartoons' are known to be modern fakes.
The new tenants of Daffy were the Harvists of the Conver Ambi, a fairly mainstream population. Over time the diverse natives and Harvists interacted in complex manners, sometimes in friendly ways, sometimes antagonistically and often combining into new and unexpected cultures. A form of caste society developed, partly due to taxation and lease regulations, with different subpopulations having very different functions; these in turn genetically drifted further apart from their origin. As the climate of the Conver Ambi hardened, rifts within Daffy society widened between liberals and orthodox, cutting across other social lines. The Second Interstellar Empires War devastated the planet, nearly wrecking the terraforming and killing over two billion inhabitants.
In the aftermath one group managed to unite the scattered survivors and restore order and environment control: the Church of Negentropy. A previously minor group descended from negentropist natives had survived the war relatively unscatched, and now emerged from their hiding places equipped with nanodefenses, vital AIs and convictions. Over a span of a decade they united the planet, creating a new planetary government strongly based on negentropism, bioism inherited from the Conver Ambi and an intense distaste for religious or social dogmatism.
Daffy negentropism spread far and wide in the new era, linking up with the other negentropic worlds and the renaissance of the Second Federation. As the Negentropy Alliance grew Daffy became one of the main worlds, competing with Ken Ferjik, Greylag and Gegton as the cultural capital.
During the Version War Daffy was hard hit by the standardisation side, and in 4479 it was occupied by NoCoZo/Cyberia forces. The invaders did their best to control the system and loot it for all it was worth, but the local resistance (the "Narchy") proved to be a hard opponent. Due to the tremendous importance of the system the NoCoZo could not leave it, and the Narchy acted both as a major drain of resources and information source. It was soon discovered that the anarchistic invaders had a hard time coordinating and that it was not impossible to buy loyalties with enough resources. Except for a number of major battles between outside forces in the system, the situation remained a low-key but expensive war of subterfuge, guerrillas, occasional terrorism and reluctant control attempts from the ostensibly anarchist military leadership. Many stories are told about the guiles used by the sides against each other throughout the 60 year occupation, producing thousands of virches. Negentropic children still love to tell the many stories about Regular Jack and her band of saboteurs.
After the war Daffy slowly returned to its old self. An interesting addition was the 43 million solarian refugees from Haqqu, a nearby system that had to be evacuated due to strange matter weapon presence. The Haqqua were never assimilated, but developed their own isolated society based on a restoration of the native solarist society from the 3000's.
 Image from Anders Sandberg | |
| Psi Serpentis V in the middle stages of being terraformed by Lander Geotech (approximately 2049). The formerly hot greenhouse world has been cooled using solar shades and the atmosphere thinned by Sagan algae. A relative simple terraforming target, although the high level of nitrogen in the geosphere and the occasional flares of the star made it somewhat hard to balance ecologically. | |
The other capitals are Gegton X, Greylag, Ken Ferjik and the Seat of Judgement. In the Negentropy Alliance Daffy is one of the classic worlds - not economically, militarily or politically powerful, but having had an important history defining the Alliance. Tourism and historical retreats are major industries, and many Inner Sphere Negentropists help fund the Daffy History Preservation Office.
 Image from Anders Sandberg |
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Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg
Initially published on 09 October 2001.
Initially published on 09 October 2001.
