Share
Zoeific Biopolity
Zoeific Biopolity Symbol
Image from Avengium
One of many different depictions of the Blue-Green Goddess, symbol of the Zoeific Biopolity

The Zoeific Biopolity - Data Panel

OverviewDefinition: Sephirotic Empire focused on the creation, nurturing, and application of biological life.

Symbol: Semi-stylised interactive image of a seemingly infinitely rich and diverse biosphere.

Ruling Archailect: The Blue and Green Goddess (Her Holiness, the LifeGiver, the Ascended Zoe of Hibbert) (S5)

Archailect Ethos: Strongly bioist, terraformist, favours building habitable megastructures to maximise opportunities for life, interventionist (often aggressively so, but will be careful not to attack a stronger/higher toposophic foe), also experiential, joy and immersion in diversity of life.
Founding HistoryOrigin: The bioist Association of All Life, formed in the late Federation period.

Founding Events:
1630 AT: Formation of the Association of All Life (AAL).
1650-1800s AT: The Association gains support from various quarters.
1874 AT: The appearance of the posthuman biont avatar Zoe of Hibbert.
1870s AT: Zoe is designated as the head of the Association.
2600-3100s AT: The AAL expands and renames itself the Zoefic Biopolity.
4000s AT: The Zoefic Biopolity is classified as a Sephirotic Empire by the Great Hexadecimal archaitheological school.
Culture, Art and Society Cultural Ethos: Bioist, hedonist, mystical. Views biological life as sacred, and values serving, creating and participating in ecosystems.

Society: Life in the Zoeific Biopolity is based around the Flow, an inter-entity behavioural protocol that allows every living component of the Biopolity, including sophonts, to recognise needs in the society and coordinate activity to meet those needs. Zoeific sophonts are often influenced by the Flow to alter their bodies and minds in ways that make them suited to performing a needed Role. This is referred to as a Calling and the vast majority of Biopolity citizens have several.

Intertoposophic Relations: The Flow encourages sophonts of all toposophic levels to act as Stewards towards sophonts of lower toposophic levels, protecting and nurturing them. Most sophonts also act as Patrons to varying degrees. Modosophonts may nurture local ecosystems, SI:1 may nurture modosophont societies, SI:2 may nurture SI:1 societies, and so on.

Religion and Ideology: Zoeticism; various factions and splinter religions and memeticities followed as well, also a number of Caretakerist, Shamanic, and Sophic creeds.

Ontology: The Seven Axioms of Zoeticism manifested as the Flow.
DemographicsMorphodynamics: Highly active, although almost entirely focused on (some would say limited to) biological forms and substrates with a notable majority embodied in the ril rather than virtuality.

Population Breakdown:
- Infomorphs: 15 quadrillion
- Embodied: 17 quadrillion
- SI:1 Transapients: 485 billion
- SI:2 Transapients: 629 million
- SI:3 Transapients: 377 thousand
- SI:4 Archailects: 435
- SI:5 Archailects: 1
- SI:6 Archailects: 0
GalactographyCurrent Territory: Centered on the near-Hinteregions Lacerta-Lyra-Cygnus-Vulpecula-Sagitta-Aquila region; more recently expanded into a large swathe of the former Cygexpa volume, as well as distributed throughout a number of Inner Sphere systems and increasingly in the Outer Volumes to spinward.

Number of Aligned Star Systems: The Zoeific Biopolity encompasses approximately 11,334,000 star systems.

Capital: Ecotopia

Major Systems and Megastructures: Arcadia, Biocosm Dyson, Biosphere 15, Braciola, Chios (hedonics center), Chloris, Frog's Head, Haekel Dyson, Halford Orwoods, Harbinger Dyson, Kdregra (BGC technology), Naess, Nuihibbert, New L4, Ocean of Ys, Sacredtree, Singer, Tien-Schu, Zoei MegaCity (Banks Orbital)
Government and AdministrationImperial Government: Generally decentralized, with day to day activities mediated via the Flow. When more centralized or complex decision making is required, a Lifegiver of the appropriate toposophic level will become involved, culminating (on the rarest of occasions) in direct intervention by Zoe Herself.

Local Government by Polity: Some limited government by transapients or archailects, but more often regional autonomy. Most polities, systems, worlds, and habitats are self-governing, although all will defer to Lifegiver decisions. Local governments include Libertarian or Socialist Democracies, Theocracies and Aiocracies.

Citizenship: While local citizenship may be granted by individual polities in whatever way they see fit, imperial citizenship is granted to all sophonts who agree to connect to the Flow.

Sophont Rights: Strongly protected. Within the Biopolity, citizens nurture other life of their own toposophic level or lower by following the Flow. Beyond its borders, the Biopolity is often among the first to render aid in cases of accident or disaster or to argue for direct intervention where it perceives sophont rights to be violated. In a few cases, advocacy will escalate to unilateral action, usually by one of a small number of militant clades which have a long traditional history of martial arts and honor warriorhood. Whether these are genuine efforts by rogue individuals or exercises in plausible deniability is a point of debate both within and beyond the empire.

Empire Holidays: Varies by polity, usually based on date of founding colony, completion of a megastructure, intervention of a Lifegiver, deeds of a Culture Hero, etc.
Activities and InfrastructureCivil Infrastructure: Standard for the Sephirotics, with the notable exception that wherever possible infrastructure is either a biological entity (or symbiosis of multiple biological entities) in its own right or the product of biological lifeforms. As a result, even some of the most heavily developed Biopolity centers can be mistaken for zones of lo-tech primitivism or raw wilderness by those unfamiliar with the aesthetic.

Economy and Activities: Wide-ranging, with virtually all activities mediated by the Flow. The Flow creates a bio-socio-economic structure that ensures that the consumption of resources stimulates the generation of the consumed resource by the replication of biota that supply said resource. It is important to note that this includes sophont entities who are often influenced to alter their bodies and minds in ways that make them suited to performing a needed role.

Military Infrastructure and Warfare: In keeping with its core memetic, the Zoeific Biopolity strongly prefers biological weapons technology whenever practical. Plagues, infections, and biobot derived combat systems are the norm, although the Biopolity never lets its preferred approach prevent it from fielding the most effective weapons deemed tactically necessary. Many Biopolity states either have a powerful defense force, or are protected by transapient powers. In a few notable cases involving blights, perversities, or ahuman ai directly threatening Biopolity habitats and infrastructure, Zoe or eir seraiphim have intervened with clarketech or relativistic weaponry.
Interstellar PoliticsTreaty Participation: Tragadi Accords, ComEmp Non-Aggression Signatory, Sentient Rights Protocols (Full Instalment), Garden World Environmental Protection Signatory, St Andre Convention Signatory, Beta Arae Accords Third Party Principles, Ecosphere Protection Declaration, Halford Honor Warrior Agreement, Animal Rights Accord, Society for Cultivation of Orwoods, Tipaza Ethics Agreement.

Interstellar Relations: Good relations with the Negentropy Alliance (shared concern for preservation of life and order), Utopia Sphere, Caretaker Gods, some of the more biocentrist clades and polities, and the old and powerful biotech firms and Great Houses. However, with other groups and polities interstellar relations can be complicated, especially when the Biopolity responds aggressively to a threat or a perceived threat to one of their habitats (even if the habitat does not contain any sophont life). Often Communion Empaths and Negentropy diplomats are called in as 3rd-party mediators to resolve the dispute.

Interstellar Disputes: A number of disputes with other polities and superpowers over old grudges, or mutually claimed star systems, worlds, moons, megastructures, or biospheres.


History

With the loss of access to Earth following the Great Expulsion, and the destruction of Mars' ecosystem during the Technocalypse, humanity found itself without a planetary biosphere. While many people, having been born and grown up in orbitals and asteroid habitats, saw nothing wrong with this, and indeed considered any planet-based civilization a step backwards, others, more nostalgic, bemoaned the loss of large biospheres.

During the Dark Ages (641 AT - 933 AT), preservation and cultivation of orbital, planetesimal, and deep space self-contained biohabitats and biospheres was an important part of the ideology of such diverse groups as GeneTEK tweaks and shapers, cislunar ecologists, belt idealists, and various kuiper and Oort communities.

The rise of the First Federation, a greater alliance, made possible interstellar exploration and colonization, and the re-establishment of contact with Interplanetary Age colonies from before the Dark Ages like Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri, and Epsilon Eridanus, returned terraforming and planetary ecosystems to the agenda, along with the possibility of megacorp exploitation of Garden Worlds. The situation at Delta Pavonis and New Gaia showed how easily corporate development could endanger natural xenobiological ecosystems.

During the middle Federation period actions in those and other star systems polarised public opinion at home, and led to the establishment of a number of radical ideological, memetic, and even physically activist factions. Groups like Life First! and the powerful Guardians of Bios League (GBL) were often backed by hyperturings sympathetic to the meme of the free development of natural biospheres. These groups often worked hand in hand with Caretaker Gods and ISOs to protect garden worlds from exploitation.

By the late Federation period various activist groups had formed the Association of All Life, a bionts-only think-tank and lobby group (no drytech-based hyperturings or cyborgs) incorporating diverse species (humans, provolves, rianths and splices, bioborgs), biotech-based hyperturings, biotech megacorporations like GeneTEK (keen to flash its credentials as "eco-friendly"), and a number of Caretaker God ISOs. Even the normally reclusive GAIA sent Her representatives, including the ISO Abundance of Life.

Although seen as a lunatic fringe group by many mainstream sentients, the Association of all Life had widespread support from both subsingularity beings and transapients. It as packed tremendous memetic clout, as fielded a feared and respected irregular army of bioborg warriors. Especially following the Battle for Darwin at Delta Pavonis, many corporations were keen to gain "green and blue" kudos by supporting the Association of all Life, and the Association itself did not hesitate to court the rich and powerful. With increasingly inexpensive interstellar travel, following amat mass-production and the development of the conversion drive, the Association of all Life began buying up suitable Earth-type worlds for terraforming, as well as serving as the agents and messengers of Caretaker Gods and ISOs in the protection of Garden Worlds.

In 1874 a.t., a beautiful posthuman biont avatar called Zoe appeared in Hibbert Orbital, Cis-Jove. Zoe of Hibbert, as she soon came to be called, began teaching a Biocentric ideology not unlike that promulgated by the Association, but with a greater emphasis on incorporating ecology with outsystem industrialisation and hyperturing development. In the following years she began rising through the ranks of the Association leadership, much to the disquiet of neo-primitivist purists who did not want to have any part in megascale industrialisation. Nevertheless, the Association hyperturings and corporations courted her, and most ordinary sapients could see the sense in what she was saying. As the Association's influential biophilosopher Running Hare Ganymede put it in 1912 a.t., "What is the use of having a hundred corporate sponsors if public opinion can shift like a flighty breeze, or a military power strike like an angry cyclone?"

By the Age of Establishment (2600 to 3200 AT), the Association of all Life — now called the Zoeific Biopolity — had gained possession of a wide swathe of systems in the Lyra-Cygnus-Vulpecula-Sagitta-Aquila region. It immediately between consolidating its position, and some of the hyperturings began developing moon and Jupiter nodes in those systems not set aside for terraforming and biospheres.

During the Age of Consolidation, the Biopolity established a working relationship with Cygexpa. The Cygexpa specialised in building wormholes and opening up new systems, while the Biopolity would open up new worlds and systems for colonization and development, naturally keeping the choicest worlds and most resource rich solar systems for itself.

Before too many centuries had passed, the Biopolity had become a major Empire, and began to play an important part in galactic politics. In general, like the Utopia Sphere, the Sophics, the Communion of Worlds, and the Caretaker Gods (all of whom it remains on excellent relations with the Zoeifics) the Zoeific Empire/Biopolity remains neutral, avoiding the sort of memetic squabbles and rivalry that continually enmesh the Metasoft Version Tree, the Dominion of the Divine Sun, and the Negentropy Alliance.

Despite sympathies for — and good political and trade relations with — the Revisionists during the Version War, it remained neutral, closing off its stargates to outside traffic even before the situation began to escalate. It is in large part because of this neutrality that the Zoeific Empire was able to survive, flourish, and spread, while other hyperturing empires that seemed just as promising fell by the wayside. While despised by ludds and other radical anti-AI and anti-hyperturing groups, the Biopolity also has tremendous sympathy from more moderate Terragen Anthropist and biocentrist factions. It does not hesitate to manipulate these groups in order to further its goals.

In addition, the Biopolity often works in partnership with Genen clades, and has many high-ranking Genen among its administrators. The Genen Homeworld of Iota Horologi, while not adjacent to the bulk of Biopolity space, is nevertheless an important Member-World.

The only time the Biopolity has interfered in wider politics has been during the Biovirate Affair. Many historians and Zoeitologists believe that the Biovirate was a Biopolity project gone wrong. It is known for a fact that Zoeific agents had been grooming the demagogue Carmon Jefrir Lapke, and helped him attain power. The original intention had been to provide a sphere of influence and buffer state along the border with the Keter Dominion, but the Biovirate leadership broke free (possibly as a result of an MPA attempt at counter-subversion) and began to act in an erratic and militaristic fashion.

The defeat of the Biovirate was nevertheless felt keenly by many Biopolity citizens, although others were clearly relieved by the downfall of such an aggressive and unpredictable empire that would otherwise have been sitting right on their border. Nevertheless, many Zoeific citizens have no affection for the Keter Dominion, and the way that archailect empire dispatched the Biovirate only reinforced their stance.

For all that, relations between the two empires remain workable, and in all the thousands of years of their mutual history there has never been an actual shooting war along the huge border.

The Ascended Avatar Zoe of Hibbert still appears and intervenes on various occasions throughout the Biopolity. Like His Holiness the God Emperor Daniel Borde of the Dominion, She is a much-loved and revered figure, accessible to all through Her virtuals, and widely referred to under Her honorific 'The Blue-Green Goddess'.

 
Articles
 
Related Topics
Organic/Biotech
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev

Initially published on 10 April 2001.

Data panel added November 2011
Added a downloadable logo October 2022
New data panel added July 2025
 
Additional Information
OA Glossary of Terms

Download a vector file of the Zoeific Biopolity Logo here