Reploid Productions
From NSwiki, the NationStates encyclopedia.
| |
| Flag of Reploid Productions | |
| Motto: "May the Goddess bind our foes with Her chain, and destroy them with Her axe!" | |
| No Map Available | |
| Region | Space Sector RPRA |
|---|---|
| Capital | Arpia |
| Official Language(s) | Primary: English |
| Leader | (Lady Shogun Eternal Under the Wings of Chaos) Firefury Amahira |
| Population | Over 12 billion |
| Currency | Arpean yen |
| NS NSTracker Sunset XML | |
Contents |
[edit] The Shogunate in Brief
[edit] The History
[edit] The Original Clans
The first coherent history of the lands that would later become the Shogunate tell the tale of how the natives eventually made the change from small hunter-gatherer clans to small settled tribes. Gradually, these small clans interacted, some bonding together, others contesting eachother over land , water, or other natural resources. Over time, the tribes coalesced into four main clans. The Pegasii in the southern reaches near the modern capital Arpia, the Drakonic in the far northern reaches of what would become the territory of Aquamarine, the Nekoite centered around the great western bay that would later be named Nekoa Bay after them, and the scattered peoples that would become the Amahira clan in the western desert.
[edit] The Early Dynasties
Coinciding with the first appearance in Shogunate mythology of the Keepers of the Goddess Blades, the Pegasii clan succeeded in subjugating the other three, creating the first real Empire on the continent. It was at this time traditional army warfare began to see widespread use, as before the consolidation of manpower, most fighting was done on an extremely small scale.
Most of the early dynasties counted the Pegasii clan as their founders, a line of rule that was broken only briefly by the first Drakonic Dynasty, which lasted for roughly 150 years before the First Nekoite Dynasty seized power. The Nekoites ruled for approximately 200 years before the Pegasii clan suddenly took the continent by storm, apparently under the leadership of one of the Keepers of the Goddess Blades, a violent, tempermental madman by the name of Xefo.
Xefo's rule continued unbroken for nearly 800 years, the Keeper's thaumatological longevity and sheer power making a revolution seemingly impossible as he killed the other Keepers that supported the other clans, or otherwise drove them into hiding. Despite the tyrannical leadership, this was a fairly profitable time for the common people. Early industry was thriving, advances in architecture resulted in tremendous new temples and civic structures, and thanks to Xefo's magics, many natural disasters such as flood and famine were averted. However, any deviation from Xefo's wishes resulted in bloody retribution upon the guilty party, and often anyone known to associate with the unfortunate person.
[edit] The End of the Pegasii Clan and the Chaos War
The first real challenge to Xefo's rule came when the Far-Searcher and Eldest of the Keepers Najoedo returned to the continent after his long journey, chronicled somewhat in truth in the epic The Journeys of the Far-Searcher. According to Najoedo, he first tried to talk to Xefo reasonably, but the other Keeper refused to listen, and turned to violence as was second nature to him. Forced to defend himself, Najoedo responded in kind. According to legend, the resulting battle was so destructive that it not only razed the Pegasii capital to the ground, but also wiped out the entire clan. It is entirely probable that several members of the Pegasii clan did in fact survive the disaster, but the clan leadership was decimated and and surviving members had to have been so scattered that for historical purposes, the Pegasii clan was completely destroyed.
After this, the Keepers all disappeared, leaving a massive void of power and leadership that needed to be filled. Later called simply the Chaos War, various factions of the other clans vied with eachother for control of the empty throne. From the remains of the Pegasii civilization, new technologies of war were crafted- it was during this war such things as cannon, rifles, and battleships were first used on the continent. Primitive aircraft were in combat service in the final years of the long war, as were early incarnations of modern armored vehicles.
The Chaos War was not one long war itself, but a long series of connected skirmishes, sometimes punctuated with short breaks of peace as negotiations were attempted, or groups had to fall back and rebuild their forces. Alliances were formed and broken, assassinations were common, and it was generally a rough time. Ultimately the Nekoite clan would triumph after the Drakonic and Amahira clans exhausted their fighting strength for good after roughly 200 years of vying for power. Thus the final dynasty was established.
[edit] The Last Great Dynasty
Following the Nekoite's rise to power, the clan subjugated the other clans and unified the continent for the first time in known history. Fighting tapered off as the Nekoa Empire sought to modernize everything from transportation to personal luxury. Using technologies originally used only for war, automobiles and other technological advances became freely available. Even with the advancing civilization and relative peace, however, the Empire still showed its violent tribal roots when dealing with crime and the occasional threat to its power. Despite this, however, the early years of the Nekoa Empire were a generally idyllic period, especially in contrast with the tribal wars that preceeded it, and the insurrections that would eventually follow.
It was during this period that Doctor Kagami Nekura became a prominent figure in the then-emerging field of robotics. After ten years of research and failed experiments, she created what was then hailed as the Holy Grail of advanced robotics: the first truly sentient machine, named Alpha Labor-One. The Doctor's results were confirmed when a second prototype, Beta Labor-One, also proved to be sentient. The development of reploid technology revolutionized everything in the Empire from national security to hard labor as reploids were produced, bought and sold like common appliances.
This eventually would lead to the most violent unrest yet seen on the continent.
[edit] The Irregular Wars
Soon after reploids were available on the common market, the government adopted the oft-vaunted Three Laws- A reploid could not harm a human being, a reploid had to obey a human, and a reploid had to protect its existance so long as doing so did not contradict the other two laws. This effectively meant that reploids were slaves to their organic owners, a fact that rapidly began to fester among a great many reploids. The incident that set events irreversably into motion was the trial and execution of the reploid Theta Labor-Three. The reploid had accidently killed his owner in self-defense, was convicted of behaving in a way irregular to proper conduct, and was executed shortly thereafter. This is the incident that coined the term "Irregular" as a label for reploids who broke the Three Laws. Protests for reploid rights began to pop up, and Irregular occurances began a steady climb.
Two years later, the first organized Irregular uprising occured in the desert town of Lost Ocean, ultimately resulting in the deaths of some 6,000 people and an unknown number of reploids. Taking a cue from the uprising, other reploids staged similar violent uprisings, and organic groups formed in reaction to these explosions of violence.
Over the course of the Irregular Wars, several factions developed. At one extreme of the scale, there were the reploid-supremacists, a group of extremely violent reploids who had decided they were superior to humans and sought to wipe out their organic masters entirely. At the opposite end of the scale was the fanatical Anti-Reploid Coalition, seeking to wipe out what they perceived as mechanical abominations. In between these two extremes were several shades of grey- reploids who were declared Irregular but who only wanted equal rights; the officially sanctioned Irregular Hunters who, as their name implies, hunted down violent Irregulars; and a group of pacifist organics and reploids under the leadership of a reploid named Northwind Windrider.
It was Northwind's group of pacifists that, ironically enough, spawned the greatest heights of violence to be seen in the war. The group colonized a island some distance off the coast, forming the utopian community of Elysium. Outraged by the peaceful coexistance of organics and reploids, members of the Anti-Reploid Coalition stole a nuclear bomb and detonated it in the city of Drakos Lake, while making it appear that the Elysiumites were responsible. Outraged, the Imperial armed forces bombarded the island, destroying the utopia and most of its inhabitants. The survivors, all reploids, formed the so-called Hell's Vanguard, later coordinating a massive uprising in three seperate cities: Jishin, Nekoa Bay, and Pegasii City.
With thousands killed in the fighting, the violence finally began to taper off when the Empire passed legislation limiting the production of reploids, eventually banning them entirely, aside from highly limited specialized production for the government. The economy, adapted to the presence of reploids, began a downward spiral as a result, leading to increased civil unrest and firmer measures in response from the government.
[edit] The Dividing War
As the government clamped down on personal freedoms and became increasingly tyrannical in response to the increasing civil unrest, a revolution seemed to be inevitable. Several fledgling attempts failed before ace fighter pilot Firefury Amahira took the helm of the revolt. Under her guidance, the revolts took a new tone- to unseat the Minister of State Aurora Koneko and restore the actual Empress to power.
The first major move in the so-called Amahira Uprising was to capture the isolated Ytorla base, thus seizing the Empire's limited supply of nuclear weapons and securing a base from which to launch future operations from. Other major attacks included an air raid on Pegasii City and the eventual attack against the Space Taxi mass driver, originally intended for launching stuff into space, but ultimately turned to a more violent purpose.
In response to the revolt, Aurora Koneko had the Space Taxi serve as a giant kinetic cannon, using the weapon to strike at cities flying Firefury's insignia. Drakos Lake, already devastated once in the Irregular Wars, was completely wiped out, as was the city of Kazeryuu in the north. More kinetic strikes would have been inevitable, except that Firefury organized and executed an attack on the huge mass driver that crippled the device. It would remain inoperable until several years after the revolution.
The war came to a climax when the revolutionaries had marshalled the force to lay seige to the capital at Pegasii City. Both sides suffered heavy casualties, and both Aurora Koneko and the Empress were killed. It would take several more years for the rest of the fighting to taper off, and Firefury was declared Empress by acclamation, as she had seized power in the tradition of the original clans. While she had technically founded the first Amahira Dynasty, she instead claimed the title of Shogun, serving an Imperial Throne that no longer existed.
[edit] The Modern Shogunate
The modern Shogunate is run as a benevolent dictatorship- Firefury's word is law. The nation is divided up into a number of local provinces, each with a representative assembly elected by the populous. Most issues with the internal operation of the country are handled by the provincial councils, reporting to the executive offices as needed. The government generally takes a "tough but fair" approach to most issues, and stays out of people's personal lives- a fact that makes it quite difficult to track down and accost members of various violent organizations, most notably the human-supremacy group Mankind Against Nonhumans.
Internationally, the Shogunate maintains a semi-isolationist policy, choosing to interact with only a handful of other nations, while trying to avoid military altercations. While the Shogunate is a pacifist nation, it should be noted that it is a defensive pacifist nation- it possesses a sizeable military, easily enough to effectively defend the country, though not quite as effective for aggressive campaigns. Its space fleets incorporate advanced and varied technology including gravity diffusion, thaumaturgic combat and defensive systems, and powerful ortillery weapons, most notably the Daijuusan Shinken.
The nation has a thriving economy, and also loosely governs its colony nations: Aquamarine to the north of the Shogunate proper, and Dosei on the Ring around Saturn. The country shares its only land border with allied nation Sneaky Bastards, and it also has a number of small mutual defense agreements with a number of nations outside of the Triumvirate of Yut.
[edit] The Peoples of the Shogunate
The Shogunate's population can be divided into five main organic groups, and at least two mechanoid groups- the Four Clans, Humanoid Reploids, and Other Reploids
[edit] Biological population
Most of the Shogunate's population are of the carbon-based lifeform variety, primarily descended from the original tribal clans, though there has been a stable influx of immigrants from outside the Shogunate.
[edit] The Pegasii Clan
As far as anyone knows, the entire Pegasii Clan was wiped out some 2,000 years ago for reasons only recently discovered. The last Pegasii Dynasty, the story goes, was razed to the last man by the Far-Searcher in his battle with the Black Dragon, so the myth states. In any case, the clan no longer exists, and little knowledge remains today about their ways, culture, arts, and so on.
[edit] The Drakonic Clan
Human subspecies who's notable features generally include a tiny pair of bony horns attached to the skull, and a slightly longer lifespan than your basic human. They also tend to be more hot-tempered, and will often be the first to jump into a fight should the opportunity present itself. They make excellent fighters, but poor leaders, hence the Drakonic Dynasties never lasting more than a century or two.
[edit] The Nekoite Clan
Human subspecies best described as "cat-people". Most Nekos have furry catlike ears and tails, though some breeds have fur elsewhere on their bodies, or claws, or fangs. They tend to be more sly than violent, and have a knack for scheming and diplomacy- a tendancy that resulted in the Nekoa Imperial Dynasty taking over shortly after the Pegasii failed, and ruling almost uninterrupted for 2,000 years after that.
[edit] The Amahira Clan
No specific genus. The Amahira clan has historically been made up of outcasts, criminals and fugitives of the other clans who banded together for their mutual benefit. The clan counts expatriate Drakons, Nekos, humans, elves, and other minorities in its ranks. Due to the widely varied membership of the clan, it historically never had the kind of sway needed to establish a ruling dynasty until Firefury led the revolution.
[edit] The Um Lizaans
Originally from Um Lizaa, north of Iraqstan, the original Um Lizaan immigrants to the Shogunate were "exiled" from Iraqstani territories and relocated to the Shogunate in the month-long operation Heaven's Stair. Several hundred of the nearly 200 million refugees perished in accidents in transit or in the first several hectic months following the move, despite the best humanitarian efforts of the Shogunate and the Triumvirate of Yut. Many of the older Um Lizaans still bear a great hatred for Iraqstan for the years of subjugation and abuse they endured, but thanks to an intense schooling program, many of the younger generation are adapting to the Arpean way of life.
[edit] Reploids
Originally created by Dr. Nekura, reploids come in many shapes and sizes. While not quite as numerous as the organic citizenry, millions of reploids still operate in the Shogunate, some of them quite old. They can be divided into groupings based on build type, or by age.
[edit] Humanoid Reploids
The first reploids created were humanoid in design, and to this day, the majority of reploids follow the human body in form. The most common model series is the Labor series that dates back to the first reploids of the Labor-One line, all the way through to the modern day Labor-Twenty-Six line. Other humanoid reploid types include the Skypeace flight-type, Lifesaver emergency operations type, Windrider flight-type, Dragoon combat type, and the Blademaster infantry type, among several others. They have as much range of personality as any human grouping... a fact that contributed to the Irregular Wars.
[edit] Other Reploids
Once reploid technology had developed more, non-humanoid types were developed for various special uses. Most of the non-humanoid reploids are in the form of various dragon-types, likely as a throwback to the nation's mythology. Among the non-humanoid types are the Draco, Drakos, Dragonis, Ryuujin, and Ryuusama dragon-types, the Ookami type (technically a humanoid, but the model was developed by a furry fetishist for... well, furry fetishists.), and several others.
[edit] Oldtimers
These are reploids who were built before or during the Irregular Wars. The youngest "oldtimer" is at least 200 years old. Due to the violence of that time period and the length of time that has transpired, there are very few reploids today that can claim to be oldtimers. Generally reploids of the Labor series up to 12 are "oldtimers", as are the Dragoon, Draco, Blademaster, Windrider, early Dragonis and Lifesaver series.
[edit] Moderns
While something of a misnomer, "modern" reploids were built after the official end of the Irregular Wars, but before the outright ban on privatized production prior to the Dividing War. Labor series 13 through 26 are considered modern, as is the Ookami, some later Dragonis models, and Drakos series. Most of the reploids currently operating today were built during this period.
[edit] Dividers
As the moniker implies, "divider" reploids were built after the ban on private production, but before Firefury Amahira came to power. The Ryuusama, Ryuujin, Labor-27 and Labor-28, Dragoon-II, Skypeace and Tempest models were all built in this period, and the majority of them would fight in the Dividing War.
[edit] Nextgens
After the Dividing War, the country could not handle new reploid production, and it has only been very recently that trial programs have gotten underway to create new reploids, primarily specialized avatars for Shogunate shipminds such as Zeroel or Morphin of the Diplomatic Corps. The Labor-29, Dragonis Alpha, and Dragoon-III are all next-generation reploids.
[edit] The Culture of the Shogunate
[edit] Religion
Despite the tangled history of thaumaturgic phenomenon in Shogunate lands, most people tend to keep religion firmly as a secondary thing rather than a primary part of their lives. Most who are descendants of the original clans still hold a general belief in an omnipotent, omnipresent, but distant and non-judgmental Goddess that created everything and then withdrew to observe. The two primary variations in this faith are that either this Goddess created everything including the deities of other faiths (thereby rendering them inferior or as a sort of divine middle-management;) or that the Goddess created everything, and that the deities of other faiths are simply other interpretations or faces of Her. This deity's female designation and commonly accepted name Shimeki appear to be completely arbitrary, attributed now to members of ancient clans mistaking the Eldest of the Keepers swearing oaths in his deceased lover's name as pleas to a god. Archaic names for the deity include "the All-seer" and "She Who Sees All."
Aside from this, immigration to the Shogunate has brought an assortment of monotheistic and pantheistic religions to the country, though worship tends to be more subdued than it may be in the nations of origin. Various sects of mainstream Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on are represented; as well as more obscure pagan, elf-worship, and dragon-worship faiths.
Most reploids in the country hold little stock, if any, in religion; though that generally doesn't stop them from using exclamations invoking a deity (most often the common oath of "Good Goddess!") That doesn't mean that all reploids are atheists however; there is a particularly notable exception in a reploid by the name of Epsilion Labor-Nine who, during the Irregular Wars had taken a group of human orphans under his protection and for some reason believed very deeply in the Catholic scriptures. He was branded an Irregular for not following a human's orders pertaining to the children, and was destroyed. Epsilion inspired an addition to the Christian scriptures in the Shogunate, the Book of Episilion; and the reploid's remains are now enshrined in the largest church in the country as its patron saint.
[edit] Names to Know
- Firefury Amahira - Wingleader of the 337th Fighter Wing "Queens of the Sky", supreme executive power over the Shogunate.
- Tsume Dragonis - Reploid dragon, Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Surprisingly patient and tactful for somebody who's a six foot long metal dragon built for combat.
- Pirika Drakos - Miniature reploid dragon, head of the Arpean Thaumatolgy Institute.
- Najoedo - Ten-thousand year old being, Eldest of the "Keepers of the Goddess Blades". The nation's foremost expert on most things 'magic', and extremely wise and patient.
- Zeroel Archangel - Electronic intelligence in command of the Archangel class thaumaturgic attack carrier Zeroel. Prominent figure in the Diplomatic Corps
- Tsuki Skypeace - Flightleader of the Tengai Fleet
- Ryken-Ynti Lyna - Flightleader of the Amatsu Fleet
- Oramos Altana - Flightleader of the Tenchuu Fleet
- Velaria Fyiari - Flightleader of the Daijuusan Shinken Fleet
- Reanne Dragoon-II - Flightleader of the Setsujoku Fleet
- Kiy-Aumi Juuro - Flightleader of the Shusen Fleet
[edit] International Organisations
- Triumvirate of Yut - Member
