MJD, hope this inspires... (and hope others join in)
The Fourth Imperium: the living fossil
The collapse of the Third Imperium during the period of Hard Time was not the end of empire as such. Emperors who described themselves as Imperials still reigned from the planet of Phoenix (present day Delphi), for 500 years after the Dulnor incursion to Capital, behind the Black Curtain. The empire today is usually called the Fourth Imperium, but the emperors and their subjects still regarded themselves as citizens of the great Third Imperium, although their language was Cutheric (a language devised by the traders and spacing guild based an obscure dialect of Galanglic). Through much of the splendor of the Fourth Imperium with its luxurious royal palaces, its libraries and public institutions, its scholars acquainted with the writings of Solomani and Imperial antiquity, its 300 worlds and its magnificent palace (TL G) stood out as the one redoubt of culture against the poverty, illiteracy, superstition and endless wars that characterized the rest of Charted Space.
Yet the Fourth Imperium added very little to humanity’s ability to make a livelihood or to its knowledge in those 500 years. In every sphere it relied on advances already known to the old Regency and Reformation Coalition and already known to the Third Imperium before that.
The floating TL G palace completed in 50 NE, was the most magnificent building in Charted Space at the time. But it also marked the end of the Fourth Imperium architects. The innovative techniques employed were not used again, and later architects did not know how to keep it in repair. Hence its resting-place on Table Mountain, is by design not by accident of the Corthian Howling Winds, as claimed by some. Fourth Imperium literature was characterized by a deliberate rejection of originality, with a striving to emulate the style of the classic models and to serve a set of pedantic rules…No literary value was attached to originality of content, freedom of invention, or freedom in the choice of subject matter. The obsession with imitating the past meant the language was the classic Rim Galanglic of 1000 years before not the very different version employed in the empire’s squares and spacelines. When making a formal speech, the orator would shrink from referring to any object by its familiar name. Fourth Imperial art was characterized by a process of continuous limitation until it became nothing more than propaganda, either for the imperial power or for the Yodites.
There were few advances in technology. Alchemists stumbled upon new methods of creating materials, although “scientific methodology” was all but destroyed by the superimposition of occult practices. There were improvements in the manufacture of starships that permitted an uninterrupted flow of trade among the worlds of the truncated Imperium. There were improvements in communication technologies with the acquisition of knowledge from the Hivers on how to make Virus-resistant computers, with several high tech components. Gravatics, jump physics, genetic engineering, terraforming were considered technologies that had brought upon the downfall of humanity, hence discouraged. Yet these advances seem to be employed only in two limited fields to provide luxuries for the ruling class and for military purposes.
There was not even a limited advance in science. A few manuscripts survived which detailed the discoveries in mathematics and astrophysics of the Third Imperium; all but a handful of scholars ever took them seriously. Mainstream thinkers relied upon interpretations from the Book Yod for the understanding of the physical universe.
Josefchais the Historian
Looking Back and Looking Forward.
The Fourth Imperium: the living fossil
The collapse of the Third Imperium during the period of Hard Time was not the end of empire as such. Emperors who described themselves as Imperials still reigned from the planet of Phoenix (present day Delphi), for 500 years after the Dulnor incursion to Capital, behind the Black Curtain. The empire today is usually called the Fourth Imperium, but the emperors and their subjects still regarded themselves as citizens of the great Third Imperium, although their language was Cutheric (a language devised by the traders and spacing guild based an obscure dialect of Galanglic). Through much of the splendor of the Fourth Imperium with its luxurious royal palaces, its libraries and public institutions, its scholars acquainted with the writings of Solomani and Imperial antiquity, its 300 worlds and its magnificent palace (TL G) stood out as the one redoubt of culture against the poverty, illiteracy, superstition and endless wars that characterized the rest of Charted Space.
Yet the Fourth Imperium added very little to humanity’s ability to make a livelihood or to its knowledge in those 500 years. In every sphere it relied on advances already known to the old Regency and Reformation Coalition and already known to the Third Imperium before that.
The floating TL G palace completed in 50 NE, was the most magnificent building in Charted Space at the time. But it also marked the end of the Fourth Imperium architects. The innovative techniques employed were not used again, and later architects did not know how to keep it in repair. Hence its resting-place on Table Mountain, is by design not by accident of the Corthian Howling Winds, as claimed by some. Fourth Imperium literature was characterized by a deliberate rejection of originality, with a striving to emulate the style of the classic models and to serve a set of pedantic rules…No literary value was attached to originality of content, freedom of invention, or freedom in the choice of subject matter. The obsession with imitating the past meant the language was the classic Rim Galanglic of 1000 years before not the very different version employed in the empire’s squares and spacelines. When making a formal speech, the orator would shrink from referring to any object by its familiar name. Fourth Imperial art was characterized by a process of continuous limitation until it became nothing more than propaganda, either for the imperial power or for the Yodites.
There were few advances in technology. Alchemists stumbled upon new methods of creating materials, although “scientific methodology” was all but destroyed by the superimposition of occult practices. There were improvements in the manufacture of starships that permitted an uninterrupted flow of trade among the worlds of the truncated Imperium. There were improvements in communication technologies with the acquisition of knowledge from the Hivers on how to make Virus-resistant computers, with several high tech components. Gravatics, jump physics, genetic engineering, terraforming were considered technologies that had brought upon the downfall of humanity, hence discouraged. Yet these advances seem to be employed only in two limited fields to provide luxuries for the ruling class and for military purposes.
There was not even a limited advance in science. A few manuscripts survived which detailed the discoveries in mathematics and astrophysics of the Third Imperium; all but a handful of scholars ever took them seriously. Mainstream thinkers relied upon interpretations from the Book Yod for the understanding of the physical universe.
Josefchais the Historian
Looking Back and Looking Forward.
Sorry for the misplaced worry.
