Back in 2003, I created a minor human race for a mashup setting I'd started work on combining elements of 2300AD with Traveller and Transhuman Space. The minor human race in question was located in a planetary system on a frontier region just beyond the fringes of human space (Beta Virginis, beyond Arcturus at the tip of the French Arm but in the opposite direction from Kafer space, if you're curious).
That setting was never completed. Speaking specifically to the Sygmani, I was never sure if I had gotten the whole point. Non-Terran races--other human races especially--have to have something distinctive to them if they're to be interesting. The Vilani have their history, Zhodani their psionics, Darrians their technology and their ears, and so on. I never figured out what made the Sygmani distinctive apart from their origins in a regional population of humans assimilated/exterminated by a more successful human populations, and their long history.
Anyway. I thought I'd take the old draft and post it here, for others' sake and maybe also my own. Suggestions?
***
The Sygmani are a minor human race (Homo sygmanensis) settled in the Beta Virginis system, on the world of Sygman in the Sygman/i-Sygman (literally, "earth" and "not-earth") binary planet system. Both worlds are approximately Earth-sized and appear to have been gravitationally linked to each other in their present orbit since their creation, but research has revealed that the two worlds were lifeless until 300 thousand years ago. At that time, a precocious interstellar civilization ecopoeticized the two worlds with Earth-derived ecologies and installed a population of homo sapiens neandertalensis on Sygman. This population survived the unknown civilization's devastating internecine war and spread across the surface of Sygman. Circa 20 000 BCE, the Sygmani developed their first industrial-era civilization; however, resource shortages (particularly of fuel) and international war quickly destroyed these civilizations and disrupted the planetary ecology. Circa 5000 BCE, a Sygmani civilization reached a post-industrial level, developing space technology and successfully establishing a small Sygmani colony on i-Sygman before its collapse. Two thousand years later, an i-Sygmani world empire managed to develop ocean-thermal power-generation techniques and extensive undersea colonies, transferring the required technologies to Sygman before its collapse, freeing Sygmani civilization from its resource shortages and allowing industrial-level civilizations to remain active.
In following millennia, Sygmani civilization remained on a plateau, with a kaleidoscopic geopolitical structure that manifested itself alternatively as competing nation-states, unstable global empires, dynastic federalisms, fragmented city-states, and ideological hegemonies. The undersea colonies on Sygman and i-Sygman were able to provide enough resources (energy, minerals, food) to sustain industrial civilization on both worlds. They rarely were enough, however, to support more than limited spacefaring between Sygman and i-Sygman, much less full-fledged interplanetary travel to the sister worlds of the Sygmani binary planet. One notable exception was the launch of a slower-than-light starship by a federation of i-Sygmani nation-states to the marginal terrestrial world known to exist at DM+0 2989 a, but this burst of energy exhausted the federation.
When a Sung trading vessel arrived at Beta Virginis c-I and c-II in 2317, Sygman and i-Sygman wee unified for the fifth time in a single imperial structure. The Manler Empire was founded upon a dynastic union of three major i-Sygmani states and two Sygmani states, later joined by voluntary allies and cemented by a century-long war against holdout states, and unified by relatively extensive use of space technology (used both to maintain regular communications between Sygman and i-Sygman and to reinforce space-based weapons platforms). The Manler Empire differed radically from its previous predecessors in that it combined a taste for interventionism (many of its opponent states were not maintained as protectorates but abolished outright, while internal administration was rationalized on bureaucratic lines) with a degree of popular input (semi-democratic regional and imperial diets regularly voted on the imperial budget and local affairs). The Imperial government was committed to a sort of heavy-handed egalitarianism, opposing slavery and hereditary castes on universalistic moral grounds and favouring a meritocratic biplanetary economy and polity, dominated in places by the Sygmani's ancient economic conglomerates but including large continental areas with relatively balanced economies. The Manler Empire, in short, had the potential to break from the mold of Sygmani civilization given sufficient external impetus.
The Sygmani of the Manler Empire were shocked by first contact with the League. The Sygmani did not have, in their literature or popular mythology, any particularly common concept of intelligent beings of non-Sygmani origin; the closest approximation to this was the idea that lub-Sygmani might return to their native system. The recent history of the Kafer Wars came as a shock to the Sygmani masses--the recorded atrocities committed on a half-dozen worlds were terrifying, as was the news that Beta Virginis appeared to have been a Kafer target for colonization before the Second Kafer War. News of the Sygmani relationship with Earth and with homo sapiens sapiens also came as a surprise; reports that homo sapiens neandertalensis had been exterminated on Earth in prehistoric times by homo sapiens sapiens were rather disturbing to the Sygmani. For its part, the Manler Empire was also aware of its technological and military backwardness, as the primitive weapons systems orbiting Sygman and i-Sygman would be completely useless against a determined attacker. As news of the outside universe permeated into the Beta Virginis system, the Sygmani became aware that they were encircled: the Beta Virginis system lay deep within the self-contained Virginis Sector, and there were only four other Earth-like planets in the entire sector. Their limited technological base meant that these were the only worlds that they could colonize, but already outside powers were encroaching upon Sygmani space--DM+16 2404 a had already been taken by the Indochinese, and Klaxun was under a League protectorate. Obviously, the Sygmani needed to expand, in order to ensure their civilization sufficient space to thrive.
Sygmani foreign policy in the remainder of the 24th century was based on the need--shared by the rulers and ruled of the Manler Empire--to keep the League out of the Virginis Sector long enough for Sygmani colonies to be spread throughout the area, while maintaining a friendly relationship with the League that would let the Manler Empire narrow the gaps separating it from the League. By the 2330's, the Manler Empire had opened direct diplomatic relations with the League of Nations and with most of the stutterwarp-capable powers; there was a Manler embassy on Stark, and before the collapse of the rimward portion of the Ziru Sirka there were even preliminary discussions of a Manler embassy on Vland. The Manler Empire politely refused offers of immediate membership in the League; its ambassadors explained that the Sygmani preferred to maintain their independence for the time being, not while not being friendly. The Sygmani economy staggered under the effect of the imported technologies; living standards dropped even as taxation and unemployment rose. The economic conglomerates survived, if barely, through joint ventures with League partners (offering them a stake in the maturing Sygmani economy in exchange for technology and capital), while the Imperial state survived by co-opting many of the most dangerous dissidents and making examples of the remainder.
The Manler Empire bought a fleet of stutterwarp-equipped transport ships--old York-class models--from the shipyards of Beta Canum in 2337. Although several of these transports were modified to serve as ad hoc system dominance vehicles, their true value to the Manler lay in their ability to transfer large numbers of people from one planetary system to another. In 2341, this fleet was used to transport Manler soldiers from Beta Virginis to lub-Sygman, which was incorporated into the Empire as an satellite world, providing raw materials and colonists for further expansion. Some elements of the Manler transport fleet were placed on permanent detail on the lub-Sygman route, while smaller contingents were assigned to support outposts in the planetary systems in the immediate hinterland of Beta Virginis. Most of the fleet, however, was tasked with supporting the new colony world of vot-Sygman in the DM+10 2531 planetary system, three stutterwarp intervals from the Beta Virginis planetary system.
The experience that the Manler Empire gained from operating its own fleet of stutterwarp transports soon proved to be quite useful as the Sygmani developed their own indigenous space capacity. By the end of the 24th century, the Manler Empire and the major economic conglomerates were all operating their own interstellar-capable spacecraft, visiting the major colony worlds and outposts in nearby barren systems. The Sygmani maintained outposts in most of the planetary systems in the Virginis Sector, with Sygmani space vessels being not uncommon at points as far afield as Lambda Serpenti and Beta Canum. Although Sygmani technology tended to be a patchwork of imports, with most elements being comparable to that of mid-21st century Earth, the Manler Empire had succeeded in making the Sygmani a starfaring race.
That setting was never completed. Speaking specifically to the Sygmani, I was never sure if I had gotten the whole point. Non-Terran races--other human races especially--have to have something distinctive to them if they're to be interesting. The Vilani have their history, Zhodani their psionics, Darrians their technology and their ears, and so on. I never figured out what made the Sygmani distinctive apart from their origins in a regional population of humans assimilated/exterminated by a more successful human populations, and their long history.
Anyway. I thought I'd take the old draft and post it here, for others' sake and maybe also my own. Suggestions?
***
The Sygmani are a minor human race (Homo sygmanensis) settled in the Beta Virginis system, on the world of Sygman in the Sygman/i-Sygman (literally, "earth" and "not-earth") binary planet system. Both worlds are approximately Earth-sized and appear to have been gravitationally linked to each other in their present orbit since their creation, but research has revealed that the two worlds were lifeless until 300 thousand years ago. At that time, a precocious interstellar civilization ecopoeticized the two worlds with Earth-derived ecologies and installed a population of homo sapiens neandertalensis on Sygman. This population survived the unknown civilization's devastating internecine war and spread across the surface of Sygman. Circa 20 000 BCE, the Sygmani developed their first industrial-era civilization; however, resource shortages (particularly of fuel) and international war quickly destroyed these civilizations and disrupted the planetary ecology. Circa 5000 BCE, a Sygmani civilization reached a post-industrial level, developing space technology and successfully establishing a small Sygmani colony on i-Sygman before its collapse. Two thousand years later, an i-Sygmani world empire managed to develop ocean-thermal power-generation techniques and extensive undersea colonies, transferring the required technologies to Sygman before its collapse, freeing Sygmani civilization from its resource shortages and allowing industrial-level civilizations to remain active.
In following millennia, Sygmani civilization remained on a plateau, with a kaleidoscopic geopolitical structure that manifested itself alternatively as competing nation-states, unstable global empires, dynastic federalisms, fragmented city-states, and ideological hegemonies. The undersea colonies on Sygman and i-Sygman were able to provide enough resources (energy, minerals, food) to sustain industrial civilization on both worlds. They rarely were enough, however, to support more than limited spacefaring between Sygman and i-Sygman, much less full-fledged interplanetary travel to the sister worlds of the Sygmani binary planet. One notable exception was the launch of a slower-than-light starship by a federation of i-Sygmani nation-states to the marginal terrestrial world known to exist at DM+0 2989 a, but this burst of energy exhausted the federation.
When a Sung trading vessel arrived at Beta Virginis c-I and c-II in 2317, Sygman and i-Sygman wee unified for the fifth time in a single imperial structure. The Manler Empire was founded upon a dynastic union of three major i-Sygmani states and two Sygmani states, later joined by voluntary allies and cemented by a century-long war against holdout states, and unified by relatively extensive use of space technology (used both to maintain regular communications between Sygman and i-Sygman and to reinforce space-based weapons platforms). The Manler Empire differed radically from its previous predecessors in that it combined a taste for interventionism (many of its opponent states were not maintained as protectorates but abolished outright, while internal administration was rationalized on bureaucratic lines) with a degree of popular input (semi-democratic regional and imperial diets regularly voted on the imperial budget and local affairs). The Imperial government was committed to a sort of heavy-handed egalitarianism, opposing slavery and hereditary castes on universalistic moral grounds and favouring a meritocratic biplanetary economy and polity, dominated in places by the Sygmani's ancient economic conglomerates but including large continental areas with relatively balanced economies. The Manler Empire, in short, had the potential to break from the mold of Sygmani civilization given sufficient external impetus.
The Sygmani of the Manler Empire were shocked by first contact with the League. The Sygmani did not have, in their literature or popular mythology, any particularly common concept of intelligent beings of non-Sygmani origin; the closest approximation to this was the idea that lub-Sygmani might return to their native system. The recent history of the Kafer Wars came as a shock to the Sygmani masses--the recorded atrocities committed on a half-dozen worlds were terrifying, as was the news that Beta Virginis appeared to have been a Kafer target for colonization before the Second Kafer War. News of the Sygmani relationship with Earth and with homo sapiens sapiens also came as a surprise; reports that homo sapiens neandertalensis had been exterminated on Earth in prehistoric times by homo sapiens sapiens were rather disturbing to the Sygmani. For its part, the Manler Empire was also aware of its technological and military backwardness, as the primitive weapons systems orbiting Sygman and i-Sygman would be completely useless against a determined attacker. As news of the outside universe permeated into the Beta Virginis system, the Sygmani became aware that they were encircled: the Beta Virginis system lay deep within the self-contained Virginis Sector, and there were only four other Earth-like planets in the entire sector. Their limited technological base meant that these were the only worlds that they could colonize, but already outside powers were encroaching upon Sygmani space--DM+16 2404 a had already been taken by the Indochinese, and Klaxun was under a League protectorate. Obviously, the Sygmani needed to expand, in order to ensure their civilization sufficient space to thrive.
Sygmani foreign policy in the remainder of the 24th century was based on the need--shared by the rulers and ruled of the Manler Empire--to keep the League out of the Virginis Sector long enough for Sygmani colonies to be spread throughout the area, while maintaining a friendly relationship with the League that would let the Manler Empire narrow the gaps separating it from the League. By the 2330's, the Manler Empire had opened direct diplomatic relations with the League of Nations and with most of the stutterwarp-capable powers; there was a Manler embassy on Stark, and before the collapse of the rimward portion of the Ziru Sirka there were even preliminary discussions of a Manler embassy on Vland. The Manler Empire politely refused offers of immediate membership in the League; its ambassadors explained that the Sygmani preferred to maintain their independence for the time being, not while not being friendly. The Sygmani economy staggered under the effect of the imported technologies; living standards dropped even as taxation and unemployment rose. The economic conglomerates survived, if barely, through joint ventures with League partners (offering them a stake in the maturing Sygmani economy in exchange for technology and capital), while the Imperial state survived by co-opting many of the most dangerous dissidents and making examples of the remainder.
The Manler Empire bought a fleet of stutterwarp-equipped transport ships--old York-class models--from the shipyards of Beta Canum in 2337. Although several of these transports were modified to serve as ad hoc system dominance vehicles, their true value to the Manler lay in their ability to transfer large numbers of people from one planetary system to another. In 2341, this fleet was used to transport Manler soldiers from Beta Virginis to lub-Sygman, which was incorporated into the Empire as an satellite world, providing raw materials and colonists for further expansion. Some elements of the Manler transport fleet were placed on permanent detail on the lub-Sygman route, while smaller contingents were assigned to support outposts in the planetary systems in the immediate hinterland of Beta Virginis. Most of the fleet, however, was tasked with supporting the new colony world of vot-Sygman in the DM+10 2531 planetary system, three stutterwarp intervals from the Beta Virginis planetary system.
The experience that the Manler Empire gained from operating its own fleet of stutterwarp transports soon proved to be quite useful as the Sygmani developed their own indigenous space capacity. By the end of the 24th century, the Manler Empire and the major economic conglomerates were all operating their own interstellar-capable spacecraft, visiting the major colony worlds and outposts in nearby barren systems. The Sygmani maintained outposts in most of the planetary systems in the Virginis Sector, with Sygmani space vessels being not uncommon at points as far afield as Lambda Serpenti and Beta Canum. Although Sygmani technology tended to be a patchwork of imports, with most elements being comparable to that of mid-21st century Earth, the Manler Empire had succeeded in making the Sygmani a starfaring race.
