Sept Châteaux de la Grande Morille

Sept Châteaux de la Grande Morille
Government	Tahora Whai
System	Écu
Tech Level	TL 4
Population	Tens of Millions
Atmosphere	Corrosive and Invasive
Biosphere	Microbial
Temperature	Variable Cold
Planet Tag 1	Rigid Culture
Planet Tag 2	Tyranny
Mechanical Tag	Reroll a FC generation die
Ruin	No

Sept Châteaux de la Grande Morille (aka Sept Châteaux or Seven Castles) is a treacherous world at the edge of the sector located in the Écu and the Kikorangi o te Tahora Whai. Life on the planet struggles and toils, not just for the inhospitable atmosphere and the fungi which coat the world, but for the tyranny of its elites. Sept Châteaux, as the name implies, is marked by seven fortified cities. Of the surviving five, each is lorded over by its own house.

Governorship of the world is nominally held by the regional houses and lord mayors, but access to the sector is controlled exclusively by patrol ships of the Tahora Whai. As a result the Whai have a dominant influence on the comings and goings of the world.

Astrogeography

The surface of the planet is dominated by large polar regions which are detrimental to most forms of life. Expansive ice sheets and simple gravel deserts are common across these polar regions. Either side of the tropics, the climate of the planet transitions into boggy tundra and dense boreal forests. However, these forests are characterized by tall fungal species rather than coniferous trees. Swamps and marshes of Sept Châteaux are nigh impassible on foot during warm months, but freeze over in winter. Around the equator, a temperate zone of colorful mushroom forests and deep algae-filled oceans provide comfortable climes for most sapient life. Tall, craggy mountains and dramatic fjords mark the coastlines, while scenic lake districts invite adventure seekers inland.

The atmosphere of the world is, much like the surface, pervasive with fungal spores and various airborne bacteria. Many of these microbes are impossible to keep out of environmental suits and buildings with passive filters. Active filtration systems need constant maintenance and repair for the health of explorers and residents alike. Repeated exposure to the raw atmosphere is correlated with adverse health effects and early death. Some gene engineering and adaptations allege to mitigate risk and prevent these symptoms, although they are very costly and risky in their own right.

Castle Cities

The cities of Sept Châteaux were all founded around grand estates, or castles, of the original directors. Much of the architecture of the world is built on a practical and functional ethos championed by La Compagnie. Each city is home to several million people. In some areas of cities, large apartment blocks work to shield neighborhoods from strong winds and treacherous weather. During the paranoid era of the Glitch, and later the Baron’s War the cities were fortified into proper castle towns with extensive security networks.

Le Marais - The boggy wetlands of Le Marais are rich in natural resources but utterly impossible to navigate during the warmer months. The family Arnault manages this region.
Mouette - A coastal city focused on algae production and other aquaculture. Ruled by the family Mouette who’s founder named the region after themselves.
Palais Rouge - The Red Palace, is situated in the heart of a rose-colored fungal wood. Red caps of the forest are all part of a single individual organism that rises up through the ground across hundreds of kilometers of land. House Seang-fort rules this region with an iron fist.
Rivière Rocheuse - At the edge of the planet’s habitable zone, the city and its hydropower plant harnesses the power of the planet’s seasons into an industrial monolith. Local mines provide ore and spaces to cultivate edible mushrooms. The titular river was once seeded with fish, but centuries of runoff and overfishing leaves only the only safe catch as the exclusive property of the Loup family.
Sedan-sur-Mer - Built into the side of the cliffs and bluffs over the sea, Sedan, like Mouette, is an aquacultural city. The Decaturs govern the city and its gulf.

Lost Cities

Bois Fort - meaning “Strong Wood” the boreal forests were full of tall mushroom colonies that on first impression appear to be giant conifers. Despite the look of them and the name given to the towering ‘trees’ are a poor material to build in their natural state. Factories in the city were once able to process the biomass into a study concrete. Some of these structures survived the destruction wrought during the Baron’s War but the city as a whole did not.
Châteauneuf des Montaignes - Perched in the high mountains, Châteauneuf was the last town established during the planet’s founding. Mining and refining of those captured resources was the primary industry until the Baron’s War and its devastation.

Refueling Station TBD

Established by Tahora Whai on Turn 34

History

Founding

First discovered by the Mandate who established outposts on the neighboring world classified as Planet CT, the world later known as Sept Châteaux was remarked as a hostile world not easily settled. All would change after the formation of an exploratory company known as La Compagnie du Cinquième Écu, or simply La Compagnie. The business founded seven city locations with extravagant offices in each. La Compagnie’s plan was to cultivate the microbial life, mostly fungal spores and simple algae, and derive foodstuffs and starship fuels from it.

As a new colony Sept Châteaux promised immigrants a chance at new beginnings and a foot in the door of a growing industry. None answered this call in as many numbers as the Nipaimuat, a nomadic group who had faced a devastating war and disease in a neighboring system. With a fresh start, the Nipaimuat were able to apply their technical skills and ingenuity to the development of the fledgling colony. In the early years they proved themselves an irreplaceable asset to the directors. Soon La Compagnie became a regional player in the agricultural market.

Attempts at refining a viable starship fuel from local biomass struggled in fits and starts. While theoretically possible, the process was expensive and produced an inefficient substitute. A famous trial run between the two main planets of the system proved the new fuel could be used for intrasystem travel in a pinch, but otherwise was best relegated for atmospheric and terrestrial transit modalities. The requisite energy density was not quite achievable. Despite the funds and expertise invested into the project, the biofuel was also not suitable for interstellar drives. After the public setbacks and soft failures, refineries across Sept Châteaux cut hours and wound down production.

With more and more wealth flowing to the world, the colony grew and grew. But so too did the pocket books of the directors and elites. Weaponizing a bureaucracy of their own making, La Compagnie demanded more and more of the working class laborers and technicians. Quotas rose along with the profit margins enjoyed by the rich. The grand estates and offices at the heart of each city ballooned into opulent mansions bursting with treasures from across the sector. Wealth disparities and social inequalities grew and grew.

Common Hands Movement

Tensions between the working classes and the directors hit a fever pitch with the public marches and demonstrations by the Common Hands Movement. Common Hands was a mass protest against the tyranny of La Compagnie’s policies. A summer of walk-outs and civil disobedience brought the directors to the table. The Board of Directors reluctantly agreed to many of the worker’s demands and provided moderate legal protections. In the decade following the Common Hands Movement was championed as a victory for the working class and a model for future action if necessary.

As much as the movement achieved for the factory worker or field hand, it threatened the elites ten fold as much. Paranoid at what a second bout of civil unrest would mean the Directors invested heavily into personal retinues and private armies to protect themselves and their assets. The primary tasks of these so-called peace keepers was to break up unions, quash dissent, and seize contraband. Mansions of the directors were also fortified into veritable castles, simultaneously isolating themselves from the people and lording over them from on high. So long as the directors had a say, their perceived failures during the Common Hands Movement would never be repeated. A strict enforcement of the social order was seen as the only way to ensure the prosperity of La Compagnie. Soon after, that promise the directors gave themselves would be tested.

The Glitch

The Glitch was a sector-wide collapse of various advanced technologies including the interstellar jump gates. Sept Châteaux was isolated from its major business partners and clients. Only the Mandate World now known as Planet CT was within reach. As the sole source of food locally, Sept Châteaux siphoned the wealth of its neighbor with extortionate rates. Leveraging their dominant position, the ruling classes of Sept Châteaux bought the rights to ancient noble titles including Duc, Comte, and Baron from their neighbors. The directors and their families gave themselves a mandate, not from some heavenly being from up on high, but to uphold the gods of profit, quotas, and greed.

A repressive regime, before the glitch became absolute tyrannical afterwards. Openly hostile to the working class, the neo-medieval directors and lord mayors exercised complete control on their ‘subjects’. Paranoia, originally aimed at the laborers, was also applied to neighboring cities. Rivalries between directors were accelerated by the limited resources. They grew into full on feuds. Isolated from each other, the elites rallied around their families and loyal retinues in their ivory towers. The eccentricities of the directors, once a novel quirk of a particular individual, multiplied into cartoonish extremes of a noble house.

The Baron's War

The nobles of Sept Châteaux typically reserved their capacity for violence for their workers rather than each other, but a brief period of open war persisted two hundred years ago. The Baron’s War, as it is known, lasted for 12 years of on and off fighting. Early battles were performative showcases of arms and “honorable contests” of professional armies. Later in the war prisoners and common laborers were armed and thrown into battle. In Le val de Dominique, as many as a million combatants were tossed into the meat grinder. Conflict culminated in a standoff between two neighboring cities: Châteauneuf des Montagnes and Bois Forte. Each side had aimed devastating warheads at each other with the threat of mutually assured destruction. Records don’t survive of why or which side fired off their munitions first, but unsurprisingly they both met the same disastrous fate. The city states wiped each other off of the map. It is rumored that survivors of the fallout fled to the woods and hills and continue to live off of the land. Particularly conspiratorial folks suspect that the nobles launched their nuclear missiles to prevent a popular uprising from spreading beyond the region. In either case, the Baron’s War ended with only five of the seven original cities still standing.

Rediscovery

The arrival of Whai starships, the Waka Horua, in Écu system at the end of the second year of the modern age brought Sept Châteaux back into the sector. Whai explorers were appalled by the inequities enforced by the ruling classes. The pirates and whalers kept an eye on the goings on of the Écu system and regulated the trade passing through the region. Access to the common market through the Space Truckers in some ways reinforced the dominance of the elites' power over the local economy. Conditions for the common worker, failed to improve in any meaningful way.

Intervention was seen as the only way to restore some semblance of decency on world. The Whai soon established a refueling station and bases in each city. They provided soup kitchens and cybernetic treatments to the people. All while plotting to upset the tyrannical order of the elites.

Culture

La Compagnie and Houses

Mostly dissolved from its original state, the La Compagnie du Cinquième Écu exists in name only. Officially, the noble directors still have a forum for cooperation and resolving disputes, but too much rivalry and animosity has divided them to settle their ancient feuds. Each division, each city acts as its own insular city state. They only begrudgingly rely on each other if the cost of trade is worth it. The surviving five cities are each led by a noble house descending from the original directors.

Duc Arnault de Le Marais

The swampy ground of their city is no match to the grime and muck embodied by this house. The Arnaut are willing to stoop to the lowest level to one-up their rivals and will use every dirty trick in the book to screw over their workers.

Comtesse Decatur de Sedan-sur-Mer

Tee-totalers and quixotic bookworms, the Decatur family push their workforce to the absolute limits in the pursuit of absolute efficiency.

Duc Loup de la Rivière Rocheuse

Industrialists to the max, House Loup hunger for profit and are ready to seize what little property their workers have when quotas aren’t reached.

Marquis Mouette de Mouette

Some say the sea air does one good, but the Moulette family may be proof of the opposite. Said to be plagued by demonic forces from the depths of the sea, the family turn to their personal psychics and fortune tellers to sort out their affairs when faced with tough decisions.

Baron Sang-Fort du Palais Rouge

A particularly violent family who are quick to anger.

Bureaucrats

Operation of a million person corporation is functionally beyond the purview of simply a noble family. Granular management is affected by a class of bureaucrats, magistrates, officials, managers, and supervisors. While C-suite level operations are conducted by members of the house, everything else is governed by cadres of loyalists. Ardent social codes maintain a strong division between these bureaucrats and those above and below them on the social order. These positions receive improved conditions

Advancement into the managerial class is technically possible for experienced workers who have demonstrated unfailing loyalty to their liege, but is practically impossible. That said, a handful are raised to these ranks each quarter. However, these promotions are typically reserved to maintain hope for personal improvement for common laborers. Superficially meritocratic, what tier of society one is born into is a better metric for standing than anything else.

Corruption is rampant, but so long as the elites keep getting their dues nothing is done about it.

Peacekeepers

Tyrannical rule and strict social mores governing millions of people would be impossible to maintain without a dedicated policing force. That power is given to the peacekeepers. Led by officers known as Chevalier du Corps (Knights of the Company) they exercise the will of the noble families they work for. The primary duties of the Chevaliers are to break unions, suppress insurrections, enforce social norms and etiquette, and to apprehend criminals. These troops have the power to be judge, jury, and executioner; so long as the suspect is of a lower social class.

Each Chevalier is member of the personal retinue of their liege lord and is afforded many of the same luxuries. However, their stipends are expected to be spent on enlisting and training subordinate enforcers. A significant portion of the peacekeeper’s actions are the acquisition of alleged contraband and other property to maintain the liege’s retinues.

In the brief periods of open war that Sept Châteaux has faced, the Chevalier du Corps led the city’s armed forces against each other.

Working Class

The beating heart of the company towns, the workers and laborers of the world are the source of its rarified wealth. A majority of working class people trace their lines back to the Nipaimuat people who first came to Sept Châteaux after a devastating war. It is not uncommon for folks to curse their ancestors for signing those founding employment contracts as it has led to the struggle for survival of millions. The nomadic life of the Nipaimuat, for all of its trials and tribulations, was lost when they settled here.

Working to the bone in the mushroom caves and algae fields, the common laborers see nothing of their toil. Company tactics of garnished wages, collective punishment, impossible quotas, ever increasing rents, shrinking ration books, and other malfeasances push the common folk further and further into the dirt. False promises and jack-booted ‘peacekeepers’ reinforce the messages that they aren’t valued. For a few decades, the success of the Common Hands Movement upset the balance of power, but all those reforms failed to last as the elites chose to ignore the rules. Organization, even thinking about it, is cursed enough to get a visit from a Chevalier or their troopers.

Hope however does remain with the working class. Common tales, spoken in the language of their people, tell of a band of survivors who escaped the devastation of Bois Forte and Châteauneuf to live in harmony with nature. These free-folk are said to embrace the nomadic lifestyle of their ancestors.

Diets

While Sept Châteaux is a regional powerhouse when it comes to food and agricultural products, access to them is highly stratified.

Common laborers are relegated to only eating the most simple rations. Mostly derived algae pastes and agar or reconstituted mycoproteins provide sustenance to workers. On feast days or special occasions dishes like vegetable stir fry or krill chowder are enjoyed by the whole family.

For elites, the noble houses of the directors and their toadies, they can eat practically whatever they like. With greater access to the world’s food they rarely, if ever, stoop to eating common rations. Mushroom Steaks, Sea Snails, Nori Salad are typical fare. But for the top of the top, introduced fish and game, real meat, can be seen on their plates.

SWN Worldtags

Rigid Culture

The local culture is extremely rigid. Certain forms of behavior and belief are absolutely mandated, and any deviation from these principles is punished, or else society may be strongly stratified by birth with limited prospects for change. Anything which threatens the existing social order is feared and shunned.

Enemies:

Rigid reactionary
Wary ruler
Regime ideologue
Offended potentate

Friends:

Revolutionary agitator
Ambitious peasant
Frustrated merchant

Complications:

The cultural patterns are enforced by technological aids
The culture is run by a secret cabal of manipulators
The culture has explicit religious sanction
The culture evolved due to important necessities that have since been forgotten

Things:

Precious traditional regalia
Peasant tribute
Opulent treasures of the ruling class

Places:

Time-worn palace
Low-caste slums
Bandit den
Reformist temple

Tyranny

The local government is brutal and indifferent to the will of the people. Laws may or may not exist, but the only one that matters is the whim of the rulers on any given day. Their minions swagger through the streets while the common folk live in terror of their appetites. The only people who stay wealthy are friends and servants of the ruling class.