The solarpunk tribal world is detailed here, here, and here.

I built the world because it's what I wanted to see in the late-20th to early-21st century. But it's weak on the question of how that came to be. So I thought some theory-experts might be able to mutual-aid me 😉

Why did this world come to be?

• Economically: A moneyless world where labour is organised by kinship obligations and local cultures are self-sufficient for the basics.

• Politically: Öcalan-style democratic confederalism: your local folkmoot or veche makes local decisions. They send representatives to the country-level popular assembly, they in turn send representatives to the continent-level popular assembly, and they in turn send representatives to the world-level popular assembly which does things like stops wars from escalating. Russian doll democracy.

Ok I think I've laid out the question well enough now: why did the economy become/remain moneyless and clannish, and why did democratic confederalism become powerful? And how can this be explained in terms of class struggle? Let me know if there's confusion and I'll edit.

Now, towards an answer –

• Actually a lot of the inspiration for it all came from Mutual Aid Among the Barbarians, and less so Mutual Aid in the Mediæval City: clans living together helping each other. Comrade K mentions "The Teutons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, and others", and the chapter is largely about the Russian mir. So should I say they struggled against Roman/feudal systems and won, beating out manoralism that later became enclosure and capitalism?

• Another thing I could use: around 1100AD in America, Hiawatha creates the Great Law of Peace and the Iroquois Confederacy with five tribes and later added a 6th.... What if in the alternate history this confederated more and more tribes and became really huge? But that's not historical materialism.

• The first reply I ever got said, "I feel like, at first, you need to address a kind of Columbian Exchange"... but what if instead of crossing the Atlantic, they cross the Pacific?? So it's an exchange between say Chinese societies and ones like the Tlingit.

• I have lots of other little historical tidbits that could force to the tribal side of the dialectic: Pashtun with their jirga assemblies, Chechens as free and equal as wolves, the stateless Igbo, and many others.

Not to be confused with Deluge (Poland-Lithuania).

The Deluge of Elephants, also known as simply the Deluge, was the largest refugee crisis in human history. It resulted in a major economic crisis and health crisis in much of Europe as an estimated 72 million Usonians fleeing the Second US Civil War migrated to the region in the five-year period between 2037 and 2042, triggering multiple disease outbreaks that together killed approximately 4 million people. The name of the Deluge of Elephants is in reference to the "White Elephant Brigade", a derogatory term for the Usonian migrants, associated with European tabloids' assertion that the United States of America in the midst of its second civil war was also waging an economic war against Europe by sending refugees to the region as white elephants — "possessions which are difficult to dispose of, and whose cost of upkeep greatly outweighs their value".

Europeans' attitudes towards the Usonian refugees was at the beginning of the crisis known to be largely highly positive, even with the resulting material strain. However, attitudes towards the refugees soured as the crisis deepened, famously resulting in the trend of "Laser Troopers" who would assemble in large numbers to shine illicit laser pointers into the cockpits of airplanes carrying Usonian refugees. On the other hand, though the term "oh-ro" today has more positive connotations, it was originally used to mock Europeans seen as overly sympathetic to the Usonian refugees. The term "oh-ro", or "to sing oh-ro", was specifically originally in reference to the Dublin "Deaf Ears" incident of 2038, where a flash mob performed the Irish folk song "Óró! 'Sé do bheatha 'bhaile" to welcome a group of Usonian refugees at Dublin Airport who had, unbeknownst to the mob, been deafened by an uncontrolled decompression incident mid-flight.

The first amclub was founded at Saint-Louis Middle School in Liège in 2041 in response to widespread bullying of Usonian/American students; this is considered to be the recognized beginning of the Usonian-American split. Even today, Americans are still commonly distinguished by their relationship to the Deluge of Elephants: Americans whose families have continuously lived in Europe since prior to the Deluge are today known as Old Dogs, and the descendants of the Deluge-era refugees are known as the New Litter.

The Deluge of Elephants, its origins, and its impact are of much interest to scholars. Consensus holds that the bourgeois factions of the Second US Civil War intended for the relocation of settlers to Europe among other regions to be a temporary measure, such that they could return to settler life postbellum. The ultimate failure of this plan is attributed to the state of class conflict in Europe and the USA at the time, and to contradictory interests and changing dynamics within the bourgeoisie of either region. The exact details of this analysis remain hotly debated, however.

Scholars take particular interest in how the crisis was presented by liberal political parties and media in Europe, who were criticized for xenophobic statements, scapegoating, and opportunistically co-opting and distorting the language and rhetoric of leftists during the crisis. Scholars also take particular interest in how the crisis was exacerbated by capitalism, including government policies criticized as irresponsible or as wealth transfers to the bourgeoisie; and scholars continue to debate what the exact motives of the European and Usonian bourgeoisie were during the crisis, including the degree to which the crisis was engineered versus accidental.

The Deluge of Elephants and the resulting Usonian-American split resulted in a high level of class consciousness among Americans. This is widely considered to be a major part of the prelude to both the Locotian Revolution and the Socialist Revolution in Europe.

Most of the cultures in the non-colonial solarpunk universe – written about here, here, and here – are also in your crappy universe. The Merina, the Marra, the Māori are all there – but with more dignity, able to look anyone in the eye as an economic and cultural equal.

Yet technology has also created newer cultures not seen on Terra. These new groups couldn't but follow the only pattern they know: living in mutual aid groups self-sufficiently within the ecological limits.

One such neo-tribe is the Cloud Nomads. Sky Truckers. They emulate the traditional nomadic groups that surround them, but with the new addition of solar-powered airships.

Their ships are solar-powered, taking advantage of the higher solar irradiation found at high altitudes. The typical ship is similar in size to the LCAT60T airship in your universe. That means is has about 60 metric tonnes of lifting power. About 65% of this is for hauling cargo. The rest? That's home. Your home in the clouds. An airship might be home to about 22 people: their bedroom, bathroom, shared kitchen all lightly lifted by a helium-hydrogen mix.

Everything must be light. We love balsa wood. Some furniture is made using tensioned bits of fabric and rope. Light and airy. As a crew member, you are allowed 1000kg (less on some ships) for everything: that's your bed, your water ration, your body, everything. Better bring an e-reader.

We like silk, it's is a part of our lifestyle. From the year 2031 onwards, we start to use a lot of spider silk the biopunk guild has learned how to produce. We use it for clothing and rigging, and in the construction of our ships. Spiders are creatures of the sky.

Karl Marx said: "Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish society."

This world doesn't depend on trade much, yet there is some. Sky Truckers play an important rôle in that trade: bringing goods to spots that aren't easily reached by sea or other means. Other cultures are nearly totally self-sufficient. The Sky Truckers a little less so, they are Marx's intersticial tribe. They are self-sufficient for energy and water, but only half so for food. Cloudmen depend on landlubbers for some food, heavy industry, and of course for their ships to be built. Yet they harvest the food of the sky as much as they can: it would be unthinkable to not feed yourself.

Some cultures live by a sacred river that gives them life. The cultures of the Sahara manage their qanat through the generations. Skymen have no rivers or wells: they live on clouds. Their ships can unfurl a mesh net like the wings of some immense mechanical bat, and fly through a cloud, filling its tanks with the purest of water. (These tanks are only big enough to hold a few days' water: lightness is always on their mind.)

Eat the sky. Ancient Greeks ate lots of species of birds, including mallards, pigeons, blackbirds, larks, sparrows, and cranes.

You idiots hunted the passenger pigeon to extinction but our world did not. They're a reliable food source when our wanderings take us to North America.

We go to Africa in June-August and participate in the quelea hunt with nets deployed from our ships. For small birds, the trick is to remove the head and feet and then cook 'em whole; you can eat the bones 'n' all: just crunch it down! The stewing softens those small bones anyway.

There's also edible pollens in the air, and technology in later eras allowed these to be sucked up efficiently. A high pollen count is 10g per m³ which is really quite a lot of food if you think about it. This PDF says they "found the most pollen at 600 meters" – up in the realm of the Cloud Nomads.

This culture is the least 'permanent' of all cultures in the solarpunk world. Typically, people follow this lifestyle for a few years in their 20s and then go home. It is an exciting life because we travel to festivals bringing equipment in and out, travel to disaster zones delivering emergency aid. We are young, able-bodied people, good with knots and rigging, good with our hands.

The gliders in the cargo deck become lifeboats in the worst-case scenario, but normally they're used on hunting trips. I love to take my glider out from the bottom deck and hunt big game high in the sky. The Southern screamer is an "excellent flier and soarer" and has as much meat as 1½ chickens. (It is eaten somewhat in your dumb universe too.) The most coveted game is the whooper swan, the Canada Goose. Mallards are also pretty good. Radar helps us find game. Eating swans and pigeons might seem weird to you, but it wasn't to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, for example.

The pattern of nested mutual aid groups is universal. Among Bedawin down below on the ground, several 'bayt' form a 'goum'; among the Yolŋu, several 'Ḻikan' confederate into a 'Bäpurru'. Here in the sky, you and your shipmates help each other with cooking and loading/unloading cargo, while your fleetmates support you in other ways. A typical fleet has 28 or 29 airships, each averaging 22 souls. You probably don't have a doctor on your airship with you, but your fleet has a doctor. One ship has the shared Fabrication Workshop (pictured above). One ship has the nightclub.

We can cover 2000km in a day when we need to, or more if the wind favours us. A fleet can haul 1000-1100 metric tonnes (28-29 ships with 30-40 tonnes of cargo). When we show up, we can set up a festival in 72 hours, evacuate 4000 people from a disaster area. That is our power, that is our contribution to the wider world. In return, they provide us the things we can't get in the skies. This agreement is formalised at the highest levels of the democratic federal assemblies.

Our storytelling nights are rich with wild stories of UFOs, as well as tales of the roc and Pouākai. One guy in my fleet claims he has seen the 'jellyfish UAP' you might have heard about.

I've posted about this world before here and here.

It's an alternate history. Colonialism never happened in the first place. The world remained tribal, and traditional cultures remain strong. But 21st century tech develops. There is a lack of capitalism and exploitation.

I downloaded these pics from the multiversal interwebs:

Traditionally nomadic cultures – such as this Australian bushman – remain nomadic in the 21st century. But their lives are made easier by technology. Under capitalism, developing technology keeps some people poor but increases the wealth of a few. In the solarpunk, non-colonial world, people use tools like this off-road tricycle to make their traditional lifestyles easier.

North American cultures follow the still-great buffalo herds. They use offroad vehicles that run on gasified biomass they harvest as they go. These vehicles are no faster than a horse. That guy on the right? I guess he's a tourist from a traditional European country; he's visiting his friends. They'll speak the Esperanto-type language to each other.

This picture was taken in a subway station in Cahokia.

This is a typical sight in the northeast megaregion. This is what the longhouses of the Haudenosaunee people look like in the 21st century.

The fishing cultures of North Europe live within the ecological limits. Some fish are still wild-caught, providing 5-10% of the diet. Others are farmed in open ocean farms. Members of a large (town-sized or city-sized) tribal confederacy have the customary right to harvest from these waters, and manage the wild stock and the farms as a commons.

My post linked above discusses guilds. One guild that exists, alongside doctors, tailors, and microchip-fabricators, is the Soapwitch guild. They have knowledge of local wildflowers, oils, and that sort of thing. Their job is to provide soap, perfume, toothpaste etc. for free to members of their tribe (instead of Unilever and Colgate doing it for profit). It's their tribe's reciprocal obligation to give them food, shelter, protection, etc.

Not to be confused with Legacy Americans. For other uses, see American (disambiguation).

Americans (singular: American, IPA: /əˈmɛɹ.ɪ.kən/) are a heterogeneous ethnic group most heavily concentrated in Europe. They descend from the historical Usonian diaspora. Americans first started to be commonly distinguished from Usonians during the Deluge of Elephants in the time of the Second US Civil War; this distinction, often called the Usonian-American split, was solidified by the formation of the American representative organization Amicon and the publication of its manifesto Amdec in the year 2049.

Americans commonly speak English, Spanish, and French, or derived languages, often freely blending these with each other and with the local languages of areas where they live; many Americans are denaskuloj as well. Deaf Americans most often have European American Sign Language (EASL, IPA: /ˈi.zəl/) as their first language, a divergent and variable form of American Sign Language with partial intelligibility with Locotian American Sign Language (LASL, IPA: /ˈleɪ.zəl/). EASL is designated as one of the three federal working languages of the European Federation alongside Esperanto and Interslavic.

Prior to the Usonian-American split, "American" was a historical name of Usonians. The word comes from "America", the colonial name of Abya Yala, which had come to be used totum pro parte to refer to the United States of America. Modern Americans chose to use the name "American" for themselves in part as an attempt to skunk the term in reference to Abya Yala and the USA. Following the decolonization of Abya Yala, however, a name debate has ignited among Americans on the appropriateness of continuing to use a colonial name referencing Amerigo Vespucci. No replacement name has caught on, however.

The American flag is based on the Usonian flag. It depicts nine horizontal stripes of red and white, with a sky blue canton bearing a large red star. The nine stripes reference the nine regional amicons of Europe whose representatives drafted and signed Amdec; while the red star represents the "new lodestar" of socialism. In its original context, as the Usonian flag's white stars represented a "new constellation" of the constituent states of the United States of America, the American flag's replacement of these white stars with a single red star was intended to symbolize Amdec's assertion that Americans "[did] not belong to any state of the USA", and that the USA was an illegitimate and illegal occupation regime. A common practice among Americans known as "scrifting" the flag symbolizes that American identity is based in interpersonal connections rather than claims to land.

In the modern day, the red star is often said to symbolize the role that Americans played in the Locotian Revolution and in the Socialist Revolution in Europe.

Americans are generally divided into the "Old Dogs" and the "New Litter" according to their relationship to the Deluge of Elephants. Other terms or phrases often used by Americans include "retour", "oh-ro", "ami", "see single" and "em and en?".

I've had this idea for a while now of a Universe where Earth is destroyed but the Cold War Continues on Humanity's new home, based on the Verse from Firefly. An early point of divergence is the Survival of Salvador Allende and the success of CyberSyn.
No one is exactly sure the cause of the End of the Earth, only that for the two decades proceeding Humanity's exodus the planet was wracked by increasingly devastating volcanic and seismic activity. In the 80's scientist across the globe began looking for a place to flee, to save even a fraction of humanity from the intensifying devastation. The System was discovered during this period, a massive compound Solar System consisting of 5 giant suns orbited by a dozen proto-stars each in turn orbited by nearly a hundred planets and twice as many moons. News of this discovery led to the race to send Humans to The System. Three projects began development under NATO, The Warsaw Pact, and The Non-Aligned Movement. These massive vessels were built over nearly a decade a assembled in Orbit. An agreement was made to limit the number of original colonists of each ship to 10,000, with more ships to come in the future. No more would ever come. The technology of the time meant the journey to The System would take about 57 years to complete. Generations would be born and die aboard the ships, never to see The System. The worlds that each ship finally touched down on were inhospitable worlds with only the ingredients for one day supporting life. The original shelter of mankind in The System was made of deorbited pieces of their original ships, the hab blocks, reactors, hydroponics and more forming the original Arcologies on the worlds. Here the long work of Terra forming began. For the next 300 years Humanity explored and expanded across The System. the new home worlds of Unity (NATO now known as the Union of Planets), Rebirth (NAM now known as the Rebirth Accord) and Cradle (Warsaw Pact now known as the New Peoples Republic) were turned into Shirtsleeve worlds requiring no survival gear. Each faction began colonizing other planets and moons in The System, while each of the large asteroid belts surrounding the home worlds became home to large "belter' communities. Each faction maintained contact with Earth despite the decades their messenger probes took to reach Earth. Conditions on Earth continued degrading with more and more sporadic communication until 280 years after arrival the last probes to ever arrive from Earth spoke of Apocalypse and Upheaval. This began the "No-Contact" Era becoming year zero of the standard calendar. Around 70 NC each faction had made contact with the other two. While originally met with celebrations on many of the worlds of The System, this would be the beginning of the competition and strife in The System.

Thank you for reading my Infodump , if you have any questions or comments they are welcome.

In many ways the world of Muzhchina LA Mushina is about domination and subservience, both on a national level and on a gender level. But what I haven't talked about a lot here is the interpersonal level and the lives of those who inhabit this world.

Helene Batova is a slightly above average Burgunian who suffers under their political system. She's obviously very proud, but also cold to those around her. She thinks of herself as very mature yet often acts rashly, like when Pierre was grating on her with his enthusiasm for aviation. Deep down she did not really believe Andre's accusations against him, yet she cut off all contacts with him anyways. As she matures she constantly believes herself to have finally become a responsible adult, yet constantly learns that she's still far from grown.

In what has to be one of the least kinky aspects of MLM she eventually keeps Andre, now her lover, on a leash, as if to secure her control over him. She is only fooling herself and doing a poor job of it; Andre's power over her and the abuse he inflicts gradually breaks her in the years following her disconnection with Pierre. She could move to the Orenland occupation areas to find a life where she would be respected for her sex, yet her blind nationalism without being able to see through class relations chains her to Burgune. Even so she eventually manages to build her prototype of an aircraft, but ends up crushing both of her legs on her test flight due to sabotage that was aimed at Pierre, no less. Even when he takes care of her during her recovery, she can't find it within herself to love him because of what she's driven between them herself.

In contrast Zhigao is a much happier woman, from Xibei, which is basically China. While her entire family is dead, and she's heavily injured when she barely escapes to Burgune with the skin on her back, she's happy. According to her philosophy, as long as she's done the best she could, then there's no reason for her to lament her fate. And she still has plenty of loved ones to cling to: Fang Zheng (her boyfriend, still in Xibei and alive due to smoothened relations between the NPA and monarchy), and Pierre as well as his friends. Of course, she's a very sloppy person in her daily life, though determined (seen through the handkerchief she sewed with Zheng's name that Pierre finds while she's semi-conscious off the train), and she semi-secretly desires to be taken care of. And the young men and women she organizes with are truly her friends who would (and did, when she first was ordered to escape to Burgune due to her age) die for her, while many of Helene's 'friends' are quick to abandon her, if not outright manipulative.

At least during the first half of MLM, the culture within the NPA is much more open, with outright revolutionary factors flourishing, while Burgune is a typical conservative monarchy with a heavily oppressive society, weak to outsiders but harsh to its own citizens. Just through these two women alone, it's easy to see how big of an influence where you've grown affects the characters.

The living memory of Saerdastia is one of war and revolution, cataclysm and plague and famine, great upheavals, genocide, unrest, and incredible wonders unlike any seen by prior generations. The youth of today, those born after the establishment of the Age of Peace, do not recall the cruelty and folly of the nobles, their short-sighted and petty ambitions, the horrors of the great wars that followed, the hunger, the chaos, the rage, the despair. They are told to remember those who paid the price of mortal ambition, and who paved the way for the time of plenty and stability they know now, but it's different, remembering, rather than simply seeing it in a mirror.

The simple times before, messy though they were, were slow-paced and predictable. The rich hoarded their riches, wars were waged, crops were grown, trade and commerce flowed, all the various mortal races found ways to coexist even as they clashed. All know the legends of the ancient times, the elves who enslaved everyone with their ordered magics and machines that performed wonders on command. They're told of the rebellion, when the primitives rose up as one and chased the elves into their cities, who hid behind their glowing shields and never came out again. The elves are gone, and so are their glowing shields, but their cities remain, and the wreckage of their machines besides. It was a humble alchemist's assistant who first saw the potential in something as simple as a child's toy, a floating pentad of crystal spheres arranged within the empty space of a simple wire cradle. A curiosity his master had acquired in a card game. The balls would clack together, the force of the first transferring to the last, setting up a physical chain reaction that reversed this and then repeated it, all without the spheres losing their levitational force.

His master disregarded this, the story goes; he was in pursuit of the philosopher's stone, after all. A much more noble pursuit. The apprentice grew frustrated, and fled in the night, stealing the cradle toy and a number of other elven artifacts and lab equipment besides. He studied the crystals, made of aerynite, a curious alchemical substance known for its odd magical storage properties, but it was, like the toy, largely seen as a curiosity, too fickle for much practical use.

The elves clearly knew better. He studied its properties, figured out how to align their structures in the way the elves had, and eventually, he found a way to control the storage, release, and transformation of the essences within. Inside of a year he had a functional levitation engine, and knew how to build more. Knowledge of his devices spread, and he grew rich, and richer still selling his findings to others, allowing this technology to proliferate. Other techniques arose from experimenting with the crystal's properties, and those of the elven machines.

Alchemists and magi were able to reverse engineer many of the elves' incredible wonders: crystalline aerynite-infused "sprites" that levitated matter and manipulated essence to perform a variety of tasks, programmed by elven command glyphs; humanoid golems and flying mechanical scarab spies they could slot into to manipulate from afar; magic mirrors capable of showing flat images and eventually three-dimensional illusions near-indistinguishable from the real thing, and crystal needles that stored these images and sounds; greater and more powerful levitation engines capable of carrying massive airships; scrying devices that could see through solid matter; speaking stones that carried voices instantaneously over great distances; energetic shrouds like bubbles that could be adjusted to hinder or halt light, sound, or matter; weapons like lightning casters and fire sprayers, ice bombs, gravitational reversers, flensing rays that strip away matter layer by layer, cutting beams, and other horrible things barely understood but all-too-eagerly wielded by would-be conquerers and religious crusaders.

The result was predictable: widespread war and upheaval. Kingdoms smashed into each other, consolidated, slaughtered one another, and eventually the noble class started to shrink. Knights were torn to shreds by new weaponry, and martial prowess gave way to conscripted peasants with lightning scepters and flensing cannons in hand, often as dangerous to themselves as the enemy.

Society rapidly evolved in its wake. Mages grew wise to the rules of science and experimentation, constantly seeking an edge over enemy kingdoms. New theories of economic function and development, ways to exploit natural resources, manufacturing, labor exploitation, and exciting new social theories to justify slavery and ethnic cleansing. The most notorious innovator was a necromancer lord so vile his name was struck from history books, and all needle recordings of his experiments on living prisoners, corpses, and undead (mindless and otherwise) are classified and kept out of circulation. Still, he revolutionized medicine, introduced cell theory and germ theory, and discovered methods of limb replacement and rapid healing that are still used to this day. He also developed the method of breaking the Holy Church's anti-undeath protection that they bestowed upon their loyal soldiers, which was instrumental in shattering the loyalty of their ranks and ending their multi-front genocidal holy war. Too late to save the hobgoblins, or most of the orcs and goblins, but it was enough for the dwarven corporate lord to sweep in and wipe them out to seize their mines and treasuries.

The abuses heaped upon the lower classes reached a breaking point. Bit by bit, a revolutionary coalition formed among defectors from various armies. Conditions deteriorated for decades before finally, those who would eventually become known as the Keepers of the Peace gained a pivotal edge when they seized control of the Thunderhead fleet of ships; nightmarish iron-clad flying vessels covered in rods and prongs that manipulate lightning, mobile hurricanes capable of leveling cities with enough concentrated power. This gave them the edge needed for lesser cells to successfully revolt and begin the Great Purge, hunting down any of noble blood and those who served them willingly, eventually fully wiping out all the nobles. Victory was bittersweet; the continent lie in ruins. Farmland was destroyed and unusable far and wide. The druids had gathered their strength and summoned a massive intelligent bed of brambles, which strangled the city of a king who had cut down a sacred forest, tearing out and devouring the minds of those who choked to death on its thorns. The brambles grew massive and they remained hostile to any who would approach, blaming all for the horrors inflicted on nature. A massive maelstrom of never-ending lightning tore apart anything that tried to approach the northern sea. The Necromancer left behind the Deadlands, a peninsula that is all that remains of his self-destructed kingdom. Anything dead there rises up and tries to kill the closest living thing it can sense. The walls keep people out and the land and skies are regularly cleansed, but most people don't want to think about how the borders are still growing by a half-inch or so every year. Nomadic peoples fled to the cities; races that once had bitter blood feuds were forced into close quarters, the peace kept by the revolutionaries who'd killed the nobles and now struggled to keep order in the wake of the wars.

The wars wiped out half the population. Famine and plague and banditry wiped out half of those who remained. In the end, it was the magi who saved everyone, and thus bought their absolution for their part in destroying the known world. Time manipulation was another weapon that had been used in the war, but they created a system of machinery that was able to simulate a closed loop of cultivation at rapid speeds. In this way they were able to rapidly grow at first only mushrooms, but soon enough actual staple crops and eventually even fruit and spices and simple, small animals for meat. The famine was done with practically overnight, and rebuilding began. The Maelstrom and Deadlands are being contained, the repopulation and rebuilding efforts have been ongoing for several decades now. Various societies are adjusting to the aftermath.

The Demodocians (bat people) who fled underground are emerging again, the Dzeturi (bug people) have ceased their extreme isolationism and settled their own internal turmoil enough to function, trade, and slowly restart immigration. The orcs and goblins have joined together as a single nation with widespread and disparate holdings, and pride themselves on having many children. But many orcs and goblins live among the humans and dwarves and halflings and kobolds, who tend to keep to the walled city-states, working in factories or time farms. The druids expand the brambles and accept refugees, and maintain an easy truce with the Keepers by securing lands to restore to their natural state, a process that will take centuries. The Keepers recruit from all walks of life but tend to draw heavily from orcish, human, and dwarven stock. Orcs, humans, goblins, and halflings regularly mix families together, something almost unheard of in prior generations. But nowadays, everyone knows all too well that everyone is simply a Mortal; everyone dies. They've seen it. And they try to impress this upon their children and grandchildren, but among Mortals, old habits die hard. Wealth begins to accumulate, cruelties are tolerated, racial divisions fettered with sputtering feuds over wealth ignite despite laws mandating an end to racial war. The world is messy, as it always was, but at least there's no nobles now. It's a brave new world, there's capital to be made and opportunities to seize. There's no way people will repeat old mistakes.

so i had a dream where a group and i were magically summoning like, liquid stone and by-hand forming it into walls--this is clearly half-baked and inefficient--so how would YOU make or enhance construction processes using magic, sci-fi technology, or fictional materials?

Once you learn how to understand and apply historical materialism and break out of capitalist canards like the myth of barter, it becomes much easier to come up with the things that make societies feel evolving, nuanced, and alive: internal struggles, subcultures and countercultures, political movements, economic bases, social mores and customs. That, plus having a variety of real-world examples to draw from to avoid falling into the trap of capitalist realism.

This one takes place in Burgune, which I don't think I've written about here, but you'll enjoy the expanded lore and story (I hope) anyways.

Pavel Arkhangelsky was born on February 13, 2006 in a hospital somewhere in Japan. His parents lived in the Soviet Union before its collapse. Afterwards, they moved to Japan due to programs that paid relatively well for their technical expertise in engineering. He was enrolled in a local high school, where he met Sayori, who was somewhat sympathetic to his cause. Indoctrination was wasted on him as he had learned Soviet patriotism from his parents from a young age.

Despite his best efforts, Pavel was never more than an average student, in part due to his alienation from his classmates who were complete slaves to capitalist ideology. For his first year, Sayori was his only friend. Though he attempted to join a socialist club, it was full of demsocs and he left angrily.

The following year he was invited by Sayori into the newly-formed literature club, which, under his guidance, became a sort of hub for socialist activities. This culminated in his invitation to Hope's Peak Academy as the Ultimate Marxist Leninist.

Unaware of what was going on at the time, he was thrust into the Killing Game. Though thrown off his footing at first, he was able to gain the trust of the remaining students and used his limited knowledge to construct simple devices such as molotovs and even a rudimentary cannon. Eventually, he was able to escape Hope's Peak Academy.

In March of 2029, when the duties of reorganizing post-verzwieflungkrieg society was at last completed, he married Sayori in Leningrad. Three years following, they had their eldest child, Kiril. Seven years following, another child, again a son named Milorad.

In terms of personality, on the chart thingy I made the fuck up, he can best be described as warm/passion. He obviously cares about his friends, and also excels at political agitation.

After watching the darwin 4 documentary over the weekend I decided skewers were cool and decided to add a variant of them to my story.

So, canonically, the entirety of Silen (the continent Lindsen is located on) was created by Komi(me), and humans were later introduced. Thus, the animals that live there have quite different anatomies from what we're used to. These include the massive flying organisms known as 1/1/17/4. Now this family is quite diverse, and actually consists of two major lineages, 1/1/17/4/1 and its derivatives, as well as 1/1/17/4/2.

1/1/17/4/1 is the older of the two. Organisms of this group have two large jet pods on their backs, while their bodies are torpedo-shaped, with a large mouth that can expand to swallow prey. Teeth are present inside the throat, to aid in crushing it. Juices are digested in the stomach. Most waste is immediately expelled to reduce weight, while nutrients enter the blood. Several large blood vessels flow past the jet pods to cool off, also heating the air inside slightly.

In two organs beneath the jet pods, glucose and fat are metabolized into methane. Upon entering the jet pods, air first goes through several tightly compacted swirls to increase pressure, then into a combustion chamber which expanding muscles can compress. Methane is added here, and electrical pulses from ignition nerves ignite the mixture. A sphincter opens shortly following a compression to allow the heated air to release.

Most members of the 1/1/17/4/1 family have not lost their hind fins. They have instead evolved into two triangular fins that sit directly behind the jet pods, possible directing the flow of air. A single large tail that resembles a boat's rudder is located at the end of the organism and has colorful patterns that may aid it in finding mates. The two wings resemble elongated triangles. The eyes sit close to the lower jaw, and transparent eyelids can cover them when prey is being attacked.

While superficially similar, 1/1/17/4/2 is quite a different family. For one, its jet pods are located at the base of the wings. It lacks stabilizers, as its fins have migrated to where its lower jaw once was to form a sharp, flexible organ resembling a limb crossed with a jaw that can impale prey. It is smaller and faster than its cousins in 1/1/17/4/1, as its smaller size (though it's still very big, it has a wingspan of 6 meters and a length of roughly 3) ensures it can have a faster metabolism.

These two species have been regarded as pests due to their hunting of herds of livestock. In the past, little could be done about them due to the lacking of any weapons that would be effective against their speed. However, developments in firearms have caused a considerable decline in their numbers. If the living jets are to remain in Silen's skies, action must be taken to protect them.

Although, frankly, given all the shit that's going on in Silen, I wouldn't blame them if preserving these species are pretty low on their list of priorities.

Me and my friends have a huge world building project, the whole scope of it would be impossible to explain without several hundred screenshots of discord convos and pictures of notebooks. To summarize everyone is responsible for a fictional country and can make stories about it and how the nations interact with each other. Obviously my country was communist, I called it 'Antegria' (before playing Papers, Please and being like ). I was getting bored of being a good country, so I had my country get couped and became a theocratic empire, and transition to a capitalist economy. This had pretty devastating effects on the people, and very many became poor. One bit of the story I wanted to make is a majority of class-conscious communists in the government, military, and general population fleeing persecution (the junta was killing suspected communists) to another communist country, the Communist Union of Benteria (which is kinda like if west germany and the DDR were both communist, and then unified). The government were very sympathetic to the fleeing communists and gave them a large empty bit of land to make a semi-autonomous commune. Over time, the commune grew enough to the point where 15-16,000 people occupied it, and they started to make a plan to take over the empire in a cuban revolution-esque plan. So a large force travels to a very rural part of the old country, and brings food and healthcare to the farmers and miners, who desperately need it as the austerity and privatisation had put a lot of them out of jobs (many had jobs in nearby cities, as the gov. ran high-speed trains between cities, but when the new government privatised the rail industries, it became prohibitively expensive to travel by train). By doing this across many rural areas they grow slightly in numbers and declare a few rural towns to be Antegria proper, and the junta's new government to be fraudulent. Is this in any way realistic or practical? Or really a way that a revolution could even happen?

This is something tangential I've developed for my science-fantasy world with intelligent animals. For context: In this world, different taxonomic governments represent groups of related species. You have the Felines, Vulpines, Rodents, Avians, etc. Each of them technically belong to a different State but frequently intermingle and live in the same area, and taxonomic governments tend to also have territory/land associated with them where they primarily control the area, but other animals can and very much do still live there. Taxonomic governments have jurisdiction of the species within their scope no matter where they live, and are the ones responsible for having an ID system that works both within their own taxon and with other taxonomic governments and other official organizations.

Instead of making everyone carry ID cards or passports, which would be cumbersome for four-legged or winged animals to use, I envisioned a DNA-based ID system. The tech for this is definitely in the Star Trek levels of sci-fi, but it's basically a flat surface that you press your paw, wing, or other body part firmly onto, and a mechanism below produces a mild energy beam through your fur and skin which interacts with DNA in your cells and gives returns based on the specific sequence, and it's a safe, non-invasive DNA sequencer that can get a full read of your genetic code in seconds. The DNA scanner also checks for things like active metabolism and DNA synthesis and are generally configured to not even attempt to scan non-living cells, so you can't do something like use someone else's severed paw to make the system think you're them.

But since your full DNA sequences can be, for one, several gigabytes long and not conducive to things like printing onto certificates and migration papers or even just sending over the network to other agencies, and also contain actual information about things like your species, sex, family history and a bunch of sensitive stuff that you wouldn't want just anyone having access to, they typically take a cryptographic hash of the DNA and use that as an identifier for an individual animal. Kind of like how humans might have something like a social security number, animals in this world have a DNA Hash that governments use to identify them. Whenever a government agency in our world asks you to show some kind of ID like a driver's license, passport, health card, etc, they just have to scan their DNA and their information is automatically pulled from the right agency, using the hash to look it up. Even things like crossing international borders (of friendly nations) can be done with just a single biometric scan with no passport or ID card required. Basically, if you're animal in this world, the various government agencies around you refer to you as something like "8ed254569e8ddccea1784f569609aa32ced2691e2d22e99583ebd426cac76bd8" which is derived from your DNA sequence, and since you can't change your DNA, the same hash algorithm will always produce the same identifier, but better for privacy since it's impossible to reverse the algorithm and derive the original DNA sequence from the hash, and in theory only your own taxonomic government would have your full DNA sequence stored away on a server somewhere. Also extremely hard to falsify since it's literally identifying your body and not a card or anything that can be replaced.

What do you think? Does a system like this make sense? Are there glaring logistical or security issues that I'm not seeing? (Beyond just having a non-invasive and rapid DNA sequencing system in the first place, but that's what sci-fi handwaving is for.) Do you think a system like this is actually superior compared to physical ID media?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1575977

A well-done article. I never knew about this writer. More research should be done on him.

I should also check out his work sometime.

For context, I have a science-fantasy world with intelligent, non-anthro animals trying to live in peace with each other. A major problem is of course what the carnivores eat, and their solution is something called Dietary Enzyme Supplements, which carnivores take in order to supply artificial, carefully engineered digestive enzymes that allow them to digest plant matter and directly synthesize essential nutrients that would otherwise only be found in meat inside their own digestive tracts. It's something that works really well for its intended purpose and that they're really proud of, and I talk more about their history with solving the predation problem here if you're interested.

For the species, taxa, and factions that have committed to banning predation and having predator and prey live in harmony, dietary enzyme supplements are typically freely available and a guaranteed right under their constitution, along with plant based food in general. Dietary enzymes are ubiquitous and work really well for their intended purpose, and represent the very bleeding edge of their chemistry and nutrition science prowess.

The most advanced dietary enzymes, those intended for obligate carnivores like cats, contain trace amounts of a special quasi-element called Intium as part of how they work, which is also a really powerful substance that power most of their super advanced sci-fi tech. However, due to how versatile and powerful it is, Intium is also extremely dangerous if misused, so it is heavily regulated by the government, and the only real "consumer" product that contains it are those obligate carnivore dietary enzymes. The next most accessible source is hovercraft fuel and the internal components of hovercraft engines, both of which are prohibitively expensive and require an aviation related license to purchase, while dietary enzymes are both free at the point of access and anyone can just go into a grocery store and take them without anyone else batting an eye.

The vast majority of animals that need dietary enzymes do not abuse their free access to them, since there's no benefit in taking more than the required dose and they're just flavourless pills that most animals don't just stuff their faces with. However, this is where amateur chemistry enthusiasts come in, after a post on a science forum showing how to extract Intium from ATDP, which are the dietary enzyme supplements most commonly used by Felines. The process is pretty simple, basically just burn the pills at a very high temperature and in a high oxygen environment to convert the proteins and other support chemicals into carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc, and you're left with a solid residue of mostly Intium oxide, which can then be further processed into pure Intium. This is technically legal since the government doesn't regulate what exactly you do with dietary enzymes once you have it, but the problem is that ATDP, while free to use, still has a high production cost, and only contain minuscule amounts of Intium. A domestic cat for example typically takes one pill of ATDP per week, with the enzymes attaching to the lining of their digestive tracts to prevent the still perfectly functional enzymes from being expelled out the other end after one cycle of digestion and being wasted. However, an unlicensed chemist smelting pills to extract Intium can go through literally thousands of pills in a few hours, and those pills are paid for almost entirely by Feline tax revenue so neither the Feline government nor the Feline population in general are happy about this. Of course the safety risks of working with Intium apply as well, including pretty severe explosion risks, but the amounts they extract are so small that it's hardly a public safety hazard so much as a public burden as they destroy tens of thousands dollars worth of dietary enzymes just to extract ten dollars worth of Intium. The Intium is not the expensive part of those pills, the expensive parts are the carefully engineered and synthesized proteins that surround the Intium. After a few incidents of particularly brazen and entitled animals (who notably weren't even carnivores and had no biological need for dietary enzymes, certainly not the super advanced obligate carnivore versions that contain Intium) cleared out multiple grocery store shelves for their Intium extraction hustle and went viral on their internet, attracting intense public shaming with both predator and prey calling them selfish and misusing public resources, they realized that it was a massive problem and a policy change was needed to ensure fair access to this extremely important resource.

The most obvious and immediately effective solution is just to implement some kind of rationing system, where instead of a shelf filled with boxes of dietary enzymes that any animal can take, they move them behind the pharmacy counter and require ID to obtain, where they'll check both whether you're actually a species that requires the enzyme and also use a centralized database that tracks how much you're taking per month. However, again, only a tiny minority of animals abuse the free access to dietary enzymes to do things they really shouldn't be doing anyway, so it would feel like a massive burden for the rest of the carnivore populations who literally depend on access to dietary enzymes to survive in a society where predation is banned. It would also preclude things like animals who don't need dietary enzymes getting them for their carnivore friends since they were going to the store anyway, or even things like losing your box of dietary enzymes and potentially getting denied replacements if they only allow animals to obtain them at the specific dosages they need, nor would they be able to stock up some dietary enzymes in their own nests and dens in case of supply chain issues. Not to mention the costs associated with implementing and maintaining such a rationing system which will also be passed onto the general public, potentially siphoning funds away from other public projects like housing and transportation, or just having less money to make more dietary enzymes. Free and easy access to both plant based food and dietary enzymes have been such staples in their society that they really don't to abandon it just because a few animals don't follow the rules, so they're looking for an alternative that lets them have their dietary enzymes and eat it too.

What do you think? Is their only hope to just start rationing dietary enzymes? If you were a policy maker in this world, how would you address this issue? This world is supposed to be socialist so I'd love a socialist (or leftist in general) perspective on this!

Unlike Lindsen, the southern Menora kingdoms were never whole. Wedged between the southern coast and the Raimat river, they have historically been separate, albeit sharing cultures. However, an Orenland state has established a Commission in its southeast peninsula, and although it expands less aggressively than the analogous Lindsen Commission, it is still a threat to the unity of the nation.

In the eastern area between the two forks of the Raimat river is eastern Menora, which has modernized in part due to influence from the Menora Commission, with beret hats becoming a staple of the local industrialist leaders, be they populist or centralist. To the west, more traditional rulers guard their kingdoms from dangerous and radical schools of thought that may bring upheaval to their feudal orders.

In the southwest, Emilio Colella rules in the Sidenian Kingdom, occupying roughly a third of western Menora. His coastal kingdom holds significant economical influence as well as having access to plentiful resources.

Rocco Pignatoro is slightly further north, with his Subaldena bordering Lindsen's Aldenland, being only a river apart. A rather traditional though large kingdom slightly smaller than the Sidenian Kingdom. It is more technologically backwards due to being essentially locked from the outside world. But will the turmoil in the continent force it to embrace change?

Matteo Landolfi rules the Dosenti State in the eastern portion of Menora, in the middle of the section with a small port. It borders the Menora Commission directly and as a result has greatly benefited from the technology leaking from the advanced Commission. But will Melinda Whitfield tolerate this one-sided flow of precious Orenland advantage?

Salvatore Scanga is in even more dire straights, with most of his republic close to the Commission border. He clings on for now, intensifying construction of fortifications he hopes will delay the inevitable onslaught, but is he only erecting dirt walls in the unstoppable path of fate?

Melinda Whitfield controls the Merona Commission, where lighter policy has resulted in significantly less unrest than her Lindsen counterparts. But this has resulted in less progress towards true matriarchy than her superiors would desire, and as the years drag on they may lose their patience entirely.

Finally, the industrial populist state of the Vensorian Council, a small and often overlooked country in the north of eastern Menora, is ruled precariously by Belani Insoro, with power split between the two main industrial populist parties, the VRC and the VRGP. But the industrial centralist VNPA lurks in the shadows as promised reforms fail to bring about substantial improvements in life, even as various proletarian populist movements hinder various projects. Most disturbing of all, the establishment of Albert Stahler's Worker's State in the northern border has resulted in a diffusion of proletarian centralist thought. Who knows what the future will entail...

All of these countries may have never been a part of something greater, yet advances in communication and nationalism has created something new in the people. And perhaps someday, their dream will be fulfilled, and all of Menora will be one.

If you asked any soldier or student in any warlord state in Lindsen what the cause of the Orenland invasion, you would get different answers. From a citizen of the state of Aldenburg, that they come to upend Lindsen's traditions and impose unnatural matriarchy upon its citizens. From the Worker's State, that they are capitalists seeking resources to exploit, no longer satisfied with what they can find on their own soil. From a businessman in Gorsenya, they are here to rob Lindsen of economic activity.. All these answers are true to an extent.

Due to sea monsters, the two continents only connected very recently, when an Orenland steamship fitted with a reinforced hull reached the eastern coast of the southern Lohne strip, belonging to Lindsen at the time. From the point of view of the invaders, this was an excellent opportunity to expand its raw resource base, as well as to relieve social tensions. At home, despite numerous attempts at suppression, strikes and other such disloyal behaviors were rising, while others complained that even in industrialized times men were still legally property, and even going to suggest that industrial populism was not very populist after all.

The invasion was over in months. Superior artillery as well as tanks and aircraft, which were nonexistent in the backwards states of Lindsen, Burgune, and the fragmented southern kingdoms, easily destroyed their armies. Peace was made with Burgune, while an uneasy stalemate was achieved with the southern Menora kingdoms. No such luck in Lindsen, which was defeated thoroughly and turned into a puppet. For a year or so, things were looking up, with a large region to extract resources and more jobs to soothe unruly elements at home.

Unfortunately, the people of Lindsen did not make things easy for the invaders. In two years the Commission's territory was history and it only retained a fertile but small section of the Lohne strip. Masses were angry as austerity measures had come down to nothing, with none of the promised riches from war going into the pockets of working women. Industrialists were similarly angered by the lack of promised profit.

With this background as well as the spread of proletarianism, both centralist and populist, across all the nations of Orenland, several massive civil wars broke out in which various smaller states were seized by proletarian forces around eight years after initial invasion. The governments of several larger states, including Orenland proper, hastily mobilized to combat the red menace. While they were successful in containing the proletarian revolutions, it left them militarily and economically hollowed, and allowed for the Lindsen states to develop without fragmentation intervention. While the two federations were defeated two years later, it was a half-measure at best and little measures were imposed to contain them.

Thirteen years after the initial invasion, the situation had stabilized somewhat, with the propaganda machine working to indoctrinate a new generation against dangerous proletarian sentiments that would snuff out, it was hoped, the revolutionary flame once and for all. But Albert Stahler of the South Lindsen Worker's State and his growing country seem to think otherwise, and the time may come again where a second conflict with Lindsen will leave Orenland too weakened to fight, even against threats within its own borders. The fate of a continent and the entire matriarchy painstakingly built in the Commission, as well as its Menora section, lies on the actions of these warlords with their own dreams for their nation.

May the One save Orenland, for no one else can.

So while I've done some detailed worldbuilding for Lindsen and its surrounding nations, I haven't even drawn a map for the Orenland yet, and all I know is that it's slightly more advanced and it's supposed to be matriarchal. But how might it have become so even with agriculture being developed?

I contemplated having the entire continent or at least the part where humans originated be rainforest with plentiful fruits to make gathering more viable, while dangerous animals meant men were needed for defense and therefore more expendable. However, this is immensely stupid for obvious reasons. Does anybody have better ideas I can steal?

Two years after the Orenland invasion, the former Lindsen Commission collapsed. Brandon Holstein, a member of the old nobility, led his chunk of the Southern Raimat.

The initial threat of an invasion from the remains of the Commission subsided when many fragmented warlord states arose between it and Holstein's domain. The ambitious Holstein took it upon himself to reunify the nation, trusting that the Commission would be too weakened to notice his expansion.

For a while this strategy was effective. Holstein was able to federate with many larger closer states over the next seven years, while also annexing surrounding microstates. He also attempted to industrialize his country to compete in productions with the Commission. While he was able to establish a formidable industry, this also led to the quiet strengthening of industrialists, which he tried his best to suppress. For most of the first ten years after the invasion he was successful at keeping a lid over industrialist power.

Eventually, Johannes Heydritch's North Lindsen Federation had also become sufficiently powerful, so Holstein proposed a federation that would then lead to only west Lindsen being incomplete, by which point the weak warlords there could be easily defeated. However, the Commission had grown westward in the decade after its initial collapse and was now almost bordering the two federations. The day before the federation would've occured, the commission invaded the two federations and crushed both of them. The treaty of East Lindsen was signed, forcing the two federations to split apart into their constituitent states.

The remaining rump state of South Lindsen lost much of its authority. Holstein became closer to Albert Stahler in this period of time as the industrialists gained more and more power over the nation's affairs. He entrusted Stahler with his ultimate plan: seeing as retaining his nobilibty was no longer possible, he hoped to instead pursue one of his long-lost dreams of utopianism, when he was just an aspiring prince in a Lindsen that was still complete.

Two years after the federation's defeat, Holstein died. On the same day, Stahler became the Regent of the South Lindsen Federation, and disbanded the army with the pretext of reorganizing. He quickly mobilized the masses as all industrial output stalled for the day. The private police of the Industrialists retaliated but was quickly crushed by the sheer number of workers Stahler had organized, combined with the weapons confiscated from the former army. Within a week the industrialists were crushed and the workers had siezed power.

Soon afterwards, Stahler revoked his position of regent and declared himself the chairman of the South Lindsen Worker's State under the governing principles of Proletarian Centralism, a jump from the previous Feudal Centralism. While the new state faced challenges, most neighboring states were too weak to intervene. In addition, there were none of the problems with production the later matriarchal and patriarchal post-Commission states had, due to workers being familiar with production already.

The Commission invaded two years later, taking the eastern half of the Worker's State. But despite this massive setback, it retains the industrial base to expand and strengthen for possible unification. What does the future hold for the South Lindsen Worker's State?

The Lindsen Commission can and will collapse. This unstable Orenland puppet, no matter what actions it takes, will eventually implode. Whether Frederick Olsten reclaims the throne, or Maria remains and unifies Lindsen, it will fall apart to countless rebels.

In the former commission's northern areas, near the border between the commission and the northern, mostly independent states of the Lohne strip, there is the Muzhinen Iron State, ruled by Franz Scholl. He is part of the younger generation of commission men, who dream of a restored patriarchy but can only construct a broken vision of one, having spent fifteen years under Commission oppression. To further complicate matters, Commission policy resulted in most technical knowledge being concentrated in the hands of women. The Iron State rests in a precarious situation, with patriarchy being barely maintained with Scholl's Iron Armoe. Any imbalances in the situation could throw it into further instability, or worse, the complete collapse of the male dominance that Scholl has worked so hard to maintain...

The Iron State's neighbors are not to be trusted. To the east, the Orenlanders have grown tired of proxies and have directly established a presence in Lindsen, intending to annex the entire nation once more. The technologically inferior Iron State will have to expand westward to the even more backwards western states if it wishes to survive the onslaught. To the south, Klara Clausewitz's ineffective but large Governate of East Lindsen is also a threat, albeit a lesser one that must constantly combat internal strife.

In terms of international relations, both forward and guard nations of the Lindsen Warlords view it as an illegitimate state at best. The forward nation of Stahler's Worker's State views it as a twisted and hauntingly pathless but nonetheless oppressive patriarchy, while most other guard nations view its version of Commission-warped masculinity as a perversion of what they view as the glorious tradition of Lindsen soldier men.

The uniform of the Iron Armoe soldier is, of course, the traditional Lindsen maid dress, in part due to its role in the Iron State's patriarchal system. The major factor, however, is the Iron State's internal strife. With a barely functional industrial system stacked with severe development output and cost debuffs, it can do little more than maintain its rusting production lines left by the invaders, using whatever is on hand.

Scholl has never considered peaceful unification as an option. In his view, a whole Lindsen will either be ruled by him, or will never manifest at all.

The interdimensional Christmas bug is coming to town, and every world needs their own Santa. Doesn't matter if they have no idea what Santa or Christmas is, participation is mandatory and they need to use whatever exist in-universe to replicate Santa's flying sleigh as best as they can.

The following are some guidelines for what a prototypical Santa and sleigh would entail, your world needs to try and replicate as many of these elements as possible.

1. A fat bearded man or similar species dressed in all red.

2. A huge sack of toys or whatever the kids in your universe like.

3. A sleigh or another vehicle modified to resemble the classic shape of a sleigh, one that is capable of flight.

4. Eight flying reindeer or similar species strapped to the front of the sleigh.

5. One more flying reindeer or similar species up front with a glowing red nose.

Note that the reindeer don't actually have to be the ones pulling the sleigh through the air, you can choose any propulsion system you want as long as it looks like the reindeer are pulling it.

How does your world pull it off? Who would need to be called in and what kind of equipment acquired to do this? What unique conflicts does Santa face in your world that the "real" Santa wouldn't?

If your world is also conducive to other Christmas characters like Krampus, the Grinch, Frosty, Jesus, etc and you want to replicate them as well, we'd love to hear it!