IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICE BRIEFING DOSSIER
CHILDREN OF EARTH DEPARTMENT
DOSSIER: THE CONFEDERATED HOUSES OF NORDAN
In 2242, the Empire, through the Orcus Regime, was able to make contact with a nation ruled by an offshoot of the Elvhen. The warlike and honor-obsessed Nordan are a distant concern for the time being, but unless they can be adequately dealt with or overawed, it is unlikely that Nordan can be peacefully folded into the Empire. Some kind of fight will be necessary, and the Nordan themselves, while favorably disposed towards the Empire, all said and done, appear eager to face our 'warriors' in battle.
The Founding of the Houses
It is unclear when Nordan was first settled by Children of Earth. The Nords - a genetic offshoot of humanity that now forms the laboring underclass of the Confederated Houses - were obviously there for centuries before the Elvhen came, but the exact details of how or why are unclear. Some catastrophic failure afflicted the Nords when they modified themselves for their frigid environment, destroying large portions of their higher brain functions (though not all of them), rendering Nords... stupid, to be frank, or at the very least, extremely slow and having a difficult time processing complex or abstract concepts. Much of their records of their past were lost either during the aftermath of that genetic failure or in the war the Elvhen fought to subjugate the Nords when they arrived.
Based on pieced together surviving bits of Archeological artifacts and oral tradition among the Nords themselves, the Nordan Elvhen have concluded that the Nords settled the system sometime between the First and Second Empires, and that the simply never found the Odin's Eye system, as the hyperlanes did not appear to connect to it when the Second Empire was expanding and conquering. They were norse Neo-pagans, and tried to adapt themselves for the world, but whatever retroviruses and modification techniques they used were either badly designed or encountered some sort of unknown circumstances on the planet, resulting in the regression of the Nords. They are not incapable of technical sophistication - they retained a capacity to work Iron and even steel by the time the Elvhen arrived - but they did lose sophistication of thought and language. Nord, which appears to have strong basis in the Scandinavian languages of Old Earth, is a language that has a comparatively limited vocabulary, and Nords are not capable of long or complex conversations in the Nordan dialect of Elvhen.
The Elvhen who settled Nordan did so during the Kishrath Wars - as the Kishrath ravaged over Eastern Space, many Elvhen from the Vagaran Sector, which was heavy with Elvhen population, most of whom were organized into monarchical or aristocratic systems on their worlds, gathered into refugee fleets to escape the Kishrath, which were already at the fringes of the Sector. The Gynoids were there as well, yes, but many of those aristocrats found the effective subjugation the robots offered to be just as bad (as the Gynoids would take entire worlds wholesale to support their war effort, extracting all available resources for the construction of more ships and combat forms).
For one refugee fleet, before they could escape through the hyperlanes or even use their Jump Drive after having plotted a destination, the Kishrath reached the system they'd been gathering in and a blind jump was forced.
By sheer chance, or, as the Elvhen of Nordan believe, divine intervention (which kind remains a matter of debate among the Nordan Elvhen), they arrived fairly close to the Odin's Eye system, requiring only one month of travel to reach the system, and then another month to reach Nordan itself.
Upon arrival, the Refugees organized themselves based on their worlds of origin and began to set up a series of independent settlements - and they met the Nords.
The Wars of Pacification
It didn't take long for the Elvhen to realize that A) they needed to be better adapted for their environment and B) the Nordan were far too simple to be allowed to remain free. It would be cruel, like letting children run around with laser-spanners.
The Elvhen genetic modifications were far more successful than those of the Nords, and they became the so-called 'Ice Elvhen', slightly stronger than most Elvhen for their trouble. The Nords, on the otherhand, were not entirely thrilled. At first, many tribes, eager to get help from the 'magic' of the new arrivals to help grow crops or hunt food or defeat rival tribes, made all sorts of agreements they barely understood and became little more than serfs, but soon enough, all Nords started to understood that what was happening to them was leading to their loss of freedom.
The Wars of Pacification took centuries to complete, and cemented the noble house as the centerpiece of Nordan society - the local House controlled the villages of the Nordan serfs of a given region, they controlled the local military forces, and they protected their communities from the threats of free Nordan raiders - the Nordan could not make modern weapons, but they could understand 'pull movey thing, magic stick shoot burny light'
IIS Note said:
This caricature of Nordic speech or ability to understand things is a little ungenerous, but not entirely without merit
The Houses each had ultimate authority in their area, and while there was some skirmishing between the various houses, they tended to work together as they spread across the planet and subjugated the Nords.
This led to a strong culture of military combat to keep the community safe, and also an emphasis on honor as one of the things that separated them from the 'cunning and deceitful' Nordan. Honorable combat, similar to the Jousts on Old Earth, became a common way for various houses to settle disputes, though the weapons used were modern rather than lances and horses.
Whenever a community had too many people, the House would send a few of the younger, non-inheriting children with some of the non-noble population and some of the warriors to settle somewhere and establish a new House and new community. Thus, many of the Houses are descended from cadet branches of the older ones, and of course, all these ties, through cadet branches and intermarriage, are important for the politics of Nordan. They worked together, for survival, against the Nordan and for implementing the technology that took them into space, able to exploit some of the resources of their system.
Overtime, this process became increasingly regularized, and by the time the Confederated Charter was signed two hundred and six years ago, it was merely formalizing a state of being that already existed. Each House would have one representative on a central council, but that representative would cast a number of votes based on the population and land they controlled, and the number of Nords they had authority over. If any house was found to have lost control of their Nords, in any capacity, or allowed rebellious free Nords to spread, they'd suffer a penalty in terms of their number of votes for a decade.
Nordan Today
The Confederated Houses, today, has no real problem with the Nords. Virtually all have been folded into effective serfdom, laboring in the farms, mines and other manual efforts of the realm, all owned by the Houses, who remain the ultimate authority in each territory. New Houses can be made by any House that wishes to parcel off territory and manpower, so it is done but rarely. New Houses can also be authorized on new worlds to help encourage settlement, though the existing houses do also own territory on the newly settled words.
Nordan is a society of warriors obsessed with honor and glory, raised on the stories of their forebears wars against the Nords, and the Ice Elvhen are eager to test the mettle of the rest of the galaxy. But they are also quite interested in getting to know their would be opponents, both on a cultural and personal level. Their 'jousts' were as much conflicts between friends as anything else half the time.
War shouldn't stop people from being friends, right?
Beyond their desire to fight and get to know everyone, the Nordan have no specific ambitions for conquest in of itself or a specific desire to rebuild the Third Empire.
Nordan Culture
Unsurprisingly, the Nordan are extremely interested in war, combat and honor, and that forms the centerpiece of their fictions. Dramas set during the Wars of Pacification, usually with some intriguing (and thus dishonorable) noble set on using some band of free Nords against their rivals, are extremely common. Grand sweeping romances often feature a role, with overwrought and 'purple' prose and epic drama.
Joust-like contests are the most popular form of entertainment - still used to settle disputes, in some cases, there are professionals who compete for public entertainment in these staged combats, much like sports on other worlds. The most common games are Vatolda, a game where two teams move through a maze like environment to take eachother out before time runs out, and Shooting Gallery, where two opponents start at a long distance from each other, armed with nonlethal, underpowered plasma casters, and shoot, taking a step closer and closer as they try to hit the other from beyond the effective range of their guns. The plasma does burn something fierce, and to flinch in the face of a shot or even try to dodge is disqualifying, making the entire contest a measure of guts.
IIS Recommendation
The ideal circumstance would be to peaceably ally with the Nordan with an eye to later vassalization. Their desire for war could easily be put to use against our enemies. If an alliance proves impossible, some measure of war will need to be possible, but it is hoped that after such a war, the Nordan will prove to be more amenable to working under our authority, given their own traditions.
Regardless, they are not a significant concern or threat to the Establishment of the Third Empire in the long-run, unless the Houses develop an appetite for conquest for conquest's own sake they've yet to show.
