IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICE BRIEFING DOSSIER
CHILDREN OF EARTH DEPARTMENT
DOSSIER: GAIAN CONCORDANT
A cursory briefing for the Assembly of Higher Minds. No classified Data not authorized for Assembly viewing is contained therein.
In 2222, contact was made with the Gaian Concordant, a pacifistic nation of Elvhen. Relations opened well and have continued to open well. We have scouted their space with stealthed ships, but in all honesty, they are extremely open with their information and their space. Though they have said that we our public ships can't enter a few specific systems that are dedicated to military matters - they're pacifists, but they're not stupid, and they know space is dangerous and secrecy must be made in some things, at least this early in contact.
The Gaia Seed Initiative
As is now well known, the Gaia Seed Initiative was a project by the First Empire to create perfect worlds, ones that all members of the Children of Earth, and even alien citizens of First Empire, could live in perfect adaptation, together, on a planet. Ringworlds and habitants simply were not the same. Besides, Gaia Worlds had, to this point, been one of the technologies of the by then vanished 'Fallen Empires' that was most desired, and thus far elusive.
In a previously unremarkable star system, a barren, lifeless world around a star that was merely numbered, rather than named, was selected as the test case for the Initiative. The star was renamed Rhea, and the planet Gaia. The project was a success, and more Gaia Seeds were sent out. However, the arrival of the Ravening left Gaia uncolonized, as debates had raged as to how to colonize the world best, and in what arrangemnts to be made. Gaia was forgotten, and the Rhea system lost to the shifting hyperspace currents.
Gaia in the Second Empire
A memory, a rumor, a mystery of Gaia was held onto, even through the chaotic times after the fall of the First Empire, but the story was twisted and bent - Gaia was remembered as a paradise, yes, but a paradise that had been the perfect world, set aside for the rulers of the First Empire, where their needs could forever be catered for, where none would ever want for anything or work for anything.
It acquired a legendary flavor, the lost treasure. It was said First Empire technology and even greater knowledge was there, great treasures and artifacts hidden there before the destruction of Black Rose. Countless myths were told of it, growing in the telling with every passing decade.
It was known to be somewhere - in theory - in the region of space known as the Mayros Sector in the Second Empire. The Sector held some 90 systems by the Hyperlane network, but covered thousands and thousands of light years of space naturally, and so countless failed expeditions tried to use Jump Drives and Warp Drives and more to try to find Gaia, utilizing lost scraps of information.
When the Second Empire fell, a refugee fleet of Elvhen on repurposed colony and hydroponics ships set out, past the Hyperlanes and drifted through the currents of hyperspace and ended up in the Katos system - where the Gaia Seeds had been made. The system was overrun by old, malfunctioning robots, and the data they extracted from the system's computers was corrupted and missing countless files by the time they accessed the servers, and it cost them many lives, but with that information, they were able to construct a route to Gaia - it took them well over a hundred years and their numbers dropped significantly as ships failed or food supplies ran short at times , but it was the hope for Gaia that kept them going, and eventually, they reached the Rhea system.
Modern Gaia
The government of Gaia is a parliamentary democracy, and they are a strongly egalitarian people, which dated to their struggle to reach Gaia - they had to work together to all share in the paradise they sought, so they all share in the paradise they found. Status and rank exist, but purely as a matter of individual merit and there are few honorifics beyond 'sir/ma'am' for military officers and the Prime Minister themselves.
Their military does appear to be more powerful than ours, but they also have a certain shallowness of resources we may be able to exploit in the long term. It seems that after 500 years on a Gaia world, they have really lost interest in colonizing less perfect worlds, meaning that in all the space they have claimed, and it is a great deal relative to ours, they have only Gaia. A recently discovered Gaia world on their northern border - found by Explorator Impos - will probably be colonized, but even then, that is only two worlds.
That means they lack the long-term depth of resources that we will, as our colonies continue to develop and continue to churn out resources, especially advanced alloys.
Obviously, of course, their pacifist bent seems to throw off any threat of danger from them, in the immediate term, and the value they place on diversity of opinion and idea seems likely to ensure they won't seek to engage in some sort of ill-minded 'liberation' of the Empire.
The people have Gaia have a strong respect for the Sanctity of Life, and thus have little respect for the leadership of the Purity Order, declaring them anathema, and I suspect they are likely to be the one power Gaia may be interested in attacking someday - that can be used to our advantage, possibly. That said, they also seem quite interested in just not getting involved in foreign military entanglements, so it is impossible to see.
Gaian Culture
The Elvhen that made up the refugee fleet that eventually found Gaia was drawn from many worlds, and thus, they brought a great many cultures to Gaia itself - they have melded and weeded out strongly dissonant elements, but there are still many strains of culture on Gaia.
Religiously, they are especially diverse - there are followers of the Cult of the Dead Carpenter, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Neo-Druidism, Buddhism and derivatives of all the same, among their six billion-odd citizens. However, the cultural strain that they all share, more or less, is a respect for life, for the diversity of life, on Gaia, and elsewhere.
Vegetarianism is not universal on Gaia, but it is extremely common - less out of a belief that killing animals for meat is wrong, but rather that it is simply less damaging to a planet's environment and less resource intensive overall to consume plants. Even those who do eat meat eat relatively little of it.
Their diet does include many animal products, however, and there is a dizzying array of types of salads and other methods of preparing and serving vegetables, mixed with cheese, pastas, rice and more.
Gaians love Chocolate, but they favor bitter, dark chocolates that are unpalatable to Psilon tastebuds. They have absolutely no coffee, but the Gaian Embassy has gotten hooked on the stuff and it seems possible we could export the coffee to them en masse to make a great deal of profit.
Gaians have a rich and vibrant artistic culture, but they especially love flower arrangements - especially massive ones that take up a lot of space, the flowers growing into pictures, as specific colors as planted in specific places - and visual arts. Painting and sculpture are highly prized on Gaia. Interestingly, they also have a very diverse range of graphic novels, outnumbering traditional novels in the number of them published every year, and in their sales. Indeed, in the artistic circles of Gaia, traditional novels are actually seen as the lower and more 'plebeian' form of art.
Poetry, however, apart from epic poems (like the Illiad, the Odysessy, or our own Vanerran production, the Tychead), are not particularly liked on Gaia.
Gaian music tends to two extremes, though of course they have more variety than that. Soft, highly tonal, soothing music... and music that is made up of hard, screeching dissonant chords, angry, furious lyrics and aggressive in every aspect. It's as if all the repressed aggressive of this pacifists people are channeled into this popular genre of music.
IIS Recommendations
Wait them out, increase our military and economic power, and work with them until they can either be peacefully brought into the fold under our suzerainity, or conquored piece by piece by force. With all the empty space they've taken, planets they don't settle, they will - for now - have relatively few hard targets, and their reliance on space-based industry rather than more planets makes them vulnerable to an aggressive strike that hits them there and could cripple their economy long-term.
That said, in the immediate term, we should work with them to defeat the Purity Order and dismantle that xenocidal regime.
