• The land of Greenstar is ruled by biotech-enhanced
nobility, who are seen as being
blessed by the gods. They have ruled for
thousands of years, through all manner of
horrible natural disasters that wrack the
planet. The world’s technology is roughly
at the level of medieval Europe, and much
of the social structure is that way as well
— feudal relationships, oaths of loyalty, strategic
marriages (to “enhance the blood” of
the nobles), and so forth. There are stories of
how the nobles “fell from the stars,” but the
commoners would be stunned to realize that
they, too, came from another planet.

• The Sun-Circlers and the Actualists unhappily
share a single planet. The Sun-Circlers
(correctly) believe that the planet circles its
sun, while the Actualists believe that everything
outside the planet is an illusion. Both
sides are almost religiously capitalist, and
many of them have the Property CV. These
cults are relatively well-equipped in terms of
general technology, having come back from
several previous “crashes,” but the religion
of the Actualists means that any space-related
technology (such as telescopes) could
be the target of a holy war. Cybernetic enhancement
is common, and there are “wild”
microbots that act as parasites on the people
who live there, filling some of the same roles
as dermal microbots do in the rest of the
universe. The pregenerated character Astina
(see page 91) is from the Sun-Circlers.

• The world of Fu Jing is probably one of the
most orderly of the Cargo Cults. Here a solarpowered,
self-repairing infosphere still operates,
though very unreliably. Display devices
on the surface of the planet can interface
with satellites, which run psychohistorical
predictions on the world’s inhabitants. Accessing
these predictions requires a process
similar to casting the I Ching, with similar interpretations
— the original colonists’ mnemonic
for remembering various predictions.

• Onubu is a world where the inhabitants
tried to be Old-Worlders, but then regressed
significantly in terms of their technology.
They are stuck in the stone age, with almost
no heavy metals and no fossil fuels available
on their planet. Their society remains quite
sophisticated, however: certain citizens
learn “ancient” metatech techniques, passed
on through secret societies. These societies
are at war with each other, each trying to
eradicate the others while remaining hidden.
Their techniques let them hypnotize others
quickly, start or quell riots, and generally
shepherd the rest of their tiny civilization.

• New Earth (one of many) holds a crash-andburn
civilization. The current cultists are
hiding from and occasionally worshipping
the warbots that were built by a previous incarnation
of the same cult. The planet holds
evidence of many crashes in the past, some
of a very devastating nature.

• Wantannala is nearly covered with an extensive
fungal nanophage with an animal-level
AI. The land masses that it does not cover,
typically inhospitable, are inhabited by terrified
natives that treat the bloom as a god.
Their lands are used as a dumping ground
for what the phage either can’t use or is saving
for later, and thus their lord giveth and
taketh away almost all the resources these
people have.

• Shambala is the result of a failed attempt
to create a fantasy world. There are massive
fairy-tale castles and swords that glow
and sing, and these things work fine. There
are also rampaging dragons, feral unicorns,
glowing talking skull-lights, and infectious
nanophages that empower the unfortunates
they touch with demonic-looking limbs of
great strength and sharpness.

• Podur would be an unremarkable world,
quite similar to 20th century Eastern Europe.
However, an ancient ammunition dump
has recently been unearthed, along with
evidence that humanity came from far away
indeed. What they do next will determine
whether Inspectors find a world on the brink
of war, or a smouldering wreck.

• Zvezda’dom was originally a Russian world
that lost touch with the motherland during
the Nanotech Wars on Earth. Although its
technology stalled, this cult is nonetheless
one of the more advanced in the universe.
The tech is what one might call “cyberpunk,”
with mobsters forming an oppressive
kleptocracy

• Ganja is a “Rastafari” world with moderate
metatech knowledge and an extensive
biotechnology infrastructure, a significant
percentage of which is focused around
drugs and medicines. The culture is only
skin-deep, however; any connection to
religious doctrine and the original ideas of
Zion and Babyon are gone, replaced by a
cobbled-together belief system that serves
primarily to validate extensive drug use. The
civilization regularly undergoes upheavals
and crashes every hundred years or so, but
seems to be “chaotically stable” in a bizarre
way, quickly returning to normal.

• On Taqatka, only a single replicator remains.
Self-repairing and powered by a geothermal
tap, it gives the planet’s high king nearly
godlike power over his rivals. None of the
cultists remember any high-tech devices, so
the replicator’s AI stumbles through its translations
of the kings’ requests for magical
devices with which to smite his rival kings
and dominate the planet.