Name: The Church of Ouroboros and Congregation of Lords
Government Type:
Spoiler: click to toggle The Lords of the Congregation rule their worlds in a neo-feudalistic fashion, exchanging land for resources and protection. Each Lord rules as an emperor of their own, reigning over their worlds with total authority. The Congregation itself is a loose structure, a means for the Lords to commune on neutral terms and neutral grounds, both to address disputes and arrange for mutually beneficial pacts.
The Church of Ouroboros is the one organization that holds power over the Lords, restricting and punishing them with divine authority. The chain of authority within the Church is unknown, a closely guarded secret held by the priest caste.
Species:
Spoiler: click to toggle Ophis. A small serpentine creature with relatively simple biology. Its body is unremarkable save for the fact that its neurons are de-centralized and closely entwined with its nerves and muscle fiber. In essence, the entire body, save for surface elements and its cartilaginous skeleton, serves as both a brain and muscle.
Ophisian serpents have the unique ability to share its neural capacity with other serpents they are in contact with. This resulted in colonies of serpents forming that were collectively more intelligent and capable than a scattered swarm of serpents could ever be. With their bodies closely entwined, a colony could take on a variety of bodyplans, formed essentially of raw muscle wrapped out scattered vertebrae.
At the dawn of civilization, Ophisian colonyminds turned to more regular and predictable forms, capable of moving across land and manipulating tools more readily than their ocean and reef counterparts. Their favored bodyplan is vaguely humanoid, with limbs like tree trunks and no head or neck to speak of. They encase themselves in armor and wrap themselves around artificial skeletons to ease the burden of holding a rigid shape.
Territory:
Spoiler: click to toggle The Lords of Ouroboros presently hold control over 17 star systems, though they have left a trail of burning in worlds in their wake, all formerly controlled by them and their ancestors.
Culture:
Spoiler: click to toggle The Ouroboros is a warrior culture through and through. The Lords wage constant war upon one another, and even the yeoman engage in drone skirmishes over land disputes. They are bound only by a twisted and ever changing sense of honor understandable to their own kind. Even the Church remains mystified by the code of conduct that the Lords and lordlings live by.
Their society has two primary caste structures, which dictates the gender identification of individuals. Gender in Ouroboros space is literally a social construct. The Congregation, from the Lords down to the Yeomen, are identified masculinely, without exception. All members of the Church are identified as feminine. To outsiders, this gender assignment may seem strange, but it is merely a side effect of each individual actually being a colony of mixed-sex Ophisian serpents and culture therefore being forced to dictate gender.
Additionally, the two castes have genetic differences. The Congregation of Lords and the Church of Ouroboros, with few exceptions, do not interbreed and mix their genetic code. This is due to the belief that the Church’s genetic ties to God would be diluted if intermingled with the genetic lineage of the Lords and lordlings, who are not genetic descendants of God.
History:
Spoiler: click to toggle Few archives ever survive in Ouroboros space, historical or otherwise. The best estimates by the Congregation of Lords puts the history of their stellar empire at an age of several thousand years, but there is no way for them to know for certain.
At the dawn of their civilization, it is known that there was only God and the world it inhabited. It was a colonymind spanning several kilometers in diameter, described by the priest caste as the size of a mountain. Its life is unknown, save for its final moments. The God of the Ouroboros performed Divine Suicide, dividing its form hundreds of times until nothing of the original remained. These descendant forms became the first priests of the Ouroboros, direct descendants of God and carrying within their genes and their neural structure the Divine Will.
They traversed the globe, raising formerly mindless colonies to sapience on their great pilgrimage. Those colonies they raised became the first of the Lords and lordlings, creatures of tangentially similar nature to the priest caste, but lacking the crucial connection to God.
Civilization has been guided by the priest caste since its inception, though their direct influence wavers and fluctuates from century to century. As the Lords inevitably turned toward destruction and nuclear bickering amongst themselves, it was the Church of Ouroboros that kept civilization from total annihilation.
The Church was responsible for the invention of space travel, and the subsequent invention of faster-than-light travel. They dispersed their knowledge of these technologies, gifting it to the Lords so that they may continue their existence on other worlds. They knew, of course, that more war was inevitable, but now, it would become eternal. And therefore, civilization would survive.
TECHNOLOGY
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