This account by Silverius was originally posted to to Sergio's longstanding forum in GoKrida, told from the point of view of the people of Red Catastrophe, minor souls who think of major souls as gods. The narrative discusses the environment, culture, and government of this imagined planet, including stories and rules for games. Some of the details were inspired by events and discoveries in GoKrida, while others must have been inspired by Silverius' other interests. The GoKridan planet Red Catastrophe Earth, commonly known as Legendary Red Catastrophe, was named in honor of this tale.
Red Catastrophian Society
We pride ourselves on our advanced society which gives power to the people while maintaining the rightful attitude towards our Lord. Our society is based around four main groups: werkers, denkers, vechters.
The first group, the werkers, are the workforce of Red Catastrophe. They do all the farming, building, manufacturing, etc. Within the werkers group there are three subgroups: the primairen, the secondairen and the tertairen. The primairen extract good from the land, they are mostly farmers but also miners. The secondairen transform goods, for example they produce cloth. The tertairen are all that aren't engaged in either production or transformation of goods, merchants belong to this category.
The second group, the denkers, are the brains of Red Catastrophe. This is my group by the way. We denkers are always trying to improve the quality of living on Red Catastrophe, either directly by inventing or indirectly by discovering how the universe works or producing cultural objects.
Not all denkers are the same, therefore we too have three subgroups: the vincies, the einsteins and the rembrandts. The vincies are inventors, they try to construct the most amazing machines and often blow things up in the process. The einsteins are scientists who attempt to understand how and why things work. The rembrandts are artists who produce great paintings and statues.
Finally the third group, the vechters, are the military. Given the threat of the Dark Three and other dangerous lords it's vital that we keep a strong defense ready at all times. The vechters only have two subgroups: the luchtmacht and the landmacht. The luchtmacht is probably the most impressive of the two. We are people of Sky and therefore rule the air above our lands. Our valiant airknights ride giant eagles and valcons, which is really a magnificent sight. The landmacht uses the weird constructions of the vincies called tanks which are basically just heavily armored boxes that can shoot exploding bullets.
The Constitutional Monarchy
In our constitutional monarchy the head of state is our Lord. Our Lord does not have supreme power however as he is limited in his powers by the constitution. The constitution assigns the power to rule over the land to the representatives of the people.
The representatives are chosen using a somewhat indirect model. The people directly chose the representatives for their local village or town council and representatives for the regional council. The regional councils chose from their mids the representatives for the chamber, the general assembly. The amount of representatives each village and region has are dependant on many things but primarily the population number.
The chamber choses the people that will form the cabinet and rule the country. They do this by first appointing an informator that determines which parties are willing to govern together and then a formator that actually works out the details of cooperation like who gets what job. Often the formator then joins the government as the prime minister.
The constitutional court exists to prevent the chamber from passing laws that are in conflict with existing legislation, including the constitution. It also provides interpretation of laws where those turn out to be ambiguous. The constitutional court is independent of all other powers but it's members are appointed, for life, by our Lord.
Our Lord does not have much power over the process of legislation. He does have the right to advise the government however and can disband the chamber on request of the chamber or with the support of the supreme court (which can judge the chamber to be unfit for it's job).
While the chamber is for all the people the Denkers and Vechters have their own structures. The Denkers have the Conclave which is a septally conference where just about every denker comes to chat with others and to help formulate advices to the Kamer (though that's more of a side matter usually). The Vechters have the Command Council, a panel of five leaders: the General of the Landmacht, the General of the Luchtmacht, the High Commander of Dinil Septum (the secret agents, also known as the Unseen), the High Commander of the Catastropian Guard (the police force) and with our Lord as the leader of the Council and as the supreme commander.
Our judicial system was originally very simple with our lord being the one and only judge. As our numbers grew however this became an unworkable system as our lord only has a limited amount of time and an ever growing backlog of cases developed. After many lengthy debates a new legal system was created. In the new system people are judged by their peers in first instance with the possibility of appeal in case of a major punishment (anything more than 5 tempos in prison) or judicial errors. Appeals are handled by a panel of three judges. Above the appeals courts stands the supreme court that mainly deals with constitional matters.
Myths and Legends
Little is known about the Lords and Gods and most of what we know is from rumours. However we do know that there are three classes of higher beings: the Lords, the Archangels and the Gods.
The Lords are who rule us. We have the honour of being ruled by our most marvelous lord Silverius. The Lords are immortal for we have seen a lord die and return through one of the gates of heaven. There are rumours that the Lords are actually spirits from another universe, this could explain why most of the time they walk with their eyes closed.
The Archangels are divine beings who are even more powerful than the Lords. We don't know how many Archangels there are, but we do know there are at least two: the Great Lord of Energy and the Great Lord of Lightning. The goddess Arzeyka is also believed to be an Archangel by some.
Of the gods we know little and most of it is either rumour or faith. The worshippers of Symo say he is the Great Glazed One that in his sleep in heaven watches us and helps his followers. The worshippers of Arzeyka say Symo is just a dead lord who some Lord started worshipping out of boredom.
The worshippers of Arzeyka say she's the creator of the universe and the writer of a secret book named Logos. They say she sleeps within a dream and dreams the universe. The followers of Symo say Arzeyka is just a fairy tail who some Lord started worshipping because he couldn't stand the magnificence of Symo.
And then there are the Dark Three, the feared lords of darkness. These are the Unwelcome Guest, the Devourer of Worlds and the Master of Storms. The Unwelcome Guest is said to constantly jump around the universe, searching for worlds to conquer. The Devourer of Worlds is the master of dark magics who's prime goal is to destroy as many worlds as possible. The Master of Storms is reported to have fought with the Lord of Energy who empowers the universe, should he have won it's likely the universe would have collapsed.
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