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.
Currency and banks
Our standard unit of currency is officially called a Silver (Si). There is historical evidence that in the early days some of the coins were indeed made out of silver, but in modern times we use a much cheaper and much stronger alloy for it.
The value of a Silver is about so that you could buy 10 breads with it. Old people like to complain that in the past you could buy even more breads with it. Our economical denkers have noticed this too and have a plan ready to introduce a new currency, should this ever be needed.
These are our coins, from large to small values.
Quitensil (50 Si)
Dutensil (20 Si)
Tensil (10 Si)
Quisil (5 Si)
Dusil (2 Si)
Silver or Sil (1 Si)
Quitens (0.50 Si)
Dutens (0.20 Si)
Tens (0.10 Si)
Quicent (0.5 Si)
Ducent (0.2 Si)
Cent (0.1 Si)
For things larger than a quitensil we have special hexagonal discs. These discs are made out of special materials conjured by our Lord and cannot be imitated.
As our economical system is quite sophisticated we have a number of banks. There are many banks of which one is special: the Lords Bank. The Lords Bank is not a company but a state organ. It has the job of offering basic financial services with fixed prices and high security also it's in charge of the production of coins and discs. The point of having the Lords Bank offer savings accounts is that in case of an economical crash the money in the Lords Bank is guaranteed to be safe. The point of having the Lords Bank offer loans is that it kills the business of providing loans with extremely high interests. Note that the Lords Bank must offer loans to anybody except in rather extreme circumstances and that cheating on the Lords Bank is considered a crime against the state, punishable with a fair prison time.
Tricolore
There isn't a most popular board game on Red Catastrophe, but Tricolore comes very close. The origins of the game are largely unknown, but from historical records and archeological digs we know that it was played as early as the First Cyclos and may even have come from Yellow Moon.
Tricolore seems to be based on the five element dominating system of nature. However the five colors have been reduced to three, possibly because it would otherwise make the gameplay to difficult or because it's hard to evenly distribute five colors on a board made of squares or hexagons. The colors are Red, Green and Blue, where Red dominates Blue, Blue dominated Green and Green dominates Red.
Tricolore is normally played by two players, white and black, on a hexagonal board with a radius of 6 hexagons (so with a diameter of 11 hexagons). Each player has 30 stones, 10 in each of the colors. The stones are arranged in triangles, with one nearest to the center hexagon, two below that, three below those and finally four against the edge of the board.
When the game starts White must move a stone. A valid move is either a move into an adjacent empty hexagon, or a jump sequence. A stone may jump over a stone of it's own color, but only once in a sequence. A stone may also jump over a stone of a dominated color, removing it from play if it was an opponents stone, and optionally jump again. A stone may not jump over a stone of a dominating color.
The game ends when a player loses the chance of taking all the stones of the opponent, logically this means that when a player doesn't have at least one stone of each color anymore that player loses.
Many variants and alternative rules exist. A popular rule is that a stone may jump two squares if the first of those squares is occupied by a stone of a dominated color and the second is not occupied by a stone of a dominating color, in such a case the dominated stone is never removed.
It's possible to play Tricolore with three and with six players. In the three player variant each player simply gets only two colors and in the six player variants each player gets one color. In the three color game there's a possible end situation where two players are undefeatable, in such a case the player who caused the undefeatability would win.
Geography
[Note from the author: I took the liberty of asuming that a single peep in the web interface translates to a 1000 peeps, this to preserve the coherency of the story.]
Red Catastrophe is huge, not as huge as Yellow Moon reportedly is, but still huge. Our best estimate is that it's about 700 kilora from the most northern point to the most southern. Of that space we currently use only a relatively small part even though we already occupy this planet for slightly more than 12 cyclos.
The center of our world is formed by the Three Temples on the Sacred Platform of Divinity. On the platform the first things one notices are two great temples, that of His Holy Glazedness Symo and the one of Arzeyka, the Mother of the Universe.
On the north of the platform stands a marble statue of a bearded man, naked except for a rag around his waist, his muscular arms raised towards the sky. Across it, on the south side, is a small temple, also made of marble. It has six pillars of white marble that support a slightly conic round roof, also of white marble. Carved between each pillar, on the edge of the roof, is the sacred symbol of pentagram in pentagon that symbolises the five elements. It is this small temple that's so vital to our planets existance, for this is where our Lord channels his energy into the world, protecting it from the void.
To the southeast of the Three Temples lies the Great Mountain. The Great Mountain is the highest of all the mountains. Around it are a whole lot of others mountains, some being pretty great themselves. It is here that the Giga's come from and it is here that they return to breed. As these mountains are so vital for the luchtmacht they have delved into one of the larger mountains and made a large cavern base there which over time has become their primary base which known as Mount Victory.
Looking east from Mount Victory the Tower of Science is well visible at the horizon. The Tower of Science is actually just part of the Catastrophian University (commonly known as the Catastrophical University). The tower is the highest building on Red Catastrophe with it's height of 400 ra. It has a diameter of 100 ra, ensuring a stable base. The scientists have come up with some pretty innovative tricks like hanging a metal ball in the top of the tower to keep it stable during the Herft storms. Around the tower there are some buildings that house the more dangerous research departements such as alchemy.
South of the Tower lies our capital Alaxis. It is in this city that more people live together and more goods are manufactured than anywere else on the planet. Highlights of Alaxis include the Palace of Government where the kamer resides, the parks and the many statues. To the west of Alaxis lie the farms, to the south the forests, to the southeast the great venerable old forest and to the east our quarries.
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