Inspired by the above exposition/development/enrichment on the lunar nomadic mining culture, thought a bit more about Starfields glaring lore gaps, and something struck me again.
The glaring lack of real-world religions. While the out-of-game reasoning is pretty obvious, the lack of an in-game explanation is notable. Before folks try to cite the whole - "Earth died, of course people abandoned their religions" I will just note that the fall of the roman empire, the mongol invasions, and the black plague were all followed by upswings in religious fervor, not collapses. So that explanation fails.
Yet, there is still a notable lack of real world religions, and two brand new ersatz cults.
Also, bear in mind that Starfield involves and alternate/hypothetical future, not an alternate past, so the conceit is that is extrapolated from the real world as of today, projected forward.
Another factor to bear in mind is that for most of the evacuation and early colonial period the currently named United Colonies was the undisputed(?) hegemon of humanity. So a review of the UC is appropriate.
What is the UC? We have some pretty clear hints.
1. We have 2 distinct classes - the worthy "Citizens" and the unworthy/unproven "Colonists". Citizens have full rights, and have earned those rights by demonstrating both loyalty and utility to the United Colonies leadership hierarchies.
1.a. Utility is proven on the battlefield (real or corporate), or academia.
2. UC's own propaganda depicts its overarching goals as providing security, prosperity, and opportunity to the colonists.
3. UC was formed after the collapse of Earth's magnetosphere was known to be occurring, but well before evacuation completed.
4. This means that the UC was in charge of at least most of humanity that left the planet at the time that real world religions (and more) 'disappeared'.
5. The UC is notably military/security oriented. They have the largest military in settled space, and their core organizational model has had a large military since inception.
6. None of the UC propaganda or documentation (with the exception of the post-war memorial) mentions freedom or liberty.
7. None of the UC propaganda or documentation mentions any rights held by the colonists which would be enforceable against the UC.
8. There is no mention of a UC judiciary (much less and independent one) or legislature.
9. There is a UC president, but no discussion of elections or political parties or how succession in office takes place at all.
10. The UC is unitary in design and function.
11. The UC (at least at the start) asserted unlimited authority over all of surviving humanity.
The above items, in combination, paint the UC as a textbook case of "friendly" technocratic fascism. I state "friendly" because it is clearly (and begrudgingly) moderating from a more explicitly totalitarian past. It is doing so after 3 disastrous (from the perspective of the UC citizenry and MAST leadership cadres) wars.
Next we need to take a look at the likely state of affairs in the Sol system in general, and on earth in particular, as the 21st century became the 22nd, the formative years of the UC.
As we are given no indicia to the contrary, the simplest approach is the project current cultural trends forward, adjusting to accommodate the expectations and beleifs of the BGS / tech culture of the designers (IE: what they thought the late 21st early 22nd century would be like).
So, essentially, what is the quintissentially Californian technology industry view of the next 80 years or so?
1. Currently politically correct/woke culture will achieve hegemonic status across the wealthier parts of the world. Remaining constitutional/political/cultural barriers to enforcement of this culture on the recalcitrant will eventually fall as various crises, real and virtual, are leveraged.
2. Corporations, having been coopted by the elite zeitgeist will continue and strengthen, as the new left will have abandoned any inherited residual interest in protecting the poor from corporate abuse. This only makes sense, as cooption will mean that those corporations will be loyal entities and tools of the new left, and such can be relied upon not to act in an undesireable fashion.
3. The unification of corporate and political power will act in concert, both consciously and unconsciously to marginalize the unenlightened followers of dead-history faiths and cultures.
4. The revision of history and literature will continue, along with the deliberate erasing and memory holing of inconvenient beliefs and facts.
5. We know, based on evidence from past totalitarianisms, that resistance open and covert, will continue. Samizdat, subversion, etc will keep at least some knowledge preserved. 80 years are nowhere near enough to obliterate religions, political beliefs, or cultures so thoroughly.
6. However, we can posit that by 2100, in the history of starfield, a mostly unified elite culture had finalized capture of the levers of political, cultural, administrative, corporate, judicial, and military power across most of the wealthy portions of the world. This will involve redefining some terms and cultures (democracy) and blacklisting others (freedom).
7. Technology will continue to progress mostly uninterrupted, but with the changes required to maintain, strengthen, and (where previously lost) reassert control.
7.a. Personal transportation and widespread personal communication devices have both proven to be factors that weaken unified control. Mass transit and broadcast communication devices are preferable - enabling those at the top of the hierarchies to control population movements, and the information the population receives. - Hence no personal transports or cellphones in Starfield. Removal of such items from circulation could have been achieved in the cause of 'saving the environment' and 'fighting extremism'. While such removals and restrictions would not have been complete the by the turn of the century is to be expected that the process would be much further along than it is today.
8. This then is the model for the future, as envisioned by the folks at bethesda - a (militantly) secularist, environmentalist corporatist technocratic totalitariansim. A global love child of Singapore, the PRC, and the European union.
9. This model would obviously generate resistance from various nationalities, religions, cultures, and ethnicities - either for being disfavored by the new regime, or for acting to preserve norms and beliefs in opposition to those of the regime. This tension would lead to periodic populist outbursts, or worse, all of which would be used to justify further tightening controls.
But what is happening in space?
By the early 2040s we can expect the first long term / permanent residents in space, on the Moon and Mars. Numbers would be small, a few dozen at most, and primarily scientific.
By the early 2060s, however, the viability of long term settlement would have been proven by experiments at New Homestead and elsewhere and the combination of resource discoveries along with increasing restrictions on resource extraction activity on earth (for environmental, access, and security reasons) would drive the establishment of off-earth extraction industries during this time.
The 2070s and onward would be boom years. The original Mining Nomads (see post above in thread) would date from this time, as would the start of Cydonia mining operations. The Nova Galactic (pretentious marketing name) would probably date from this timeframe as well, being focused mainly on inner system shipping.
Who would populate this booming expansion? Space would still, compared to the nicer parts of Earth, be spartan, bleak, and very dangerous. The oil-rig model mentioned elsewhere probably applies. These original spacers would be a mix of small numbers of Scientist/Astronauts from the elite and rapidly growing numbers of blue collar and no collar working stiffs,
Blue collar for the members of 'disfavored' groups voluntarily seizing one of the few remaining avenues for achieving wealth and security for themselves and their families, and no collar for the members of excluded groups involuntary exiled from Earth. A prison from which return is an actual death sentence with extensive, expensive, and cutting edge medical intervention is, from the perspective of the rulers down on Earth, pretty optimal. Their spaceborn subjects can't effectively rebel, as Earth is their only source of food and critical spare parts. They also can't come back to Earth to threaten the hierarchies there, as in low-g their bodies will quickly lose the ability to survive the return.
This needless to say would be another source of resentment and tension, but a manageable one from the perspective of the rulers.
This model of solar-system colonialism and extractive imperialism would probably have continued near indefinitely except for two factors.
The grav drive, and the grav drive initiated collapse of the terran magnetosphere.
Each deserves to considered separately.
Before the grav drive, travel from earth to orbit was expensive, relatively slow, easily monitored, and thus easily controlled. Travel between solar system outposts and colonies was (while a bit cheaper) otherwise the same. The center knew what was happening across the system, and had time to take any 'corrective' actions deemed necessary.
After the grav drive, travel from Earth to orbit is massively accelerated. In one stroke, orbital transit became faster, cheaper, harder to monitor, and (as a result of being faster and cheaper) more frequent. Travel between outposts accelerated even further. The center began losing oversight and control of the extraterrestrial portion of humanity.
The collapse of the magnetosphere, had the opposite effect. Here was the crisis of all crises. Here was the event that provided the perfect, inarguable, justification to fully implement the technocratic vision. Here, finally, was a solution to the problem of deadworld thought and belief. The hierarchy, of course, controlled space access. The hierarchy controlled the industries. It was the hierarchy who would design, build, and launch the evacuation ships. It was the hierarchy that decided who and what would be rescued from Earth, and what would be left to burn amongst the ashes.
Moreover, the magnetosphere is not a kitchen light, the collapse would not be a digital - all or nothing, one click affair, The weakening would be gradual, the collapses spotty and increasing over time, the relative safe zone shrinking. The hierarchy assured the general populace that the technologies developed in the offworld outposts would be put to work, keeping the masses safe until the last human was safely evacuated from Earth to their new, better, life among the stars.
This was, of course, a lie. The hierarchy never had any intent of evacuating all of humanity,even if it were feasible, which it arguably was not. Rather, this was a once-in-history chance to purge humanity of mal and disinformation. Bitter clingers, deniers, ists and phobes of various stripes would be left behind to wallow in their ignorance and die in the purging fires as a new, better, version of humanity rose like a pheonix to spread among the stars. This was the cherished dream of the core leadership.
But there was a problem, the leadership quickly realized that even with robotic labor, they lacked the ability to build, launch, and pilot enough craft to rescue themselves in time. Worse, decades of antagonism between the enlightened leadership and their resentful masses had lead to fecund infosphere where malinformation would metastasize virally. Too many of the extremists masses accepted malinformation that their leadership was going to abandon them, and disorder was spreading. Separatists and insurrectionists were already conspiring with offworld criminals to endanger the evacuation with their own misguided attempts.
Moreover, even were orignally planned evacuations to succeed, they lacked the ability (or inclination) to farm, fish, and mine the necessary supplies post-arrival to ensure survival in the manner to which the preferred to remain accustomed. Nor did they have the ability to retain control of the necessary infrastructure during the evacuation process on their own.
A series of bargains were struck.
Places would be reserved on the evacuation craft, places which could be earned by those doing the hard work of building, supplying, and protecting the craft. Places for themselves, their spouses, and their children. Sure, the materials brought onboard would be carefully screened "for security", but better to leave some books and songs behind than to stay and behind to die.
This then, was life on Earth in the first half of the 22nd century.
The United Nations Extraterrestrial Colonization Initative had become, after a few brief and vicious struggles depicted as terrorist attacks in the broader media, become the hegemon of Earth. Cars, planes and all private motorized transport had been banned to preserve resources for the evacuation. Work was assigned to the populace to build and prepare the evacuation craft, all were told that best, brightest, most loyal, and most hard working would have the honor, risk, and duty of preparing humanities colonies for those who would follow. Work continued everywhere to prepare shelters to ride out the expected 5-10 year gap between the magnetosphere collapse and the final evacuation flight. Contests were held on media daily to select the "best" books, music, movies, games, and food to bring to the stars. Any action that might 'delay or distract' workers, or 'hinder or impede' evacuation efforts was banned. Religious services were gradually restricted, and then blocked all together. Political parties (outside of those formed by and for the UNECI were banned outright.
But, you ask logically, how can a government assert control over a populace that is already sentenced to death?
The answer was raw force. Unified military forces augmented by militarized robotic auxiliaries imposed martial law across the required infrastructure, with a series of increasing strict checkpoints for entry into the greenzones. Those areas outside the required infrastructure were increasingly abandoned.
This however led to foreseable issues when exclusion zoner gained access military hardware and began shoot down multiple UNECI Directorate (leadership) air transports. With no spare military assets, the (recently renamed United Earth Colonization Directorate) UECD leadership turned to bioweapons. Dusting off late 21st century military proposals, the UECD developed and deployed bioweapon drones on militant concentrations. A demonstration strike (and feasibility test) in London rendered the strike zone uninhabitable over the course of hours. The Bio TerrorDrone program was an unmitigated success! Even better, they were successful in blaming the attack on 'genocidal Spacer terrorists'.
(I added that in from finding a flesh-cave less than 500m from the London landmark).
Now the UECD had a means of imposing penalties beyond the shrinking greenzones on one hand, driving a wedge between their onworld and offworld oppositions, while continuing to hold out the promise of (eventual) evacuation on the other.
The remaining fly in the ointment was the offworld opposition, the Spacers. Descendants of the pre-UNECI extraterrestrial solar system outpost residents, these recedivist and extremist deadthinkers continued to smuggle as many of their fellow criminals offworld as they could manage, despite the best efforts of the UECD System Defense Command, based around the primary UECD shipyard at Deimos. While the SDC had better, and soon more numerous craft, the Spacers had generations of experience in piloting in micro-g at this point. Whre previously the stresses of transorbital accelerations prevented them from directly interfering with Earth, the grav drive with it's inertial controls and artificial gravity settings unleashed them. So-called 'mercy flights' of earthbound supplies and spacebound evacuees became an increasingly common, if irregular and unpredictable, occurence.
By 2149, the SysDefCom forces had secured sufficient control of Earth's orbitals that 'mercy flights' had gone from an hourly to a weekly occurence, at best. Magnetosphere collapse had shrunken the portion of Earth safe for surface exploration without a space suit to less than 40%. Those portions of the biome which had not been successfully sampled, by spacers or the UCD, were nearly extinct. The functioning shelters outside of the UCD controlled zones were overcrowded, and not expected to last past their second decade. Most the UCD membership had decamped for Mars or Alpha Centauri. UCD ground forces had been almost entirely replaced by robotic auxiliaries, having been finally evacuated in 2147 after several unofficial mutinees. The remaining forces were composed almost exclusively of 'former' criminals given a uniform and pointed at the masses to maintian a semblance of order as the final shipments went skyward.
In October 2150, a (mostly empty) evacuation craft was caught in a crossfire between SysDefCom forces and a Spacer 'Raid' (mercy flight). The craft was lost with all hands, and the falling debris destroyed the former Singapore Secure Zone. The UC Directorate announced ' a breif pause to implement improved security measures to avoid further tragic losses during the next stage of the evacuation'.
In December 2150 flights resumed, using fully automated craft.
On January 8th, 2161, 'Spacer aligned terrorists' hijacked an evacuation flight from the Panama City Shelter Zone, meeting up with their consipirators in orbit, they succeeded in smuggling "over 2400 hundred deadthought criminals and unknown number of the London Bio-weapons" from Earth.
The UC decided that was quite enough.
All flights to and from Earth were halted for 1 year, for security reasons. With UC robotic ground forces and SysDef space forces given shoot to kill orders for any attempted smugglers.
After the final magnetosphere collapse in August of 2163, the UC declared that they would "continue to search for loyal sheltered survivors for as long as hope remains".
November of 2163, remaining UC robotic forces on Earth deactivate. The last evacuation ships are rushed and seized by the desperate survivors, only to discover that the ships are no longer functional, if they ever were.
By January 2164, Earth was home to extremophile bacteria deep crust viruses, and ashes of a world.
Life however continued in space. The first extrasolar colonies were established under UECD, later UC control. The deathought beliefs of the past had been nearly expunged, and the galaxy awaited for the newer, better, humanity. Problems remained however.
Whether it be sign of human fallibility, or the bill coming due from the faustian bargians necessary to make the evacuation possible, the UC faced new challenges. Barely 20% of the extrasolar colonists were true and loyal citizen-members of the UC, while the vast majority were second class rescuee-colonists, brought along to farm, fish, and mine as part of the agreements made to secure infrastructure, ships, and supplies for the evacuation. Malinformation and deadthink, particularly about the alleged abandonment of those 'back home', while far more limited than on Earth, was distressingly common, and growing, despite the most agressive infosphere security controls.
Deciding to make a virtue of necessity, the UC anounced the Centauri protocols, enabling (and encouraging) malcontents to set up new colonies far from New Atlantis, and all of the extensive support infrastructure established there. It was believed by the UC leadership that after confronting the dangers and losses of frontier life without UC support, the malcontents would either die off, or repent and return to the UC as newly loyal subjects.
The rest, is history.
OK - that was probably mostly crap, but there should be one or two interesting ideas in there someone can run with.
I just realized how many typos there are in the mes above. gahaah. too many, can't fix, too tired.
