Continuation Overview   Some Character Bios   Writngs   Art   Encyclopedia   Timeline   Contributors' Guidelines   Contact

"Daughter" is the planet on which the ancestors of all the human peoples we meet in this universe (to date) originate. It was a colony of Earth, though the name "Earth" is not remembered by post-Daughter societies. Instead, it is understood that there was a planet of evolutionary origin before Daughter. Almost nothing is known of this planet, called "Mother." When "Daughter" became the victim of massive biospheric collapse, its inhabitants fled into space, taking with them genetic stocks of most recognizable Earth life forms. Eventually, these peoples terraformed new planets and became an interstellar society known as the Continuation.

At most points in its history, the Continuation is comprised of four major Nations.

The Kiris: This people was largely responsible for the collapse of Daughter and responded to this cultural guilt by becoming very "back to nature." They usually live at a paleolithic (hunter/gatherer) level of society with their high technology stored away from daily life in "tech centers."

The Samas: The least technologically advanced people on Daughter, the Samas spent much of their history acquiring technology and expanding their empire. At the end of the Kiri-Sama war, the Sama Empire was destroyed (not by the Kiris -- if you want to know how, read Perdita). Sama culture survived in often-oppressed enclaves.

The Leddies: The most culturally diverse Nation, the Leddies form a Confederation that broadly champions representative government and sustainable progress, yet each planet has great autonomy and individual culture. The most unifying cultural feature of the Leddies is their most common religion, Ak-Ork, which includes a Pentad of gender-switching gods balancing the forces of good and evil.

The Ranlans: Closely related to the Kiris on Daughter, the Ranlans were also partly responsible for Daughter's collapse but responded to their cultural guilt by developing an intricate system for the safe application of high technology. The are the most technologically advanced Nation and prize reasoned argumentation as means of coordinating society.

The Aejdarians (old form) / Ashtorians: This post-Daughter Nation formed when a few disaffected Leddies and Ranlans opted to return to a "primal" way of life, becoming comparatively low-tech, strongly religious warriors/knights errant. After the fall of the Sama Empire, Ashtor largely took over Sama space and became more powerful, expansionistic, and regimented. (You might think of them as transforming from Klingons into Romulans.)

These peoples live along an area of space called the Tide-Track. The Tide-Track is a system of Tides (wormholes) that connect different galaxies. The Continuation inhabits solar systems in pockets close to the Tides. Thus, while it exists in eight galaxies, it only comprises about 150 planets. Faster than light travel between planets in the same galaxy is accomplished by rippling, which produces a "speed" of about 2 light years/hour.

Then came Jana. And suddenly instantaneous point-to-point travel was a reality. Such travel was limited, however, to places a Jana Walker could clearly picture in his or her mind and, thus, not useful for taking people places no one had ever been before. All the same, Jana revolutionized the Continuation. By the later Jana era, the difficulties of regulating point-to-point travel led to numerous sociopolitical and ecological upheavals. And after that...?

Last update: 12/31/2005