Home of the Union of Progressive Peoples, first planet to declare independence from the United Nations Interstellar Protectorate and current haven of contemporary Communist ideology. These are the three things that help to define the ways that Xanu is viewed by the rest of the Orion Spur. Visitors will recall its glowing oceans, the intense automation and the tours through the scars of the civil war that once wrought through the very society they now explore. A home to mere millions, and yet a serious contender on the stage of politics between the star nations. Xanu is many things, but ultimately it is considered the blueprint planet of the UPP, the role-model and the caring older sibling of an entire family of interstellar socialist endeavours.
History
The story of The People’s Democratic Xanu State begins with the Manchurian People’s Republic in the 2190s. Seeking to expand into the interstellar colonisation efforts, the Manchurian government set their eyes upon a distant but inhabitable planet that had potential to be a perfect base of operations for more distant efforts later-on. The friendly states of The Caucasus People’s Bulwark and The Alliance of Indonesian Communes were appealed to for experts and willing idealists to send on a one-way journey of colonisation, with refugees from the Balkan Treaty Zone joining for a chance at a new life. The shuttle launched in 2198 to much fanfare and a large propaganda campaign from the Manchurian government. To supplement this relatively small but diverse group of people, the Manchurian government also sent with them the latest in their robotics program to multiply working capacity, as well as fabrication equipment to manufacture more.
Landing upon the planet, little manual labour was needed once the robotics plant was established, with robots constructing prefab plasteel villages for workers to inhabit. Prefabricated buildings quickly gave way to permanent settlements and a self-sustaining colony soon began to form, no longer needing the vast majority of the resources brought by Manchurian supply ships. As resupply lessened, so too did communications, with radio signals being next to useless for data transmission and the only way for important diplomatic contact to be made being through messengers riding trade transports. After an unprecedented economic downturn in UNIP, this eventually turned into a total loss of contact in 2270, with the colony presumed lost due to a variety of circumstances from the last message. With little political capital available to back sending a rescue mission, the minimal loss of resources and the lacking public interest in the colony after so many years, no action was taken regarding the presumed loss of the colony, and UNIP bureaucracy often placed colonisation of such a distant outpost on the backburner.
At some point during this loss of contact, the colonial administration began to suspect that they had been abandoned. While self-sustaining, this had still struck a significant blow to their confidence in the Manchurian portion of UNIP, and they thus declared themselves abandoned, forming a new government independent of the Manchurian People’s Republic and its UNIP overlords, declaring The People’s Democratic Xanu State. This did not go over without issues, however, and in 2291 a group of MPR loyalists, primarily political officers of the military and government-sponsored business owners who stood to lose their monopolies if the MPR was ignored, declared the colonial administration traitors, sparking a civil war. Radical elements of the Pro-MPR loyalists, declaring “Death before Revolution!”, unleashed weaponized biological agents in various cities across the planet, killing vast swathes of the population and themselves in the process. To this day, these agents contaminate the water tables of the former cities and prevent them from being habitable. What was most confusing, in all of this very complex war, was that the government still claimed to be communist like their former leaders, and the accusations of an anti-communist counter-revolution seem to be entirely baseless.
This new government managed to roughly stabilise after the war, banning all new political parties outside of the current three as a measure to prevent “undue political strife”; a measure that stands up even to this day. As the planet developed, and gained an identity of its own, it began to see itself more as an interstellar entity, with short-range FTL travel being cannibalised from the surviving ships in orbit and reverse engineered in the immediate 2400s. With this interstellar identity came the concept of the Union of Progressive Peoples, in that if a future habitable planet were discovered, Xanu should be ready to treat it as a proper colony, not repeating the past mistakes of their parent nation. This concept would be put into practice much sooner than expected, however, and from an entirely unexpected source to say the least. In 2431, an experimental Xanu exploration ship jumped to what was assumed to be an uninhabitable system. Instead they came across a colony of miners governed by a syndicate of local unions: the star nation of Himeo. The Xanan version of history then goes on to elaborate that Xanu saved Himeo from their fate of abandonment, but this is disputed as a simple partnership by Himeans. What was initially just a partnership to salvage and repair bluespace drives to enable long-distance travel soon elevated to both sides floating the idea of unity, and Himeo eventually joined the UPP in the year 2451, ten years to the day after first contact. From here, the story of the UPP becomes a general one, but one that Xanu will always take a part in.
Home of the UPP
Being the founding planet and governmental centre of the Union of Progressive Peoples, Xanan government and culture have come to form a large building block of the UPP and Xanans are proud of this fact. In their eyes, while the Himeans and Vysokans are appreciated, well-competent members of the UPP, it is up to the mantle of the Xanan Government to continue to lead the UPP into prosperity. During propaganda advertising on Xanu, there are often motifs of leadership, unity and being the front of the pack when concerning the UPP.
This belief of leadership isn’t entirely unwarranted. While the union is small, Xanu is typically the one pulling the string on everything from clusters of habitable space stations to small mining colonies sitting on planetoids with little better to do. Whenever a planet is lacking its own distinct culture, either due to small population or relative new-ness, Xanan culture permeates through as an all-powerful force. As a result of this, and some inherent biases in the system, most representatives from consulars to military advisors have a distinct Xanan slant to their ideas.
Environment
Xanu is a planet primarily defined by the impact humanity has had on it. It is generally a warm, occasionally drought-prone planet that, despite the devastation wreaked, has rebounded in unprecedented ways. Some areas are still inhospitable centuries on, though. Much of the land, habitable or not, is undeveloped, as most of the population is concentrated around a handful of cities, with very few living more than a hundred kilometres beyond city limits. Beyond that are sweeping plains as far as the eye can see, with almost no tree cover to be seen due to the war. With little to break them, the winds on Xanu have a reputation for being intense compared to everywhere else in the Spur, only rivalled by the massive and terrifying thunderstorms this environment produces. Several of the strongest tornadoes in recorded history have come from Xanu, though most cities are built in a way to minimise damage.
There are still many places that display the sheer brutality of the war. Though the toxic fog that defined the Xanan environment for many years has been beaten back, there are still places and settlements that remain shrouded in it. In these areas, it is unsafe to travel without a personal air supply, though additional protection is often encouraged due to some of the species that have proven immune to the bioweapons. The oceans were also rendered extremely poisonous due to the conflict, but have since been restored through advanced terraforming techniques. As a result of the bioluminescent bacteria used in the process, the oceans, rivers, and even some areas of coastal grass take on a characteristic shimmering cyan that can be seen even from orbit. There is some variation in colour as the seasons pass, turning to a deep shade of purple during the fall, becoming turquoise through the dead of winter, before eventually returning to cyan in the spring and summer.
Culture
Attitudes
While much of the Orion Spur has polarising or objectifying opinions of automation, and especially robots, Xanan culture as a whole has taken up a generally more friendly approach to synthetics. Home robots are granted names by the occupants, customarily having it written somewhere on their frame so that guests can be polite by addressing the robots the same way the owners do. Even public service robots, such as street cleaners and building maintenance robots, will be affectionately referred to as “comrade” by passers-by if they have to get the attention of it.
These attitudes are more easily understood when one understands how automation is viewed. Since quality of life is typically defined by party loyalty, rather than work, automation is seen as little threat, and with the small population of the planet, those who wish to work need only qualifications, managing their workforce of robots to verify the quality of the production. Automation is no threat in the eyes of a Xanan, but merely a sign of the inevitable march of progress, so long as it is wielded by an appropriately benevolent force, such as the party, and originates from a benevolent culture, such as their own. Xanan automation, therefore, is inherently better than the automatons of any other nation.
Of course this idea of a more moral, more benevolent society does not come around naturally. While the average thought of the average Xanan may indicate such, human reality often gets in the way of a perfect society, and Xanu is not the World State, there is hardship in life. Censorship is the mend to all cultural woes, at least, and with enough censorship, the language to discuss hardship and demoralisation withers. Xanans, then, struggle to express when they are struggling in a manner that cannot be blamed on an individual, and often lack the vocabulary or will to discuss the trickier subjects of life, such as death, abuse by the system or depression.
Entertainment
Being as culturally isolated as it is, Xanu has developed a rich domestic entertainment industry, with many local studios and producers working to fulfil the media demands of an entire planet without any variety of imports. To this extent, Xanan entertainment has become something of a unique group of themes and conventions, not least because of its intense censorship. Foreign observers have made something of a game of bingo when watching a Xanan movie, for example, and seeing how long it takes to fill out their cards with tropes.
Some of these tropes include:
- No anti-government character may succeed, and must die at the end of the story
- The revolutionary must always at least earn a pyrrhic victory
- Corrupt officials may only be at the lowest level, and cannot be shown to be popular with their colleagues
- The only foreigner that is allowed to be equally as noble as a Xanan is a Himean
- A subsection of this rule is that Vysokans may be helpful but ultimately in need of the help of the Noble Xanan
Some of these rules result in bizarre and convoluted ways to follow the rules, such as the heroes having a eulogy of their contributions to the revolution play every time the player fails in a video game. This has had the side-effect of Xanans being extremely good at games, if only to avoid these long periods of down-time between failing and getting to play again.
Common themes and time periods include the civil war, colonisation of the planet under the MPR and speculative fiction about conflicts in or with other stellar nations. Dystopias set in a near-future Eridani are especially popular, being seen as the perfect antithesis to the Xanan lifestyle.
Censorship
Communications are one of the most dangerous threats against a functional one party system, and The People’s Assembly recognises this all too well, heavily restricting what communications can be made to the outside galaxy. While unacceptably overbearing by the standards of outsiders, Xanan society has been built intensely around the idea of cultural isolation, believing themselves already abandoned by the outside world. It should be no surprise, then, that the extranet and foreign entertainment are almost inaccessible to the average citizen, with the planet’s own intranet having very well designed filters and flags to avoid any revolutionary sentiment being “misdirected” at party officials.
This is not to say that Xanu has no extranet presence, however, or even foreign entertainment. These are both plentiful, but harshly moderated so that nothing of dangerous origins can infect the minds of the people. Extranet capable devices require a full application, where loyalty to the party and agreements for extra monitoring must be assured before it can even be turned on for the first time. Similarly, foreign media go through an intense censorship regime, sometimes with entire segments being cut out or rewritten to suit the narrative.
Food
The Xanan diet consists heavily of a handful of hydroponics friendly, flexible staple crops, primarily rice, beans and corn. Culturally speaking, the average Xanan is vegetarian, preferring lightly cooked meals with animal products rather than heavy meat dishes, with the main source of protein being either beans or cheese. Cheese, as it turns out, is beyond a delicacy on Xanu, being considered more of a way of life, with entire conversations being had on which is one’s favourite. This may stem from a previous amassing of cheese by the government during the civil war, which in turn was handed out to a population that was up until that point unused to the product as a way to bolster the caloric intake of post-war rations.
Meat is still available, however, and is mostly enjoyed outside of the home. Beef dishes especially are popular in restaurants, and meat is often added to the snacks at sports games to increase turnout. If one wanted to enjoy meat in the privacy of their home, however, they would have to ensure their loyalty to the party, with the small amounts of commercially available meat being reserved for party officials and well connected individuals.
Home Life
A major result of Xanu’s reliance upon robotics comes in the form of their home lives, where the majority of house-work is in some variety automated. Basic tasks like cleaning the floors, putting the washing on or doing the ironing are essentially forgotten knowledge that only need to be understood by technicians servicing these machines. Some outsiders have taken this to mean that Xanans are lazy and dysfunctional, not least because ones that leave their system and enter the world outside of such extensive automation often do not have the life skills to perform these tasks, having never needed them.
Of course, these luxuries come with a cost in such a society as Xanu, albeit not a financial one, but a loyalty one. The luxuriousness of one’s home and the amount of house-work that has been automated is almost directly correlated to the loyalty of their family to the UPP and the parties of Xanu. This carries an implicit threat with it for the children and especially grandchildren of loyalists, forcing them to remain equally as loyal as their ancestors lest they have to learn to function without some of the features they had quite literally grown up with. In extreme cases, people have starved after insulting influential party officials, unable to operate their automated cooking systems or figure out the manual overrides.
Memory Collection
The closest thing Xanu has to a widespread religion, Memory Collection is a philosophy born out of the planet’s culture and turbulent history. The seeds that would eventually grow into this way of life were planted in the final days of the civil war, when death could be found around every corner and the ranks of the living had all suffered the loss of those they knew and loved. As the war finally came to an end, the number of formal funerals taking place skyrocketed as the population came together to remember those who were lost. With funerals came eulogies, and the workload grew so large that eulogy writing became a full-time profession for many. These writers eventually registered a union under the new government and in the following years, their unique approach to eulogies was developed and codified across the entire planet.
First and foremost, the philosophy of Memory Collection is centred around providing closure over the dead by compiling all the memories surrounding them. All sources on them are uncovered, and those closest to them interviewed for more information. When this process has concluded, the results are compiled into a multi-page(often 20 pages or more) obituary of the deceased. These obituaries are cherished by the surviving family, and some households will have a shelf solely dedicated to the obituaries of extended family. The workers behind these obituaries, simply known as Writers, have very few formalities between them. All are required to be registered members of the Union of Eulogy Writers, and wear the black formal clothing of their region when working. Rates may vary among the Writers, but charging too much may result in being banished from the union, effectively banning them from the practice.
Robotics
More than anywhere else, the people of Xanu rely heavily on robotics in their daily lives, and their use has given the planet an obscenely large economy for its low population. Most work on the planet has been completely automated, with most jobs left focused on monitoring or maintaining the robots that do the work. This emphasis on a robotic workforce can be traced back to the years following the civil war, when the population was vastly reduced, yet still had a robust synthetic manufacturing base that they could use to fill in the extreme amount of vacancies. Even after the job market stabilised and contact was made with the wider Spur, these robots are mainly produced for internal use, and are found abroad very infrequently.
Though the most intelligent of Xanan-produced synthetics contain a processor that looks similar to the common positronic brain, they could not be more different than the rest of the Spur’s synthetics. In lieu of the common mind-template approach to positronic brains, Xanu uses a collection of open source bases when programming their IPCs. Not only does this make the barrier to entry much lower as well as encourage a collaborative approach to improving the code, but it also allows Xanan manufacturers to create non-bipedal chassis with minimal complications. Regardless of what body the brain is plugged into, Xanan positronics using templates based on social interaction tend to score much higher on Turing Test-like examinations than their foreign counterparts. Perhaps as a consequence of this aptitude, many Xanans hold a strong fondness for their robotic co-workers, often affectionately referring to them as comrades.
Government
Officially, the government of People’s Democratic Xanu State adheres closely to a Marxist-Leninist style of organisation. The planet as a whole is divided into various provinces each run by a council of governors, appointed from the cities and farming communes located within said province. Above them is the Central Executive Committee, responsible for determining the direction of the entire planet. The Premier of the People’s Democratic Xanu State is chosen by the dominant party in the Committee and serves as the face of the nation. They are also able to appoint judges and dissolve the CEC, though that same group is also able to remove a Premier from office if they so choose. Politics on Xanu are divided into three parties: the Communist Party of Xanu, the Labourers’ Revolutionary Party, and the All-Xanu Workers’ Vanguard. All three are functionally indistinct in terms of policy, and are also the only three parties permitted to exist. Citizens of Xanu are expected to register with one in order to receive all the benefits of citizenship, such as freedom of movement, access to some jobs, and other lifestyle benefits.
While the politics are rigid on the home front, international politics are a much different story for Xanu. Balancing their positive relationships with partner and client planets such as Himeo and Vysoka respectively against their much more aggravating relationships with the rest of the Orion Spur. It is often noted that after following the money trail for any number of socialist or similarly aligned uprisings, Xanan funding or weapons are found to have at least encouraged such paramilitaries to be more bold, if not unified these groups into a cohesive movement in the first place.