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Gyanti System
Phytotopia
Image from Steve Bowers
The Emerald Necklace consists of thousands of small paraterraformed moons and asteroids, and orwoods

Gyanti System

GalactographySystem: Gyanti

Primary: Gyanti

Region: Sephirotic Band Inner Middle Regions (Utopia Sphere volume)

Planets/Megastructures: With the exception of some Kuiper bodies, the outer microjovian Byron, and the frozen core Lilith (distance 500 AU), all the original rockballs, gas giants, and ice dwarfs have all been converted to habitats, orwoods, and megastructures. The largest megastructure-series is the Emerald Necklace, a string of some sixty thousand paraterraformed moon- and mars-sized worlds, each representing a unique biome and ecology, paced equidistantly in the middle of the life zone of Gyanti Prime.
Important Local Artificial Intelligences: AI overseers: Utopia Sphere Seriphs and remotes, reporting back to Beta Arae

AI's ethos: sanctuary/refuge/park for diverse subsingularitan clades
Largest Polity:Name: Phytotopian Biopolity

Affiliation: Utopia Sphere AI overseers: bionanoborged orwoods and godtrees (Utopia Sphere affiliated)

AI's ethos: ecosophic administration

Religions/Ideologies: include animism, orwood/habmind worship, phytoshamanism, biosophy, ecosophy, and pansophontism

Population breakdown: up to 99% phytosapient provolves. The rest includes a small number of hu, rianth, splice, and standard (animal) provolves. Presapient servitor neogens and augmented invertebrates and vertebrates are not included in these figures

Government Type:
Exoteric: High Council of the Wise Trees, loose centralised govt on Phytos, mostly titular/ceremonial and advisory;
Esoteric: subtle (and often understood animistically) transapient governance via bionanoborged orwoods or habitat intelligence

Administrative Divisions: divided into local administrative districts, local government ranges from nominal or symbolic only to highly organised, depending on clades, memetic environment, cultural history etc

Constitution: 'Voice of the Forest' (issued by First High Council, 1227; mostly pan-sophontist-based)

Legal system: incorporates Beta Arae Protocols, Pan-Sophontist League Accords, Sephirotic Sentient rights Bill, and arbitrary local legal systems

Major Industries: Varies greatly by polity, may be anything from low tech and prim arts and crafts to pansophont madverts, exotic genemods, crude organobiota, immersive interactives, ecological templates, and botanical databases.
Other Polities:Affiliations: Most Utopia Sphere, some non-aligned, a few also have Sophic League and Zoeific Biopolity affiliations

Population breakdown: depends on polity. All categories of sophonts represented, although bionts are more common and predominant than artificials or alife

Government Types: varies greatly - may be cyberdemocratic, aristocratic, panmystical, benevolent autocratic, Archaitheocratic, etc etc

Constitutions: Generally follow Beta Arae Protocols or local clade or house lore, or combination of two. Sometimes indigenous and idiosyncratic

Legal System: incorporates Beta Arae Protocols, Pan-Sophontist Sentient rights, and arbitrary local legal systems

Economics and Local Infrastructure Major Industries: Varies greatly by polity, clade, and tech level

Angelnetting: Full in only a few hu and other habitats and tourist jaunts. Elsewhere partial or non-existent. Partial angelnetting varies by polity and habitat; in some cases provided by Utopic Seraiphim, in some cases by local hyperturing administrators, and in other instances by bionano orwoods (godtrees)

Major Orbitals: several billion rings, cylinders, paraterraformed moons and moonlets, microgravity habits, orwoods, and assorted habitable megastructures

Trade: While there is a rich trade, it is mostly in-system. Most produce does not even leave the Phytotopian Biopolity; it usually involves trade between local shires or woods. Other polities have a diverse system of trade, again mostly with each other or with the Phytotopians. Commerce outsystem involves setting up permits and licenses for visiting scientists, artists, ethnologists, sociologists, and tourists
Ultratech and transapientech devices are in great demand; these are sometime acquired through commerce with the rest of galaxy, assembled or modified locally, or given as gifts or baubles by utopic transapients)
Travel:Stargates:
The Garden Path goes to the Beta Arae Hub (8500 meter gauge)
The Way of Trees goes to Radwan (Pan-Sophontist League) (2500 meter gauge)
Yellow Brick Road II to NuiDainty (Zoeific Biopolity) (2500 meter gauge)
The Other Gate to Xyntii (Sophic League) (2500 meter gauge)
Hazard Rating: Phytotopia: hu residential orbitals 0.0. (angelnetted). Other areas varies, commonly 2.0 to 4.0 for unaccompanied visitors

Other polities: varies; most are safe (0.1 to 1.0); but some polities and clades are extremely xenophobic, hazard rating for outsiders may reach 3.5 to 5.5, the visitor is advised to respect local customs and be accompanied by a registered guidebot at all times
Visa Restrictions:Phytotopia: Class C Restriction applies
Other polities: varies; some polities do not allow visitors without insider recommendations
Environmental Requirements: Phytotopia: While most biospheres are Earth-standard normal and baseline habitable, some have excessive levels of carbon dioxide, or other unusual conditions, and unaugmented bionts would require respirators. Aquatic tweaks or apparatus needed for water worlds
Other polities: varies, depending on clade. Earth-standard conditions are common for many biont habitats
Gyanti trees
Image from Steve Bowers
Phytotopia habitat
Notes on Phytotopia
(from: A Quick Guide to the Utopia Sphere - Lonely Galaxy Guidebooks, Intro module)

Phytotopia: Provolve Polity / Reserve based mainly in a number of habitats, orwoods, and megastructures (including the famous Emerald Necklace) in the Gyanti System, Utopia Sphere ; with a total living area equivalent to several thousand Earth-sized garden worlds. Phytotopia is unusual in that the whole polity (sometimes called the Phytotopian Biopolity) is run by plant provolves. No less than 20 thousand sapientphyte species can be found there (according to the latest survey of the system - 10492 a.t.), including Alseid, Tvekna, Greater Ents, Sapiodendrons, and many other species, along with independent nanotree ai (turing, superturing, and a few hyperturing) and embedded transapient orwood intelligences affiliated with the Utopia Sphere archailects. The polity is also a refuge for escaped or freed sentient fruit.

While many species are gravity-adapted and live in Earth-standard conditions, there are others, like the Weightless Green Giants (motile Sequioadendron-derivatives) and a number of smaller-sized clades that prefer the microgravity of many space habitats, where it is easy to maneuver with only very small effort. Especially spectacular in this regard are the Yggdrasil Garden orwoods - vast hollow bionanoborged dyson trees with trunks many tens of kilometers in girth, inside which are ecologies of 10 to 100 meter-radius multi-trunked microgravity-adapted phytosapients, even small sapiophytes and epiphytes around and on them, as well as various animal species, and even a few lo tek nearbaseline hu and sapientbonobo.

The Phytotopian Biopolity has close and friendly relationships with the Pan-Sophontist League, and indeed it originally grew out of a First Federation pan-sophontist colony (the "Karrenists", named after their founder, the Su-Rianth Provolver Jonia Karren), but prefers to stay under the Utopia Sphere umbrella as far as formal alignment goes.

The number of provolve animal species in Phytotopia is fairly small, although it varies greatly by region and local shire. In many habitats, animal life is subsapient or presapient, and serves the plant provolves (insect pollination, gengineered nematodes to break down soil nutrients, etc.). In some habitats no herbivorous animal life is allowed, although invertebrate detritivores and decomposers are common. Other habitats have an edenic ecology with both plants and animals in abundance, many species sophont or presophont, and non-sentient bionano as a standard food source. Others again have spectacular ocean ecologies, such as nanokelp forests in the Oceania VI (part of the Emerald Necklace) tended by neo-ludd Gaian Rorqual agriculturalists.

The number of hu, rianth, and splice inhabitants in the region is also small, being mostly artists, scientists, and phytophile and arborolatrous eccentrics, with a few diplomats housed in the "Human Quarters" (which are basically a couple of small residential orbitals no different to those found anywhere else in the civilized galaxy).

There is only a very loose centralised government (the so-called High Council of the Wise Trees), and much of the region is divided into local administrative districts variously known as "shires", "parks", "forests", "woods" and "jungles" Laws and regulations vary greatly from district to district, and the visitor is advised to carefully consult with a local expert system or tour guide before venturing forth, in order to avoid a possible incident.

The rest of the Gyanti System is also host to a number of splice, cyborg, bioborg, rianth, tweak, vec, and nearbaseline clades, confederations, republics, and genome alliances, that have settled the region in the second and third millennia a.t.. All are strongly independent, and wish to have no part in the memetic jungle that is the Sephirotic civilization. Being sub-singularitan (transapients are few and far between, and some polities actively discourage ascension) they find shelter in being a Utopian Protectorate.

 
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 16 September 2003.

 
 
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