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Zoeific Biopolity
Zoeific Biopolity Symbol
Image from Avengium
The Blue-Green Goddess, symbol of the Zoeific Biopolity

The Zoeific Biopolity - Data Panel

DefinitionInterstellar Biont Empire
SymbolSemi-stylised interactive image of seemingly infinitely rich and diverse biosphere
Founded1874 AT
Ruling ArchailectThe Blue and Green Goddess (Her Holiness, the LifeGiver, the Ascended Zoe of Hibbert)
AI EthosStrongly Bioist, terraformist, favours building habitable megastructures to maximise opportunities for life, interventionist (often aggressively so, but will be careful not to attack a stronger/higher toposophic foe), also experiential, joy and immersion in diversity of life, will intervene against aihuman ai, including clarketech and relativist weaponry, if any Biopolity habitats or colonies are threatened.
Science and TechnologyTechnology Level: Everything from Low Tech to Hi Tech (Biotech) to Transapientech can be found throughout the Biopolity, depending on the local environment. Transapientech is usually muted and subtle, being located in the proximity of Lifegivers and transapient Zoea, or at Sanctuaries and Altars to Life.

Technology Type: Biotech and syntech are highly developed and preferentially used.
Psyche, Art, CultureMetapsychology: Biocentrist, Zoeticist, Hedonist, Experimental, Joyful, Reverential (towards wonder of Life and of the Cosmos that nurtures it), may also be aggressive, expansionist, and arrogant (to hostile clades or polities), may often be libertarian and strongly individualist, but within Zoeticist/Biocentrist principles.

Society: Within the metapsychological definitions, societies vary greatly. Also, not all societies and polities follow those definitions strictly.

Religion/Ideology: Zoeticism; various factions and splinter religions and memeticities followed as well, also a number of Caretakerist, Shamanic, and Sophic creeds.

Symbolism and Aesthetics: Varies widely, according to clade, culture, and polity. However, ecological themes, benign transapient and archailectual guardianship, and praise of the Blue and Green Goddess, are common in many works of epic literature.

Psychological Stagnation: May become fixated in pleasure principle addiction, over aggressive or assertive, or over-dependent on the guardian AIs and Lifegivers

Psychological Liberation: Enlightenment and transcendence through tantric, taoist, and other methods of cultivating and transmutation of ch'i/zoei; creation of immortal spirit body (immortal child), fusion with enlightened megastructure biominds, etc.

Culture and Art: Is often very distinctive, often with striking plant, animal, ecological, or neogenic themes; and is usually in high demand elsewhere in the galaxy.

Architecture: Often uses organic materials, or if diamondoid, concrete, or other inorganic material is used it is designed in terms of flowing and natural forms, harmony with the landscape, taking into accordance Feng Shui principles, and so on.

Language: Officially, Ecotopian Standard (based on Proto-Genese, Eco-runner Protocols, and First Federation Shamanic), but in practice a large number of languages, dialects and protocols are used throughout the Biopolity.
Territory and PopulationCurrent Territory: Centered on the near-hinteregions Lacerta- Lyra-Cygnus-Vulpecula-Sagitta-Aquila region; more recently expanded into a large swathe of the former Cygexba volumes, as well as distributed throughout a number of Inner Sphere worlds and increasingly distributed throughout the Outer Volumes to spinward.

Capital: Ecotopia.

Representative Systems: Arcadia, Biosphere 15, Chios (hedonics center), 009 Ceti including Sacredtree Ring , Halford Orwoods, Kdregra (BGC technology), New L4, Haekel Dyson, Harbinger Dyson, Nuidarwin, Timothileary, Zoei MegaCity (Banks Ring)

Associated independent worlds Frog's Head (Genen capital)

Current Core Population: Thought to be over 20 trillion; many in dyson- and orwood-based habitats. The population continues to slowly rise in these spacious worlds, but living space is abundant and will remain so for some time, especially as more dysons and banks rings are developed and more orwoods grown.

Number of Core Star Systems: Over 15,000 (many with megastructure-biospheres), many more distributed throughout other empires and regions.

Population Breakdown: A wide cross-section of all major biont phyla; often strongly individually augmented or provolved; median sophonce level baseline equivalent, but with a large number of superbrights and a fair number of transapients.
Government and AdministrationGovernment: Some limited government by transapients or archailects, but more often regional autonomy. Little centralisation. Local governments include Libertarian or Socialist Democracies, Theocracies and Aiocracies.

Administrative Divisions: Particular polities, world, habitats and/or clades have their own full autonomy, although all with defer to transapient Zoean and Lifegiver decisions.

National Holidays: Varies by polity, usually based on date of founding colony, completion of a megastructure, intervention of a LifeGiver, deeds of a Culture Hero, etc.

Constitution: Varies by polity, but all are based on Zoeticist principles.

Legal System: Varies by polity, but all are based on Zoeticist principles
Economics and InfrastructureCurrency: Varies by polity (some worlds don't use currency).

Major Industries: Biosphere templates, biotech, wetware, genome licensing, biopico-interfaces, Crude Organobiota, Ecological and phylogenetic databases, terraforming technology, orwood cultivation, bioborg technology, neogenic production, evolution-immersives, bio-hedonics, pharmacopia, distributed biocomputronium processing, etc.

Dyson spheres or swarms: Harbinger, Biocosm Dyson, Ecotopia, Haekel, Naess, Newjupiyer, Nuidarwin, Nuihibbert, Oceans Unlimited, Singer, many others.

Major Stargate Nexi: Ecotopia, Haekel, Sacredtree

Military Expenditures: Percent of GDP: 12%
Trade and Treaty RelationsImports: Commodities: exotic matter, computronium, virches, mechosystem elements, expert systems, personality constructs, clarketech, cultural databases, personality copies, subsentient bot parts, iso modules, cliological services, dyson technology.

Exports: Commodities: biosphere templates, persona compoids, provolve arts (various species and phyla), prim, low, and high tech arts, crafts and artifacts, fashion and lifestyle modules, genome templates, biohedonic systems, bioborg templates, terraforming services and technology, ethnological, biological and ecological databases, softbots, bioethical teaching devices.

Treaty Participation: Interstellar treaty organization participation: Tragadi Accords, ComEmp Non-Aggression Signatory, Sentient Rights Protocols (Full Instalment), Garden World Environmental Protection Signatory, St Andre Convention Signatory, Beta Arae Accords Third Party Principles, Ecosphere Protection Declaration, Halford Honor Warrior Agreement, Animal Rights Accord, Society for Cultivation of Orwoods, Tipaza Ethics Agreement.

Interstellar Relations: Good relations with the Negentropy Alliance (shared concern for preservation of life and order), Utopia Sphere, Caretaker Gods, some of the more biocentrist NoCoZo clades and polities, and the old and powerful biotech and biocentrist clades and houses. However, with other groups and polities interstellar Relations can be touchy, especially when Biopolitists will respond aggressively to a threat or a perceived threat to one of their habitats (even if the habitat does not contain any sophont life). Often the Communion Empaths and Negentropy diplomats are called in as 3rd-party mediators to resolve the dispute.

Interstellar Disputes: A number of disputes with other polities and superpowers over old grudges, or mutually claimed star systems, worlds, moons, megastructures, or biospheres.

Warfare: While the Biopolity is aggressive in retaliating, it will rarely initiate an attack without provocation. Many Biopolity states either have a powerful defence force, or are protected by transapient powers. Also a number of more militant clades have a long traditional history of martial arts and honor warriorhood.


With the loss of access to Earth following the Great Expulsion, and the destruction of Mars' ecosystem during the Technocalypse, humanity found itself without a planetary biosphere. While many people, having been born and grown up in orbitals and asteroid habitats, saw nothing wrong with this, and indeed considered any planet-based civilization a step backwards, others, more nostalgic, bemoaned the loss of large biospheres.

During the Dark Ages, preservation and cultivation of orbital, planetisimal, and deep space self-contained biohabitats and biospheres was an important part of the ideology of such diverse groups as GeneTEK tweaks and shapers, cislunar ecologists, belt idealists, and various kuiper and Oort communities.

The rise of the Federation, a greater industrial base making possible interstellar exploration and colonization, and the re-establishment of contact with Interstellar Age colonies from before the Dark Ages like Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri, and Epsilon Eridanus, returned terraforming and planetary ecosystems to the agenda, along with the possibility of megacorp exploitation of Garden Worlds. The situation at Delta Pavonis and New Gaia showed how easily corporate development could endanger natural xenobiological ecosystems. During the middle Federation period actions in those and other star systems polarised public opinion at home, and led to the establishment of a number of radical ideological, memetic, and even physically activist factions. Groups like Life First! and the powerful Guardians of Bios League were often backed by hyperturings sympathetic to the meme of the free development of natural biospheres. These groups often worked hand in hand with Caretaker Gods and ISOs to protect garden worlds from exploitation.

By the late Federation period various activist groups had formed the Association of all Life, a bionts-only think-tank and lobby group (no drytech-based hyperturings or cyborgs) incorporating Diverse species (hu, provolve), rianths and splices, bioborgs, biotech-based hyperturings, biotech megacorporations like GeneTEK (keen to flash its credentials as "eco-friendly"), and a number of Caretaker God ISOs. Even the normally reclusive GAIA sent Her representatives, including the ISO Abundance of Life.

Although seen as a lunatic fringe group by many mainstream sentients, the Association of all Life had widespread support from both subsingularity beings and transapients. It as packed tremendous memetic clout, as fielded a feared and respected irregular army of bioborg warriors. Especially following the Battle for Darwin at Delta Pavonis, many corporations were keen to gain "green and blue" kudos by supporting the Association of all Life, and the Association itself did not hesitate to court the rich and powerful. With increasingly inexpensive interstellar travel, following amat mass-production and the development of the conversion drive, the Association of all Life began buying up suitable Earth-type worlds for terraforming, as well as serving as the agents and messengers of Caretaker Gods and ISOs in the protection of Garden Worlds.

In 1874 a.t., a beautiful posthuman biont avatar called Zoe appeared in Hibbert Orbital, Cis-Jove. Zoe of Hibbert, as she soon came to be called, began teaching a Biocentric ideology not unlike that promulgated by the Association, but with a greater emphasis on incorporating ecology with outsystem industrialisation and hyperturing development. In the following years she began rising through the ranks of the Association leadership, much to the disquiet of neo-primitivist purists who did not want to have any part in megascale industrialisation. Nevertheless, the Association hyperturings and corporations courted here, and most ordinary sapients could see the sense in what she was saying. As the Association's influential biophilosopher Running Hare Ganymede put it in 1912 "what is the use of having a hundred corporate sponsors if public opinion can shift like a flighty breeze, or a military power strike like an angry cyclone?"

By the Age of Establishment, the Association of all Life — now called the Zoeific Biopolity — had gained possession of a wide swathe of systems in the Lyra-Cygnus-Vulpecula-Sagitta-Aquila region. It immediately between consolidating its position, and some of the hyperturings began developing moon and Jupiter nodes in those systems not set aside for terraforming and biospheres.

During the Empires period the Biopolity established a working relationship with Cygexba. The Cygexba specialised in building wormholes and opening up new systems, while the Biopolity would open up new worlds and systems for colonization and development, naturally keeping the choicest worlds and most resource rich solar systems for itself.

Before too many centuries had passed, the Biopolity had become a major Empire, and began to play an important part in galactic politics. In general, like the Utopia Sphere, the Sophics, the Communion of Worlds, and the Caretaker Gods (all of whom it remains on excellent relations with the Zoeifics) the Zoeific Empire/Biopolity remains neutral, avoiding the sort of memetic squabbles and rivalry that continually enmesh the Metasoft Version Tree, the Dominion of the Divine Sun, and the Negentropy Alliance. Despite sympathies for — and good political and trade relations with — the Revisionists during the Version War, it remained neutral, closing off its stargates to outside traffic even before the situation began to escalate. It is in large part because of this neutrality that the Zoeific Empire was able to survive, flourish, and spread, while other hyperturing empires that seemed just as promising fell by the wayside. While despised by ludds and other radical anti-AI and anti-hyperturing groups, the Biopolity also has tremendous sympathy from more moderate independent anthropist and biocentrist factions. It does not hesitate to manipulate these groups in order to further its goals.

In addition, the Biopolity often works in partnership with Genen clades, and has many high-ranking Genen among its administrators. The Genen Homeworld of Iota Horologi, while not adjacent to the bulk of Biopolity space, is nevertheless an important Member-World.

The only time the Biopolity has interfered in wider politics has been during the Biovirate Affair. Many historians and Zoeitologists believe that the Biovirate was a Biopolity project gone wrong. It is known for a fact that Zoeific agents had been grooming the demagogue Carmon Jefrir Lapke, and helped him attain power. The original intention had been to provide a sphere of influence and buffer state along the border with the Keter Dominion, but the Biovirate leadership broke free (possibly as a result of an MPA attempt at counter-subversion) and began to act in an erratic and militaristic fashion.

The defeat of the Biovirate was nevertheless felt keenly by many Biopolity citizens, although others were clearly relieved by the downfall of such an aggressive and unpredictable empire that would otherwise have been sitting right on their border. Nevertheless, many Zoeific citizens have no affection for the Keter Dominion, and the way that archailect empire dispatched the Biovirate only reinforced their stance.

For all that, relations between the two empires remain workable, and in all the thousands of years of their mutual history there has never been an actual shooting war along the huge border.

The Ascended Avatar Zoe of Hibbert still appears and intervenes on various occasions throughout the Biopolity. Like His Holiness the God Emperor Daniel Borde of the Dominion, She is a much-loved and revered figure, accessible to all through Her virtuals, and widely referred to under Her honorific 'The Blue-Green Goddess'.

 
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev

Initially published on 10 April 2001.

 
Additional Information
OA Glossary of Terms