Neo-Feudal Dark Age Stew

by Eric R. Ashley



Dear Reader, am I you wonder after that title you stepped over on the way in, an unbiased, objective observer able to give a fair treatment to the subject of the Space Empire? Err, probably not, is the honest answer. I know a bit about them, and so I naturally tend to despise them. But I am not here to slay Caesar, but to prop up his rickety descendants.

Those descendants are in the real world, and in our dreams. This is not about a Roman Imperium, or the Pax Mongolica, or the Empire upon which the sun never set until the whole thing fell to pieces. The cheering crowds demand a recipe for a Neo-Feudalistic Empire.



What is feudalism? Let’s stick with a very basic description because otherwise I’d be lost at sea.

Take a bunch of individuals who have very intensive and not easily duplicated skills that require years of practice. Add in the extreme expense of their equipment. Add in the limited amount of propulsion devices(horses). Make them so effective in combat that a pair could wipe out a whole village, and make it so that they are absolutely neccessary for a ruler to survive an unfriendly visitor. Make them have the almost complete invulnerabiity behind their walls so that they can be fairly rude to the ruler, and get away with it.



Tell me, what would your typical gamer in D&D do if you gave him plate mail +5, a pegasus, an artifact sword, and an extraplanar stronghold, and told him the King needed him too badly to do more than slap his wrists unless he was really bad?



Point Number Two commences …now. Tell everybody else how special you are. Because of your bloodline you deserve to be the boss. If you are from a nation that believes in demigods then casually drop a line about how great-grandaddy Zeus was an excellent archer with those thunderbolts of his. Of course, if you live in Medieval Europe, you are limited to being descended from the Apostles, or maybe John the Baptist. John the Baptist would probably blister his supposed descendants with calls for repentance, and end up on a silver platter again, but that’s an aside.



I’m finished with my unflattering portrayal of that romantic, and misty time known lovingly as the Dark Ages. How do we translate this to to the Future?



We substitute element for element.



Forcefield integrated power armour requires enormous skill to use. It takes weeks for a newbie to learn to stand, let alone do any of the astounding acrobatics that a controllable frictionless surface with astounding durability and multi-ton quick-flex strength allows.



The gravity ram mounted on the chest of the armour is effectively invulnerable, and if accelerated to a high enough speed is destructive in the mega-ton range. For a long time this power was wasted, because no one could generate enough speed for massive damage without the ram breaking free, and often shredding the user. A simple, yet utterly brilliant, innovation connected the ram to the micro warp drive aboard an armour.



Unfortunately these micro drives are limited in quantity only being able to be “milked” from neutron stars at specific points during a Tau-Kleinte Cycle. Certain armour wearers end up preferring certain neutron stars for their specific “feel”.



Now .1 c speeds were possible to the armour wearers. They proceeded to maul the heavy ships of the merchants and then the Navy. Soon everybody had to have armour wearers. Seeing how valuable they were the armour wearers kept pressing for special priviledges.



The last piece fell into place when a thoughtful armour wearer took an asteroid, and an enemy armour. He joined the two after several years of work. Planets were too high in mass for this, and ships too low to have such a large area protected. Soon other armour wearers built their near-invincible rest halls despite the feeble protests of the central governments.



A scientist from one of the few mega-corps that coud survive in this brutal age was “liberated”, and forced to improve the genetic structure of the armour wearers. Soon enough they were better in many ways. They were taller, lived longer, better looking, had greater emotional range, and they all had a pride that brooked no insult.



However whether these results were due to the scientist’s efforts or not was never really determined. The “lowlies”, the “softies”, the “targets” did not often get all the food they needed. And the pride was a defense against continual challenge. A reputation as a coward would draw vultures from all over Known Space.



The various Churches begged, threatened, and preached to try to keep the fraction of a light speed ramming contests between two armour wearers off planetary surfaces. Sometimes these pleas were heard. Sometimes planets suffered sudden hurricanes and worse.



But finally, one day, a ruler named Phillip fired a Sun Cannon that tapped the awesome energies of a local star. It cracked a rest hall’s forcewalls like a strong man cracks a walnut. And soon enough another type of Empire began to grow. Hail Phillip.



The Sun Cannons restored the balance of military might from the few, rich, highly trained individuals in their invulnerable homes to the mass of people, and the ruler who could command that mass. And the ruler used the romantic legends of specialness against the armour wearers to insist that he was even more special than them.



Next time, I hope to get off my science-fiction kick, and tell you how, and why to powergame for a much-loved, by me, system. Until then, Dear Reader.