Selas

‘The Light has led us here, to this fertile ground. Here, shall we found our new society. Here, shall any who desire to follow their ideas be welcome. Here, shall those ideas be put to work for the betterment of all humankind. And here, shall those whose ideas do the most good be recognised as the greatest humanity has to offer.

With the guidance of the Light, we have cast off the rigidity of the oppressors. Our future is ours to mould. No person of this new civilisation, should they be worthy and dedicated, shall need fear the conditions into which they were born - for here, the conditions of their life shall be entirely in their hands.’
- Declaration made upon the founding of Selas.

• Selas was a small, fertile (or formerly fertile) planet. The Selasi nation previously also controlled a rocky planetoid called the First Selas before it was destroyed.
• The original settlers of Selas defected from Eunomia because they disagreed with the rigidity of Eunomian society.
• Selasi culture idealises the pursuit of knowledge, but as an end in itself rather than a means to an end.
• Most Selasi honour and espouse the idea of a meritocracy, but in practice their social structure is pretty far from this ideal.
• The planet Selas was destroyed by Eunomia in the war.

It would not be inaccurate to state that Selas owes its existence to Eunomia, though you'd never hear a Selasi say that. The founders of Selas were originally from Eunomia, but had become disillusioned with the rigidity of the caste system, and the lack of social mobility that necessarily followed. Moreover, they felt that seeking knowledge only with an end in mind, rather than letting that knowledge itself be their compass, was a backwards approach. They took a leap. Out into the stars they flew, with no idea of where they were going, only of what they were leaving behind.

They landed on a rock: an inhospitable wasteland that could not be called a planet, much less a home. But from that rock, they saw a light. In the distance, there was a star system. How far?, they asked. Could they make it? But it was better than remaining. So they left their First Light - their First Selas - and journeyed onward. Eventually, they discovered a fertile system - one never before located. And there they settled.

In the ensuing centuries, they expanded. They laid their values into the soil. They swore theirs would be a civilisation of thought - where anyone with ideas could set them in motion, for the betterment of all. They had Eunomian roots, but their branches and leaves were their own; and they bore fruit. They created technology of a kind that few had seen before. Their advancements were lauded across the Seven Systems. But just as a light can be a beacon of hope, so too can it burn out. Their leadership, once hailed as a true meritocracy, became detached. They became hungry for power, wealth, and self-indulgence. Their ability to recognise great thought slowly atrophied, replaced by an ability to recognise exploitable knowledge. The people continued to output research at as remarkable a rate as ever, but their focus began to shift. Slowly. Gradually. Unnoticeably. The people let their ideas be their guides as ever, without realising that these ideas were themselves being shaped by their leaders. It was these ideas that they brought to the conference on the Ananke.

Selas was the first target of the war. The swiftness and brutality of the Eunomian bombings shocked the interplanetary community, as the people of Selas were all but wiped off the map and the planet itself was left a toxic wasteland. The planet’s population fled mostly to allied systems, Briareos and Kybele, before Eunomia turned her wrath on those places as well. The final blow to Selas came when Eunomia turned its powerful mineral extraction technology on the now-abandoned Selas, turning the planet to dust and doing the same to the First Selas for good measure. Despite having little to no population nor production capabilities, the First Selas had a great deal of symbolic importance to the people of the system. It was held as a symbol of hope, a symbol of what Selasi could do and how far they could go with the power of their ideas. Even more than their actual planet, the destruction of the First Selas has left the Selasi diaspora crushed and hopeless.

With the planet wiped out, the few remaining Selasi live scattered throughout the other systems, the majority of them now working gasbags on Briareos or fighting for turf in Kybele. Some live in ships that drift aimlessly through space, powered by Selasi ingenuity but hampered by a critical lack of resources.

Broadly speaking, Selasi culture values the pursuit of knowledge (even without a direct goal or application for that knowledge in mind) and the ideal of meritocracy. In reality, many Selasi preach these things much more than they practise them - though this can of course vary by the individual. Before the war, the Selasi people could be divided along two axes: nationalist versus re-unificationist, and leadership versus non-leadership.

Whilst the average citizen of Selas roughly corresponds to the description above, the leaders of the planet had a tendency to differ in a few ways. Members of Selasi leadership are likely to have gained their status through connections and money, rather than any inherent 'merit', and therefore were less likely to view the pursuit of knowledge without a well-defined goal in mind as worthwhile, and were more likely to favour research with obvious and obviously profitable applications. Additionally, Selasi leaders were less likely to favour the pursuit or dissemination of knowledge that had potential to negatively affect themselves or their political allies. Despite these things, however, many Selasi leaders openly espoused a version of meritocracy which basically means that because they are in charge, their ideas and actions are by definition meritorious and 'better' than those of people who are not.

Now that the Selasi people are scattered throughout space following the planet’s destruction by Eunomia, the reunificationist approach has fallen out of favour – not least because those who were about to demonstrate their reunificationist tendencies quickly enough were taken in by Eunomia, living effectively as Eunomian Realisers rather than Selasis. The leadership has more or less crumbled. As the relentless pursuit of power is now not much more than a dream, even the former leaders have fallen back on an idyllic view of Selas as it once was, pushing for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake - in the limited way their can, siloed in amongst oppressed and war torn populations on Kybele and Briareos.