Settlement
Alnos was settled by a group of travelers with roots in almost all the known planets between their new home and the outer clusters early in our ninth millennium. According to Alnese lore, a group of explorers set out from a planet at the edge of our galaxy around 6100 and never turned back. For two millennia, these ‘Space Gypsies’, as they eventually became known, journeyed around our many worlds, picking up quite a few inter-galactic hitch-hikers along the way. We estimate that every tenth Alnese has an O’bonne ancestor from that time, for example, a much higher proportion than any other group within our cultural contact zone.
The Alnese recount how as they grew tired of space travel, spiritual leader Pallas of Yver had a vision and guided them to the fourth planet of a nearby solar system. The Space Gypsies found what we would consider a frozen wasteland with a narrow inter arctic region around the planet’s equator, the so-called Alnese Tropics. They actually chose to live there, and after seventeen centuries of residence, they’re still going strong. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they are thriving. The population stabilized at around eight million several centuries ago, though recent immigration spurred by an improving climate and the society’s affluence is leading to a minor population boom.
Geography
Alnos has been in an ice age for at least sixteen thousand years, but appears to be shifting towards a warmer phase. The Alnese have documented evidence of climate change for the past two centuries, with accelerating effects quite noticeable on a planet-wide basis. Tropical forests have expanded into areas formerly covered by small deciduous shrubs, and these borderland zones are now several hundred milotres further north and south. The Alnese Tropics have become almost tolerable, with a warm season that rivals the summers of our tundras.
An Alnese year lasts 384 days, which the Alnese divide into eight months of 48 days (six weeks). The year starts with the month of Yanir, a month of transition from winter to spring, as 1 Yanir of year 1 was the day the Alnese landed. The spring month of Koreh follows, then the early summer month of Zhoni and the high summer month of Solstin. Ostyx, the “month of changes,” is followed by winter months Loxi, Holdin, and Jotun, generally the nastiest month of the year.
Society & Economy
The Alnese people adhere to an elaborate clan system that governs all aspects of their lives. Every Alnese child is born into four primary clans, two from each parent, and learns to recognize eight lines of heritage from each great-grandparent. Because the Alnese believe that it is best to be related to as many clans as possible, they are exogamous and follow a long tradition of arranged marriages going back to their inter-galactic wanderings. Alnese women have controlled conception for all of recorded Alnese history, and thus choose when and with whom to have children.
Land holdings, housing, agricultural and industrial enterprises are all held and controlled by clans, and most commerce and material exchanges are transacted according to never-ending cycles of mutual obligations between related clans. Since every one is related to eight great-grandparents who are themselves related to eight great-grandparents, it is safe to say that every Alnese is related to every other Alnese in one way or another.
Economic activity is also organized by a series of professional ‘Orders’ akin to our associations and guilds. Most of our studies have focused on these Orders and their functioning. In many ways, they serve as a counter-point to the clans, and help add cohesion beyond family and clan.
The Alnese rank among the most affluent societies we have ever studied. Their centuries of space travel honed their technological expertise, and they never shied away from borrowing ideas and knowledge from the many places they visited. Indeed, ask any Alnese about the rigors of life in an ice age and that Alnese invariably will point out how surviving in an ice age is easy compared to surviving in space. They have applied their accumulated expertise to all aspects of their economy, and achieved impressive results.
Politics
The planet is governed by a regent and eight elected advisers called Councilors. Regents are chosen for eight terms of eight years each, typically starting at age 32 or 40 after a sixteen-year apprenticeship. Future regents are often selected at birth as soon as a new regent begins his or her tenure. Each new regent has to come from a different home clan, and has to give up all family ties to accept the title. The current regent is the former Xhania Nandez Ciani, a woman who grew up in the planet’s Antarctic Borderlands and who began her term in 1660.
Councilors are chosen from among the society’s many professional Orders, and typically serve eight-year terms. It is considered good practice to rotate Councilor appointments, so many Councilors will serve one term, then serve in another capacity for a few years before running for the position again. The Alnese are singularly devoted to rotating leadership roles and countering any possibility of concentrating too much power in any one clan, Order, or person.
