After a conversation with Oznerol where he decided to ask me the question of "How do you imagine the world of Mare Umbrae?" where I explained how my vision of MU is 'very specific', I've decided to post here about it. Now, my original and ongoing vision of Mare Umbrae isn't enforced. It can't be enforced, simply, because it comes out of my mind.
It has the level of uniqueness that makes me wish I was Hayao Miyazaki, so I could at least show you all.
If Mare Umbrae was a book (it may yet be!
), it may surprise some of you (or all of you..).
I don't see Interstellar, Firefly, or anything like that.
It isn't a world that is relevant to the anything before its Imperial timeline, in the same way as people in the 21st century consider them "cut off" from the age of the Romans and the Bronze Age.
The world is different. Not as much Latin, and not so much "uniformity".
It is a vast, diverse, confusing, complex, and ultimately chaotic world.
There is no ongoing "information age." If you went there, you might find it quite "alien" to what you know.
There is a such thing as "clans" and "tribes" and so on.
No, those aren't primitive. Get your minds out of the box and please realize that worlds can exist with both spaceships and traditionalist cultural customs.
Individualism (not the democratic individualism of the 21st century) over the mass produced uniformity of most post-1600 portrayals.
People are often moved by and live their lives by codes dictated by religion or philosophy.
I particularly imply a Muslim and Confucian-like approach to Prometheanism, with customs of temperance, self-control, and training of the body (martial arts and mathematics etc). The rise of the Empire is to be best compared to the rise of Islam in the Middle East in the 600's and 700's.
Humanity was nearly destroyed. Never forget this. It came back. Humanity then descends from the handful of survivors, especially culturally.
One time and place that I often look to for inspiration is the Boshin War in Japan.
Men carried swords, traditional clothing/armor, alongside rifles and advanced cannonry.
Skill and uniqueness. Not every soldier is the same as the one next to him.
And yes, in Mare Umbrae, swords and melee weapons are actually quite prevalent, regardless of how much they may be used and to what effect.
Clothes are made for specific individuals, not mass-produced in humid factories.
More of
this and less of
this.
Realize that humanity that changes over each decade, century, and millenia.
And the 1,000-year empire does not begin in the late 21st century, but maybe even 1,000 years later.
Recall all the alien civilizations that have been crushed under the rise of the human empire.
It lost much of its previous technology and adopted the technology (notable the warp gate/spacelane tech) of the alien civilizations.
So I hope you will be much more creative than just "House Romanesque III" and "House Romanesque XIV".
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So if you ever stop and wonder about my view on something in this context, just remember
who I am, for those of you who know me well enough.
I live in California. I'm type of Californian who really pretty much finds the rest of the USA dull or uncomfortable.
I can be a bit of a hippie, according to some. I had long hair that reached down nearly to my rump until about a year ago.
I'm into Carl Jung's way of thinking. I find Confucianism and Buddhism to be great models of living.
I love Dune. I basically worship Dune. I like worlds and narratives that use religion and messianism, among other things such as divination.
I'm agnostic, but I generally believe in underlining spirituality in the world and even enlightenment in the Asiatic sense of the word.
That said, I'm hugely pessimistic and analytic, and believe that humanity will always be paranoid and blind, and that its future existence will rely on being spread out so vast and wide that it couldn't be easily wiped out.
Just remember
who came up with MU when you're trying to understand what it should look like according to that original creator.