The Karros Statutes

The Karros Statutes were a series of laws collectively defining Rodinia's contemporary foreign policy and philosophy, establishing non-intervention as the principle political philosophy of the modern age.   They forbid almost all interaction between Rodinians and non-Rodinians, such as technology and knowledge exchanges, military interventions, and aid. Even proximity to non-Rodinians was discouraged.   The statutes gradually developed over several millennia, becoming ever more draconian in pursuit of limiting Rodinia's influence upon the rest of the cosmos. This culminated with the highly controversial Zetar Act, which formally abolished the empire and required all Rodinians to return to Rodinia, prohibiting anyone from leaving without approval from the Imperial Government. It also created the Zetar Enforcement, colloquially known as the "God Catchers", to hunt down Rodinians who were unwilling to return.   Non-intervention as a philosophy arose in response to various abuses uncovered throughout the Rodinian Empire committed by Rodinian governors and their adjutants upon their non-Rodinian subjects. It gained the upper hand in Rodinian politics over Imperialism as malaise and loss of conviction in the empire's goals sapped public enthusiasm for it.   Several conspiracy theories also circulated concerning the origins of the Karros Statutes, the most popular of which asserted that Emperor Barden and several high profile members of the Rodinian aristocracy and legislature acted under orders from the Saints Sovereign. Others proclaim that the Imperial Government knew about the Billowing long before it was publicly discovered, and subsequently passed the Zetar Statutes in order to bring all Rodinians home before it began tearing the universe apart.    

History

  Following the Blood Harvest, the Nadrakians were extinct, save for the accursed Ninth Caste. The peace and order existing in their realm was subsequently at risk of collapse.   Up stepped Rodinia.   As part of the promise made to the Nadrakians in return for their power, the Rodinians pledged to continue the Nadrakian’s peacekeeping and civilization-building mission throughout the cosmos, providing they could defeat the insane Archnadrakian Balaine first. They would become the ultimate arbiters throughout the universe by inheriting the sole monopoly on power.   It was a promise they honored in the beginning, as it nicely complimented their innate drive for dominance. After the defeat of Balaine, Rodinian fleets of Mycoships sailed forth across the stars and galaxies to bring their rule to all places touched by the light of the stars in the former realm of the Nadrakians.   Within this new ‘Empire of the Creatures of Earth’, the Rodinians guaranteed to every intelligent species therein their continued existence. There was no need for any civilization to worry about genocide, enslavement or subjugation, and any such attempts or instances of such would be stamped out by the Rodinians with eye-widening brutality. None dared defy them. Under the warlike Rodinians, peace ironically reigned.   But after three million years of utterly unbeatable dominance, cracks grew within the foundations of the Rodinian Empire from the exposure of the Rodinian psyche to the challenges imposed by vast space, deep time, stubborn psychologies, and the cyclical nature of civilization. Underneath the godlike might of their facade lay a mortal mind trying to tackle infinite challenges that didn’t simply require the power of a god, but the alien mindset of one.   The universe is vast. Over 124 billion galaxies were visible from the Milky Way alone, and beyond our observable universe the galaxies continued onwards seemingly forever. Yet at its height, the Rodinian Empire had its thumb on 50 billion galaxies, under half of what the Rodinians could see and almost nothing compared to what they knew existed beyond their light cone. This enormous empire was the culmination of millions of years' worth of inexorable and zealous expansion and conquest, using a military of unimaginable scale, and yet it was a raindrop in the ocean.   This was the challenge of vast space; that in three million years using billions upon billions of ships, they conquered less than 50% of what they could see, and nothing compared to the cosmos at large; a statistically insignificant pin head of space in a cosmic field. It was impressive for a civilization of former mortals, but there was no denying the near-absence of their presence throughout the universe at-large even after so much effort.   Then there were the complexities of civilization. The Rodinians started as keepers of the peace, ensuring the strongest civilizations in a galaxy would not abuse their power, and co-opting them to ensure peace between all others. Where necessary, the Rodinians themselves would intervene to ensure peace.   But they couldn’t stand the sight of suffering and injustice within civilizations; starvation, war, ethnic cleansing, persecution, self-destruction. As arrogant and megalomaniacal as they could be, they still possessed empathy, a sense of fairness, and an aversion to nihilism. And so, they began intervening in the affairs of civilizations, becoming governors rather than peacekeepers, and this transition brought with it the start of Rodinian tyranny. If they believed a civilization was incapable of governing itself, or believed a government or collection of governments were unjust, they would overthrow them and install a Rodinian governor.   The trouble with Rodinians though is they’re significantly more intelligent than any other species in the cosmos other than Nadrakians, and so to them almost every civilization looks as though it can’t govern itself. The temptation to “fix” incorrect decision-making among mortal civilizations led the Rodinians down the path of installing a Rodinian governor for every civilization the came across.   This bloated the empire’s underlying maintenance requirements, as more Rodinians were required to uphold the standards of life that Rodinia wanted all intelligent beings to possess: food security, a place to call home, self-determination, purpose, safety, fulfilment. This slowed the empire’s rate of expansion as its internal workload increased, pushing Rodinia’s ambition for cosmological dominion ever further into the realms of fantasy.   As a proper understanding of the scale of their ambition crystallized in their minds, so too did a realization that fixing the problems of intelligent civilizations wasn’t a straightforward task. Material problems could be fixed with technology, but many problems were not material in nature. They were psychological and political.   It was also true that many material problems had causes of a different nature; a civilisation may have produced enough resources but wished to deprive some of its inhabitants either deliberately, or unintentionally through economies which encourage or create this outcome. The irrationality of intelligent life taxed Rodinian governors, and the job gradually became synonymous with frustration, tedium, recidivism, and endlessness. The reality they would likely never be free of the tangle of pettiness, and that the universe may never move beyond this stage, exposed them to deep time: the notion that this was forever, and that there’d be no moment of completion.   Fewer and fewer Rodinians wanted to be involved in this, as they began viewing the universe’s other inhabitants as being stunted, stupid and petty, and this started to hollow out the empire from within. Enlistments rates for both Imperial and Great House fleets plummeted, as did those who applied to become Imperial Governors. The repetitive nature of conquering endless galaxies sapped the morale of those already serving in the conquest fleets, and resignations skyrocketed. During the final million years of Rodinia’s empire, its fleet numbers fell from over twelve million at their height to a pinch over five million.   This made the job harder and slower for those who remained, and numbers continued to fall as a result. Staffing issues with the governorships also resulted in weak imperial presence throughout the empire, resulting in increased rebellions which required Imperial fleets to turn around and engaging in policing efforts.   Efforts to address this using mandatory conscription resulted in a political landslide election against the incumbent pro-Imperial aligned parties, and the final death knell for Empress Nyza Thezumai’s sovereignty. Clearly, political support for the empire back home had severely weakened, and this paved the way for the rise of non-interference politics.    

Arguments for Non-Intervention

  With morale and public support for the empire weakening due to the factors of endless space, deep time, repetition, and tedium, those who promoted non-intervention found themselves with many more open ears.    

Abuse

  Even before the empire transitioned from peacekeeping to direct governance of civilizations, there were significant concerns about the brutality involved with addressing violations of the imperial order.   The early empire forbid most wars of aggression between civilizations and species, and absolutely outlawed attempted exterminations, enslavements, subjugations, and other crimes against sentience as defined in Rodinian law. Rodinia's chosen method for enforcing this was an 'eye for an eye', and a broadcast to other civilizations in the local galaxy of the sentence they imposed. In severe cases where a species was wiped out beyond Rodinia's awareness or before Rodinia could intervene, such as with relativistic supernovae inducing weaponry that destroyed the species' entire star system, the Rodinians would blow the culprit back to the stone ages, incarcerate them on their home world for the rest of time, and erect devices in orbit that constantly fried any electronics they manufactured.   This policy was argued as hypocritical, as it involved committing the exact crimes they were meant to be stopping. Unlike the death penalty for an individual who commits a serious crime (an instance of murder that isn't treated as such), they argued that death penalties for civilizations involved mass scale punishment of innocent individuals. These individuals may have opposed their civilization's actions, or otherwise maintained no association with them.   As the empire progressed into direct rule of civilizations via appointed Rodinian governors, concerns of abuse exploded. Installing a Rodinian governor involved subjugating a civilization through a mixture of telepathic brainwashing of its leadership and elite , and often violence when the masses refused to submit. Rodinian governors were often accused of using harsh methods of inspiring fear and thereby order, such as eliminating political opposition to them, brainwashing, murdering rebellion leaders and dissidence members, purging certain elements from a culture where they deemed it necessary, and shock and awe displays of their power to crush notions of ever getting rid of them. As governors' frustrations of their subjects grew, so too did their capacity for cruelty and disregard for the lives of non-Rodinians.   They argued that all direct rule by governors needed to be rolled back and abolished. Furthermore, they added that Rodinia's choice of enforcement of its order on the cosmos, being primarily retribution based rather than preventative, was deeply unethical and should be stopped.    

Rogue Rodinians

  The free movement of Rodinians to and from Rodinia was argued as presenting an existential threat to the other civilizations of the cosmos, and therefore needed to be severely restricted.   Whilst the actions of the imperial fleets and governors were in theory controlled by democratic institutions (or by proxy in the case of the Great House fleets), there were no safeguards against rogue Rodinians venturing out into the cosmos to singlehandedly subjugate a civilization, as they very easily could do. This would then set them up as a tinpot god, and allow them to start their own mini empires. The worst offenders of this ventured tens of billions of light years away from Rodinia, and built up galaxy spanning empires until they grew bored after millions of years and left.   Several examples were uncovered as the imperial fleets expanded outwards, and such Rodinians were usually arrested and tried for their crimes. However the true number of rogue Rodinians out there was and still is unknown. Furthermore, these Rodinians usually presented with some form of psychiatric defect that made them more likely to pursue this, such as extreme narcissism, megalomania, psychosis, and psychopathy. The rate at which they committed heinous acts upon their subjects vastly outstripped the imperial governors by orders of magnitude. The governors ruled within imperial law for the purpose of instilling peace and order, however flawed its execution was. Rogue Rodinians on the other hand ruled through a desire to be the center of attention, and make everything about themselves. Often, they wished to visit their worst desires and fantasies upon their subjects.    

Rodinian Supremacy

  It was argued that the empire was merely an expression of Rodinia's longstanding desire to exert its dominance over the cosmos, calling into question its supposed moral foundations.   For eons the Rodinians and Nadrakians had sparred and skirmished, then eventually warred, over Rodinia's persistent aggression towards its neighbours. Non-interventionists argued that in the absence of the Nadrakians, Rodinia merely gave its supremacist views a new coat of paint and masqueraded it as concern for the wellbeing of others. They tied this to Rodinia's choice of enforcement against those who defied its order. Instead of opting for prevention, Rodinia opted for the method that allowed it to dominate others, namely via retribution.   Another argument demonstrating this was the connection between Rodinia's warlike compulsions and people's interest in the empire. As time grew from the Blood Harvest three million years ago, Rodinia became less aggressive and warlike. It's culture was less martial focused, its militarization rate was at a record low, and Rodinians in general were less likely to resort to violence to settle disputes. If people's interest in the empire had always been from an ethical standpoint about peace and order, then the empire's support and level of public enthusiasm shouldn't have changed. Yet, it has dropped as the Rodinian's warlike culture has shifted towards a less confrontational form. Non-interventionists refer to this as "Rodinia having had its fill of violence".   This, they argued, was why the empire was fundamentally flawed, and why Rodinian efforts to police the cosmos were also fundamentally flawed, and doomed to always fail on ethical grounds. From this, they viewed the empire itself as a crime that just coincidentally happened to have some positive benefits, but that those benefits do not justify the original crime. This formed part of the basis for the empire's eventual abolishment, as it attacked people's fundamental conviction in the empire's purpose.    

Cultural Erasure

  The power and actions of the Rodinians were bending the less developed civilizations and cultures of the cosmos towards the incorrect belief that Rodinians were gods, it was argued.   Rodinians were capable of things no one else could do. Without iconoclastic magic and trihypostatic Souls, no one could harm them. They could read minds and control them, reshape matter at the subatomic level, and seemingly violate many physical laws on a whim. They were physically and mentally superior to a degree difficult to even imagine. None of this made them gods however, and was instead the result of a succession of developments in their history that could have happened to anyone if the circumstances were right.   However without that understanding, it was observed how many cultures were instead beginning to alter their religious beliefs to accommodate for the Rodinians' apparent godlike power. Religions were popping-up where the Rodinians were either messengers of their gods, or their gods themselves reincarnated. This was decried as being wildly immoral, and the Imperial Government's official stance on the subject was fairly muted. They instructed governors to deny that they are gods, but otherwise to not oppose the formation of such religions as they were viewed as helpful to Rodinian law and order.   This was argued by non-interventionists as another reason why the empire needed to go, as Rodinians simply could not be trusted to resist the temptation of deification, which was fundamentally a narcissistic lie.   In other regards, the Rodinian empire quashed elements of a civilization's or species' culture or society, such as restructuring economic paradigms, re-assigning resources and wealth, changing laws, altering customs to accommodate Rodinian views on subjects ranging from social to political, etc. Whilst the non-interventionists usually didn't comment on what was being altered, they argued it was wrong for Rodinians to do this, regardless of how correct it may have been. They argued it was a form of supremacy and cultural arrogance for Rodinia to impose its values on everyone else.    

Outsized Influence

  The power of the Rodinians also impressed other fascinations into the cultures of their subject civilizations and species, to largely detrimental ends they argued.   There was an obsession with what the Rodinians were and how they became so powerful. People were anxious to obtain Rodinian artefacts, knowledge, myco-technology and even Rodinian biomatter itself. The most extreme examples featured civilizations going to war over a single skin cell, believing it could unlock the secrets of their physiology and souls, not realizing this was impossible. The reality that a portion of cultures were obsessing over this, some to the extent of war or the devotion of their brightest minds and resources, was viewed as a profoundly disgraceful state of affairs encouraged by Rodinia's continued presence through the universe.   There were some risks to the Rodinians themselves too, in the form of weapons created from Rodinian blood. This carried enough residual iconoclastic magic to harm a Rodinian, and so could be mixed into the alloys used to create blades, bullets, bombs and more exotic weapons. The source of this blood was from remaining Nadrakians of the Ninth Caste who isolated lone Rodinians and killed them. They then pulped their bodies and created vials of blood for distribution throughout the empire, to encourage rebellion against the Rodinians.   Non-interventionists therefore argued that Rodinia's continued presence throughout the universe risked Rodinian lives, and could potentially pose an unknown threat if enough Rodinian blood were harvested this way.    

Issues at Home

  The resource requirements of sustaining and expanding the empire were argued to be wasteful, when those resource could be used to relieve the population requirements back home within Rodinia's Weave of Worlds.   The empire required Rodinians and Mycoships, which meant a high birth rate for more Rodinians and more of the Mycelium to be devoted towards the creation of Mycoships. The latter was promoting a population size approaching the limits of what the Weave of worlds could accommodate even with its own growth factored into the equation. The mass of Mycelium being used to create the fleets was also large, with millions of stars being consumed by the Mycelium superfungus to fuel the growth requirements. This could have instead been used to expand the Weave of Worlds further.  

Threats from Beyond

  The non-interventionists argued that Rodinia's concern should be hunting down the remnants of the Nadrakians of the Ninth Caste, who were known to visit unspeakable horrors upon civilizations. They argued that Rodinia taking its focus away from the Ninth Caste allowed them to repopulate their numbers and pose a threat to Rodinia in future, as the Ninth Caste are one of only two other forces in the cosmos known to be capable of harming Rodinians.   The other threat concerned the entities breaching the barrier into our universe from Billowing Space, the nature of whom is poorly understood. Between the Ninth Caste, Billowing Space entities, and the Billowing itself, the non-interventionists argued that Rodinia's priorities required re-evaluation.    

The Nature of Life

  Non-interventionists argued that the moral arc of the universe doesn't bend towards good, and this isn't Rodinia's responsibility to correct. The nature of life is chaotic and prone to violence and competition, and they maintained that there's nothing Rodinia could ever do to change that.   Ergo, the Rodinians constantly apply a bandage to a wound that's caused by an infection, instead of dealing with the infection itself. They therefore view Rodinia's actions as a net negative, as they fail to address the underlying issue whilst their continued presence throughout the cosmos compounds negative consequences. As they view the nature of life to be unalterable, i.e. the infection incurable, they view Rodinia's eventual influence upon the cosmos to inevitably become a net negative.  

The Acts

  The empire was systematically dismantled in steps through a series of acts of The Grand Court of the Creatures of Earth, and imperial decrees from Emperor Barden (who succeeded Empress Nyza Thezumai).    

Karros Act

  The Karros Act mainly ended the empire's continued expansion, including the laws and decrees that supported it.  

• Placed a standing order to halt all further expansion of the Empire into new galaxies (current galactic campaigns could progress as normal until completion).
 
• Consolidated and repurposed redundant fleets to hunt down the Ninth Caste.
 
• Repealed (With Emperor Barden's decree) former Empress Nyza Thezumai's mandatory conscriptions.

   

Kuto Act

  This act significantly slimmed down Rodinia's naval forces by requiring Great Houses and the Imperial government to retire Mycoships used in the expansion and conquest fleets.  

• Retired over half of the Mycoships in active service due to redundancy, and reprovisioned them for Weave of Worlds habitat creation.
 
• Cut enlistment targets for Rodinia's armed forces to 5% from 30%.
 
• Withdrew almost all Imperial and Great House fleets back to Rodinia.

   

Hashtak Act

  This act effectively abolished the empire in everything but name.  

• Abolished all Rodinian governorship positions throughout the Empire, including all appointments made by them and all offices created under them, with a 300 year deadline. Prohibited the creation of any further such positions or governorships during the 300 year lame-duck period prior to abolishment.
 
• Prohibited any unauthorized contact between Rodinians and non-Rodinians, including knowledge and technology exchanges, military intervention, or aid.

   

Zetar Act

  This act formally abolished the empire in name, and ended Rodinia's presence throughout the cosmos by requiring all Rodinians to return home.  

• Issued a standing and mandatory order for all Rodinians to return to Rodinia within 1200 years of the passage of the Zetar Act.
 
• Prohibits any Rodinian from leaving Rodinia, for any reason, without the explicit permission of the Imperial Government.
 
• Established the Zetar Enforcement, a division within the Imperial service dedicated to hunting down and returning Rodinians who refused to obey the Zetar Act's mandatory Return Home order.
 
• Formally abolished the Empire of the Creatures of Earth as a political entity.