Planetary Romance: Fowndree
If anyone ever wondered what it would be like if I tried to create a planet in the style of Jack Vance, wonder no longer.
Reputation:
Fowndree is an unusual Red Zone world colonized by Solomani stock and currently protected by a pocket empire. The Empire regards it as a useless backwater -- rich in mineral resources but plagued with virulent diseases and an insidious atmosphere. Imperial "experts" all agree that the costs of extracting its mineral wealth far outweigh potential profits. However, the Imperial Scout Service believes that some of the desperate prospectors who visit this harsh world are in fact Zhodani spies. The official reason for its Red Zone status is a deadly parasite which lays eggs in a medicinal lichen used for pain control.
Rarely, a mad prospector or pirate will try to land in the Fowndreean wilderness. Their bones are usually discovered shortly thereafter. More frequently, smugglers will take their chances with local diseases to sell slaves and exotic information in exchange for gold, platinum, uranium, or rare earths. These smugglers are slowly endangering the Imperium with contagious Fowndreean diseases. Additionally, they are often technically inept enough to accept highly radioactive gold that had been used as reactor shielding, thus many of them die of radiation sickness before they can spend their profits.
Fowndree's solar system has one major planet and a large number of dwarf planets and asteroids. Many prospectors and pirates take their chances with the asteroids, but even there, the danger is high. Fowndreean technology is adequate to build interplanetary spaceships, and Fowndreeans roam their solar system, mining, mapping, and setting up robotic guard stations.
Planetology:
Fowndree's atmosphere is tainted and insidious; on rare occasions, corrosive dusts and liquids are carried by storm winds, resulting in torrents of rain with Ph values on the extreme high or low end of the scale. (I.e. some rain is acidic and other rain is basic.) Rarely, natural uranium dust is carried in the rain, making it highly dangerous. Fowndree's atmosphere is very dusty and characterized by strong electromagnetic storms, making astronomical observations and radio communications impossible. Large deposits of natural magnetic materials make magnetic compasses useless in most locations. The Imperial Scout Service regards Fowndree recon missions as suicide missions. Most Fowndreean houses are at least partially underground, with enough life support (including air and water recycling) to maintain a starship.
Fowndree's native life is almost entirely extinct, and consists of molds, fungi and algae, mostly living in the planet's oceans. Fowndree does host humans, domesticated animal and plant life, and a wide variety of feral mutant animals. Mutant animal strains are mostly non-viable, but since domesticated animals frequently escape, the feral population is replenished. Most wild plant life is slightly mutated Terran stock. Fowndree has very little insolation at visible wavelengths, making conventional photosynthesis and solar power difficult. Many native fungi species are bioluminescent. Fowndree nights are often lit by high-altitude lightning, however, rather than being pitch black.
Fowndree does have a fascinating range of microscopic parasites. It is unknown how much of their genetic material is native and how much is mutated Terran stock. All Fowndreean humans have enough exotic parasites in their systems to land them in Imperial quarantine if they receive a health check-up on an Imperial world. Dedicated Imperial parasitologists frequently land on Fowndree; some last for several years before dying of local diseases.
Fowndree's gravity is almost twice that of Terra. Its day lasts approximately 39 standard hours. Fowndree is slightly smaller than Terra, but contains extremely rich deposits of heavy metals and rare earths, including uranium, platinum, etc. The extremely hostile environment makes conventional mining almost impossible. Also, many rare substances required for high-tech devices are entirely absent, making Imperial investors reluctant to fund prospecting missions. Fowndree is volcanically active and many Fowndreeans seek mystical closeness to Gingery by meditating on the edges of lava craters. Those who fall into the lava, accidentally or intentionally, are inevitably mourned by a day-long chanting ritual.
Culture:
Fowndree's most prestigious citizens are the "bootstrappers" -- men and women who have the talent and skill to start with some high-quality rocks and make knives, forges, lathes, and finally power tools. "Bootstrapping" low-quality tools into higher-quality tools is about as central to Fowndreean culture as the Roman Catholic Mass was to Medieval European culture. All high-level priests have at least some "bootstrap" ability. This emphasis on reinventing old tools is not economical, but it does guarantee widespread, fanatical emotional attachment to the culture. Fowndree's unusual mineral distribution makes "bootstrapping" easier on Fowndree than on most planets. The average Fowndreean can make a lathe out of scrap metal. Exceptional "bootstrappers" can smelt and refine ore into metal with nothing but rocks, clay, and lava. Priests can go from ore to electric motors without using outside tools. "Bootstrapping" drains a great amount of goods and services out of the economy, since Fowndreeans are religiously obligated to help "bootstrappers" in their pious exercises, assist wandering priests who are seeking out special ores, etc.
Fowndree's humans have no effective military and no hunting tradition, but they do have a rigidly enforced cultural tradition of usually lethal duelling. This is always done with a short, 10-kilogram hammer in the stronger hand and a hatchet in the weaker hand. Typical duelling grounds are dense artificial "groves" containing thick pillars that provide considerable cover and make fast running maneuvers impossible. Due to the difficulty of the terrain it is common for a single protagonist to kill two antagonists, since the pillars prevent them from aiding each other. Some groves use actual living mutant oak trees as pillars.
Due to various environmental mutagens, Fowndree's humans have very low average life expectancies. Infant mortality is high even with the best medical care; many humans die in childhood or early adulthood. The average Fowndreean regards human life as cheap and does not hesitate to kill -- even family members and priests are not immune to being challenged in lethal duels. The vast majority of Fowndreeans die from degenerative diseases or from an overdose of the naturally occurring mutagens. The average Fowndreean female who lives reach menopause will experience twenty-four pregnancies, most of which end in miscarriage.
Fowndree's society is a theocracy dominated by culturally rigid mystics. The religion is centered on the Great God Gingery, who creates all tools from chaos and nothingness. The title "Toolmaker" is roughly equivalent to "Lord" in religious usage: thus "THE Toolmaker" refers to Gingery, but "Toolmaker Smith" refers to the priest surnamed Smith.
The planetary religion is known as "emulation of Gingery" or "manifestation of the Gingery within." It asserts the reality of reincarnation and miscellaneous afterlives, which are attained by the cultivation of virtues. Adherents often have ecstatic visions of tool designs and mathematical equations. Numerous unresolved questions exist, such as whether Gingery is a personal god or an impersonal force, but the religion is dominated by practice, not creed. Personal fabrication of tools is the core religious practice. Mathematics is studied as a pious exercise but there are few original mathematicians.
Every home on Fowndree has at least one lathe, milling machine, drill press, and dividing head gear-cutter. The Fowndreeans regard cutting their own gearwheels with the same aplomb that Terrans regard cutting their own vegetables for dinner. Almost every Fowndreean home has facilities for uranium decontamination, a bank of algae to produce emergency oxygen, and a complete biological subsystem for reprocessing water.
The church regulates Fowndreean home life with a heavy hand, prohibiting birth control for most men and taking custody of any children who show unusual skills. Women have a few more rights, including abortion of deformed fetuses and the freedom to give up children to be raised at government expense. Many Fowndreeans attempt to gain more personal sexual freedom, but find themselves thwarted at every turn by the priesthood.
Fowndreean children endure conditions that would be considered inhumane elsewhere in the Imperium. They undergo "ordeals" for the sake of their religion, such as floating ceramic crucibles in hot lava in order to melt copper ingots for wire drawing. A considerable percentage of children die during these ordeals. Imperial humanitarians who attempt to stop or modify the ordeals rarely escape to talk about it.
Law and Policing:
Laws are not usually written on Fowndree. Outsiders frequently never know they have broken local customs until they are surrounded by mobs with chainsaws and welding lasers. Government forces exist to deliver the mail and remove the unrecyclable garbage; church forces are little more than heretic-hunting death squads. All weapons are theoretically "legal," but considering that offending the sensibilities of the locals is punishable by immediate lynching, outsiders are advised to hire local guides to deal with issues of courtesy and protocol.
Alcohol is not commonly used as a drug on Fowndree, but there are many local fungi which act as euphorics and stimulants. Outsiders who attempt to digest these fungi often experience mild allergic reactions -- for which the locals will inevitably prescribe a highly addictive pain-killing lichen. While the fungi can be ingested without risk of disease, the pain-killing lichen often contains local parasite eggs. Many Fowndreeans trade offworld books on contraband drug manufacture. The church does not outlaw any drugs, so even addictive and psychosis-inducing drugs that are forbidden in the Empire can be found openly for sale on the street-corners.
Slavery is theoretically illegal on Fowndree, and it is suicidal to enslave anyone born on Fowndree. However, loopholes in church rulings allow Fowndreeans to buy offworld slaves. The church opposes slavery, and slave-owners are a major threat to the otherwise totalitarian power of the church. The church forbids disarming anyone, even slaves. There are no prisons and no law courts other than theological courts which argue abstruse points of doctrine.
Other than shotguns, there are few firearms on Fowndree. Local tech is more than adequate to provide laser weapons, but dusty atmospheric conditions mean that, at long range, lasers are less effective than shotguns. (Fowndreeans do often carry welding lasers that work as well as laser rifles if fired in dust-free rooms or at short ranges, but they are rarely used as weapons.) Fowndreeans do arm their interplanetary boats heavily, and Fowndreean space is heavily patrolled by the church, the educational research fleets, and Fowndreean militia forces.
A loose network of local governments does exist, but civic service has low prestige and government workers invariably seek to leave. Most of these local governments are kritarchies, run by theological "judges." The primary government services are mail delivery, garbage collection, and road maintenance. All primary schools are operated by the church. The theocracy is somewhat politically balanced by a network of highly prestigious educational institutions. The priesthood is officially separate from the educational institutions, but in practice an old-boy network connects the two institutions intimately. The educational institutions are centered on tool-making, and it is not uncommon to find professors with doctoral-level qualifications in multiple fields such as mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, mining, chemistry and physics.
Spoilers below -Referees Only:
Referee's Information:
Unbeknownst to its neighbors, Fowndree's intolerant theocracy is mostly composed of psionics. Fowndree's high death and birth rates make it ideal for the emergence of mutations, and its original founders were mystics who believed that craftsmanship would give rise to mystical powers. Obviously this makes the priesthood highly hostile to the Empire and highly sympathetic to the Zhodani. The unpredictable parasites of the planet, however, make most Zhodani prefer to communicate with telepathy from a safe distance rather than land on the planet. The asteroids and dwarf planets hide numerous Zhodani research stations. The Zhodani are content to trade know-how and rare materials for gold and uranium. A few daring and dedicated Zhodani spies live on Fowndree to watch for Imperial intrusions.
The Zhodani are particularly interested in a non-intelligent, psionics-boosting parasite. While it is not currently safe to use, the Zhodani and Fowndreean priesthood are devoting all available resources to develop it into a safe symbiont.
The priests often supplement local technology with psionics. They subtly discourage mass marketed technology because a technological society would need psionics less. "Bootstrapping" among the priesthood often involves some amount of psionic power. However, most highly psionic priests devote their attention to healing and biological adaptation. Because the priests believe that Fowndreean sexuality exists only the breed a super-race, the priests have no qualms about using telepathy to invade the privacy of Fowndreeans who try to promote birth control.
Fowndreean priests will be very alert to the possibility that visitors might be non-Zhodani psionics. Psionic visitors who are willing to embrace the religion will be richly rewarded. Of course, the priesthood has telepathy and other resources by which to test the sincerity of converts. In the event that the referee is willing to let psionic players join the religion, they gain effectively inexhaustible supplies of gold, platinum, and uranium, but they are guilty of treason to the Empire and possibly of collaboration with Zhodani. If the referee wants to discourage the process, there might be an indefinite waiting period during which the priests seek a mystical sign that will not come until the referee is good and ready.
Offworld slave-dealers are eager to flood the Fowndreean market with slaves and some of them have secret bases in the asteroid belts. Recently, some slave-dealers have been performing highly unethical brain surgery on slaves to make them fearless, obedient, and resistant to telepathic scanning. The process only works on patients of subnormal intelligence and risks killing the subject, so it is unsuitable for high-value spies and soldiers. The slave-dealers hope to empower an anti-clerical minority by selling them armies of these slaves.
The majority of Fowndreean parasites are in fact symbionts without which the Fowndreean hosts would die. Some of the symbionts depend on radiation to survive. Thus surprisingly large numbers of Fowndreeans are uranium addicts whose metabolisms are balanced on a knife edge, poised to die if they get too much or too little radiation. Some members of the priesthood have adopted and controlled these symbionts to become effectively immune to radiation damage. The priesthood tries to keep most of its parasitology knowledge secret and tries to avoid allowing outsiders access to potentially useful symbionts. However, the priesthood encourages offworlders to contract non-advantageous diseases in order to stifle Imperial interest. The priesthood bred the pain-killing lichen to host particularly frightful parasite eggs so that offworlders could be sent back to the Imperium to die in unpleasant ways.
The priesthood has a variety of archaic information that is highly inspirational to Solimani separatists and archaeologists but valueless to normal folk. It includes explanations of how the planet was originally called "Foundry," as in a place to forge metal, and how to translate the ancient English holy books, such as "Build your own metal working shop from scrap" into modern Galanglic.
It is recommended that referees do not allow players to make Fowndreean player characters. However, in game terms, Fowndreeans are assumed to have 1D-1 potentially fatal diseases and a higher-than-average chance to have psionic powers. In addition to suffering conventional aging crises, Fowndreean characters have a chance of dying of degenerative diseases every year. Frequently the "disease" is just the death of a vital symbiont. Because Fowndreean parasitology is so hard to study, Imperial and Zhodani medicine and xenobiology can almost never help.
"Bootstrapping" works well on Fowndree because of two factors -- unusual raw materials and an unusual culture that overrides economics in this case. Even an expert "bootstrapper" will find that toolmaking is very difficult without Fowndree culture and working materials. Outside the church of Fowndree, "bootstrapping" is a very expensive hobby.
Fowndreean characters receive a large bonus to strength due to their high-gravity environment. Fowndreean characters start gaining skills at 10 years of age, but roll for death each year. After eight years of high risks of death, Fowndreeans have a chance to enter the priesthood if they are psionic, or conventional life if they are not. Fowndreean adult non-player characters always have a number of skill levels equal to their combined intelligence and education. Common skills include Survival, Jack-o-T, Chemistry, Mech, Elec, Prospecting.
If anyone ever wondered what it would be like if I tried to create a planet in the style of Jack Vance, wonder no longer.
Reputation:
Fowndree is an unusual Red Zone world colonized by Solomani stock and currently protected by a pocket empire. The Empire regards it as a useless backwater -- rich in mineral resources but plagued with virulent diseases and an insidious atmosphere. Imperial "experts" all agree that the costs of extracting its mineral wealth far outweigh potential profits. However, the Imperial Scout Service believes that some of the desperate prospectors who visit this harsh world are in fact Zhodani spies. The official reason for its Red Zone status is a deadly parasite which lays eggs in a medicinal lichen used for pain control.
Rarely, a mad prospector or pirate will try to land in the Fowndreean wilderness. Their bones are usually discovered shortly thereafter. More frequently, smugglers will take their chances with local diseases to sell slaves and exotic information in exchange for gold, platinum, uranium, or rare earths. These smugglers are slowly endangering the Imperium with contagious Fowndreean diseases. Additionally, they are often technically inept enough to accept highly radioactive gold that had been used as reactor shielding, thus many of them die of radiation sickness before they can spend their profits.
Fowndree's solar system has one major planet and a large number of dwarf planets and asteroids. Many prospectors and pirates take their chances with the asteroids, but even there, the danger is high. Fowndreean technology is adequate to build interplanetary spaceships, and Fowndreeans roam their solar system, mining, mapping, and setting up robotic guard stations.
Planetology:
Fowndree's atmosphere is tainted and insidious; on rare occasions, corrosive dusts and liquids are carried by storm winds, resulting in torrents of rain with Ph values on the extreme high or low end of the scale. (I.e. some rain is acidic and other rain is basic.) Rarely, natural uranium dust is carried in the rain, making it highly dangerous. Fowndree's atmosphere is very dusty and characterized by strong electromagnetic storms, making astronomical observations and radio communications impossible. Large deposits of natural magnetic materials make magnetic compasses useless in most locations. The Imperial Scout Service regards Fowndree recon missions as suicide missions. Most Fowndreean houses are at least partially underground, with enough life support (including air and water recycling) to maintain a starship.
Fowndree's native life is almost entirely extinct, and consists of molds, fungi and algae, mostly living in the planet's oceans. Fowndree does host humans, domesticated animal and plant life, and a wide variety of feral mutant animals. Mutant animal strains are mostly non-viable, but since domesticated animals frequently escape, the feral population is replenished. Most wild plant life is slightly mutated Terran stock. Fowndree has very little insolation at visible wavelengths, making conventional photosynthesis and solar power difficult. Many native fungi species are bioluminescent. Fowndree nights are often lit by high-altitude lightning, however, rather than being pitch black.
Fowndree does have a fascinating range of microscopic parasites. It is unknown how much of their genetic material is native and how much is mutated Terran stock. All Fowndreean humans have enough exotic parasites in their systems to land them in Imperial quarantine if they receive a health check-up on an Imperial world. Dedicated Imperial parasitologists frequently land on Fowndree; some last for several years before dying of local diseases.
Fowndree's gravity is almost twice that of Terra. Its day lasts approximately 39 standard hours. Fowndree is slightly smaller than Terra, but contains extremely rich deposits of heavy metals and rare earths, including uranium, platinum, etc. The extremely hostile environment makes conventional mining almost impossible. Also, many rare substances required for high-tech devices are entirely absent, making Imperial investors reluctant to fund prospecting missions. Fowndree is volcanically active and many Fowndreeans seek mystical closeness to Gingery by meditating on the edges of lava craters. Those who fall into the lava, accidentally or intentionally, are inevitably mourned by a day-long chanting ritual.
Culture:
Fowndree's most prestigious citizens are the "bootstrappers" -- men and women who have the talent and skill to start with some high-quality rocks and make knives, forges, lathes, and finally power tools. "Bootstrapping" low-quality tools into higher-quality tools is about as central to Fowndreean culture as the Roman Catholic Mass was to Medieval European culture. All high-level priests have at least some "bootstrap" ability. This emphasis on reinventing old tools is not economical, but it does guarantee widespread, fanatical emotional attachment to the culture. Fowndree's unusual mineral distribution makes "bootstrapping" easier on Fowndree than on most planets. The average Fowndreean can make a lathe out of scrap metal. Exceptional "bootstrappers" can smelt and refine ore into metal with nothing but rocks, clay, and lava. Priests can go from ore to electric motors without using outside tools. "Bootstrapping" drains a great amount of goods and services out of the economy, since Fowndreeans are religiously obligated to help "bootstrappers" in their pious exercises, assist wandering priests who are seeking out special ores, etc.
Fowndree's humans have no effective military and no hunting tradition, but they do have a rigidly enforced cultural tradition of usually lethal duelling. This is always done with a short, 10-kilogram hammer in the stronger hand and a hatchet in the weaker hand. Typical duelling grounds are dense artificial "groves" containing thick pillars that provide considerable cover and make fast running maneuvers impossible. Due to the difficulty of the terrain it is common for a single protagonist to kill two antagonists, since the pillars prevent them from aiding each other. Some groves use actual living mutant oak trees as pillars.
Due to various environmental mutagens, Fowndree's humans have very low average life expectancies. Infant mortality is high even with the best medical care; many humans die in childhood or early adulthood. The average Fowndreean regards human life as cheap and does not hesitate to kill -- even family members and priests are not immune to being challenged in lethal duels. The vast majority of Fowndreeans die from degenerative diseases or from an overdose of the naturally occurring mutagens. The average Fowndreean female who lives reach menopause will experience twenty-four pregnancies, most of which end in miscarriage.
Fowndree's society is a theocracy dominated by culturally rigid mystics. The religion is centered on the Great God Gingery, who creates all tools from chaos and nothingness. The title "Toolmaker" is roughly equivalent to "Lord" in religious usage: thus "THE Toolmaker" refers to Gingery, but "Toolmaker Smith" refers to the priest surnamed Smith.
The planetary religion is known as "emulation of Gingery" or "manifestation of the Gingery within." It asserts the reality of reincarnation and miscellaneous afterlives, which are attained by the cultivation of virtues. Adherents often have ecstatic visions of tool designs and mathematical equations. Numerous unresolved questions exist, such as whether Gingery is a personal god or an impersonal force, but the religion is dominated by practice, not creed. Personal fabrication of tools is the core religious practice. Mathematics is studied as a pious exercise but there are few original mathematicians.
Every home on Fowndree has at least one lathe, milling machine, drill press, and dividing head gear-cutter. The Fowndreeans regard cutting their own gearwheels with the same aplomb that Terrans regard cutting their own vegetables for dinner. Almost every Fowndreean home has facilities for uranium decontamination, a bank of algae to produce emergency oxygen, and a complete biological subsystem for reprocessing water.
The church regulates Fowndreean home life with a heavy hand, prohibiting birth control for most men and taking custody of any children who show unusual skills. Women have a few more rights, including abortion of deformed fetuses and the freedom to give up children to be raised at government expense. Many Fowndreeans attempt to gain more personal sexual freedom, but find themselves thwarted at every turn by the priesthood.
Fowndreean children endure conditions that would be considered inhumane elsewhere in the Imperium. They undergo "ordeals" for the sake of their religion, such as floating ceramic crucibles in hot lava in order to melt copper ingots for wire drawing. A considerable percentage of children die during these ordeals. Imperial humanitarians who attempt to stop or modify the ordeals rarely escape to talk about it.
Law and Policing:
Laws are not usually written on Fowndree. Outsiders frequently never know they have broken local customs until they are surrounded by mobs with chainsaws and welding lasers. Government forces exist to deliver the mail and remove the unrecyclable garbage; church forces are little more than heretic-hunting death squads. All weapons are theoretically "legal," but considering that offending the sensibilities of the locals is punishable by immediate lynching, outsiders are advised to hire local guides to deal with issues of courtesy and protocol.
Alcohol is not commonly used as a drug on Fowndree, but there are many local fungi which act as euphorics and stimulants. Outsiders who attempt to digest these fungi often experience mild allergic reactions -- for which the locals will inevitably prescribe a highly addictive pain-killing lichen. While the fungi can be ingested without risk of disease, the pain-killing lichen often contains local parasite eggs. Many Fowndreeans trade offworld books on contraband drug manufacture. The church does not outlaw any drugs, so even addictive and psychosis-inducing drugs that are forbidden in the Empire can be found openly for sale on the street-corners.
Slavery is theoretically illegal on Fowndree, and it is suicidal to enslave anyone born on Fowndree. However, loopholes in church rulings allow Fowndreeans to buy offworld slaves. The church opposes slavery, and slave-owners are a major threat to the otherwise totalitarian power of the church. The church forbids disarming anyone, even slaves. There are no prisons and no law courts other than theological courts which argue abstruse points of doctrine.
Other than shotguns, there are few firearms on Fowndree. Local tech is more than adequate to provide laser weapons, but dusty atmospheric conditions mean that, at long range, lasers are less effective than shotguns. (Fowndreeans do often carry welding lasers that work as well as laser rifles if fired in dust-free rooms or at short ranges, but they are rarely used as weapons.) Fowndreeans do arm their interplanetary boats heavily, and Fowndreean space is heavily patrolled by the church, the educational research fleets, and Fowndreean militia forces.
A loose network of local governments does exist, but civic service has low prestige and government workers invariably seek to leave. Most of these local governments are kritarchies, run by theological "judges." The primary government services are mail delivery, garbage collection, and road maintenance. All primary schools are operated by the church. The theocracy is somewhat politically balanced by a network of highly prestigious educational institutions. The priesthood is officially separate from the educational institutions, but in practice an old-boy network connects the two institutions intimately. The educational institutions are centered on tool-making, and it is not uncommon to find professors with doctoral-level qualifications in multiple fields such as mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, mining, chemistry and physics.
Spoilers below -Referees Only:
Referee's Information:
Unbeknownst to its neighbors, Fowndree's intolerant theocracy is mostly composed of psionics. Fowndree's high death and birth rates make it ideal for the emergence of mutations, and its original founders were mystics who believed that craftsmanship would give rise to mystical powers. Obviously this makes the priesthood highly hostile to the Empire and highly sympathetic to the Zhodani. The unpredictable parasites of the planet, however, make most Zhodani prefer to communicate with telepathy from a safe distance rather than land on the planet. The asteroids and dwarf planets hide numerous Zhodani research stations. The Zhodani are content to trade know-how and rare materials for gold and uranium. A few daring and dedicated Zhodani spies live on Fowndree to watch for Imperial intrusions.
The Zhodani are particularly interested in a non-intelligent, psionics-boosting parasite. While it is not currently safe to use, the Zhodani and Fowndreean priesthood are devoting all available resources to develop it into a safe symbiont.
The priests often supplement local technology with psionics. They subtly discourage mass marketed technology because a technological society would need psionics less. "Bootstrapping" among the priesthood often involves some amount of psionic power. However, most highly psionic priests devote their attention to healing and biological adaptation. Because the priests believe that Fowndreean sexuality exists only the breed a super-race, the priests have no qualms about using telepathy to invade the privacy of Fowndreeans who try to promote birth control.
Fowndreean priests will be very alert to the possibility that visitors might be non-Zhodani psionics. Psionic visitors who are willing to embrace the religion will be richly rewarded. Of course, the priesthood has telepathy and other resources by which to test the sincerity of converts. In the event that the referee is willing to let psionic players join the religion, they gain effectively inexhaustible supplies of gold, platinum, and uranium, but they are guilty of treason to the Empire and possibly of collaboration with Zhodani. If the referee wants to discourage the process, there might be an indefinite waiting period during which the priests seek a mystical sign that will not come until the referee is good and ready.
Offworld slave-dealers are eager to flood the Fowndreean market with slaves and some of them have secret bases in the asteroid belts. Recently, some slave-dealers have been performing highly unethical brain surgery on slaves to make them fearless, obedient, and resistant to telepathic scanning. The process only works on patients of subnormal intelligence and risks killing the subject, so it is unsuitable for high-value spies and soldiers. The slave-dealers hope to empower an anti-clerical minority by selling them armies of these slaves.
The majority of Fowndreean parasites are in fact symbionts without which the Fowndreean hosts would die. Some of the symbionts depend on radiation to survive. Thus surprisingly large numbers of Fowndreeans are uranium addicts whose metabolisms are balanced on a knife edge, poised to die if they get too much or too little radiation. Some members of the priesthood have adopted and controlled these symbionts to become effectively immune to radiation damage. The priesthood tries to keep most of its parasitology knowledge secret and tries to avoid allowing outsiders access to potentially useful symbionts. However, the priesthood encourages offworlders to contract non-advantageous diseases in order to stifle Imperial interest. The priesthood bred the pain-killing lichen to host particularly frightful parasite eggs so that offworlders could be sent back to the Imperium to die in unpleasant ways.
The priesthood has a variety of archaic information that is highly inspirational to Solimani separatists and archaeologists but valueless to normal folk. It includes explanations of how the planet was originally called "Foundry," as in a place to forge metal, and how to translate the ancient English holy books, such as "Build your own metal working shop from scrap" into modern Galanglic.
It is recommended that referees do not allow players to make Fowndreean player characters. However, in game terms, Fowndreeans are assumed to have 1D-1 potentially fatal diseases and a higher-than-average chance to have psionic powers. In addition to suffering conventional aging crises, Fowndreean characters have a chance of dying of degenerative diseases every year. Frequently the "disease" is just the death of a vital symbiont. Because Fowndreean parasitology is so hard to study, Imperial and Zhodani medicine and xenobiology can almost never help.
"Bootstrapping" works well on Fowndree because of two factors -- unusual raw materials and an unusual culture that overrides economics in this case. Even an expert "bootstrapper" will find that toolmaking is very difficult without Fowndree culture and working materials. Outside the church of Fowndree, "bootstrapping" is a very expensive hobby.
Fowndreean characters receive a large bonus to strength due to their high-gravity environment. Fowndreean characters start gaining skills at 10 years of age, but roll for death each year. After eight years of high risks of death, Fowndreeans have a chance to enter the priesthood if they are psionic, or conventional life if they are not. Fowndreean adult non-player characters always have a number of skill levels equal to their combined intelligence and education. Common skills include Survival, Jack-o-T, Chemistry, Mech, Elec, Prospecting.