Well, I started writing stuff last night, then I did some more this morning, and then I actually got some work done, and then came back to it and I think I'm approximating something that's near finished. I've still got to describe the capital planet properly using the Planet Description Sheet though, as, right now, it's sort of just "a planet that's covered in jungles that are slowly reclaiming the ruins of a previous civilisation".

Here's what I've got so far, apologies for the wall of text and my rather informal style.


[hider=Species - Nezzim, Avelone, Orp]
Three bird-like species, uplifted to sentience and tinkered around with by the Creators.

[b]Name:[/b] Nezzim
[b]Kingdom:[/b] Animalia
[b]Base:[/b] Carbon
[b]Composition:[/b] Multicellular
[b]Physiology:[/b] Small in regards to the rest of the Orpil Flock, averaging out to about 20 inches in length, with a wingspan of around twenty six inches. Most often recognised by it's black and white feathers, small beak and, according to some, "mean looking eyes". As with all the uplifted species within the Orpil Flock, their toes are highly articulated and posess something similar to an opposable thumb.

Think "Eurasian Magpie", and you won't be too far wrong.

[b]Reproduction:[/b] Sexual. Usually once a year, with an egg taking around a month to hatch. A single, solitary egg is laid; now it often artificially incubated, tested and generally looked after as well as possible. Around 30% of eggs fail. 
[b]Dimorphic?[/b] Males tend to be slightly smaller then females, with more iridescence in the black feathers.

[b]Name:[/b] Avelone
[b]Kingdom:[/b] Animalia
[b]Base:[/b] Carbon
[b]Composition:[/b] Multicellular
[b]Physiology:[/b] A large, heavy, flightless species, nearly two meters in length, with short wings that are rarely displayed. The Avelone posesses a short, hooked beak, "dull" plumage of dappled green, yellow and brown. Facial plumage gives members of this species something approximating a moustache and eyebrows, which are used in displays and as an aid to communication. As with other uplifted species in the Orpil Flock, it has highly articulated toes and a digit that functions like an opposable thumb.

Think bloody great big "Kakapo", and you won't be too far wrong.

[b]Reproduction:[/b] Sexual. Clutches of eggs (usually around five) are laid once every three years, hatching after three months. Approximately half of the eggs fail to hatch. Use of artificial incubators is something of a taboo, instead, family members, friends and trusted people within the community take it in turns to look after eggs and the young.
[b]Dimorphic?[/b] Nope.

[b]Name:[/b] Orp
[b]Kingdom:[/b] Animalia
[b]Base:[/b] Carbon
[b]Composition:[/b] Multicellular
[b]Physiology:[/b] A large, brightly coloured bill is the defining trait of the Orp species - it shares the same black and white plumage of the Nezzim, and is only slightly larger at three feet in length. A large wingspan and long tail helps somewhat to balance out the size of the bill in flight, but it still looks like a fundamentally top-heavy creature. As with all members of the "Orpil Flock", it has highly articulated toes with an opposable thumb-like digit.

Think "Toco Toucan", and you won't be too far wrong.

[b]Reproduction:[/b] Sexual. Inherited a lot of mating behaviour from their pre-uplift ancestors; a male with a suitably large and impressive bill will be accepted by multiple female partners in the yearly breeding season. Pre-uplift behaviour of nest-building and the male rotating around his territory to provide food for the females is no longer displayed, and the rise of artificial incubation means that a female is no longer tied to a nest for three weeks. Communal incubation is the modern norm.
[b]Dimorphic?[/b] Male bill colouration tends towards stripes and brighter colours compared to the female.
[/hider]

[hider=Nation - Greater Orpil Flock]
Briefly, comprising three species (the "Orpil", being Nezzim, Avelone & Orp), a bureaucracy that endlessly fights with itself as various Ministries squabble amongst themselves and a pair of cultures that sort of get along with one another.

[b]Name:[/b] Greater Orpil Flock (GOF)
[b]Territory:[/b]
EN08 "Ave-Mux" system - comprising of their capital, Ave-Orpil, which is heavily populated. Orbital stations above Ave-Janus and Ave-Lorr monitor pre-sentient life on their respective planets. Ave-Orpil is dominated by dense forests and jungles, with modern constructions built alongside and into the ruins of the Creators.
KV77 system - designated within the GOF as an "area of ecological interest". Three stations are present in the system; two scientific observatories with associated living and laboratory space operated by the Ministry of Environmental Concerns, one naval station operated by the Ministry of Harmony. The latter helps enforce the quarrantine of KV77 while the Ministry of Environmental Concerns tracks the development of an "Iron Age Equivalent" species on the surface of KV77 IV.
BE15 "Ruin" - extensive archaeological work is overseen by the Ministry of Culture on BE15 II, uncovering sites that may have belonged to the Creators. It might also serve as something of a place to send undesirables, malcontents and those who have fallen afoul of Ministry politics. The other five planets remain uninhabited, though the Ministry of Procurement has expressed an interest in establishing a colony on BE15 IV. 

[b]Culture:[/b] Surprisingly, the culture is not split along racial lines. Two main cultures dominate the GOF; the Southern Song, and the East Wind.

The Southern Song considers itself to be the ones most capable of organisation, or at least, the ones most vociferous in promoting co-operation between members of the GOF. History is an important subject to this culture, though few take it to the extremes of venerating the Creators, nearly everyone within the Southern Song will have an opinion on that subject. Politeness, formality and civility are treasured, such that outsiders may not realise that they have born witness to a major disagreement. Worse still, an outsider may not realise that they are making a terrible social gaffe, fail to recognise the signs of displeasure, and only realise they are now considered a pariah when they are no longer invited to social events. A relatively sheltered life within the jungle-ruins of the Creators has given the Southern Song an air of refinement and knowledge of their place in history. To the East Wind, they are seen as stuffy, slow, but useful to have around. 

The East Wind territory is home to scarred lands and the ruins of devestated cities left behind in the wake of the fall of the Creators. Faced with the constant reminders of an age long since passed, their culture is considered - by the Southern Song, at least - a little odd. Some are prone to fatalism, seeing the wreckage of terrible machines of war. Some promise to live their lives to the fullest, knowing that it could all easily end for them just as it did for their Creators. Some dream of the stars a as a way to avoid the terrible threat of extinction. Regardless of the nature of the actions they take, they value the simple act of acting - they consider themselves to be a dynamic people, propelled forward by the explosions that tore apart the Creators. Loud, boisterous, active, they are the means by which the Greater Orpil Flock reached the stars. To the Southern Song, they are reckless and difficult to understand, but useful to have around.

[b]Warring factions / Political Parties:[/b] Political life is dominated by various Ministries, with each having very strict limits on what they may control. However, most Ministries employ a number of exceedingly clever people who have the task of arguing just how their interpretation of statutes and codes allows their own Ministry to interfere in a matter that might not directly be within their domain. Open violence between the Ministries is more or less unheard of, but dirty tricks, espionage, assassination and strongly worded letters have all been deployed in the name of one Ministry or other. Each Ministry is led by a Minister, and the squabbling group of Ministers forms the government of the Greater Orpil Flock, with a directly elected "Speaker" acting as something akin to a head of state. Elections for Speaker are held every ten years, and each Ministry is responsible for it's own arcane processes by which it chooses a Minister.

Recently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have suffered a series of set-backs. The Ministry of Harmony - responsible for the (rather limited) armed forces of the Greater Orpil Flock - has seen a rise in prominence in recent years, partly due to the election of Speaker Mallicum (a close personal friend of Minister-General Fortidae).

[B]History:[/B] The History of Ave-Orpil, and the Greater Orpil Flock, is generally broken down into three ages. There is the Age of Life, the Fall, and the Modern Age.

The roots of the three species that comprise the "Orpil" are in the Age of Life. By their understanding of history, the Creators brought the Orpil species out of the darkness of ignorance, such that they might carry the brilliance of the Creators onwards into the future. It is regarded as something of a Golden Age, mostly due to the efforts of romantic writers who promoted the image of the Orpils and the Creators living as equals in a peaceful society. While scholarly studies suggest that this was certainly not the case, that the Orpil species were just one set of many that were uplifted and that the act of uplifting itself was considered distasteful by many of the nation-states that the Creators lived in. To the majority, however, they remain the multi-armed, flightless pseudo-gods, who chose their ancestors for a life of greatness.

Then came the Fall. To the Orpil, an unexplained, mysterious event that devastated the Creators. Many presume that outside interference is to blame, while the truth is that conflict between a number of states escalated into a highly destructive, global war. One continent - the cultural home of the East Wind - is particularly scarred, while the rest of the world has been steadily reclaimed by nature, and the inheritors of the world, the Orpil.

The Modern Age begins with the reclamation of the Creators works, the adaptation of their technologies to use by the Orpil and the establishment of the Greater Orpil Flock. Reclamation was slow; so much was lost, many areas were initially uninhabitable, and the barely sentient Orpil left in the wake of the Fall were forced to scratch an existence in the shadows of the ruins. True intelligence, as the Orpil reckon it, actually developed during this time - and it was a slow, slow process. "Official History" paints a picture of brave Orpil striking out of the still-smoking wreckage with mastery of the tools left by the Creators. The truth is that, just like many species, they went through various ages of technological progress, albeit significantly accelerated by the guidance of technologies left behind by the Creators.

The history so favoured by the Southern Song is of recent, modern history, and the formation of the Greater Orpil Flock out of the East Wind and the Southern Song. It was a time of coming together, of cut-throat negotiations, of compromises and agreements that led to the creation of the first Ministries, where Song and Wind could come together and share in a mutual interest. Local governments began to be replaced by the Ministries, and the bureaucracies endemic to the Ministries began to blossom, absorbing various political functions. Finally, the Ministries were ascendant, and an accord had to be reached - none of the Ministries, with their specialisations, could allow another to lead them, but a leader was needed.

Wars followed. Once great Ministries fell, some absorbed by others, others scattered to the winds. A compromise was reached once again, following the surrender of the Ministry of Arms & Armour to the Ministry of Harmony; no Ministry would be placed above another, and the leader shall be directly chosen by the "Greater Orpil Flock", comprising of the Southern Song people and the East Wind people, regardless of what Ministry they were employed by. With disputes mostly put aside, and grudges kept to themselves, progress began to happen fast. Three hundred and sixty five years after the election of the first Speaker, and the establishment of the Greater Orpil Flock as a (mostly) functioning government that stretched across Ave-Orpil, we arrive at the modern day.

[B]Hostility Scale:[/B] 1-2. The inability for the Ministries to come to a consensus on many issues creates an outwardly facing pacifism. Even in the face of an existential threat from outside the GOF, it is unlikely that the Ministries would agree on hostile action. Individual Ministries may employ covert operations outside of the GOF unofficially, though discovery would likely see the other Ministries turn on them.

[b]Laws & Legality[/b]
Prior to the rise of the Ministries and the establishment of the Greater Orpil Flock, each community tended to adopt their own legal code. In the modern age, the Ministry of Justice is responsible for most things legal. There are no laws, as such, but rather agreements and understandings. A party who feels aggrieved by the actions of another may seek justice from the Ministry of Justice, who will consider, as best they are able, whether actions taken against the aggrieved party constitute a crime. The ponderously slow bureaucracy of the Ministry of Justice check prior rulings of the Ministry to help determine whether a crime has actually taken place, though individual Adjudicators can rule on one side or the other based on their own judgement. If found guilty, relevant information is handed to the Ministry of Harmony. 

Punishments, like legality, vary, and is decided upon by representatives from both the Ministry of Harmony and the aggrieved party. Periods of indentured servitude are generally preferred to other punishments, with the guilty party becoming a low-paid employee of the aggrieved party.

One of the obvious, and often exploited, loopholes in the system is that the Greater Orpil Flock does not pursue legal recompense, but that it comes down to the single aggrieved individuals, or those that are close to them. Political assassinations are often incredibly bloody affairs, as if there are no "aggrieved individuals" left to complain about it, no criminal action has taken place.[/hider]


[hider=Narrator]
[b]Name:[/b] Nona Bellicae
[b]Age:[/b] Twenty nine.
[b]Species:[/b] Avelone.
[b]Sex:[/b] Female.

[b]Appearance:[/b] Frazzled. Dishevelled plumage. A rather plain looking white bonnet, a couple of wooden leg-rings and a pair of spectacles carefully perched upon her bill make up her everyday outfit. Attempts to get her long "eyebrow" and "moustaches" feathers into some semblance of order have failed so often that she appears to have given up entirely, making her look near permanently startled.

[b]Personality:[/b] Hard-working, obedient and more than a little bit nervous. Is not particularly happy about the things she has done, but has mostly convinced herself that it was simply following orders, which is the Right Thing To Do. Usually tries to pass off her nervousness as simply being cautious. Plans out everything, makes plans for when those plans don't work, and gets quite worried when things do not go according to the plan(s).

[b]Nationality:[/b] Southern Song / Greater Orpil Flock

[b]Role in society:[/b] Ministry Diplomat.

[b]History:[/b] Prior to being assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nona Bellicae held a number of fairly lowly positions within the ever-expanding bureaucracy of the Greater Orpil Flock. While many within her extended family had natural aptitudes that made them ideally suited for some particular role or other, Nona could find no particular role that spoke to her. Bumped from department to department in order to find the right position, by the time she arrived in Foreign Affairs she had a fair understanding of the politics that dominated the other Ministries, along with a string of mostly useful contacts. 

Nona was first assigned as a diplomatic envoy, attached to a Ministry Diplomat, that would help oversee the First Application for Membership with the Galactic Federation of United Nations. Disputes within the most prestigious of the Ministries - the Ministry of Harmony, the Ministry of Environmental Concerns and the Ministry of Procurement - regarding the prominence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the age of space travel saw the three reaching an agreement that Something Must Be Done. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be purged of their senior leadership, and in its place would sit leaders and officers that could be easily controlled.

Nona Bellicae would be one of those people. Following the tragic death of Ministry Diplomat Graffil in an air-lock accident, along with the grief-stricken suicides of his direct staff and the unexplained fire that consumed a communal habitation area belonging to his relatives on board the MFAV [i]Wings of Hope[/i], Nona was given the field promotion to "Ministry Diplomat". Now the badly damaged, understaffed [i]Wings of Hope[/i] limps along to meet up with representatives from GFUN to negotiate their admittance into the  - with the interests of the other Ministries firmly in mind, of course.

[b]Kill Count:[/b] None. Or, well, maybe a few in an indirect sort of way.
[/hider]