Asanatown
Culture in Asanatown has been shaped by more than 20 years of psychic noise. Every lashunta in the Archipelago has been subjected to unspoken but keenly felt warnings that something awful is about to happen. The result is a culture with a siege mentality. People here are cynical. Outsiders typically have to prove they’re not a threat. Ordinary citizens vacillate between sullen silence and passionate outbursts. Everyone assumes the worst outcome in any enterprise.
Few children reside in Asanatown. Those who do grow up here find the stresses contribute to a bias toward korasha genetics. This kind of pressure is very unusual for the otherwise enlightened lashuntas, and it’s one of the most telling examples of the degree to which this psychic stress has distorted Asanatown’s culture.
Meetings take place regularly in Horizon House, in closed form between only members of the council and in open form with council members’ various constituents. Korasha lashuntas, who are traditionally considered to be better suited to military conflict, dominate Asanatown’s council positions. This majority maintains a strong conservative stance, calling upon their fellow lashuntas to preserve a traditional way of life that values courage, honor, and physical prowess. Intellectual and artistic pursuits, as well as integration with other species, are often sidelined as luxuries Asanatown cannot afford.
Because of these factors, visitors to Asanatown may find themselves surprised by the city’s atmosphere. Much of the technology favors telepathic operation, leaving non-telepaths at a disadvantage in some cases. Streets are thick with dour locals, many clad in all-black clothing or military gear—or both. Some carry holographic signs proclaiming different ways the world might end, such as the sunbecoming a nova or imploding into a black hole, the domes of the Burning Archipelago collapsing, or the Swarm returning in an invasion to consume all life. Street-corner debates are common, and brawls and similar disturbances are not unheard of.
Demographics
Assets
The lashuntas of Asanatown are suspicious and introverted. They’re much more likely to hoard what they have than seek trade with outsiders. Nevertheless, some local industry exists. If the residents of Asanatown are ever able to look outward again, they could offer much to the Burning Archipelago.
In Asanatown, it’s relatively easy to locate military equipment, trained soldiers, and residents that have combat experience. Lashunta soldiers, in particular, are unique due to their integration of telepathy into the facets of military life, including training, daily operations, intelligence analysis, and logistics. Veterans residing in Asanatown often find themselves caught in mysterious plots and paranoia regarding outsiders, so their military expertise is exported only in small amounts and for mercenary missions near the sun. Those seeking psychic warriors for covert missions within the Pact Worlds, military hardware designed for use by telepaths, or the expertise of a retired lashunta colonel must come to Asanatown and arrange a meeting in the Seeker Shelter, the Last Laugh, or one of the settlement’s other dark corners. However, if the lashuntas’ strange psychic affliction ended, thousands of veteran lashunta warriors could have the opportunity to serve as defense professionals all over the Pact Worlds. The Stewards would celebrate such a change in attitude, but for now, anyone who wants to hire mercenaries from Asanatown must travel to the city prepared for a tense negotiation.
Despite their introverted stance, lashuntas have built only a little of Asanatown and Clearlight. It’s often forgotten, but the entire Archipelago was constructed by mysterious engineers who came and left, perhaps millennia ago. For lashuntas, who are accustomed to the verdant lands and aggressive life forms of Castrovel, Asanatown can feel cold. As a response, it is custom here to keep “jungle boxes”—enclosed terrariums housing plants and animals from Castrovel—adjoining homes and other buildings. Asanatown has plenty of space and ample water, and so many of these jungle boxes are full-size greenhouses. A few are expansive parks, especially in Clearlight. These arrangements can require considerable upkeep and care, but few lashuntas complain about tending their colorful plants or caring for familiar Castrovelian creatures, especially telepathic companions such as shotalashus. Indeed, green spaces of Asanatown have become a valuable source of food, pharmaceuticals, and raw materials that would otherwise be quite rare in the Burning Archipelago. A craftsperson seeking Jabaskian lumber or an herbalist in need of fungus from the Ikal Expanse just might be able to find it here and avoid expensive transport from Castrovel.
History
On the grand scale of the Pact Worlds, where history goes back thousands of years before the Gap, Asanatown and the Burning Archipelago are new settlements, only two or three generations old. While the Archipelago’s founding is the result of exploration and, some say, a divine miracle, Asanatown’s unique character as a lashunta enclave is the product of two intersecting factors: social unrest caused by psychic signals from within the sun, and a wave of veterans seeking purpose after the end of the lashunta-formian wars.
In the early decades after the Archipelago was founded, lashuntas were scarce in the community. Those who did make the trek to the sun came to help establish centers of higher learning in Stellacuna. Although it would surprise many students and visitors now, Solar University once counted many distinguished lashuntas among its faculty— before shirren diplomats negotiated an end to the long conflict with the formians, before the coming of the Swarm, and before the university riots.
The peace treaty with the formians was signed in 287 AG, and in the years after, thousands of lashunta soldiers were released from duty. Countless veterans traded that confrontation for the Silent War, but others sought to use the technical and physical skills they had developed in service for a civilian purpose on the frontier, and no frontier was more dangerous than the edge of the sun.
Devotion to Sarenrae is strong among military personnel, and these lashunta veterans were no exception. Therefore, numerous people among these new arrivals to the Archipelago were followers of Mataras, the Burning Mother. This community of ex-soldiers found a spokesperson in retired General Malonio Kam (LN male korasha lashunta soldier), whose taciturn and practical leadership made him a counterpoint to the more cerebral leaders of lashunta society in Stellacuna.
Lashunta faculty, students, and veterans were friendly rivals in the Archipelago for years, until a wave of mass anxiety and panic took hold among them in 296 AG. Virtually overnight, lashuntas from different backgrounds and diverse upbringings came together out of fear over some unnameable threat only they could sense. Putting aside their jobs and pastimes, the lashuntas reached out to the other citizens of the Archipelago, warning them of coming disaster. Unfortunately, to many of these residents these warnings sounded incomprehensible and unlikely, and were largely disbelieved.
Whatever the lashuntas were feeling was telepathic in nature, but even the brightest minds could not determine its cause, and other telepathic species, such as shirrens, remained unaffected. The more passionate and outspoken the lashuntas became, the more unreasonable they appeared, and the less willing anyone was to listen. Finally, in 299 ag, anxiety, frustration, and telepathic instability erupted into a series of riots on the campus of Solar University. There were no fatalities, but several people were seriously injured. Popular opinion turned against the Archipelago’s lashuntas.
During this time, little urban growth and development had occurred within the bubble that would become Asanatown. Several corporations had weak claims and conflicting interests in the bubble, and no linecrawler had yet been built into it, though explorers had mapped out the area’s massive dome and the monolithic structures it towered over. As time wore on, lashuntas of the Burning Archipelago developed a paranoid siege mentality. General Kam led them to begin the work, through influence and actual labor, to establish a lashunta enclave. The Archipelago Senate supported this plan, since by then lashuntas had come to be seen as disruptive troublemakers. Castrovel’s government settled some of the competing corporate claims on the empty bubble-city by offering lucrative contracts back on the lashunta home world, but it was the influence of the church of Sarenrae that proved decisive. General Kam welcomed the assistance of a handpicked disciple of the Burning Mother, Ada Belel (LG female damaya lashunta mystic), and a charge to consecrate a new church to Sarenrae in the lashunta enclave. He helped found the secular government facility in Clearlight, centered on Horizon House, a preexisting Archipelago structure the lashuntas co-opted for their purposes. (The name Clearlight derived from General Kam’s childhood home and Horizon House was named after that town’s council building on Castrovel.) With all these forces paving the way, many of the Burning Archipelago’s lashuntas quit their jobs in other bubbles, packed up their belongings, and migrated to what soon became known as Asanatown.
It has been fewer than 20 years since Asanatown’sfounding, and although General Kam has, despite his widespread popularity, largely retired from public life, Ada Belel remains the high priestess of the Church of the Burning Mother. Academics, scientists, soldiers, and others continue to visit Asanatown and its subsidiary bubble, Clearlight, but most choose only to visit rather than emigrate, as the psychic weight of living in the Archipelago is too overpowering. Other species are allowed into Asanatown provided they have business there, but the lashuntas welcome few who wish to reside within the settlement unless they have lashunta sponsors. Most visitors find themselves eager to leave anyway, perceiving the lashuntas here to be bellicose, grim, insular, pessimistic, and suspicious. These observations are fair, though, rooted in the mysterious psychic stress that could disappear as quickly as it came.
ASANATOWN
N bubble-city- Population 5,292 (83% lashunta, 5% human, 4% android, 3% ysoki, 2% half-elf, 3% other)
- Government elected council
- Qualities academic, devout, insular, paramilitary
- Maximum Item Level 20th
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