Traveller!: The Gravesmen of Pharan

B6668D6-C

Since the beginnings of their history, the people of Pharan have had a religion based on a relatively simple concept: Their dead go to the moon. Originally, the planet's bluish-grey moon was believed to be the afterlife to which the dead ascended along the crystal road. Imperial anthropologists have theorized that this owed much to the fact that Pharan's moon, though smaller than Terra's, orbits much closer, making the similarities between the planetoids more immediately obvious. The moon's proximity also meant that there was a significant evolutionary bias towards pattern recognition to deal with the extreme and treacherous tides, and Pharani technological advancement occurred leaps and bounds faster than that of other worlds. After a surprisingly short time, they were able to visit their moon. The doctrinal war that followed was prolonged, bloody, and - judging by the dearth of material the normally rigorous Pharani kept on the defeated and their perspective - decisive.

After almost a hundred years of struggle, the official doctrine was rewritten - The dead did in fact go to the moon, but this meant that the bodies of the dead had to be placed on the moon, lest their spirits walk the surface of Pharan until they found the road to heaven. The only living humans permitted on the moon were the priests and their descendants. The original name of the moon of Pharan was forgotten, replaced by the new name Phatum - Graveworld - and attended to by the new caste of spacer/priests, the Notum - Gravesmen. The Notum, with the power to decide who would be taken directly to the afterlife and who would be left to find their own way - or worse yet, cast into space entirely - quickly rose to become the planet's nobility class.

A supplemental edict pronounced early in the post-war era - that any non-Notum who died offworld would be forever lost, barred from Phatum both in spirit and in body - is looked upon by historical scholars as the key to the technologically advanced Pharani's failure to become a major race. The Notum caste were primarily concerned with ferrying the bodies of the faithful from Pharan to Phatum and their own debaucheries and intrigues; the general populace, meanwhile, was terrified of dying in space. Stellar exploration (and Jump technology) were permanently sidelined. When the First Imperium arrived, they were quickly worked into the Notum's religious structure as Lanon - Not-men, or hollow men, humanoid beings who could travel the space between the stars without fear, because they had no souls to lose. Lanon were to be pitied rather than feared, and interaction with them was not taboo. The rapidly evolving dogma of the Pharani went so far as to accept that, while nothing could be done for the Lanon, any result of a union between a Lanon and a Pharani would be a fully-souled Pharani. Outside observers are quick to note that this particular dictum was passed mere weeks before the birth of an influential high Notum's grandchild - the father was a Lanon trader.

Pharani generally avoid going out into the wider galaxy, and Pharan's high level of technological advancement allows them the leeway to do so - Traders and Imperials are willing to come to them for their advanced technology. While Jump technology was never discovered, the Pharani have a religious duty to go into near space, and are masters at developing small craft and non-Jump-enabled system freighters: The "Tumrak" Graveships are designed to carry tens of thousands of corpses to the planet's moon. Further, the world's relatively small number of potential pilots - Generally, only Notum and deeply irreligious Pharani would dare leave the planet's surface - meant that Pharani ships tend to be highly automated and easy for a small crew or single pilot to operate. Pharan exports its ships and automatic systems to other worlds, where they are highly prized by nobles and corporate execs looking for yachts they can operate alone.

In recent decades, Pharani, especially the youth, have increasingly fought for permission to leave the system and explore the universe of the Lanon. A workaround compromise was found before the pressure could threaten the existent theocracy: Cryonics. Offworld Pharani on the verge of death are put in low passage, and eventually returned to the surface of the planet to die "appropriately". Even non-religious Pharani are often uncomfortable with the idea of dying off-planet or allowing a fellow Pharani to do so, in much the way that a similarly non-religious Terran would be uncomfortable with the idea of being left unburied. Ships and craft built on Pharan always have many low berths; a Pharani will be wary of riding or serving on a ship that lacks them.

While the low berth system allows Pharani to leave the planet generally without fear, the Notum still discourage galactic exploration as a danger to the soul (and a threat to their control). Petitioners to journey out among the Lanon are granted permission on the condition that they may not return to Pharan, or their bodies to Phatum, for a period of one hundred lunar weeks (approximately thirty Imperial years, due to the slow orbit of Phatum). This condition, called the Ganaro, means that venturing out into the galaxy is seen as a brave but desperate act, and Pharani who return from their Ganaros having somehow significantly benefitted the planet (often by bringing in major trade deals or contracts) will be sent upon their deaths to Lhotuma ("The Grave of Heroes"), a highly visible crater on Phatum.

The system has bred some unexpected results: A colony of offworld Pharani exists near the system's main gas giant, composed of those who regret their Ganaro, who pine for Pharan or who find the worlds of the Lanon repellent or terrifying. Some are simply waiting to for their Ganaro to expire, others, less patient, agitate through on-world sympathizers for early return. The colony makes a living fuelling and servicing passing ships, providing near-mainworld technological expertise at much lower prices, but their trade is often undercut by outsiders' concerns about antagonizing the mainworld. The Notum government is divided on the colony - Some feel that the exiles' desperation to return to Pharan makes for an excellent example of the undesirability of travel, while others worry that their appeals may undermine the Gravesmen's authority.

The bodies on Phatum are not buried, but carefully arranged in religiously significant patterns on the surface by the Notum. Despite the size of the moon, these patterns have become increasingly cramped as bodies accumulate. There is a movement among the high Notum to amend the edicts to permit burial or cremation, but it is being fought as a heresy by the orthodoxy. Meanwhile, on airless Phatum, the corpses continue to pile up.