New Dawn Fades
The World of New Dawn Fades
Noyan is poor; a backwoods world with little to offer outsiders. And yet it finds itself courted by two competing powers, the Commonwealth and the Autarchy of Gallask. Neither cares about Noyan or the Noyim, but each is determined to prevent Noyan from joining the other's sphere of influence.
On Noyan, primitive technology exists side-by-side with advanced biotechnology, and sophisticated outsiders recoil in horror at the Choosing Ceremony, a rite of passage where children decide if their parents live or die.
Cultures
Noyan
▼Noyan is a world apart, and widely reviled. Its central rite — the Choosing ceremony — horrifies outsiders.
“You know what the single most endearing thing about Noyan is, Justice? The way you simply don't understand how anyone can object to Choosing...”
Its unique culture derives from its origin in Nullism, a profoundly anti-natalist movement, somewhere between a philosophy and a religion. Nullists held that it was immoral to create life. Noyan's distinctive institutions — the Choosing Ceremony, and the Family Court that administers it — stem from, and are a reaction to, the Nullist beliefs of the early colonists.
How is having children any different [from murder]? Without birth, there is no death. With it, the victim may live for sixty, seventy, even a hundred years, but the eventual result is the same. In the end, death is certain.
In order to restore the balance, to make amends for doing what no true Nullist could ever do, [the Noyim] created Choosing. Choosing is the child's opportunity to pass judgement on their parents — to thank them for the gift of life, or to protest against having been born.
Noyan is a poor world with limited technology, it has just one major city — the capital, Spate. Most of the population lives in largely autonomous settlements that only engage in minor local trade.
Given its poverty, and a culture widely despised by outsiders, it is an unlikely target for even the most expansionist imperial powers. Yet it finds itself courted by two competing imperiums: the Commonwealth, and the Autarchy of Gallask.