Musical Acts in the Galaxy

Space isn’t just big, it’s STUPID big. Big enough so that just about anything could be out there. It is in this spirit of unlimited possibility that this (very partial) list of some of the notable musical acts in the galaxy is offered.

Ambient Ambitions - A drug-addled wuxrian, generally acclaimed as a musical genius, known for their unique “Contrast Music” style.

Broken Symmetries - Fractal-electro Salsa music quartet from Fitzgerald’s World.

Fog Plow - A Victorian Metal duo known for excessive pyrotechnics. They got their start on Cielius 5.

The Glowing Herd - A Weestern-Trance orchestra banned on several worlds due to the combination of the hoedown and the rave.

NeoHeatCore - Metamodern Punk band known for performing underwater. Popular among Thanians.

Kly Fnofcob - A band of lower-caste subjects of the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns, their music is designed to shock the conservative tastes of imperial society. All members were sentenced to hard labor in the heat-mills of Scharlaff.

The Laundry - Traditional funk group from New Samarkand Station.

Lewis and Roscoe’s Vibraphone Anomalies - A free-floating synthcore jazz ensemble last heard touring the Sagittarius Gap.

The Lung-tronics - Acapella classical music “orchestra” featuring members of numerous species singing the parts of different instruments.

Maiden House - An ASMR-dubstep idol group, primarily composed of Lärkians, named after one of the most notorious rishathra parlors on Gibson.

Riot of the Floating Head - A choir of ool-tyr renowned in the Tartarus Sector for Heavy Metal renditions of advertising jingles stretched into hour-long symphonies, usually with a political message.

Super Nandemo ( スーパー 何でも) - Heavy metal band known for romantic ballads, based in Berwynne’s Reach.

Zaganway - An Electro-folk band, the members are all Jovians, except for lead vocalist Marfy Snok,(a Bleen), known for featuring the Sprungivore ( a traditional Jovian insturment).

Zaganway Poster

Kly Fnofcob

In the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns, the name Kly Fnofcob is used as a generic name (along the lines of John Q Public or Jane Doe), but with the added connotation of referring to an ideal citizen. For example the statement “Kly Fnofcob always pays their taxes on time.” does not refer to any particular person, but rather implies that this is what an ideal citizen does, and by extension you ought to do so as well. For an example, read The Caretaker.

Takarran Glossary

Boltacn - humility/ power through silence

Ki’tak - red takarrans

kultah - literally wet sand or beach - meaning non-binary (in regards to gender)

Lu’tak - purple takarrans

T’ozah - a type of robot capable of disguising itself as a mundane piece of technology exemplified by the Cryptobots and Defendrons

Chedoku

Chedoku is an extremely complex board-game. The name is a portmanteau of Chess and Sudoku, and the rules combine elements of both. Chedoku is a strategy game for two players, played on a nine-level board, though a simplified, three-level variant attained wide popularity during the last century of the Planetary League. The pieces are based on chess pieces, but in addition to moving and capturing opposing pieces, they also place or modify numbers associated with each square. These numbers in turn constrain the movement of the pieces.

The game tends to be complex enough as to be essentially unintelligible to most humanoid life. The main competitors and audience for Chedoku lies among beings adapted for high intelligence. Encephaloids, Brains, and powerful AIs are the main competitors. Occasionally, a highly intelligent human or other humanoid will make an appearance in an official tournament, but rarely lasts beyond the opening matches.

Mr. WOW!

Mr. WOW! was a popular brand of soft-drinks during eras 1 and 2.  This synthetic beverage came in a wide assortment of colors and flavors, often involving some kind of gimmick.  Made by Mr. WOW!, inc. headquartered in the Berwynne's Reach system, Mr. WOW! outlasted many competitors, even surviving the Great Reckoning.

Mr. Wow! employed a large array of gimmicks, including robotic, ambulatory vending machines. One of these is known to have been employed on the campus of the PLAS Academy for a long time, becoming something of an unofficial mascot.

Flavors included:

• Orange Insanity

• The Purple Prescription (Later changed to Murasaki Mayhem in honor to the famous Battleoid)

• Chaos Cola

• Strawberry Berwynne (after Ichigo Berwynne, and used in the cocktail of the same name)

Notable gimmicks:

• Nanotech dyes used to stain a particular design on the consumer's tongue

• replacing carbonation with helium bubbles, raising the pitch of the consumer's voice

• a bio-luminescent glowing soda

Paper-craft:

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Print and cut out this image to create a paper-craft Mr. Wow! vending machine. (Scaled for use with 25mm miniatures)

Grigoo

Grigoo (grigo͞o) n. A pejorative term for anything that doesn't work properly or is worthless, especially nanotechnology. (A shortened form of Grey Goo, a doomsday scenario in which runaway nanotechnology disassembles everything into grey goo.)

Grigoo entered the vernacular early in Era-1, when a new line of self-cleaning bathroom sinks came on the market without getting a thorough quality control review.  The main issue with these sinks, which were designed to break down organic matter, arose when they were used for shaving.  The embedded nanotech turned the hair follicles into a disgusting grey paste and gave off a foul smell. 

Other infamous examples of Grigoo include the first attempts at Plushite underwear, which often contorted themselves into very uncomfortable configurations, and a line of high end telescopes with nano-engineered lenses that under certain conditions exhibited unintended emergent properties, giving a distorted image. 

Entities made of naturally occurring and/or low purity computronium (which tends to be sentient, but hopelessly insane) are also commonly known as grigoos.

Election Festival

The Planetary League was a democratic civilization with a Senate, a court system and a President, as well as planetary, regional, and local versions of the same basic governing structures.  In order to fill those offices, the League held annual elections.  These took the form of a ten-day festival.  This was held each year from day 301 - 310 of the Galactic Standard Calendar, (roughly corresponding to the end of October through the beginning of November from the older Gregorian calendar).

The first five days of the festival were devoted to debates and discussions, as well as general revelry, parties and dances.  Local festivals often included a midway where political parties, candidates, and petitioners had booths and displays, mixed in with various carnival amusements.  Comedians and artists would lighten the mood with public displays of satire. 

The sixth, seventh and eighth days turned solemn, with candidates giving formal speeches.  These days were set aside for citizens to actually cast their ballots.

The ninth day of the festival was for announcing the winners of the election.  It was a day for victory and concession speeches and parties.

The final day of the festival was known as Reconciliation Day, and was devoted to reaffirming the core values of the Planetary League.  This was a day for the losers to congratulate the winners, and the winners to make a public display of graciousness to the losers.  It was perhaps the most important civic holiday in the Planetary League.

The Election Festival survived the Great Reckoning, and a form of it was carried on every year in the Holy Empire of Man. It was a substantially shorter festival, being only three days long.

The main feature of this incarnation of the festival was an extended military pageant, with parades and speeches.  This was accompanied by the public shaming and execution of various criminals and enemies of the empire.

The festival ended with the announcement of the people who had been "elected" (chosen by the Emperor, or his servants) to fill various civic and military offices, as well as those who had been awarded medals or honors. 

Storyteller civilizations

This euphemistic category of cultures primarily encompasses those that failed to achieve technological prominence through a lack of literacy.  Most of these never developed any formal system of writing.  Some were founded by life-forms that lacked the ability to think abstractly about visual information, while others never developed writing because they were trapped in a cycle of perpetual warfare, or other ongoing upheavals.  Others settled into lifestyles that fit comfortably with their environments, and never felt the pressure to advance their technologies.   Also included (but not without controversy) are a handful of cultures that did develop writing systems, but had written languages so simple as to only contain a handful of words.  Included in this latter group are the Wuxria, whose lack of fine manipulation abilities left their written language at a rudimentary level.