The Kinnison Estates
The Estates are a collection of agricultural businesses located in the Octanneve system of Solitude (constellation Elose). The main estate is on Octanneve V, a temperate planet twice the size of Earth and with a 14 earth-year orbit. The planet is cool (average temp just above freezing +/- 3 degrees C) but has a long summer with the average temp closer to 15-20 degrees. The winter is exceptionally harsh except at the equator, but this lends itself to the cultivation of several hardy cereal species similar to wheat and rye on the great prairies and steppe, which make very extraordinary kinds of bread.
The main estate is located on the continent of Arisia, wholly owned by the Kinnisons. Arisia is a large continent of tectonic mountains and sweeping glaciers at the southern tip, and endless prairies as the spine of the land winds around the equatorial region. These grasslands, incredibly fertile because of the northernmost volcanoes, produce grain in abundance, and further east, enormous herds of buffalo, wild dairy cattle and ravine sheep are ranched to produce excellent cheeses - the soft, acidic blue Ratchet being cluster famous for its biting, lemony-citric tang and the volcanic ash used to form its distinctive skin.
The Estates also produce fine wines from vineyards along the southern facing slopes of the volcanic ranges. The warm, reddish sky caused by refraction of the giant sun promotes abundant growth among the native varieties of grape and berry, and the rich volcanic soil provides a characteristic bite to the palate. In addition, the geothermic energy undersoil provides a pleasant microclimate even into autumn. A bushy variety of wormwood grows on the northern slopes, and provides the raw material for the renowned Kinnison Absinthe, as the wheat and rye fields supply the production of fine whiskies for export.
Octanneve V was uninhabited when the Kinnison family arrived and claimed it as part of the colonial expansion into Solitude a hundred and fifty years ago. Several other Mannar families run farms and ranches on the other three continents, all under tenancy.
The long and brutal winter brings much growing activity to a halt, which is when activity transfers to spirit making and the distribution of secondary products to market and, under the auspices of the Kinnison Foundation, charity to Minmatar refugee camps. The volcanoes create a by-product of a rare salt, which is mined for its ascerbic, slightly sulphurous and peppery taste and excellent preservative properties - used in the production of smoked and preserved fish and meats. Fishing and shellfish production takes place off the northern coasts, facilitated by the warm underwater thermal currents, and the fact that the long winter is very stable and thus the oceans are not buffeted by wild storms as on many planets. This is in stark contrast to the autumn, which lasts about an earth year (except when the orbit of Octanneve V is at its most eccentric apogee) and is characterised by furious gales and storms. For this reason, the season has become known as ‘The Frenzy” a rather apt description. This time is spent largely indoors, and time taken to preserve and store the fruits of the harvest. Livestock either migrates or is herded into the southern mountains where some shelter is to be found. Oddly, the transition from iron-cold winter to the warmth of Spring is much gentler. YC117 has been a harvest period, and the Frenzy is just getting started, with winter expected in YC119-20.
The Estates employ just under a million people, with about 3% itinerant. The majority (around 75%) are Minmatar - refugees, ex-slaves and people tired of the Republic. Other notable ethnicities are Ni-Kunni and Intaki. The Kinnisons are known as exemplar employers, paying above the average wage and providing excellent benefits such as free accommodation, travel, amenities and cultural activity. Full training and education is given for free to all members of an employee’s family, along with state of the art medical facilities. This reduces the turnover of staff to barely measurable levels, and many families have been employees for several generations. The Kinnisons argue that this increases productivity and the return on investment for the educational and health facilities. Some liberals accuse the paternalistic approach of being little different from an Amarr Holdership, to which the scathing reply comes that everyone here is free to leave, and paid handsomely. A counter-argument might be that freedom to leave this largesse into the more usual grinding poverty found among Gallente agriculture is a limited freedom at best. Nonetheless, the model is in wide use throughout the constellation, and there is even a strong commercial relationship with the more enlightened agricultural Holders in Aridia and Khanid.
Most of the estate workers live in scattered village communities, each with their own leader/manager. The estate stewards oversee and assign activity, reporting on performance and guide production goals, but most of the communities know their business and are left to it. Stewards are elected from the leadership, and only very rarely will Mhoram Kinnison over-rule such selections. Unions are permitted and encouraged, but operate mainly as managerial oversight committees, since management (the stewards) are accountable to the workforce almost as such as they are to Governor Kinnison.
Coldhammer
The Kinnison residence - known as Coldhammer - is an architecturally innovative homestead set out in a horseshoe shape, with the central villa at the apex. The open end of the horseshoe faces west, to the setting sun. Coldhammer village is set a few kilometres behind, to the east, nestled in the shallow valley of mountain foothills. Here the residence staff have their homes - at least, those who choose not to live at the residence itself.
Coldhammer is built in the neo-natural style using the silvery white dolomitic stone from the southern mountains. It is low in profile, the walls very rounded - almost like a hunched, smooth croissant, with shining reflective silver windows whose screen coatings against infra-red from the low sun reflect the light. As the red giant Octanneve sinks into the horizon, the house coruscates into a fiery cardinal-red as the circumferences of the white stone catch the sun and the windows scatter the dying light like flames. It’s an astonishing effect, as if the residence had suddenly erupted out of the ground from one of the distant volcanic traps. Almost as abruptly, the effect is gone and the house fades like a coal into the darkness, just a louring shadow beneath the snowy peaks. In deep winter, long-lived aurorae can reach this far south, especially during the planet perigee, and then the house reflects a wonderment of blues, purples and greens along with the bleak snowfields.
The residence is heated by geothermal energy, and both heat and water are plentiful. There are many large pools for bathing and recreation, in fascinating geometric shapes. These are lit in different colours, as the builder Kinnisons believed strongly in the power of colour effects on psychological and physical healing. Most rooms have both central heating underfloor, and large and ornate fireplaces which are lit upon request.
In the main entrance hall, a swooping open structure with high skylights that refract in the evening and morning sun, an enormous fireplace two metres high and seven wide is kept constantly lit (using compressed fire-bales formed of harvest straw). This is an ancient Mannar custom, whereby a fire is kept lit as a symbol of both the longevity of the family and of the permanent responsibility of hospitality to strangers. Such fires are only put out when the last surviving male of the family line dies, and tradition dictates that firebrands from the original fire are taken by each newly wed couple to their own hearth-place. Clearly, if the fire goes out for nay reason, it is seen as an extremely bad omen.
The Kinnison fire has been burning for one hundred and eighty-three years and was brought from Mannar itself.
The entrance hall is pillared in white stone, using a hexagonal motif echoing the basaltic cooling fractures seen in the volcanic ranges. ((Think Giant’s Causeway)). With the star-lights embedded in the higher walls (and the real stars through the skylights at night) it resembles an ancient grotto - a deliberate allusion to the first Kinnison on Octanneve, Albrecht, who stayed in a cave for several months as he began the process of settling the planet.
Continuing this theme, the hall leads into a low doorway of ironwood, and the main living rooms - which are in fact, centred around the wooden frames of the first homestead built in this land, now preserved within the great stone residence. This is very homely, tight spaces of worn wood and hide, smelling of ancient wormwood and smoke, decorated with rugs, deep carpets and heavy, soft leather furniture. The walls are stacked with antique books - real paper bound with animal hides, in long, winding cases made sinuous by their burden of knowledge and time.
It becomes noticeable that there is very little tech in the room, just a small comlink screen. It is almost as if Time has passed this house by, and the residents seek respite from her in this refuge.
A door leads off into another part of the old house, a long dining room and then a very old-fashioned drawing room. The latter is lighter, less frontier ‘masculine’ and there are a number of exquisite studies of the human form in silver metal and silver sheen obsidian. There are also some varied musical instruments, clearly for playing rather than display, including a large Gallente harp.
Whilst other doors are obviously portals to the private quarters, another large ironwood door leads back into a light atrium connecting the guest rooms and working sections of the residence. Through the bright glass and white, stylised stone may be seen laboratories and offices, and a huge octagonal pool of blue water, gently steaming. A gym and activity centre can be seen on the other side. This part of the building is far more modern in conception than the home behind.
The guest rooms are large, with panorama windows and a balcony overlooking the western plain or the eastern mountains looming behind. They comprise four rooms, two bedrooms each, a living/dining area and a huge bathroom. The most unusual aspect is a bacterial stasis cabinet housing a selection of excellent cheeses from the estates, and some astonishingly tasty bread. Most meals are taken in the enormous refectory beyond the gymnasium, and many of the residence workers may be found here.
Octanneve V Fauna and Flora
The southern tip mountains are newly formed, with great razor like ranges filled with magnificent glaciers of blue ice. Many of these azure rivers of ice have created headwaters of the deepest turquoise imaginable, glittering like jewels when they form in the depths of summer. Here, the Firebirds dance and swoop during courtship, producing their characteristic laughing call.
The Firebird is so named because of its orange and red plumage, and that it migrates from the volcanic north where it lives during winter, to the high lochs of meltwater in summer. The flashing, red, swooping, spiralling flight of the courting firebirds over the aquamarine and turquoise mirrors of the glacial lochs is a once in a lifetime experience of sheer, exuberant joy. On migration, the ventral feathers turn a caramel black colour, and there Firebirds are known as darkwings, less obvious against the glowering storm clouds. The Estates control access to the breeding grounds (not only because the climb is perilous and most arduous) to ensure the precious birds are not put at any risk.
The Mannar Settlers
Mannar tradition is quite conservative, with many customs that reflect back to the times before the Gallante arrived. Though the majority are very positive about the Federation - much more so than the Intaki - they also like to see themselves as a special and distinct culture, resistant to some of the more extreme heterogeneity prevalent in the Gallante themselves.
This results in a strong leaning towards the Progressive party, the belief that people should be capable of controlling their own fate, that prosperity is a product of hard work and well-deserved when found. Government should be conspicuous by its absence, aside from foreign policy and defence. There’s little enthusiasm for welfare programs, but their deeply held beliefs of honour, paternalism (summarised by the concept of noblesse oblige - charity is the province not of the state, but of the successful individual) and hospitality (the obligation to welcome strangers and provide for them) mean that they have some very successful charitable outreach programs to the poorer in society. The downside (to the more liberal-minded) is that these programs also expect the beneficiaries to be suitably grateful through responding with hard work and non-dependency - meaning that some unable (rather than unwilling) may be brutally abandoned as hopeless cases.
For example, Mannar senators were among the pre-eminent drivers of aid to the Republic, and championed this cause for many years. However, the events of the Elder Fleet and subsequent ‘ingratitude’ (bordering on oath-breaking for some) has eroded this support considerably. It is only because many (especially from Solitude) are somewhat dependent on the Minmatar workers’ vote that they have not very openly called for a moratorium on aid.
The early Mannar were governed by monarchies, and the many of the modern race tends to romanticise those times. Some even go so far as to gloss over the slavery that characterised much of that period, even to the extent of arguing for an acceptance of Amarr practices, at least as a theoretical position. Mannar slavery was entirely practical however, with no hint of religious justification, and most see that period as a necessary, but now primitive and abhorrent time. Nonetheless, liberal observers might point to the paternalism of many Mannar as not entirely distinct from the motivations behind the early slavers.
Traditional Mannar are sticklers for good manners and observe protocol scrupulously. Formal Mannar dining is legendary for the complexity of its etiquette and the myriad cutlery choices (there’s even a long running holo-soap on Galnet, “The Comedy of Errors” which is very popular - either seen as a comedy drama for many Gallente, or as a fascinating cultural documentary for the obsessive compulsive). ((If you know the very famous - in Germany - British comedy "Dinner for One" you get some idea of the Mannar sense of humour)).
Whilst the Mannar are politically conservative, culturally they can astonish the unfamiliar observer for the sheer joy and abandon shown in ritual. The Mannar are not religious - there are some that still practice devotion to the ancient animist pantheons, some that have household gods/angels which are representations of the old divine kings, but most embrace their ritual as a purely cultural expression. A fairly high number of Mannar are converts to the Amarr religion, though they retain enough scepticism of core tenets - such as slavery - as to be considered pretty heretical by the orthodox.
Almost all cultural activities take place naked, usually with the bodies painted in lurid colours. Indeed, for such an apparently conservative people, their festivals and art are characterised by riots of colour and shape. Music is usually ethereal, light and high on harmony and melody, low on bass and rhythms. This is exemplified by the famous balletic theremin.
Solitude is a unique region within the Federation and is relatively newly settled. Some two hundred years ago, there was a movement among many Mannar to distance themselves from the increasingly chaotic Gallente (but not the Federation - Mannar consider their oaths to be sacred, one reason they can be found often in the war zone with the Caldari - the breakaway state is seen primarily as oath-breakers, especially with the subterfuge the Caldari undertook prior to announcing their secession) and take advantage of Solitude’s frontier to establish a new homeland.
Many of the families that established themselves out here take their Progressive politics of self-reliance to a degree found distasteful by many Gallente. They are very supportive of the Federal Navy, especially after the Kador invasion, and pride themselves that it was the ‘homesteaders’ (a trifle outdated as a description since most are extremely rich and certainly no longer live in the caves and huts of the early frontier) who checked the early invasion long enough for the Navy to respond with overwhelming force. A dinner party that gets onto the subject of local armed fleets, the minutemen and militias can be a very, very long evening for outsiders.
Politics is the life-blood of Solitude, and it is perhaps not surprising to learn that Senator Mentas Blaque was born here. Whereas he represents the Social Democrats most Mannar here approve of him and consider his affiliation as a front. They also approve of the Black Eagle programme, but have concerns - should Blaque prove to be a real Social Democrat - that his agency might become an organ of state, of the government, rather than protecting the rights of the people as the Navy does.
Many of the residents of Solitude, including the Mannar homesteaders are moderately pro-Amarr, as they consider the Empire to be a reliable and honourable partner. There are many business networks into Aridia and Khanid, and politicians often promote the Amarr lobby.
Author
Topic: [Worldbuilding] Octanneve V and the Kinnison Estates (Read 4060 times)