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Jon N'mabbo and the Pazists
The planet Paz was settled by a branch of the True Universalist Church headed by Jon N'mabbo. With the departure of Broderik Paz and the Primus Innocent I in 1425, the True Orthodox Universalist Church was the largest and wealthiest remaining faction. N'mabbo was a real estate salesman, and cynics have speculated that he decided he could make more money in the Church than he could selling time shares in prestigious cislunar orbitals. In any case, by the middle of 25th century the True Universalist Church had become a mecca for budding archbishops and virchevangelists who found plying their old trade almost impossible in the now Gabrielised Universal Church. But it is also fair to say that N'mabbo did not seem to abuse the wealth and power he gathered as he rose through the ranks.

N'mabbo in fact was obsessed by questions regarding the location of Paz's "Pleroma", and by 1536 had become convinced that the cluster was actually NGC 5460 (at 1900 light years too distant to have been colonized, and hence it was "pure"). He shared Paz's love of secrecy though, and told ll but his closest confidants that it was actually NGC 6124 (and popular choice) that was the location of the Pleroma. The invention of the advanced and cheap amat ships in the early 16th century had ushered in a revolution in space travel, and at the same time resulted in a glut of amat and old ships that were now deemed obsolete. Jon N'mabbo, now Archdeacon of True Orthodox Universalist Church (only two steps down from Primus) talked the Ecclesiastic leadership (including Primus Hannsie Chronen, who was, as with his entire church, not recognised by the Gabrielic mainstream) into investing in a secondhand ship and stoking it with as much amat as they could afford. Although the Broderik Paz could never go fast enough for extreme time dilation effects to occur, it could nevertheless attain quite near to the speed of light. N'mabbo was concerned that the despised mainstream church would use their financial clout to acquire a fast ship and get to NGC 5460 first. And as with Paz himself, he insisted that the ship must carry 5000. (A smaller ship would have been lighter and faster).

The Broderik Paz departed in the year 1545. Travelling at near relativistic velocity the amat-powered pilgrim ship covered the 587 parsecs to NGC 5460 in a little over two standard millennia, arriving at 5650. As true relativistic velocity could not be attained and the passengers spent most of the time in hypersleep. Over a period of twenty centuries even the best hypersleep units of the time could be unreliable. So N'mabbo advised those pilgrims responsible for maintenance (no turing or higher grade robots or vecs were used; like Paz, N'mabbo was paranoically frightened of aioids) to work in ten year shifts. Unfortunately the isolation and boredom proved too much, and one pilgrim, known only as "the Judas" (his name and records were deleted by the others) apparently had a psychotic episode and sabotaged the the hypersleep banks, killing fully a quarter of the colonists before being discovered by the others on watch. Among the 1380 casualties was N'mabbo himself. N'mabbo had announced before their departure that any who would perish on the journey were "The Blessed" would undergo a period of sleep, and be resurrected in the Pleroma (not via nanotech download and cloned body, but supernaturally!) with the arrival of the Broderik Paz and the founding of the first colony, so it was believed that he and the others would be revived. Leadership was assumed by David Chan, the most senior pilgrim to survive. When the Broderik Paz reached the sun-like star b 297+135 82, in the NGC 5460 cluster, and went into orbit around the second planet, a barren lifeless world about the size of Earth, the deceased colonists did not revive, even after being thawed out. The survivors maintained a vigil until the bodies reached an advanced state of decay, there was no resurrection, and it was decided to re-freeze those who were "sleeping" until some future time when God in His Wisdom would revive N'mabbo and the rest.

Out of respect for all those who were "asleep", the yellow dwarf b 297+135 82, which was originally named Christ (in the Pazist nomenclature of the Pleroma), was called Morpheo instead ("Sleep"). The pilgrims said that those who had not survived were still "sleeping", awaiting the resurrection. They set up camp on the second planet, which they named Paz (the other worlds, moons, and major asteroids in the system were named after other church leaders, mystics of earlier ages, and other pilgrims who had died during the trip).

Terraforming attempts did not go well, and half the survivors died over the next five years. The survivors under Chan (who had now assumed the status of Primus, an office even Paz had never wished to claim, begging unworthiness) managed to get the few biospheres stabilised, but it was some years before the colony actually began to show an increase in numbers.

When the Negentropist linelayer Columbus 5 reached NGC 5460 in 3840 the crew were astonished to find a small but now thriving colony of heavily inbred baselines, claiming descent back to Primus Chan and Elders N'mabbo and Paz of the True Universalist Church. It had been widely believed that Broderik Paz had been lost (N'mabbo had followed Paz in his love of disinformation). The Pazists (as they called themselves) had a few bases on some of the system's moons and planets, but had not been able to reach any of the other stars in NGC 5460 (the Primus Innocent I had been cannibalised when establishing the colonies).

Under both Federation and Negentropist Law, the Pazists were allowed to retain ownership of all the planets and moons they were occupying, but the rest (the bulk of the system) were considered terra incognita and open to colonisation. The system as a whole was opened to colonisation, and soon became quite prosperous. However, the Pazist majority soon found themselves under the thumb of a series of superiocratic rules, first (during the late Age of Consolidation) by the Negentropist Malovitches and Heinlim cyborg clades, who tended to alternate in leadership (the Pazist Majority Opposition party was never able to gain power, apart from a brief period from 4124 to 4126 after which it was ousted in a Malovitche-organised bloodless coup), and then, after the Version War and the establishment of a NoCoZo settlement who remained after the mercenary armies had withdrawn, the formerly NoCoZoist and now non-aligned Clade Borup.

The Efficiency Maximization Paradigm took over leadership of Paz with relatively minimal loss of life in 5348. In 5394 they began a process of forced nano-upload, as part of their "crusade against entropy" and within thirty years In 5394, or shortly after, the Efficiency Maximization Paradigm leadership became optimizing the planet, and within thirty years it had been dismantled and used for construction of the Thermal Virtopia Dyson Sphere.
 
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  • N'mabbo, Jon - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
    [3487-c.5110 (standard year)] Real Estate salesman and later Pazist Universalist Church leader, became convinced that Paz's "Pleroma" was the open cluster NGC 5460; led 5000 pilgrams to colonise the Morpheo system, died in transit following sabotage of the nanostasis banks. Although the entire system has long since been optimized by the Efficency Maximization Paradigm, many uploaded virtuals, not aware of their fate, are still awaiting his resurrection.
  • Paz (Morpheo Ab)
 
Appears in Topics
1500 to 2100 AT: Late Federation / AI EmergenceSignificant Historical Events
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 14 April 2001.

 
 
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