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Ambi Limis
Historic polity, successor to the Conver Ambi | |
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| Great Symbol of the Ambi Limis | |
History
With nearly all of their systems, worlds, and outposts now destroyed or annexed and their leadership systematically annihilated by the end of the Conver Wars, the Conver Limis was reduced to a few semiautonomous colonies in the rimward Hinter-region. The Conver Wars concluded with the signing of the Ian Treaty 3932 AT, brokered by The New Beneficence, in which the Conver Limis, Geminga Orthodoxy, Metasoft and Solar Dominion settled on a ceasefire. In the peace accords the antebellum territories of the Conver Ambi were divided four ways amongst the participants. Over the next century, the remaining fragments of the House of Conver Limis were officially disbanded and reorganized into the Ambi Limis. Among the conditions imposed was that in exchange for the Ambi Limis renouncing offensive warfare (enforced through disarmament and strict monitoring) and relinquishing any territory claims within 500 ly of SolSys, Metasoft and the Dominion would offer reconstruction assistance in the form of infrastructure construction. The two major empires were too busy assimilating the coveted coreward systems of the former Conver Ambi to care about the distant rimward volumes. Instead, the newly organized Ambi Limis turned outwards, and undertook one of the most significant local renaissances of known history.The elevated immigration rate from worlds of the former Conver Ambi to the few Ambi Limis worlds produced social pressure on the nascent polity to consider colonization efforts. With the linelayers provided by The Lord of Rays, the Ambi Limis were able to assimilate several client systems of the former Marabi Patha-Charlwood Alliance and continue their long-range expansion efforts rimward, towards the Perseus Arm and into the Perseus Rift.
There are persistent rumors to this very day that the Ambi Limis of this time was directly responsible for The First Vec War in 4044, by backing the cyborg spacers in the Rigel Oort Cloud and rousing them into an attack on the Emotive Cognation. The focus of such rumors are primarily on the motives of the Ambi Limis; believed to include justified retaliation against Metasoft for their role in the Conver Wars and anger at the alleged marginalization of fellow cyborgs, in addition to the knowledge that the Silicon Generation had taken in many vecs that had once belonged to the Conver Limis bot workforce for mining pyrothalassic worlds. To date, no conclusive evidence has been found to support this hypothesis.
By the 4100's the Ambi Limis cultural flowering was at its height, with close to a thousand core systems. However colonization efforts continued to outpace the Ambi Limis ability to setup dedicated hyperbandwidth communication relays.
This failure to commit necessary resources caused much of the Ambi Limis to decline into literalism and neo-scholasticism around 4280. This deterioration in cohesiveness between various systems of the Ambi Limis saw increasing decentralization with various systems acting independently or aligning with The Solar Dominion and Metasoft Version Tree.
While the Ambi Limis continued to remain nominally autonomous it was in fact undergoing drastic memetic drift and infection, in fact by the end of the Integration it had been completely absorbed into the Dominion. The surprise attack and destruction of Landau II in 4556, gave Metasoft the excuse to enter the Version War. The vec empire's decentralized structure worked in its favor, and it made huge territorial gains against its former ally, and now enemy, the Solar Dominion; Metasoft relativist fleets swiftly moved to occupy a huge swathe of worlds along the Ambi Limis border.
The Great Houses of the Ambi Limis anticipated these events, and fled in the direction of the Perseus Arm along with their followers. In the Outer Volumes era they founded the Restored Ambi Limis, a coalition of posthuman clades who rule over a population of superbrights. Despite the name, this isolated polity, with its tightly controlled culture and focus on toposophic ascension, shares little in common with its precedessor. They have not spread beyond the small cluster of systems they originally settled, and seem content to keep to themselves.
Religion in the Ambi Limis
Unlike the Conver Ambi, which had a corporate religion based on the teaching of Culver-of-Bydovsky, the Ambi Limis had no official state sponsored religion. The result was a proliferation in the number of major religious movements that were followed. These simultaneous religious reawakening movements contributed to the overall cultural flowering of the Ambi Limis. The most notable being:Ambi Limis Synthesis: An example of syncretism, it blended concepts from the old Conver Ambi megacorp religion and Zarathustrism. A mystical movement, the Ambi Limis Synthesis advocates a mindset of near total directness, a Zen-like state of being wonderfully alive and rejoicing in every moment regardless of what is happening. Followers use a ceremonial DNI to emulate sensory deprivation in order to reach a Zen-like state of mind. The business philosophies espoused by Ambi Limis Synthesis continues to be practiced into the Modern Era, albeit heavily modified.
Neo-Culverism: Some individuals chose to strictly follow the old faith. These communities tended to be fundamentalist and traditionalist in nature, being led by individuals or groups asserting direct connection to the former House of Conver Limis. Politically they often supported isolationist policies or reunification with the Geminga Orthodoxy as a first step in recreating the Conver Ambi Empire. As hardliners, they mostly viewed others as heretical or of weak faith, even other Neo-Culverist sects, and were plagued by internal schisms and violent purges. A vocal minority they remained influential due to their associations with the old political leadership.
Solarism: The major monotheistic religion of the Greater Solar Dominion was first adopted in the Ambi Limis by communities of traders, civil servants, and academics. As attitude towards the Solar Dominion and their part in the Conver Wars were either mended due to the passing of time or manipulated by memgineering, tolerance for practicing Solarism spread in Ambi Limis society. Solarism by far became the dominant religious movement of the late Ambi Limis, permeating society meticulously until the Ambi Limis became just another peripheral prefecture of the Greater Solar Dominion.
Universalism: Immediately after the Conver Wars, many inhabitants of the former Conver Ambi were seeking a replacement to the apparently defunct megacorp religion and an explanation to their calamitous losses. Various Universalist sects, seeing an opportunity to expand, latched on to the rampant anthropist sentiment and began to send in missionaries. They found a population both eager and willing to be converted. Universalism, particularly sects influenced by Jobitarianist and Thomist teachings, gained wide acceptance. The adoption of universalism, while initially strong, abated with the increasing influence of the Solar Dominion.
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Development Notes
Text by Mark Ryherd
Initially published on 28 April 2010.
Initially published on 28 April 2010.
