Intergalactic Summit

I smell a spy....

This, totally. I mean, think about how a childhood in a rural farming community in temporate, pastoral environs would seem to spacers like me, or even more to folks who had it rougher like Bjorn. For me, what I grew up in was normal. It was, actually, a little boring sometimes, crawling through the same conduits every day, keeping the same machinery running, dealing with the normal reconstituted protein paste and noodles...

Having animals around? Plants? How exotic! Being able to run in any direction until you drop? MADNESS!

What seems normal and boring to you, I promise, is alien and wondrous to others.

This was undoubtedly my experience. As a child, the adjustment to cramped station environs pressurized with canned nitrox was not without its troubles.

Born aboard a Fenrir, which was then on fire and leaking atmosphere about a week after I was all wrapped up in a bundle. So that doesn't count as my home.

Instead, I was raised on Skarkon II. Not in the major population centres, thankfully. Instead, I was raised on the regolith regions, so it's not that much better either.

What you wish to know about my home you can probably find on the Galnet. That Skarkon Incident of YC110 generated alot of publicity, and not the sort the late Karin Midular appreciated either.

I was born and raised on the second planet of the Vey system, and lived there until I was around 25. The locals know it as Maatrukaanan, "the forest that gives birth to the world". As you can guess, there are a lot of trees. The planet's surface is mostly land with some seas and lakes, though nothing on the scale of the oceans I've seen on other planets, and the land is almost entirely covered in forests.

Life on Maatrukaanan is tied to the forests. The trees provide for us, offering a bounty of nuts and fruit, medicinal plants and mosses, shelter for a variety of game animals and birds. They also provide our main exports: lumber for contruction and wooden crafts and finished good. In terms of fauna Maatrukaanan may not be as biodiverse as the jungles of Intaki Prime but there are some unique species such as the shadow fox, a small black mammal that is a master of stealth. You will never see one unless it wants to be seen, they served as an inspiration to me during my wormhole hunting days.

When it comes to plant life however there is incredible diversity, from the boreal forests in the polar regions to the temperate regions filled with deciduous and coniferous forests to the rainforests near the equator and cloud forests that crest the Shilankbaka mountain range. Trees range from small shrubby things to massive firs the size of office towers. To anyone that has not experienced a planetside forest it is hard to describe. The freshness of the air, the scent of tree sap on the wind, the sound of the rustling the leaves and the sheer peacefulness that finds one amidst these silent giants. I've seen some stations that try to recreate the experience but in my opinion they don't come close.

What makes Maatrukaanan remarkable though is it's government, I have not seen it's like anywhere else in the cluster.

Maatrukaanan was the first planet colonized by the Intaki a mere 95 years after first contact with the Gallente, so these settlers were only a few generations removed from their ancestors who relied on wind to power sailing ships and had not yet discovered electricity. The first year was very harsh as the settlers had no prior experience of winter (on Intaki Prime it's joked that there are two seasons: hot and wet). It's get pretty cold on Maatrukaanen (though maybe not by some people's standards having read this thread), and many settlers being woefully unprepared died that first year, and many more returned to Intaki prime, including the leaders of the expedition. What was left were a few hearty settlers and people with nothing to go back to on Intaki.

Those who remained made the remarkable decision to not elect any leaders whatsoever and instead to rely on a communal framework (known as the parivaar system, parivaar being the Vinan k'Intaki word for a family unit) where each individual contributes to the good of his or her community. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a slogan that those early settlers came up with and by which the people of Maatrukaanan still live.

Another unique thing about Maatrukaanan is that there is no planetary currency whatsoever, nor is there any concept of private property. ISK is used to trade with off-worlders but any profits made through trade are kept in a communal account and any spending must be approved collectively by members of the parivaar.

It is a nice place to grow up, the forests take care of the people and the people take care of the forest and everyone takes care of each other. The forests are considered sacred by our people and as such all logging and forestry is carried out sustainably. The forests are so abundant that there is also minimal land cleared for agriculture.

Most of my youth was lived in a contented bubble on that planet, and it was easy to ignore the chaos in the rest of the cluster. That is until the days of the blind auction when the Caldari took the Virette constellation. Vey was auctioned off to Hyasyoda and being naive and not understanding the concept of private ownership (how can someone claim to own a planet?) we invited Hyasyoda to form a parivaar and we celebrated their arrival. Before we knew it hundred of acres of our sacred forest had been stripped and shipped back the the Forge.

That event was a spark that lit in me a desire to understand more about the people who lived elsewhere in the cluster. What did they believe and why? How could they have such different worldviews? I went on the University and studied sociology and the history of the peoples of New Eden. It was not enough though, I wanted to go out and experience it all for myself, so here I am. For my brother Hadeth it was a call to connect even more closely with our home planet. He is now a forestry technician working to help our forests recover from Hyasyoda's plundering.

I was back home fairly recently to celebrate Yoiul with my Parivaar. It was nice to see the trees all adorned with snow again.

Intaki home world is lots of jungle.
And when you find a clearing, it's just a little less jungle, but still a lot of jungle.

Luminaire is my home planet.

I just recently became a pilot and was quite ready to see the stars, but already I feel homesick.

My family owned a vineyard in the countryside but I grew up in a suburb just outside of Caille. It made for a rather interesting childhood: the countryside juxtaposed against the city.

I cannot do Caille justice in but a few paragraphs, but it is a city among cities. It is so uniquely Gallentean, yet you can find anything you want there from any part of New Eden. The level of detail and care that has gone into the creation of Caille truly moves the heart. I have spent much of my time in the Sanctuary of the Seventh Goddess and none of it have I regretted.

The Crystal Boulevard is another obvious site that would be criminal to neglect. Both during the day and nighttime, it is as if one is stepping into another realm that glitters and shimmers. Try not to lose your footing out of dizziness.

I could go on and on about the numerous galleries, gardens, architecture, boutiques, libraries, spectacles of future art, even the peopl themselves, but some things simply must been seen. And it is getting late.

As one might infer from my time spent in the sanctuary, I and my family are rather spiritual (if not religious). We follow the many gods of the Caille region like most others we know. I was drawn in particular to what the gods meant, how they existed and what they represented, so I spent a lot of time visiting the many shrines an temples of Luminaire. Once, I went with a group of pilgrims to a far flung shrine in a mountain range halfway across the world to pay homage to a god of the stars (the irony is not lost on me).

The countryside is quite verdant with deep forests, rolling hills and pleasant lakes. My family's vineyard is about two acres with a small wooded area near the back that my siblings and I would dare each other to go deep into. My father would warn us not to do so, for fear of ghost-lights that would lure those foolish enough to follow them deeper into the woods and never to be seen again.

We also maintaine a small shrine to a god of wine and merriment at the vineyard as well. It is quite lovely, if somewhat small.

One other feature that shouldn't be missed are the seemingly endless fields of flowers that exist here. Some exist for harvesting to make perfumes and others grow naturally. Truthfully, the ones that grow naturally are the ones that I think are most beautiful.

Considering what I've said, it may seem as if I'm boasting. I don't mean to come off that way, but Luminaire is truly beautiful to me and I look forward to one day settling there again. Doing what, I've no clue.

Though I was born on a station, that was simply unfortunate timing. My home planet goes by the name of Asakai III. Natives just call it Asakai, which can be confusing for non-natives to the system, but nearly any natural-born Asakaian will know whether one is talking about the planet or the system.

It is a dry, very warm planet with no real concept of "seasons" besides stormy weather and calm weather, and with nothing one would classify as an ocean. Of the few seas, the majority are irradiated, contaminated, or otherwise adverse to human health and not really for consumption. There is little vegetation left, and likewise few non-domesticated animals above the size of a standard dog.

Our past has been erased. Ground down into dust by the worst aspects of our natures. Though, there are some things we can learn from clues scattered here and there, still around by simple virtue of the being to large to easily destroy.

The planet must have been colonized a long, long, long time ago, but nobody really knows when or by whom. Some speculate it was habitated before the Eve gate collapsed, but that theory has as much evidence as any other. All we know, is that we were here before the Caldari explored and exploited Black Rise. There were never many of us. We know at some point a few hundred years ago, the population of the planet dwindled to around 370,000. Today, it's sitting at a healthy 57 million, thanks to the prosperity brought by the State. The majority of those souls live in 3 massive partially-underground fortified cities dotted around the planet. All of them are self-sufficient, though that's only come about recently. There are four other city-complexes, but only the military is cleared to go to them, and only for a very good reason. One was wiped out 150 years ago in a biological attack, two are and have been severely irradiated for recorded history, and the last is a skeleton of a complex where you'll only find scavengers, mercenary bands, raiders, cults and vagabonds.

The surface of the world is riddled with obvious signs of the favorite pass-time of my people. From the rusted corpses of military convoys left to bake in the sun for hundreds of years, to mountainsides with craters half their size blown out of them, to derelict missile silos and military complexes gutted after they were abandoned by their owners. The only reason you go into the wasteland is to either kill people living there, or because you're no longer welcome in the cities.

Before the Caldari, every known attempt to go into space has failed. Pilot error, unexpected weather, hostile action, shoddy equipment, sabotage. The very few who actually reached space, in all known cases, disappeared not long after. Even now, when the spacelanes are mapped out and the air above Asakai III is monitored, no evidence of them has been found.

Culturally, we're diverse, but not exactly friendly with eachother. The first thing the Caldari did when they came was impose peace between the cities. It had little effect beyond forcing us to be discrete about killing eachother. No, the biggest thing that brought us together as a people was realizing that we were slightly outnumbered in the universe, and it might be a good idea to work together as a people, rather than against one another. Mixing between the cities is still very uncommon, and someone from Carkos probably won't ever really be welcome in Ranth or Kyten, but it's more prevalent now than it has been for a long, long time.

The Megacorps own Asakai, that's for certain. But being a borderworld, already armed and entrenched, and having few natural resources that can't be gotten elsewhere at much cheaper extraction cost, they've seen fit to administer from afar. As long as the 3 cities generate revenue and soldiers and stay loyal, the State seems content with imposing only moderately authoritarian laws.

The capsuleers, on the other hand, have brought both riches and war.

I can't thank everyone enough for sharing a personal look at the places you grew up, and what that place means to you. I would love to hear more, from anyone and everyone. The pictures you lot paint of these places make my heart warm, even if the pictures themselves are not always pleasant.

Home is complicated, no?

In the next day or two, as time permits, I will be collating these accounts into a master list at the beginning of the thread.

Again, thank you all. Truly.

I don't have too many memories of my first home planet. I was a child and it was a domed colony world on the a storm planet on the edge of the Empire, as part of the Empire's effort to spread. I remember looking up and seeing purple and red tiered clouds with an extraordinary amount of electrical energy generated by the planetary forces that effect such things. I have a vague memory of strange life, like airborne jelly fish in the clouds but perhaps it is a child's whimsy.

From holo pictures of what was there before the attacks, I can see that my commoner family plot's was a simple one. It was a square plot with a utilitarian habitat structure with a basic set of rooms (I shared my room with my siblings), separated by a simple metal fence. My mother had a garden plot. A holo picture I have, which shows me as a four year old playing, shows rows of corn are spaced wide enough to allow a person to walk through. Next to the habitat's entrance are two small beds containing kitchen herbs, with common names such as Lavender, Parsley, Sweet Basil, Oregeno, Saint Junip's Wort, Amarr Chamomile, Rosemary and Spearmint.

Given that space is at a premium in such a world, I assume the purpose of the plot was not simply an affectation. There was no room for frivolities. I had no play equipment. Space was at a premium and the crops may have been part of the balance necessary to sustain the isolated colony. Besides providing for nutritional needs, such gardens help to filter and re-oxygenate air and provide biomass, some of which may have composted into fertilizer for the next round of crops.

Unfortunately, I had to leave my first home at a young age due to the untimely death of my parents. I don't remember much else except for some cherished holo pictures.

**Addendum. The colony was located in the Aridia region. A description of the region (found on the capsuleer interface is as follows): "It has been a long, tedious journey. Whilst my cartographer maintains that the distance from the central Throne Worlds is not great, the toil of getting here was, for many reasons, too tiresome to enumerate. The mineral survey report is also grim. It seems that despite being perched on the fringes of known space, the riches that we were led to expect are nowhere to be found. This region seems literally devoid of anything of worth, a desert with no oasis in sight, where even my faith seems to shrivel and die. Perhaps others will find worth here. I cannot." - From the journal of Soruma Aquiun, Commander 51st Exploration Corps. it was a region of lost dreams, and - as it turned out - entirely too close to Delve...