Visiting the Molstram Sector

It takes a frighteningly short amount of time to get from Coruscant to
Len's homeworld with modern hyperdrives and navcomps.  I say
"frighteningly" because those worlds so close to the capital are usually
tremendously prosperous, well-settled and incredibly important in the
Senate and the galaxy.  The Molstram Sector, however, is only prosperous.
Although it is very easy to get to, and other worlds in the "band" of
worlds it lies in are incredibly important (on the order of Corellia for
example), Molstram has been left behind by economic development and
political connections, making it almost a little anachronistic, and
definitely isolated in the most literal sense of the word.

Despite being a fairly large chunk of space, the sector only has five
inhabitable worlds in it, two of them in the same system.  The rest of the
suns are either tiny and cold or huge and red and ancient with no worlds
at all surrounding them.  In addition, access to the major trade routes
are essentially permanently blocked by black holes and huge asteroid
fields, the former of which are used for waste disposal.

Trade is therefore mostly carried out between those five inhabitable
worlds, and because of its location in the Primordial Galaxy, this means
that speeders and buildings and most things are built in the Molstram
Sector with metals and minerals that are not often found in other parts of
the galaxy.  The hilt of Len's vibrosword, for example, instead of being
shiny gunmetal grey or ornamented with brass, has almost a bone-white
marble look to it (despite being metal) with streaks of grey and deep
blue.  In some respects this enhances the anachronistic appearance of
things, in other ways it looks a little like an "alternate" set of
technology.  Most things in the main Galaxy have been made the same way
with the same stuff for thousands of years, and the break point for
Molstram's technology is well before that.  Silks that last for decades,
houses that last for centuries (without even needing to repaint), stuff
like that.  

There are factories, but not many of them (because, as Len will explain to
you in excruciating detail if you are so unwise as to ask) there's not a
constant expansion of demand for consumer goods.  Pretty much all of the
sector that can get settled is settled, and there has been fairly close to
zero population growth for the last 3,000 years. Trade with the rest of
the galaxy exists but is fairly rare.  So a lot of people have handcrafted
goods in their homes and there is not a lot of economic pressure all the
way around.  There's enough to go around.

Not much fuss is made over Len on his homeworld, despite his high honors.
In fact there's a faint amount of disapproval detectable for those with
high Sense Motive scores when the admiralty is brought up. This may be
difficult to understand at first until there is a little more time spent
among the ruling families.

There are six of these ruling families (Serenity, Joy, Honor, Generosity,
Patience and Bravery) and they are the least pretentious nobles that can
possibly be imagined.  Their jobs (and the order in which the jobs will
devolve upon them) are fixed at birth by a complicated set of inheritance
rules that have been in place for millenia.  They are clearly taught from
a young age that service is their birthright (yes, Vin, you read that
correctly, their RIGHT), and well-trained in an enjoyable fashion to their
duties, even if (like Len) they never really expect to have to do the job
perhaps for many years.  They live in luxury but not decadence - nobody
seems to much see the point of excess wealth that they themselves cannot
personally enjoy.  On the other hand, everyone in the noble families has
everything they could possibly want, and most of them seem to spend most
of their time (that isn't spent learning or helping out) doing them.

All of the families seem to have varied duties due to intermarriage (and
marriage outside the families in the upper classes of the Sector also
seems to be common) but there are a few patterns:

The Patience family is connected to diplomacy, mediation and advisory
positions. 

The Serenity family is connected to military positions (although the
sector has been at peace for 9,000 years except for banditry and piracy,
which is only a minor problem.)  Serenity's other duties involve
organizing (and securing) festivals and parties, of which there seem to be
an endless number.

The Joy family is connected to the Jedi order most closely.  It is by far
the smallest and the Tower of Joyous Song was shattered in the Sith war
because of Joy's military support of the Jedi order.  However, despite the
horrific slaughter that unfolded there, Joy's Song continued.  (We will
get to the Songs in a moment.)

The Honor family is connected to the justice system of the Molstram
Sector, which is non-retributive and based solely on isolating the
dangerous from the population, rehabilitating those that are possible to
rehabilitate, warehousing those who are not, and unceremoniously exiling
out of the Cluster those who are truly dangerous.  Because of this
position, Honor tends to be the most standoffish of the nobles, although
this seems to be a little bit melancholy instead of snobbish.

The Generosity family is connected to handling the internal economics of
the sector, making sure that trade amongst the five worlds continues in
stable equilibrium. They are even more nerdy than Len about matters of
business if such a thing is possible.  On the other hand, they are also
the most accessible - literally anyone among the billion or so sentients
that live in the sector that has some kind of financial problem can come
to the Tower of Generous Sharing and see one of the nobles with actual
current power.  Thus they are frantically busy all the time and usually
walk around with goofy smiles on their faces, thinking about something
else.  In addition, for some reason, the best athletes among the noble
families come from Generosity.

The Bravery family is connected to the actual administrative duties of
ruling the planets themselves, splitting these duties more or less
fifty-fifty with the Patiences.  It is also by far the largest of the
noble families.

Each of these families has a tower - really a tower complex - with
painfully little security.  As mentioned before, Joy's complex was ruined
in the Sith war and is still (!) being rebuilt.  It's not considered a
high priority, it seems.  There is a seventh tower called "The Renunciated
Tower" which belonged to a noble family (called Honesty) who renounced
their ruling privileges about seven thousand years ago.  They've long
since intermarried and disappeared into the general population, but the
tower is maintained by the other noble houses as a public edifice where
the homeless can sleep, the hungry can be fed, and in whose gardens
children can play.

Now for a word on music and the Molstram Sector.  Everyone, and by this I
mean everyone, on all of the worlds, is musical.  This does not
necessarily mean everyone has natural musical talent, but everyone has
enough practice that they are at the very least not off-key.  There is
music at every occasion, and the musicians that are good enough for people
to actually go and see are truly outstanding.  Every musical genre
imaginable is practiced there.  In fact, one of the few things that is
consistently imported from outside the planet are music recordings and one
of the few things consistently exported are musical geniuses.  

Music is treated in some ways as a second language.  If someone wishes to
express something which they feel passionately about, it is very likely
that they will do so with a musical instrument or song.  The diplomatic
language of the sector (rarely used anymore except in ceremonies since the
noble families get along so well) is music.  And every member of the noble
families, without exception, receives voice training from a young age.
This last is because of the Song.

The Song is sung outside the front gate of the main tower of each of the
family tower complexes.  Each song is different, and each song is between
five and twelve days long.  It is sung constantly, day and night,
repeating, by blood members of the noble families.  Even those with actual
offices will often take a half-hour or hour-long turn at the Song, as it
is considered an honor.  If the Song stops, explains Len, the House has
Renounced. 

This is what happened to the Honesty family seven thousand years ago, when
a raging war between a pirate lord and the Sector swept across the
still-growing planets and managed to wipe out (despite gruelling and
legendary battling) the Honesty member singing the Song without someone
nearby who could pick it back up.  The Honesty family, with sadness but
pride at their final military victory, left their positions en masse and
voluntarily.  Len hates this story, because the lesson is that devotion
sometimes isn't enough, that even bravery can be extinguished through no
fault of any good persons, and he makes that very clear.  He hates it.

Musically, the Song varies.  At times it sounds like a muzzein calling
people to worship, at others like a funeral dirge, at others like a jazzy
and playful melody, in places it is downright sexy, and smoky.  Some of it
is in modern Basic, part of it is in an ancient version of Basic, and some
of it is in simply nonsense syllables.  It is usually sung with minimal
accompaniment, but can be sung a capella.  The Songs, together, tell
nothing less than the story of human life, including childhood,
adolescence, youth, parenthood, middle age, old age, and death.
Everything is in there - job, family, sex, virtue, vice, shame, pride,
everything.

Once some time has been spent with the upper class, it starts to become
clear why they don't much approve of Len's Rear Admiralty and why Len
himself isn't too psyched about it.  He wasn't born to be an Admiral.  He
was born sixth in line to be Senator, the five before him died, therefore
he became Senator.  There is no chance that he will be demoted but there
also is no chance he will be promoted either.  That is what he is.  Len
will half-heartedly justify the Admiralty as a necessary evil to pursue
his Senatorial duties and people accept it, but it's clear there are
reservations about it all around.  They all know their place, Len knows
his place, and Admiralty is not his place.

Okay. Now on to the details of the visit itself.

Len himself has a rather painful reunion with his parents, who rule a huge
chunk of the main inhabited world in the system.  He tells them about the
murder of his predecessors and the awful war he witnessed.  They're
horrified, but understanding.  It's clear they are personally very proud
of him.  They promise an investigation but admit that it's been so long
since the shuttle crash (and deeply conspiratorial crimes are so unknown
on the planet) that they don't expect much to come of it.

Len's introduction of his friends is distressingly blunt and factual.
Naturally this might sound like bragging to some.  ("This is the best
pilot I have ever personally laid eyes on. And here is her partner, a
gentleman who is singlehandedly responsible for the rescue of the Republic
fleet by his unnerving skill at astrogation.")  You are given run of the
sector, essentially.

There is no dress code around any of the towers.  Even nobles (without
formal office that requires robes of state) are pretty casual even at high
dinners.

One of the favored hobbies of Len's close family is that of hafarl riding.
Hafarls are built a little like tauntauns, except they don't smell awful,
their fur is a silvery blue, they have no horns and a long slender face.
The hafarls used in riding seem to really enjoy being ridden around and
are serious attention hounds.  There's a rather strenuous polo-style game
which is played on the beasts with a levitating ball, a repulsor-bat and
an accelerator glove.  It's exhausting for the riders (the hafarls love
it) yet the nobles play it quite a bit.  Len's sister (who, yes, is hot,
and smarter than you) kicks everyone's ass.  A non-mounted version is also
popular among the populace.

Possibly because of the system's isolation, the natural world of the
planet is extremely specialized.  Caretaking the natural order is an
important part of Bravery's duties - upon arrival, the colonists didn't
know what parts of the planet could be safely altered and which parts
couldn't, so they established a duty to try to keep everything as pristine
as possible.  And so there are birds that never land, plants which
obligingly grow their fruit near to the ground for animals and people to
eat and throw the seeds nearby, and the whole thing seems to be a
perfectly good little system.

For specific things people are likely to ask about: 

For swoops, there's plenty of good speeder technology around, and a fair
amount of swoop racing among those who are technically oriented, and
there's not much of a "standard" swoop - the kind of people who do swoop
racing in an environment like this are the kind that would customize and
customize and customize.  So wanting to tinker with your own is perfectly
accepted.

For ships, other than short-range freighters and their escorts, there's
not much.  There's only one small shipyard and one large spaceport in the
whole sector.  Remember, the Molstram sector is not a galactic trade
partner.  There is little trade with the rest of the galaxy.

For Jedi stuff, despite having a society partly founded on Jedi
philosophy, there's not much of a Jedi presence in the system.  A single
meditation chamber at the base of the Tower of Joyous Song exists
(suffused with music, of course).  Among the nobility, children who are
born with Force potential tend not to go to the Academy because that is
not what they are destined for.  Some exceptions have existed, but nearly
all actual Jedi recruits come from the general populace.  A few who turn
down the Academy manage to become Force Adepts on their own, and this is
tolerated much more than it usually is because the suffusion of Jedi
philosophy in Molstram's populace is thought to be a bulwark against the
Dark Side.