Ranathan

The **Ranathan** (RC: Ранаθан) is the birth place of the Imperatrix race, the word basically literally meaning "world empire" in ancient Ranisch. They are also often called the West since the Tribes are mostly scattered in the outer reaches of our galaxy along big circular trade routes often spanning millions of light-years. Being by far the largest of all interstellar entities both current as well as former, their gigantic fleets are indeed the uncontested rulers of the cosmos.

Yet they always complain about not having enough manpower on board, so they often draft people by questionable means: they are the ones who abduct kids as discussed in the Fleet Alliance article. We must note here that the Ranisch consider everyone under 64 a kid!!

## Human relations

After a short while they abduct the parents as well, to let the family be together as long as they co-operate: the Ranathan came to believe that the world regards them as the unwanted bad girls of the universe no matter what they do, so they are determined to survive at all cost.

Their fleet carriers are widely dreaded as the most powerful space vessels ever built & in general they have more military assets than all the other known interstellar entities combined.

### Language

Their main vernacular is a vulgar mutation of Greek with slavic & iranic features: the Ranathan Creole, with hundreds of loan words from contemporary vulgar modern Earth languages as well. Those they acquired while parking fleets at the Ranigan star: they keep controlling their own past in order to control their future!!

Main article: Ranathan Creole

### Politics

Protecting their allies from external as well as internal threats is their primary goal: they could just eat all Thanna worlds for breakfast anytime. The reason why they don't is basically why the US does not bomb North Korea to dust either.

But it's also the fact that their ancestors used to be Thanna themselves, hence their questionable moral principles. They are, however, totally into blitzkrieg interventions in unstable worlds! Of course they can't always stabilize them by force, so they often just gather up all the downtrodden folks they find to re-settle them at home.

## Geography

Their home worlds are in fact Saturn-sized planets, with rings made of space stations & the infrastructure between them, so they always have more than enough lebensraum (and also jobs) to settle any number of immigrants! They just keep sucking them in from all over the universe like some vacuum cleaners of souls.

Here's their planet-building process:

1. Find a rocky planet similar in size to Ancient Earth.
2. Tow it into the habitable zone of the star system.
3. Terraform the atmosphere to make it habitable.
4. Harvest all geothermal energy from below.
5. Mine all heavy metals & use them to build stuff in orbit.
6. Import lighter stuff to achieve Earth-like gravity.
7. Mine everything below to extend the surface above.
8. Remove old surface below to extend further.

### Industrial heartlands

The inside of the planet will be filled with hyperloop tunnels connecting hundreds or even thousands or millions of geo-stationary space ports together. With all due respect to the great Mr Asimov, we must really note here that Trantor having only one "star bridge" for 40 billion citizens is a ridiculous under-estimation of the famous elevator conundrum!

Ranathan planet cities have at least a hundred billion citizens each: the largest of them is Medina with more than a trillion souls, followed by Betlehem with almost a trillion as well! To exert normal human gravity on a vastly enlarged surface, they are in fact a lot more massive than Earth. Their highly regimented but nonetheless very flexible egalitarian culture makes them exceptionally capable to integrate even stone-age tribes on all that surface! Most of them are settled down there, but indeed they need millions on their fleets & stations too.

## Culture

Ranathan women, especially the Laconians behind the facade of their cold-blooded ruthless militarism, are very emotional & always horny. Even a simple flirt can send a younger Joanne into a violent frenzy of lust, especially if she hasn't slept with you before: she won't give a shit about professional etiquette or what people are gonna say.

Their annoying penchant for drama is indeed often limiting their collective organizational intelligence, yet they are also fully aware of their shortcomings: they like listening to all sorts of advice before committing themselves to something big. They also let Ranigan agents operate with administrative privileges even more far-reaching than the ones RCI tends to enjoy at home.

### Nationalism

As the apex predators of the universe, the Joannes are indeed fiercely nationalistic & incredibly passionate about all the different artifacts of their culture: the SR smiling sun is literally everywhere, with a plucky little fortress endorsed by the sickle & hammer emblem included below.

Their politics are actually pretty de-centralized though, so there ain't nothing like an empress ruling from an ivory tower on Ranathan Prime. They have a very efficient system of multi-lateral arbitration to fill her place: there is no Trantor here, no Ranathan Prime to speak of.

Yet they are of course nonetheless imperialistic, regarding their benevolent influence over human cultures as their god-given mission unless one is so backwards that they did not yet make it to other planets. In this case they are treated the way India treats the Sentinel islands, not letting anyone approach them.

If they start de-stabilizing their climate, however, the war fleets are usually quick to intervene! This is why they start shipping the vast armies of the Mars Republic to conquer Earth 2. The most important asset of their imperialism is obviously their highly efficient & yet also beautiful Creole language, so they expect all their allies to teach it as a mandatory course for their kids whether they like it or not.

### Market economy

SR folks are highly competitive & rabid consumers of pop culture, known for hosting big festivals everywhere to show everyone how cool they are. Just keep in mind that you might end up on an interstellar troop ship instead of being allowed back home if you hook up with a Joanne, so it's good to keep some distance if you ain't that much into joining them!

### Cats

Since cats are in a few ways even more responsive to the Ranisch substance than humans, the laws hold them basically on par with us. There is in fact a whole lot of hyper-intelligent Ranisch cats way up in the command structure of the Laconic military establishment: they communicate through body language & also voices that carry vast amounts of information in the ultra-sound spectrum. Jade Lensky's pet cat Lavinia is in fact superior even to Jade herself in terms of ranking.