Saldan

**Saldan** is the Pocket Dimension that is home to the Academy on Saldan, founded in 20 A.S..

## Religion

The Saldanese are religiously pluralistic as a population, with stringent secularism at the top of the administration. Nevertheless, the Mage Imperium goddess Adalna casts a long shadow over the customs and values of the Academy, and while worship of her is limited (in large part because she does not answer), many a Saldanese academic building keeps shrines to her memory and carries doctrines unwittingly passed down from the ancient Seer Council.

## Government

Saldan is governed by the academy: it has no permanent president, only a Chancellor who is appointed ad-hoc to act on behalf of the constantly infighting Council of Deans for its Great Colleges (the Chancellor is generally as neutral a third party as the Deans can find, often a leader of one of the academy’s endless proliferation of institutes, minor colleges and breakaway departments): the College of the Occult, the College of State, the College of Etherics, the College of Biology and Chemistry and the College of Engineering. The Council must vote unanimously (or by simple majority if instigated by an acting Chancellor) on the deployment of the [[[Janissary]] corps, Saldan’s national defense arm. The Janissaries are equipped with the best technology that the academy can safely replicate from the glory days of the Mage Imperium, and even before the rediscovery of genetic theory, more than a few cases have emerged of terrifyingly effective super-soldiers. Man-per-man, elite Janissary regiments outclass the Knights of Adarnum and the Aeldrum Dragoons.

All laws in the Saldan metropole are, at some level, decided by academic committee, and they can vary on Saldan by neighborhood, building or even floor depending on the convoluted ownership dynamics of different departments. Students have special status depending on their home institution, and professors enjoy enormous influence, albeit implemented at the pace of committee decision making. Other worlds and outlying territories of Saldan are either controlled through large academic holding companies or arrangements between the Academy and various local leaders.

## Economy

Saldan’s economy, likewise, is driven by a mix of student and faculty consumerism (supported by a substantial underclass of the semi-educated) and by the arcane requisition procedures of academic departments with seemingly endless endowments. What Saldan lacks is a broad industrial base, a weakness seemingly inherited from its Mage Imperium forebears and little improved by the non-pecuniary preoccupations of the academy’s government at all levels. Tuition money for the Academy’s superlative educational services, and a healthy grey-market trade in rehabilitated or new technology keep the Academy well, if non-centrally, funded.

## International Relations

The Academy of Saldan strenuously avoids imperialist associations, if only so that it can escape the extremely costly business of fighting wars. Saldan is fiercely independent but, so-far, largely disinterested in power competition.

Even with the rise of state academies, religious colleges and research universities in the great powers, the Academy of Saldan remains the premier educational destination of the scions of the cosmos’s ruling families. This lifelong connection with so many senior academics and leaders across the cosmos gives Saldan substantial diplomatic and moral influence, which it exercises regularly for everything from fundraising to concessions for research stations to smoothing international incidents involving its researchers. A more unified Saldanese foreign policy could use this influence to help, or hinder, international cooperation.

Saldan is not only a store of knowledge and beacon to the curious, but a refuge for renegades and traitors, provided they bring interesting knowledge or artifacts. Its secrecy and generous political asylum policies have earned it the ire at one time or another of every great power. Saldan’s formidable technology and deep repositories of lore make it a tempting prize, but far from an easy one, and the competing paranoia of rival powers has kept any one from daring to make an overt move. Instead, Saldan is happy to collect the wealth that various political sponsorships bring, whilst policing its academic ranks carefully and quietly removing anyone too well positioned and too well connected to foreign powers.

The Academy of Saldan has been compelled by the exhaustion of the frontiers and the increasing land-hunger of the great powers to declare its own modest sphere of influence more formally. With enough provocation, time to mobilize and impetus to organize itself into a decisive state, factious Saldan could emerge as a secondary power. There are certainly many powers which would jump at the opportunity for technical partnerships with Saldan. Though its trove of closely guarded inherited knowledge makes it of special interest, Saldan’s technological monopoly is long gone, and the Academy may have a closing window of technological superiority: aside from industrial matters, which it is socially ill-equipped to improve, Saldan is also diminished in large-scale cases such as naval development, just about to slip below the standard set by high-spending powers like Aeldrum and the Fialta Imperium.

## Notes

1. ↑ The Saldanese College of the Occult has significant internal staff dedicated to the problem of religious infiltration and extensive rehabilitation programs for scholars who fall into the clutches of Othal and other deities.
2. ↑ The Saldanese underclass enjoys basic rights but few privileges, and while meritocratic efforts to identify and educate the most promising youth are widely funded, they leave millions of Saldanese subjects without much hope for advancement. While Saldanese academics enjoy living standards at least on par with the minor nobility of wealthy powers, the standard of living of the Saldanese masses compares poorly with the major improvements of the last half century enjoyed by metropolitan Aeldmen, Directorate citizens and Alusian subjects. Their precarious economic position is more in line with the lower classes of the Shantine or Fialta, but without religion or nationalism to act as a social coagulant.
3. ↑ Rumors persist that deeply embedded officials of Aeldman intelligence blame Saldan for the disaster at A-11, which shattered the planet and set back the Aeldman null bomb program by years