Committee for Morphological Standards
The CMS, or Pretties, are a unique little civilization with an interesting take on changing behavior…
The CMS is a small civilization that grew out of a successful Old Worlder settlement of Westerfeld that collapsed. Focused on a mid-20th century American culture, it eventually grew and changed and was on its way to becoming a minor stellar civilization, when it got caught by its dependence on petroleum. Specifically, an oil eating bacteria emerged. Apparently an attempt to come up with a cheaper method of refining oil, it was dangerously flawed. Instead, it changed the chemical structure to something much more volatile - either leaving an empty container and making the area around it very dangerous, or exploding the container. No matter which option, fires usually resulted. Worse, the bacteria used the fire to spread itself. Before long, their world was wracked with fires.
Since so much of their civilization was dependent on oil (plastics, power, transport, agriculture, etc.), it was the end of their civilization. 98% of a population of billions died between the initial disaster and its aftermath.
After the collapse, long years of warfare and hardship followed as survivors squabbled over the remains. None of the old organizations survived. Cities and towns, dependent on the infrastructure of their civilization, failed as well. Still, small groups managed to survive. Most of these were outside the mainstream.
Some were survivalists awaiting the collapse of their civilization or invasion by the Transcendentals or their minions. Others were other versions of Old Worlders that had rejected the changes of their world and clung to older, more sustainable and traditional ways. Some were pragmatic scientists and leaders who used their skills to navigate the changes their world faced, or the remnants of their planetary security and defense forces.
At first, these disparate groups were separated by distance - the collapse had rendered large parts of the world marginally inhabitable (at best), creating dead zones. Invasive and bioengineered species further upset the ecology.
When civilization did rise again, it was in the form of small settlements in a few safe areas with vast spaces between them. These settlements were further separated by differences in culture (thanks to founder effects) and background. Some were very rustic and primitive, others very high tech. Some blamed mysterious enemies, or the rest of the human diaspora, or the mysterious Transcendentals, or their own civilization. Still, as they grew they came into contact (usually among the ruins of their civilization that they were looting/mining for raw materials), they discovered a common conviction: The world must not be wrecked again.
The new cities established contact and traded, usually information and things they couldn't manufacture locally. No one was interested in re-establishing the highly interdependent society they'd had previously. Lacking oil, they turned to solar, wind, OTEC, geothermal and nuclear power.
Overall, it was a time of peace and cooperation. The population was so small (and the ruins so large) that there was little competition for resources or territory. And with the collapse, war seemed a bad idea.
Still there were conflicts, and the worry that they could become wars preyed on the minds of most. The recurring worry was that the cities might grow strong enough to wage war, and that someone might re-discover, rebuild or reinvent some of the old weapons.
Almost a hundred years after the Collapse, a think tank was convened to study human conflict. They studied the more regressed Cargo Cults and Old Worlders who still fought endless bloody feuds. They studied old psychology and neurology texts, trying to find a way to end war forever.
After much research, they shied away from changing humanity too much neurologically. Instead they began to 'hack' known problems to take advantage of them. Specifically, they took advantage of the halo effect and the exposure effect. The halo effect is the tendency to think that pretty people are better than the rest of us. The exposure effect is the human tendency to be attracted to things we recognize. The texts they rediscovered showed that beautiful people were treated better than their less attractive peers and got into less trouble. This lead to the idea that life might be better and more peaceful if everyone was pretty.
So, they began designing plastic surgeries that made everyone pretty, and familiar enough that people they were attractive. Genetic alterations were considered, but since old traits (like putting on fat) had been needed in recent memory, they decided to leave that alone. To further take advantage of this, they emphasized young looks and symmetry. At this point, the think tank became The Committee for Morphological Standards, or more commonly The Pretty Committee. Over the centuries, they refined this and added pheremonal and voice effects as well. All of these developments lead to Prettytime, an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
Above is the official history. The reality is that while prettier, the Pretties did still fight and compete with one another. Since they were still human, they still fought, rebelled and sometimes hated each other.
If war was to be eliminated, while still remaining human, they needed something more drastic.
Since everyone was queuing up for the pretty surgery (who wouldn't want to be gorgeous or devilishly handsome after all?) the answer was another bit of reversible surgery.
Bubblehead surgery.
With small alterations to areas of the brain courtesy of implants, the personalities of the subjects could be changed. They could be made compliant, trusting, unaggressive, happy, sweet tempered and a bit lazy. But not unintelligent, or incapable of learning or foresight. The process also could (and frequently did) enhance the halo and exposure effect. They were all but impossible to make into soldiers (though those implants could be deactivated); bubbleheads would never go to war. Incapable of dealing with lots of children (and offered alternatives with birth control), they didn't re-create a population overburden. Plus, they were unlikely to want to change the system that made them beautiful and happy.
The Pretty Committee kept this secret, and by this point had acquired enough political power to have great influence over the various statelets. Before long, the surgery went from voluntary, to mandatory - only withheld if it might kill the subject, or as a punishment.
Still, the committee needed some people without the bubblehead effect. They had to sacrifice their own innocence and happiness to guard the world that was being created. This meant that there was a minority that could still see cold, cruel reality as it was, even if they were beautiful on the outside.
Before long, these non-bubbleheads saw themselves as … special.
These specials soon began to augment themselves, becoming "better." Wardens, rangers, firefighters and search and rescue needed to be stronger and faster. Others needed to make cold rational decisions to protect humanity. Some were the last line of defense against troublemakers and rebels, a job that required a cruel beauty commanding instant respect.
They didn't depart from mainline humanity all at once. Each generation improved the next growing stronger, faster, more durable, colder and crueler looking. They began to call themselves Special Circumstances because they handled all of the messy, unpredictable things that Pretties had difficulty with. After decades and centuries of this, they saw themselves as different from the rest of humanity, as special and with different rules.
In most of the cities, the Specials hid themselves, becoming a shadow government known through rumor. They pursue rebels, runaways, guard the borders and keep a watchful eye on humanity to prevent it from wrecking the world again.
Life Phases
Phases of life are strongly and carefully defined in Pretty culture. Outside of young children and their parents, people live segregated by age. They obey different rules, entertain themselves differently, even speak different ‘languages.’
This isn’t an accident. The government uses this to control each group by rewarding the behavior they wanted. It also made it easier to conceal the effects of the bubblehead surgery. By separating the new Pretties from their families and younger friends, they found it easier to believe that humans suddenly changed as a result of turning sixteen.
The phase of life are: Littlies, Uglies, new Pretties, middle-Pretties (Middies) and late Pretties (Crumblies)
Littlies
From birth to eleven, children live with their middle-pretty parents in the suburbs. Littlies went to school with other children their age, but with strong parental relationships. This is the only stage of life where traditional nuclear families are considered appropriate.
Parents are encouraged to only have one child per decade (to the point of encouraging abortions for multiple births). This is offered as means of controlling the birth rate. It also prevents strong sibling bonds.
Uglies
At age twelve, children leave home to live in dorms in a part of town called Uglyville. Separated from their families for the first time, they went through systematic social programming to increase the desire to become a Pretty at age sixteen.
This conditioning comes from being encouraged to call each other by ugly and insulting nicknames. The dorm uniforms are basic and deliberately unflattering. Combined with other memetic programming, a low self-image and –esteem, it is the rare Ugly that doesn’t welcome an entirely new face and body.
The dorms are under heavy surveillance using drones and other devices, but Uglies often hack the machines and rules governing their lives. Many cities allow and encourage this as a method of spotting troublesome personalities early. The most rebellious are more closely monitored even after the operation, and the most resistant to the surgery are recruited for jobs requiring aggression and independent thinking.
Uglyvilles
Uglyvilles are physically separated from the rest of their cities physically and with some carefully narrowed and monitored bandwidth. Examples of physical separation include islands, peninsulas, mountains and fullair arcologies.
New Pretties
When Uglies turn sixteen, they undergo the Pretty Process to become new Pretties. The Process is actually several operations: skin replacement, cosmetic surgery, body morphology change, dental replacement, hormonal alterations, digestive alterations, etc., etc.
And of course, bubblehead surgery. Since the human brain can rewire itself, the effects of the surgery are more pronounced in the new Pretties who had recently had the operation. To help hide the effects, the new Pretties are kept separated from other age groups in New Pretty Town. They are also plied with distractions: huge clothing allowances, fast changing fashions, sex, drinking, drugs, bungee jumping, ballooning, as well as regular fireworks displays and nightly parties. Also during this time, they are expected to complete at least some basic courses, continuing their education.
Middle Pretties
After several years the initial effects of the process begin to fade, and most become bored with the distractions of New Pretty Town. They then take a series of aptitude and interest inventories to determine what jobs they will hold as an adult and begin a course of study for that.
At this point the people who had been tricky Uglies and most resistant to the bubblehead effect are marked for jobs requiring fast reactions, independent thinking and/or aggression. These Pretties then have some of the effects of their implants dialed back, or turned off. They are then trained as wardens, Rangers, firefighters, paramedics, search and rescue, doctors, nurses and surgeons.
Once assigned jobs, Middle Pretties move out of New Pretty Town into the suburbs outside of the central city areas. At this point, they are allowed to marry, have children and live in single family houses instead of dorms. As they age, they have minor operations to change their appearance, replacing the markers for youth and beauty with those for wisdom, experience and authority.
Late Pretties
At age eighty, Pretties retire and move to assisted living estates and facilities circling the cities, nicknamed ‘Crumbleyville.’ There, they live quietly, garden and carry out other similar activities until they die.
Since their rediscovery by the greater human universe, the Pretties are under stress. Their society is engineered for stability at the expense of growth and innovation, and the sudden exposure to the wider world is troubling.
They have limited contact with the wider universe, but the pressures are there. The Roamers skip around the edges. Old Worlders attempt to contact cultural analogues on Westerfeld. Then there are the Tao … They have clamped down further, but have opened one carefully controlled access through a ‘freeport’ at New Malta. Here, the greater human universe politely queues up and gets in for whatever reason. They cannot leave New Malta and are under great scrutiny and surveillance by the CMS Special Circumstances. Unfortunately for CMS, the visitors can (and sometimes do) entirely bypass their surveillance and do what they want anyway.
As planets go, Westerfeld is very earthlike, but scarred by the industrial development and ecological collapse. Still, it is pretty. The city-states of the Pretties are widely separated, separated near sources of power and resources (typically the ruins of their old cities and industrial areas). The cities do have their own architectural styles and are as pretty as the citizenry. If they ever open up, they may have a future in tourism.
Their infosphere is very barren, restricted and stripped down compared to the universe at large. The CMS controlls access to information and communications among its citizens using servile AIs and dataghosts to monitor the infosphere as a whole and individuals in particular.
The CMS government is an authoritarian meritocracy. Its executive committee is the CMS and admission is granted by a mix of political and technical ability. Most citizens remain minors until their mid to late twenties when they began the exam process.
Militarily, the Pretties have no real forces. The wardens and rangers are urban and rural police respectively, and largely focus on search and rescue and preserving social stability. The CMS Special Circumstances are effectively a planetary security agency and city level shadow government, and like the wardens and rangers, focused on social stability. Their reach offworld is limited to purchasing wormhole access until they buy or build their own. Right now, the Pretty Committee has invested in planetary wormhole interdiction fields. They are also hiring military trainers to train up their forces for real planetary security.
On a related note, the Pretties are intensely interested in Neural Mesh technologies. While they are capable of building them, they’d overlooked them as a development. The interest stems from the idea of being able to control their population more thoroughly by using some version of the slave mesh. At this point, all they need are the experts to help them along the way.
Similarly, a not very terrifying technology they are interested in are Dermal Microbots. Since their civilization is so focused on appearance, they are going to be very popular with all segments of their society.
The Pretties are also a touchy bunch. They get along best with the Tao, but are very cautious about the Tao’s desires to gain access to their world and its historical archives. The Roamers were initially welcomed until the Pretty Committee realized the instability they could bring. Since then they’ve tried to exclude them, but that makes them a more tempting target for the Roamer youths. The Stardwellers and Mechanicans scare them badly with their inhuman appearances. The Replicants, Stored, Logicians and Union scare them even more with their apparently inhuman natures despite the protests of their representatives. The Independents are welcome, due to their appearance and the technologies they bring for sale and apparent closeness to them.
In terms of societies found among the Pretties, the Hyperevolutes, Organized Crime, Artisans and High Society can be found at this point. As contact increases, one can expect other societies to gain foot holds. They have outright banned the Group Minds and others as threats to stability.
Common Name: Pretties
Emblem: None
Benefit: One additional Twist for Romance, and another Twist for Magnetism, due to their striking good looks.
Inspector Status: Advisors only – equivalent to 20th and 21st century Interpol.
Core Values: Stability and Beauty
The Pretties value a stable world. Stability means that the Pretties abhor sudden change, especially change for changes sake. This means the CV can be used to resistance Metatech attempts to force them to change, especially without a good reason.
Beauty means they value appearance over the deeper traits. This CV can be invoked to reduce resistance to an attractive or striking person, as well as add to attempts to use their own beauty.
Other common Core Values for the Pretties include Conformity, Elegance, Hedonism, Humanity, My City, Order, Physical Perfection, Pleasure, Sensation, Stability, Tradition and The Common Good.
| Civilization | Bio | Cog | Meta | Nano | String |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pretties | 2-4 | 1-5 | 1-6 | 1-6 | 1-7 |
Metagame Notes
The Pretties are written up here as t hey appeared in the first three books of the ‘trilogy’ – a post scarcity, authoritarian dystopia. By SA standards, they’re a backwater world with a very shallow philosophy and tightly controlled. Which is where the PC’s can come in.
By the end of Specials and the beginning of Extras, the civilization(s) have undergone a renaissance – the Mind Rain its called. The bubblehead surgery is gone – its cure is widely distributed. As a result, humanity has begun to settle back into more normal patterns (at least to those of us in the early 21st century). Freedom is everywhere, with an explosion in art, science and technology as the caged human creativity is released. Morphological freedom is also on the rise with different body types (Manga heads, Surge Monkeys (going for extreme body modifications), Plain Janes (people that just want to look like people), etc.) all over the place.
If you want that civilization instead, a few changes need to be made.
- Their government becomes a strong confederation of city states, some democratic, some dictatorial, some meritocracies, some reputation based.
- They still have an eye towards preserving their world though, so they begin moving into space and building space laser launch facilities and beanstalk (its still cheaper than wormholing into orbit, which is ‘halfway to anywhere’).
- They also begin to hire the expertise of other civilizations to help ‘re-terraform’ their world and preserve it.
- They also build fullair and seagoing arcologies as well.
- The life phases described above are no longer mandated, but optional. Even so, societal inertia keeps them moving that way for some time.
- There is wider contact with the larger human universe and less negative reaction to the disparate branches of humanity.
- Darwinians, Group-Minds, Heterolinguists, Hospitalers, Hyperevolutes, Sleepers, Transcendental Worshippers, and the other societies can now be found on their world.
Their summary changes a bit though as they begin to open up the throttles on their creativity and are exposed to the cultures of the greater universe.
Common Name: Pretties
Emblem: A golden Phi on a white background.
Benefit: One additional Twist for Romance, and another Twist for Magnetism, due to their striking good looks.
Inspector Status: FBI, RCMP or Customs Inspectors.
Core Values: Beauty and Ecology
Beauty means they value appearance over the deeper traits. This CV can be invoked to reduce resistance to an attractive or striking person, as well as add to attempts to use their own beauty.
Ecology means that the interactions of living systems are complex, subtle and not tampered with needlessly. To this end, they can use the CV to resist arguments to meddle with, exploit or damage ecosystems. It can also be added to arguments to help study and preserve them.
Other common Core Values for the Pretties include Discovery, Diversity, Elegance, Experimentation, Freedom, Hedonism, Humanity, Identity, Individuality, My City, Physical Perfection, Pleasure, Sensation and The Common Good.
| Civilization | Bio | Cog | Meta | Nano | String |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pretties | 2-4 | 1-5 | 1-6 | 1-8 | 1-8 |
