Practicum: Riftfall
Greetings and sennit! Who doesn’t need a good rope? Anyway, what is today's topic? A practicum for a specific world in my universe named Riftfall, and all the things that are related to how it got to be as it is.
Concert of Stars
In my world order post, I discussed the Concert of Stars, but I will re-explain it here. In Stellima, the Concert of Stars is like the United Nations, with one big difference. They are much more honest about the fact that the system is based on “Might makes right”. But the Concert is still trying to maintain peace and order… as far as it cares to.
The structure of the Concert consists of 3 official layers and an unofficial layer. At the centre of it all, or the core, are 12 star nations that are absolutely gargantuan and have industrial capacity and military prowess that dwarves everyone. These are so enormous that if they were to ever go to war with each other, there would be no winners. They are generally the ones in charge, but the 12 are split into various alliances with each other and rarely agree on things that go beyond maintaining the current power structure because it benefits all 12 of them.
Outside the Core Members are the Major Members. They are still very powerful but about 1/20 to 1/50 the might of any Core Member. So you can see from that that the core can bulldoze any of the Major Members. A thing to notice here is that there is a patronage system in place, so each of the Major Members has a Core patron who assists the Major Member. This is how the Core maintains a sphere of influence and trading blocks that it dominates.
The next official stage is Minor Members, and the relationship between Major and Minor is similar to that of Major and Core, and the power difference is the same. Usually, decisions and decrees flow from the top to the bottom, but it is not unheard of that when the Minors (with Majors) unite over some topic, the Core Members will agree to the demands of those below in order to maintain peace.
The last unofficial stage is Non-Concert, also known simply as “Farspace”. It is all star nations too weak to be considered part of the Concert. The Concert's membership is based on power. Not just military but political, economic, soft power, and much else. That is why, for example, the Tshutsi are part of the Concert despite having barely any fleet to enforce anything outside their own solar system. But beings in Farspace? They are too weak to ever be considered part of the Concert. They might grow powerful enough to eventually become a Minor… but Minors might come and crush them before they can to preserve their own power.
A key thing to note is that the word Farspace refers to two things: people in a political position of insignificance relative to the Concert Members, and the physical space where these star nations are located. So, Concert Members can have things in Farspace because it is located physically in the region of Farspace, even if it is politically not in Farspace. The opposite of Farspace, the physical sense, is Concert space.
Colonies
Another aspect of the universe of Stellima is that of colonies. And no, I don’t mean the completely immorally repugnant ones where people move in forcefully to occupy already inhabited areas. Every planet has done it on its own homeworlds, but in space, they (generally) don’t do that. And that is because inhabited worlds, even if they are technologically inferior, tend to be too troublesome to force yourself on. The sheer volume of unclaimed planets with life on them makes that level of invasion and colonisation very… costly. Which is why, in conquests, a lot of the old is maintained; only the government is forced to gain new loyalty directly, as the planet slowly adapts.
But colonies of uninhabited worlds, now that is a thing! But here is the thing: back in the old days, colonies were expensive. And in modern times in Stellima, it is no different. Starting colonies is very expensive, and it takes a lot of effort and money before they will be self-sufficient and productive enough to pay for themselves. Core Members can easily throw colonies anywhere in their space. They have the personpower to make them spring up quickly and enough money to throw it at the colony until it becomes productive decades later. This is the snowball effect of power and money. The more money and resources you have, the more money and resources you can get.
So Core Members can easily do colonies, Major Members can also, but it takes effort. Instead of just easily throwing money at many new colonies, they need to gently budget new colonies, but it won’t disrupt them too much. But for Minor Members, it changes drastically. They can do colonies, but it is generally a rather huge commitment, and they often need help from their Major patron if things go sideways. So for Minor Concert Members, a colony is more often a prestige project than anything else. It is guaranteed to take a century or more before it can become productive.
For Farspace, colonies are exceedingly rare, but not unheard of.
Riftfall
And with that pre-work done, let’s get to Riftfall itself!
History
Riftfall is, by context, a colonial world. Which means it did not have native sophont species upon it when people started arriving. And who is the coloniser of Riftfall, you might ask? Well, they are a Minor Concert member named Zubril Concordate. They experience two opposing forces within themselves. They wish to both show themselves as potent and viable Minors, but they also need to heed the wishes of their Major patron. After a lot of talks, their patron, the Vireks, agreed that the Minor could embark on this colonial expansion. It looked good enough on paper that the Zubril could manage it without the Vireks having to deal with anything or fund it. Vireks don’t want to fund something that could come to undermine them in the future, after all.
So off Zubril set and into Farspace, because their own space was not vast enough to have colonizable planets, and doing it in Concert space would trigger a lot of political issues that no one wants to deal with. So over a century ago, Riftfall was founded, and initially, all looked well. People were coming in larger quantities than initial projections had anticipated, and it looked like it could be a success story. Then, economic hardships struck back home as a massive recession took hold, and the colony of Riftfall initially fell to the back burner. The Vireks had no inclination to help because the recession struck them as well; the entire economic block they belonged to was in a massive recession, and none were spared. What was initially meant as a temporary thing became permanent when Zubril's interest in Riftfall waned.
But abandoning Riftfall would be politically unviable. That would be an immediate admission of weakness; someone else could take it then, and the Zubril could fall out of the Concert if someone saw it. So the claim to Riftfall remains, despite the Zubril… never really caring about it anymore, now a hundred years later. So Riftfall has landed in this limbo state where they are officially, de jure, a Concert Space Member and part of a Minor Concert Member, which should give them a lot of help. But in reality, de facto, they are abandoned, and no one cares about them beyond the simple fact that any attempt to take Riftfall from the Zubril would be a political problem. Riftfall does not matter beyond a political statement in existence.
Life
Riftfall, since its founding, has managed to gather a few million people over time. The capital city of Fallport is actually a city of over a million people. There are farms all around, but a lot of the farming exists to sustain Fallport, and the remaining people are scattered far and wide on the planet. Some exist so far away that they never see other people throughout their entire lives because they don’t want to.
In Fallport lives the prefect of Riftfall and the mayor of Fallport. De jure, the prefect is the most powerful person who is also in contact with the Zubril homeworld, Zubred… but as you can imagine, that matters not. The prefect is elected whenever the last one dies or gets ousted, and lives a pleasant life. But whatever calls they make to Zubred are either left on read or get premade responses that are never followed up on. That is why the mayor of Fallport is the de facto most powerful person on Riftfall, because they are the one who keeps things working as well as they can.
And by that I mean barely functional at all. Riftfall is on paper just as advanced as any other part of known space. But delivery ships rarely come by; there is little profit to be made here. The Concert rarely drops by, and if they do… it is not to help. So most of the machines and technology are put together by locals from what they can manufacture themselves, using lower-quality technology. It gets the job done, but… it is not pretty. But hey, who needs pretty when it works? My colleague and friend used to want to kill me for having that opinion 😂
So life on Riftfall is not easy; it is very hard from the time you get born, hatched, sprouted, or emerged. An unfortunate side effect of this is that, due to resource scarcity, people are already divided into categories for education, healthcare, and everything else from an early age. It is not a consistent system like in bad dystopian fictions where, for example, all of “Level 1” gets garbage everything. You know how it is in bad dystopian fictions where people are hard divided, and that entirely arbitrary division dictates every single aspect of your life. Not on Riftfall! They don’t have much, but they are not that stupid as to have a singular division that covers all aspects of life. They might have “Level 1,” but only for technology, for example, where they might have a slightly better “Level 2” for education, maybe even worse in farming! But the divisions are meant to maximise the utility of the few resources they have.
Law and Order
Short version is… there is one or the other, and often neither. Law is predominately locally enforced rather than by an organized police force. Police do exist, but to call them corrupt is an understatement. The police enforce law based on their whim and often take bribes in order to ignore things. This is a reason why local organisations often enforce the locally made-up laws instead.
This happens even in the city of Fallport. The city is split into regions with different groups being the dominant force and in charge of the region. The groups range from fairly benign to quite bad. Not horrifically bad, because then the local population will become a problem. Though these groups do a lot of bribing with the official police to be able to reign as they see fit.
And police outside the area near Fallport? Forget about it. Those are very long journeys for no good bribes!
Trade
Local trade is thriving! But trade with the greater known space? It happens extremely rarely because ships rarely come out to Riftfall, and if they do, the prices are often far beyond what the locals can afford to pay unless they pool together. If something is desperately needed, taxes might be raised to buy it when it comes.
Summa Summarum
Riftfall is an example of how you can make a rather grim world in a universe where order does exist. Order is just not accessible everywhere and having areas where it doesn’t exist helps show how politics actually shape the world. Riftfall fundamentally shows one thing about my universe that is rather cruel: the fundamental issue is not resources, but the politics of distributing resources. Riftfall could be made better… but it simply is not beneficial enough to those that can so they don’t do it.
And if we look at our world… it feels eerily familiar.
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Copyright ©️ 2026 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as space colonies are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as Concert of Stars, Zubril, Vireks, and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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