Phaistos

Overview
Phaistos is a world shaped by genetic engineering and terraforming, and is dominated by an impossibly large tree, called Shajarat Al-Khulood. This Shajarat, resembling a massive ghaf tree, rises 11 km above sea level and covers a diameter of approximately 100 km.

Phaistos is home to largely religious-based communities, varying from structured agricultural societies that reside in Shajarat Al-Khulood itself, to wandering nomadic herders who occupy much of the rest of the planet.

Shajarat Al-Khulood
The people of the tree believe themselves to be a chosen, ruling class, and have a strained relationship with most of the nomadic tribes, whom they trade with but do not otherwise associate with. Their religion resembles ancient Islam of old Earth more closely than the religious practices of various tribes, and their government is entirely structured around a religious caliphate. To live in the tree, one must convert to the religion as defined by the caliphate, and heretics are banished from the branches.

The tree is large enough to contain three major cities. The first is the highest, called Qimat Al-Shajara, is the highest city in the tree, approximately 5 km above sea level. It is illegal to ascend to the branches above Qimat, punishable by death. The highest point in the city is occupied by the caliph himself, and the priests closest to him. It is the seat of both government and religion. The rest of the city is occupied by the families of the highest order of priests, their servants, and those involved in the day to day running of the government (clerks, scribes, etc), as well as a select class of scholars.

The second city, and the largest, is Ghasin Al-Shajara. Ghasin starts in the lowest branches of the tree and reaches up to the base of Qimat. The lowest reaches of Ghasin are farms, built on the widest branches of the tree. The caliphate is a largely vegetarian society, due to the difficulty of raising livestock within the tree, although different types of birds are farmed and eaten. Ghasin contains farmers, tradespeople, and the limited merchant class.

Beneath the tree is Jidhr Al-Shajara, the third and final city. Jidhr is a city of near-total darkness, and the people of Jidhr rely strongly on the charity of those in Ghasin for food and other necessities. Most of the inhabitants are recent converts to the caliphate’s religion, i.e. former nomads. These people seek the opportunity to move up to Ghasin, and a group of those who have demonstrated an appropriate amount of piety are chosen each year for this privilege. The merchants of Ghasin also sponsor citizens of Jidhr who act as go-betweens to trade with the nomad tribes, offering those who work a certain number of years the opportunity to be adopted into their families and therefore also reach Ghasin. Those who have visible genetic modifications are not eligible for either path to Ghasin.

Nomadic Tribes
The nomads of Phaistos are largely remnants of the extensive genetic engineering that took place on the planet. The tribes typically consist of 5-6 large families, although intertribal alliances and intertribal marriage is common. Many of the tribes are herders, and some of them still work for the Nada Corporation to raise and breed the genetically engineered exotic pets the Corporation still produces.

The nomadic tribes practice religion very differently from the caliphate. While their belief system is still rooted in the Islam of Earth, it has evolved in various ways across various tribes. The most common tribal structure is to have a chief elder, who may be male or female, who makes day to day decisions and is the political center of the tribe, and who works in tandem with a chief priestess, who is always female and is the religious center of the tribe. The priestesses are called Halazoon.

Sadaf’s particular tribe calls themselves Naas Al-Bahr, People of the Sea. They are a warrior tribe who live fairly far from Al-Khulood, and who consider god to be synonymous with water. While they have little contact with the caliphate, they have strong alliances with nearby tribes, offering protection to groups of herders in exchange for the sharing of food and other resources. What contact they do have with the caliphate is through trade, as they favor the forged iron weapons made in Ghasin to the more primitive weapons they are able to manufacture themselves, which are largely made from the scales and fins of the large sea dragons that live in the waterways of Phaistos. In more recent years, the reliance on Al-Khulood for these weapons has been supplanted by their contract with the Nada Corporation, who is able to offer them better tools. Sadaf herself is the daughter of the chief of her tribe. Her curiosity about the worlds beyond Phaistos, her political position as the chief’s daughter and one of the tribe’s strongest warriors, and her knack for picking up new languages and technology made her an appropriate choice to work as a go-between to facilitate the contract between the Nada Corporation and Naas Al-Bahr.

Fauna
The wildlife on Phaistos is reptilian. Here there be dragons.