Chylene

Chylene is a forested planet out on the Outer Rim, far from Imperial or New Republic space and having few stellar neighbors. It is home to a winged humanoid species called the Chyleni who have little contact with the rest of the galaxy. The star system itself has very little of value to the galactic economy, so it has been left largely undisturbed in the great history of the galaxy. This is mostly because it's too much hassle and money for too little return to actually bother to go out there and harvest anything of use or value.

Geography/Climate
Like most other planets, Chylene has a varied sort of geography. Vast continents stretch across the northern and southern hemispheres, with neither pole actually perched on land. Over half the planet is covered by various oceans linked by straits and thin seas between the continents.


 * Northern Continents - Nrella and Yranna are in the temperate zone and are considered 'breadbaskets' of the planet, as most of their rolling plains are home to the majority of the farms and pastureland on Chylene. Sandy Tholling is mostly a vast cool desert near the northern pole, pockmarked with crystalline oases and is the source of most of the sacred sands used in the Chyleni Art.


 * Equatorial Continents - Mostly little more than a lengthy archipelago, the Islands of Ilendron are home to the fisherfolk of the Chyleni, the shipmasters. Formed by an active chain of volcanoes, the black sands of the islands are carefully gathered to use in the Art as well.


 * Southern Continents - Most of the Chyleni live in the deep forests of the largest continent on the planet, Phendrellian. The planet's lone spaceport can be found on a mesa rising out of the forest at the foot of the Berynnia mountain chain. The highest reaches of the mountains are covered in snow year-round, and their heights are sufficient that only the most mythical of Chyleni can be said to have actually flown over them.


 * Isolated Continents - Scattered all over the globe in various locations on the oceans are small continents barely worthy of names, occasionally hosting settlements of Chyleni who choose to live as hermits or simply away from the stifling society on Phendrellian. Most have seaports or flitterports that allow them to visit the mainlands when they choose. Their climates vary depending on their latitude and time of year.

Weather
Chylene is a planet not prone to horrific storms, although some small hurricanes have been recorded out on the ocean. The winds tend to be sufficient to the winged sapients being able to fly without undue effort but not so strong as to cause the evolution of more stunted and gnarled trees. Rain is suitable for the growing of food on the northern continents, although it only falls randomly on Tholling. Ice packs are retained at either pole, and the tilt of Chylene's axis is enough to cause moderate changes in the seasons over the course of any given year. Chylene's four moons are also suitable for causing the most interesting and intricate system of tides that one famous Chyleni went insane trying to calculate with precision.

Flora/Fauna
The dominant species on Chylene are winged sentients called Chyleni (see Physiology). Chylene also sports a full range of life in the forest, both ground-dwellers and tree-dwellers, as well as great mammals and fish in the seas.

Notable species of fauna

 * Kren - Four-legged ruminants who are the basic 'meat' staple on the planet. Equivalent to the average cow, they produce milk and fertilizer and are used to ensure the fields are properly grazed.
 * Barees - Fleet running creatures roughly the size of a Shetland pony and as friendly as a spiteful kid brother. Only the most sturdy Chyleni have managed to tame them, and they're much in demand as guards for the farmlands on the planet.
 * Maelryn - The giants of the oceans, maelryn are worshipped as gods by certain sects of the Chyleni. Sleek and fishy, they have teeth nearly four feet long that are prized amongst the Chyleni.  Only the Elders of the Clans are permitted to have a maelryn tooth, and the supply is carefully guarded as it's extremely dangerous to go hunting for one of the monstrous fish to replenish the supply.  Any given tooth is scrimshawed with details of the Elder's life and death and is planted roots-down in the Great Circle when the Elder dies.
 * Sorenwyrm - The Sorenwyrm, named after its discoverer, is a worm-like creature that lives on the most inhospitable of the mountains in the Berynnia range. The sheer silk of its spinning is cultivated and harvested by the Chyleni and used in the richest of textiles.  Given the viciousness of the worms and the resultant rarity of the harvested silk, only the higher levels of Chyleni society can claim ownership of even one garment, and the ownership of many is the mark of the richest members of society.  The Chief Elder is permitted to have silk for his official robes of office, but the other Elders may only have silk sashes.

Notable species of flora

 * The Trees - The forests of Chylene grow vast trees whose trunks are thick and nearly arrow-straight. Wide branches and the knotty boles have been fashioned over time to be habitation for the Chyleni people, who build sturdy platforms on them, much like the Ewoks.  Some of the densest clusters of trees even have entire buildings resting comfortably on those branches.  While the variety of trees is quite astounding, it's a planetary mystery as to why they all more or less grow in the same fashion.
 * Crynda - The wheat-like staple of much of Chyleni food, crynda is tilled on the breadbasket continents in great fields that are harvested twice a year. With a little bit of a nutty flavor to it, crynda stalks are used to feed the kren or in some weaving of mats and baskets while the seeds are ground into mealflour and used in every sort of baking application known to the Chyleni.
 * Eleran - This silver-grey and puffy plant is the source of the vast majority of the textiles created by the Chyleni. It grows upon the crowns and along the boles of the vast trees like great chains of flowers.  It is also the source of one of the few Chyleni exports: a blue and silver alcoholic drink called elerain.  The grey vines are also harvested to be used in weaving and ropework.  The strongest vines are used for fishnets and to hold various buildings together strung between the trees.  Eleran is carefully harvested by the Chyleni to ensure that no one tree's mother vine suffers too much cultivation and dies.

Government
Chylene has an oligarchy as its form of government. A High Council of the Elders is in overall charge of the planet, with lesser Councils handling various specific duties as needed. To be a Councilor, one must be elected by one's Clan, and often, the Elder of the Clan is the one elected to be Councilor as well. Unlike many other planets, Chylene has never had any 'war of the sexes', with males and females serving equally at all levels of society and government. The notion of someone being 'the first female' is completely foreign to the Chyleni.

There are 144 recognized Clans on the planet and thus 144 Councilors. Any given Councilor may have up to two Junior Councilors who can be used to sit in chambers and listen to the speeches or otherwise handle the more mundane duties of the senior Councilor. Each Councilor also has a personal staff to see to liaising with the rest of the Councils and the Councilor's Clan.

The planet as a whole votes on who gets to be on the High Council, and candidates may only be chosen from the existing Councilors. Councilors serve four-year terms and may be re-elected as many times as their Clan chooses. It's considered extremely poor taste to try to interfere with another Clan's electoral process. Tenure on the High Council is until retirement or death, and thus High Council elections are generally unscheduled chaotic affairs in which the vast majority of the Chyleni cheerfully join in.

Once a year, there is a special election for the role of Senator on Coruscant, and this generally is 'won' by whatever poor soul was politically embarrassed in the past year and staffed by Chyleni who are themselves in some sort of disfavor with the current High Council. The Senator has no say in the voting processes of the Councils and is simply the mouthpiece for the High Council and messenger boy (or girl) for when there's actually any real news to bring back from Coruscant. As of the return of Chylene to the Empire in 15 ABY, the Chyleni Senator has been on record as having never requested to address the Senate, whether it was to bring a Chyleni matter to the Senate's attention or to provide support or show lack of support to any matter, motion, or person brought before the Senate as a whole. The Chyleni Senators over time have a voting record that has tended to favor 'order' over 'risk'.

Below the various Councils are appointed Guilds whose job it is to ensure Things Get Done. This includes proper farming, due cultivation of the eleran so the people can be clothed, etc. Unlike the Councils, which are mostly politicians, the Guilds are most often full of competent individuals who wield a great deal of the day-to-day power on the planet, simply because they can withhold their work and seriously interfere with peoples' lives. The most powerful Guildmaster is the one in charge of the Art and all that it entails, and the Guildmaster has successfully 'suggested' that the Elder of the High Council might want to step down on more than one occasion. The term 'Guildmaster' must be noted to be gender-neutral, as there is no corresponding female term such as 'mistress' in Chyleni language.

Below the actual governing bodies are the various Clans themselves. While most laws are handled at the Council level, any behavior not ruled upon there is handled within the Clans, with some Clans allowing things others consider sheer madness. Each Clan has an Elder who is typically the most senior mentally and physically competent member of the Clan regardless of gender, with succession being a way of life. There are very few cases of squabbling over who gets to be the next Elder unless there are arguments over which was hatched first out of a single clutch of Chyleni or clutches which hatched on the same day. The Elder of a Clan is the ultimate authority for the Clan itself and is held accountable for any poor behavior on behalf of any members of the Clan, so loyalty to the Clan is paramount and offenders are generally punished from within before the courts ever get a whiff of trouble.

Economy
Chylene's economy is an extensive and extremely complex system of bartering that occasionally involves what the rest of the galaxy would regard as money. Most Clans will specialize in particular aspects of the economy, generally aligning with whatever Guilds many of the Clan are members of. The Guildmasters meet monthly to assign prices to everything that is formally sold in the society, and every new item to be bartered has to be approved and assigned a basic 'value' by the Guildmasters before it can be publicly traded. Home-crafts, such as trinkets made for friends, are not counted amongst the publicly traded goods and are often bartered quietly amongst the people without any need for official oversight.

Chylene manages to be self-sufficient through careful shepherding of the planet's resources versus the actual population. By utilizing heavy trade amongst the Clans, the Chyleni manage to have most goods available to the entire planet, with the rarest and most precious only available to those able to purchase and transport things to their homes. As the concept of 'making do' is a way of life to the Chyleni, most simply never developed a lust for things they couldn't obtain relatively easily.

The rarest commodities on the planet are precious gemstones and metals, including the sacred sands culled from the Islands of Ilendron and the desert dunes of Tholling. The sacred sands are never exported, on pain of death of the offender and Exile to the offender's entire Clan.

Jewelry is something that is an affectation of nearly all Chyleni and the foundation of much of the actual money changing hands, with certain formalized pendants representing certain numbers of kren or other saleable items. Money-jewelry, called arhent, can only be made by one particular Guild that lives in the Berynnia Mountains.

The Guilds of Chylene are responsible for the control of all items within the economy and they vary based on the natural groupings that arose from prehistoric times.


 * Arhent Guild - Responsible for the manufacture of the arhent jewelry that serves as coinage when such things are needed.
 * Honored Caretakers Guild - Responsible for the elderly and ensuring their twilight years are full of happiness and usefulness for society.
 * Farmers Guild - Duties include care for the kren and crynda on the northern continents.
 * Warriors Guild - They serve as the police, military, and honor guards amongst Chyleni society. Only the best may serve as guards to the sacred sands.
 * Laborers Guild - These Chyleni are responsible mostly for the physical infrastructure of the planet, including the shipping of goods from continent to continent.
 * Fishers Guild - Mostly Islanders, the Fishers hunt the maelryn when their supplies of teeth are low for the accession of a new Elder and also supply regular fish and shellfish and kelp products to the mainlands. They are also the best sailors on the planet.

Culture
The Chyleni evolved as an aerial society, and their entire way of life involves being able to fly without technological aid, although they do that as well. The Chyleni are an extremely spiritual people and have long regarded themselves as the caretakers of their home planet rather than its masters or conquerors.

Chyleni society is grouped up into loose families called Clans, of which there are 144. These are almost always blood relations, although the occasional adoption of orphans isn't unheard of. Most adult Chyleni are members of various Guilds that handle the actual economy and the production of all raw goods and finished items on the planet. Guild membership isn't automatically hereditary or blood-related, but some powerful traditions have made unwritten rules about what sort of person may or may not join a particular Guild. Chyleni Clans tend to live in the same areas on the planet, such as the Arhent Guild living in the Berynnia Mountains, although there are always representatives in other places to ensure proper flow of their goods and services.

Tradition and custom are extremely important to Chylene's people, although neither are so strict and eternal that they have never changed over time. It just takes quite some time (and a groundswell of public opinion). They are not entirely mindless when it comes to their way of life, although some traditions and rituals are more sacred than others. Children are taught at home by both parents and also older siblings not yet of mating age, and any given family may have twenty or sixteen hatchlings and underaged fledglings at once as a maximum, but most parents tend to spread out their clutches to save their own sanity. One of the key messages taught to children as soon as they could open their eyes was loyalty to Clan and Chylene, and Guild-loyalty is a lesson any near-adult Chyleni is taught when they apprentice.

Chylene's spiritual people worship a number of animistic gods, such as the monster fish in their seas or the gods of the air and soil and good old fashioned rocks and trees. Every home on the planet has some small unobtrusive shrine in a nook or small room that the family uses for daily devotions before breakfast and going to bed at night. Given the plethora of deities in the planetary consciousness, it's amazing that the people didn't devolve into religious jihads, but Chyleni common sense won out because they realized such warring behavior would have destroyed their world.

Most Chyleni prize Order over Chaos and thus it's extremely difficult to find a dirty or cluttered Chyleni home or workplace. Precision is a way of life for them and while their homes may be tastefully decorated, they are also precisely decorated. Beauty is also a way of life, and there is nothing on Chylene that is merely functional. It ties in with the spiritual asthetic that there's no reason why something cannot be functional and beautiful at the same time. Surprisingly, the Chyleni themselves rarely value physical beauty amongst their people as a means to an end, preferring to honor those who are strong in flight or adept with their minds or hands.

A Chyleni's personal honor is extremely important to them, as is upholding the honor of one's Clan and/or Guild, and sometimes the three may conflict in terms of what is the right or correct choice to make. In Chyleni society, it is considered acceptable to refuse an order from one's Guildmaster if it clashes with a Clan's or even one's own personal honor, although the Chyleni refusing had better explain it is a matter of honor to the Guildmaster in question. However, amused parents will not accept 'it was against my personal honor' as an excuse as to why one of their hatchlings refused to clean his or her room.

Chyleni mate for life, and there are no concepts for 'remarriage' or 'divorce' in their language. A Chyleni's full public name is a first name that is publicly known and then a contracted secondary name that is chosen by the Chyleni upon their 16th birthday. This second name is of a dual nature. Publicly, it will match the rest of the Clan's last name. When a Chyleni has chosen a lifemate and is given permission or chooses to reveal their full last name, they do so only to that lifemate and it is kept secret to all. For example, Kyrin Sh'vani was simply called 'Kyrin' until she was 16, when she took on the Clan-name 'Sh'vani', signifying her ascension into the ranks of the adults. When she chose her lifemate, she revealed to him her entire last name, a secret only for him. Due to a Chyleni's loyalty to family and Clan, a Chyleni would commit suicide before abandoning those responsibilities, and there are no such things as arranged marriages on the planet. The Chyleni felt that lifematings were serious enough to allow those intending to make that choice do so of their own free will. Unattached Chyleni are free with their affections with either gender, although if eggs are produced, the pair in question are expected to undergo the lifemating ritual and spend the rest of their lives together. Chyleni culture treats them as adults and expects responsibility that is generally followed. Once lifemated, neither Chyleni will have sexual relations with another being other than their chosen mate, even if that mate dies or is somehow incapacitated. If a couple is not fertile, there are unfortunately enough orphans on the planet that there will always be a hatchling or youth in need of parental care.

As Chyleni age and eventually lose the strength to fly, they are cared for by the Honored Caretakers Guild, whose members are young, nearly of lifemating age or early into their lifemating. The Guild ensures to the physical needs of the elderly and that they are treated with respect by all Chyleni, including ensuring they have transportation anywhere they wish to go (within reason).

Once a Chyleni dies, he or she is cremated with robes made from a secret extraction of eleran, and their ashes are used to bolster the roots of the great Trees that cover the southern continents and on the farmland on the northern continents. It is believed that in such a manner, any Chylene worthy of honor will then be of eternal use to the rest of society and that their goodness passes forward to future generations.

OOC Notes
Chylene and its general content was created by the player of Kyrin Sh'vani. Please contact her if you wish to add to or edit the actual content of this page (not if you just want to spellcheck or reformat stuff), and she can assist with answering questions when it comes to applying for a Chyleni or how to properly play one on the MUSH. The #1 FAQ would be 'what race do I use in chargen?' and the answer is Near Human for code-purposes.