Fosterite Empire

Summary

Caste-based society that burned itself messing with genetic engineering, etc. Their history will serve as a backdrop for the technological taboos of the current setting.

The formation of the empire was a direct response to the extinction-level threat of the AI Wars. Slave races were the intended replacement for the apparently always-dangerous technology of strong AI. 

Origin

The Fosterites were a sect of people who saw prophetic prescience in the works of Iain Foster. In response to a perceived AI threat, they moved to remote sections of the Gatemap and began to organize their society as best they could according to The Foster Manifesto. The result was a totalitarian racial caste system far uglier than what they had planned. Despite the Utopian intentions of the Fosterites, harsh temporary measures became permanent means to order, and plans to relax controls were eventually dismissed by the ruling castes.

As soon as the various Fosterite colonies assembled together politically, they set to work constructing an enormous war fleet. The timing of their preparation for war seems uncanny. Many people speculate that they had spies in the UN who tipped them off that one of the megacorps was playing with fire. When the AI Wars broke out, they were the only ones prepared to address the threat.

Caste System

The Progenitors created a series of human-based subspecies for racial caste-specific roles in the empire. All strains of Homunculus are superhuman in a narrow way, but have had their mental faculties reduced in others as a means of preventing uprising.