Metamor is the capital city of an Empire. What is its name? How many people live in the Empire? What are the other major cities and/or regions called. What is the relationship between metamorians and the other people in the empire? Do significant numbers of people who have taken the curse live outside of the city?
The breeding cell worked for the Imperial Intelligence for a number of years. Who were they spying on or fighting against. Which countries are outside the Metamorian Empire and what are their relationships with it like. The psy-collective is a worldwide phenomenon. Do telepaths from one country spy on telepaths from another country? Do the different Hives take different sides in interstate conflict. Are the telepaths comitting treason against metamor by revealing state secrets to members of the Hive who don't work for the government. Could they be arrest for it?
The official name of the Empire is the Imperial Union of Metamor and Allied Nations. Most people call it the Empire of Metamor for short.
Unlike many political entities that have been called "Empires" in SF
and fantasy fiction, Metamor is a true empire; i.e., it is a coalition
of countries with diverse ethnic or cultural backgrounds, in which one
country (the metropole) controls and directs the operations of the other countries (the peripheries).
The imperial system has nothing to do with tyranny or dictatorship;
many empires in RL Earth history have grown from metropoles that had
some degree of representative government (e.g., Athens, Rome, Great
Britain). So it is with the Empire of Metamor.
The metropole in the EoM is, of course, the Kingdom of Metamor
itself (though it is rarely referred to by that name any longer).
Geographically, this includes the territory from the Marchbourne River
in the south to Caralore in the north, which were the traditional
boundaries of Metamor's kingdom from the time of Prince Ovid to the
rise of Nasoj. Metamor's national sovereignty is invested in the
monarch, Majestrix Kyia, who delegates power and authority to the
agencies beneath her.
The Metamorian government is divided into three branches: legislative (headed by the Senate), executive (headed by the Cabinet) and judicial (headed by the High Court).
All of these branches derive their authority from Kyia herself, and she
could dissolve or reform them at any time if she chose to do so (though
common law tradition demands that she receive the approval of the peerage, the Metamorian nobility, before making any drastic changes in the organization of the government).
The peripheries are provinces that were incorporated into the Empire by
treaty or national plebiscite at various times in the past. Each of
these provinces has its own legislative, executive and judicial
branches, with their own traditions and their own systems of common
law. There are two basic types of provinces: crown provinces and viceroyalties.
Crown provinces are provinces that became part of the Empire by national plebiscite; at
some point in the past, they were autonomous protectorates of Metamor
that voted to join the Empire and accept Majestrix Kyia as their
sovereign. The government in these provinces resembles that of the
metropole, with separate legislative, executive and judicial branches.
The provincial legislature, usually called the Assembly, consists of
elected representatives of the nobility (if any) and the common people,
who vote on bills and send them to the provincial governor for
approval. Each province also has its own High Court that oversees the
lower courts and interprets provincial law; decisions of this court can
be appealed only to the Majestrix herself.. The governor, who is always
one of Kyia's Avatars,
acts as the eyes, ears and voice of the Majestrix in the province,
reporting back to her on the needs and desires of the people and the
actions of the Assembly. The Assembly has control over most aspects of
the province's affairs, but the Majestrix and the governor deal with
matters of national defense, inter-province commerce and other issues
that affect more than one part of the Empire. The governor has veto
power over any bill passed by the Assembly, but any veto may be
overridden by a two-thirds supermajority. There are currently 18 crown
provinces.
The viceroyalties are regions run by some of the former gods and daedra of the Pantheon, and as a result they are organized somewhat differently from the crown provinces. Since these viceroys
were in power over their respective kingdoms before they became part of
the Empire, they retain control over their territories and are given
substantial leeway in how they run them. These "semi-autonomous
protectorates" must still defer to Kyia in the areas of defense and
interstate affairs, and she reserves the right to override the actions
of the viceroys if they become too noxious, but for the most part she
lets them handle things for themselves. Oblineth, the viceroy of Arabarb, rules in a very democratic fashion, with an elected legislature handling most of the business of government; Samekkh, who rules Pyralis, maintains a stricter monarchical system, with elected officials serving only at the local level or as non-voting "advisors". Dvalin, who runs the viceroyalty of Orien in southeastern Sathmore,
has no elected officials at all. In all cases, though, it is to their
benefit to govern justly — none of them may prevent their citizens from
moving to another part of the Empire, so an irresponsible viceroy may
soon find himself without any subjects.
Metamor has also had a succession of protectorates throughout history,
regions in the world that are defended by the Empire but not considered
part of its territory. These protectorates have most often been created
because Metamor's assistance was requested when the local government
collapsed due to economic or political deterioration, civil war, or
external invasion. Most protectorates have gone on to become crown
provinces by national plebiscite, but some have chosen to retain a
greater level of autonomous rule. The lutin homeland of Inu Lutinaka is
one of these: while bounded on all sides by the Empire, it is
considered a sovereign nation, and Kyia respects their rights to govern
their own affairs.
As for the Curse, most affected individuals live in Metamor City or its immediate outskirts, but handfuls of them are found here and there throughout the rest of the Empire.
__________________
"Zombie guards, seize him!" Tell me that's not fun to say.
> The breeding cell worked for the Imperial Intelligence for a > number of
years. Who were they spying on or fighting against.
That hasn't been established.
> Which countries are
outside the Metamorian Empire and what > are their relationships with it
like.
That's a much longer question than we have room to answer here. Suffice to say that the world is as big as our own, and that there are MANY countries with wide-ranging degrees of favorability toward Metamor.
> The psy-collective is a worldwide phenomenon. Do telepaths > from
one country spy on telepaths from another country?
No. The Psi Collective as a whole has a secret alliance with the Empire's Military Intelligence Directorate (MID). Collective members anywhere in the world, regardless of nationality, are called upon to support MID's efforts in exchange for MID covering up some of their activities, providing protection to them within the Imperial power structure, and giving them advance warning when MID is about to initiate operations that could put their fellow teeps in harm's way.
Yes, that *does* mean that Psi Collective members of some other nations are technically committing treason by passing intelligence to MID, and they could be executed for it if they were caught. But psis generally see their allegiance as being to the Collective itself, not to any national government, and they take care of their own.
__________________
"Zombie guards, seize him!" Tell me that's not fun to say.
Thank you very much for your long and detailed answers to my questions. But all good answers only ever lead to more questions so here we go:
I should perhaps have specified that I was asking about cultural and social relationships as well as political but I'll stick with the political ones for now.
While their are certain similarities between the Imperial powers of Athens Rome and Britain they have many differences two. I don't think any of them are a perfect match for the Imperial Union of Metamor. From what I've read on the net and heard on the podcast The origins of the Imperial Union seem very similar to the Delian League which was presumably what you talking about when you sited Athens as an Imperial power. The League started as a mutual defence pact between approximately 150 greek city states formed in the aftermath of the second Persian invasion of Greece. The League met in Delos (hence the name), which was also the location of the treasury. The league agreed to a common security policy (atleast so far as the Persians were concerned) and each member had to contribute ships and personel to the mutual defence effort. As the most powerful state Athens took on a leadership role. I believe metamor did something similar as a response to the repeated invasions of Nasoj. Probably because they didn't have an immortal benevolent figure like Majestrix Kyia ruling over them the Delian League quickly became more coercive and more imperial. Athens started to demand money instead of ships and men as tribute, the treasury was moved from Delos to Athens and used to fund projects that had nothing to do with defence like the Parthenon. States that tried to suceed from the League were invaded and could have many of their citizens sold into slavery.
I would like to make the point that while of course the structure of the political system of the metropole affects the choices made by the metropole about the relationship it imposes on the periphery, they are independent variables. I've already talked about the way Athen's changed the relationship it had with other states. Rome had different relationships with different territories over time. This usually went from a stage where several satellite vassal kingdoms owed alleigience and tribute to Rome but continued to be ruled by local elites according to local laws e.g. Cleopatra in egypt to a latter stage where provinces were Romanized and ruled directly by a Roman Governor. Rome was assimilationist. You've talked about the variety of different peoples in the Empire just how culturally and linguisitically diverse is the Empire?
The British Empire had an even greater variety of relationships with different states. A large part of the British Empire was made of colonies of British people who had displaced the native inhabitants. From your comments about metamorians living outside the Valley it seems metamor was never a colonial power. The British Empire experimented with a variety of direct and indirect methods of rule, perhaps the most surprising being the rule of the East India Company in India, where you had a private corporation controlling a territory many times larger than the metropole. Did Metamor ever have a mercantalist period in it's imperial expansion. The British were similar to the Athenians in that they were a thalassocracy i.e. their imperial projects were enabled by control of the oceans. The great advantage of the British Empire was that Britain became the worlds first industrialised country this gave it a technological and economic adavantage over it's rivals and allowed to use it's peripheries as markets for manufactured goods, which led to closer relationships.
It seems that in contrast to the three examples you site and pretty much any other imperial power in our history, that Metamor never embarked on a war of conquest to subdue it's neighbours. This leads to the interesting question what is the source or sources of metamor's power? Why do so many other people want to be part of the Imperial Union. The Majestrix respects the selfdetermination of the lutins who were never part of the empire. Would she ever allow a province to secede? Would she intervene militarily if they tried?
Looking for parallels in our own world the Empire seems to be something between a federal state like America and and a regional intergration organisation like the European Union. Like the Imperial Union most member states joined the EU by having either a vote of their national parliament or conducting a national referendum, or plebiscite if you will. The EU is mostly concerned with regulating and encouraging trade between it's members as well as developing a common foreign and security policy. The main difference between a member state of the EU and a state in the US is that a member state e.g. France has it's own foreign policy, it's own army, it's own diplomatic realtions with other states. Whereas Texas can't make foreign policy, doesn't have an army our diplomatic representation. Where do the crown provinces and viceroyalites fall? What about taxation? How heavy is the tax burden placed on the peripheries by the metropole? The EU central administration of the EU has fewer people working for it than Birmingham City Council (in the UK not Alabama or wherever). The contributions of the member states to the budget of theEu represents a tiny fraction of their revenue and the European Rapid Reaction Force (Europe's first integrated army) is tiny. Metamor seems more like the US with one integrated army responsible for the defence of the whole Empire. How big of a tax burden does this put on the perihery as opposed to the metropole. Does the Metamorian government collect not military taxes from the periphery? What is it used for?
Like the member states of the EU the different provinces administer their own legal systems and elect their own governments. What is the exact legal situation. The member states of the EU remain soverign entities but they have agreed on the primacy of EU law which grants citizens fundamental rights. If these rights are infringed by the government of a member state a citizen can appeal to the European Court of Justice in much the same way a US citizen could sue a state government in the US supreme court. If citizens can appealk to the Majestrix does she gaurantee their fundamental rights in the same way? The regualtion of issues which affect the whole empire necessitates the creation of a legal code which applies to all parts of the Empire. The only legislative bodies you have mentioned are the Kingdom of Metamor and those of the peripheries. In both the US and the EU the member states send representatives to the bodies which make laws that apply to them all. Do representatives from the crown provinces sit in the metamorian parliament or are they taxed without representation? If a 2/3rds majority of a crown province voted through a measure in contravention to metamorian law i.e. an independence vote or a hot button issue like the death penalty whicj the Majestrix and her Avatar were seriously opposed to would she step outside the consitution to prevent it from happening? Has a province ever tried to leave the Empire and been prevented by a military conflict?
Just how involved is Kyia in the governing of the Empire. Just how much of a constitutional monarch is she. is it like the British system where although the monarch retains the rights to for example dismiss the government as a practicality she would never exercise it. On the other hand does Kyia still have real power?
As far as the internal government of the Kingdom of Metamor goes. Is the peerage the second chamber of a bicameral legislature? How do the nobles exercise they're collective veto? Can the senate overturn a veto from the peerage with a 2/3rds majority.
Just wanted to add i love the show and after many many download issues I'm listening to SE10 then I've just got the last two eps before I'm all caught up.
The Psi Collective as a whole has a secret alliance with the Empire's
Military Intelligence Directorate (MID). Collective members anywhere in
the world, regardless of nationality, are called upon to support MID's
efforts in exchange for MID covering up some of their activities,
providing protection to them within the Imperial power structure, and
giving them advance warning when MID is about to initiate operations
that could put their fellow teeps in harm's way.
Yes, that
*does* mean that Psi Collective members of some other nations are
technically committing treason by passing intelligence to MID, and they
could be executed for it if they were caught. But psis generally see
their allegiance as being to the Collective itself, not to any national
government, and they take care of their own.
This being exactly the sort of behaviour which is likely to put the Teeps into conflict with Mundanes. Even Teeps who did nothing could be seen as traitors. Were the right political situation to occur.
Offline
Metamor is the capital city of an Empire. What is its name? How many people live in the Empire? What are the other major cities and/or regions called. What is the relationship between metamorians and the other people in the empire?
Do significant numbers of people who have taken the curse live outside of the city?
The breeding cell worked for the Imperial Intelligence for a number of years. Who were they spying on or fighting against. Which countries are outside the Metamorian Empire and what are their relationships with it like. The psy-collective is a worldwide phenomenon. Do telepaths from one country spy on telepaths from another country? Do the different Hives take different sides in interstate conflict. Are the telepaths comitting treason against metamor by revealing state secrets to members of the Hive who don't work for the government. Could they be arrest for it?
Hi Laoshi,
The official name of the Empire is the Imperial Union of Metamor and Allied Nations. Most people call it the Empire of Metamor for short.
Unlike many political entities that have been called "Empires" in SF
and fantasy fiction, Metamor is a true empire; i.e., it is a coalition
of countries with diverse ethnic or cultural backgrounds, in which one
country (the metropole) controls and directs the operations of the other countries (the peripheries).
The imperial system has nothing to do with tyranny or dictatorship;
many empires in RL Earth history have grown from metropoles that had
some degree of representative government (e.g., Athens, Rome, Great
Britain). So it is with the Empire of Metamor.
The metropole in the EoM is, of course, the Kingdom of Metamor
itself (though it is rarely referred to by that name any longer).
Geographically, this includes the territory from the Marchbourne River
in the south to Caralore in the north, which were the traditional
boundaries of Metamor's kingdom from the time of Prince Ovid to the
rise of Nasoj. Metamor's national sovereignty is invested in the
monarch, Majestrix Kyia, who delegates power and authority to the
agencies beneath her.
The Metamorian government is divided into three branches: legislative (headed by the Senate), executive (headed by the Cabinet) and judicial (headed by the High Court).
All of these branches derive their authority from Kyia herself, and she
could dissolve or reform them at any time if she chose to do so (though
common law tradition demands that she receive the approval of the peerage, the Metamorian nobility, before making any drastic changes in the organization of the government).
The peripheries are provinces that were incorporated into the Empire by
treaty or national plebiscite at various times in the past. Each of
these provinces has its own legislative, executive and judicial
branches, with their own traditions and their own systems of common
law. There are two basic types of provinces: crown provinces and viceroyalties.
Crown provinces are provinces that became part of the Empire by national plebiscite; at
some point in the past, they were autonomous protectorates of Metamor
that voted to join the Empire and accept Majestrix Kyia as their
sovereign. The government in these provinces resembles that of the
metropole, with separate legislative, executive and judicial branches.
The provincial legislature, usually called the Assembly, consists of
elected representatives of the nobility (if any) and the common people,
who vote on bills and send them to the provincial governor for
approval. Each province also has its own High Court that oversees the
lower courts and interprets provincial law; decisions of this court can
be appealed only to the Majestrix herself.. The governor, who is always
one of Kyia's Avatars,
acts as the eyes, ears and voice of the Majestrix in the province,
reporting back to her on the needs and desires of the people and the
actions of the Assembly. The Assembly has control over most aspects of
the province's affairs, but the Majestrix and the governor deal with
matters of national defense, inter-province commerce and other issues
that affect more than one part of the Empire. The governor has veto
power over any bill passed by the Assembly, but any veto may be
overridden by a two-thirds supermajority. There are currently 18 crown
provinces.
The viceroyalties are regions run by some of the former gods and daedra of the Pantheon, and as a result they are organized somewhat differently from the crown provinces. Since these viceroys
were in power over their respective kingdoms before they became part of
the Empire, they retain control over their territories and are given
substantial leeway in how they run them. These "semi-autonomous
protectorates" must still defer to Kyia in the areas of defense and
interstate affairs, and she reserves the right to override the actions
of the viceroys if they become too noxious, but for the most part she
lets them handle things for themselves. Oblineth, the viceroy of Arabarb, rules in a very democratic fashion, with an elected legislature handling most of the business of government; Samekkh, who rules Pyralis, maintains a stricter monarchical system, with elected officials serving only at the local level or as non-voting "advisors". Dvalin, who runs the viceroyalty of Orien in southeastern Sathmore,
has no elected officials at all. In all cases, though, it is to their
benefit to govern justly — none of them may prevent their citizens from
moving to another part of the Empire, so an irresponsible viceroy may
soon find himself without any subjects.
Metamor has also had a succession of protectorates throughout history,
regions in the world that are defended by the Empire but not considered
part of its territory. These protectorates have most often been created
because Metamor's assistance was requested when the local government
collapsed due to economic or political deterioration, civil war, or
external invasion. Most protectorates have gone on to become crown
provinces by national plebiscite, but some have chosen to retain a
greater level of autonomous rule. The lutin homeland of Inu Lutinaka is
one of these: while bounded on all sides by the Empire, it is
considered a sovereign nation, and Kyia respects their rights to govern
their own affairs.
As for the Curse, most affected individuals live in Metamor City or its immediate outskirts, but handfuls of them are found here and there throughout the rest of the Empire.
"Zombie guards, seize him!" Tell me that's not fun to say.
> The breeding cell worked for the Imperial Intelligence for a
> number of
years. Who were they spying on or fighting against.
That hasn't been established.
> Which countries are
outside the Metamorian Empire and what
> are their relationships with it
like.
That's a much longer question than we have room to answer here. Suffice to say that the world is as big as our own, and that there are MANY countries with wide-ranging degrees of favorability toward Metamor.
> The psy-collective is a worldwide phenomenon. Do telepaths
> from
one country spy on telepaths from another country?
No. The Psi Collective as a whole has a secret alliance with the Empire's Military Intelligence Directorate (MID). Collective members anywhere in the world, regardless of nationality, are called upon to support MID's efforts in exchange for MID covering up some of their activities, providing protection to them within the Imperial power structure, and giving them advance warning when MID is about to initiate operations that could put their fellow teeps in harm's way.
Yes, that *does* mean that Psi Collective members of some other nations are technically committing treason by passing intelligence to MID, and they could be executed for it if they were caught. But psis generally see their allegiance as being to the Collective itself, not to any national government, and they take care of their own.
"Zombie guards, seize him!" Tell me that's not fun to say.
Thank you very much for your long and detailed answers to my questions. But all good answers only ever lead to more questions so here we go:
I should perhaps have specified that I was asking about cultural and social relationships as well as political but I'll stick with the political ones for now.
While their are certain similarities between the Imperial powers of Athens Rome and Britain they have many differences two. I don't think any of them are a perfect match for the Imperial Union of Metamor. From what I've read on the net and heard on the podcast The origins of the Imperial Union seem very similar to the Delian League which was presumably what you talking about when you sited Athens as an Imperial power. The League started as a mutual defence pact between approximately 150 greek city states formed in the aftermath of the second Persian invasion of Greece. The League met in Delos (hence the name), which was also the location of the treasury. The league agreed to a common security policy (atleast so far as the Persians were concerned) and each member had to contribute ships and personel to the mutual defence effort. As the most powerful state Athens took on a leadership role. I believe metamor did something similar as a response to the repeated invasions of Nasoj. Probably because they didn't have an immortal benevolent figure like Majestrix Kyia ruling over them the Delian League quickly became more coercive and more imperial. Athens started to demand money instead of ships and men as tribute, the treasury was moved from Delos to Athens and used to fund projects that had nothing to do with defence like the Parthenon. States that tried to suceed from the League were invaded and could have many of their citizens sold into slavery.
I would like to make the point that while of course the structure of the political system of the metropole affects the choices made by the metropole about the relationship it imposes on the periphery, they are independent variables. I've already talked about the way Athen's changed the relationship it had with other states. Rome had different relationships with different territories over time. This usually went from a stage where several satellite vassal kingdoms owed alleigience and tribute to Rome but continued to be ruled by local elites according to local laws e.g. Cleopatra in egypt to a latter stage where provinces were Romanized and ruled directly by a Roman Governor. Rome was assimilationist. You've talked about the variety of different peoples in the Empire just how culturally and linguisitically diverse is the Empire?
The British Empire had an even greater variety of relationships with different states. A large part of the British Empire was made of colonies of British people who had displaced the native inhabitants. From your comments about metamorians living outside the Valley it seems metamor was never a colonial power. The British Empire experimented with a variety of direct and indirect methods of rule, perhaps the most surprising being the rule of the East India Company in India, where you had a private corporation controlling a territory many times larger than the metropole. Did Metamor ever have a mercantalist period in it's imperial expansion. The British were similar to the Athenians in that they were a thalassocracy i.e. their imperial projects were enabled by control of the oceans. The great advantage of the British Empire was that Britain became the worlds first industrialised country this gave it a technological and economic adavantage over it's rivals and allowed to use it's peripheries as markets for manufactured goods, which led to closer relationships.
It seems that in contrast to the three examples you site and pretty much any other imperial power in our history, that Metamor never embarked on a war of conquest to subdue it's neighbours. This leads to the interesting question what is the source or sources of metamor's power? Why do so many other people want to be part of the Imperial Union. The Majestrix respects the selfdetermination of the lutins who were never part of the empire. Would she ever allow a province to secede? Would she intervene militarily if they tried?
Looking for parallels in our own world the Empire seems to be something between a federal state like America and and a regional intergration organisation like the European Union. Like the Imperial Union most member states joined the EU by having either a vote of their national parliament or conducting a national referendum, or plebiscite if you will. The EU is mostly concerned with regulating and encouraging trade between it's members as well as developing a common foreign and security policy. The main difference between a member state of the EU and a state in the US is that a member state e.g. France has it's own foreign policy, it's own army, it's own diplomatic realtions with other states. Whereas Texas can't make foreign policy, doesn't have an army our diplomatic representation. Where do the crown provinces and viceroyalites fall? What about taxation? How heavy is the tax burden placed on the peripheries by the metropole? The EU central administration of the EU has fewer people working for it than Birmingham City Council (in the UK not Alabama or wherever). The contributions of the member states to the budget of theEu represents a tiny fraction of their revenue and the European Rapid Reaction Force (Europe's first integrated army) is tiny. Metamor seems more like the US with one integrated army responsible for the defence of the whole Empire. How big of a tax burden does this put on the perihery as opposed to the metropole. Does the Metamorian government collect not military taxes from the periphery? What is it used for?
Like the member states of the EU the different provinces administer their own legal systems and elect their own governments. What is the exact legal situation. The member states of the EU remain soverign entities but they have agreed on the primacy of EU law which grants citizens fundamental rights. If these rights are infringed by the government of a member state a citizen can appeal to the European Court of Justice in much the same way a US citizen could sue a state government in the US supreme court. If citizens can appealk to the Majestrix does she gaurantee their fundamental rights in the same way? The regualtion of issues which affect the whole empire necessitates the creation of a legal code which applies to all parts of the Empire. The only legislative bodies you have mentioned are the Kingdom of Metamor and those of the peripheries. In both the US and the EU the member states send representatives to the bodies which make laws that apply to them all. Do representatives from the crown provinces sit in the metamorian parliament or are they taxed without representation? If a 2/3rds majority of a crown province voted through a measure in contravention to metamorian law i.e. an independence vote or a hot button issue like the death penalty whicj the Majestrix and her Avatar were seriously opposed to would she step outside the consitution to prevent it from happening? Has a province ever tried to leave the Empire and been prevented by a military conflict?
Just how involved is Kyia in the governing of the Empire. Just how much of a constitutional monarch is she. is it like the British system where although the monarch retains the rights to for example dismiss the government as a practicality she would never exercise it. On the other hand does Kyia still have real power?
As far as the internal government of the Kingdom of Metamor goes. Is the peerage the second chamber of a bicameral legislature? How do the nobles exercise they're collective veto? Can the senate overturn a veto from the peerage with a 2/3rds majority.
Just wanted to add i love the show and after many many download issues I'm listening to SE10 then I've just got the last two eps before I'm all caught up.
The Psi Collective as a whole has a secret alliance with the Empire's
Military Intelligence Directorate (MID). Collective members anywhere in
the world, regardless of nationality, are called upon to support MID's
efforts in exchange for MID covering up some of their activities,
providing protection to them within the Imperial power structure, and
giving them advance warning when MID is about to initiate operations
that could put their fellow teeps in harm's way.
Yes, that
*does* mean that Psi Collective members of some other nations are
technically committing treason by passing intelligence to MID, and they
could be executed for it if they were caught. But psis generally see
their allegiance as being to the Collective itself, not to any national
government, and they take care of their own.
This being exactly the sort of behaviour which is likely to put the Teeps into conflict with Mundanes. Even Teeps who did nothing could be seen as traitors. Were the right political situation to occur.