Drawing Maps - Season 6 Faction Creation Pt. 2 - Aesthetics

Hey everyone! Welcome to another look into my notes as I continue to prep for Season 6, which now has a name: PARTIZAN! Listen above as I dig into a major breakthrough I had w/r/t the aesthetics of this season. This is less a Beam Saber specific thing and more general insight and workflow discussion about arriving at aesthetics for the season.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy. Also, guess in the comments about which Stels you think map up to the other key terms!

1. Stel Nideo
   1. Type: Theocracy - PRESENT. 
      1. The Divine Principality is built around a faith that runs through both streams of Asterism: The centrality and timelessness of the state, which itself is divine (or a conduit for divinity, depending on who you ask). They govern through biopower and necropower--all about control through law, order, categorization, and culture. You don’t need secret police when you shape everyone to police themselves. 
   2. Goal: Secure the Borders - Nideo is cleaning house and barricading the door ahead of anticipated hostilities. Survival is the fittest.
   3. Corruption: 4
   4. Aesthetic notes, Notable NPCs, Vehicle Designs, additional traits.
      1. The PRESENT: Faith, political education, and the culture industries (mass media and high art, both), policing, and surveillance. They also maintain the constellation satellites that orbit the moon, ensure that anyone can look up to the sky to remember their morality lessons from childhood. They  Can tell you were someone or something is now. Arbiters of the aesthetic and moral good.
      2. Architecture is what the architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussof called “hidden medievalism.” Using a two-part technique, Nideo architecture misdirects you from the truth of their buildings and settlements: First, they deploy the sort of “invisible” design elements that make you forget you’re in a city and walking past buildings to begin with. Lots of glass, buildings mirrored, modular, and positioned so that they reflect the sky, not each other or you. Second: critical regionalism: They adopt and extend local historical customs to underscore the Asterist principle of cellular stability, to ingratiate themselves with the locals while simultaneously beating their chests about how they can do it better. If your hometown used big orange gates, they make the biggest orange gate you’ve ever seen, and they make it so it’s one of the only places your attention goes.
         1. One major example of this, though also one that has actually permeated across all Nidean art: Statues as fashion and vehicular accoutrement, as lifted from the Hypha. 
      3. Normative humanoid body mech designs. Beautiful in the way “beautiful” might apply before you put on your critical thinking cap. Featuring flourishes like capes, holographic insignia projections, and asymmetrical statuettes on their frames. Also: 12 glowing eyes in a 3x4 grid.
      4. NPCs
         1. Aleel Verdicate, The Song of Paritzan
            1. Ranks are: Note, Chord, Melody, Passage (two roles, you're either a Chorus or a Verse), Song, Cycle.
         2. Oncemore Once
         3. Zuse Zaveleta
         4. Sefton East
         5. Vernal Leson
   5. Squads
      1. The Divine Imminence and Elect - Tier V - Presence itself.
      2. Church of Received Asterism - Tier IV - On any other world, Divinity’s first faith would be the strongest force on the planet. But here, in the birthplace of Progressive Asterism, the old church isn’t even Stel Nideo’s most capable organization.
      3. The Plume - Tier IV - Hallows blessed by Empyrean directly, sent to ensure that the home of Progressive Asterism remembers the strength of NIdeo’s virtue.. 
      4. The Lambic House - Tier III - Between the mountains of the Pique Ridge is a town where peasants pick fruit, and where the monks of the Sovereign Immunity who look after them in place of normal Nidean leadership, turn that fruit in the moon’s most popular drink. All involved would die before letting anyone else see the recipe.
      5. The Partizan Palace - Tier III - Once a week, the portcullis opens, and when it does, it brings the truth. Then, as in every system throughout Divinity, the Palace gets a hold of it, and turns it into information, indexed and improved. 
      6. House Leson - Tier II - Though blessed by a divine, and committed to their vocation of executing the faith’s justice, House Leson remains landed lay gentry. With lineage going back to a heroic elect of the Divine Clash, Nideo holds them up as proof that courage is rewarded.
      7. The Divine Vernacular - Tier II - Sometimes a divine wields a blade, incomparable in sharpness. Sometimes, it allows thousands to speak instantly, at distance. You decide which is more frightening. 
      8. Sefton East - Tier I - Though only a Melody in the church, East’s emphasis on unity and peace in a time of war have found them a loyal following.
      9. Ardor and Adamance - Tier I - The rare Nidean hollow unit, made of those who have yet to earn the touch of the divine, yet who strive tirelessly and gallantly towards it.
   6. Regions
      1. The Pique Ridge
         1. A coastal chain of mountains and the valleys beneath, leading to the highly populated shore

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