Ist
Kind: Colony world (destroyed) Location: Unstated Controlled by: Galactic Human Empire (nominally; governed internally by feudal rulers)
Summary
A colony world that secretly developed Dust Technology — a nano-artform illegal empire-wide except for high officials. Ist pursued the research autonomously and within a generation became highly adept. But Ist was a feudal society, ruled by kings, despots, and autocrats. The result was not a scientific utopia but a nanotechnological war.
“Wizards” — practitioners who had learned to use dust technology via mental bands, manipulating the world with pure will — levelled entire villages and towns and tore opponents apart where they stood. The wizards paid with their lives; the culture paid with everything. Nothing of Ist remains but ashes and occasional ruins. Several million people are gone.
The text notes conspicuously: “One will notice the conspicuous placement of ‘was’ in that sentence.”
Appearances
- Ch. 07 — 101 Things to Not Visit in the Galaxy Before You Die: Named as a cautionary example of human-created catastrophe — placed in the chapter between alien dangers and alien warnings, making clear that some of the galaxy’s worst things are humanity’s own work.
Related
- Dust Technology — the illegal nano-artform that destroyed Ist; the wizards of Ist are the most detailed depiction of its use in the text
- Galactic Human Empire — Ist was a colony within the empire; the technology was empire-illegal; the empire apparently did not intervene in time (or at all)
- Dannika Massacre — another of the empire’s colonial disasters, though state-driven rather than self-inflicted
Open questions
- When did the Ist nanotechnological war occur? No A.L. date is given.
- Did the empire intervene, observe from a distance, or simply fail to learn of it in time?
- Were other colonies aware of Ist’s dust-tech research? Was there ever a chance of intervention?