Keywords: rampant capitalism, overt crime, androids, smuggling

In-game language: English (if we have English-speaking participants)

On Sacki, no gods are worshipped, only the god of money, Mammon. Sacki is the planet where criminals launder their money. Sacki is where you go, if you want to get something illegal, or if you want to buy the latest fashion in androids. The planet’s society is a strange mix of lawlessness and capitalism, so you can buy everything for money, but on the other hand you get nothing (absolutely nothing!) without money. If you ask the average Sackian, they will say that their system really works rather well. However, if you ask a Sackian without money, an android or Sekolt, they will not quite agree.

On Sacki, the ordinary Sackian do not perform physical work. You have androids for that kind of thing. Androids don’t need food or drink, can be recharged by the sun and are stronger than ordinary people. Sacki have a large android population. used for all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant tasks: they sweep the streets, look after the children, man the brothels, make up most of the army, kill each other, toil in factories etc. Some of them have been going about their work for hundreds of years, and they have collected so many experiences and memories that they have developed a personality. That’s what the soppy android lovers claim anyway, those who preach about android-rights and slavery. The common Sackian would be very reluctantly to work in the factories, so they are fairly indifferent to this kind of fancy pretensions.

And then there are the Sekolts with their fanaticism about nature. It is the arrogant female Sekolts who are in charge among the Sekolts (although there are far fewer of them than men), but it is probably linked to the fact that their men are such wimps. The Sekolt men have no more strength than a 10-year-old child! All Sekolts are insane, it is widely agreed upon. It is of course reasonably entertaining so to see them fall down on the ground and talk to the empty air, when they have religious hallucinations, but it is also what makes them so fanatical. There are also the rumours that they sacrifice their own children to their goddess, if they do not have the proper mutations. And sometimes Sackian children also disappear; it is probably the Sekolt who have run out of defective children!

They continue to preach about nature’s divinity and sanctity, and one could perhaps live with that. No, what’s really unbearable is that in the last three hundred years they have been running around, cleaning up the mess of the Sackian industry, they are so damn holy! It’s this kind of behaviour that gives people a bad conscience, and that’s one thing they really do not like on Sacki. Those Sekolt, they just need to get out of here, and it can’t be fast enough. Luckily, the Sekolt are beginning to do that.

Many Sackians live the good life, with plenty of android servants and large homes. But there are even more who do not have quite as much as they would like, and endless amounts of poor, fighting frantically to get away from the bottom of society. If you have no money, you have no health insurance, no education, not enough food, no place, no rights, and no justice. Police must be paid out of your own pocket, and justice is available to the highest bidder.

So everyone wants to get higher in the societal pyramid, everyone wants MONEY! One way to get money is to smuggle refugees out. Sacki’s government has actually committed itself to complying with intergalactic political conventions and only send approved and health checked refugees through official routes, but this control system works only as well as the people who carry it out. If you grease the border patrol a little and let them extort some money from the pitiful refugees, there is usually no trouble getting past them.

So, it is a fine job to be a gendarme of the border patrol. People pay good money to get a post in the border patrol. You usually only get a small piece of the pie, if the lieutenant is getting bribed to approve fake shipping documents. No, the real money is in checking the ships of the human traffickers. Of course, the refugees need to still have a little money left, when they travel on.  If it was WAY too expensive to go through Sacki, the refugee flow would immediately go somewhere else. So the art is to find just the point, where the individual refugee has paid to the point of pain and no more.

THE GENETIC INHERITANCE OF SACKIANS

Sackians are close to the human genetic standard.

GENDER ROLES

The genders are pretty equal on Sacki, but there is still a tendency for the men to be just a little more equal. There is no prejudice towards homosexuality or any kind of sexuality. Sekolt men though are considered to be soppy wimps, because they are frail and very submissive to their women.

CLOTHING

Sackians want to show off their status and wealth. They do this by wearing colourful flamboyant clothes, preferably shiny or glittery. The more colours, the better! As a gendarme in the border patrol, one must wear gray uniforms, but they are thankfully decorated with different bands depending on rank.

NAMES AND BEHAVIOUR

Sackians originate from a sub-culture of Urbania, called Asi-Australian. Their names are therefore a mixture of different Anglic and Asian names, such as George, Susan, Ricki, Miko, Takahiro, Liu etc. What passes for politeness on Sacki, would be called unusually bad behaviour everywhere else.

Sackians are straightforward, loud, and coarse, are very ready to talk about money and how much they earn and are sexually relatively intrusive. If you have taken a public Sackian transportation and have not had your ass grabbed, you are either very scary or incredibly ugly. The only courtesies that exist go upwards towards people higher on the social pyramid than yourself and can very easily be confused with servility and flattery.

RELATIONS WITH OTHER CULTURES

Sackians are arrogant and uninterested in other cultures. They regard their culture as the only interesting one and only tolerate other people, if they look like them and/or have money. In particular, they look down on Sekolts and androids.

EATING HABITS

Sackians eat a peculiar mix of Australian / English and Asian cuisine, such as chocolate scones, biscuits, rice cakes, chips, Yorkshire pudding, sushi, Wasabi peas, Japanese snacks and plenty of tea.

VARIOUS PRACTICAL DETAILS

Sackians use the common currency intergalactic credits, colloquially called credits, which is legal in several galaxies. The refugees pay fees ranging from 750 to 10,000 credits in bribes, but the normal price is around 2000. A good dinner for two costs 1000 credits on Sacki. A really good dinner for two will cost 3000 credits.

 

ROLES FROM SACKI

The crew are from Sacki, but only one of the refugees:

Kimchi Jones (F), a petty criminal, a thief and a rat for various bookmakers, has stolen an unexpectedly big win, her attempt to travel legitimately has failed and now she is on a wild escape, 22 years old