Colonialist Legacies: Interstellar Voyages

[Natan35]

Anyway... for those of you who guess correctly - may I present to you:



Faiza Ibtisam al-Rahman of the Crescent Company!​

"Faiza al-Rahman, president and Grand Hafiz of the Crescent Corporation, is fifty-one years old.

"If you're wondering why that is, then I can only suggest you take Temporal Physics 101: How Linear Time Works. It will be on offer from the cybermadrassah and may be accessed through any Internet-capable devices you own. If what you're wondering is how she can look so much older than that, how her hair has turned so grey and her forehead so lined, then know this; even without the rallying cry of the Great Mistake, of the destruction of the great kingdoms and the Petremirs, even now we have our enemies. There are those who still see the Crescent approach as weak. Misguided. Heretical. Their arguments are flawed beyond measure, as even the briefest study of Islamic history will tell you. That is why they are so willing to kill and to maim; because they know their words are too weak for anyone other than the greatest simpletons to be convinced otherwise.

"Her way is not weakness. Her way is art, her way is science, her way is the way that brings us closer to knowing the full beauty of God's creation. If that is weakness, then only the barbarian is strong.

"Some Westerners tar us with the brush of our forebears, yes. That is their road. They are just as wrong, though they are dangerous in other ways. Sanctions, blog pressure, fifth and sixth estate attacks on Crescent interests... revenge for imagined slights all, but still dangerous to our prospects. Why is al-Rahman grey? Because she must be the answer to these problems. That is her road, and we are blessed that it is the road to peace and to God.

"Faiza's rise has been meteoric, yes. A full rundown of her career is available behind a paywall that everyone in this room can evade - if they can't, I am forced to wonder why they are on an advanced computing course to begin with - but in this brief talk, I will hit the high points. She was born in a slum in Niyazovsky Oblast, the last of seven and the only one to reach adulthood after Sandstorm Raqqa hit the city. You may not be aware that Sandstorm Raqqa was radioactive, and thus not immediately fatal to her brothers and sisters. Perhaps that ignorance was more pleasant, perhaps it was not. They are at peace.

"After this, Faiza turned to God, and an imam of the Crescent became her tutor and sponsored her through secondary and tertiary education. She graduated valedictorian at the ARC's flagship Liberty University, which I am given to understand is meant to be some manner of great achievement, and then went on to study habitation dynamics under the eminent Professor Gomez Farouq. Yes, that Gomez Farouq. His life story I am sure you've all heard a dozen times.

"Faiza used this platform, and the attendant postdoctoral qualifications from Crescent Madrassah Tehran, to join the Crescent as a mid-level researcher in the field of exobiology. It was through her that the planets suitable for Seeding by the Crescent were founded. It was by her strength, by her negotiating prowess, and by her sheer will to survive, that the Crescent Corporation Seeding programme exists at all. It is by her will that the Crescent has poured money into socnet educational media, both scholastic and gaming, and by her hand that a few of you got the start you needed.

"The Crescent became, under her banner, a charitable force for good in a world where few remain. She designed the first viable Burj housing blocks, soaring towers that single-handedly put an end to the homelessness problems of cities from the Kurdistani border to the Pillars of Hercules. You can see her here meeting with the ARC's then-chief executive to discuss the Dreamtime software, designed to teach people in stasis chambers vital skills and even provide therapy for some mental illnesses. Even this lecture was partially written by her - though of course, I simply wrote the introduction, and if you're hearing this over Dreamtime or iLearn, the skip function should be the red button at the bottom left of the screen.

"But do not press it now, because here to give the parting speech to those selected for the Crescent Company Seeding, by the grace of God, Faiza Ibtisam al-Rahman!"

-- Preface, Dr. Mahmoud Sadiq Khan, Ph.D, D.D, Cai.

Spoiler :

Let's all applaud Scapegrace for this spectacular piece of bombast!

Arabic freaky civ? Killer leader?
I thought scapegrace didn't like psychopaths!

Oh, he is spacegrace here... the brand different... spacegrace
(BTW, this dress will NEVER fit Arabs....)
We need an Israeli flavour civ

Moderator Action: Removed inflammatory comment

 

[TPangolin]

What an earth are you talking about? Killer leader? Psychopaths? Arabic freak- .......I don't even know where to begin.

It quite literally says nothing about her being a killer leader, or a psychopath whatsoever. She's a humanitarian and a scholar. I should clarify the boundaries though - which is essentially outline by Kuwait, up past Iran and into the Caucasus. On the other side, the Crescent boundaries extend to Afghanistan and up through to Kazakhstan.

Spoiler :

 

[Civitar]

I'm sorry TPangolin, but no Arab woman would be caught dead wearing that. Heck, no Arab woman would ever become the leader of her people in any venture. Certainly not one so avidly devoted to Islamic heritage.

Moderator Action: Removed argument about Israel

 

[TPangolin]

And I'm sorry TPangolin, but no Arab woman would be caught dead wearing that. Heck, no Arab woman would ever become the leader of her people in any venture. Certainly not one so avidly devoted to Islamic heritage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Rania_of_Jordan

In a September 2008 CNN televised interview with Fareed Zakaria, Queen Rania stated that she is not opposed to women choosing to wear the Islamic veil hijab by their own volition as long as it is not compulsory. She further noted that modern Islamic women must be entitled to wear any veil by their own individual choice and not "pressured" by a traditionalist interpretation of Islamic law in society.

There's really no need to be close minded here. The fact that you generalize the entirety of Islamic women could very well be a catalyst for yet another round of "-ists" as you say it, to be hurled around.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Yup. If Queen Rania can have that stance (and dress like she does) today, being an Islamic royal consort, then a far more liberal Islam is quite plausible 200 years from now. A lot can happen in two centuries. And within any given religion or ideology, you'll always have those who are more conservative and those who are more liberal, besides.

We went with a female leader for the Crescent Company precisely due to the potential for this kind of social/religious innovation in CivBE's global context.

 

[Scapegrace]

Compare modern Christianity to Christianity at the time of, say, the Thirty Years War. Also, read up on the Abbasids, patrons of art and science, whose empire spread culture and the lost learning of the ancient Greeks throughout the world.

 

[durfal]

I think the leader of the Crescent Company looks great but isn't her name not a bit to arabic? In the borders you show there are mostly Indo-Iranian Languages spoken like Farsi (Iran) or Pashto (Afghanistan) and the Turkic languages like Uzbek, Turkmen, Kazakh and Azeri. They are all Islamic countries but non speaks Arabic or an Arabic related language as it's native tongue except only Kuwayt which seems also part of the Company. So I guess she has Kuwayti ancestors .
But maybe it is just Farsi but with heavy Arabic loanwords in her name.

Also I know it is a rough sketch but you also included Armenia on your map which is nowadays a mostly Christian Orthodox Country that has a big borderconflict with its neighbour Azerbaydzyan who are also part in the Company according to this map. No clue if it is on purpose but if it is it asks for some background information why they joined a mostly Islamic country which includes Azerbaydzyan.

 

[TPangolin]

Her name is adoptive rather and you'll learn her original name soon enough

 

[TPangolin]

Anyway, I guess now is good as good as time as any to reveal Faiza's Affinity Variations (and also her ability):

​

Spoiler :

 

[LoneRebel]

Yes, but we all knew from the beginning that "Middle East faction" meant an Islamic faction, which was strangely lacking from the base game. Seems you're the only one who didn't know. Don't tell me...the reason you were so fervent in calling for a Mideast faction was that you thought it'd be an Israeli faction? Seriously?

I think the most realistic outcome for Israel in the BE world (excluding the obvious unpleasant one that I won't mention) is for it to be part of Franco-Iberia or one of the other European sponsors. Or ARC, if the geographical distance were not a problem. For them to have their own sponsor all to themselves is possible, but demographic issues (namely having nowhere near the population, and therefore GDP, of any of the extant sponsors) make it a bit unlikely. But hey, if a Dutch criminal mob could somehow launch an interstellar colony ship, then I guess Israel certainly could. If the global Jewish diaspora pitches in then it makes more sense.

With a name like "Crescent Company" it's hard to believe there could have been any misunderstanding. Oh, I see where the ambiguity could have come from now. "Crescent" could have meant either "Fertile Crescent" or the Islamic crescent. It clearly seems to be the latter now though. Hmm, speaking of which, why doesn't the faction include the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, or North Africa? I thought it would.

 

[TPangolin]

Hmm, speaking of which, why doesn't the faction include the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, or North Africa? I thought it would.

We would absolutely love it too, but we know that other More Sponsors plans to do at least 2 Middle-Eastern Sponsors likewise. The borders you see here exist as a compromise so that they can all play nice in a potential game

Also Northern Africa is owned by FI.

 

[Viregel]

I made this map of Franco-Iberia to roughly illustrate the territories (ignore the typical Viregel spelling errors/misplacement of Turin that I managed to mistake for something else). I only really thought of it as Franco-Iberia having parts of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco for historical reasons, but aside from that they don't have too much in North Africa.

 

[LoneRebel]

Also Northern Africa is owned by FI.

I made this map of Franco-Iberia to roughly illustrate the territories (ignore the typical Viregel spelling errors/misplacement of Turin that I managed to mistake for something else). I only really thought of it as Franco-Iberia having parts of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco for historical reasons, but aside from that they don't have too much in North Africa.

I'm looking for the original canon source of the common conception that FI includes North Africa, even partly. Closest I've found is the wikia article on it, which says "this transnational spans much of the area around the Mediterranean". But I do not know if that is a canon statement, and it's still ambiguous enough. Moreover, the article then goes on to say that FI sees itself as a guardian for Western civilization, which makes the inclusion of even part of North Africa a little stranger. The cultural gap to bridge would be rather big. The gap between Indonesia and Australia might be just as big, but for some reason I still find Polystralia more believable. Maybe because Southeast Asian Muslims tend to be more moderate, and Australia and Indonesia (and the Philippines and the Pacific island nations) mostly have shared democratic traditions anyway. Unlike FI, Polystralia does not have as its goal protecting Western civilization, or any civilization (except human civilization, obviously, that's what they're launching a spaceship for).

 

[Scapegrace]

Oh, and the reason the Crescent Company doesn't cover the Levant is because of potential conflict with Mr. Bubbles' Sponsor from that region. It's a bit of a weak reason, in my opinion, but it's the one I vaguely remember TP giving me. So there's that.

Moderator Action: Removed inappropriate content. Insulting other members is NOT okay.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Pouakai]

Moderator Action: Okay, I've removed most of the argument about Israel from the last page, because it resulted in offensive and extremely inappropriate personal attacks being made against members of the forum. Infractions have been given, posts have been deleted and further action is being considered. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that flaming and personal attacks on members are NOT okay, and that CFC is a family friendly forum where people must be treated with respect, ESPECIALLY if they have a difference of opinion with you. Please drop the conversation now, and if you want to debate the merits of an Israeli sponsor do so with RESPECT and TOLERANCE.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[TPangolin]

I'm looking for the original canon source of the common conception that FI includes North Africa, even partly. Closest I've found is the wikia article on it, which says "this transnational spans much of the area around the Mediterranean". But I do not know if that is a canon statement, and it's still ambiguous enough. Moreover, the article then goes on to say that FI sees itself as a guardian for Western civilization, which makes the inclusion of even part of North Africa a little stranger. The cultural gap to bridge would be rather big. The gap between Indonesia and Australia might be just as big, but for some reason I still find Polystralia more believable. Maybe because Southeast Asian Muslims tend to be more moderate, and Australia and Indonesia (and the Philippines and the Pacific island nations) mostly have shared democratic traditions anyway. Unlike FI, Polystralia does not have as its goal protecting Western civilization, or any civilization (except human civilization, obviously, that's what they're launching a spaceship for).

iirc, they mentioned it in the Firaxicon video about the Great Mistake.

 

[regalman]

Faiza looks good and all, but is there a way to make her face you? It looks weird when they look off in the distance.

 

[TPangolin]

Most of the CL mods have leaders that look off into the middle distance

 

[WakeUpMrBubbles]

With regards to my mod, please don't worry about any overlap on my account. I was a little embarrassed when I saw we had such similar projects as it is. Just by virtue of the quality work you're doing here, I'd endorse your faction over the one I put forward, quite frankly. When I started Civ:BE I wanted to see a Middle Eastern faction in the game so I made one. But even I can admit that by comparison I think I phoned it in a little bit.

Love your work here, and keep it up. If you want to expand their borders, this is all just fun and games. Many of the mods on offer conflict on a fictional basis with each other. I see no real reason to worry about that. I actually voted for this as the next one done.

Edit: Ah, just checked that, apparently I was mistaken. I voted Eighth Fire, thought that sounded interesting too. It was a coin flip. Either or.

 

[TPangolin]

We tried to avoid overlap as much as possible (except for the colour scheme, which is slightly different). The city list, although it follows a similar theme has no overlap (it uses polymaths and scientists from the Islamic Renaissance, current place names and Arabic names for constellations).