On the Manifold Conservation Society
I have never felt so uncomfortable beyond the confines of a local Burning Hearts pub as I have in Bunker Primus, the layer-spanning city-state that is the seat of power for the Manifold Conservation Society. One would think that, as a faculty member of Petalcap Vale University, the would-be philosopher-kings of the Conservatorship would find common cause with me. Let it be known that even my cachet in academic circles did little to win me through the bureaucratic morass that came with conducting my anthropological research and, in fact, may have even served to stymie my progress; after all, the world of academia is no less plagued with politics than other major societal institutions... ...For all of their stuffy officiousness, I can say that the administrative state of Bunker Primus does, at least nominally, hew close to their mission of preserving species and knowledge in case of Manifold-spanning catastrophe. The top-down managerial state seems to 'squash' certain cultures over time due to its own collectivist inertia, but not intentionally and certainly not without efforts towards thoughtful remediation. For one example, all of the Holdsmen citizens I spoke to reported unease at the lack of wide-open spaces and the feeling of being watched attendant to subterranean living - important aspects of Craterhold culture - so the local Habitation Bureau was funding construction on moveable wall sections painted with pastoral scenes or mirrored to create the illusion of greater distance between them. The dissident Groundling subculture is a fascinating example of what happens when these efforts on the part of the government are insufficient... ...Where preserving the people fail, the Manifold Conservation Society do their level best to make up for it with meticulous research and record-keeping. The Tarensa Rokei Cultural Archive was among the most complete resources on cultures, both living and extinct, that I have ever encountered. No, I don't praise it simply because they included some of my own works, but I'm also not complaining. Most citizens of the MCS I met were erudite and multilingual, making them a pleasure to work with. I got the sense that some of them would rather be undertaking their scientific pursuits in more natural locales, but the prevailing sense of fear towards the future of the Manifold as a whole kept them bunkered up. Would that I could show some of these peoples the pleasure of travel... ...Environmental conditions in the depths are especially hard on verdial residents for physiological, rather than cultural, reasons. My native Vale Verdial culture entails a strong sense of family and community, including long stints in the glowing hollows of the Mycorrhizal Catacombs, so close confines and the eyes of an overarching organization would not gaul most - though I'm aware that my proudly libertine attitudes run counter to that current. No, the issue is that, no matter where you go in Bunker Primus, the lack of light is stifling! The Last Taps had provisions for feeding my Caudal lichen, but beyond the walls of that gravity cath were miles and miles of corridors that varied in brightness between dim and absolutely tenebrous. I tried to spend as much time as possible in the extensive agri-mines or even on the surface, but my work constantly carried me into the sunless, high-vaulted chambers where the subjects of my observations resided. Still, I felt like an absolute ghost getting back on the airship at the end of that research rotation, my skin clammy and eyes sunken for the metabolic strain of my lichen functionally converting from symbiosis to parasitosis in an effort to spare itself. Suffice it to say, I am not eager to return...
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