I'd be lying if I said I was a little hesitant to post this since it makes me 2 for 2 on lore contributions about alcohol, and I really don't want to give anyone the wrong impression. At the same time, though, this is a quintessential lore tangent, and one that has turned into a rather convoluted piece of unratified canon.1
There are some broad strokes things that are nailed down, but some of the details need a little refinement before they earn the right to be considered OSEC2. In truth, this post is as much about my world building process as it is about the lore itself.
The Most Important Questions
Stellar Empire is not my first foray into world building. I’ve been developing a fantasy world for a sizeable chunk of time, and I’ve come to the conclusion that proper world building is driven largely by two questions: “Why?” and “What’s next?”
The world you’re building is “real.” To an extent. You want it to be compelling. It needs to feel alive. It didn’t just blink into existence on page 1, and unless you’re writing a story about the heat death of the universe, it doesn’t blink out of existence at the end. Your heroes (or maybe your villains) move on with their lives. What happens beyond the back cover is just as important as the events that led to the opening chapter.
The point is, everything happens for a reason, and everything has a consequence. Cause and effect. Every single thing that happens in your world is a direct result of something that came before, and the further you tumble down that rabbit hole, the more believable your world becomes.
Buhlit: Interstellar Moonshine
This started with Bog Water. That's how my brain works. It was a simple idea for a horrendous cocktail that was so bad it almost started a war. Why did it start a war? Why did the Nothonians think it was a good gift? Why did it become so infamous?
I took the red pill on that one and dove head first into wonderland, and it got me thinking—there must be other liquors out there. Bog Water is a fun story, but even in-canon it’s something of a joke. If there's bad alcohol, then there must be good stuff too, right? Maybe there’s even some legally questionable offerings. Something akin moonshine.
That’s where buhlit comes from.
Real World Parallels
The weird thing about building Stellar Empire (or really any fictional world) is that when you start talking about food and drink, you have to find a way to describe it in terms your readers can understand.3 I can't tell you that buhlit has “notes of garble root and fermented krunti fruit,” because you have no idea what those are.4 On the other hand, if I tell you that it has hints of vanilla and caramel with a touch of cherry on the finish, that paints a recognizable image, but now, subconsciously, you've come to accept that the characters must know what those things taste like—which begs the question: “Where does someone like Fisker get actual cherries?”5
I realize that in a very roundabout way, I'm repeating one of the more frustrating phrases I heard in all my creative writing classes back in the day: “Write what you know.”
As someone who favored fantasy writing almost exclusively, I always thought that was on odd phrase. How am I supposed to “know” anything about a world that didn't exist before I started writing it?
It's admittedly less frustrating now that I understand the actual point. By drawing a parallel to something familiar, it's easier to bring the unfamiliar to life. Behind the scenes, I can make a note for myself that says buhlit tastes like a fruit infused whiskey, and that gives me a frame of reference to better present the idea “in canon" so to speak.
Starting Point: The Wanderer’s Spirit
My lore tangents always start somewhere small. Sometimes it’s an tangential comment in the JAMR text threads, and sometimes it’s as simple as “it would be cool if…”
In coming up with ideas for the various adult beverages found throughout the Stellar Empire universe, I decided to start by creating fictional equivalents to things in the real world. Buhlit came into existence as the whiskey parallel.
The official in-canon pronunciation varies a bit by region. It’s officially officially pronounced “byoo-lit,” but if you’re inclined to read it like a certain orange-labeled bourbon, you’re not exactly wrong.
Like all things, buhlit needs a story. If it’s significant enough to be named, then it has a history. That’s how you bring an idea to life. My immediate thought was moonshine. Buhlit is distilled out in the wilderness, and in this universe, that wilderness is the void between stars—the emptiness of space. It’s called the “Wanderer’s Spirit,” because it’s most often crafted by those who spend most of their lives out among the stars.
Now we have to ask the important questions:
Why is it so well known? Because it’s not strictly legal in all parts of the galaxy
Why is it illegal? Because it’s largely unregulated. No standards for things like alcohol content or product quality
Why is it unregulated? Because long haul freight crews distill it as a hobby
Why do freight crews choose distilling as a hobby? Because buhlit is easy to produce with the tools they have on hand, and doesn’t require a lot of space.
With just a few simple questions, I can work my way back from the “final” state of things, and define the foundation of a story. All I need to do now is connect the dots and see where that road takes me.
Enough Stalling. Tell us a Story
That is why we're here after all, isn’t it? Pour yourself a drink, pull up a chair and let’s dive in.
Logistics are Hard
Interstellar trade logistics are complicated.6 If your system depends on imported goods, you probably rely on some sort of localized distribution hub, which needs to maintain enough stock (and enough staff) to facilitate localized distribution.
With that in mind, long-haul freight vessels were designed to maximize cargo capacity without overtly creating inhumane working conditions for the crew on board. There were certainly corporations cutting corners and stretching the truth of what was considered “acceptable,” but the industry was generally passable.
Freight vessels aren’t 5-star luxury liners. Most ships are outfitted with rudimentary quarters. Each member of the crew gets a small cabin with a lumpy bed, a cramped lavatory, and a tiny desk. There’s a common space with a kitchenette and a dining area barely large enough to seat half of the crew.
There’s no room for frivolities in the CAB7.
The Wanderer's Spirit
Buhlit is often referred to as the “wanderer’s spirit.” No one really knows who invented it. There are a number of varying claims floating around the galaxy, but the general consensus is that it originated among long haul freight crews as a way to pass the time when the entertainment hub went offline.
Freight vessels had plenty of contingencies in place to make sure the crew could maintain contact with their dispatcher or broadcast a distress signal if they found themselves in dire straits. There were far fewer contingencies in place for entertainment options.
As the story goes, a freight pilot was running a particularly lengthy supply route and found themselves stranded between systems with no entertainment hub and a restless crew. In an act of desperation, she cobbled together some distilling equipment from some kitchenware and spare ship parts, and started experimenting with her personal food supply.
The rest of her crew pitched in some ideas of their own, and they eventually crafted an otherworldly, high-proof spirit. They bottled it up with assorted fruit hoping that the natural sugars would cut some of the burn, and the end result was a subtly sweet spirit with a smooth finish and an alcohol content that knocked you on your ass.
Corporate Greed Drives Municipal Policies
Buhlit is illegal in some parts of the galaxy. In most others, it’s heavily controlled. When we say there’s no regulation, what we really mean that there’s no quality control. No one’s coming to inspect the equipment or revoke licenses if you use spoiled grain or if your alcohol content is too high, but the days of making some extra cash selling it on the dock are over—unless you know how to skirt the law.
As buhlit distilling gained popularity among freight crews, its notoriety started to leak into the ports. Engineers would share their stash with dock workers and shipwrights. Captains would trade small bottles with customs officials—sometimes (unofficially) in exchange for less invasive inspections.
It was only a matter of time before the corporations backing the freight vessels caught wind of this growing side hustle and decided to shut it down. Publicly, buhlit was an unknown. It wasn’t officially sanctioned by the freight companies, and they didn’t want to be held liable if one of their crews sold a bad batch. Privately, it was a lot of legalese for “we’re not getting a cut, so neither do you.”
The right people put the right pressure on the right politicians, and buhlit was flagged as a “non-tradable commodity.”
Enter The Tangent
This is where things get a little meta. The concept of a “non-tradeable commodity" didn't exist when I started writing this post. It's just something that sort of flowed out while writing the previous section. It sounded right, so I decided to stick with it–which leaves us at a bit of a crossroads.
I could just sort of gloss over it and continue with the history of buhlit. There are enough context clues to help people formulate a general concept of what that means.
On the other hand, “non-tradeable commodity” sounds like something important. It's a concept that requires explanation, and if I don't figure it out now, we run the risk of using the concept before fully realizing it. We risk writing ourselves into a corner.
I doubt this is a surprise at this point, but since I have ADHD and the attention span of a goldfish, I chose door number 2.
Non-Tradeable Commodities
"Non-tradable commodity" (otherwise known as NTC) is a strangely specific classification of products. In a system rife with legal loopholes, NTC is a loop hole in and of itself. To put it bluntly: This product classification exists specifically to be red tape.
Giving buhlit the NTC classification was effectively a less than subtle way of telling the corporations of the galaxy that they’d get what they want, but it was going to cost them.
Lockdown Protocols
To understand the significance of the NTC classification, we need to start with detainment policies. Interstellar trade law grants the port authority the right to detain any ship under “suspicion of criminal activity.” The length of that detainment window varies a bit by region, but the average is about 3 days. This policy exists largely as a buffer to allow the port authority to essentially flag certain ships for local law enforcement.
Customs officials have limited jurisdiction to inspect the CAB on freight vessels. Intensive investigations require a search warrant and must be conducted in the presence of a law enforcement officer. On paper, detaining a ship gives the disparate agencies space to coordinate all the moving parts that make such investigations possible.
When a ship is detained, the port authority escorts the vessel to a dedicated holding facility. The ship's crew is ordered to disembark, and the ship itself is put into lockdown. No one is allowed in or out of the ship until either the lockdown is lifted or a search warrant is procured.
The crew in question is then escorted to a state funded hostel for the duration of their detainment. While it's not a prison in the strictest sense of the word, the “guests" aren't exactly free to go either. They're under constant surveillance, and should they choose to leave the facility, they are accompanied by an escort.
Once the detainment window closes, the port authority has 12 service hours to perform one final inspection and either release the ship or present a search warrant. If that warrant arrives even 1 second past the final 12 hour window, it is considered void.
Gaming the System
This is where the NTC classification comes into play. If a product is tagged as NTC, you're allowed to produce it, and you're allowed to consume it. You just can't move it.8
More specifically, NTC products cannot be sold directly, and each NTC product has an intentionally convoluted limitation on how much you're allowed to carry onboard your ship. For buhlit, that limit is .015% of your total freight capacity per crew member. It’s worth noting, however, that each NTC product has its own unique limit.
Due to the excessive variance in how these limits are calculated, auditing NTC inventory is a painfully tedious process. NTC audits can take weeks, and given the inherent complexities of the regulations, it often falls to the more senior customs officials to conduct these audits.
The catch here is that NTC audits circumvent the need for a search warrant, and the port authority can call for one of these audits at any time as long as the following conditions are met:
Customs officials identify NTC products among the ship’s cargo
The ship in question remains within their jurisdiction.
What this ultimately means is that the port authority can leverage a NTC audit to ultimately extend the standard detainment window. During NTC audits, the ship is returned to the holding facility, and only authorized agents involved with conducting the audit are allowed onboard.
Give Me a Reason
While there are potentially substantial fines associated with NTC violations (not to mention tarnished reputations for the late deliveries resulting from NTC audits), the real purpose of the NTC audit is to trap professional criminals.
It would be nice to tell you that there’s no such thing as corruption in the Stellar Empire, but that would be really boring. There are crime syndicates everywhere, and more than a few of them have government officials on the payroll who have more than enough power to stall requests for things like a search warrant.
It’s a lot easier to smuggle contraband when law enforcement isn’t allowed to inspect your ship. NTC audits were (at least partially) designed to mitigate corruption by giving the port authority a very specific set of circumstances that allowed them to conduct a more thorough investigation of a ship without requiring a search warrant to do so. Think checks and balances.
The NTC audit is also one of the reasons most freight crews are especially kind to anyone wearing the port authority insignia. Customs agents are not beyond requesting an audit purely out of spite because an impatient pilot pushed the wrong buttons.
Two Way Street
Customs agents are just as susceptible to corruption as anyone else. Though NTC audits exist to facilitate upholding the law, the nature in which these audits are conducted makes it easy for corrupt officials to use them as a means of smuggling goods. Products in violation of NTC regulations are confiscated and ultimately disposed of. It’s up to the offending corporations to pay those disposal fees (in addition to any associated fines).
If the disposal facility happens to be a front for a local crime syndicate, the disposal fees are an excellent way to cover up a bribe while the disposal facility can assist in covering up the last leg of the delivery.
Closing Thoughts
Abrupt endings are my bread and butter. I often struggle to “finish” a concept because tangents like this pile up and I lose sight of where I started. Sometimes there are too many disparate threads, and I simply have no idea how to bring them all back together.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve come to really love working with Andrew Sears and Robert R. Fike on this project. They let me spiral out of control these bizarre side quests. They don’t shut down the ideas. They don’t always agree with them (which is just as good), but they give me the freedom to see it through (at least as far as my easily distracted brain is able to take it). When the dust settles and I’m a little less manic, we work together to refine the idea into something we can all agree on, and the end result is always something really exciting.
I mean, on its own, I suppose interstellar trade law probably isn’t what most people would consider exciting, but there are threads here that lay the groundwork for something even bigger. At the end of the day, that’s what world building is, right?
Ok, full disclosure, the post title was a bad pun. Stellar Empire is brewing, and it’s getting bigger every day. This is just the tip of the iceberg, so if you want more from this new Sci-Fi universe (you know you do), make sure you subscribe!
Learn more about Stellar Empire on our official wiki.
Stellar Empire is a new sci-fi IP that we’ve been developing, and Andrew previously Kickstarted a card game in this universe, Stellar Empire: Skirmish!
“Unratified canon” is a fancy way of saying “the lore here isn’t set in stone.”
Official Stellar Empire Canon. Acronyms are fun.
Unless it's a fish filet. 😬
These aren't real things. I definitely won't be diving down another rabbit hole after this post.
Maybe the better question is “Why do you feel compelled to talk about food?” (The answer is obviously: “Because Redwall”)
I feel another lore tangent coming on…
Crew Accommodation Boundary
This is intentionally an oversimplification.