Share
Eden Institute of Xenoscience

Eden Xenoscience
Image from Steve Bowers

The Eden Institute of Xenoscience is a successful, respected, highly formalized and highly conservative Institute and academocracy, located at Niu Mynti.

The Institute specializes in xenobiology, xenology, xenopsychology, xenodiplomacy and xenolinguistics, although it also covers many related disciplines. It collects information from all known alien biospheres and cultures, sending out expeditions to study new alien species and acting as consultants on all forms of human-alien interactions. It has branch institutes located on practically every world with living intelligent aliens, and many local universities educating bionts in trans-species interaction.

History

Th Institute is an organisation that grew out of Liahili University on Eden. During the late Age of Empires it expanded to the extent that it became an independent organisation, and in 2796 it relocated the central offices to Mynti (85 Pegasi IV) where it included the local government as a department. Over the next 2000 years it developed into its current, highly formalised and highly conservative structure. All life on Mynti was destroyed by Metasoft forces in 4490 as the Institute refused to change its Ontology Interpretation. The Institute survived thanks to the large number of branches and relativist expeditions, and was reinstituted 4885 in 39 Tauri system, renamed Niu Mynti. Since then the Eden Institute has remained essentially unchanged, except of a minor coup attempt by the Ophiuchi branch in 7452 which was defused and led the expulsion of the branch (it currently is a part of the Sagittarius Transcultural Cooperation).

The Eden Institute specialises in xenobiology, xenology, xenopsychology, xenodiplomacy and xenolinguistics, although it also covers many related disciplines. It collects information from all known alien biospheres and cultures, sending out expeditions to study new alien species and acting as consultants on all forms of human-alien interactions. It has branch institutes located on practically every world with living intelligent aliens, and many local universities educating bionts in trans-species interaction.

The Niu Mynti system has been extensively terraformed: Ketu (Niu Mynti I) is a cytherian type world inhabited by To'ul'hs, Sukra (Niu Mynti II) is a terraformed gaian type world with a sizeable human population, Angaraka (Niu Mynti III) is an arean world inhabited by some tweaks, vecs and aliens from low-oxygen worlds and Budha (Niu Mynti V-2) is currently being terraformed for the Muuh Embassy. The system is rich and popular, with many famous museums and art collections. The Institute has over the millennia grown into a powerful business cluster, closely linked to many NoCoZo, Communion and MPA interests. Politically the Institute has learned its lesson from the Version War and remains strictly neutral, at least officially.

The relation to the Hamilton Institute of Exopaleontology is somewhat strained; it has long been clear that the Eden Institute regards Xenopaleology as a department subject rather than worthy an independent and competing institute, and the HIE has throughout its history been fiercely independent from the arch-conservative Eden Institute (in fact, it was largely formed as a reaction to the strict hierarchy of it). Both institutes compete for valuable research findings, although it has long been clear that the HIE has managed to consistently attract the brightest exopaleontologists while the Eden Institute attracts the xenodiplomats and biologists. In the field there have been a few incidents between competing expeditions, although academically there is much exchange between the Institutes in the Inner Sphere. The Free Eschatology and Cosmology Institute on Chibootis is another competitor, although with far less economic power.

 
Related Articles
 
Appears in Topics
ArchaeologyInstitutesXenobiology
Xenology
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 06 August 2000.

 
 
>