Paradiso

The planet of Paradiso is the setting of RedDragon's graphic novel series, Jade Growing Up Again and was created by him as an original location, a Colony world depicted as existing during the early days of space flight during 2400ad. At this time the planet is cut off from Earth due to events in the colony's history creating a technological divide between this planet and Earth.

History
In 2265 mining colony ships touched down on a freshly terraformed (using Earth fauna), temperate planet rich in high atomic weight elements and precious metals designated G-629. After the settlers emerged from cryogenic storage, they disassembled the ships and converted them into the organs of the infrastructure; power plants, water treatment centers, and other essential structures. The multi-national colonists dubbed their new home Paradisio and set to work building a new society. The colonists were drawn primarily from North America, Europe, and Japan.

The Discovery of Rejuvenation
In October of 2322, Sam Diehl, a weekend miner, full time professor of geology, was following a rich vein of gold quartz when his last explosion reveals a perfectly smooth surface, impenetrable by his drill bits or explosives. There appeared to be the outline of a “door” with a small panel next to it baring this image of human hand print embossed on it. Suddenly feeling himself out of his element, he conceals the entrance to his mine and contacts colleagues privately. This was the discovery of the first rejuvenation machines.

Not trusting the FTL communication agencies and knowing that it would take about just as many weeks to send and receive messages than to go there himself, Sam Diehl visited other colleagues on Earth, who go “on sabbatical” from their university jobs to Paradisio to investigate this “once in a lifetime opportunity.” After noticing that there are a lot of university people in Sam’s mine, the Paradisio government found out what had been found and establishes a tight security zone around the mine site…floating a story about high radioactivity levels and poisonous gases killing the professors to hide the true nature of the discovery…and explain the absence of the professors.

The Plague
News reports of Plague on Earth and other colony planets sow panic in the population and in the planetary government even though no cases have occurred on Paradisio, yet. As more and more colonies fell to the Galaxian Plague, the Paradisio government struggled to from a plan for survival. The first plan was to reassemble the original populace ships that had carried their population to the planet in individual cryo-stasis pods and place as many citizens as possible into the cryo containers to wait out the disease while government agents in sealed suits and sealed environments monitored the pods and kept the infrastructure of the colony from deteriorating too much. The obvious downsides to this plan were that the ships were not large enough to hold the current population and the estimated wait time for the plague to die without subjects to infect was six to ten years.

Three spaceships, the Trollop, Apropos, and Porteus arrive, selling a new vaccine against the plague from a new corporation called PIZGARLEN. Captains Pizano, Garson, and Lennart displayed a reputed “license” from the Federation to sell the vaccine and some scientific evidence that seemed valid, though when doctors asked about spcifics, the captains hid behind trade secrets. The government decides, in this dire emergency, to go ahead without waiting weeks for a FTL response from Earth concerning the “license.” The captains of the ships insisted on payment in Gold, Platinum, and raw gems. This planet was one of the great trade hubs of the colonies, it literally could not afford to remove itself from the stage for a decade. Inoculation of persons at high risk (especially children) begins the same day as the vaccine is received. The PizGarLen ships departed (suspiciously rapidly) …to sell their vaccine to other colony planets.

Three weeks later, the living nightmare began. Those first inoculated were the first ones to succumb to the illness. Half the population was wiped out within the first few days and no children survived at all. The vaccine was the live virus, not the dead/weakened one as advertised.

The Cryo-plan was put into effect, but by that time, the only cure they had for the plague was the still experimental rejuve technology. After an emergency rejuve, the few remaining citizens were placed in the cryo cylinders as children, told that they would wake up when it was safe. There was a worry of overcrowding, but in the end there were not even enough localized survivors to fill any of the ships to capacity. The few remaining government overseers were left with the responsibility of maintaining the infrastructure with skeletons crews (or considerably less).

There was a curious new development. Of the thirty seven million individuals on planet thirty were immune. The few remaining scientists scrabbled to isolate the genetic vectors that made them immune. The only thing they had in common was that they had all spent protracted terms of time in the wilderness. As near as they could tell it was some rare, ignorable infection native to Paradiso that gave their immune systems the instructions to fight the plague. A vaccine was synthesized, but it was a slow process. Incidentally, the overseerers discovered that PizGarLen had left a jamming satellite in Paradisio-stationary orbit above the spaceport to intercept and scramble all FTL transmissions.

The Reconstruction
The frozen population was released in waves, with more and more of the people released as more and more of the vaccine became available. In the first wave of released children, the focus was on reviving essential professionals to take up their positions again. The expectation was that even as twelve year old girls, they would be able to handle the responsibilities and relationships they had as adults and were granted equal rights. It was a disaster, though the technical knowledge was there, the rejuves handled their emotions no better than teenagers. Further complications continued to rise, running from individuals aggravated that their spouses were still in cryo-sleep, parents traumatized by the loss of their children, and the ever growing cases of the then misunderstood Rejuve sickness (caused by a temporally reduced immune system within the digestive tracts of rejuves). Power plants suffered meltdowns, industrial machinery was miss-handled, lives were lost. At last the governors decided to relegate the rejuve populace to hastily assembled boarding schools (retrofitted populace ships) and start teaching them to deal with their unique situation. Most of the rejuves were insulted by this measure (turns out telling a bunch of emotional traumatized working-class men and women transformed into 12 year old girls to act their age is even more difficult than it already sounds). With rejuves outnumbering adults nearly twenty to one, maintaining control of the populace proved very difficult. Problems started cropping up again ranging from illicit relations between Rejuves and adults to recreational sex between rejuves to hacking to food replicators to produce intoxicants to outright malicious subversion.

Several teachers at one of the schools started using corporal punishment to deal with their worst students. This reduced the occurrence of serious incidents, or at least took them down to childish pranks at the expense of the adults that went mostly unreported. With the remaining adults struggling to find a solution to the “behavior crisis,” corporal punishment became an institution among every school. It was used for everything from punishment to behavior modification. Needless to say, the rejuves grew quite resentful under the new rules. The governors placated several revolts by reorganizing populations while simultaneously releasing rejuves’ spouses and family members from stasis and also releasing therapists and other mental health professionals into the population to “calm things down.”

Six years later most of the “First Generation” rejuves had grown up enough to properly assume their former positions and the governors were ready to release the next generation of rejuves. A few of the first generation took on the job of helping out at the boarding schools (looking forward to giving the spankings for a change). The second generation of rejuves were appalled at the degree to which corporal punishment had been integrated into their lessons. One year after their release, members of the second generation presented to the governance a very carefully worded proposition to remove corporal punishment from the schools. The adults let them down easy, citing the accidents that started with the first generation, but punishments became less severe after the second generation had demonstrated that they were not as rambunctious as the first.

Penny Lane
During the turbulence of the first generation, significant latitude was given to most individuals on the understanding that emotions were high. Still, ten rejuves committed crimes serious enough that they warranted incarceration over corporal punishment. The leadership hastily constructed an isolated prison, one part penal experiment, one part quick fix. The staff would consist of one principal, one teacher, one doctor, two therapists, two guards to each door, and one guard per prisoner. the “Babysitter” guards (as they would be jocularly called) would each be responsible for overseeing one prisoner. They would sleep in adjacent rooms to their charges and their wrist comms would alert them if their individual charges ever strayed one hundred meters from them. The prisoners would be rejuved to five years old to diminish any threat. They would receive classes, behavioral therapy, and even more regular and severe corporal punishment.

Two years after its founding the overseerers sent a representative to document any progress that had been made in Penny Lane (as the residents had come to call it). Their biggest fear was that the guards might be taking advantage of the prisoners (remembering such events as the Stanford prison experiment). To their surprise, they found that the guards had formed curiously strong emotional bonds with the prisoners. The therapists theorized that since the prisoners had never developed a sense of solidarity with each other they had turned to their guards for emotional support. On the flip side the guards had reciprocated these feelings and had come to genuinely care for their charges. The result had been very beneficial to the prisoners’ behavioral modification. This was unprecedented. In the second generation, the penal system was revolutionized to incorporate this emotional bonding into every prisoner’s rehabilitation, resulting in the penitatas system.

Recent History
The three “plague ships” as the populace had come to call them, had reported the entire populace wiped out by the plague. A general quarantine announcement went out and the galaxy more or less forgot about their “lost colonies.” Over the next one hundred years or so, there would be intermittent reports of stray communication signals emanating from the planet. Meanwhile a rumor began to spread in the smuggling community about a system that “nobody ever came back from. Paradiso was left alone until the trader’s guild lost a convoy in the system.

The Planet
Visibly very similar to Earth in a variety of ways, Great length was taken during the setting up of the colony to transplant native Earth trees and plants to the new world despite it having its own native Flora. Covering a good third of the small planet's surface, much of the human populated area's have been visibly terraformed to create a familia environment. The planet consists of one major city and a large number of suburban and rural areas that have a distinctly 'American' feel to them.

Even the houses and buildings, while not actually made out of wood, are designed to have a weatherboard style look reminiscent of late twentieth/early twenty-first century building.

Language and Culture
The Native language of Paradiso is English, the Global language of earth as developed by the 22nd century and the culture is a general Mish-Mash of Earth based cultures that follows the Multicultural Trends developed in the 21st century over much of Earth, however as a culture Paradiso has some differences to it's homeworld.

Cut off from Earth due to Quarintine Procedures some time ago, during a great plague that ran accross a large number of Earth's distant colonies, the RedDragon setting establishes this earlier time in Earth's history as not being based on rejuve culture or having rejuve Technology. RedDragon has stated in his comics that Paradiso is the only Colony Planet to have working rejuve technology, and to develop a Rejuve based culture.

Sexuality between adults on Paradisio is comparatively liberal to previous generations. The prevalence of birth control and better medicine lead to a manageable increase in recreational sex. Homosexuality is almost universally acceptable, as is voluntary gender change by use of y-repression or y-insertion. The practice of erotic corporal punishment and bondage is very prevalent (most theories ascribe this to the stringent methods of child rearing) and few would blame a couple for seeking a bit of adventure in the bedroom. However, if a married couple wants to give birth to their own child, or even become a parent to a rejuve, parenting boards expect the couple to conform to a much more conservative standard of behavior. Allowing your bedroom practices to bleed into the rearing of the children is very frowned upon.

The issue of sexuality and children is still a touchy one. As far as kindern are concerned, it is almost universally understood that early initiation to sex leads to psychological problems later in life (with the only dissenting opinions coming from hard core pedophiles, along with unfounded accusations of a conspiracy among child psychiatrists). The age of consent on Paradisio is (physically) eighteen. But Rejuves are a different matter. The question of whether or not an adult who has already had sex should be allowed to engage in sex as a child was under debate early on, but modern opinion is that it is usually best to treat a rejuve as you would a kindern. Rejuves would also face harsh punishment if they were to engage in any kind of sexual activity with each other, but solitary masturbation is quite accepted as an appropriate channel for hormonal emotions. However, medicalos and volunteras rejuves may engage in sexual activity if they acquire an erotic play licences before they are rejuved into children, specifying, at maximum, two adults (or rejuves) that one may engage in sex with. All parties must enter this contract voluntarily while they are over the age of consent. Some couple use their right to sexual contact through out, others may use it once then request it be invalidated because they are turned off by the experience. Other couples may only enter into the contract as a precaution. For example, if they decide to have sex when one or both parties has reached the age of seventeen. Still practically no one would brag about being inside such an arrangement, and whether or not such contracts should be outlawed entirely is still a matter of debate.

Discipline
Discipline on Paradiso is based around the same principal as the Melody Stories with great emphasis on spankings but also emphasises a strong sense of family. Introduction of such family discipline tools as The Memory Bench and The Belt show indications that the art of spanking in this time is most likely less advanced but more family oriented then that of the Melody stories, however at the same time the pennies on Paradiso seam to be more heavily monitored with listening devices embedded into collars that can not be removed and much higher levels of security than seen in either Lurking Dragon's works or in Professor Bob's work.

There is almost a sense of paranoia about the punishments and while the parents on the colony seam to make very strong emotional bonds with their penny wards there is a sense that the memory of the plague and what it did to the colony is the biggest influence in how children are treated on the colony.

Politics
The two dominant political factions on Paradisio are the Expansionists and the Conservationists. On the right, the Conservationists advocate for maintaining isolationism and counts a great majority of plague survivors among its ranks. On the left, the Expansionists, by contrast, advocate for Paradisio to reestablish contact with the Federation. There is a noticeable divide on Paradisio between plague survivors and the children born after the plague.

The Conservationists currently hold the majority in government, elected in when the interdicted trade ships sent a fresh wave of xenophobia through the planetary populace.

Holidays
Citizens of Paradisio are free to celebrate the holidays of their respective religions. One holiday, however is particular to the planet: Mourning Day.

On the anniversary of the first day of the plague, few shops are open for business. In public, individuals are as silent as they can be in memory for those they lost. Secular households are usually silent within as well. Religious households will usually follow memorial rites adapted from their traditions. Catholics will hold candlelight vigils, Buddhists will display images of their departed and pray for them, Irish households will swap stories of their lost family and friends between rounds of whiskey (one once remarked that you will never laugh or cry so hard as you will in an Irish house on Morning Day). In the evening, churches, temples, and synagogues will hold memorial services.

Mourning day is the only holiday where a penitatas might not be spanked all day. Since it is not a time of celebration there is no need to invert the festivities upon the children and the general consensus is that no one wants to make children cry out in pain on the anniversary of the death of so many children. Exceedingly few pennies have had the indecency to attempt to exploit this to practice malicious conduct, and those that have were spanked twice as bad as usual on the spot. A penny misbehaving on Mourning day is seen as an affront to their lost children. Any penny accidentally breaking the rules will be spanked the following day.