At the moment the PC and his team are on Persatuan, which is a cool planet tidally locked to its star, so that the region around the subsolar point is warm and very wet, and surrounded by a belt of cool, windy, semi-arid to arid lands halfway to the terminator. Industrial development on Persatuan is such that the locals can use manufacturing techniques and produce items about as sophisticated as Old Earth in the 1950s CE. But there are a lot of (expensive) imported goods in high-value applications, such as cellular comms towers, and smart-ish phones.
There are basically two cultures on Persatuan, though they aren’t very different. The wetter and more industrial parts are dominated by “masyarakat”, which are industrial or agricultural communes, each both a clan and a workforce. The drier and more pastoral areas are dominated by “pusaka”, which are less egalitarian and tend a bit towards the economical and social structure of a cattle station or feudal manor.
The union of workplace and home in most parts of Persatuan creates constraint; the most socially acceptable escape from this is through musical ensembles and amateur music-drama: practice and performance give people on Persatuan places and occasions into which to escape from mundane concerns and pressures.
On Persatuan it is accepted that people will take mood-altering and noötropic drugs from time to time to modulate their experience and behaviour: drugs to make them diligent at work, drugs to make them feel transcendent while jamming, drugs that will make them affable at parties, drugs that will make them horny in the marital bed. It is, however, very poor behaviour indeed, and in circumstances a serious misdemeanour, to give people such drugs secretly or without their consent.
The people of Persatuan seem superficially very informal and relaxed, but they are actually strongly attached to their dignity and self-possession. They react angrily to any humiliation, and are ashamed of sensual abandon. On the other hand they admire, and like to be admired for, musical ability and the diligence with which they collaborate in their masyarakat or pusaka.
Persatuan is nominally a unitary republic, but in practice the central authority discharges few functions and its most important branch is its judiciary. Executive functions are mostly subsidiarised to the level of “subak”, which are approximately counties. County officials are elected, and in routine matters citizens deal with the subak government through their masyarakat and pusaka.
I want to pep Persatuan up a bit. It’s not as pungent as I would like.