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Starborn is wrought with controversy both small and large. These are the issues which make the worlds afar a complex and vibrant place to live. To understand where these lines lie is important, but can be challenging. As such a simple overview exists below to help look at these issues and try to understand some of the complex questions behind them.

Issues

Ethical

Cloning

Mankind has been able to clone most life for over a thousand years, however human cloning has always been a matter of questionable practice. As such it is still a hotbed for contention. This field has not been made any easier through advances in artificial wombs and age-acceleration technologies, in fact cloning in and of itself would not cause many problems were it not for these other technologically created conflicts.

Questions to Care About

• Clone template bodies can be used, and are presently in limited situations, in organ farms. Should this become an even wider standard practice?
• Clones can be age-accelerated in such ways it is conceivably possible to "replace" someone. How do you avoid this danger?
• Clones are not born with the same knowledge or characteristics of the cloned, so why must we hate new individuals?

Astrum Expansion

An age old problem which remains today, where those trusting a group with power to protect desire to maintain control. Yet, how can the agency do its job properly without its own decision capabilities? Today this problem exists as Astrum looks to expand power against illicit activity while those protected look on in fear of an ever more powerful force.

Questions to Care About

• Is Astrum still an independent agency?
• Do System Chiefs holds too much authority?
• Given past abuses where does the future of law enforcement extend?
• Should a law enforcement organization be in the place to be a true military power?

Racial

Syntek Sentience

Do they really exist as peers to men, or are these man-made things only that? These questions and more surround the problem associated with artificial intelligences of all kinds with the Syntek the most in-your-face example. As a hot topic of the modern stage the universe seems torn between acceptance and denial of this new, growing body of self-proclaimed thinkers. Where do you stand?

Questions to Care About

• With the anger and violence that began with the Awakening what is the true intent of the Syntek?
• Do all AI possess the same drive as those who become naturally self-aware? Where is the line in the sand?
• What are true Syntek, those who fulfill their normal function or the self-aware?
• Is killing a Syntek considered murder?

Political

Phirrus Sovereignty

They are a young race still, at least by the standards of most outsiders. The Phirrus exist as the end result of an unethical experiment. Outsiders liberated the Phirrus from the oppression of their creators, yet some now deny any further help, fearful of more abuse.

Questions to Care About

• Are the Phirru-den right in their trepidation? Are they able to deny outside help as products of such corruption?
• Do the Phirrukup matter more than the Phirruden? Or is the reverse true?
• Since the Phirru-den are violently protective, does that mean they are our enemies?

Technological

Man-Made Change

Mankind has crafted whole worlds to their needs, shaping the land, plants, animals, and even humans themselves to fit a present need. Men have for thousands of years felt they know best, and in many cases their gambles have paid off - however not every action works out as planned. It is this lingering doubt of men that makes people question the actions of engineers and scientists as they warp both world and life to fit a model that they've created.

Questions to Care About

• Do men truly have a place in tampering with whole worlds? Is terraforming a practice that needs continue?
• Can men really wrestle with the process of crafting an entire ecosystem as they still struggle to do on every terraformed world as a full-time endeavor? Are the zoologists and associated engineers and environmental scientists able to anticipate the cascade a single action produces?
• Is it right to create life that only favors man? When at one point life existed in a natural balance that naturally pushed mankind to the stars.

Cybernetic Enhancement

Technology reached the stars long ago, but before that it began to find its way inside of men’s bodies. Some view this steady encroachment in an age of brain-implants, cybernetic limbs, artificial organs, and cerebral enhancement as the final breaking point for humanity. The species many argue is on the verge of a reclassification, or should be, from Homo sapiens to a new classification. Despite the split on the use, people all across the universe are taking part in cybernetic enhancement from mundane health maintenance to comprehensive body upgrades.

Questions to Care About

• Where is the boundary between man and machine?
• Where do Syntek fall into the spectrum?
• When does technology cease to be a tool, but instead a medium of change, a part of humanity?
• When is the proper age to allow for cybernetic enhancement? Can parents begin it for their children?