For a next iteration of my "spacepunk" worldbuilding experiment (https://www.facebook.com/johnslegersart/posts/122099982044075369), I wanted to explore the different cultures of my universe in greater detail.
The first culture I explored, is the Nahyan-Maktoum caliphate on the desert planet of Proxima Centauri b, also known as Adn.
After the Terran Empire made first contact with the arachnid hive in the Kepler-62 system, and the arachnids destroyed the Archimedes armada, the empire was forced to relocate most of its military resources to Kepler-62, to serve as cannon fodder in the first great inter-species war.
This left the Empire with insufficient resources to maintain control of the off-world colonies. Adn was was the first colony to declare independence from the Empire. Sheikh Hasher bin Maktoum and Sheikh Dhiyab bin Al Nahyan, the two most influential oligarchs on Adn, founded the Nahyan-Maktoum caliphate, uniting the former confederacy of emirates under the rule of two caliphs.
Free from Terran meddling, the caliphate abandoned the stoic-taoist ways of the Empire and imposed Islam as the state religion across the former colony, purging most European and East-Asian elements from its territory and pursuing a radical Arab-centric ideology.
This would mark the beginning of the first golden age of Adn, which would last almost a century, until civil war would tear the caliphate apart.
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This LORA is trained on two sets of "concept" art I did for this culture :