The RTSC Guide to Startopia
Part 12: Redemption

All Peeps have little Souls, and like every other character trait, Soul points erode away during the cut and thrust of a Peep's normal day. A Peep will feel and heed the need for some religious advice and seek out a blessing from a Zedem Monk. The Zedem embody all things spiritual and religious in the game. In keeping with their religious theme, all other races receive a small Soul bonus whenever they have a conversation with a Zedem. But the Zedem's main tool is their Temple, and Peeps will receive massive Soul bonuses when they are blessed by a Monk in this institution.

Zedem Temples

Temples are raised exclusively on the Bio-Deck. They cost you nothing, but once created, it can never be removed. Your first hired Zedem Monk conjures up the central obelisk made of crystal; the process of establishing this plinth drains all the water in the vicinity, levels the land and automatically weeds out any vegetation nearby. For each subsequent monk you employ, a stone slab rises out of the nanosoil. Twelve monks will produce a ring of twelve stones, or the Zedem Full Temple. You can only have one Temple, unless you happen to capture another Administrator's Bio-deck space, and sacking all your monks will remove the ring of stones, but not the original obelisk, which will continue to attract a swirl of Monks and visiting pilgrims. Apart from the hiring and promoting each Monk, Temples cost you nothing and don't require any maintenance. Once planted, a Temple will begin to attract passing pilgrims. You'll need to have a working Comsensor and a quick trigger finger to receive their docking request before other players beat you to the punch.

The Targ on the right has serious spiritual issues (as flagged by the red Ying-Yang symbol) but look closely at the guy on the left and you'll see a dark shadow looming over him... this poor fellow's Soul has zeroed and he's now depressed.

Criminal Monks can be dangerous, since their advice only makes things worse. There's a close relationship between spiritually depleted Peeps and criminality. I've often found that a Station with a hard working Temple that's creating many Penitents is also one with bulging jails. (This is especially true in the single player missions: Mission 8, the Zedem Conclave) Lockdown Brigs incarcerate and rehabilitate crims using secular means, while the Zedem use religion to "fix" Peeps by solving their spiritual issues. I've had some surprising games where beaming a gang of Security Scuzzers into a Temple resulted in most of its patrons being marched off to the Brig - including a number of Zedem employees! The corrupt Zedem had been driving their flock to deeper levels of corruption and it wasn't until they were rehabilitated that the lockup rate across the Station started to drop.

Penitents

A skilled Monk at the Temple can turn a soulfully depressed Peep into a Penitent. This is good news for your coffers, since you win that 5000e. Unfortunately, Penitents shut themselves away from the rest of the world in a big, bulky Penitent Suit, and then proceed to wander everywhere on the Station, neither buying or using anything and annoying everyone they meet. On top of that, a potential customer or worse, a hard working employee, is effectively lost to you. Depending on the size of your population and the effectiveness of your Monks - and the sort of scenario you may be playing - this can sometimes lead to manpower shortages.

All Peeps suffer a small negative soul hit when conversing with a Penitent, and the Turrakken and Sirens suffer additional losses to their minds and their sense of fun. Unsurprisingly, Zedem Monks enjoy bursts of Love, Soul, Mind and Fun with Penitents. Produce twelve Penitents with a Full Temple and interesting things happen...

But there are other, more subtle ways to improve the soulful well being of your Peeps. A Plaza Fountain gives them somewhere quieter to sit back, relax and meditate. The giant Viewing Gallery gives them a portal to the Universe outside, to contemplate the vastness of Creation (it also lets you see passing traders and other weird space phenomena.