New Thessaly

New Thessaly was a Member World of the Federacy. Like Alexander (planet) it was originally settled from Greece, had a dominant Greek culture and its population tended to be dark and slim.

The Greek Orthodox Church had a strong position in the social and political life of New Thessaly, for example making sure that there would be no entrtainment featuring bare-breasted women, such as was common on many other planets of the Federacy. However, the Church did not try to impose too puritanical a way of life. For example, it did not interefere with young people having sex without marriage, as long as they did not flaunt it.

Most New Thessalians had hand-carved Icons hanging in their homes, and New Thessalian expatriates kept them also in homes on other planets, and even when their religious fauth waned. On other Federacy planets, New Thessalian icons were moderately valued as works of art, though not fetching extrmely high prices.

New Thessalians kept much of the traditonal Greek cuisine, such as stuffed wine leaves and the ouzo wine. However, being made of locally available materials and seasonings, the taste of these as prepared on New Thessaly actually diverged considerably from that produced in Greece from Earth materials.

Educated New Thessalians were familiar with Greek history and culture, streching many thousands of years back - for example the plays of Sophocles. Thye were, however, often ignorant of non-Greek aspects of human history, for example the arocities perpetrated by Nazi Gemrany. While the planet had its own unversities, New Thessalians seeking to study specliased subjects such as anthropolgy often went to more cosmpolitan planets such as Hyperion.

The mountain areas of New Thessaly were known for the centuries-old bitter feuds among their inhabitnats, some of them reported to have been brought from Greece by the original settlers.

Outsiders tended to confuse Alexanderians and New Thessalians with each other, though the people of these two planets could easily tell the difference due to many subtle details.