"Space is really, really big. And yet the Tsarina insists that we make more."
Technological advancements were of utmost importance to Tsar Prime Pyotr, and this drive has continued throughout the Empire he founded. No fewer than three of Rüs' moons are dedicated to research and development, and many planets throughout the Empire have been terraformed into production facilities of the utmost scale. (The synergistic effects of the Law of Specialization and the Law of Assimilation make it easier to build mutiple single-function devices and then another device to connect them all than it is to build one multi-purpose device. Entire factories are dedicated to the production of a single component, and it takes a village of them to make evn the simplest of technologies.) No citizen of the Empire wants for any tool or device. The Law of Spirits has allowed for the development of numerous machine intelligences that inhabit nearly every device, in every home. The Law of Specialization has insured that technological development continues in all fields rather than just those with immediate application or commercial value, and the Law of Assimilation assures that discoveries are quickly disseminated throughout the Empire. While true hyperspace is not supported, the Compression Point Drive can vastly reduce the relative distances of space travel, making inter-planetary travel available to every citizen. And the Cosmos Engine, developed by Tsar Nikola, has opened up entire new worlds to the Empire.
Magic is not even a consideration for the vast majority of the Empire. Tsar Pyotr taught that the universe was understandable in and of itself, and the Church teaches that all blessings flow from God, so the supernatural is all but ignored. But the Law of Specialization assures that no possible activity goes fully undeveloped, and there are a few citizens in the Empire that have devoted their existance to the further understanding of what lies beyond the veil. There are even tales of a "Planet of the Magi", where a lost tribe of sorcerors has achieved full mastery of the arcane. But as of yet, this remains only a myth.
Even Tsar Prime Pyotr, for all his force of personality, was unable to remove the Church from the position it held in the minds of the inhabitants of Rüs. Though the Curch itself has grown as fast as the Empire, and has had similar problems with control and corruption, Religion remains a prominant facet of life in the Cosmos. (A situation similar to the CyberPapacy on Magna Vertia.) Every hour of every day is devoted to at least one Saint - a number that will soon exceed every hour as more Alien Saints are finally canonized - and every child born is named after their timely patron. Icons are common not only in homes but in commercial venues as well, and relics of the Bogatyr, true and false, can be found for sale in any city on any planet.
On Core Earth it was said that all roads led to Rome. In the Cosmos, Chernobog has altered the very essence of reality to insure that all roads - cultural, economic, spiritual - lead to Rüs, and that the other planets all look to Rüs for guidance and inspiration. Russian culture is not just the culture of the Empire, but of the cosm itself. All other cultures must adapt to it, while the Rüs culture gleans the best and the brightest from those it encounters.
In game terms, this world law grants a bonus to communal actions. Groups of two or more have their Many-on-one bonus increased by an additional +1. Any actions which are successfully coordinated - at least one successful coordination roll - also gain a +1 bonus in addition to the value bonus. In addition, the difficulty of all coordination attempts is reduced by 3. Note that this also applies to communal Miracles, granting the +1 additional bonus and reducing the Community Rating by 3, another reason the Church and Religion in general has retained so much power in the Cosmos. Groups aligned with the Empire - defined as the entire group seeing itself as working towards the goals of the Empire, or all having Faith(Imperial Orthodox Church) in the case of Community bonuses - gain an additional +1 bonus to any group actions.
This world law is the counterpoint to the Law of Assimilation, rewarding people for "doing their own thing" rather than forming groups. Uniqueness is power, and the more unique the better. Realizing the great number of skills that would be neccessary to build his Empire, Tsar Prime Pyotr pushed this world law for all it was worth, almost to the point of disolving the very group he wished to create! Even today, 3000 years later, the forces of specialization threaten to divide the Empire.
In game terms, characters who specialize in one skill gain a bonus. If a character has a skill that is two adds greater than any of their other skills - adds indicating how much time the character has devoted to the skill, rather than the skill value which indicates how good they are - that character gains a +3 bonus to a sub-group of the skill as with Type Specialization. Skills that require a focus, such as Scholar gain the bonus only to a further sub-group. Characters that already have a Type or Trademark Specialization use the base skill to determine the bonus rather than the increased skill (and in fact most of the Cosmos uses Type and Trademark with their other skills to get around the 2 point limit), but can combine any or all of the Specialization bonuses as desired. If a character is the Lead Character of a coordination effort, they gain the bonus only if their skill adds are two points higher in the coordinated skill than any other in the group, not counting Type or Trademark Specializations, as well has being higher than any of their own skill adds. In addition, the five point limit for coordination is determined after the bonus is determined, meaning there is a very narrow window for coordinating attempts. Coordination bonuses due to the Law of Assimilation are not effected in any way by the relative skill adds, values, or specializations of the coordinating group. Imperial Research Specialist Groups are carefully balanced so that each member is an expert in their field, but also able to cover the expertise of every other member of the group. These Specialist Groups were used to great effect by Tsar Prime Pyotr, and the dominance of Rüs engineering continues to this day.
Animism isn't just a belief system in the Cosmos, it's the law! Everything in the Cosmos has an empowering spirit that determines it's physical characteristics and abilities. This applies not only to "natural" objects, but crafted ones as well. Fashioning a tool is as much a matter of altering it's spiritual components as amnipulating it's physical form. Objects that are combinations of two or more materials rely on the Law of Assimilation to integrate into a single spirit whose energies encompass the new form. But due to the Law of Specialization, each component also maintains some degree of spiritual individuality, which can be returned to it if the device is reduced to component parts. In fact, even the "natural" spirits can be disassociated if their physical forms are broken, with each piece having it's own spirit similar to the original but each unique. The spirits have been shown to inhabit partcles at the sub- and sub-sub-atomic levels, and are theorized to exist in as many distinct forms as matter can partake of.
In addition to determining the object's physcial abilities, the spirit also grants even supposedly inanimate objects the Charisma and Spirit attributes. Note that this does not grant inanimate objects the ability to speak, or any degree of actual intelligence, but it does make it possible to have some degree of social interaction - equivalent to the Charm, Persuade, Taunt and Intimidation - with not only other beings, but plants, rocks, hydro-spanners, and even entire vehicles. In general, objects that do not specifically have CHA or SPI can be assumed to have them at a value equal to their Mass Value or TOU. Highly specialized objects that perform a specific function can have values as high as the value of their functional Attribute, Skill, or Damage or Armor Value or Limit. Most however have no more than their Mass Value plus the Power Push of their highest ability. Devices with any knowledge of problem solving capabilities, equivalent to PER and MIN, are made equivalent to animate beings by this world law, and their attributes should be determined as if they were any normal character. Or even Prated character - Spirits have the same ability to Transcend as any living being, for an average Possibility Rated population of Rare(55).
Even in the face of this world law, Technology still rules the Cosmos, and for most the effects of this world law are interpreted in terms of "the perversity of the inanimate" or "proto-personality archetypes" spuriously developing in the neural progamming. This doesn't stop even the most heterodox Technical Specialist from alternately threatening, cajoling, and outright begging their tools and devices to work properly. Magically, Living and Unliving Forces remain seperate, and spells used to heal Folk cannot be used to recharge batteries. Miracles that have an effect on the living, however, can be used to the same effect on the Unliving, unless specifically denied by the mythos, such as the organic Keta Kalles of the Living Land. But miracles that specificaly target technology do not conversely effect the Living the same way, and are often penalized by having to beat the SPI of the object as well as it's user.
The only inhabitants of the Cosmos to fully exploit the effects of this world law are the Bogatyr through their Spirit Sense skill.