Well it's nothing like NATO. More to the tune of an invasion followed by occupation. Atmos Prime was once a planet like our own. Divided and at war with itself. Thousands of years ago, the planet was, "unified." Basically one alliance of nations took over everything. Nexus was born and over time things settled nicely.

Then Nexus begins attacking other planets. Either taking over by force and installing a new government to rule under the thumb of Atmos Prime, or negotiating their surrender and installing a new government.

The planets which fall under the umbrella of Nexus are subordinates. They are not given political leverage, and that's why Nexus has rose to dominate the galaxy. It's, "Join us, and obey us, or we'll destroy you and take your planet anyway."

Nexus High Command rules everything. A representative of each planet sits on a council that answers to High Command.

Ariana basically rules an entire galaxy.

But the focus is really The Valiant. The locations and artifacts. Not Atmos Prime. The Nexus Military, and other Agent vessels will become another focus later on. And I'll explain after I address the tech question.

As far as tech goes, I'm glad you asked. I want a gritty feeling. No laser weapons. Just a practical, realistic, again, gritty feeling.

And I struggled with what kind of technology the ships would have to travel great distances. I'm not even sure yet so you can help me come up with something.

One idea I had was wormhole technology that would allow vessels to bend time and space, travelling from point A to point B in an instant. The thing I keep coming back to is where the wormholes come from.

I had a few ideas.

Wormholes are created by machines at Nexus Space Stations, and on some Nexus ships (the bigger ones leading fleets and such)

I also played with the idea that our ship could generate wormholes, for the sake of convenience. The catch being once a wormhole is created, it can be accessed by other ships from then on. So opposition would be able to follow if the have wormhole technology.

I also played with the idea that worm tech was stolen from a much more advanced race believed to be from another galaxy. I haven't worked on them for the same reason. Not immediately important, and I want to give my co-writers some input here.

What are your thoughts on, or ideas for wormhole technology?

It's a new idea my friend gave me, so I'm not opposed to ideas from you, even if you have faith in an FTL system. You don't strike me as a stranger to SciFi.

Okay

I'm going to be honest. I've come up with a rough idea for what I want to go down in the plot for the first RP. it's just 1 major event.

Starting out, we don't know what's going on. Ariana has not told us what we are helping her do. After a while, a traumatic event will lead to our crew going back to Atmos Prime, to confront Ariana for answers, and drop off the latest artifact in person. She see's Leon privately (just because it's realistic) and tells him everything. Leon then informs the crew. I have no idea how your characters will handle it, but Leon is going rogue, with his ship, and one of the artifacts.

That's when another Agent vessel will be hired to kill us, on top of the Nexus Military hunting us down.

Maybe some people won't want to go rogue. Maybe an Agent or two from The Valiant might be put on this other ship as a Valiant Specialist.

Hmm... Who knows how many ways that could play out.