So I know the Arcturan empire is a Human one, but does it have any alien civilizations that it annexed/imperialized?

As noted in the OP, yes, but the details are left to players to fill in.

WIP Sheet

Faction Name: Voomorane

Faction Type: INVADERS/ASTROGOTHS

Faction leader(s): Tu'Liris

System(s)/Territory: Tu'Vis

Planet(s)/Holdings: 1: Tu'Vis

Faction/Government Desc: Republic

History: (Feel free to make up details about the setting and the major powers. I love collaborative worldbuilding, so feel free to work with me and your fellow RPers at building the setting)

Relations with the Empire and Other Factions: (this section is super important, please work with other players to work out shared history, etc)

Military Capabilities: (ships in faction fleets must be under 3 kilometers, though I will allow exceptions. Please keep in mind that militaries are likely to be parts of the old imperial military, and so some commonality between factions is to be expected. As for ground forces, no hard limits here. The Rule of Cool and the Rule of No Effing Godmodding obtain)

Faction name: The Haldrian Might
Faction type: Reactionary/Loyalist
Faction leader: High-Commander Arlios Haldrian
System: The Ranos System.

Holdings:
Ranos Prime
Utopia. Ranos Prime is a lush, terran world, just within the goldylock zone yet still close to the sun. The makes for pleasant, warm tempratures on the surface. Ranos Prime is in essence a Vacation World. Many aristocrats often come down here to their own villa's. One of the reasons of Ranos Prime's popularity is due to a more lax law when it comes to otherwise illegal, or grey-area goods. Never the less, while the law may be easy, the convictions are not. Even petty crime can be punished by at least 5 years of obligted labor.

Aer
The barren moon of Ranos Prime. Lacking any atmosphere, and in a tidal locked orbit around Rans Prime, Aer was shrouded in secrecy and superstision for a long time. The fact is that Aer is a massive military base. Built for low-gravity training, simulations, grey-zone research, ship construction and other secret projects. The moon also houses the majority of the long-range system-defences. While - under pressure - the Haldrian Might was forced to give up the secret shroud surrounding Aer, it refused to seize any activity on it.

Persaus Station
Persaus system used to be exclusively for miners. Yet with the steady decline of the Emire's power the military of Haldrian's Might moved in and expanded the station. The massive station now houses one of the biggest forges of Empire. The mining efforts were quadrupled. But it doesn't end there. Exstensive training rooms have been built to emulate zero gravity combat and movement. It is here where the infamous Haldrian Gladions are trained.

Taurox Jumpgate
Ranos' location is still kept in some secrecy and its exact location within the galaxy is only known by a select few. Most of them members of the Haldrian Might. However, to keep traffic flowing Taurox Jumpgate was constructed. The Jumpgate itself can be reached through several simple protocols, standard within most jumpdrives. So everyone can reach Ranos without any trouble. At least, for as long as Taurox remains operational. If, for some reason, Haldrian's Might would inniate a system-wide lockdown, no ship could leave or enter Ranos System.

Lurion Station
Orbiting the gas-planet of Lurion. This station supplies all the required gasses for space-construction and flight. Tactically a vital station, as without it the flighttime of all Haldrian Might's ships is fairly limited.

History: High-Commander Haldrian was an honorable general within the Imperial Navy. His many victories gave the emperor of his days great glory. Yet Haldrian himself received little reward for his victories. If anything, the man's might outside the Navy shrank as his victories continued. Eventually he was discharged, to be replaced by a young admiral. A cousin of the Emperor. Haldrian returned to his peaceful, yet poor planet of Ranos.

But he was no man to sit idly by. He was man of violence. He began to gather many of his old friends, veterans of the Navy. Each removed from their post to be replaced by some favored brad. Soon the general started his own army. While still swearing loyalty to the Emperor, Haldrian's Might became a mercenary corps. As the Imperial Navy was getting slowly but surely crippled due to inexperience of its new, young admirals, Haldrian's Might flourished. They were called more and more often into battle by systems who didn't trust the capabilities of the Imperial Navy. Now, a few hundred years later and Haldrian's Might turned into one of the most reknown Private Security Companies of the Empire.

Relations:
The Empire
There is an active dislike towards the powerhoarding of the bureaucrats and the Emperor. Spawned from the first Haldrian long ago. Yet the crumbling of the Empire, proof of the lethal ineffecieny, is profitable. As more and more systems prefer to pay a hefty sum for protection by a more experienced force. Haldrian's Might will let them worm in the mud for some longer, with smiles on their faces. Soon we answer to nothing but the numbers on a bank account.

Military capabilities:



I'll probably expand on it if more people finish up their sheets.

Updated my sheet. It's a mess but the idea seems to be working out. It's possible that any faction would have a Toskar Geist (knight) in their service to act as military council or mercenary force (they have command of a few hundred troops or maybe a small detachment of fighters. Not sure yet)

So, this is what I have so far:

History:

The Vilojaun were the initial rogue human faction that the infantile Arcturan Imperium encountered during its premier military expansion into the median interiors of the known galaxy.

But just as they are in the latter-day galactic era, the Vilojaun were a bellicose and capricious group of “uncivilized humans”, the astro-tribe possessing a well-earned reputation throughout the Milky Way for frequently substituting acts of rational diplomatic discourse and proper statesmanship with wanton belligerency and turbulent savagery when pressed into dealing with “conquerors”. Their complete disregard for the terms of subjugation espoused by the magnificent Imperial emissary fleet that materialized within the sovereign space of Ni was not only aptly illustrated by an unrelenting storm of blast-fusion cannon fire, but additionally legitimized by an ominous message tight-beamed to a single surviving vessel prior to its hasty warp withdrawal from Ni's dominion:

“Heed the words of our patron, Arcturan filth: the metallic avatars of our divine masters shall litter the ground with your adulterated ichor and rattle the foundations of your precious manors and villas with each stride of their titanic forms. Fourteen empires, each one as aspiring and hopeful as your own, met their fates at the ends of our teeth and talons. Yours will be the fifteenth.”

Only three weeks would pass before the fledgling Arcturan Imperium's multitudinous legions and elephantine void fleets clashed mightily with sects of the Vilojaun's barbaric warrior caste.

The two stellar powers were polar opposites in their respective martial characters: the Vilojaun armed forces sparse in number and chaotic in its organizational composition yet strikingly seasoned and seemingly steeled for confrontation with a significantly larger foe; the Imperium vast and organized yet tactically amateurish and ill-prepared for battle with a far smaller but disproportionately powerful adversary.

Fashti I began to severely doubt the future prospects of his grandest creation as one imperial system after another fell to the Vilojaun's seemingly unstoppable land armies and formidable void marauder forces.

However, while the Vilojaun's aspect knights and their towering war engines found themselves comparatively uncontested on the surfaces of planets, the space-orientated branch of their armed forces was finding itself increasingly outclassed when pushed to engage heavier Imperial naval assets---most notable of which being Imperial battleships and dreadnoughts: two keystone, war-winning classes of void vessel that the Vilojaun nation could not fabricate in their smaller orbital shipyards in any meaningful number.

The empire, on the other hand, could afford to produce them at a geometric rate.

This violent confrontation swung increasingly in favor of the Arcturanians with each Vilojaun defeat over a strategically valuable planet or in the treacherous confines of an asteroid belt, its duration spanning over two standard centuries before Radiance Lekaria—the young although illustrious “god chieftess” of this troublesome tribe—would be brought before the negotiation table to outline the parameters of the Vilojaun's conditional surrender and subsequent absorption into the Arcturan Empire.

In exchange for ensuring the welfare of her people and their right to cultural autonomy, the god chieftess agreed to submit her subjugated nation's entire military arm to imperial authority, agreed to pay a hefty resource tribute to the throne annually, and agreed fully to defer to the will of the royal throne without question nor complaint.

With new leaders to obey, the old Vilojaun aspect knights and their mechanical idols would be one of many integral causes of the downfall of numerous alien civilizations and the assimilation of scores of independent human societies into the Imperial yolk.

----

Basically, the Vilojaun are an ethnically homogeneous warrior tribe of animal worshipers. They have a thing for creating gigantic mechanized idols of their patron deities, distrust most forms of modern technology (especially genetic engineering), and haven't really meshed well with mainstream Imperial culture due to their high distrust of state institutions or anyone who isn't of Vilojaun heritage.

They have proven to be an incredibly fickle people to break spiritually.

Also, despite being techno-barbarians, their comprehension of robotics and metallurgical techniques is exceptionally sophisticated.

Think of them as a queer amalgamation of 40k's Collegia Titanica, the Aztecs, Gauls, and perhaps the pre-reservation Apache or Comanche Native American peoples. They are probably hated by most imperialized worlds and races on account of their war machines having absolutely outrageous historical death counts attached to them. Old grudges die hard.

Personally, I believe that the key reason behind the downfall of the Vilojaun nation is pretty weak. It would be better if the Imperium actually managed to drum up a worthy mercenary company or something to give the fabled "beast riders" a run for their money.

They're probably happy as hell that the Imperium is finally dying. God Chieftess Jericha (a direct relative of Lekaria) is probably waiting for the right opportunity to ignite a rebellion of truly enormous scale from Ni, but she won't get far without naval support. Her people were further neutered by the empire when all of their military shipyards were dismantled by Arcturian demolition teams.

As should be expected, I'm more than willing to tweak the Vilojaun's past so that it better complements the histories concocted by other players.

EDIT: It should be said that a noteworthy integer of Vilojaun would be loyal to the empire. If this nation really speaks to me (and if it can be worked into the setting), expect a lot of Vilo-on-Vilo violence during the course of the Imperium's demise.

Consider me very interested. I have a concept-in-progress! Space pirates and foreigners and insurrectionists, led by a 'civilized' Astrogoth (perhaps one who was taken as a hostage in an earlier conflict on the periphery of the empire and raised in an Arcturan household), who lured an Imperial fleet into a disastrous ambush in which they captured numerous vessels and essentially garnered enough strength for themselves by way of plundering military hardware in order to roll over a number of petty secessionists and regional governments and create something of a 'pirate republic'. They're simultaneously rejecting Imperial ideals (in particular the established social hierachy and humanocentric policies), and acting as inheritors of sorts.

Their leader, being Arcturan-educated, is very much inclined towards taking what he thinks 'works' and doing away with what he thinks doesn't. He's a larger-than-life figure, and there's all sorts of mystique swirling around him, and there's all these tales of his daring and bravado and his legendary victories. He's cultivated something of a cult of personality, but the future of the territory he's carved out for himself is all very much up in the air. He has no heir, and even if he did appoint one, what are the chances they'd survive the first year of their reign? He has the charisma and the history with these people to make it work, few others do. He's aware of this. So he wants to consolidate. He wants to put up a front of civility and be recognized by his intergalactic peers. He wants to whip the gangs and tribes that he has under his banner into shape.

Likewise interested, per usual. Refurbishing something I threw together for another game, the Empire of the Terrible Claw. Probably sounds less cheesy in the native tongue, though that was rather the point. Wrote them to fill the seemingly nonexistent niche for biological corporatists in comparison to Starship Trooper-style civilized hive minds and also as a spin on the 'malevolent reptilians' archetype. Because said game had a gamey balancing act setup with a few huge, sweeping tech choices, they ended up with a severe focus on radiological weapons, volitions agents, gun-fired nuclear shaped charge tungsten plasma beams, and paradoxically hypereffective-yet-ineffective shielding technology. How much of that will directly translate I'm not sure, but they definitely use rough, dirty tech that is unquestionably and unorthodoxly effective, a bit of 40s-50s and 60s-80s in aesthetic. Vacuum tubes, rayguns and slab armor meld and contrast with rifled gun launchers, obtuse hover AFVs and combined arms warfare. Bits and bobs taken from Macedon for aesthetic and a little from Scythia, more Imperial Japan-like in social model. Feathers and sun symbolism everywhere as a dash from Mesoamerica. This, also, may or may not be subject to change, depending on how closely things need to adhere to proper Fall of Rome analogues or if things can get wonky. The entire history will obviously change, in the names and degrees of events if not the event archetypes. The Claw may be Seperatists or they may be Astrogoths, and I imagine they'd eventually segue into Pretender category; being resurgent xenos from fringe space with their own imperialist designs, who were either subjugated or observed the subjugation of nearby states, they fit snugly into the niche of the Ummayads or the Ottoman Turks. First eating at the edges of the empire, then at second heartlands like Space North Africa. Probably going to go at things from a protectionist-populist angle and of self-interested enlightened domination of those liberated from Arcturan shackles, as their semi-honestly propagandized potential subjects and they themselves would look at things respectively.

First post of origin here, first sheet iteration posted here, though I think I have a more filled out version. Not sure. May or may not be useful to peruse, but I thought I'd show the thought processes of the time, in case they are. Mind that it's text dense and probably not terribly easy on the eyes.

@FlaggSounds good.
I'll either join as a Separatist (either human or somewhat alien) or as Martian Invaders for fun.
@Senor Herp
I just read this.
My Martian idea would be mostly similar with lots of old sci-fi concepts returning.
Hopefully you don't mind if you aren't exactly alone with that.

I feel the call in my bones... My browser is drawn to the guild...

It must be a new Flagg NRP.

@Willy Vereb
Not in the slightest! Something could be made of it, I'm sure. Maybe they're both fringe species who've been waging occasional internecine warfare, with no holds barred arms development and a mutual hostility to each other and the Arcturans. Maybe they're aligned with one another, making for less of a shock-and-awe chaotic tone as they race to sack the capital for a second time, and more one of slow erosion and a tightening noose. Or they could be unrelated or unknowing of each other entirely 'til they start butting in on each other's business, leading to realpolitking dickery. Plenty to make of the seperatists, furthermore.

Here's my App. Lemme know if I need to make any changes.

How long has it been since the fall of Almata and the Empire? I'm seeing people reference the fall of the Empire in their sheets like it happened a long time ago, but the OP makes it sound more like it is still happening, or has just happened.

Oh me oh my. Color me interested. I'll got an app going pronto.

How long has it been since the fall of Almata and the Empire? I'm seeing people reference the fall of the Empire in their sheets like it happened a long time ago, but the OP makes it sound more like it is still happening, or has just happened.

It is still happening, but the Sack of Almata is where we'll start the IC. Sorry that wasn't clear, will adjust to OP.

Faction Name: The Great Horde

Faction Type: Astrogoth/Invader

Faction leader(s):

The Supreme Hordelord Ikt'Clir'Rikt: The current Supreme Hordelord of the Reclicica and the third to have reached prominence since the Imperial Culls began 13,000 years ago. It is debatable whether he is truly a competent leader or has merely been incredibly lucky, something that is often wondered about the Reclicica Hordelords and others of power in their strange and savage civilization.

Great Frist Ris'Nir'Rikt: Self proclaimed Great Frist Ris'Nir'Rikt is currently the second most influential and powerful being in the horde.

System(s)/Territory: The Great Horde does not technically control any territory aside from the worlds where it is currently residing, and those worlds are typically abandoned shortly after conquest as the horde moves on towards its next target. The Reclicica dwell and breed in their masses upon an unknown number of worlds beyond the empire's frontier in a savage region of space that was never conquered, mostly because the empire didn't want to deal with the headache.

Planet(s)/Holdings: N/A

Faction/Government Desc:









History: The Reclicica do not keep much in the way of records themselves outside of the old tales of the great accomplishments of past hordelords and the bare minimum of knowledge required to both create their own rather crude technology and to interface their technology with others. Their history is rather patchy and it is in the records of the empire that a somewhat legible history can emerge.

The Reclicica were encountered far before the Empire was known by its current name. They were a scourge that occasionally showed up in their hordes of vessels, descending upon unprepared worlds and wreaking vast amounts of death and destruction. There were many hordes that failed, that shattered as they attacked more powerful targets than themselves or that were hunted down by vengeful factions, but they were always a nuisance and sometimes far more than a nuisance. There are no reports of encounters with Supreme Hordelords in those days and it is unknown if that means that the Supreme Hordelords are a new phenomenon or if there were simply none encountered in those days when humanity and the Empire had not yet achieved their dominance.

Following the rise of the first Emperor the first records of encounters with a Supreme Hordelord are found. Records state that during the early years of the Emperor's reign a horde beyond any that had been seen before boiled over into imperial space and that in the initial chaos of the incursion it did a great deal of damage. Ultimately the Supreme Hordelord's invasion of the Empire would fail miserably as the Empire united against the attack and the superior technology as well as numbers on the galactic scale, though almost never on a local scale, carried the day. In those days the Empire did not yet know where the Reclicica worlds were, and an expedition was launched into the outer reaches of the galaxy to search for them.

The expedition was successful but what it found was disheartening. There were many worlds where the creatures swarmed in their billions and subjugating such worlds would be incredibly difficult and bloody if it even could be done. However the Emperor was determined to conquer the filthy Xenos who had inflicted such an affront with an invasion of the empire. As a result the Empire launched an invasion of its own against one of the Reclicican worlds. The world was eventually conquered the local Hordes destroyed, and the Reclicica upon the world slain. But it was a vicious campaign of grueling attrition and massive loss of life, and notably one in which the other Reclicican worlds were aside from a few initial encounters with Horde Fleets likely coming to the world to recruit replacements not involved with the conflict.

The Emperor seeing this instead ordered that the Reclicica be culled and set up forces that would over the course of thousands of years work to destroy any Reclicican horde that seemed to be gaining sufficient power to mount unite others or to launch an invasion of the Empire. These forces would fail in their duty only twice before now when previously unknown hordes appeared from unknown worlds and quickly accumulated the power for the Hordelord who ruled them to name himself a Supreme Hordelord.

In the wake of the internal strife that has swept the Empire the forces that had so vigilantly watched the Reclicican frontier and launched their culls were depleted and in time a new Supreme Hordelord rose. And his first action as Supreme Hordelord was to set all of his forces against the world from which the culls were launched, the very world that had once been ripped from his people thousands of years ago.

Relations with the Empire and Other Factions: Please post ideas or get in touch with me if you have some thoughts for relations. I've lots of willingness to work with people here.

Military Capabilities: WIP but coming soon.

Hi team- great to see so many NSes and so much interest. If folks could put their NSes in the Character tab with Not Accepted in bold at the top, that would be helpful to me. I will review all the sheets as they are posted there, and you can then put ACCEPTED at the top of your sheet once it's...accepted.

Thanks!

((Hello. Have a barbaric, traitorous and xeno filled polity for the reactionaries to wage genocidal war on.))

Name: The Consortium (To those that read the app, give me some creative monikers your factions use for them)

Faction Type: LIBERATOR/INVADER

Faction leader(s): The Auditor and the Seven Composers.

System(s)/Territory: TBA

Planet(s)/Holdings: TBA

Faction/Government Desc:
The Auditor has no name; only their title for the Auditor is more like a president than an emperor. Yet, the Composers insist the Auditor to be the true successors of the imperial line, completely perverting the whole system of secession the Empire had. They don’t even call their leader an Emperor. But they insist that the Auditor is the voice of the Emperor crying out in forms shattered across time and space, among countless species in the galaxy and that the empire crumbles now in their failure to find the true emperor.

Auditors are not Emperors. They are disposable autocrats who are chosen by the Composers due to having aspects of the TRUE Emperor. The Emperor here being a metaphysical concept more than any physical status, a sovereign of existence itself. All life bending to its will in absolute obedience. The Composers believe that the Aucturians once had the one true emperor, and through that Emperor they conquered far and wide. But that was so, so long ago. The Aucturians in their extreme humanism and favoritism of bloodlines picked illegitimate successors since none of those successors were truly Emperors, simply children picked to rule from nepotism who had no right to ever come to power.

Heredity is not how they define a true emperor, which means there is no actual legitimacy to their Auditors. The Composers in effect hold all the true power, with the Auditors being who they listen to and follow obediently and directly unless said Auditor acts in forms and ways unbecoming of the one and true emperor. Despite the immaterial outlook on legitimacy, the common Consortium human has been described as “materialistic and worthless in their character” by xenohistorian Valerius in Book of Treachery.

The ideals of the one and true emperor being that the one and true emperor rules with outmost effectiveness and outmost relentlessness. The One and True Emperor does not hold themselves to tribalism; for there is only one sovereign and all are within it. The One and True Emperor is all conquering, all consuming. And most importantly, unrelenting in their pursuit of harmony. In practice, despite the lofty trappings held to the One and True Emperor, the Consortium behaves far more like an oligarchy than an autocracy with the Composers holding all the actual power. The Composers are a very mysterious in nature, being powerful space craft of high end engineering whose pilots are never seen. Their origins are presumed to be a produce of the lost fleet. What is known, is that the Composers are capable of single handedly bombing entire worlds into oblivion if they deem in a necessity and are direct leaders.

There is seven Composers, each of which having a personal sub-faction they have total control over. The Composers seem to be immortal, and may well have ruled for centuries. Those subordinate to the Composers have quite free reign in how they run things on a planetary basis, but only if they swear unwavering obedience to the Auditor’s word. Those who go against the Auditor, or indeed, the Composers tend to be replaced. So often people end up disappearing in the Consortium that there is a secret police force known as the “White Guard” that roams the Consortium made of specially chosen individuals whose sole task is to make unwanted individuals disappear. More often than not, ending up being the subject of weapon testing or synthesis tests. Those who turn out to have something useful about them, be in expertise in certain fields or psychic power are granted a reprieve into special units.

Multiple species are part of the Consortium and are treated all too egalitarian without any real caste system. Open discrimination is punishable by death in many parts of the Consortium, but this has not prevented grassroots hostilities between species from being a frequent trouble.

Of those part of the Consortium, the most notable the Ccrypcp. The Ccrypcp are unique in that while many species perceive themselves as one body with a single soul or many souls that represent different aspects of themselves, the Ccrypcp are a composite of multiple bodies that view themselves as a single individual/spirit/soul. Ccrypcp consist of three different species, the head of a Ccrypcp being a parasite for the body. Their prehensile limbs are not connected at all, being like snakes that wind around the highly vertical hump of the quadruped the head feeds from and manipulates. The Clattering of ccrypcp in the comms fills many with disgust, as they know it is a particularly deviant xeno they are about to communicate with. It was Ccrypcp as a whole who were conquered by the lost fleet, a upstart interstellar civilization whose infighting made them all too easy to take over. The Ccrypcp were a distant species from the Aucturian Empire, and were unknown to the Aucturians at the time of the lost fleet’s discovery and subsequent conquests. Ccrypcp are widespread as a species now, be it as citizens of the glorious consortium or as slaves in other anthropocentric empires. The Ccrypcp are a complicated kind, culturally diverse due to their diaspora and surprising adaptability. They likely may show up in other factions as well.

The Voliff are the other major species. Voliff are gas bags through and through, uplifted by the Consortium and experimented on until they achieved the status of citizen. The Voliff you see, are very adaptable. It is very common to find Voliff floating about around the corridors of zero gravity corridors or on space stations, usually modified heavily like organic machines. Despite that, the Voliff are viewed as not tools, but as citizens. Who make for great tools in every sense of the word.

History: (Since this is early world building, this is history subject to change)

The origins of the Harmony are nebulous, but what is certain is that the Harmony is a product of the Composers, of whom are unclear in nature (as it’s uncertain if they are spirits of selected individuals infused into powerful vessels or if they are simply machines) from a historical war of secession. They were lost in distant space, where the lost fleet conquered the Crrycpcp (xenos), who at the time were an upstart space faring society easily outmatched by the lost fleet. The lost fleet however, instead of trying to reestablish contact with the empire went rogue and destroyed any scouters from the Empire on sight. Such manuver carried out because at the time deserters were to be executed and those in power were corrupt and sitting on a goldmine of riches they wanted only for themselves. So instead of thinking for the greater good of the Empire or their fellow man they bribed their men into loyalty and held a false meeting to find and executed those opposed to their defection. As early as this point, the foundations of the White Guard were forming. For a time it seemed the lost fleet would just develop to be another pretender polity the Aucturian Empire would have to conquer as humans assumed their natural state as dominant over the Ccrypcp, who in a pragmatic maneuver were treated as second class citizens who could become full on citizens through their loyalty instead of as slaves.

Over their centuries of isolation around multiple alien species they uplifted, they rapidly drifted from Imperial orthodoxy, to the point where eventually the military overlords of the lost fleet were culturally intertwined with the Ccrypcp elite. Eventually the Composers came to power, whatever they may be and revelations of the Emperor became all too clear to every citizen of the Consortium. The military dictators in their de facto imperium were overthrown in a silent coup by none other than the Composers who forced the military elite of humans into subordination. It remains unclear if the composers are human made or Xeno, what is known as that the Composers appear only a two centuries after the lost fleet made their glorious conquest of the Ccrypcp. Shame the lost fleet than decided to betray mankind.

Due to their distance and policy of destroying any outside scouts, knowledge of the Consortium was sparse for centuries. By 2700-3100 IE however, the Empire became all too aware of the Consortium's existence. The Consortium began raids on the Empire involving regular abductions of imperial citizens and implanting doppelgangers in various parts of the Empire. The Consortium was violently pushed back in a war that was notoriously taxing on the Imperial Treasury. However, Imperial conquest of the Consortium was halted by the Tucanae Massacre (Think Arminius type massacring here).

Since then, the Consortium has been engaged by Imperial forces in border conflicts and kept at bay. However, no major efforts since the Tucanae Massacre by any generals or emperors for that matter were put into crushing the Consortium for good due to a million other conflicts and troubles across Imperial Space, the Harmony believed to for all intents and purposes be kept at bay and something to systemically wipe out and perhaps erase from history in a later, ideally more stable time.
That time never came, for the civil wars and the twilight of the empire came sooner than ever thought.

(May need some more history here when I get a better idea what the last century was like since I figure the consortium may have been able to achieve military buildup and spread influence as the Empire wanes)

Now the Consortium finds an opportunity to expand their influence in a time of chaos, without any Empire to get in their way.

(The name Consortium is a product of how the human elite in the early years managed their faction, through the use of proxy organizations backed by blunt military force.)

Relations with the Empire and Other Factions:

-They’re seen as a barbaric force to the Empire, the more gruesome aspects of the Consortium being used in propaganda to great effect. There is quite a few black books on the atrocities the Consortium has committed. Their dehumanizing treatment of individual and the blatant xeno influences being all too easy pickings for those writers. The Empire is aware of the Consortium’s origins as “rogue fleet”, but the Consortium is treated as a foreign, alien menace regardless. The only reason the Empire didn’t crush the Consortium was because the Consortium was viewed as a lesser danger compared to the hordes of xenos they faced on other fronts that proved far more immediate threats. This is in no small part to being able to push them back centuries ago at a well-guarded border zone and not wanting to risk another Tucanae Massacre like event against the Consortium. Fear (of which is perhaps well justified) of Consortium infiltrators remained common regardless.

(I’ll need to speak with other players before figuring out Consortium relations with the other barbarians, no doubt that Pretenders will be disgusted by the Consortium)

Military Capabilities: TBA, a common theme of melding and fusing. Composers hit above the norm in tech level, I should note, but their other forces are much more balanced. There’s Seven Composers, which means there’s seven fleets/chapters which I will elaborate on later. Exact numbers I have no clue, whatever works best with the setting is what I give. Either way, their overall power/influence is at the level implied in their imperial relations; there is things out there more immediate a threat than the Consortium even if the consortium is not something the Empire was able to roll over like they hoped to.

I should note that the White Guard's a placeholder and anyone who wants to make a secret police organization should contact me since their "secret police" is not actually limited to Consortium worlds and has quite a bit of autonomy.

How high exactly are we scaling populations? Would a healthy population be in millions, hundred thousands, or what?