The solar system as we know it today is desolate. Earth is but an island of life in a planetary system where no life is known to thrive.
It doesn't need to be that way.
Imagine, a Venus with a veil of an atmosphere with dense jungles and a homogenously tropical climate.
Imagine, a mars that until recent was a world with beauty akin to the Earth; dried out from a industrious civilization of Martians whose ambition was far greater than the small world where they were born.
Imagine now, how developed by the year 2015 our world would be if such worlds existed. Ion powered spacecraft, nuclear propulsion, a moon base and more- all within a few decades. This would be a very different world; for we are turning back the clock a whole century to before the Great War in a world dominated by aristocrats and nationalists. From there, we march to the 21st century on a increasingly different trajectory from our own world.
Would it be a more peaceful world than our own? Unlikely.
For the Martians are as violent as us and Earth itself is a world which by our time will have the most powerful nations setting their sights on colonizing the whole solar system. The Martians have colonies around Jupiter and the asteroid belt, with the distant outer solar system still a nebulous mystery. Martian explorers to the outer solar system have never returned; their light of their ships is always extinguished whenever they get close to Uranus or Neptune and never heard from again.
Venus is a world where colonial competition perhaps is the most tragic and intense; while much of venues is still unexplored due to the dense cloud cover and harsh interior, Humans and Martians alike have already begun ravaging the world while the natives try to fight for their own existence using primitive technologies.
With the 21st century now upon us, will it be possible to transcend the barbarism of the 20th century or are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of ancestors, again and again?
That is for us all to find out.
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Major Species
Sapience has appeared multiple times in our star system, no one is certain why or how this makes sense given the sheer multitude of stars in our galaxy alone. The Christians claim god, the new age spiritualists claim aliens, the athiests claim it's all a big coincidence and the martians believe that everyone else is a degenerated form of themselves. What is relevant from a pragmatic standpoint is what they are, how powerful they are and what nations they dominate.
SPACE AGE
Humans
Humans are the big Joes of Earth, they have in the past sixty years spread to other worlds and set up colonies in multiple parts of the solar system at a stunning rate. Martian incursions onto Earth in the early 20th century led to a technological revolution as great as the industrial revolution itself, leading to humans as of 2015 having interplanetary space faring capabilities, a moon base and colonies on Venus.
Martians
The Martians come from mars and have been around the solar system for 300 years. While Columbus was discovering the New World, mars already had electricity and semi-automatic weaponry. While the USA was rebelling, Mars was united under a single empire. While the british struggled to conquer Africa, the Martians already had conquered Europa and Ganymede. But in this time mars has bleed dry, the intensive mining of their own world and ecological catastrophe after catastrophe has made Mars borderline uninhabitable. The Great Northern ocean is drying up into a ice cap, massive dust storms have ruined the great canal projects and most of the Martian population now lives underground volcanoes. Necropoli dote large parts of the world and the world government of Mars effectively is a living fossil that has become hated by their own citizens. A rebellion is pretty much viewed as inevitable by martian intellectuals after centuries of world peace. Said intellectuals are almost always found dead. Their engineering and technology is at least a century ahead of our own, but they lack the vitality of Earth due to their world being a dying one where water grows scarce to the point where they must import ice from the asteroid belt and their Jupiter colonies. Mars itself has fallen under increasing resentment by the Martians who live around Jupiter and Saturn, for they are controlled heavily by their masters from the red planet with trade deeply regulated by the Olympian Senate **This is the term humans use for it**. The attempt to colonize Earth in 1918 backfired greatly; the much loathed Olympian Senate had greatly underestimated how much humans in the past 100 years have narrowed the tech gap and instead have put focus on setting up colonies on Venus, which lacks Earth's billions of violent apes with machine guns and tanks.
((What sort of martians would be appropriate here? I'm leaning towards a greyish type design personally.))
mars map:
(From orig15.deviantart.net)
Venusians
These are free-form natives; feel free to be creative with them. Try to take into account that they cannot see the stars day or night, only a persistent cloud cover. They won't even be aware of other planets and live in a highly tropical environment. I would prefer they be pre-industrial or at least much more insular than Earth or Mars. They all must be from the same genus, but can have multiple intelligent species. I may allow a extremely isolated industrial civilization that has no contact with other regions of Venus however.
Venus Map:
(From mapsharing.org)
(Europans/Ganymedians?)
Completely optional native sapients can go here. Only by request.
Worlds With Life
There is five worlds with life, all with the same DNA. Panspermia from the outer solar system is believed to be why life has managed to occur on so many worlds.
-Venus (Venusians!)
-Earth (Terrans!)
-Mars (martians!)
-Ganymede (Multiple layers of oceans with life, who knows what lies in the lower depths?)
-Europa (A complex ecosystem in the pitch black ocean of Europa that is heavily exploited by the Martian fishing industries)
-Titan (The oil suckers live here)
-Uranus (Extremely strange critters have been rumored to live here)
-??? (Origin world of life in the outer reaches of sol?)
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Everyone can have nations and can build these nations from the early 20th century onward.
Space faring technology is more advanced than today due to humans emulating (poorly) Martian engineering. Computing has lagged behind our world to a extent, but humans in this world make much more application of technologies that are theoretically available today.
Martian technology is advanced, with much more organic engineering and computing systems based of neuraltech (their wiring is made from synthetic nerves instead of copper). They tend to use heat rays and shielding systems. Their technology is not really known for being ecologically in-tune with the world around them however. For instance the Martian world protectorate has had little qualms about using nuclear pulse rockets. They also have tripods.
Further details on technology can be defined by the player as they see fit. Just do not make tech that is world breaking (like a FTL system or a World Shattering bomb)
The app sheet for this NRP comes in two flavors.
Simple sheet.
Name:
Map:
Culture:
History:
Other:
Advanced sheet.
Name:
Location(s):
Demographics:
Governing System:
Economic State:
Culture:
Military:
History:
Relations:
Notable Individuals:
Other:
You do not need a nation to work in this NRP since like many NRPs I run, it's free form in regards to content creation; individuals and characters can be made for other factions at your volition.
I personally recommend some people make characters who can act as agents/spies with no actual affiliations.
Name:
Appearance:
Bio:
History:
Other:
