Oz testing

The Last Laugh

The Ashtar? Bunch of assholes. Bullshitty jumped-up psychic hippy assholes. Ask literally anyone anywhere and they’ll say the same.						

They popped up almost exactly 130 years ago. And I do mean “popped up”; one day they were just everywhere all at once, and everyone knew who they were, and why they had come.

It was a noble enough goal; peace in our time and all that good shit. It’s just that they were such giant assholes about it.

You ever been Pushed? No, course you haven’t, you’re too young. Not a psintegrat in the galaxy these days who could do what the Ashtar did, thank the Gods. When they came, they Pushed us. All of us. Every last man woman and child, every blip of sentient spacefaring life in the galaxy. It didn’t hurt, not really. Psintegrae that we have, what they does hurts. It’s a fight, when they try to change something, a fight you have a chance in. But getting Pushed...well, one moment your mind is one way, then you have a little stabby feeling behind the eyes, then your mind is another way. The Ashtar wanted the Galaxy to know why they were here, and they didn’t want to waste time with sub space transmissions and translation algorithms. So they just...Pushed. Some folks didn’t mind it, some folks clawed their own eyes out. Guess I fell somewhere in the middle.

So they spent a hundred odd years enforcing peace in the galaxy. And that’s the right word for it, cuz they sure used a lot of force to keep the peace, at least at first. Between their gate tech and the PsiNet, they could come calling on any scuffles that might be brewing. Only ever took a few cruisers to put a stop to that. Whole fleets got taken out by those cruisers, in the early days. Beautiful ships they were, but more deadly than you’d ever believe. Not invincible, but damned close. When everyone got to comparing notes back at the Madrigasa talks, we figured they lost maybe 7 cruisers in the whole 100 years. Course they were just cruisers. Ashtar sent one of their capital ships around on a tour of the galaxy once. Thing was the size of a small moon...

Anyways, bout a hundred years pass, then *poof*, gone. Took everyone a while to realize it, but they up and left, every last ship, in about a day.

Rest is modern history, really. The Great War, the Madrigasa talks, the Treaty of Detente, all that. I guess the Great War kindof proved the Ashtar’s point. Took the galaxy less than a year to start a war like we’d never seen before. Like we’d never known we even could see.

And now the stupid bastards who run things are about to do it again. Madrigasa and the Detente would’ve lasted if the Ashtar hadn’t poked their godam noses in again. Assholes had to know what they’d provoke. Oh sure, that Llyena woman talked the good talk, “come together as a galaxy, carry on our legacy”, all that crap. But they had to know that every government in the galaxy would be willing to do anything to get their hands on Ashtar tech. Llyena said they were dying, leaving, whatever. I figure they just decided to fuck with us on the way out. PsiNet’s final message. The Ashtar’s last laugh.

So here we are. The fighting’s still holed up at Agdemnar, all those “rogue elements” and “expeditionary forces” killing eachother, but it won’t last. No, those new hyperdreads everyone’s building, most of those are never going to see Agdemnar orbit. They’re building them to go for the throat. Damn galaxy’s one stray spark away from going up in flames. So I don’t know, maybe the Ashtar were right in the end. Maybe that’s the joke.

Well I ain’t laughing.

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Welcome all to my inaugural attempt at running a sci-fi NRP. Let’s see how running one of these things actually works. 

There’s a couple key elements to the setting, but I’ll spell out the history a little more plainly first.

In short, some high tech psychic space elves (the Ashtar) spent a hundred years playing peacekeepers in the Milky Way. If you don’t like space elves, I’ve got good news: they’re all dead. Anyways, less than a galactic standard year after they left, war breaks out. It started out small enough, but pretty much everyone got involved before the end came, 10 years later. Peace was negotiated on the neutral world Madrigasa, and in the ensuing spirit of cooperation and unity, the Treaty of Detente was signed. It did a lot of nice things, but mostly it limited naval construction. It gave the galaxy 20 odd years of peace. Then the Ashtar sent out a psionic broadcast across the galaxy, announcing that they were dying/leaving, and giving the coordinates to Agdemnar, their outpost at the centre of the galaxy. Agdemnar in turn would “open the way” to the fabled Ashtar homeworld of Ayrie, where the races of the galaxy could “take on the mantle” of the Ashtar and carry on their work and so on. Naturally every government around was mostly thinking about all the amazing Ashtar tech they could loot from Ayrie, and how much it would suck to share that with their neighbors. Naval construction kicked back up at a frantic pace, including the new hyperdreadnoughts, which I’ll get to in a minute. Everyone sent forces to Agdemnar, but most sent “mercenaries” or “relief forces”, or claimed the admirals and generals involved had gone rogue. The result is that so far the fighting has been contained to Agdemnar, but everyone knows that’s going to change. So build your space boats, make some friends, and get ready for a fight.

Note that this setting will have very little room for first contact situations. I’m establishing a shared galactic history that everyone’s been involved in to some extent. There will certainly be nations with no established diplomatic contact, but this setting is interconnected enough that your nation will have at least heard of everyone else’s. Certainly there can be exceptions, so if you’re wanting to play an isolated nation and do first contact, write up an NS and I’ll take a look.

The Great War: Despite sharing a name with WW1 IRL and resulting in a similar treaty setup, I’m thinking the Great War was actually relatively civilized, a gentlemen’s war, certainly at the start, probably because everyone’s naval forces were super out of date after the Ashtar lockdown. Towards the end, when new weapons started to emerge (like dreadnought class starships), enough of the belligerents got spooked by the killing power becoming available that they ended up negotiating a broadly satisfactory peace settlement at the Madrigasa talks. 

The Treaty of Detente (or at least the naval component): Halted all dreadnought construction and introduced strict limitations on the size and firepower of battleships and battlecruisers. Largely written up between the X major powers of the galaxy. Quite effective because none of those major powers’ economies had sufficiently recovered to sustain an arms race. The major powers forced the thing top down on everyone else, since it was no good to them if some upstart power built up a modern navy while their backs were turned. Likely resulted in one brief conflict, the “Devastation of Blank”, wherein the major powers discovered such an upstart and went in and practically nuked em back to the stone age. 

The Message: The Ashtar built a comm beacon array throughout most of the galaxy (PsiNet as they called it, but now known as the Galactic Net, more on that later). The nations of today still use it because why wouldn’t you, it would be ridiculously expensive and inconvenient to replace. However, they only have access to the “real” frequencies of the network. There’s a telepathic layer to it that only the Ashtar could access, and the message came from there, simultaneously to the entire galaxy. Come to Agdemnar, open the way to Ayrie, take up our mantle, build our legacy etc. etc. Coordinates attached. 

The Battle for Agdemnar and Point Jakurna: The first folks to arrive at Agdemnar didn’t take long to find the Ashtar command centre: A huge tower the Ashtar called Point Jakurna. Unfortunately it’s under an enormous shield bubble a hundred klicks across, and in the year since folks arrived at Agdemnar, no one’s been able to penetrate the shield. So Agdemnar has become a warzone, on the surface and the orbitals. Different armies occupy different parts of the planet, most of them with some presence on the perimeter of the bubble. No one’s been able to secure control of the orbitals; space forces have gotten into the habit of rallying in the outer system, then making a dash for the planet and offloading as many ground forces as they can before someone else comes along to chase them off.

The idea here is that we have a persistent conflict going on regardless of the politics and diplomacy going on in the rest of the galaxy, so there’s always something for everyone.Lots of room for plot elements on Agdemnar, so don’t ignore it. At the same time, you wouldn’t want someone to march into your capital while you’re away, so don’t overcommit either.

Hyper-Dreadnoughts: Fun little gimmick here: everyone go out and find a picture of a big cool spaceship then write a little blurb about how big and cool it is. Basically, the next greatest thing in naval warfare, hyperdreads utterly outclass any ship that came before them. They represent the final word in combat power, and a significant escalation of tensions in the galaxy. Everyone starts with one at the beginning of the RP, and every now and then I’ll announce that some more have been completed. For simplicity’s sake, every hyperdread is equal to every other hyperdread. Expect engagements between these things to be long and rarely conclusive.

The Galactic Net: A network of FTL comm relay stations across the galaxy, originally built by the Ashtar and now maintained by the nations of the Galaxy. FTL of course does not mean instantaneous, and bandwith remains an issue, so the Net is not like our Internet, more like a very fast postal service. You’ll all be finding out about major events in the galaxy within days, rather than weeks or months. The limits on bandwith mean it’s still easier to send large amounts of data by courrier ship. Additionally, since it’s a shared network, you’d better be damnned confident in your encryptions and cyphers if you’re sending sensitive information. Top secret stuff (like military orders or diplomatic correspondence etc.) should probably also be sent by courrier. 

Relations Sheet: I'd like folks to summarize their nation’s relations with other nations. It’s a nice easy way to keep track of shared history. This may be multiple paragraphs or it can be a simple “Contact between X and Y is minimal.”

Tl;dr rules for the lazy among us

1. Every nation was in some way impacted by the Ashtar, otherwise there’s no reason for them to engage in the central plot.
2. Your engagement with the Great War and the galaxy’s shared history will determine how big I let your nation be. I’ve formalized this into three classes, read on to find out more.
3. Everyone starts with largely outdated or small navies built before or under the Treaty of Detente. This is mostly to level the playing field a bit, but I’m open to exemptions.
4. Everyone has some level of forces on Agdemnar. Might just be a few special ops teams, but you have people there. Note you don’t have to always use them; as in, you don’t have to write up battle posts for Agdemnar every time you post, but your guys should be there.
5. Everyone builds Hyperdreads. I’m not going to bother determining the combat effectiveness and relative power levels of every class of ship for every navy, and the Hyperdreads will not penalize the rest of your forces in any way, so just take the godamn super spaceships that I’m giving you for free.
6. Play nice. Really, sort out your differences politely amongst yourselves. You don’t want me intervening, if only because I’m lazy and any intervening I do will be sweeping and arbitrary, and probably disappointing for everyone involved (sex joke!).
7. No planet crackers. Just don’t want to deal with that. You’re welcome to glass the surface but no blowing the things up.
8. There’s always a kerfuffle over FTL. I as of this writing have not decided what I’m going to do to preempt/respond to that kerfuffle. Ideally we’ll all play nice and work out a compromise, but I reserve the right to slap rules on FTL and how it’s used.
9. Speaking of slapping, I reserve the right to boot anyone at any time for any reason, or no reason whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, I want people to play this and I want people to enjoy this, so I’m not going to be kicking people for the lulz. What I mean is that if you’re being a dick, you’re not entitled to a defence attorney, a fair trial, and a jury of your peers. I’m not going to play internet lawyer with dicks, I’m just going to give em the boot. I do like to think of myself as a reasonable person so I’ll generally stick with warnings and trying to talk out the problem, but yeah, consider yourselves warned.

Please post your nation sheets in the OOC tab for approval, then move them to the Characters tab when I give the OK.

I’m probably going to make a discord. The link will be distributed by PM.

NS Format: see next post

I’m going to go ahead and code the thing out, but this format is not strictly necessary, I’m just doing it to make things easy to read for myself. Go ahead and quote this post and

NOTE: I’m aiming to get some collaborative history building going, so I’ve decided to formally divide nations into three classes. You may choose whichever one you want, there’s no limit on how many we can have of any type.

Major Belligerent: Your nation was a major participant in the Great War, your brave men and women fought valiantly across the galaxy for peace, justice, all that good stuff. Consequently, your nation was a major force in shaping the treaty of Detente and the post-war galaxy as we know it. Your words carry weight at any table, your while your economy took a beating during the war, you have the population, resources, and prestige to restore what was lost, sooner than your enemies might think.

Minor Belligerent: Your nation fought at the side of a Major Belligerent, contributing what men and materiel it could from its more limited resources. Your contributions did not go unnoticed, and your voice carried loud and clear at the Madrigasa talks. You may lack the diplomatic clout and resources of the Galaxy’s old guard, but your star is in the ascendant; less affected by the ravages of the Great War, your nation is poised to become the first of a new age of galactic powers.

Non-combatant/neutral: Let other fools fight. You wisely stood by the sidelines when the Great War began, though perhaps it was your small size and unimportance that saved your nation from the war. Still, you’ve managed to grow in the interwar years, building up rather than building anew. Your more influential neighbors may crush you under their boots once they’re fully mobilized, but only if you don’t slit their throats first.
Ozerath U WOT M8?

Ozerath U WOT M8?
