The history of the human species is a history of blood and strife. Or at least, that is what a Utopian would tell you. The Utopia Project may trace its founding to the Solar War, but the movement that spawned it started long before that fateful conflict. The Society for Human Advancement, as it was known, was a social and scientific movement that emerged shortly after the discovery of psi-integrae. These so called ‘Proto-Utopians’ saw the psychic potential of newly discovered organisms as more than a scientific curiosity. Rather, they and their leader Farid Nikbin, saw the potential for both the evolution of the Human species and a chance to achieve a true peace for the first time in Human history.

Farid Nikbin would author several seminal works during his time as a professor on Earth, outlining an ideology that would eventually lead to the foundation of The Utopia Project. He believed that the baser instincts of Humanity, those that drove people to violence, could be eliminated by modifying the Human species so that everyone had some level of psychic ability and connection. At first his ideas were nothing but the chatter of a delusional old academic, but he soon made global headlines by ignoring law and protocol in going ahead with human experiments. Had his work been a total failure he’d have likely been forgotten, doomed to die in prison a disgraced man. It goes without saying that was not the case.

Working in secret Professor Nikbin created the first artificial human psychic. His results were not immediate, after all he had opted to work on embryos implanted into volunteers, but within a few years it was evident to everyone involved that his experiment had been a success. The first child, a boy named Arthur Ueland, exhibited ‘unnatural’ abilities shortly after his sixth birthday.

Professor Nikbin verified the boys abilities beyond a shadow of a doubt, and then published the complete results of his work. The global response was mixed, but eventually it became clear that few in positions of authority cared how successful the Professor had been. His experiment was, undeniably, illegal. Farid Nikbin was tried and convicted to life imprisonment, even as Arthur grew up alongside a number of other psychic children.

The powers that had put away the founder of the Society for Human Advancement could never have predicted the effect of their actions. The Professor’s trial had been in global headlines for weeks, and what was once a group of fringe scientists and idealistic students became a massive international organization. The children that the Professor had created grew up, and all but one went on to join the Society.

It would be three decades after the Professor’s experiment that the Society finally secured the legal standing to continue its work. In that time what was once a primarily scientific organization had grown into an international movement with its own political wing and nearly fifty million members. These early adherents of Farid Nikbin’s philosophy, often called ‘Proto-Utopians’ today, would spearhead the creation and study of Human psychics for over a century.

By the time the Solar War started the Society had grown to a membership of over three hundred million across more than sixty planets. As many as one in three of those members were so called ‘Empaths’ or Psychics whose powers related more to understanding and feeling the emotions of others rather than any explicit abilities. After all, the creation of empaths was the societies ultimate goal. While the United Nations and the Intersystems alliance sported elite units of powerful Psi-Integrae, the Society had no part in their creation or training.

It was this position of complete neutrality that would ultimately destroy the Society. As the war went on members of the Society became increasingly persecuted as the states of the day saw them both as a threat and as an increasingly inhuman presence on their worlds. This persecution culminated in the Eurasian Riots, an event which saw as many as four million Society Empath’s killed in what was a targetted genocide by any other name. The United Nations hadn’t been complicit, at least not officially, but the elimination of a powerful third party that refused to aid in Earth’s war effort was hardly something to focus resources on stopping.

The Eurasian riot started a wave of anti-psychic and anti-society violence across human space. The pacifist ideology of Farid Nikbin failed and millions died, many of whom were all but paralyzed by their attackers rage and hatred. In less than a month the Society announced its official dissolution, but not before funding the evacuation of more than ninety million empaths and former members to an undisclosed location.

That place was the planet Halcyon. A distant Society outpost far beyond Human space Halcyon was the bastion on which the Society had chosen to shield its remaining members. After the survivors of the Psychic Genocide, as they called it, arrived on Halcyon they swore to never permit that level of violence again. From that day forward there would never be a child born who wasn’t an empath. Thus began The Utopia Project.

Isolated from Humanity the Utopians began to experiment and innovate. In their quest to create a society that would never know internal conflict the Utopians began to develop technologies unknown,and perhaps abhorrent, to Humanity. What was once a society of empaths became a society of proper Utopians. Individuals who, fundamentally, were no longer entirely human. What was once a sensitivity to the emotions of others became a subconscious connection to the entirety of the species.

That is not to say the Utopians surrendered their free will, they did not become a Human hive mind, but they did craft something many might have seen as far too close to that. The Utopians had created a collective subconscious. Every member of the species came to understand that there was a sort of unspoken ‘compromise’, a general set of principles that all knew, even if they didn’t know how. One could defy the compromise, of course, but doing so would be more than uncomfortable. Emotions of guilt and shame would come unbidden to those who violated what was, in essence, the middle ground of every Utopians beliefs. A legislative branch became unnecessary, as all knew the law.

There were still leaders among the Utopians, of course, but they acted more as agents of the people than as commanding wills. Their opinions mattered no more than anyone else's. The compromise, alongside the empathic nature of the Utopian people, led to what Farid Nikbin had dreamed of. A society at peace.

The Utopians colonized a few other worlds, but by and large they chose to live in as small an area as possible. Deep space habitats became far more common than colony worlds. This was, ultimately, a strategy born out of a desire to minimize conflict with any other species. Especially Humanity. Regardless, the Utopians thrived for generations.

At least, until the Ashtar came. The Utopians, for all they had worked to create their perfect society, had never anticipated an existence like the Ashtar was possible. Almost at once countless minds of an unfathomable scale pressed against the collective subconscious of the Utopian people, and in the span of a day the compromise shifted. The beliefs and opinions of the Utopians were irrelevant, the Ashtar’s psychic presence was too much to be resisted.

Not that some didn’t try. The laws might have changed, but every Utopian knew that they hadn’t changed them. There was resistance, many tried to ignore the guilt and even the pain as they went against what the Ashtar wanted, but in the end it was futile. None can live a life always feeling like they were wrong, and so in a day the Ashtar had all but brainwashed the Utopians.

What came after that was the same thing that happened everywhere, nothing. The Utopian people lived on, the Project continued, and it seemed like the Utopians peace had merely spread to the galaxy at large. Many, most, felt as if that was a good thing, a great thing. It was what Farid had wanted.

Except, that wasn’t the case. When the Ashtar vanished the Utopians woke from a deep and dreamless sleep, and they felt disgusted. The new compromise was reached almost instantly. The Ashtar hadn’t just enforced peace on the Utopians, they already had peace, the Ashtar had forced themselves on the Utopians. Alien minds, Alien ideals, they had violated every living member of an entire species.

The Utopian species had been raped. Perhaps, given that understanding, it isn’t surprising what happened next. While the rest of the galaxy scrounged whatever Ashtar technology they could find, the Utopians burned it all. The new compromise was simple, the Utopian species wanted revenge and everyone would work to get it. Even if the Ashtar were dead.

Because death wasn’t enough. The Ashtar had to be forgotten, wiped from history. When war overtook the galaxy the Utopians, for the first time in their history, lashed out. They destroyed Ashtar infrastructure across the galaxy, played sides in the great war to do as much damage as possible to their oppressors legacy, and they only stopped when they had no choice.

Detente. The states and species of the Galaxy had, it seemed, had enough of war. That was unfortunate, given how convenient it’d been. So once more the Utopians retreated to Halcyon, but this time they made plans. After all, without the Ashtar the rest of the galaxy was incapable of peace, and it was only a matter of time.

When the last Ashtar revealed their homeworld to the Galaxy the Utopians were delighted. Their revenge could, at last, continue.


Your capital world, your favourite starbase, the key places in your Nation etc.




Not an actual number, but this is the section to talk about your people. Folks with multiple species, a percentage breakdown of those species might be nice. Descriptions of all those lovely species would also be nice.


Daily life and such. Not the most important section but useful for giving us a sense of how your citizens actually feel about their nation. Can include religion, fashion, etc.


This could go under society if you like. Mostly just make it clear up front if you’re an industrial powerhouse, a nation of refined master artisans, etc. Also things people might want to know for trading purposes.


My favourite part <3. Probably the most important of the demographics sections. Who runs the place, how do they run it. Since you will presumably be RPing people in your government, this is pretty critical.




Mostly interested in military techs, here: FTL, weapons, shields, armor, power, engines, etc. Civilian techs are also here, and sometimes just as important.




Describe general doctrine, history, whatever floats your space boats.


Your space boats. Include pics or don’t, I’m not your supervisor. You’ll probably want to have one or two of most of the classes, but it doesn’t really matter too much. I’m also including some flavour options here that you might want to consider. In short, the history of the galaxy has divied up ship designs into three waves: Great War (ships built before and during the Great War), Detente (ships built during the Detente, some wonky designs in the larger classes due to treaty limitations), and Modern (ships built in the year since the message)

DO NOT put your hyperdread here, it gets its own section.

Dreadnoughts: Only a few were built before the end of the Great War, the destructive potential of these vessels was a major contributor to ending the conflict. Those old ones are pretty obsolete, and any new ones are only just coming into service (mostly in secret) due to the Treaty of Detente banning their construction.

Battleships: The grand old ladies that did all the fighting of the Great War. The Treaty of Detente imposed limitations on their sizes and destructive potential, so if you want to get intricate there’s 3 waves of battleships: Great War, Detente, and Modern. Great War is self explanatory, old sluggers and antiques. Detente battleships were awkward creations involving all kinds of elaborate ways to get around the Treaty without actually violating it. Lots of glass cannon designs here, or iron fortresses that couldn’t scratch eachother’s paint, or half baked experimental weapon systems, or novel propulsion methods that only work if nobody on board sneezes. Modern battleships are just coming into service, and are quite deadly.

Battlecruisers: The treaty of Detent also limited battlecruisers, in an effort to avoid just slightly reducing the size of ship involved in any potential arms race. Similar design iterations to Battleships; Great War, Detente, and Modern. Detente battlecruisers were often cripplingly overspecialized: dedicated point defence ships, artillery vessels, mass shielding vessels, etc. Battlecruiser designs from the Detente period were often put together as a way to shore up the weaknesses of their contemporaneous Battleship partners.

Cruisers: Nothing special here.

Destroyers: Still nothing special.

Frigates: Nope.

Corvettes: Corvettes can be thought of in several iterations just kidding I don’t care what you do with these things. Unless you try to just upscale what I’m trying to avoid with strike craft.

Strike craft: K I’m actually gonna sort of limit these things, or rather, the things that carry them around. Strike craft have long been an important part of space combat, so most nations have them and defences against them. Historically, they’ve been used as close in support; no one’s yet figured out how to strap useful FTL drives on the things. All this means that long range strikes aren’t practical. What I’m trying to get at is Carrier’s aren’t really a thing, or at least dedicated carriers aren’t. Plenty of room for Battlestar type things (fighty-boats with a solid complement of strike craft), but no dropping off a carrier squadron on one side of the system then expecting your strikecraft to win the fight on the other side.

A notable exception is your Hyperdread. Do whatever you want with your super special awesome boat.



Outline some doctrine, highlight some major units. I’m not great at doing ground forces so not much guidance here.

ANNNDDD


Go frikin nuts. Pics are nice.

The Conflux is ostensibly a liberal and prosperous, if somewhat bellicose and reclusive union of culturally young species growing and developing under the benevolent oversight of the powerful skirol. What the galaxy knows about it and its true nature are, however, entirely different things. Behind its bright and vibrant facade of disinformation, the Conflux is a predatory hegemony where the skirol rule over hordes of mutated grunts and prisoners of monstrous abattoir worlds, and barter with the flesh of sapients degraded to cattle.



The history of the Conflux is, belying the truth about its structure, mostly that of the skirol. Once one of many parasitic species plaguing the megafauna of their homeworld, they outcompeted their evolutionary rivals not through symbiosis with their hosts, as many others had tried, but by growing increasingly malignant, large and ferocious. By the time they crawled their way to sentience, they had become the apex of the food chain; and, by the time their disparate civilisations had mastered space travel, the once fertile planet had been mostly scoured of life, not so much by rampant exploitation as by the unfortunately specialised alimentary needs of its inhabitants. Curiously, the skirol never formed a unified planetary government. A generally accepted explanation is that the need for one was obviated by the rarity of armed conflicts and international regulations being disfavoured relatively to case-by-case diplomatic agreements, though many historians believe this to be an oversimplification.

The foundations of the Conflux proper were only laid when the skirol discovered that they were not alone in the galaxy. A prospecting interstellar expedition by the Accord of Theniax, then a relatively minor nation, encountered a pre-spacefaring species in a newly discovered system. The skirol had a difficult time coming to grips with the idea that anything else could be intelligent in the same way as them, something many are still not fully convinced of to this day. It did not help matters that most of the Accord subscribed to the aggressive faith of the Wurm Raslir, whose cosmology left little room for friendly contact. Though inferior in numbers to an entire planet’s people, Theniax had vastly superior technology and the advantage of orbital control. The newly met species, its original name stricken and forgotten, was pillaged, enslaved and processed to be fit for consumption by the skirol. Willing collaborators were “rewarded” by being subjected to experimental augmentation procedures and, if they survived, accepted by a society that thought little of their betrayal. Almost overnight, the Accord became a major player on the market and political scene, which contributed to the spread of the religion of the Wurm until it surpassed many of the previously dominant confessions.

The Reaping of Irret-Thenn, as it became known, gave an explosive new motivation for interstellar colonisation and set a precedent for future contact. The skirol had discovered a taste for intelligent meat, and wherever they happened over the miracle of life, which they were lucky enough to do a few times more in the following centuries, their sleek, spiny ships descended like a hungry swarm, subjugating, harvesting, and uplifting defectors to bolster their forces.

Although their intentions never changed, and indeed have not to this day, the skirol’s first clashes with other spacefaring powers made them rethink their strategy. Faced with prey they could not overwhelm through brute force and fearing that they would face war on all fronts if their practices came to light, their governments, in an unprecedented display of joint effort, assembled to build an enormous masquerade that spanned the entirety of skirol-held space. The Harmonious Conflux of the Hundred Suns, as it was known at the time, was formed as an international organ with sweeping authority to curtail and oversee external communication, projecting an aseptically neutral and rather enigmatic public image. The burgeoning population descended from the various uplifted inductees, now largely mutated and modified beyond recognition, was rebranded as a number of minor protectorates, and the existence of the conquered harvest worlds became a dark secret hidden in the depths of Conflux space.

Nevertheless, the skirol’s hunger for new tastes only grew, and with subterfuge instead of force they had only traded one weapon for another. Where mere expansionism was judged unacceptable, finding more civil pretexts to skirmish with their neighbours, and not only, became a favourite sport. From border disputes over some drifting asteroid to false flags set up by uplift mercenaries, Conflux forces made a habit of sweeping into their targets’ backwater colonial holdings on the flimsiest casus belli, abducting the population and concealing the strange disappearances with massive collateral damage. The conflict was then smothered in protracted negotiations, and usually ended with the offer of token reparations, though this was of little comfort to the captives, en route to becoming the latest flavour on the market. Of course, when the skirol were confident enough of their superiority, formalities were forgone altogether, and small colonies just inexplicably vanished before anyone could tell what hit them. An entire industry sprang up around this sort of raiding, from specialist harvester companies to teams of treaty loophole-seekers, and in time it grew to become one of the main pillars supporting the economy of the Conflux, by then already comprising Innumerate Suns and having spread into a catch-all term for skirol holdings and activities.

Needless to say, the advent of the Ashtar hit it badly. While at first they flatly disregarded the imposition of peace and gleefully carried on with their hit-and-runs, they quickly found that not even their raiding fleets, whose speed and stealth were the pride of skirol engineering, could outrun retribution. Growing furious and desperate as this once hugely profitable niche was choked, threatening their entire market, they struck at the Ashtar directly, sending droves of warships against their response parties, but only succeeded in wearing themselves down.

The worst, however, was yet to come. With as little warning as they did anything, the Ashtar struck at the Conflux’s harvest worlds, bypassing their outermost defensive perimeters altogether. The skirol guards were scattered, their stranglehold over the planets shattered, and centuries of conditioning and forced obedience were undone in a matter of hours, former captives shaking off the constraints of a lifetime. It was a miracle that the skirol's cover held at all, mostly owing to everyone else having better things to keep them busy and what information got out being later dismissed as provocations spread by rebellious subjects. Cornered and heavily wounded where it had never expected a blow, the Conflux gathered the largest warfleet in its history and prepared to attack the Ashtar head-on, regardless of the disparity of forces. Or, at least, it tried. Individual battlegroups were intercepted, gathering points were blockaded, and the final assembled force, mere scraps of its projected magnitude, was faced with the imposing mass of Prevailing Tranquility. Threatened with complete annihilation, the skirol had no choice but to resign themselves to a heavily downsized diet and market, though their resentment grew and festered.

By the time the Ashtar disappeared, the Conflux was starved for fresh meat and on the brink of economic collapse, having been deprived both of its old conquests and the lucrative raids. It is thus little wonder that it was at the forefront when the Great War erupted, looking to make up for lost time by gobbling up as many people as it could, appearances be damned. However, it soon became clear that all its rage had little of a punch behind it; built for rapid and precise tactical operations, its military had never been prepared for sustained conflict. Attrition took its toll, even as its forces were spread thin by the simultaneous effort of retaking the liberated harvest worlds, and when the Madrigasa talks came about the Conflux dragged itself to the table beaten and broken, with few real gains to show for it.

Yet those few scrapings proved vital, giving a brief reprieve for the Innumerate Suns to sustain themselves as they turned their attention inward to sharply reorganise their workings. The Detente saw heavy work on the harvest worlds, which were rebuilt and reshaped into streamlined breeding grounds. In a bold move that many feared would threaten the Conflux’s facade, but was ultimately recognised as necessary, the market was opened to external trade, (supposed) slaves in particular becoming a valued commodity both as imports and exports. Along with offering a much-needed influx of foreign wealth, many saw this as an opportunity to smooth over the skirol’s reputation in at least some corners of the international stage after a litigious and belligerent past.

This period of revolutions had, however, some adverse effects as well. The seeds of radical ideological movements had been sown during the hardships of the past recession, and a changing society brought them to the fore. Rogue underground factions gained alarming power, and their sometimes unsubtle machinations more than once strained both Detente and masquerade to their limits.

Incidentally, those same rogue factions gave the Conflux a convenient excuse when the Message pointed the way to Agdemnar, and officially the skirol force that has dug in on the planet is controlled by any number of extremist groups. Still, the roots of conspiracy have had decades to sink deep into its reconstructed society, and sometimes the brains at high command themselves wonder just how much of that is merely a cover story.



Vesereth: The homeworld of the skirol, once shared along millennia-old repartitions by their elder nations, has gradually been overtaken by the Conflux’s administration as the organisation’s significance grew, and now serves as the de facto capital of the Innumerate Suns. While most of the old polities maintain a token presence in culturally and historically important places, most of the planet is considered neutral ground. This makes it a favoured meeting ground for settling diplomatic disputes, as well as being the neural center of the Conflux’s activities of communications, transit, market and to an extent military oversight. The planet’s heavily urbanised surface is an amalgamation of architectural styles as diverse as many are ancient, with remains of its peculiar megafauna ecosystem surviving only in sparse reservations.

Giaxil: The Lisrak Covenant has, for most of skirol history, been the largest and most powerful sovereign state to stretch its holdings beyond Vesereth, and in some aspects this still holds true. Though temporary outpaced when Theniax struck it rich with the Reaping, the old money of the Conflux more than recouped its losses with the rise of the raiding industry, and for a long time dominated the niche with its unequaled military might. The post-bellum need for remodernisation only served to cement its position as the strongest pillar of Conflux’s military-industrial complex. The seat of the Lisrak government embodies this role, being a bustling hive of factories, laboratories, military compouds and marketplaces of all calibers. Life on Giaxil is busy to the point of being frantic, but also famously well-paid.

Ur’Theniax: In many ways the polar opposite of Lisrak, the Accord of Theniax never shifted its attention away from its resounding success in the Reaping, instead choosing to capitalise on the practice of world harvesting and its various products. Besides swelling to obscene wealth through careful exploitation of the flesh trade, biotechnological research sponsored by it made leaps and bounds thanks to the abundance of high-quality subjects that were ethically and legally free game, its society was always the most progressive in its acceptance of uplifted Acolytes, and its patronage of the church of the Wurm let it reap the rewards of its cultural primacy. In contrast with Giaxil, its capital of Ur’Theniax is a clean, quiet and photogenic paradise, decorated with ample stretches of unspoiled nature. It is ideal estate for research facilities, elite trading hubs (usually dealing more with stocks than the actual deal), religious centers and luxury estates for wealthy skirol or successful Acolytes.

The Silent Maw: Located at the fringes of Conflux space and the one of the few places in it freely accessible to outsiders, the Silent Maw is one of the most concrete signs of the social restructuring that has pervaded the Innumerate Suns. This vast, well-fortified habitat station, strategically placed at a convergence of several local transit routes, is the greatest slave trading hub in skirol territory, and certainly one of, if not the largest in the galaxy altogether. While maintained by the Conflux itself, the nature of the business that takes place on it such that some concessions need to be made for more legally dubious clientele, and thus, despite standard surveillance and the application of tax rates, transactions can easily be held in complete anonymity.

Kardatt: During the Detente-era industry reforms, the reconquered harvest worlds, the Conflux’s closest-held secret, underwent radical renovations to become the backbone of the now once more insular flesh trade. Kardatt, one of the last inhabited planets to be conquered in the first period of skirol expansion, and thus comparatively less ruinated by rampant exploitation, was the prototype of the chillingly efficient new model, and remains a symbol of the undertaking’s success. Heavily defended and camouflaged, the planet is a hell of assembly lines, breeding pens, cloning chambers and worse, regularly churning out herds of debased beings to sate the skirol’s hunger.







Skirol: A species of malignant parasites who grew to exceed the size, strength and intelligence usually held by such organisms, but never lost their voracity and primitive non-dimorphic, worm-like appearance. Their prehensile branching tongues supply to the needs of fine manipulation, though nowadays most prefer to use mechanical prosthetic aid. In ideal conditions, they can live for a surprisingly long time, exceeding several centuries even unaugmented; however, this is generally only achieved by the wealthiest among them. Strictly carnivorous, skirol, in an atavistic throwback, prefer consuming their prey alive, slowly draining it of fluids and externally digested organs before finishing the desiccated body in a few bites of their bone-breakingly powerful jaws. Psintegrat aptitude among them is unusually rare, though those that do show potential can develop tremendous powers.



Acolytes: A blanket term for beings descended from the minorities of conquered populations that willingly joined the skirol. Generations of bio-augmentic tinkering and simply living among their masters have long made every Acolyte unrecognisable as the species their ancestors had once been, their bodies warped beyond nature and their minds overtaken by an alien culture. Having abandoned every vestige of their old lifestyles out of scorn, desire to integrate into the dominant society, or simple convenience, they mostly reproduce through cloning or artificial parthenogenesis. While they can be divided into a number of mostly stable breeds, every Acolyte is a biologically unique entity, shaped by a free choice of augmentations and distinguishing marks of their occupation.







Others: The ones you won’t find in any census or galactic atlas. Despite forming a sizable percentage of the Conflux’s overall population, the inhabitants of subjugated planets are not recognised as sapient members of it. Bred in gigantic factories that were once their homeworlds, they are treated, sold and devoured like cattle by the skirol, and centuries of debasement have indeed left most of them mentally little better than animals. Those that do reach the public eye do so as exotic slaves from allegedly primitive worlds. In late pre-Ashtar times, this category has been expanded to include the victims of abduction raids, who are likewise subjected to the same treatment.



Traditionally, the structure of skirol society has rested on the notion of the trezklin. This word, loosely translatable as “swarm” (though much of its meaning is lost), denotes a large, but tightly bound family unit living and working in close vicinity. Spanning various levels of more or less extended kinship, trezklin are extremely diverse in size; the smallest might count around a dozen members, while the largest number in the hundreds, and in some cases even the low thousands. Those numbers are, naturally, in constant fluctuation as some leave the family web to join another or found their own nucleus, and others are conversely taken in as they come to join a new mate or several. Single skirol living outside a trezklin are not quite uncommon, and are growing progressively less so in modern times, but are still regarded as eccentrics.

The reason for this is that, now as thousands of years ago, by and large it is the trezklin, and not the individual, that is considered the minimal formant unit of society. Jobs have historically been, rather than positions to be filled by fungible appropriately skilled workers, dynastic traditions upheld by the members of the same trezklin over the generations. The staff of a facility, the crew of a ship, an entire military unit; each of these was, and in many places still is, far more often than not a family in addition to everything else. Young skirol were quite literally born into their roles, and raised accordingly. This did not, however, negate social mobility; those dissatisfied with their position could seek membership of a different trezklin, if they were accepted and proved they possessed the necessary aptitudes, and units judged to be underperforming by those higher in the hierarchy (itself a rather complex notion; more details in the government description) could be downgraded to a lower position and replaced.

While this system has held from the birth of skirol civilisation, ever since the species began to expand into interplanetary space its inflexibility and difficulty in adapting to the needs of spacefaring nations became apparent. Assigning jobs to individuals was a completely alien idea which all but the most radical visionaries struggled to even process, but a compromise was found in the shape of what came to be known as anrak-trezklin, or “surrogate” trezklin. Those are typically groups of skirol who join together in order to receive a temporary position, and only remain thus until the term of the job has expired. Although those anrak-trezklin can occasionally develop into actual families, in most cases the relationships holding them together are purely businesslike, with each member still considered part of their trezklin of origin and expecting to return there. A gradual shift has made this model of employment the dominant one on the modern market, though, depending on the place and field, old dynastic trezklin occupations are still common enough, and the progressive integration of Acolytes has made individual work a more widely accepted, if still curious reality.

Despite the enduring rigidity of its structures and the perpetual control of communications by Conflux authorities to ensure the truth about the harvest worlds is not leaked out, skirol society is surprisingly liberal. With no clear division of class beyond disparity of income, the goods and privileges available to any citizen depend exclusively on their wealth, and extreme poverty is, if not completely nonexistent, becoming increasingly rare. Basic commodities are generally affordable to any social stratum, not in the least because, though the skirol enjoy luxury, they can easily subsist on very few minimal necessities, albeit how comfortable that subsistence is can be debated. Nevertheless, a permissive social order and a widespread striving for profit contribute to a rather competitive environment, which results in further entrenchment and insularity of the trezklin - the reason why solitary lifestyles are still discouraged at a distance of centuries.

The position of Acolytes in all this is an ambiguous one. Nominally accepted, they are neither skirol, nor do they have an innate drive to form trezklin. Because of the integrational difficulties caused by this, Acolytes have long remained on the fringes of Conflux society, trying to build their own cultures and communities with varying degrees of success and interacting with the wider macrocosm of the Innumerate Suns in the capacity of mercenaries and hirelings most of the time. Theniax has always been a notable exception, showing itself more willing to accommodate the needs of its recruits by creating professional niches available for individuals. Besides easing the access of Acolytes into society, this has had the added effect of lessening the stigma around solitary living, as this has become a viable choice for skirol as well. Due to this, most of the Conflux’s members have long been reluctant to follow Theniax’s example, though more and more concessions are being made in this direction in recent times given the beneficial results of this policy.

In a society that is, at its core, market-driven, the importance of religion has long been on the decline. Nevertheless, the inherently conservative nature of the trezklin has so far considerably slowed the withdrawal of spirituality from the Conflux, in a personal if not a political way. Among the many ancestral devotions and latter-day cults of the skirol, a majority of which tend to adopt some form of skewed animism, the most popular remains the worship of the Wurm Raslir, which is likewise overwhelmingly dominant among the Acolytes. According to its doctrine, the Wurm, commonly interpreted to be symbolic of the skirol species, is a vast metaphysical entity that parasitises the cosmos itself, taking what it needs and giving nothing in return but the wisdom of its example. If one considers the immense historical impact of its teachings after it was brought to relevance, it is really little wonder that the Conflux should have become what it is today.



Until the Detente, the Conflux’s policy of isolationistic aggression caused its economy to develop in a self-contained form, with the only, albeit not insignificant, influx from outside coming in the guise of abduction victims. Consequently, while a lack of external stimulation might have prevented it from growing to its fullest potential, the proportionally greater importance placed on self-sufficiency contributed to the formation of a powerful and diverse production base and an active internal market. Where this impetus would have proven insufficient for a lesser nation, the Innumerate Suns’ colossal reserves of territory and xeno-power, as well as the skirol’s physiological needs allowing for problems in sectors like agriculture to be solved in uniquely economical ways, proved a sturdy foundation for an industry of titanic power. An adequate example of this strength needs be sought no further than its performance during the Great War, where the Conflux’s fleets, despite their defeat by the Ashtar and subpar performance in prolonged combat, blazed through most of the conflict almost exclusively through force of numbers. While the industrial complex has not yet fully recovered from that strain, its reconstruction has thus far been steady, partially owing to the market reforms.

Arguably the most important of the latter has been the decision to make the Conflux’s economic scene more accessible for outside trade. Although its stringent information control regulations prevent it from entertaining foreign presences outside the Silent Maw and a few other approved trade hubs, its own merchants are seen abroad much more often, and remote transactions, however laconic, are gaining in popularity. Most notably, the Conflux has spent the best part of the decades of peace making a name for itself on the international slave and bio-construct markets, whether legal or less so - a distinction it finds wholly irrelevant, beyond how it might negatively impact its public image. Beyond having grown to a major actor in these fields, the Innumerate Suns have adopted a more open stance vis-a-vis the exchange of heavy industry products, importing machinery and ship components from relatively cheap corporate sources and selling their own. Traces of the skirol’s notorious insularity remain as entertainment and consumer goods are concerned, however, with most foreign produce being considered confusing and uninteresting for the former, and simply incompatible or superfluous for the latter.



Despite the sprawling size of their territories, or perhaps because of it, the skirol have steadfastly maintained their tradition of not centralising their government into a single organism, instead preserving their political status as several quasi-independent polities. The emergence of the Conflux and particularly its growing importance during the Great War and afterwards might be early signs that, despite all odds, such a centralisation could after all be possible and even necessary at length, but, in the current conditions, it will likely be decades at the least before this ambiguity finds a resolution in either direction.

In terms of geopolitics, the Innumerate Suns are divided into five main blocs of unequal size and influence. The most powerful, monolithic and recognisable by far are the Lisrak Covenant and the Accord of Theniax, nations that have endured since the earliest space-faring days of the species and either never stopped growing or capitalised on individual events of major importance. Despite the occasional (and not very firm) resurfacing of the sentiment that all members of the Conflux are at least nominally equal, it is no secret to anyone that Lisrak and Theniax hold the greatest sway in all matters of common concern, and indeed dictate the course of events outright more often than not. The only meaningful opposition they could encounter, barring an unprecedented coalition of the other three parties, is each other; however, while their ideological disagreements, large or small, are myriad and often incomprehensible to outsiders, their lines for questions of international importance are most of the time compatible enough for overt clashes to be rare.

The third and fourth factions, while a far cry from the two giants in prominence, likewise share a major structurally defining trait, though instead of unity theirs is diversity. The Halypt Conglomerate is a rather tight-knit ensemble of venerable skirol governments native to Vesereth, who, however, never were as successful as their more famous compatriots, and lobbies representing the interests of major corporate bodies, who saw a safer path in entering a formal agreement with state partners, at the risk of incurring charges of commercial favouritism, rather than trying to challenge the two titans on their own. As a result, the Conglomerate’s sizable market presence is disproportionate to its actual political influence, which, while respectable, is still comparatively meager. Some speculate that it could plausibly rival the Conflux’s superpowers were it not for the many conflicts of interest that regularly arise to plague it, condemning it to remain largely fractured and lacking much of a unified ideological direction.

On the other hand, a more harmonious state of internal affairs is in itself not a guarantee for success, as demonstrated by the Conglomerate’s rough counterpart. The Pale Coil, as it is known, is a loose association of younger colonial nations, formally assembled to defend their concerns on the wider stage of the Conflux. Though not comparable to the Conglomerate in terms of wealth, controlling a scant few harvest worlds overall, the Pale Coil is far stronger in terms of individual voices, and, collectively, its heavy industry is a close contender for the second place after Lisrak among the Innumerate Suns. However, any advantages these factors might grant are hamstrung by a very limited engagement in international politics; between its disjointed nature and sparse development in most fields, members of the Coil largely prefer to focus on inward growth, and only really undertake any sort of unified action when they believe their interests to be threatened.

Even more disorganised and invisible than the Coil, to the point of being often disregarded altogether, is the final pillar of the Conflux’s superstructure. The various minor Acolyte societies that exist outside established skirol nations are as a rule too small, scattered and politically inactive to have any true standing. The very archetypal idea of the small Acolyte commune living at the edges of civilisation is steadily becoming a vestige of past times, as more of these groups become integrated into wider bodies. As such, the very existence of a “fifth power” in the Conflux is only recognised in a purely formal capacity, and it is widely expected that even this aspect will disappear before the turn of the century.

Despite their impressive number, the practices of internal governance of those powers are relatively easily described. Skirol governments have a curious tendency towards a sort of convergent development; any society beyond a certain size will be virtually guaranteed to coalesce into certain broad structural patterns. The underlying form of any regime almost invariably tends towards taking the shape of a plutocratic oligarchy, with wealth and income being the main indicators of a trezklin’s chances for upward social movement and the influence it wields in local society. In an environment of stable employment and regularised wages, this system would quickly create a vicious circle of stagnation. However, in the overwhelming majority of skirol economies income is under minimal regulation and tied to a variety of factors, a good number of which are usually outside the control of the employed trezklin’s superiors (for instance, market fluctuations, authorised secondary sources etc.). These factors contribute to the rather paradoxical conditions in which a sluggish institution like the trezklin exists in a social environment with the potential for constant flux, though the immediate effects of this are most of the time less dramatic than this description might suggest.

At the upper echelons of any nation, however, these regularities break down. While in theory there would be nothing stopping a single vastly influential trezklin from instaurating itself as an absolute power at the top of the social pyramid, history has shown more than once that such drastic actions provoke equally drastic reactions, and a family that gathers too much power for itself will be the target of heavy reprisals from rivals, occasionally culminating in outright civil conflict. Thus, the usual solution to such power struggles is the creation of a governing body from anrak-trezklin made up of delegates from the most outstanding lineages. Should any of the latter be supplanted, their members in the government are likewise replaced by their successors, a process that has been bureaucratically refined over the ages to be far less grey and vague than it might sound. At the rarefied tips of the hierarchy, success is impiteously and inflexibly measured in hard quotas. The specific rules and conformations of these coalitions vary between nations, including how the branches of authority are divvied up, but a generally observed basic law is that no participant trezklin may hold an overwhelming majority presence in any organ, no matter the circumstances. If this law should be broken, the other formant families unfailingly take it upon themselves to restore balance, often by drastic means.

Of course, none of the aforementioned structures and factions would be as notable as it is without the intervention of one factor. The Conflux is at one time a coordinating mind, a restraining web and the arena on which they vie for superiority. Originally founded as a focus for projecting an irreproachable image of the skirol to foreign powers via information control, the growing evidence of the impossibility of such a task in the age of mass multimedia information (for a long time now, it has been relying chiefly on the good sense of its citizens to keep quiet and the threat of public denouncement), combined with the increasing number of challenges that had to be faced jointly by the skirol nations, caused it to develop beyond its intended purpose. Nowadays, the Conflux is effectively a supra-national organism with sweeping, rather vaguely-defined authority; its true limits and capabilities are a subject approached as cautiously as a hornet nest, and usually not at all. Its composition is likewise baffling, as while it was once formed exclusively by delegate anrak-trezklin, age has contributed to the birth of more than a few true trezklin among its halls and corridors, firmly tied together in ways confusing for the authorities of the member states. Beneath its crust of assorted paperwork, it functions as a nexus of diplomacy both internal and foreign, in which it crudely resembles a simplistic parliament with all associated structures, and the head of joint military efforts when necessary. If nothing else, the skirol are mostly capable of coming to a mutual understanding in these basic expressions of war and peace.

That said, every system has its deviants, and the Conflux is no exception. Rogue factions are nothing new, with many criminal groups having come and gone since the earliest days of the exploitation of harvest worlds, but the damage caused by the Ashtar and then the Great War has exasperated the existing currents of extremist thought. The number of militant groups owing no allegiance to the Conflux, now resting on mostly ideological bases, has increased, and two in particular have swollen to dangerous size. It is suspected that they can rival established nations, partly thanks to rumoured connections to major official entities. The Omniphage in particular are often associated with the church of the Wurm, despite not conforming to commonly accepted doctrines. This sect believes that it is the divine right of the skirol to not merely prey on other sentients, but hunt and devour them to extinction, that they might be the only masters of the galaxy, and the fanatism of its members is well-supported by strangely abundant reserves of weaponry. Less spiritual, and arguably more dangerous, the Genome Harvesters are usually believed to have ties with the military-industrial complex, and the advanced technology they have proven to possess gives this theory some ground to stand on. Their organisation and goals are more obscure, but speculation has it that they seek the collective genetic records of all species for some nefarious purpose - and that they might really have a hand in the officially renegade expedition to Agdemnar to further their schemes.



The Conflux’s technological development is on par with that of most galactic powers, if occasionally taking different detours to reach similar results. While the diversity of the skirol nations and minimal to no regulation have prevented any overall standard from forming, some principles are universally in use throughout the Innumerate Suns, either harkening back to an age of more densely concentrated populations or having spread by virtue of their sheer superiority over any alternative.



Traction-Core Generator: Conceived in its earliest forms in the early days of space travel, the vacuum-core principle has been a fundamental of Conflux energy production for centuries, supplanting even nuclear sources as the more widespread system of choice. Its main application consists in the generators, large apparati from which obstruents are removed in order to create a partial vacuum. At the center of these structures, usually shaped like cylindrical vats, although spherical variants exist, there is placed a compressed cluster of superheavy matter, typically of the heftier metals, which is then made to spin and generate centripetal traction. The latter is collected by a system of pistons in the form of kinetic energy, which is then converted, through secondary additions to the generators, into the required forms. While the production of traction-core generators is significant, they are physically large and bulky, and were thus traditionally only used in industrial complexes, urban energy plants and aboard large ships. However, recent breakthroughs in miniaturisation have finally made the production of reliable smaller models possible, to the point that even small ships and some atmospheric vehicles can be outfitted with them.

Vacuum Shields: One of the main disadvantages of traction-core generators is that, due to the relative complexity of the intermediary systems, regulating their output is a difficult matter, especially in the cramped confines of a spaceship. As such, typical default production settings tend to be rather high in the event that a sudden performance spike might be needed at an unexpected moment. Naturally, this leaves a sizeable excess margin in normal conditions, a circumstance that has heavily influenced the design philosophies of skirol shipbuilders and is most clearly reflected in the energy shielding systems mounted on their vessels. Rather than projecting a static field, vacuum shields, so named after the source, channel the power fuelling them into a constant outward flux, dissipating and renewing their outward layers many times a second to provide a stable vent for the excess output they receive. Redundant systems ensure that the transitions do not leave the perimeter exposed. Due to their functioning, vacuum shields provide a very effective defense against protracted pressure at relatively low intensity, such as from directed energy weapons; conversely, they are more vulnerable to high-density impacts like those of projectile armaments. The use of vacuum shields is likewise the main reason why Conflux ships only mount energy weapons for short-range point defense purposes.

Vortex Cannons: While the vacuum-core principle is certainly not central to all aspects of skirol naval technology, elements of it have been incorporated far and wide in the field. Ship-mounted weapons are no exception, and vortex armaments have for centuries been the mainstay of spaceborne combat. These devices are effectively railguns that use a non-linear motor, having a propulsion system shaped as a magnetic coil with a central repulsor element. Vortex cannons employ centrifuge force as an additional accelerating factor, increasing shot velocity at the expense of some projectile mass. As such, a vortex cannon will be larger and more ponderous than a conventional mass driver using slugs of a comparable size, but perceptibly more powerful.

Vacuum Warheads: Sometimes, the road from vacuum-core to weapon is not as indirect. Vacuum warheads are little more than missiles mounted with a device similar to a traction-core generator, though significantly less stable and with fewer functional additions. On impact, the device’s outer shell is ruptured, briefly exposing its surroundings to its powerful inward traction before it collapses. The result is an implosion strong enough to deform and tear open starship hulls and armour, exposing the target to the diffusion of any secondary payloads the warhead might carry.

Slipspace Pulse Disruptors: The skirol’s raiding habits in pre-Great War times and the following need to cover up their operations spurred them to innovate in the field of stealth and infiltration. All their achievements with radar evasion and sensor attacks, though, rest on the necessary foundation of the pulse disruptor. Attached to the slipspace drives used on Conflux ships, these machines create a disturbance effect upon exiting FTL. This alters the surge that is the first perceptible effect of the ship entering realspace, and that has throughout history been the bane of stealth designs due to the ostensible impossibility of masking it. Although disruptors cannot hide this pulse, they are capable of curtailing it, funneling the burst into spare capacitors, and scrambling its signature. The result is that any sensors will detect the surge as being produced by a variable number of light ships exiting FTL, none of them intense enough to be equipped for combat. Due to the demands on power and space, disruptors are only used on ships designed for stealth, but a number of them mixed into a battlefleet could throw an opponent’s preliminary calculations severely off-course.

Organomechanical Integration: A staple of Conflux manufacture great and small, the melding of machinery to engineered organic components, usually through surgical synapse attachment, is found at all levels in daily life and beyond. From basic personal devices to vehicles, body augmentics and, more recently, starships, if something is produced in skirol space, chances are it will have a fleshy pulsating mass on the underside. This offers obvious benefits in decreasing production and replacement costs and time, as grown components are faster and cheaper to procure than assembled ones, as well as greater ease in interfacing and comfort in handling (if one has the right physiology). On the downside, integrated devices require more intensive upkeep and, insidiously, are easily prey to planned obsolescence, creating a very profitable market for living spare parts.





Prior to the manifestation of the Ashtar, the Conflux, despite already presenting itself as a singular entity, did not have a unified military. Every separate nation relied on its own armed forces for peacekeeping, raiding and conquest, with the divergences in resources and technology spreading the overall picture too wide for any clear standard to be applicable. The occupation and subsequent string of defeats confronted the skirol with the necessity of being able to present a compact front in more than theory. While new military actions were impossible and rearmament was difficult, there was nothing preventing them from restructuring their navy at a formal level as long as no true conflict came from it, and so they did.

The result was a federated force under the command of the Conflux’s Commission for Enduring Harmony, itself partially comprised of representatives of the contributing powers, with every component retaining a large degree of autonomy outside of times of total war. To promote standardisation across the fleets, the practices of circulating blueprints and schematics of crucial systems and collecting common war effort funds were instituted, enduring until the present day. The destruction brought by the Great War and the rebuilding that followed were, among all else, opportunities to further streamline the previous diversity of organisations and approaches, and the most was made of them where possible. Nowadays, while the skirol militaries remain quite clearly varied in their appearances and tactics, they tend to use the same ranges of designs with relatively minor modifications. The eternal exception to this are independent Acolytes, who, being prevalently mercenaries, remain a motley and colourful crew.



The Conflux’s fleet is the branch of its military that is attributed the most importance, and the one that has seen the most radical overhauls over its history. Having started out as disparate forces used mainly for raiding and suppression of inferior enemies, the early unified navy sought to capitalise on the design features common among its ships - speed, stealth and offensive capabilities dramatically outpacing their defensive ones. These vessels relied on quickly bridging the gap between them and their opponents, bringing the fight to dangerously close ranges where their weaponry would have room to shine. The tragic results of this approach are reflected in the staggering death tolls of the Great War, where skirol fleets were decimated time and again by more resilient enemies.



The need for greater staying power was keenly felt in post-War times, but the terms of the Detente prevented overt experimentation with warship designs. A solution was found in the once-discarded notion of applying organomechanical integration of machinery at the level of starships. Previously disregarded due to their difficult and laborious implementation funneling resources away from more reliable traditional fully-mechanical models, hybrid craft were devised and put into production with a view to circumventing treaty limitations, especially playing on the parameters on tonnage and armour. The result were prototype lines with less skewed armaments than before, but whose main goal was crippled by the very subterfuge that brought them into being. Organic components, being less dense, were indeed lighter, but also less robust, and the problem of defense lagging behind offense again presented itself.







In the last years, the crumbling importance of the treaty, along with far greater experience in shipwide integration, have finally let Conflux engineers reach something like the fabled balance they were seeking. Melding organic and metallic parts in a much smoother way, last-generation vessels boast defenses unparalleled before in skirol history, along with improved weaponry. As such, when they take the field (which is not often, given how rare they are as yet) they are found spearheading assault formations, followed by the malformed droves spawned by the Detente period. In an ironic reversal of roles, the older ships now form the rearguard, saturating enemy defenses with massed fire to cover the advance of their new, improved counterparts.





Dreadnoughts:

Insatiable: Coming into service in the later stages of the Great War, the Insatiable-class dreadnoughts were an early attempt to correct the deficiencies of Conflux shipbuilding. These imposing vessels are thickly armoured and shielded on several layers, while retaining a heavy array of weaponry. Of course, this aged equipment is far less impressive nowadays.

Sun Devourer: One of the crowning achievements of Conflux industry and development, Sun Devourers concentrate decades of work on shipwide organomechanical integration and improvement into leviathans of plasmid-flesh and metal as deadly as they are immense. These flagrant defiances of the Treaty are as yet few, their existence one more among the skirol’s secrets, and it is not soon that they will fully enter mass production.

Battleships:

Reaper: Once the iron fist of the skirol raiding fleets, Reaper battleships were fine-tuned for the role, being prepared to deal with sparse local defenses through speed and overwhelming firepower. Due to their flagship role, their defenses were nonetheless not fully neglected, and they thus fared comparatively better than smaller lines in the Great War. Compared to modern craft, their once-fabled agility is nothing to write home about, but a lot of guns on a pair of strong thrusters remains a lot of guns on a pair of strong thrusters.

Flayer: Among Detente-era experiments with integration on warships, Flayers are unique in that, instead of having a few components replaced with organic parts, they were mostly built from living tissue instead, an artifice partially motivated by the more stringent limitations on battleship designs. As a result, along with being a clear improvement over the Reapers in terms of speed and armaments, they sport some unique advantages like biochemically-assisted engines, a spontaneously regenerating hull, and amazingly cheap and fast construction. However, this comes at the price of wonky machine systems requiring special instruments and spare parts to work with and rather poor armour under their shields.

World Gorger: Striking a much better balance between organic and mechanical, World Gorgers coopt the strengths of the Flayer design while correcting its weaknesses. Destructive, streamlined and far more resilient, they neatly outclass any of their predecessors in any field. The only obvious disadvantage is that they are proportionally more expensive and slower to produce, which is only further hampered by the secrecy surrounding them.

Battlecruisers:

Invader: Invader-class battlecruisers were rarely part of a raiding force themselves, but nonetheless played a crucial role in those operations. Forerunners of the reaping fleet proper, they were tasked with disrupting the first lines of defense around their targets. Their aptitude for rapid, precise strikes did not suit them well in intense combat, and they took the brunt of the losses of the Great War. Nowadays, they survive mostly in an auxiliary facility, or bought and retrofitted by mercenaries and corporations.

Pestilent: A more typical Detente hybrid design, Pestilents were built around a mostly metallic corpus, with a few organic components mostly inserted only to lighten the tonnage. Sturdier for their class than Flayers, but less mobile and more lightly armed, they were designed to accompany the battleships as support units, providing defensive screening and limited artillery fire support, and, if not else, fulfil that role adequately.

Void Plague: Virtually a direct affront to the Treaty, all, of course, in the name of a balanced peace, the new Void Plague ships are towering juggernauts, packing tremendous firepower and encased in layers over layers of shields and armour. While slower than World Gorgers and still mostly excelling at close ranges, they are nevertheless capable of great offensive flexibility, bombarding the enemy with missiles from long distances even as they inexorably close in to deliver the coup de grace.

Cruisers:

Harvester: The traditional raiding ship by excellency, Harvester stealth cruisers were built to mop up the final layers of resistance during an assault and loading as many captives as they could fit before bombarding their incriminatingly empty cities into dust. This specialisation left them fairly useless from the Ashtar wars onwards, though in present times they have been upgraded and retrofitted in several ways, with variants serving as either tactical stealth ships or dedicated siege vessels.

Flesh Grinder: Supplying to the need for a mainstay combat ship of the line, the Flesh Grinder is a fairly recent hybrid design that has nonetheless surpassed the Harvester as most widely produced cruiser. Respectably armed and armoured for a Detente ship, it does not excel in any single aspect, but is extremely flexible in fleet configurations, and guaranteed to give the enemy a hard time in any circumstance.

Destroyers:

Veinsplitter: Once one of the first prototype hybrid ships, the Veinsplitter has gone through several iterations during the Detente period, over which it has phased out previous destroyer models. Today, it has firmly grown into the niche of strikecraft-killer, though it easily doubles as a predator of corvettes and other smaller vessels. If needs be, it can be mounted with anti-missile weaponry, albeit even then it is rather less effective in that role than dedicated models like the Pestilent.

Corvettes:

Stingworm: The adage of strength in numbers, or, more cynically, quantity having its own quality has always held for the Conflux navy, and Stingworms are the latest example of that mindset on display. Fast and cheap to produce thanks to their hybrid structure, despite making slightly fewer sacrifices in durability than earlier Detente models, these small but hard-hitting craft swarm over battles in vast numbers, seeking out vulnerable spots while the enemy is focused on the fleet’s heavyweights. Modular armaments allow them to carry heavy warheads suitable for attacking battleships as easily as vortex guns to outmatch other corvettes in a straight confrontation.

Strike craft:

Mutilator: Due to the structure and activity of the old Conflux fleet, strikecraft were never given much importance, and this shows in the scarcity of designs. While minor variants certainly existed, the Mutilator was the only major type in use, combining the functions of fighter and bomber in a general-purpose support vessel. Nowadays, they are often found in the possession of mercenaries, who modify them according to their needs on an individual basis.

Ripper: Times change, but design philosophies do not always follow them. In the intervening decades the Conflux navy has still not found much of a role for strikecraft, and the aging Mutilator has been joined by the equally multipurpose hybrid Ripper. The main difference, besides general performance improvements, is a more easily switchable modular component, allowing for easier case-by-case specialisation, but otherwise not much has changed.



Given the Conflux’s most recent pre-War history of groundside military activity, one might think that their planetary forces would be similar to the spaceborne ones - light, mobile and fast on their feet. However, this would be entirely wrong. Long before raids became an established practice, the main task of the skirol military was to occupy harvest worlds - primitive and subjugated, but entire planets nonetheless. As such, their armies were built to be enduring, imposing and extremely difficult to dislodge from their positions, a tradition which they continue to follow to this day. Most of the light-footed work is done at the stages of deployment and scouting; after that, one ponderous steel wall follows another.

The backbone of Conflux planetary forces is formed by armour and mechanised infantry. While the skirol can be deadly in close quarters thanks to their bulk and powerful mandibles, they are naturally slow to the point of being barely mobile. Modern diets have aggravated this by making fattening doses more accessible, and even civilians mostly rely on personal vehicles to move about; the military merely takes this to its logical conclusion. All skirol machines are organomechanical hybrids, which eases interfacing on the pilots’ part and allows for adaptive functions like atmospheric filtration.













The biomechanical skirol armies are never encountered without a following of Acolyte auxiliaries. Usually mercenaries or otherwise irregulars, they are a diverse crowd, outfitted with custom weaponry and augmentics to turn them into lethally efficient killing machines. Some go as far as sculpting their body into a form specialised for combat at the expense of everyday utility, a practice only encountered among those most dedicated to the military life and some religious groups.







Titanic and armed to the teeth, the Embrace of Srynokk is the apex of Conflux fleet construction. An immense project already secretly started in the last years of the Detente, during which its separate components were built at different ends of the Innumerable Suns, the monstrous hybrid ship has recently been assembled into a functioning whole, and its performance has fully lived up to expectations. Despite its proportions, its functional design is rather straightforward, being built to accommodate a staggering number of synchronically working weapons. The only really peculiar part of its equipment are its potent shielding systems, built on layer upon layer of redundant fields; so powerful are they that at extremely close ranges they can become a weapon in their own right, crushing smaller vessels on impact. Furthermore, their radius can easily become a refuge for a small support fleet.

On a sidenote, the ship was originally planned to bear the name Embrace of the Wurm. However, after some resistance from secularist members of the Commission the designation was changed to its current, more neutral one, named after Vesereth’s star.

The federation is a very old and very large democratic nation. It is split into many small semi autonomous units of varying size all collectively organized, but not contled, by a central Congress. Its citizens consider themselves a post-species people as a result of generations of genetic engineering, biological modification and hybridisation. They lost territory during the great war, but are still a cultural and economic force to be reckoned with.


The feds are an old staple of galactic politics, perhaps one of the oldest in existence, that was initially formed as a trade, free movement and mutual aid agreement between various smaller nations in their corner of the galaxy in an attempt to curtail local infighting and promote economic growth. The power and influence the central board in charge of coordinating that agreement slowly expanded over the course of generations as the treaty gradually accepted new members to ranks and the federation’s individual nation’s cultures, populations and economies slowly bled into one another. Eventually the central board, its members now democratically elected by its member’s citizens, transitioned into the official central government of a new nation known as the The Valerius Federation.

The multi species nature of the feds was key to their initial success, pooling together the knowledge and skills of different races and utilizing their ability to thrive in a diverse set of environments to exploit their various world's resources with greater efficiency. Advances in affordable and wide scale genetic engineering further enhanced this versatility even as automation gradually made it redundant. The federation has gradually shifted its labor focus from resource exploitation to one that focuses on the design and production of consumer goods, media, art and scientific advancement for the purpose of internal consumption and external sales.

The federation settled into its current political structure roughly 1200 years ago and had been steadily chugging along since then until the Ashtar arrived. Being physically dominated and “conquered” by these upstarts horrified the federation, yet at the same time the federation has never gone to war easily. During the endless debates on what to do others took the brash action the federation was loath to do. It did not take long for tales and then footage of the consequences of defying the galaxies new overlords to circulate around the galaxy and find its way into the federation’s hands. No one was suicidal enough or angry enough to try to fight after that. The feds swallowed their pride, dumped water on the slowly rising embers of war and started looking for ways to take advantage of the new state of affairs.

In the end the Feds liked effects of the Ashtar’s era of galactic domination, even if they were not too fond of having it forced upon them. Peace was good for business and the Federation saw a significant degree of growth during the Ashtar period as they welcomed new members into their ranks, free of the concern of military retaliation from local space empires. There was also an active drive from many within the federation to liberate previously conquered nations using pacifist resistance techniques and the supplying of aid to oppressed peoples. This painted something of a target on their backs later on. A lack of push back against the Ahtar and an acceptance that they were simply the new norm left the feds somewhat unprepared for their disappearance. The old federal military was in disrepair, with its equipment mothballed or retrofitted for civilian use and it’s soldiers laid off due to a lack of funds. Only the black ops wing of the central military, it’s funding unable to be cut because almost no-one knew it existed, and a few privately funded groups of military enthusiasts really had any significant weapons stockpiles on hand when the Ashtar vanished. The spread out nature of the federation’s governmental structure resulted in dozens of different responses to the situation, but the most notable was a near immediate forming of local militias, be they beefed up corporate security, local government conscription for planetary defence forces or armed community watch groups all haphazardly armed with improvised or rapidly printed equipment. Attempts to stifle this buildup for the sake of diplomacy failed and the feds ended up feeding into the military buildup feedback loop that caused the war despite having no collective desire for it.

They did rather poorly in the post Ashtar galactic war, fighting using an army heavily reliant on the initially formed militia and fleets made up mostly of retrofitted trade ships. The federation where on the defence for a lot of the war, either protecting of their own territories or those of their many smaller trading partners. Their prior economic prosperity did provide funds for acquiring mercenaries and their industrial base that was rapidly turned to the task of churning out the instruments of war, but ultimately they only survived due to the sheer size of the pre war federation and from the success of a few make or brake spec-ops missions that turning the tide of a few key battles/conflicts.

They enthusiastically took part in the following peace talks, having been pushing for said talks since the moment the Ashtar vanished. They were one of the Treaty of Detente’s main advocates at its inception and subsequently one of its primary enforcers. The return of peace time economics was a great boon to the feds, so they are unsurprisingly distraught by the current, seemingly inevitable, trend towards war. Federal diplomatic envoys across the galaxy are working overtime to attempt to maintain peace or, at the very least, trying to create a coalition to squash any rablerouses before they ignite chaos that will engulf the stars.

They are better positioned for war this time however, as some groups within the feds have been hard at work preparing for the breakdown of peace since the day the treaty was signed. One of these is their current ground presence on Agdemnar, a “rouge” scientific expedition that just so happens to have brought a metric ton of prototype weaponry, mercenaries and “guards” along with them.


Argitarius One: The seat of the Central Congress was once a neutral backwater planet chosen because at the time it was of no significance to anyone but it has since blossomed into the political heart of the nation. It is defined by its single solitary megacity that spans an entire continent, all focused around the Congress itself, a truly colossal structure capable of seating the thousands of representatives that work there every day.

Argitarius One point One: The capital’s moon, home to the central military’s logistics department, the Congress’s support AI‘s massive mainframe and, presumably, the black ops hq. These three departments help turn federal policy into a reality in one way or another.

The Magunhyan sector: The secor closest to Agdemnar and the primary sponsors of the “scientific” expedition currently entrenched upon its surface. They have a loose coalition with a number of other sectors, generally those who are near the borders of aggressive foreign nations, who are all gearing up for war and attempting to convince the rest of the federation to do the same.

Vardone four: A planet that is effectively a massive movie set. Host to incredibly diverse and stunning terrain its cities all have a unique architecture style copied from various time periods/nations. A great deal of Federation cinema and tv is produced here which makes the planet an incredibly lucrative source of income for the federation. It more or less imports everything it needs to sustain itself because the only farms and factories on it are used predominantly as set dressing.




It is rather difficult to track species populations within the federation due to gene modding, and the federation itself does not keep track as the species section was removed from census criteria by popular mandate long before the Ashtar arrived. A federation citizen’s internal and external biology is functionally limited only by their brains, which need to fit inside their body, and the laws of physics, which demand their bodies can actually sustain themselves. In practice however it is also limited by common sense. While extremely bizarre bodies do exist things like having hands, personal locomotion and the ability to fit through doors are generally considered important.

If you were to attempt to classify the citizenry you might attempt to start with the only non modified component, the brain. Examination of this feature is rather taboo, but if done it would show that the citizenry are a diverse mix of many if not all species in the galaxy who are not wholly insuler (as the Ashtar where). You would also find the brains most commonly found likely belong to those who founded the federation. Small populations of those races, or evolutionary off shoots of them, can be found scattered across the galaxy, but most have subsumed into the post species mass within the federation..

They are/were:
The small reptilian Rateran who looked like a cross between kobold and a velociraptor. Evolved in a labyrinth of caves below the surface of a planet whose surface was a left a blasted watland by a long forgotten nuclear war.

Best described as a vaguely humanoid squid, the Orngar evolved beneath the thick ice of a on a volcanically active ocean moon. Discovered by the early Rateran space program while trapped in an inescapable the bronze age they were subsequently uplifted by their discoverers. They ended up colonising a great deal of the federation's oceans before genetic modification gradually eroded the rare oceanic specie’s monopoly on sea based resource extraction.

The Lonoxi were an insectile race of squat infertile drones, slender princes and hexapedal queens. Remaining populations have two opposed yet equally strict caste system that either has the royal drones and queens rule over enslaved workers or has the collectivist workers use the breeders as nothing more than baby factories. Where they exist these two opposing systems war with one another constantly.

The Sethhanide were serpentine beings to whom a lot of coastal dwelling citizens likely owe any amphibians adaptations they might have. A Lot of federation genetic science can be traced back to developments made by the Sethhanide. Their greatest pre federation achievement was the “solving” of the Lonoxi’s biologically based class warfare by re-enabling the drone’s reproductive capabilities. Snake motifs are common among geneticists even today.

The grey skinned Xetonds where a weak and diminutive race all of whom had weak psionic abilities. They mainly used these to make up for their frail physique, scaring off or control weak willed predators using their minds. The federation was founded on the basis of a peace brokered by them between the often at war Sethhanide-Lonoxi and Rateran-Orngar nations.

A number of other minor races where absorbed into the federation before the current post specise trend took effect, including a sizable human population. Races added recently are either much harder or much easier to identify depending on how much they have assimilated into the genetic soup of the federation.

Percentiles:
Post species citizens: ~85%
Citizens with no drastic modifications or hybrid ancestry: ~15%



The federation is both incredibly diverse and simultaneously deeply homogeneous. The reason for this is simple, the federation is both very old and very big. Hundreds of years of free movement between planets have mixed together the cultures of its founders and early members just as much their populations, resulting it what could either be described as a rich cultural blend or a barely coherent mess. Simultaneously its semi regular integration of new members means that different sectors and planets can have widely varying local flavor sourced from their former nationalities. This variety is more common at the fringes and gradually dissolves the closer a place is to the center.

Generally, Democracy, cooperation and rampant hedonism are the core components of Federation society.

Federalists are incredibly proud of being the oldest, and in their opinion the greatest, true democracy in the galaxy. They also enthusiastically engage in the democratic process and turnouts for referendums held by all levels of the government remains consistently high despite their frequency. These democratic principles are applied not just to politics but also to many if not most other areas of their lives. Most notably nearly all corporations are democratically controlled by their workers and even the various militaries have their command staff elected by their soldiers.

Cooperation is also of vital importance to federal citizenry, as it is more or less the only thing holding the legally decentralized federation together. The federation only really works because its people and their many elected officials work together to maintain the federation, by occasionally putting aside their own immediate prosperity for the good of the whole Federation.

Federal citizens are personally invested in the federation, having shaped it with their votes in ways, large and small, that they can tangibly see and are affected by on a daily basis. To them the federation is not just a government or a region of space they happen to live in, it's a monument, a shining beacon of hope and freedom in a cold uncaring universe. It is a bastion against tyranny that has stood the test of time only because in times of strife its people have come together and decreed that this thing they have built together is worth protecting.

All this rhetoric would be pointless if the federation was not actually somewhere pleasant to live. Generations of research on the topic have resulted in Automation and AI taking over, or at least optimizing, a lot of the more tedious labor needed to maintain a society. This has left the citizenry a great deal of time to invest in making it a society worth living in. A lot of them are in some way involved in the creation of art, be it music, holo-film, games, vr or body modifications for internal and external consumption.

The most immediately notable aspect of federation culture is the pervasiveness of genetic engineering and biological augmentation. Initially used for medical and efficiency purposes this technology is now more often than not used for fashion purposes. Citizens can and regularly will radically alter their appearance to suit their individual tastes or to follow current fashion trends. This can be anything from simply changing their hair or eye colour to replacing body parts with ones from other species (such as getting a pair of Vit'azny ears), adding an entirely new parts like additional limbs, tails or wings or even extracting their brains and placing them in entirely new bodies. These biological modifications can be combined with holographic projectors that allow them to change their appearance on the fly to suit their current mood.

While the federation is as a whole highly materialist it does tolerate religious practices and so followers/practitioners of nearly all faiths can be found somewhere within their borders.



While the federation do have a relatively thriving industrial economy thanks to its many worlds, divers citizens able to exploit their natural resources and refined automation techniques its most distinct source of wealth is its culture industry. If the galaxy has an equivalent to hollywood it can be found here. From holo films to clothes, music, designer pets and luxury civilian spacecraft, the federation produces and exports vast quantities of consumer goods to all corners of the galaxy. They also host sports and competitions like the galactic prix, the gravity ball cup and the Federal-vision song contest, that are braucast far and wide and pull in trillions of watchers every year. They also have some of the best cosmetic surgeons in the galaxy and produce a large variety of designer drugs.

A lot of the federation’s raw resources are imported. Food, raw ores, basic mechanical components and more are often purchased rather instead of being produced locally. The feds will trade with anyone, but prefer to engage with smaller nations rather than buying primarily from its equals/rivals in order to spread out their supply chain and avoid reliance on any one nation or part of the galaxy.


The federation is a federalist representative democracy. It has 5 tiers of authority within it who are answerable not to each other but to the voters who elected them.
Local: A mayor who is elected to govern a city or small region.
Geographic: Representatives who control areas roughly corresponding to the size of a primitive nation state.
Planitery: A local word government.
Sectors:Unites many worlds under one governing banner and facilitates cooperation between them.
Federal: the Central Congress, occasionally referred to as the Board or the CC, is the supreme assembly of the federation which governs national policy and facilitates national level projects and cooperation.

Each of these levels is elected by the people living under their jurisdictions, however there are no elections, but rather each citizen has an online profile which they can use to vote at any candidate at time for any and all positions they are eligible to influence. Changed votes have a brief delay before they go into effect to allow politicians time to counter whatever shifted public opinion of them, to allow time for votes to be delivered via couriers and to facilitate a smooth transition of power if it is to take place. Along with this they can take part in frequent referendums, opinion polls and discussion forums to directly voice their opinions on various topics. These poles are often rather superficial in nature (what kind of holographic art the town center should display this month is a common local poll) but they keep political engagement up and make sure that when important matters do arise the people know that their voices can and do matter. The online voting system has cyber security that puts some nation’s militaries to shame to prevent malicious tampering.

Power in the federation is rather divolved, with individual sectors, planets and even geographic regions having high degrees of influence on how things are run at a local level. They only real thing the central government dictates is forghin policy, macro scale economic matters, high level legal decisions and funding for federation wise social programs. As a result, even laws and military organisation is done at a more local level in all but the most important of matters.

Who holds power in the federation is in constant flux, but there are, ostensibly, two major groups vying for control over the federation. Colloquially known as the party of peace and the party of war they stand for the two main public opinions on the matter of the coming conflict: To hold onto peace as far as possible or to seek out revenge and to reclaim what was lost in the great war.

A nation or even planets can join the federation if they so desire. Doing so involves a lengthy investigation process where the federation attempts to determine if the applicant is economically stable enough to be a valued addition to the federation. Due to its decentralised nature the perks of joining the federation aren't exactly life changing, with the main draws being use of its currency, freedom of movement to other parts of it and a small say in the macro level decisions of the federation. Unusually, leaving the federation is rather easy, as any sub division of power can vote themselves out of the federation if they so desire. This is somewhat rare, the cultural assimilation the federation engages in is its main counter to such independence movements, but individual planets, continents and even cities that have left the federation can be found within it, and occasionally small sectors on its periphery will leave either in protest or of a genuine desire to reclaim independence. The federation is often more that happy to wait a generation or two for them to come back.




Hardlight Fields: Physical holograms. Usable for artistic and construction purposes, they can also act as force fields that physically block incoming attacks. Most if not all federation spaceships rely heavily on these defensive fields to protect themselves from harm, as do a lot of their terrestrial forces. Hard light fields are either created by a central generator or can be maintained by numerous networked units distributed throughout their structure. The former is used for shield generation, the latter for things like clothing, architecture and other projects where redundancy is more important that overall durability. Ships always have multiple shields, often specialized for different purposes (propulsion, passive/reactive shielding, cloaking, etc.) for the sake of redundancy.

Holographic cloaking: the use of holograms to either disguise a vessel or person as something else (generally terrain or other craft) or to project images of what is behind it to render the user almost invisible to optical sensors. When combined with conventional anti radar and anti thermal detection methods some advanced federalist equipment and vessels can be functionally invisible.

Engine tech: Federal ftl is rather standard affair, dropping their ships down into slipspace inorder to make long distances far shorter. Propulsion is generally facilitated by the shielding system generating and then releasing energy from the internal powersource somewhere along their radius which visually takes the appearance of a green glow unless it is being deliberately hidden for stealth purposes. While not the fastest propulsion method, the ability to point the power of other ship’s main engine in any direction grants superb maneuverability. The disk like shape of most federation vessels is meant to take advantage of this, allowing the vessel equal ease at rotating in any direction by generating maneuvering thrusters anywhere along its flat top and bottom, while main drive thrust can be instantly sent out from any part of the ship.

Auto Lasers: Rapid fire laser guns that usually take the place of automatic weapons. While the federation uses non viable spectrum and tight beams that would make the lasers invisible to the naked eye, auto lasers can activate a tracer rounds mode where 10% of the beams are the more expected bright visible beams of light.

Laser cannons: Slow firing laser cannons used for long ranged accurate fire. the amount of energy in these beams means the air is visibly distorted where they pass though.

Plasma cannons: super-heated globs of plasma that generally explode on contact with their target. Accelerated via meg rails and further forced out via a laser cannon mounted at the back of the cannon. the plasma itself is a spinning disk with a magnetic core at the center that helps keep the non solid projectile in once piece until it hit's it's target. Artillery variants have higher volumes of plasma and their progectile's are stable for far longer.

Plasma auto-cannons: Slower firing that auto lasers, they fire smaller but more frequent blasts of plasma than the regular cannons.

Plasma/laser Beam Cannon: Fire continuous streams of either lasers or plasma.

Cosmetic Biological/genetic Modification: Federal scientists can functionally change any and everything about a person’s biology down to the genetic level. Species boundaries have long been broken down and rendered redundant as regular citizens decide exactly what they look like, be it minor adjustments to their birth bodies or complete remodeling of their physical makeup to take on the appearance of an existing or entirely invented race. This is mainly done for the sake of fashion (reptilian traits are in this season) and getting a new body is equivalent to getting your haircut in a different style. This tech originated from modifications for military and environmental adaptation modifications and, while it is still sometimes used for those purposes, it has become as commonplace and ubiquitous in the civilian sphere as computers are in the 21st century.

Despite their mastery of the body there has been little success in artificial psychics due to a lack of people willing to volunteer their (living) brains for invasive and extensive alteration.

These modifications are done within life support tanks, which sustain the brain no matter how much of the body is striped away and replaced in any one surgery. This surgery itself is done by a swarm of insect sized biomachines that add and remove parts at the behest of either the person being modified or by a professional body artist.

Virtual Intelligence Neural Enhancer (VINE): A lattice of microscopic computer hardware that is intertwined with a person’s gray matter. It is grown, rather than built or surgically added and thus allows some of the advantages of cybernetic augmentation without any of the risks of brain damage or dramatic personality alteration. While mostly by civilians as a glorified smartphone in their brains it is also an important part of the federation’s id system, as in a culture where a person’s appearance and even their dna can change regularly a hard coded Hash Key nestled deep within their cerebral cortex becomes one of the few ways of verifying some is who they say they are. There are multiple military applications such as power armor, vehicle control, local comms system, combat enhancement software, etc. .

Companion AI: Helpful self developing AI systems that mold themselves to the needs of their owner. At a governmental level they help turn political policies into reality, for individuals they act as personnel secretaries or companions. Sometimes installed into drones to improve their performance (military personnel often have armed versions of these) but most often run on an individual's VINE.

3d Printers: multipurpose manufacturing units ranging from the size of a briefcase to the size of a factory capable of constructing a vast array of equipment out of a variety of materials. While they will never be as efficient as dedicated manufacturing units the ability to read a damaged ship, vehicle or armor’s blueprint and then rapidly produce replacement parts on sight partially alleviates the logistical nightmare facing the federation’s decentralised military.

Retrofitting: less a technology and more a skill, the engineers of the federation have a great deal of experience and literature dedicated to the art of turning a hunk of junk into a military craft and back again. Learned first from decommission a lot of their military once the Ashtar proved themselves unstoppable and from rapidly weaponizing and deaweponising blackops craft for stealth missions it came in great sue during the great war. They have similar skill when dealing with non federation ships and have developed special Ai capable of rapidly understanding most conventional ships put in front of them at least well enough to get them running again. Somewhat used to convert captured vessels it was mainly developed so that federation service yards could work both on mercenary/auxiliary craft and deal with whatever modifications or straight up new designs some other parts of the federation had come up with without informing them.




The military structure of the federation is rather disparate, with individual sectors all raising their own armed forces for local protection purposes. Some are more interested in this than others, and indeed having a standing military is not mandatory, but those located near aggressive neighbours often have substantial militaries, either of the standing or reserved variety. These forces can be anything from temporary conscripts to professional soldiers, part time militias, military companies or hired forighn troops.

Tying them all together is the central military which has two branches, logistics and black ops.

The logistics arm has the unenviable job of coordinating the dozens of smaller militeris found within the federation: keeping them supplied when they are out of their own sectors, sorting out the chain of command, coordinating their movements on a grand strategy level and so on. It consists primarily of bureaucrats, engineers and supply ship crews. It has no standing military of its own, as it has no worlds to draw from, and instead it’s only actual power comes in the form of mercenaries. Be they private military contractors, pirates, militaries of forgin nations or federal sectors, the logistics arm has the funds to pull in the firepower they need to support the defence of whatever the federation as a whole deems valuable.

The Black ops wing is the federations offensive problem solvers. Small, elite and the stuff of myths and legends rather than policy, the black ops branch is pointed at problems, given funds and then told to make the problems disappear by whatever means necessary. No one likes to think about this branch, and in fact it's rare that an elected politicians even know it exists. Instead they take their orders from the companion AI’s helping run the government who see it simply as another tool that gets the job done. It is unclear exactly where it originates from, there certainly is no record of a vote to form it, nor is it possible to trace its operations history back to a founding specific date. It has no employee lists, nor any officially recognised leadership. The Black ops division are, for all intensive purposes, a black box. Their input is problems that need solving, and their output is death.










Revolutionary Ultimate Stealth Engine (RUSE) ”the Project”

A truly massive yet seemingly defenseless saucer the RUSE represents the pinnacle of federation hard light technology. Utterly filled and covered with hard light projectors, this craft can either cover entire fleets with its shielding or cloaking capabilities. It can also weaponize the normal propulsion systems of federal craft to fire beams of plasma from anywhere on the surface of its shields, including a devastating death blossom that hits everything around it.