Heavy WIP for the Nine Dragon Crescent

[hider=The Nine Dragon Crescent][color=mistyrose][center][color=maroon][h2]The Commune of the  Nine Dragon Crescent[/h2][/color][hr][b][i] They call us lawless. They call us criminals. They blame us, point fingers and wave fists like we are tyrants. At least our people have full bellies and are protected from mindless death by the Guizi.[/i][/b]

[color=maroon]Government Form[/color]:
Socialist Authoritarian Criminal Syndicate

[color=maroon]Population[/color]:
7,500,000,000~

[color=maroon]What is humanity?[/color]:
Humanity is chaos. Teetering on the edge between heroism and villainy, between peace and war, between ascension and extinction. United, we are dragons who pierce the cosmos despite our enemies. Divided, we are rabble unfit to even gaze upon the stars.
[hr][img]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5b/bf/4b/5bbf4b7e596b736861b06fe346acb400.jpg [/img]
[color=crimson][i]The great head of the Nine Dragon Syndicate, the Eternal Luo Minh[/i][/color] [/center][hr][color=maroon]Planet/System Name and Description[/color]: 
[center][quote=Unnamed worker reflecting on his place in the galaxy.][b]“We were promised a world and clean living. We were given rocks and the largest shithouse in the galaxy. [i]Putang ina, mabaho naman dito.[/i]”[/b][/quote][/center]

It was supposed to be beautiful. They had toiled for years, across family generations for some. They were the gears in the machine that kept the complicated clockwork of the Gateways going. They were supposed to be rewarded for their efforts, given a world of unparalleled beauty.

Instead, they were given the CX0985 system. A barren, planet-less solar system made up of a dwarf star named Son (a mistake in the translation between humans in early contact) and vast belts of resource-full asteroids. Along with the largest den of scum and villainy then known to man.

Crescent.

A once spherical space station which has been partly destroyed to give the permanent visage of a crescent moon. Built by an unknown precursor race and maintained by rusting, lifeless automatons which meandered about the station with no care for its inhabitants. Separating the living from choking in the void are thick metal walls made up of dense alloys. Strong, sturdy and much better than the makeshift metal repairs that the inhabitants of the station provided. Importantly, they were good conductors for heat and so efficient that the masses of the station needn’t worry about boiling to death in a metal cage.

Instead, they would have to deal with the decrepit hydroponics systems, oxygen support, the lack of extensive plumbing in converted living spaces, failing nuclear reactors dotted around the station, both radioactive and non-radioactive waste along with disease outbreaks. Indeed, Crescent was never designed to hold so many people. 

Despite this, there is a dedicated population of robotic workers found within Crescent which are barely keeping up with the maintenance of the station. To interfere with them would mean death by the locals. There are the smaller “youkai”, orbs of glistening metal which seemingly sprout tools and materials needed from its own for, able to interface with anything and everything part of the station. Their animal-like intelligence and nanomachine-based technology has gathered the interest of many a scientist although studies have yielded nothing other than “this ball of metal is made out of something that makes no sense.” Other than these protected youkai, there are the large, lumbering “oni” which navigate the larger maintenance corridors. Big enough to loom over three story buildings, these more familiar boxy walking automatons check on the larger systems in the station such as the fusion reactors and the waste management systems. Unfortunately, there are only so many of these oni and such biological workers must be used to maintain those overworked systems.

The vast cavernous spaces which, if the records are true, are supposed to be “leisure” spaces became the site of built up shanty towns which extended to the ceiling. If one was to dig underneath the innumerable dwellings that now make-up the station, one can find soil. Stone. Yellow grass in some places, some weeds growing into the floors of the bottom levels. Signs of a bygone era when the space was filled with fresh air and nature, a stark contrast to the maze of ceiling-scrapers of today.

The actual “living quarters” are divided into so many living spaces for so many people that it is hard to distinguish where one room ended and another began. But at least you had a shared toilet. Maintenance areas such as the life support are kept clear when the larger “walker” automatons are present but are quickly filled up once their work was done, quickly built and deconstructed camps of people following in their wake. It is hard to walk through the hydroponics and water filtration areas without tripping on a sleeping body. The crematorium has more than just the dead and the cargo and shipyards are so overpopulated that people are often just press-ganged into working based on whether they are in the designated project zone. Even the reactor rooms are filled to the brim, RadAway aplenty to keep the mutations away (though these do not always work as the mutants display with pride).

The “cities” within the station are multi-layered, interconnected labyrinths with seemingly no rhyme or reason to its organisation. They are split between the nine wards or “dragons” of the station, sections split by large vault doors which are there to restrict large hull breaches to that section. The cities reminiscent to a combination of Chongqing and Kowloon though the pan-Asian and alien populace lend their own unique flavours in this cultural hotpot. Dark, dim lighting and networks of crisscrossing wires connect the city, with a unique cyberspace system connecting the whole station.

There is no zoning within the cities, a mish-mash of commercial, industrial and residential locations all coalescing together in one interconnected lump. Navigation is near impossible for newcomers as you often need to go through a kilometre of walking to get to a point which is seemingly right above you though the locals either get around this problem by plasma-cutting holes in the ceilings and floors or by navigating crevices which seem to lead to nowhere. Indeed, it is the locals who must lead you through the dark corridors lest you find yourself lost. 

But beyond the dark atmosphere, the station still has a liveliness that only a densely populated space station can give. While one may listen to the chattering voices, smell the violently contrasting odours and feel the constant vibrations in fear, locals see it as a way of connection. There is no isolation here and everyone must work together as a community to keep their meagre lives going. Sharing food, water and other commodities are common as to turn away someone means your greater karma will suffer. Everyone lives with all kinds of people; segregation is impossible, and outright discrimination is frowned upon (although only a fool would allow a Daga into their home without securing their valuables). Petty crime is rampant but unsanctioned murder is rare, with other serious crimes mostly facilitated by the Nine Dragons themselves or the sneaky under-gangs that live in their shadow. This is where this station thrives. In the connections between its people, in the sense of community and hope that grew from such a dim and dark place.

Which makes what those [i]Guizi[/i] are doing to sections of Crescent more horrendous.

[color=maroon]Demographics[/color]: 
Homo Sapiens Sapiens: ~64%

Hatanxing: ~10%

Thằn lằn: ~7%

Daga: ~4%

Kuo Yu: ~4%

Gaja Men: ~2%

Metall Odam: ~1%

Miscellaneous other species: ~8%

[color=maroon]History[/color]: 

[hider=The Far Past]
[center][quote=A Gaja Man’s last rumbles, trembling at the edge of depression][b]”Sometimes, we wish, we did not live so long. Sometimes, we pray, for the last of us to breathe our last breaths. Sometimes, we are burdened, by the death we see.”[/b][/quote][/center]

[center][quote=A Hatanxing reminiscing on the illusion of might.][b]”We were arrogant. We were sure of victory. For hundreds of years we waited, trained, honed ourselves to be warriors unrivalled by any others. We thought ourselves different from the rest. We were brought low all the same.”[/b][/quote][/center]

One cannot talk about Crescent without first mentioning the endless war which plague the stars around it. A clashing of cosmic titans, with what seem to be unparalleled industry and technology, at constant war over countless light years. It has been this way for hundreds of thousands of years, with every system touched leading to another drop of peoples fleeing to Crescent. Yet, despite the winding accounts created of this war, either from the oral traditions of long-lived Gaja Men or the data banks of rusting Metall Odams, not much is known of this war and why it is fought.

The two Endless powers that be, known together as the [i]Guizi[/i] or as the Screechers and the Voiceless, had been at war long before humanity had even crawled out of its primordial caves. The Endless War is fought with unimaginable ferocity with each side giving the other no quarter. Planets are struck bombarded till their crusts are molten, the empty voids filled with scrap metal, spent shells and bubbling superheated plasma. No one has ever seen a member of their respective species at all, if they still exist. Their wars are fought between merciless automatons possessing artificial intelligences that the Odell Men, the only other AI known to Crescent who could interface with these beings, could only describe as “savage” and “mindless.”  In whatever form they are found, from the smaller automatons armed with personnel-level weaponry to the autonomous ebon ships whose visage strikes fear into whoever beholds them, the [i]Guizi[/i] will attempt to destroy the other with no regard to the surrounding environment or to their own continued existence.

Near indistinguishable, [i]Guizi[/i] can only be differentiated by the sounds, or lack thereof, that they create. The Screechers do as they are named, creating constant screams of bloodlust from every available voice box. The Voiceless, in contrast, are every bit eerie, silent and creepy. Their forms are similar in most other ways, no colour standard among their number. It is speculated that they may have been created by the creators of the same species however no one has bothered trying to ask. It is hard to talk with a burning hole in your brain/s after all. And it has been this way, for millennium, for near countless thousands of years, for as long as anyone can remember. 

The history of Crescent intertwines with this war, extending far into the past by the Gaja Men’s reckoning. Not even these near-timeless inhabitants are aware of the true extent of Crescent’s history, only knowing from long-extinct species that the station used to be spherical before a “cleanse” grew out of control and a section of the space station was blown to kingdom come.

What [i]is[/i] known is that Crescent, in all its “recent iterations”, has been a hive for scum and the downtrodden. Placed in a systems-wide struggle between two major military powers, it has long been the place for refugees, criminals and other undesirables to escape from the constant fighting which plagued the stars around it. It is said that the asteroid belts floating around Son are the remnants of long blown apart planets, blown apart before any currently living species had even step foot on the space station. But through this all, as a testament to the engineering and science of the precursors, the station has stood strong as a bastion and a refuge. Waves of species, from all over this cluster of space, have come to this place either as power-seeking criminals, outcasts or refugees of the unspeakable war raging around them.

Yet, as much as it seen as haven and home for many, it is not untouched by the war around it. Cleanses, brutal expulsion of the station’s inhabitants, are conducted at a period of every 550 years. Near everyone is slaughtered by one of the two cosmic powers with calculating efficiency. As far as anyone can reckon, these are done to prevent the emergence of a potential third power in this supposed demilitarised zone held between the Screechers and the Voiceless. Yet why they leave some portions of the population intact remains a mystery. Regardless, beings still flock to this “supposed” haven by years-long, sometimes decade-to-century-long voyages in whatever colony ship they could cobble together either by luck, for adventure or to escape. 

It is by the nature of these cleanses that the demographics of Crescent have come to be. Humans, the latest arrivals and still untouched by the Endless War, make up the majority of the station’s inhabitants by pure luck. However, their alien neighbours cannot say the same.

The Gaja Men came first out of all the current species, inhabiting the station after forced pilgrimage from their home. Unlike many others, it was not the [i]Guizi[/i] who forced them out of their homes but their own people. An aggressive, expansive species of tusked four-legged mammals, these peaceful Gaja Men were foresworn by their militant brethren. As killing between Gaja Men is frowned upon in their society, millions of these “religious nutjobs” (only called so for being reasonably pacifistic) were exiled from their homes and forced to seek refuge in Crescent. Unfortunately for them, their sleeper ships were detected by Screechers.

Interrupted from their slumber by plasma fire and venting holes in their ships, the Gaja Men were nearly wiped out with only the cacophonous screeching communications of their killers serving as a farewell. It was only the timely “intervention” of a group of Voiceless, only distinguished as such by the way they immediately started killing each other as soon as they came, were the Gaja Men spared from their metal coffins. With haste, they would seek shelter in their place of refuge, where they dwell for thousands of years since.

And so, it was and will forever be. Species coming and going, species living and dying. Metall Odam in ships once designed by their long-dead creators, with their metal faces flashing and fleshy chests beating with the guilt of leaving their makers behind. Skittering Kuo Yu venting pheromones and slime out of fear after their species’ homeworld was glassed in a battle they had no part in.  The Daga came as pirates seeking a new hiding hole after the Screechers tore into their old asteroid dwellings for resources. The reptilian Thằn lằn refugees that came after the enslavement of their entire species by a passing Voiceless convoy.  Warrior Hatanxing, seeking and hungry for a fight, maws open and ready to kill the robots as they come only to get punched in their teeth. Each species of Crescent came with a past that reeked of death and held within them a terror of their eventual extinction.

They were all powerful. Once. Brought low by forces greater than them. And so, it was and will forever be.[/hider]

[hider=The arrival of the human working classes]
[center][quote=Early recruitment advertisement promoting the “Global Union of Workers” initiative][b]“Workers of the world, unite! Assist the masses escaping to the stars and you will be rewarded! A ticket to a new home, a new life, one where you are in control of your destiny!”[/b] [/quote]

[quote=Bagadaga the Daga commenting on the human’s arrival][b]”The first human-things eye-see rich-rich. Ugly as a [i]skraatch[/i] slug but rich-rich. They mouth-spoke to Daga, to fish-things, to metal-things. They were mouth-warned but no care. They order-sent them, their poor-poor. From years away, could nose-smell the poor-poor.”[/b][/quote][/center]

The overseers came to Crescent first. Bedecked in designer suits and guarded by the best soldiery money could afford, they came not to live. They came to learn of this habitable station, to scope out this possible home for humans back home. They were demonstrably unimpressed. They saw the shanty towns torn asunder by a recent cleansing, the cowering aliens in their hidey holes backing away in fear of the unknown, the crime rampant in every corner they turned. They smelt the refuse, the blood in the air, the myriad violently contrasting aromas that offended any being with a sense of smell. They felt the eyes in the dark alleyways, the desperation in every being they came across. They shivered in fear at the mention of the cleansings and the death it wrought upon all.

They would initially mark this place unsuitable for habitation. How could their clients and their citizens be expected to live in a place like this? Yet one clever and cunning man, an executive with the business acumen and ruthlessness to climb the corporate ladder, suggested an alternative. Money made the world go round and it was no different even with the Gateways project. To support a colony for millions of people, billions were invested on proper materials and expertise to create a self-sufficient colony. Here, they were provided a self-sustaining station recently emptied, a place where the investment could number in the mere millions. 

“Who in their right mind would come here willingly?” The others would ask, incredulous at the suggestion.

“People who have no choice.”

And so it was. They numbered in the millions. Hundreds of millions. Some records suggested that the actual figure was just shy of a billion. As Earth decayed, countless hands were needed to keep humanity’s flight from their home going. These people, by the misfortune of their birth, were never going to be first on those ships flying out of Earth. Farmhands, tradesmen, industrial line workers, janitors, “entertainers”, cooks, people from the lowest classes of humanity. Hired by the countless nation states and corporations funding escape from Earth, they were given barely-liveable wages through the Global Union of Workers programme. Clothes, measly rations and a monthly stipend, this was all they were afforded. But the many millions were clamouring to join the GUW programme for its one key promise: a ticket off Earth.

They came from many different cultural and ethnic backgrounds but rarely from the “richer” West. Though Chinese migrants made the majority of the workers, people of all races, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, Thai, Eastern Russians, peoples from across the East signed up to the GUW. These were the hands behind each bolt, each rivet, each weld. These were the hands that kept the offices clean, made the meals that kept humanity’s brightest full and happy, gave a hustle and bustle to the Gateways project that only human work could give, workers of all sorts that made up small cogs in the machine that was humanity’s exodus. These were rough hands calloused by years of hands-on work, skin blistered by too-tight void suits, vision’s spotty from too many hours welding. These were people that would otherwise be left behind. 

So, when the tickets off Earth were given, few initial questions were asked. Whole families thanked their benefactors, weeping with the knowledge that they would be able to [i]survive[/i] beyond the next few decades. With these tickets, they made sure their children could [i]live[/i]. Packing whatever possessions they had, millions of hands clutching their tickets in tight fists, they shuffled excitedly into the transport ships.

Some questions were asked on the way. Where were they going? What garden planet would their new home be? Some were disappointed about the metal station that awaited them but many more were excited. A unique space, unlike so many others, just for them. Complicated hydroponic farms that would feed them for centuries. Untold technologies accessible to only them. New aliens that were assured to be friendly to human life. 

Concerns were brought up at the sheer scale of it all. There were so many of them, how could they all fit? They were assured of their safety and that appropriate measures were made to make sure there was enough space for each human. After all, the overseers claimed, the station had space like previous human settlements once found on Earth. And it was true, if these words were taken for just words and not the promises they were.

The first workers marvelled at the station they had entered. True to word, it was unique. It was like a modern Babylon, with a constant sphere of translation software connected to everyone that made communication between both humans and aliens as seamless as could be. The youkai and the oni were their mechanical equivalents, tidying systems they could not understand, providing them spaces fit for living. Even the aliens were nice enough, as strange as they could be, but these initial meetings held a stand-offish and nearly sad atmosphere about them. Like the aliens knew something they did not.

But these were the first workers. More came after them. Millions more. They flooded in with each transport ship, each as excited as the last, with their predecessors’ growing dread. There were so [i]many[/i]. There was no way off the station, all cramming together and soon, through sheer human osmosis, human workers were present in every space of potential habitation, no matter how unsuitable. 

Angrier questions were posed to the overseers. What was this? What was going on? Why were they all gathered here, in so many numbers, in a station the size of a mere city? The myriad corporate attendants and nation state supervisors assured them that this was only a temporary stopover. They would be shipped on to greener, fresher pastures once their initial clients were settled in. They were needed, of course, to keep the new settled worlds going. They would not be abandoned.

Yet the millions still came. Resources were deposited for them, building materials they could use to make their own homes. These were not people who would give up so easily, and so they built their temporary homes, on top of existing buildings both alien and the humans who came before. The previously inhabited alien spaces were taken first, the myriad species helping in the construction of vast, interconnected temporary homes. Here, the initially cold meetings turned into warmer welcomes. The aliens were used to migrations of many inhabitants, as they explained. Why, the humans would ask, why were they so used to it? But here the aliens would stop, nervously glancing at the overseers and their hired guns, who were increasing their presence in the station with every transport ship.

They could not tell them. The first humans had warned them. To do so would mean their destruction, the promised destruction of the station. And so they remained tight-lipped, despite the incessant grumbling of the righteous Hatanxing, despite the desperate rumblings of the Gaja Men, despite the population calculations posed by the Metall Odam to the overseers. Sure, some things slipped, but so many fresh faces came in all at once with each migratory wave. There could be no warning to all of them, as trapped as they were. The millions more came, piling in, all looking forward to homes further afield, ignorant of the dark secret kept away from them.

As one, with the last transport ships, the overseers and their soldiery left the station. Before questions could be asked, before their new alien neighbours could truly warn them about the secrets that Crescent held, before the workers could set upon the oversees with righteous fury over their betrayal, the Gateway was shut.

Millions and millions of souls, stranded in Crescent. Their new home. Their new coffins.[/hider]

[hider=Conflict, strife and everything not-nice] [center][quote=Thằn lằn merc-maiden revelling in the chaos of the early days][b]”Yesss, very deliciousss. We mercenariesss were made rich by these humansss. The creditsss filled all of my pocketsss, this human wanting to kill that human for whatever reasonsss, this human needing protection from some criminal scumsss. Deliciousss creditsss, deliciousss humansss. Such flavourful additionsss to our potsss.”[/b][/quote][/center]


[/hider]

[hider=Criminal minds]
[center][quote=Metall Odam crime-lord lamenting the loss of his monopoly on the drug trade][b]”Fecking fleshers. They came with some fecked up drugs and a feckload of guns. Raided my supplies, pushed boundaries of what we calculated would be possible for safe flesher consumption. Feckers blended into Crescent way too fecking fast.”[/b][/quote][/center]
[/hider]

[hider=The emergence of the Dragons]
[center][quote=Historical account of the Eternal’s early life][b]”An orphan, son of a burned welder and a debt-killed cook. Left to fend for himself, lesser men would have starved with not a single credit to his name. Lesser men would resort to the mutant-filled reactor cores to seek a life of refuse there. Lesser men would have died on their way to the top, pulled down by their lessers, pushed away by their betters. Lesser men do not have the vision he has. Lesser men do not bring the gangs, the warbands, the mercenaries, the drug-kings to heel like he did. Lesser men dream, aspire, salivate to be like the Eternal Luo Minh.”[/b][/quote][/center]
[/hider]

[hider=Benevolent gangsters and their socialism]
[center][quote=An average dweller commenting on the Nine Dragons][b]”Murderers? Drug dealers? Tyrants? Who cares where the food comes from, where the credits come from, give me a belly full of food and a mouth full of water and I will bow down to whatever and whoever, as long as I get to live the next day.“[/b][/quote][/center]
[/hider]

[hider=The here and now, arrival of the Guizi]
 [center][quote=The Screechers upon arrival to the system][b][i]Unintelligible screeching[/i][/b][/quote][/center]
[/hider]

[color=maroon]Culture and Society[/color]:
A hotpot of many flavours, both human and alien. 
[hr][color=maroon]Governance and Politics[/color]: (Like the government form field, but more room for detail. If your Colony has changed in such a way that it doesn't even have a government or politics anymore, this is also a good place to talk about that.)

[color=maroon]Technology Overview[/color]: (What have your people invented? Or have they forgotten anything?)

[color=maroon]Military Overview[/color]: (This is the space to talk about any offensive capabilities you have. Given that most of these Colonies have been essentially stranded by themselves for five centuries, I don't imagine anyone has a large "conquer other planets" level fleet yet. But maybe your Colony has been in civil war for a hundred years, and has built up an impressive military in that time. Or maybe they even had to fend off a genuine alien invasion.)[hr][color=crimson]Additional Info[/color]: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)[/color][/hider]