Nemesis
Admiral Iosif Vranas, hero of the Second Vorqhul War, was instrumental in establishing a lasting peace for mankind's maturing spacefaring civilization. But with the alien menace pacified, humanity's innate thirst for conflict turned inward. Dissatisfaction with Eos' absolute rule over the outlying colonies simmered over the decades following humanity's clash with the xenos. Colonial outrage boiled over at last on Nuevo Arauco, where the Eos-appointed governors were lynched and independence proclaimed. In a panic, the oligarchs on Eos mobilized the most powerful flagship in humanity's fleet: Nemesis, a warship built extensively with reverse-engineered Vorqhul technology. The Cincinnatus of the Second Vorqhul War was called to duty again. This time, Vranas was charged with turning the ultra-lethal weaponry of Nemesis on Nuevo Arauco in order to set an example to all dissident colonists.
Admiral Vranas and his elite crew left Eos to lay waste to the rebel forces of Nuevo Arauco. A fortnight passed before a spy vessel tasked with monitoring the rebel planet returned to Eos and reported nothing had happened at Nuevo Arauco. Eosian Naval Command quickly realized there could only be one possible explanation: their most capable commander has stolen the most powerful warship in the fleet. Worst of all, nobody has any idea what Vranas intends to do next.
The Eosian oligarchs immediately recognized the scope of the crisis, and their orders to Naval Command were clear: recover the Nemesis and neutralize Iosif Vranas at any cost. Naval Command has devoted every resource at its disposal to track down the Nemesis. Spy vessels have been scattered throughout the colonial systems, using their sophisticated sensor suites to sniff out any sign of their quarry while flotillas of warships lurk through the cosmos, ready for a duel with the rogue ship at any moment. But even with the exhaustive search being carried out by Naval Command, the oligarchs are not satisfied. Their contacts within the black markets have made it known to the captains of illegally-operated vessels that anyone who captures the Nemesis and kills Vranas is entitled to a gargantuan bounty and unconditional pardoning of any and all outstanding warrants.
With such tantalizing rewards, the allure of capturing the Nemesis is very great, great enough to lure you into the search for the errant warship. As the captain of either a naval or pirate starship, you have dedicated yourself and the resources at your disposal to hunting down Nemesis. You are not deterred by the cutting-edge weaponry of that ship nor the skill of its elite crew and its master. Neither are you dissuaded by the overwhelming odds of failure and death or the sheer competition, for Nemesis will not be your only adversary in this adventure. Your fellow captains will not likely wish to share the fortune and prestige of dispatching Iosif Vranas, but can be counted upon to confound your efforts at every turn. Your crew may share your enthusiasm for this endeavor or perhaps they might wish for a larger share of the bounty for themselves; count mutiny among the endless list of perils on your journey as well.
But no matter the odds, you are committed to this adventure. Even if you must travel across a hundred alien worlds or light years of empty space, you will vanquish the Nemesis or die in the attempt.
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Hello all. I'm counting this as my second serious attempt at starting a roleplay. This is a combination of ideas I've been wanting to translate into a roleplay for some time now, and I've made this thread to determine if the RPGuild is interested in these ideas as well.
First of all, I'd like to pin down what exactly this Roleplay is. Nemesis is a large group (+5 players) nation roleplay. Despite officially being a nation roleplay, the faction size will be relatively small: a starship crew comprised of anywhere from 20-5,000 people and a handful of onboard vehicles such as dropships, bombers, ground vehicles, etc. The main plotline will serve as the glue that binds the players together, but players are encouraged to explore their own sub-plots in parallel with the main story.
Nemesis is an advanced literary roleplay, which means that the roleplay will be made up of posts that read in a coherent fashion with some measure of plot progression and few or no grammatical or spelling errors. If you are not used to advanced roleplays, don't run off! Advanced does not mean you are expected to write 50,000-word novels for every post. So long as the post effectively conveys your story, I consider it advanced. However many words you can accomplish that in is fine with me.
Now for something of a historical synopsis; Nemesis is set sometime in the fairly distant future (~300-500 years). Humans have become a space-faring species for some time and have established colonies on 20-40 planets of varying habitability. A century and a half ago, humanity made first contact with another sentient alien species: the Vorqhul. This species proved to be everything xenobiologists feared first contact with another sentient race might be. Two wars were fought with these aliens over the course of a century and a half, resulting in the destruction of many planets, including Earth. Before the Vorqhul could destroy mankind's second homeworld, a brilliant admiral named Iosif Vranas managed to incapacitate a stranded Vorqhul mothership. Admiral Vranas tasked his engineers with gutting the alien vessel of any non-essential mass, leaving a mostly-empty hull capable of housing an entire fleet of human starships. His engineers were also able to extrapolate the location of a Vorqhul planet from the mothership's distortion drive. Vranas assembled his fleet and had his captains tuck their ships within the belly of the mothership - which had been rechristened as the Trojan. Vranas and his fleet then warped to the Vorqhul planet - a heavily-populated fortress world as it turned out. A series of explosives was set off, allowing Vranas' fleet to burst forth from the Trojan and take the nearby Vorqhul ships by surprise. Avenging Earth and the colonies that the aliens had destroyed, Vranas' fleet launched a withering salvo of 100-megaton nuclear warheads upon the Vorqhul planet and its three moons. Satisfied with the absolute carnage inflicted upon the enemy world, Vranas and his fleet warped out of the system before before the immanent retaliatory attack.
Following Vranas' daring raid, Naval Command was able to contact the Vorqhul and notify the species that similar attacks could and would be carried out until peace could be brokered between the two races. The Vorqhul agreed, and a tenuous peace between man and alien was established. Neither species was to venture into or through the Mutual Exclusion Zone, a wide swath of space separating human and Vorqhul planets. To this day, the peace has held, and no combat has transpired between humans and Vorqhul.
Despite the peace, it is widely feared that the Vorqhul will disregard the peace agreement and once again invade human worlds. To this end, Naval Command has busied itself building a new generation of warships built with reverse-engineered technology recovered from the Trojan. Equipped with a Vorqhul-style directed-energy array and a forcefield system all powered by antihydrogen powerplants, these new ships are expected to reliably kill Vorqhul vessels. The backbone of this new Vorqhul-killing fleet is the Nemesis, a versatile ship powerful enough to take the brunt of alien salvos for smaller, weaker ships; or lay waste to solitary enemies with its powerful armament.
But now that the Nemesis and the only human commander ever to win a battle against the Vorqhul are gone, mankind's ability to fight against a Vorqhul attack is severely diminished.
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I plan on putting more content here as this thread (hopefully) generates interest. But I think this is sufficient to give a sense of what this roleplay is about and stimulate some brainstorming. Feel free to ask as many questions as you'd like. I hope to get this to OOC and IC quickly once the interest check takes off.
