Welcome to Malefar VI, the bloodiest, most lawless planet at the ass-end of the Known Universe. It is as if the planet is allergic to the very idea of order. There used to be a planetary government, but it’s power is now limited to one city. Several militant organizations have attempted to seize power, some benevolent, some not, but none of them have lasted.
This exacerbated by the ever-present gangs and brigandry groups on the planet, who are none-too-kind to any sort of unifying presence. Anarchy is good for their business, you see. The recent discovery of Chambers, great underground complexes created by Malefar VI’s now extinct alien natives. Thier purpose is unknown, but they’re filled to the brim with valuable alien technology and artifacts. Sounds good, right? The only issue is that they’re also full of dangerous wild animals, the reanimated corpses of both human colonists and alien natives, and all sorts of other unknown beasties. It takes a brave sort to go into one of the Chambers. These stupid courageous folk are called Chamber Raiders, and they prowl these expansive, underground, complexes in search of excitement, wealth, knowledge, and adventure.
Do you have what it takes?
Malefar VI is the sixth-farthest planet from the sun of the Malefar system, Malefar Prime. Malefar VI is the only hospitable planet in the system, though the word “hospitable” is perhaps to kind. If the constant violence and lack of real hospitals wasn’t pushing the life-expectancy down enough, there’s also the weather. There’s no pattern to it. A stretch of sandy-desert can be blanketed with snow. Rainforests can suddenly undergo massive heatwaves and droughts. The surface consists of hundreds of tectonic plates, moving significantly faster than those of other planets. Devastating natural disasters are almost a weekly occurrence. So, why in the hell does anyone live there? The reasons are two-fold. People come to M-6 (as all the cool kids are calling it, these days.) seeking fortune from the free farmland, the Chambers, or the plentiful natural resources. They either get rich, or lose what money they did have to bandits or failed business ventures. Those that make their money have no desire to leave when they could make even more money. Those that lose their money don’t have the means to travel off-planet.
Large cities, settlements, towns, bases, camps, or sanctuaries are few and far between on M-6. Or, rather, there are a metric shit-ton of them, but few are of any note.
-Serpentis: Controlled by former militant leaders of M-6, The Order of The Serpent, Serpentis is bustling metropolis, and at least semi-safe, which is more than can be said for most Malefarian cities. It’s leader is, by default, whoever leads the Order of The Serpent, The Order selects their leader by rank. When their leader dies, the next highest-ranking member takes their place, and a lot of people get promoted. The only reason that Serpentis isn’t the perfect place to live is its location. Isolated from any other city by a massive stretch of pirate-infested oceans, Serpentis exists on a series of small islands.
-Luna: Controlled by an off-shoot of the Order of The Serpent, The Order of The Moon. Luna is quite similar to Serpentis, and most consider them to be sister-cities, even if their leaders aren’t on the best of terms. Luna is also a bit hard to get to, but that has less to do with location and more to do with the fact that its walls are incessantly besieged by bandits who have a penchant for killing anyone who tries to get into the city.
-Whitestone: A little settlement that looks fairly peaceful and quaint, but contains the fiercest militia of any independent city. Many bandits have attempted to rape and pillage within city limits, and have, to put it as one militiaman put it, “got their shit pushed in.” The city is safe, but small. In order to secure their position, Whitestonians have avoided expansion. This creates a shortage of land and houses, so there are relatively few permanent residents. Luckily, the town has an abundance of Inns and Motels. So many Chamber Raiders come here to sleep for a few nights, buy some shiny new gear and supplies, and sell their fancy alien tech that city has somewhat of a reputation for it.
-Brigand’s Landing: A cobbled-together city populated by the scum of the planet, outcasts, and other undesirables. The Landing has only one law, rape, murder, rob, plunder, or otherwise harass whoever you like, so long as they aren’t another resident of Brigand’s Landing. This being a city populated by...well...brigands, this law gets broken all the time. Luckily, outside bandits don’t bother with it because the citizens are exactly as, if not more, bloodthirsty and ruthless as they are.
-The Order of The Serpent: A former mercenary organization, The Order rose to fame after they managed to bring their law and order to most of Malefar VI. They were much loved by the populace, and for their short rule, they increased the quality of life tenfold. Unfortunately, strife within the organization, as well as constant harassment from banditry caused The Order to slowly lose territory, until it was finally confined to its stronghold of Serpentis. Now a shadow of its former self, The Order had to downsize significantly, leading to many disgruntled former members becoming mercenaries again, or turning to banditry. Currently led by Alistair Karst.
-The Order of The Moon: An offshoot of the Order of The Serpent, the Order of The Moon (from now on, OTM) was created by former Serpents who were dissatisfied with Alistair’s rule. In general, OTM tends to be more conservative and militant than OTS. Currently controls the city of Luna (not to be confused with Earth’s moon of the same name). Led by Sariel Castor.
-The Mercenary Corps: After The Orders rose to power, other mercenary organizations realized that they were rapidly losing power. One by one, they combined and merged into what eventually became the Mercenary Corps. The Corps has an office and mercs ready for hire in all of M-6’s major cities.
-Bandits: There are a seemingly-infinite number of bandit groups, clans, tribes, and organizations. Far too many to name. There are a few that stick out, like Lockleg’s Scavengers or Ajihad’s Nomads. They are varying degrees of evil, varying degrees of greedy, but as a general rule, they’re kind of nuisance.
The Chambers are massive underground complexes, presumably built by the long-extinct natives of Malefar VI. Some are unfathomably large, open rooms with city-like structures. Other appear to be penal complexes. Some might be factories. The point is, these are just guesses. We have no idea what these thing are, and every one of them is a little bit different. They’re inhabited by somehow-reanimated corpses of unlucky adventurers, ancient security drones that attack on sight, and unknown monsters that lurk deep within their depths. But people will pay good money for scavenged alien technology, be it loose wire, computer chips, bits of dead drones, alien bones, or other such things.
The technology of Malefar VI is a bit of a hodgepodge. Modern technology, like plasma and laser weaponry, sweet-ass power armor, and advanced prosthetics are present, but exceptionally expensive. Many Malefarians use now-archaic 21st century technology.
Just throwing this out here to see if it gets any bites. I’ll probably end up doing a bit more development, as well.
Tentatively interested, I'm terribly bad at juggling more than even one roleplay and I put my interest into another one just a moment ago. But, I really like the concepts here.
