It is 2253. The solar system has been colonized. Humanity has spread to live in everything from cities floating in Venus' atmosphere to towns hugging the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan. Small mining outfits dot the thin asteroid belt; research stations float in solar orbit, and exploration ships push the boundaries of the Oort cloud.
Despite centuries of half-joking effort, nobody has cracked the secret of faster-than-light travel. 100 years ago, the Tilson Expedition embarked on a massive generation ship sent toward a star likely to have an Earth-like world. Their penultimate transmission revealed that there was no habitable world orbiting their destination, and they had altered course toward the beta site.
Nations, both new and old, vie for space in the solar system. Earth - the only planet with air we can actually breathe; air that's sitting there, for free, was constantly mired with infighting right up to the day it disappeared.
Observation telescopes reveal the Earth was there one day, and gone the next. It simply vanished.
Luna, after some unusual wobbling, continued along in the Earth's former orbit.
Now the many nations of humanity sit with limited vital resources, with tensions mounting and a deepening economic crisis. Water is difficult to come by. Oxygen is difficult to come by. Food is difficult to come by.
Some megacorps are making a killing, entire moons have declared independence, and remnant Earth-bound nations are scrambling to find out what happened.
Social media has adopted the term "Earthgone" to describe the situation.
Then the ultimate transmission from the Tilson Expedition came:
Tilson Expedition to anyone who can hear this. Monsters are out here, and they're coming your way. They found us - tracked us down like a deer. They toyed with us, took their time, extracted memories and our [transmission interrupt - reacquiring] -rnings in fiction; stories like interminable grating noises that never stop, seeping behind your eyes, in your thoughts, intruding like gnats in your ears, never-ending [transmission interrupt - reacquiring] Listen. Whoever you are, you can't let them live. Beware the ones who bleed. It's the first sign of the second coming and judgment day, when God is triumphant hand-in-hand with the devil whose BANG!
The transmission has continued unabated - not static, but silence.
Earth is gone. Will humanity be next?
What is This?:
This is an NRP set in the Solar System. You will play as a nation, corporation, or other solar entity struggling with the revelation that there are cosmic horrors in the universe, and they're coming this way. I will play as cosmic horrors in the universe, and I'm coming your way.
There is no plot beyond the ones we create. You can play as a corporation which has whole-heartedly gone for human sacrifice. Or perhaps you'd prefer cultists finally seeing the light of day? An innocent, standard, hard sci-fi nation trying to talk some damn sense back into the solar system? Or a fractured state looking for answers, because, damnit, magic is not a thing and Cthulhu can't exist. It's up to you!
We here in the NRP section love to worldbuild. So, that's what this RP is designed to facilitate.
Setting:
The year is 2253. Humanity has colonized the solar system. Technology is "near-future"; that is, there is no faster-than-light, and there is no ...obvious, visible... magic. Yet. Who knows? That's up to us! Impossible, insanity-driving things ate our first intersolar generation ship! Anything can happen now! Up might be down! Blue could be orange! Cats and dogs, living together in harmony!
It's mostly-hard Sci-Fi slamming into Cosmic Horror.
History:
Beyond this section, the entire history of the solar system (and everything) is up to the players. Here's what's happened so far:
0. Present-day history up to 2019 takes place in the foreground. 1. Humanity colonizes the majority of the solar system. Which parts? That's up to us. 2. Earth does not unite. Nations still cover different parts of the surface. Some have colonies on other planets/moons, others do not. 3. Some planets/moons are independent of Earth. 4. Earth is a very valuable planet, as it is the only one with "free" air and water and food. 5. A generation ship is sent to look for habitable exoplanets. This is the Tilson Expedition. 6. The Tilson Expedition has to reroute to the beta site, as close-range spectrometry reveals the alpha site doesn't have a habitable planet. 7. Something horrifying happens to the Tilson Expedition, revealed to the entire Solar System in their last, disturbing, transmission. 8. Earth just up and disappears one day in an event known as "Earthgone". The moon is mostly fine, though.
Rules:
0. Standard Guild Site Rules 1. Don't break the game. -This includes taking any issues you might have with another player into PM's. -This also includes obvious NRP/RP best practices, like do use decent grammar, don't godmod, don't have a Mary Sue, etc. 2. Anything weird and/or not covered by rules 0-1 will be dealt with by me.
Application:
How to apply: 1. Fill out the nation sheet below, posting in the OOC tab. 2. Upon acceptance, post it in the Characters tab.
The following fields are required: [u]Name of Nation:[/u] [u]Location:[/u] [u]Summary-in-a-Sentence:[/u] [u]Government Description:[/u] [u]Economic Overview:[/u] [u]Military Overview:[/u] [u]Cultural Overview:[/u] [u]History:[/u]
The following fields are entirely optional! Invent your own if you want/need to, or ignore as many as you'd like. It's your nation sheet! [u]Diplomatic Overview:[/u] [u]Theme Song:[/u] [u]Flag:[/u] [u]Major Character Bios:[/u] [u]Technological Overview:[/u] [u]Cult/Magical Overview:[/u] [u]Scent:[/u] [u]Favorite Colors:[/u] [u]Most Common Topiary:[/u]
What are ships and/or what is ship-to-ship combat like? I'm assuming well under Star Wars/Star Trek/WH40k levels. Are armed ships even a thing? Are there space pirates?
What are ships and/or what is ship-to-ship combat like? I'm assuming well under Star Wars/Star Trek/WH40k levels. Are armed ships even a thing? Are there space pirates?
Sure, why not? If you want detail, I imagine that most ship-to-ship combat takes place at a range of millions of miles, with days before engagements resolve, until right at the last second when two ships shoot past each other and hordes of antiship ordinance is exchanged. Something along the lines of: "Oh, we know where the general orbital trajectories of the enemy are and where the delta-v of the enemy might allow them to be, so let's fire missiles and anti-ship obstacles in that projected path". Meanwhile, the enemy does the same thing, and you've still got several days before either sides' ordinance makes contact. It's a game of area-of-effect and area denial, trying to predict when and where the enemy will be and trying to funnel them into a kill box while avoiding getting funneled yourself. Then, when ranges close sufficiently, it becomes a game of missiles vs. close-in-weapons-systems and lasers vs. armor and decoys and counter-measures to your own countermeasures. And then, when there's barely a kilometer between each ship, it becomes a game of who has the most firepower and flak and raw lead and processing power that they can throw at the other guy in the 5x10^-579 seconds when the ships pass each other.
I would really love to get into some good NRP. I am already going through some nation ideas, but have some questions. How realistic is the setting expected to be? You mention that the oxygen is hard to come by, so I assume we will have to justify how our people survive on other celestial bodies, but there are other problems than just getting oxygen and water, namely some moons have huge tidal forces and heating, magnetic storms and other fun things. So if we choose some planet or a moon to inhabit, do we have to be super realistic about its enviroment? What about humans? I assume that in the year given the technology will be more advanced, so various implants, modifications or extensions to human body would be somewhat normal? What about longterm effects of living in lower (or higher) gravity environments. How big nations are we talking about approximately?
I mean making Oxygen is not so hard Afterall Water is called H2O and most of everything passing by Jupiter is made of rocky ice surfaces now I think food is gonna be the hardest thing to make now your question dealing with the moons of The gas giants which have like heated cores that make Inner oceans possible i think those ones would be THE HOLY GRAIL of the solar system, Now if you deal with mars i think that place is more or less the new Industrial heartland of the solar system because of (INSERT THE NUMBER OF PROJECTS TO SEND MAN TO MARS HERE)
Well if you have water and energy then making food is simple as well - you have hydroponics, with sizable human population you would also have a lot of natural fertilizer, plus most of artificial fertilizers are based on nitrogen which I assume isnt so hard to come by in space either.
What is the technology level in the energy area? Do we assume that nuclear fusion is functional and accessible enough to be used in such distant colonies and harsh environments? Or do we stick with solar, geothermal (where applicable) or regular nuclear reactors? What about spaceships, what fuel do they use? Do we stick with the current system of hydrogen-oxygen reaction, which would mean the ships would have to stop and refuel or do we go with something more "star-trekie" like and kinda blackbox it into "well there is the engine that moves us through space, it works and doesnt really need anything".
I am trying to figure out what would the nations trade amongst each other - if the fuel system was in place, I assume the colonies occupying frozen worlds such as Jupiter moons (which was my first thought at a nation) and other ice-comprized bodies could become big fuel refineries, trading it for other things less accessible on their worlds, such as metals, which would be mined from asteroids.
I will say this in general about technology level questions:
I left it vague on purpose. As long as we're below faster-than-light tech, I'm satisfied in general. One of the inspirations for tech-levels that I was thinking of was The Expanse. However, this roleplay is designed to facilitate collective worldbuilding, and that's why I left it so vague.
Beyond that guideline, I have no problem with you, as a player, making your tech as "black-boxy" as you feel comfortable with. Maybe you're an exogeology fan, and you love figuring out all the intracies involved in mining specific minerals from specific locations in the solar system, but can't be assed to figure out how the heck it's all powered. Therefore, you might have great detail about your nation's mining tech, and then just claim your flight tech is "Epstein Drives" and leave it at that.
I, most of all, encourage you to steal ideas from each other. If one nation has a good solution for power, then it's probable (with the other player's permission) that other nations would use the same tech. We do it all the time in real life.
@RaylahI mention that vital resources are hard to come by because I want the disappearance of Earth to be a Big DealTM. I love that you've identified other important problems - like tidal forces and lack of magnetospheres and genuinely fun things to think about. Please, go into as much or as little detail as you'd like to try and solve/ignore them! Realism is arbitrary when giant, cosmic-horror, pseudomagical beings made Earth disappear. Biohacking and cyborging and augmented reality and other such things are, again, up to you. They're certainly within the realm of possibility. As far as longerm effects, we've had ~200 years of space habitation, so, again, it's something you could include in your nation.
As far as size, try not to claim half the solar system. I guess a guideline is no more than one entire planetary gravity well, but most likely a spread between several different moons/planets/asteroids/space stations in different locations. As long as there's reasonable room for other players, it's probably good. The solar system is a big place. Earth is already enormous, and there's lots more places besides Earth.
As far as energy and space-fuel, I lean toward things that encourage player interaction and/or trade. So, I like the idea of fuel. Trade is one of the major reasons I included an "economic overview" section in the nation sheet.
Posting my WIP just in case someone wants to debate over the solar system history part - I can change pretty much anything if it collides with other people's sheets.
Name of Nation: The Icy Frontier Collective Location: The Frontier Base on Ganymede (Jupiter’s moon) Summary-in-a-Sentence: Newly formed nation focused on industry Government Description: Authoritarian socialism Surviving in harsh conditions has never been easy, it requires people to be united towards common goals. Democracy, even at its best days, has always caused friction and infighting, a luxury one cannot afford when trying to build a nation in such a remote and hostile part of the solar system.
The main ruling body of the Collective is the Council - seven people who decide over everything and anything important. Originally, all seven were the leaders of the revolution, but some were replaced over the last two decades due to old age or (‘natural’) death.
The peace is kept by the Sheriffs, a police force tasked with both upholding the laws and solving crimes and also with tracking down enemies of the state.
The Bureau is taking care of all the bureaucracy, from citizen evidence through all the production to trade and other offworld activities. It makes sure that everyone has a job, enough food and an assigned place to live.
Economic Overview: The vital part of the Collective’s economy is industry and trade. As the base is located in a thick layer of ice above an enormous subsurface ocean, a large system of pumps and tubes is in place to extract the water and deliver it to the refineries located in upper levels of the base, close to the surface. The water is used to create oxygen, pumped into barrels after being purified into drinkable quality and most importantly used to synthesize rocket fuel.
Until the revolution the Far Reach Corpotation handled all traffic to and off the planet, as well as all the trade with manufactured goods. When the independence was declared, one of the first obstacles for the Council to overcome was to create alternative delivery routes for both import and export, hire cargo ships and crews and find customers for their goods. The latter showed to be an easy task, as the demand for oxygen and fuel was always high this far from Earth. In time, the Icy Frontier Collective was able to assemble a smaller fleet of cargo ships and secured trading with multiple trade stations and colonies.
Military Overview: Cultural Overview: History: The Frontier Base was established at the beginning of the 22nd century when humanity started to expand into further into the solar system and required a refueling and resupply station to be placed behind the asteroid belt. The Far Reach Corporation, at the time the technological leader in the area of space travel and inhabitation, was tasked to construct a small space station positioned in a safe distance from Jupiter’s deadly magnetosphere to which ships could safely fly and refuel without having to land, and a base positioned on one of the planet’s moons, capable of retrieving water from surface or below and manufacturing oxygen and fuel.
The Far Reach employed the best scientists and tasked them to solve seemingly impossible problem - how to put a human habitat on an icy rock in space, that is continuously bathed in deadly radiation, surface temperatures are around -200°C at most times, and Jupiter’s large gravity well draws all kinds of asteroids, which then often hit its moons. But there was water present, and when you have water, you can make oxygen and you can make fuel, which, coincidentally, also means that you can make a fortune. And when there is money involved, no problem is unsolvable.
Eventually the plans were completed and several ships filled with building materials and automated machinery headed towards Ganymede, the biggest of Jupiter's moons. The first part of the base construction had to have been fully automated - the base would be buried deep in the planet’s ice crust to protect the habitat from radiation on the surface, but it took several years to build before it was ready to accept its first human inhabitants.
The pioneers arrived to the base in 2128. They were all experts in their respective fields - builders and architects with experiences from constructing colonies on Luna, Mars or Venus, technicians to maintain the generators and life support systems, doctors, scientists in various fields like geology, chemistry or astronomy. Their goal was simple - to determine the best ways to extract water either from the planet’s surface or from the enormous subsurface ocean, refine it into fuel and then safely dispatch it to the new space station. There were 74 people in the original group, but before the base was declared fully operational in 2144 that number grew to over 2.500. The habitat was expanded greatly to accommodate the rising population, adding not only new utility areas, but also places to have fun and relax, including large biodomes simulating the natural environment on Earth (except for the gravity, which was approximately on the same level as on Luna). Incidentally, this rise in ‘luxury’ also caused another spike in population, as the company employees were allowed to bring families and fully relocate to Ganymede.
At the end of the 22nd century, the Frontier Base was fully self-sufficient in the most important areas such as energy, air, water or food, but a lot of things still had to have been imported - mainly building materials and ores from various mining stations throughout the solar system. And, of course, anything that was considered ‘luxurious’ on Ganymede came from Earth - things as simple as organic fabrics (especially wool, as the sheep and llamas don’t do well in low gravity environments), certain fruits or vegetables, or more complicated like specialized tools or medicines. At that time a second generation of Frontierans was born, people who have never been to Earth or other places and considered Ganymede to be their home planet. The result was a spike in nationalism and growing discontent with the Far Reach Corporation who continued to receive all the profits created by the base, giving only a small portion back via supplies, wages and necessary repairs to the infrastructure.
By the year of 2228 the population stabilized at around 4.500 people and after two severe accidents regarding the outdated life support systems, people started openly protesting against Far Reach. The first protests were peaceful, but after the company tried to suppress them with force, more and more people started joining in, all leading to an open revolution in 2232. During three days of blood and violence all of the Corporation security forces were defeated and the rebels officially declared independence from any outer powers. Anyone who wouldn’t pledge allegiance to the newly formed nation was either imprisoned and forced to work or executed.
The Far Reach tried to retake the base several times, but the hostile surface provided perfect protection, all the citizens had to do was to cut off all the entry points and defend them for a couple of days, before the invaders had to give up. The Corporation tried to avoid damaging the base in hopes of reclaiming it and resuming operations, but when they haven’t been successful, they decided that if they can’t have the base, no one will have it. The decision has been made to bombard the surface from orbit, destroying the settlement and everything in it. Fortunately other corporations, nations and colonies from the region stepped in and prevented the attack, as Frontier Base was one of the main fuel suppliers in the area and the war for independence has already created a shortage on local markets. Far Reach was forced to back out and without its main source of income it soon went bankrupt.
Meanwhile, the new nation was formed, finding its place in the system’s economy and diplomacy, forming its own laws, regulations and necessary bureaucracy, attempting to start building their own battle fleet, just in case someone else comes to take their home.
I might be able to join this later, but I doubt I'll be able to for now. School's starting up in a couple of weeks for me, I might join after I get used to the daily bombardment of work.
Here we go! I finished up my nation, a large collective of people called The Magpies!
Name of Nation: The Magpies
Summary-in-a-sentence: Why live small on the ground when you can live large in space?
The Pica, also known as the Pica Pica (the Scientific name for the Magpie bird), a ship that started as a large colony vessel that was enroute to Mars from Earth but decided to start it’s own life among the stars and not on some dusty planet. Now, the Pica is a colossal ship grown many times it’s original size from hard work and engineering skills of it’s inhabitants. Most food is grown internally, enough to sustain them and their children, but in a few cases is needed to be sourced externally if mistakes happen with hydroponics, and additionally luxury food items (and a large amount of luxury items that are not their own creations and exports) need to be imported, by credit or item trade. Water is gained from mining asteroids for ice, which provides them with enough water to drink and shower with, and interior purification plants help preserve what water is flushed down the bowl. At present, the Magpie has a whopping population of one point three million people, and is steadily growing.
At the top of the Magpies is someone known as Core. Core is not actually a person, at least, any more, but is the former captain who has had everything in his brain uploaded into Pica in order for the Magpies to continue under his direction. He watches through every camera, every sensor, and everything else within or connected to Pica.
Whilst Core has ultimate power, underneath him is The Silver Queen (or King, depending on gender). The Silver Queen is an official elected by the Magpies every five years to make decisions just like a president, but is underneath Core in government ranking. The Silver Queen or King is given a code that can delete Core if he for some reason starts to break down in programming, a code which changes after every Silver Queen is elected so each one receives a unique code. However, the Silver Queen or King who does so must do so only for the good of the people, and so if Core is shut down, the Silver Queen must die by starvation in front of her people.
That brings us to the final member of the Government; if Core is shut down by the Silver Queen, the Golden Servant will take her place in power until a new Queen is elected. Though not having any real political power in the Magpies, it is very well known that the Golden Servant is perhaps one of the most powerful people in the government system. Serving as a direct servant to Core and the Silver Queen, the Golden Servant can have a lot of sway in convincing the Silver Queen to pick a certain route of option, and is a top-tier adviser to both, Golden Servants being written into law as serving from youth until death as servant and adviser. The Golden Servant is a random child chosen by Core at birth, and is a great honour for the family the Golden Servant comes from, as it escalates them in social level to the highest points and grants them very good quarters, though not as good as the Golden Servant when he grows old enough to move into his own royal quarters.
Other points of the Magpies’ Government is that the Silver Queen (and by extension, the Golden Servant) have a government office that work for them, including some diplomats. Some areas of the Pica have locally elected councillors that can make decisions in their area, such as adjustments to certain procedures in that area, so long as it abides by Magpie General Law.
The Magpies are well-set economically, with trade open to all with both credits and items, such as spare resources. They often do not trade out items they need, such as food, but will happily intake that resource, providing their own goods in return. With patented designs, they earn a hefty income by trading off tools and various other technological goods - they have the mindset to known that even if they create something they may not use, they can look at it and determine if it is useful to others such as dirtsiders, and trade it off if it is, sometimes even mass-producing such tradeable tools if they have solid patents. They are swift to sue if they see someone unauthorised creating or using their tools, and use various goods-control methods to ensure their exports are used for what they are intended for and not reverse-engineered or reproduced.
There are two sections of the Magpie Military; the Marines and the Navy. The Magpie Military protect both the inside of the Pica and the outside, with Marines acting as the police force as well as the military on the inside, and the Navy with it’s ships on the outside (as well as marines on those ships).
The Magpie military is securement-based. Most military operations of the Magpies consist of ensuring there is enough left to be salvaged and either used as a whole or torn apart and used to help expand the Pica. They will not however hesitate in destroying something that is too much of a risk to try and secure. With their Pica, a ship, being their home, the Magpie Military will do everything it can to minimise damage to it and protect the families living within.
Their ships are usually built for one of two purposes; Boarding And Takeover, or Devastation. The Boarding ships are often used when a threat is light enough that it is able to be boarded, and most of the time aren’t boarding ships per se. Some of the Boarding ships are designed to make ships ready to board before the action boarding ships come in - this means weapons that are oriented toward disabling the ship, with weapons targeting weapons and drive systems to prevent the ship fighting back or fleeing, and high-powered lasers to clean up if it comes to close range. The actual boarding ships either lock on and burn through, or use pod-deployed Magpie Marines to smash through the hull and invade the inside by force if burning through is either not an option or too risky. Marines with boarding gear are usually ultra-heavies, wearing armoured suits in order to force the crew into submission or eliminate them if necessary.
Devastation ships are ships built with the purpose of destroying a foe with overwhelming firepower, and dealing as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time in order to neutralise a threat entirely. If a Devastation-type ship asks you to surrender, if you do not do so after the first communications message, you’ll find yourself with heavy weapons relentlessly barraging you, around you, and more Magpie Devastator-type ships moving into position to neutralise the threat to the Pica and the Magpie People. Devastator-ships do not hesitate, and only stop once you have sent a surrender notification, in which they won’t even let you flee, they’ll call in Boarding ships to take everyone prisoner.
In general, the Magpie Navy has nothing larger than a frigate, however it sacrifices a lot of commodities onboard those ships for weapons space. This is balanced out by ships returning to dock with the Pica every few days after their outgoings, and ships operating at long-range getting their pay multiplied if warranted. The reason for their ships being small in class is that a lot of the resources go into expanding and maintaining Pica, and because the Pica is so large that it can fit a few drydock bays inside of it, where ships can move inside and be worked on from top to bottom for everything from general maintenance, but more commonly for large-scale maintenance and refits.
Magpies follow the rule of ‘finders keepers’ outside of the Pica or it’s guardian ships of the navy. A ship that has ended up abandoned by all hands or involved in some form of accident that leaves the ship inoperable will often find itself with several Magpies circling like vulture. If someone tries to argue that it’s their ship, and the Magpies can’t have it? That’s their problem, unless there is at least one person on board or the ship is remotely controlled (outside of a sweep zone around the Pica for the latter, that is) the Magpies will swoop in and take it, claiming maritime rights of acquiring derelict ships. Their ways have gotten to the point that some insurance brokers even have clauses in regards to what happens insurance-wise if the insured ship or it’s contents end up in the hands of the Magpies, and some people sometimes will even leave a ship out there for the insurance money and claim it was just stolen from them.
Magpies are loyal to themselves first and non-Magpies second. That doesn’t mean they won’t offer a massive amount of trust to non-Magpies, but if the Magpies are crossed then they’ll most likely demand compensation. If the compensation is given, no harm as the problem was corrected, however if no compensation or apology is given, the Magpies do anything from closing off trade to using loopholes in the law to start hijacking ships.
The Magpies have their own laws just like everywhere else, and many of those laws are common laws you would find everywhere else - no burglary, no stabbing eachother to death in a hidden nook in reactor bay seven. The death sentence is common for those who have commited higher crimes, with the Magpies fully accepting of such a sentence for criminals; one less person to eat food and breathe oxygen.
However, where they have their good, the Magpies can also be cruel. A criminal who committed a crime, particularly those in higher crime who have little more hope than death, can volunteer for various other punishments as substitutes, such as experimentation or torture, so long as they have a chance to live. In some cases, they do. In most cases, they do not survive, and in others, they live an endless life of indenture in a project by some labrats wanting to increase the strength of the Magpies.
The Magpies were once not called the Magpies, nor were they their own independent nation. The Magpies used to be colonists, on a ship headed from Earth to Mars. They were an unhappy bunch, a majority being engineers and other jobs working for corporations that underpaid them for their hard work. Nonetheless, they were forced to work, as per contracts, as per life.
And then something went wrong. The Pica lost power and was left drifting slightly off course, but it was bad enough that they were on a near-collision with the sun. What was left of the ship knew that they wouldn’t hit the sun, but they would come near enough that they were all going to be cooked alive, which would be worse. The crew worked overtime with the help of engineers that were on board the ship as part of the colonists, whilst distress signals were sent out, requesting help. For forty two hours there was no help, until a ship docked with them.
What turned out to be help quickly turned out not to be, as the light frigate that had docked with them appeared to actually be pirates, finding an easy ship to loot basic supplies from. The Pica’s residents were not having any of it however, and stormed the pirate ship with anything they could find, taking losses but managing to take over the ship.
It was there that the Magpies really were formed. They salvaged part of the pirate ship, using it to fix the Pica. A look at the sensors showed that, despite time passing before the original distress signals, no rescue was on it’s way. And it was there that the Magpies decided to form an independent nation. Taking the pirate ship with them, they moved into the asteroid belt before anyone knew that they had gone missing, and went to work.
The Magpies, whilst nobody knew them, started off illegally. With an entire colony ship to feed, they turned to piratry themselves, hijacking ships and linking them up with the Pica to offer more living space to those on board. It was a year before anyone actually noticed anything happening - a corporation noticed a big shipment had gone missing, losing them millions of credits, and investigated. Pica was reported by the investigator as being a ‘supership’ at that time; ships were no longer crudely welded onto Pica, but were now being torn to pieces and being built on as expansions. Computers could detect room layouts and thus determine the classes of ships, but couldn’t place what the rooms were now actually used for; Glasgow-class frigates’ missile bays were detected in a network of Snowplow-class freighters that had their cargo bays now turned into rooms that weren’t half-bad. This of course prompted response. The Pica was involved with several ship engagements as it grew up, with the victor sending shuttles out to grab pieces of the loser to melt down and then use as new pieces to the supership.
Soon, due to it’s size, Pica had to move out of the asteroid belt. By this point, it was far too big for anyone to reasonably stop without sending a small battlegroup to do so, and nobody was willing to do that because they had no idea what hidden surprises that the Pica had. It was there, in that newly strong position, that Pica could declare itself an independent nation. A new, formally established nation meant new opportunities. Trade opened up, people started to move into the Pica (and some moved out), and the Magpies became their own nation and a place to live just like anywhere else.
