Once Upon a Star: Humans vs Shapeshifters

[Thinslayer]

This story is about a war between two spacefaring nations: the Crescent Empire vs the Collective. The Crescent Empire is a federation of self-governing worlds spanning across the entire Milky Way. Rising from the ashes of the free western nations of Earth (most notably the United States; it's a long story), the Empire was founded to be a safe haven of freedom for the beleaguered peoples of the universe. Like most human societies, it's not perfect, and has its own collection of skeletons in its closet, but it is by and large a nation of good people and governed reasonably well, all things considered. While the entire galaxy isn't theirs yet, the vast majority of it is. A fraction of territory in the spiral arm is governed by the United Nations Interstellar Command (or U.N.I.C.), a tyrannical communist state that overtook the planet Earth several centuries ago.

The Empire could theoretically squash them like a bug, but they tolerate them like the real-life U.S. tolerates North Korea - reluctantly, out of pity for its citizens. And the occupation would be a monumental pain in the butt. No, it's not the UNIC that's the Empire's greatest threat. That honor goes to the Collective, an ancient race of shapeshifters genetically related to humans who appeared through mystic portals on planet Aion and threatened to take over. Once a Type III civilization able to harness the power of galaxies, black holes, and psychic magics, their species unfortunately lived long enough to witness the looming heat death of their universe, and the resulting decline of their race drove them to seek refuge in a younger parallel universe: ours.

One would normally think that, given the Collective's dire straits, some sort of agreement could be reached peacefully to allow both races to coexist. A few rational minds within the Collective thought so, as did several members of leadership within the Empire, but the rest of the Collective had other plans. Preaching humanity to be an inferior and unclean race, the populists stirred up pre-existing tensions between the races to incite a full-on war of subjugation. Among the populists were two major factions: the Purifiers and the Preservers. The Purifiers sought the genocide of the human race, considering them a filthy stain on their environment and wholly unfit to live alongside the Collective. The Preservers sought instead to enslave the human race, since they could still be useful despite their inferiority.

Thus began the bloodbath that was the Crescent-Collective War.
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Races

Given names: "Humans," as the citizens of the Empire call themselves. The Collective calls them "enoshi."
Species name: Homo alfus, homo sapiens
Distinctive traits:

• Bio-immortality: Their bodies do not age. They can still die of other causes, and the statistical likelihood of surviving random life events drops off as their age approaches 1000. Most do not live past 700-900 years.
• Magical: Their bodies are genetically modified to transform unused resources (i.e. waste) into mana. As such, they never need to use the restroom, never develop unhealthy bodies, and can nurture immense magic power through judicious nutrition. Most institutions still build relief facilities for normal humans anyway, since they still form a substantial minority in the Empire.
• Space-Orcs: Fast, powerful, and impossibly durable, humans are like cockroaches in their ability to survive mortal events. Going toe-to-toe naked and unsupported, Shifters are no match for the opposition.

Given names: "Shifters," as officially dubbed by the top brass, but their colloquial epithets are "Darkspawn," "Daemons," and jokingly "Terminators" (among the few who've studied their biology). The Collective call themselves "adami."
Species name: Homo artificialis
Distinctive traits:

• Humanoid: They visually resemble humans in most respects, with the most obvious difference being their grayscale skin tones (due to their metallic blood). They never intentionally show this true form to humans, so the vast majority of humans do not know about this. They have mouths, ears, and a nose like any other human, though a growing number of Shifters are forgetting how to speak with the rise of short-range telepathy.
• Techno-immortality: Due to their unique, borderline-artificial biology, their bodies do not age either. Moreover, they have a firm enough grasp on the transcendent elements of human existence (such as the soul) that they can often resurrect a fallen member, either in their former body with healing or in a brand new body generated in a spawning pool. In either case, the old body must be retrieved before resurrection is possible.
• Shapeshifting: They can change their native physical form into another one, but they cannot freely shift into just any shape at will; the DNA of a combat form must be subsumed into their genes to allow transformation at will into that form. They inject different forms to fulfill specific combat objectives in much the same way one changes guns and equipment for the same purpose.
• Energy Efficient: Due to the severe energy deficiency in their own universe, their bodies are designed to absorb and spend energy as efficiently as possible. Their skin is photosynthetic (amplified by clothing), their bodies are cold-blooded and heat-powered, and their brains cut down on unnecessary functions to reduce energy expenditures. As a consequence, their race tends to be lethargic (often misconstrued as "graceful"), frail, and marginally less perceptive than humans. They are genetically capable of a higher energy brain-state (though they don't possess a strong enough digestive tract to reach it), and can mitigate some of these consequences with technology to the point that they're unnoticeable in battle, but as a general rule, they don't perform too well outside their domiciles without additional support.
• Psychics: Their minds are linked at a fundamental level to the fabric of the universe, allowing them to literally will the universe into submission to a limited degree. This tends to manifest on a practical level as extraordinary luck. Weapons jam at the wrong moments, food spills on the commander's lap, radios need percussive maintenance, an armor plate just happens to be cracked, etc. With specialized training and focus, groups of them can impose their will on the universe on a more visible level to do things like shatter starship hulls with resonant frequencies or melt human flesh to its constituent biomatter. The spell that is far and away the most common in their armies is Dark Aura, which causes them to appear demonically dark to their enemies and lends them a frightening aura of power and gravitas (which is why they have acquired the colloquial epithet "Darkspawn"). The spell was historically used for posturing to resolve conflicts without bloodshed, but in recent years has devolved into a masculinity contest and ego-stroker.

Technology

Crescent Empire: Imperial technology is roughly on a Star Trek level of advancement. You have sentient general AI, artificial food, fully autonomous industries, immersive VR, and such like. There's terraforming, weather control, Dyson spheres, ringworlds, and star gates. On a more individual level, people occupy themselves with industry-sponsored higher education, magical meditation, VRMMOs, and more. They travel on fully autonomous flying cars through Coruscant-like cityscapes, if they don't take the public subspace teleporters. Most of this good stuff is only found on the core worlds, though. As you go further out toward the edge of the Empire, the tech level drops to around modern-day (i.e. 2022) information/atomic level, then to industrial, renaissance, medieval, and finally primitive. Pre-industrial worlds are usually left alone to develop independently until they reach an industrial level of advancement, at which point they are "enlightened" to their extraterrestrial situation and granted an opportunity to join the federation. After that, interstellar trade begins in earnest.

Governance is a federal system with an aptly named Executor in the executive branch, a Council of Lords where planetary electors convene, a Council of Elders where popular electors convene, and a Council of Law where the constitutional judges convene. The Empires main interstellar military force is the militia, formed of all eligible citizens who own a spacecraft. Recently, an elite standing military fleet was created called the Azure Armada, equipped with the latest technology and most experienced personnel. They were the first responders to the Aion Crisis that sparked the events of this RP.

Collective: Since most life in their original universe devolved to highly primitive forms, they have become a bit disrespectful with it. Think Zerg from StarCraft. They mostly live underground where geothermal energies are strongest, and cover their domains from top to bottom in rock-eating biomatter. This enables pseudo-teleportation, where they subsume their bodies into the biomass to reconstruct them elsewhere. Their psychic powers grant them potent control over most non-human lifeforms, and are able to use it to perform most tasks that would otherwise involve technology, ranging from manufacturing to computation to interstellar transit. Employment follows a surprisingly ordinary range: there's factory workers, gene-code programmers, transit operators, school teachers, you name it. They are governed by a monarch of particular psychic power, selected for his/her ability to telepathically communicate across the entire Collective.

Spacecraft from both factions can take to the stars via any of three different modes of FTL travel: subspace, hyperspace, and warp. Subspace involves wormhole "gates" to teleport from one point to another; hyperspace involves traversing the spiritual plane; warp involves compressing the fabric of spacetime. Each mode has its benefits and drawbacks. Subspace is fast and safe but demands a costly energy investment; hyperspace is fast and efficient but rough on the psyche; warp is safe and efficient but comparatively slow.

Technology Samples:

Crescent: Battle Droid, Enchanter-type; a sentient, autonomous AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) like most of the Empire's rank-and-file combat units. The Enchanter Droids can cast all kinds of magic, but most focus on support magic, like repairs, shields, or teleports. While not as nimble or strong as their gunner-toting counterparts, they nonetheless form the backbone of the Empire's combat support systems.

Crescent: Warp Fighter, the smallest vessel in the Azure Armada to carry a Quantum Singularity Core (or Q-Core for short) for interstellar propulsion. As their name suggests, they are capable of warp travel, and they can use it in and out of combat freely. As such, they are incredibly mobile fighters, and together with their strong mana-shields and devastating array of magic spell slots, these things can tear holes in demigods and get away with it. Thousands of them can be loaded into a Crescent Supercarrier.

Crescent: Azure Skye, a popular civilian design favored by traders to high-risk worlds and stations, often captained by grizzled militia veterans. They are powered by a fusion core, equipped with a warp drive, and their shielding is second to none for their size class in the civilian market. Most variants are armed and staffed by around a dozen crew members. In a pinch, they can hold their own against a Warp Fighter for a few seconds, just long enough to scram out of dodge.

Collective: Decipede, a monstrous shapeform designed to burrow through and rip apart tough targets. Armed with a plethora of psi-disruptors (AA guns) and Resonance Blades (its "teeth," the main weapon) and armored with hyperdense bone plating, they're tough as nails and there isn't much in this world that can reliably take them down. Energy-equivalent to a battleship.

Collective: Shadow Daemon, a shadowy, draconic shapeform designed for aerial supremacy. Main armament consists of cryo breath (melee), psi-disruptor (AA gun), and hyper-shards (long-range missiles). Able to turn invisible or blink through hyperspace. Frail, but agile. Elites can form psionic shields if they know an attack is coming beforehand. Their shards can tear right through the armor of a Crescent Supercarrier if its shields are down. The Collective fields hundreds of thousands of these Shadow Daemons.

Collective: Juggernaut, one of a handful of Collective constructions that aren't largely biological. These monstrosities are relics of an older era, back when hydrogen was abundant, and were designed to harness the power of micro-stars to propel these staggering vessels to other galaxies. Originally built to transport the Collective to resource-rich areas for energy farming, the design has been repurposed in this new universe for interstellar warfare. You better hope they never get to build one of these.

Collective: Shadow Hunter, a standard rank-and-file army unit. Their arms can transform into psi-disruptors or resonance blades depending on tactical needs, and they can phase through hyperspace across short distances. While they are unarmored, they don't really need it, since they rely instead on speed and ambush tactics to destroy their targets. Their bodies have active camouflage features to obscure them from sight, making them ridiculously hard to spot to human eyes. The Collective fields untold millions of them, and thanks to their resurrection abilities, their numbers do not dwindle easily.

Notable Individuals

Crescent Empire:
Gregor Dravis is the Executor of the Empire. He's a political moderate, broadly speaking, though he recently earned the ire of his constituents by signing the new Affordable Food Act into law, which complicated the already impossible nutrition systems dragging the core worlds down. He campaigned on peace negotiations with the UNIC, and thus far, he's managed to keep his campaign promise. In person, he's pretty reserved and mild-mannered, though prone to outbursts of temper when stressed. While not the most competent executor in the Empire's history, he is conscientious, for which members of all political parties respect him (even if they don't all agree with him).

The Collective:
The current reigning monarch of the Collective is King Uriel, infamous for his arrogance, cruelty, and political weakness. The only reason he's still on the throne is because he's easily manipulated for factional conflicts. He started getting uppity after the war began, thinking himself too important a supreme commander to get put in his place, which puts him at odds with some of the most powerful organizations in the Collective.

Eva is an archivist, like a librarian of sorts, whose role is to collect, organize, and preserve all the data gathered for the Collective. Hers is more of a managerial role, since sentient biomachines handle most of the actual legwork. While politics isn't really her cup of tea, her elder brother is a theater commander for the invasion forces, and she treasures him deeply, so she carries an unspoken inclination toward peace with humanity for his sake.

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Before I conclude this interest check, I have a confession to make: I have never hosted a sci-fi RP before. It's my native setting, one I've created countless mental worlds in, but high fantasy has always been my go-to setting for RP until now, so let me be the first to admit I barely know what I'm doing here. But this constipated tale has waited literally decades to come out of my head and desperately needs its airtime, so here we are. Should I allow players to sign up for either side of the conflict, or just one side? Are we doing a nation RP, adventure RP, or maybe something more meditative along the lines of Arrival? I could use everyone's input to decide what kind of RP we should run with this story. Let me know in the comments whether you're interested at all and what kind of story piques your interest in this setting.

[DELETEDUSER007]

>While I'm not interested in joining another RP at the moment, I do have a bit of advice. I recommend you avoid making this a nation RP as those are generally about players making their own factions that then interact with each other in a giant sandbox, sometimes with an end goal and other times not. And even then there's exceptions to this, but last I recall those don't typically last too long, if at all. That and with only two to three major factions as the main focus, it doesn't really seem to gel with what NRP is about. I definitely think that for your first foray into sci-fi you should keep it focused, and an adventure RP would certainly fit the bill.

>Plus, this takes inspiration from Star Trek, and that was all about the interpersonal relationships of those aboard the Enterprise as they explored the final frontier. Other than that, remember not to let the science take precedence over your story. 'Tis an endeavor to write something enjoyable and fun, not to be the next Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke.

>Oh and if you feel you're up for mediating PVP when players do inevitably clash, then definitely let people play both sides of the conflict. It'd open more opportunities and hooks for those looking to play the morally gray or profiteer type character.

[Thinslayer]

I appreciate the feedback! I agree that a nation RP sounds unwise for what I have planned here. I also wholeheartedly agree that the science should not take precedence over the story. It's cool and all, but it's the people that make the story go. But I am prone to focusing on the fun science stuff, so I will certainly take your advice to heart.

You made a good point about PvP. I'll have to mull over how to mediate that.

[DELETEDUSER007]

I appreciate the feedback! I agree that a nation RP sounds unwise for what I have planned here. I also wholeheartedly agree that the science should not take precedence over the story. It's cool and all, but it's the people that make the story go. But I am prone to focusing on the fun science stuff, so I will certainly take your advice to heart.

You made a good point about PvP. I'll have to mull over how to mediate that.

@Thinslayer

>You're welcome! Although on the last point if I might offer another suggestion, the best way might be to just have players plan out pivotal confrontations with one another and yourself, then have them write a collab scene or some such. That way all parties are aware of what's going to occur, and no one gets taken by surprise in the flow of combat.

[Thinslayer]

@Zyx A collab scene? I hadn't thought of that, but it makes a lot of sense. Battle scenes in literature require short, snappy writing to convey speed, which is surprisingly difficult to pull off in our line of work. RP encourages big posts, not quick, punchy ones. So collab is a great way to close the gap. I'll have to link a Google Docs page for that stuff.

[DELETEDUSER007]

>Mhm. Beyond that I'm not entirely sure what else could be done. I'd say make a Discord, but that generally takes attention away from a roleplay's OOC section - which if the posting is slow by nature - makes the RP seem dead. Granted, a Discord also means faster communication, so it's a tradeoff only you can decide.

>Otherwise, there's not much more I can think of to add. Other than that the best way to see what works, ultimately, is to throw the RP out and see what sticks. It's only after contact with the players that the strengths and weaknesses of a roleplay become apparent, after all.

[Thinslayer]

@Zyx I'm honestly torn over whether to incorporate a chat server. A dedicated chat server can make OOC business snappier to resolve, but getting everyone to sign on and use it can be a real hassle, I've found. Using the forum's OOC section is certainly easier, but slower, and can be difficult to scroll through when necessary. For now, I'm thinking I should only use a chat server if there's ample demand for it.

Thank you again for the advice, Zyx. I needed that.

[DELETEDUSER007]

@Zyx I'm honestly torn over whether to incorporate a chat server. A dedicated chat server can make OOC business snappier to resolve, but getting everyone to sign on and use it can be a real hassle, I've found. Using the forum's OOC section is certainly easier, but slower, and can be difficult to scroll through when necessary. For now, I'm thinking I should only use a chat server if there's ample demand for it.

Thank you again for the advice, Zyx. I needed that.

@Thinslayer

>No problem. 👍

[Thinslayer]

Onto story business!

While the premise of this RP is ostensibly battle action, the true themes are more along the lines of cross-cultural interactions. Both sides are studying one another intently, to the point of laboratory experiments and dissection, and characters from both sides will have to observe the other side to learn their traits, weaknesses, and habits. Their languages and modes of communication differ too, and if one side wants to acquire intel on the other, someone's going to have to learn their language. The resulting intrigue is what I hope defines the RP. And when communications and intrigue break down, the guns come out, and the fighting begins anew. Whether peace can be achieved will depend on the choices made by the people on each side of the conflict.

[trenenp]

Interested

[OddnessApproved]

I'll keep an eye on this.

[Dark Cloud]

as will I.

[Thinslayer]

I'mma give this a bump. I would like to see one or two additional players before starting (though we could theoretically start with the three we have now).

What kinds of characters are y'all keen to play?