I think my WIP nation will qualify as villainous. They seek to conquer and subjugate all to the will of the Golden Flock. Some of them want to be loved and others just want to horde sulfur however.
I figured such a strange and dangerous force could be appropriate given the situation and Sigma's mention of forces outside the border. In terms of scale I am not sure where to place them, since they need to be dangerous enough that they actually are horrifying and not just a mere pest, but not so dangerous that they override all other potential story arcs.
Banner/Flag: (a dark red U shaped emblem made of many logarithmic spirals lined in gold and filled with marble is the moniker of the golden swarm.)
Type of Government: Logocractic Autocracy
The Vopson rule based on the mind that dominates the most, the idea that dominates absolutely.
Leader(s): The Golden Flock
The Golden Flock is a high minded flock, a mass aggregation of Vopson who have come to the collective conclusion that the Golden Swarm is to inherit the universe and must subjugate all other species to their will. Slavery is the only future for all other species, to be treated as the Golden Flock demands of it. Usually this means being put into forced labor or be made into a Swarm Protectorate where your only tax is in population to send off world for whatever purpose the Golden Swarm sees of it. The Golden Flock tends to handle smiling art affairs and so usually just uses the slaves as a work force and as battle thralls with a whole merit system. The good pets good the fancier toys and maybe their own planet of slaves to rule if they prove exceptionally loyal to the swarm.
Persons of Importance: Fuzzy Embrace, Silicon Rain, Sulfur Breeze
The three major sub-flocks of the the golden flock's influence are Fuzzy Embrace, Silicon Rain and Sulfur Breeze. They defer to the Golden Flock itself, but are ultimately autonomous in their own thought clouds and are loyal more out of pragmatism than a genuine assimilation of the Golden Flock's Ideology.
The Fuzzy Embrace is notoriously Xenophilliac in mentality, stealing other cultures as part of their own, importing the most Xenos to the Golden Flock as pets and in general just want to be loved. The space wasps. Want to be loved.
Silicon Rain is the power opposite, they hate other species entirely and see them only valuable as target practice. They evidently have a fetish for orbital bombardments, as silicon rain is often found pelting random planets with individual Vopson in asteroid ships when there's nothing important to do.
Sulfur Breeze is the more intellectual one of the major sub-flocks, being apt to just horde lots of sulfur from io-like worlds and experiment with it all the time. They have aggregated much of the sulfur the Golden Swarm has at hand and seem indifferent to other species. They just don't care as long as the Xenos don't touch their sulfur.
Species(s) and Demographics: 90% Vopson, 2% Jakai, 8% Other/TBA
The Vopson when alone are animal-like, but when mating they are intelligent. The mating Vopson control the swarm as long as it is mating, and mating lasts. Long periods of time. The Vopson can grow into huge collectives, augmented with Violet crystals refined from acidic worlds and create a massive amount of their kind coordinated by the mating Vopson. The Vopson lose intelligence when they aren't mating.
The Vopson are a flying species that come from a acidic world and are used to bathing in sulfuric acid- they are sour in taste and their blood is toxic. The Vopson rely on prehensile tongues and various contraptions to enforce their will upon the Galaxy.
Their wings are often described as leathery. Their coloration is rather vibrant, reds yellows and very dark shades of violet tend to be what their species have for dimorphism. The Vopson eyes tend to be a ghastly pale color, like cue balls that are oriented above their mouth. The Vopson use a tongue that splits into five tendrils which individual Vopson use to manipulate their environment in tandem with their raptor-like legs. The Vopson are usually not alone and rely on numbers to do heavy lifting.
The Vopson range from around the size of house cats to the size of a human child (Or about 3'). Their wingspans are double their body size. Their kind has trouble on worlds where flight is hard and/or have high gravity. It doesn't crush them, but it's very unpleasant and punishing. Some Vopson like being on high gravity worlds just because of that. They tend to not be long lived flocks.
The Vopson breed by connecting to each other. The Vopson are hemethrodites but have a extremely contact intensive form of intercourse where they secrete a binding mucus. This sexual glue is strong enough that two Vopson usually are stuck to each other for a several days on end. In breeding there is a direct neural connectivity that give Vopson in intercourse a higher chemical/neural level than your typical Vopson, allowing these mating Vopson to act as the managing organs of a Vopson flock. The Vopson give live birth, both parents do so. It is not live birth through a uterus, it is through the back like certain species of Terran frogs. The Vopson have a metamorphesis from a maggot form to a adult form. The majority of maggot Vopson don't survive to adulthood however, as the maggots are not raised with any parenting and often end up being smacked on or killed by other Adult Vopson. These maggot Vopson are all over the place, they are like large segmented chilla filled worms and are even more expendable than the adults.
Other species tend to be used as combat thralls or simply as a tribute species that the Vopson Swarm in the region uses for whatever purpose they want. Harvest systems are actually more the norm for Vopson, but the Golden Swarm developed the tribute system as a more "civil" system of treating your client species as animals you can do anything you want with.
Said clients are TBA since I am likely going to use clients that make sense for wherever they end up being.
One client species of note are the Jakai, who are giant elephantine humanoids the Vopson like to use as projectiles and shock troops. The Jakai were conquered and enslaved by the Vopson over a century ago and have been bred and harvested for their tough bones and luxurious hides ever since. Also the meat. Their trunks also make for a great ornament for any nest. The Jakai culturally are a very animistic species, and don't seem to even understand their situation. The Jakai believe the Vopson to have been a punishment inflicted on their kind they must honor in their enslavement. The massive Jakai often require multiple rail gun shots to take down even when ass naked, though landing such shots is not that hard since the Jakai are around 21' in height. The Jakai tend to be given heavy molten sulfur projectors as their standard issue weapon. The Jakai only make up around 2% of the Golden Swarm's population.
Religion Description and Demographics: 91% Golden Flock Devotion, 9% Anything else
The vast majority of Vopson have a slave-like faith based on the sacrifice of all free thought and determination in exchange for free action. In short, their whole existence is in the name of the flock and that being part of this flock enables a superiority and privilege over all other life to do as one pleases. In short, You bend to the desires of the flock and you are free to do as you desire to anything else as long as it doesn't contradict the will of the flock.
Culture: The Golden Swarm's culture is centered around massive congregations who act in harmony to one and another, following the flows as they must. The Vopson are a communal society in many regards, mainly in that individual lives don't even exist. Instead you have the flock which one is linked to by a chemical flow that through techhnooogy became far more intensive than what nature would allow. Privacy does not exist, your mind is always suspect be to outside invasion and you charge memories with the flock. For this reason it can be seen why the Vopson have such a hard time understanding others peices, and vice versa for that matter- without the intimacy the Vopson have with each other mentally, spiritually and physically we seem little more than animals tha figured out space craft to them. The Vopson are not a true hive mind, they don't have a hive structure. Instead they are directed by mating Vopson and the Golden Swarm is no exception to this- the orgasmic gold is frequently amplified with the Golden Swarm in practical at. This have the Golden Swarm the ability to unify the Vopson at a much larger scale than a flock normally ever grows to. The Golden Swarm as a whole is not centralized, but tried to keep a large and dense aggregation into order to ensure conformity across the flock with exceptions made for "useful" sub-flocks. Independant flocks that develop get subjugated back into the golden swarm in a mind war- which is a war that involves eradicating unwanted thinking that breaks away from the prime essence of the dominant flock. Many lesser thoughts however, tend to vary from Vopson to Vopson and if you get a small number with a breeder seperate from the golden flock new thinking might emerge.
The material culture of the golden swarm is very oriented around products derived from their slaves and from precious metals. Clays and stone also are frequently used, often with synthetic chemical mixtures and colorful staining to make organic seeming mountain cities where trillions of Vopson may dwell. If there is anything the Vopson are good at, it is chemistry. Indeed, it is their advancements in chemistry which allowed them to get off their rock to begin with. The Vopson are fine with leaving dead bodies all over the place since they tend to sleep on the ceiling anyways. Other fluids often are frequently spotted in Vopson colonies, the less spoken of them the better. While the Vopson on first impression come off as a mindless swarm, the truth is even worse. They are a swarm of beings who perceive themselves as morally exempt as long as they labor for and devote themselves to the Golden Swarm, and such have a long record of insanely grotesque actions taken against their fellow Vopson and other species.
The Vopson make use of cave farming.
The Vopson space fleets tend to be like floating mobile homes, massive asteroids they stylize with all manner of shit (like the remnant spacecraft of their enemies) and make a habitation zone inside. The Vopson have all manner of hymns and songs you can sontantly hear them passively singing when not in a state of action- where than they turn ominously silent. Basically, if the singing stops you are fucked.
History: The Vopson are nomads from another part of the Galaxy, and evidently have been around for a several centuries before their recent incursions on human space. Their sour homeworld of Sidolico would on first impression seem a hamper to any civilization, but the Vopson in early times were not nearly as unified as they are now. They have many competing flocks who worked against each other, no one flock every successfully integrating the whole into the massive swarms the modern Vopson are known for. Chemistry became the main science of their kind, playing into everything they did as they developed synthetic plastics and industrial apparati based on all matter of corrosive computing. The melting computers and the vast tube complexes greatly enhanced the Vopson as a species, to the point where the pressure to go to the stars came in and the flocks cooperated to send out manned space craft almost exclusively, for automation with the Vopson is highly specialized as the Vopson industrial output by hand made machines mostly seemingly redundant initially. The Vopson would make use of extremely explosive rocketry, of a sophistication human chemical rockets never had. For the Vopson had figured out means to get more energy per molecule, with the use of nuclear prolusion systems coming only when they already had been space faring for over a century. Once space faring, the Vopson immediately proved to be a menace upon civilization in their system of harvesting other sentient beings, having obscene and completely arbitrary behaviors and a completely supremacist outlook on the Galaxy. While cruelty towards other beings is not a universal trait of the early flocks, such behavior was too easy to rationalize as their connectedness set them apart from most other species of more individualistic attributes. Sadly the more hostile Vopson elements won out when the disciplinary and aggressive Golden Swarm came to prominence in the Great Mind Wars, unifying most Vopson under one super flock. And in their mentality came the enforced belief the Vopson follow- That of divine right to the universe and all its inhabitants, to do whatever one pleases to do. And all one must do is pledge absolute loyalty to the Golden Flock from your body to very essence.
In practice only Vopson got golden Flock membership- all other species tend to be enslaved and set up on harvest worlds under "protection" with the only cost being a population tax that never exceeds 10%. You better breed.
The Golden Swarm's numbers are massive and they have been spotted treading on colonies in the outer territories, but no doubt they intend to advanced further with slave raids already occurring as far south as the Southern Perseus Arm and the imperial remnant.
Military: The Vopson make use of asteroid spacecraft and weaponized acid, including molten sulfur projectors and flinging rocks filled with micro explosives. Vopson are extremely prolific in their chemical tech, indeed gas propelled projectiles and rather scrappy fission-chemical rockets (The vopson use a mixture of nuclear and chemical propulsion). The Golden Swarm also has all manner of sulfur derived tech including water acidifying crystals they like to dump on planets in massive amounts. Sulfur is of great importance to the Vopson, without it they can't sustain large populations and the closed asteroid habitats are reliant on nocturnal farming.
Military tactics tend to be attrition based as the lives of individual Vopson are completely irrelevant since the flock is the individual, not the single body. So it is very common to see Vopson using themselves as missiles or devouring each other to sustain a invasion for longer (if they can't eat you, anyways).
Vopson swarms are terrifying in size, but can be managed since the Vopson industries are mass production oriented with a few gadgets in tow (like their acid bombardments), and so technologically superior factions have to only worry about not getting ran down in sheer numbers. About 5-10% of Vopson deal with 'military' affairs, the other 90% work on sustaining colonies and other tasks of varying nature. The Vopson swarms tend to be most numerous when actually invading- raids tend to consist of only a several hundred thousand Vopson. The invaders tend to number in billions for one planet. The Vopson number in the many trillions overall. But remember that a individual Vopson is extremely expendable. They just breed a lot to make up for that.
So chances are most stuff that will be sold likely will continue being good ol synthetic drugs with any dubious bioaugs being what they sell to the wealthy clients.
The Republic of Taurus Likely does have infiltration from other countries and UN activity in regards to the ~space cartels~ that infest basically everywhere not the system New Knossos is in (My faction is centered around a Primate Planet). The smugglers are always finding clever ways to outwit the check points. Sometimes you have to basically dismantle half the ship to find where they hid the illicit cargo.
On the subject of bioaugments I still am under the impression there would be factions less ethical than others in regards to that field even if it's deeply regulated by the UN. Does the UN have organizations who will go as far as to stuxnet researchers in less ethical factions if they put research into the field? How do they enforce that regulation? What if (Hypothetically of course- if any faction is going to have a total ban on genetic modification it's the space USSR) the USSR decides to make that gorrila army stalin wanted? How would the UN prevent that?
I am not sure if there would be a unilateral fear of bioaugmentation, there likely would still be schools of thought who believe humans must adapt the tech of the Juhseughi as much as possible or risk being crushed in the future "When they really try to wipe us out".
The Republic of Taurus shall not let sanctions from the communists get in the way of the invisible hand!
If there's a market there's a way.
"Nationalism should be dead. It's the future, there's aliens out there and we still hold to these silly nationalistic ideas that divide us based on what nation-state we came from centuries ago in a fucking galaxy of things that want to kill us." -Notable New Knossian Philosopher Darian Spade
Is 9 billion people a reasonable amount? I am not sure what populations are standard, what I did was make a primate planet out of New Knossos giving a population comparable to 21st century Earth while adding a additional few billion to account for all the other settlements throughout the Hyades open cluster.
Government Description: The Repubic of Taurus is an aristocractic polity built from corporatist origins seeking a highly unregulated environment with as little oversight from the UN. Generally it is viewed inside and out as a disaster whose survival is all but miraculous given the amount of times colony collapse has happened in their region of the stars with a wealth inequality that is simply staggering to imagine. The government that runs things styles itself as a corporate republic. Which means it's highly plutocratic in nature, with an oligopoly of corporate entities who control most governmental affairs and have control over which politicans are in power. In practice there is no politicians, only spokespeople used to sell initiatives and propositions that have been drafted out in office. The system is highly corrupt from the top to bottom, as the distribution of wealth is such that one world located in within the Hyades open cluster holds over 40% of the wealth, said world also is the capital of the Republic of Taurus and is the only A-class world in the region. For those who are less wealthy grass roots companies are what are generally relied on, but with a lack of oversight the reliability of the grass roots companies can be extremely varied. The general belief is that this will all sort itself out and thus little action is done to improve the situation from a command economy standpoint.
The Republic of Taurus is considered a Rogue State or Failed State depending on which super power you ask and the latent instability of the whole area has led to many crimes against humanity. There has been in more recent times interventions in the Federation, primarily of a humanitarian nature to deal with the starving colonies caused by failed Class-D world colonization initiatives.
Freedom from an Economic standpoint is extremely poor, there is a adamant refusal to accept the use of welfare or basic income and even charities tend to be looked down upon (but are not forbidden). This is combined with a extremely competitive and at times, malicious environment where corporate sabatoge is a frequent occurance. Efforts to crack down on such behavior have been rather weak in general. Freedom of Speech in theory is the norm, but is hindered highly when you consider the consequences of losing your job and get black listed for expressing communist views or are outed as a 'xenophile'. Education is relatively weak for the majority of people who are stuck in mining jobs and just get educated in using mining vessels and some drone management. Mining is one of the strong sectors of the Republic. In general the Republic is viewed as a energy power due to having effective control over the Hyades, though the common citizen tends not to see this wealth.
The law is weak due to the lack of any centralized commitees beyond a Intelligence Bureau used more in corporate fueding than in handling threats to security and thus criminal activity is extremely high in the region in general. As a result your typical Tauran citizen often will make some side cash on illicit drug and augment trade. Human trafficking is also unfortunately very common in the Tauran Republic. The use of militias and mercenaries to deal with piracy and slave trade has proven rather ineffectual due to how said mercenaries are also corruption probe.
National Leader(s): Marcus Lin Nation Capital: New Knossos or the world of a million seas.
New Knossos was named such by the founders in the early 22nd century who saw the Minoans as a example of a highly successful trade society, and thus wanted to brand their capital as such- a center for trade and commerce in a constellation anyone can recognize in the night sky, that of Taurus the Bull. Bull Markets, you see. The rapid population explosion from a mere few thousand colonists to the billions modern day New Knossos has comes from multiple waves of 22nd century colonists who injected major growth into the world in oft neglected migration records that has led to some rather strange disapproval on modern Knossos including a considerably large Greek community. The large populations of New Knossos are strewn about the swampy, serpentine geography of the world that has since been quite urbanized at the expense of native wild life with multiple extremely large population centers concentrated in Interconnected arcology complexes. The Arcologies are a recent development and the product of outside commissions despite sanctions getting in the way of things.
Estimated Population: 9,755,510,882
Brief Nation History:
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Language(s): The most common languages are English, Chinese and Spanish. Crypto-Languages have been constructed when dealing in private channels between the oligopoly.
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Additional Information/Queries: To be a Taurun is to be suffering. Located around the Hyades Open Cluster, not sure if this conflicts with other people's activity in the area.
