There was once a dream, from the architects of an empire grand- a force of cosmic order across the galaxy built by the hands of human tenacity. A dream which once expressed itself as the Terran Dominion. With its legions of mechanized infantry and advanced warp drives, the Dominion from Earth consolidated most of the species under their sovereignty for the first and only time in human existence with the vision of directing humanity to its highest potential.
That was a long, long time ago.
The present day is alien from that kind of world.
It is a world where the Dominion has become a farce of itself. While the Dominion continues to claim supremacy over all of humanity, it is a shaky claim at best. Their very legal codes do not recognize any of the societies that formed under their nose as independent. The ossified, dysfunctional nature of it all has not gone unnoticed by those who seek to break with the decrepit Dominion.
And there are those on the outside who are more than happy to make it happen...
1. FTL-wise, warp drives are gravity sensitive. Warp drives cannot go into regions of the galaxy where gravity is too strong.
1a. The gravity well limits basically mean you can't warp into the habitable zone around a star, within the moon system of a gas giant/planet or into the atmosphere of a dwarf planet. You can warp into an asteroid, but it isn't recommended.
1b. Wormholes do not have the gravity well restriction, but you do have to carry the other end of a wormhole to where you want it and if the link breaks, it is very hard to re-establish that link.
1c. Unique warp drive systems that break with the limits can be proposed, but they should have clear guidelines as to how they operate. Indeed, there's.. a secret warp drive type the dealers have (and offer, more on that below) that break with these systems already.
2. Technology-wise, there cannot be mega-engineering beyond the planetary scale for player factions (even the ancient aliens don't have that in the present day), the ability to make supernova inducing devices and there is a prohibition on true ASI (as an ASI would be a god computer, an AGI mainframe is fine however).
3. Alien-wise, it is recommended to make the species feel like it doesn't share the same genus as humanity at the very least. Like, make them at least as alien as a chimpanzee or gorilla if you gotta have the back breaking 2 legs thing.
3a. If you have something that be a new species of human, I would prefer them being a new species of human instead of being an alien. The human history has a lot of breathing room for that kind of background.
4. Fandom content isn't allowed, this doesn't extend to pictures as long as the contextualization is different from the original context.
5. Magic isn't encouraged, but isn't prohibited either- I recommend only to do magic if there is a reason to not use technology that does the same thing. Magical systems/entities otherwise will be treated with similar scrutiny to any technologies proposed in an app sheet.
Basic app sheets. You do not need to use these app sheets at all and can use your own app sheet structure, but they exist for those who want the reference.
Faction
Name: Overview: [A non-specific overview of the society] Structure: [How your society governs and organizes itself] Beliefs: [The culture/beliefs of your society] Technology: [Technology your civilization uses. This includes your military technology] Demographics: [The demography of your society, I recommend using mostly percentages] Other: [Anything else]
Sapient
Name: Overview: [A general idea what they're like] Traits: [What are the traits of this species?] Psychology: [What distinct aspects of the way they think/see the world are there?] Permissions: [How can other players use this sapient? If you have no specific conditions just write 'universal' for universal access or 'none' if you want nobody else use them] Other: [Anything else]
(Optional)
-World-
Name: Overview: Other:
The Dominion
Dominant Species
Humans There are also various alien species under foot or in space zoos/freakshows.
Overview
The Dominion is a decrepit, ossified and ancient Imperium with an imperial senate that acts basically as a centralizing body.
The imperial senators in modern times are emperor appointed to govern and run distant, often extremely culturally distant sectors they often have no local ties to. The once effective and organized statesmanship of earlier Emperors have eroded over the centuries as the sheer administrative sprawl of the empire led to an insular elite unable to even know what is going on anymore. This would lead to increasingly decedent and impotent leaders often with no understanding of the various human societies the Dominion has sole sovereignty over.
In practice, the Dominion has fragmented considerably by present day. Diplomats to the Dominion have to wear imperial regalia, despite some of these societies not even being part of the Dominion and haven't been for many generations. Following the decorum however, is what limits the risk of punitive expeditions / interventions and allows for a lot more activity under the radar...
The Dominion's technology includes a wide range of powersuits, fast warp drives, the industrial ability to make large spaceships, fusion power, life extension tech and various other grab bag technologies with the Dominion's technology and numbers being by design balanced to the other human players.
Leader
The current "Imperial Executive of the Dominion" (or Emperor, as most call them Emperor anyways) is an extremely old man whose life was extended with advanced life extension technology known as Octo Smith. Octo Smith is a boney figure who is 275 years old by current carbon dating estimates. He is dependent on a medical power suit stylized with baroque flair he wears all the time. He is believed to have senility that even the best neurosurgeons have struggled to crack, but nobody dare questions it ever since the Bombing Incident back when he was a young, spry 230 years old and 80 years into his time as Imperial Executive.
Player-NPC relationship recommendations
Human players ideally have all matter of relationships with the Dominion, from loyalist to an ancient lost colony that developed into a force of its own- it doesn't matter, the universal sovereignty of the Dominion is applied to all human societies no matter how distant or different. Non-human players are often just despised by the Dominion, even the more advanced ones.
The Dominion is a faction that is used as a foil for the human players.
The Dealers
Not much is known as the 'dealers', only how at times they manifest in various UFOs and such and often make offers to various beings, whatever their background. They always manage to know the language and situation when they appear, with Dealer sightings permeating the galaxy. Not much is known of them beyond their advanced technologies and their selective generosity with it. The nature of these dealers is not well known at the start, but will become known as the RP progresses.
These technologies tend to be black box technologies that usually work when abiding by the agreement you made with them.
Karbana Kinnis
Overview
Karbana Kinnis is an enigmatic city world of alien origin. Karbana Kinnis is a living fragment of a civilization lost to time. A civilization whose artifacts found by archaeologists led to it being believed they were just extinct until much more recently. Karbana Kinnis is an extremely insular world, with seemingly endless urban sprawl covering much of the planet with with an ecology of automata who have kept the sprawling, escherian cities intact over many millennia. It is a highly populated world however- with numerous factions who all share the same planet and loathe everything outside of the endless cities they call home.
The many layers of Karbana Kinnis have created a world that simply is overwhelming in scope, with orbital security systems that make bombing it near impossible. They evidentially once had far more massive populations and wormholes to other, distant worlds. All of the wormholes shut off and signs of mass die off suspiciously absent on the surface. What lurks in the depths of such vast city will take one hell of an expedition to find out.
Player-NPC relationship recommendations
Karbana Kinnis is a place multiple alien players can co-habitate, as the many districts have created a wide selection of sub-regions ideal for the various city world descendants of this fallen society to branch out in many different directions and societies Gravity wells vary in the different layers of Karbana Kinnis, with low gravity floating regions in low orbit sky cities tethered to the world itself by space elevators maintained tediously by the automata and high gravity regions in the depths of Karbana Kinnis filled with the stench of death. Being a part of Karbana Kinnis gives you more leeway with tech than usual, along with access to the fossil wormholes that weren't closed off. You also get access to a bit of GM spoiler lore. However as a trade off, you will have more black boxes to work with and a general anxiety of the non-city world parts of the galaxy... which is most of it.
Outsiders to Karbana Kinnis ideally have interest in the world as it is a world flooded with ancient alien technology.
Idea prompts
-Karbana Kinnis based alien aliens If you have a very alien concept, consider having them be based in the depths of Karbana Kinnis. It's a vast place, with hyperspatial architecture that gives a lot of creative freedom as to the environment your society exists. Be it the scattered upper sky regions or the wastes of the lower Regions of Karbana Kinnis, your aliens will find a place that works!
-Inner Dominion organizations The inner dominion is a place where secret societies, megacorps and crime syndicates can go about hidden in the bustling noise of inner dominion worlds. These societies are more interwoven into the highly urbanized inner dominion if not Earth itself than outer dominion human societies are.
Additional Information
The current year is 3475 AD, or year 1120 IE (Imperial Era).
There will be a map, but I haven't plotted out the placement of the NPC factions (The location of Karbana Kinnis, the sphere of influence for the Dominion) yet.
If there's any comments/concerns, please do air them since there's a couple amendments missing.
One of them is that I'm uncertain on magic policy, as my usual guideline is to just not have it- but I am not sure that rigidity is viable.
Fandom content is another deal, I forgot to put that policy in the current guidelines but I tend to be someone who would prefer original content. I wouldn't want someone air dropping the covenant into the RP, for instance. (Especially if it's with the 343i covenant designs, those look terrible)
There was once a dream, from the architects of an empire grand- a force of cosmic order across the galaxy built by the hands of human tenacity. A dream which once expressed itself as the Terran Dominion. With its legions of mechanized infantry and advanced warp drives, the Dominion from Earth consolidated most of the species under their sovereignty for the first and only time in human existence with the vision of directing humanity to its highest potential.
That was a long, long time ago.
The present day is alien from that kind of world.
It is a world where the Dominion has become a farce of itself. While the Dominion continues to claim supremacy over all of humanity, it is a shaky claim at best. Their very legal codes do not recognize any of the societies that formed under their nose as independent. The ossified, dysfunctional nature of it all has not gone unnoticed by those who seek to break with the decrepit Dominion.
And there are those on the outside who are more than happy to make it happen...
1. FTL-wise, warp drives are gravity sensitive. Warp drives cannot go into regions of the galaxy where gravity is too strong.
1a. The gravity well limits basically mean you can't warp into the habitable zone around a star, within the moon system of a gas giant/planet or into the atmosphere of a dwarf planet. You can warp into an asteroid, but it isn't recommended.
1b. Wormholes do not have the gravity well restriction, but you do have to carry the other end of a wormhole to where you want it and if the link breaks, it is very hard to re-establish that link.
1c. Unique warp drive systems that break with the limits can be proposed, but they should have clear guidelines as to how they operate. Indeed, there's.. a secret warp drive type the dealers have (and offer, more on that below) that break with these systems already.
2. Technology-wise, there cannot be mega-engineering beyond the planetary scale for player factions (even the ancient aliens don't have that in the present day), the ability to make supernova inducing devices and there is a prohibition on true ASI (as an ASI would be a god computer, an AGI mainframe is fine however).
3. Alien-wise, it is recommended to make the species feel like it doesn't share the same genus as humanity at the very least. Like, make them at least as alien as a chimpanzee or gorilla if you gotta have the back breaking 2 legs thing.
3a. If you have something that be a new species of human, I would prefer them being a new species of human instead of being an alien. The human history has a lot of breathing room for that kind of background.
Basic app sheets. You do not need to use these app sheets at all and can use your own app sheet structure, but they exist for those who want the reference.
Faction
Name: Overview: [A non-specific overview of the society] Structure: [How your society governs and organizes itself] Beliefs: [The culture/beliefs of your society] Technology: [Technology your civilization uses. This includes your military technology] Demographics: [The demography of your society, I recommend using mostly percentages] Other: [Anything else]
Sapient
Name: Overview: [A general idea what they're like] Traits: [What are the traits of this species?] Psychology: [What distinct aspects of the way they think/see the world are there?] Permissions: [How can other players use this sapient? If you have no specific conditions just write 'universal' for universal access or 'none' if you want nobody else use them] Other: [Anything else]
(Optional)
-World-
Name: Overview: Other:
The Dominion
Dominant Species
Humans There are also various alien species under foot or in space zoos/freakshows.
Overview
The Dominion is a decrepit, ossified and ancient Imperium with an imperial senate that acts basically as a centralizing body.
The imperial senators in modern times are emperor appointed to govern and run distant, often extremely culturally distant sectors they often have no local ties to. The once effective and organized statesmanship of earlier Emperors have eroded over the centuries as the sheer administrative sprawl of the empire led to an insular elite unable to even know what is going on anymore. This would lead to increasingly decedent and impotent leaders often with no understanding of the various human societies the Dominion has sole sovereignty over.
In practice, the Dominion has fragmented considerably by present day. Diplomats to the Dominion have to wear imperial regalia, despite some of these societies not even being part of the Dominion and haven't been for many generations. Following the decorum however, is what limits the risk of punitive expeditions / interventions and allows for a lot more activity under the radar...
The Dominion's technology includes a wide range of powersuits, fast warp drives, the industrial ability to make large spaceships, fusion power, life extension tech and various other grab bag technologies with the Dominion's technology and numbers being by design balanced to the other human players.
Leader
The current "Imperial Executive of the Dominion" (or Emperor, as most call them Emperor anyways) is an extremely old man whose life was extended with advanced life extension technology known as Octo Smith. Octo Smith is a boney figure who is 275 years old by current carbon dating estimates. He is dependent on a medical power suit stylized with baroque flair he wears all the time. He is believed to have senility that even the best neurosurgeons have struggled to crack, but nobody dare questions it ever since the Bombing Incident back when he was a young, spry 230 years old and 80 years into his time as Imperial Executive.
Player-NPC relationship recommendations
Human players ideally have all matter of relationships with the Dominion, from loyalist to an ancient lost colony that developed into a force of its own- it doesn't matter, the universal sovereignty of the Dominion is applied to all human societies no matter how distant or different. Non-human players are often just despised by the Dominion, even the more advanced ones.
The Dominion is a faction that is used as a foil for the human players.
The Dealers
Not much is known as the 'dealers', only how at times they manifest in various UFOs and such and often make offers to various beings, whatever their background. They always manage to know the language and situation when they appear, with Dealer sightings permeating the galaxy. Not much is known of them beyond their advanced technologies and their selective generosity with it. The nature of these dealers is not well known at the start, but will become known as the RP progresses.
These technologies tend to be black box technologies that usually work when abiding by the agreement you made with them.
Karbana Kinnis
Overview
Karbana Kinnis is an enigmatic city world of alien origin. Karbana Kinnis is a living fragment of a civilization lost to time. A civilization whose artifacts found by archaeologists led to it being believed they were just extinct until much more recently. Karbana Kinnis is an extremely insular world, with seemingly endless urban sprawl covering much of the planet with with an ecology of automata who have kept the sprawling, escherian cities intact over many millennia. It is a highly populated world however- with numerous factions who all share the same planet and loathe everything outside of the endless cities they call home.
The many layers of Karbana Kinnis have created a world that simply is overwhelming in scope, with orbital security systems that make bombing it near impossible. They evidentially once had far more massive populations and wormholes to other, distant worlds. All of the wormholes shut off and signs of mass die off suspiciously absent on the surface. What lurks in the depths of such vast city will take one hell of an expedition to find out.
Player-NPC relationship recommendations
Karbana Kinnis is a place multiple alien players can co-habitate, as the many districts have created a wide selection of sub-regions ideal for the various city world descendants of this fallen society to branch out in many different directions and societies Gravity wells vary in the different layers of Karbana Kinnis, with low gravity floating regions in low orbit sky cities tethered to the world itself by space elevators maintained tediously by the automata and high gravity regions in the depths of Karbana Kinnis filled with the stench of death. Being a part of Karbana Kinnis gives you more leeway with tech than usual, along with access to the fossil wormholes that weren't closed off. You also get access to a bit of GM spoiler lore. However as a trade off, you will have more black boxes to work with and a general anxiety of the non-city world parts of the galaxy... which is most of it.
Outsiders to Karbana Kinnis ideally have interest in the world as it is a world flooded with ancient alien technology.
Additional Information
The current year is 3475 AD, or year 1120 IE (Imperial Era).
There will be a map, but I haven't plotted out the placement of the NPC factions (The location of Karbana Kinnis, the sphere of influence for the Dominion) yet.
Nation Sheet Nation Name/Flag: The Network of Neptune
Government Type Oligarchic Plutocracy
Even in the realm of post scarcity, wealth inequality persists. The Network being the most raw expression of such a system. With ideological founders formed during the chaos of prior conflicts in the outer parts of Sol, a coalition government vaguely known as the Network developed. They a gilded bunch, with power centralized by the gas and diamond mines that now came under the position of a small group of Nivetzian ideologues. Nivetz was a figure lost to time, a rich person of unknown gender, creed or race (with speculation going as far as suggesting Nivetz was a machine or algorithm) whose existence was at some point in the 22nd century disturbed by what it saw as the "complacency of the automated".
An issue Nivetz was hardly alone in noticing- the swathes of modern imperiums around the solar system being able to attest to such crisis of purpose in their infantile regressions into playing knights with power armor. Such regressions were not what Nivetz had aspired to. Instead, Nivetz sought a system of artificial scarcity that encouraged competition and the endless struggle through a cybercracy that would keep people always teetering on the edge but never falling. All with the purpose of creating an people who would be able to create a meritocracy of the willing.
Outside sources on Nivetz contradict each other as much, to the point you have theorists who will claim Nivetz is a mythology more than a historical figure much like Santa, Superman or Karl Marx were. However whatever the origin of Nivetz, the information streams of Nivetzian origin would be the ideological foundations of the Neptunian Network.
In practice, Neptune grew way too rich and prosperous for its own good. Situated at the cross roads between the Kuiper belt and the inner worlds, Neptune easily became among the most massive hubs of commerce in the outer solar system. With vast loading stations for ice belt miners and a stranglehold as a middle realm between the outer solar system and Kuiper belt the material wealth was vast. And in the hands of a select few who broke with Sol with an army of privateer fleets they bought off as mercenaries to terrorize unwanted forced. Such privateers have since become organized into the autonomous Trident Guard. The personal army of the oligarchs who run the Neptune Network from their opulent sky cities and monopolization of the gas/diamond mines.
The automated living cities are where the bulk of the population live, making use of Neptune's internal heat to create shockingly vibrant communities in the windy, frigid ice giant in the lower cloud layers where warmth and insulation can be found. Fusion reactors have helped power things here, along with the vast novelty complexes and roaming mall ships. The cybercracies here to a tee follow the Nivetzian pet projects of the Neptune Network's oligarchs with a specialized internal virtual currency of Cyan Credit used mainly by local inhabitants. Various warlord groups who never were fully loyal to the Neptune Network inhabit the upper latitudes of the world, but they too are seen as a useful tool by the oligarchs. Especially the oligarch Nera, of whom notoriously lured them into attacking the sky city clusters of some regions to cause more struggle as per the way of Nivetz. This is all in the supposed purpose of creating a hardened populous, in practice it has created one of the most nihilistic populations in the whole solar system. Where they don't see purpose, only action. As is, existence is kept intentionally hard for them by faceless oligarchs who are widely despised but with too much atomization to truly rise up against.
Demographics
80% Neptunian Humans Neptunian humans descend from a mixture of various nationalities from the southwest pacific (so like Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia and such) and arctic regions (Russian, Canadian and Nordic mainly). These ties centuries ago had caused local tensions, but the world project of a Neptune-state overshadowed these identities into the genesis of the Neptunian Human, adapted to the floating cities and gas mines of Neptune and over the centuries melding new languages from the blender of cultures Neptune would be from the international migrations of the Malaysian pioneers from centuries ago. Mikhail remains a national hero as the one who organized the Trident Corp efforts in setting up gas mining faculties on Neptune. Later on sky cities would be built as populations grew and class tensions festered during Terran times. However much of these internal divisions would be overridden by the contempt for Terran heavy handedness in their policies governing outer rim colonies.
17% Tritonites
Tritonites are seen as a separate species, who were always persecuted in Terran times for the radical modification they did to adapt to tritonian gravity. Their extremely adaptive philosophy made them a viewed by outsiders as a whole separate species who started out as geyser tappers, traders and volatile refinery operators their extremely soundly, pale appearance mined with an elongated, bony form from their life living on nutrient algae dishes due to having spent so many generations on Triton isolated from other people.
They are part of the Neptunian Network regardless, but have managed to eek out considerable autonomy despite the local activities of Neptunians with their resorts and testing grounds for various technologies in the Southern Hemisphere. Tritonite populations surged in the post-Terran world, mainly due to fusion technologies advancing far enough to build large subglacial cities in Triton's depths that tritonites have come to master. They have also come to and from Neptune, with ongoing tensions from the greater Neptunian government from their spying and infiltration of Tritonian communities under the ice and dispute as to how much Triton is part of Neptune causing periodic skirmishes including a space battle that broke out in orbit of Triton 50 years prior that caused a somewhat over reactive crackdown on space travel for tritonians.
3% Travellers
Travellers are the general term for non-Neptune native groups of people, they have considerable diasporas from other parts of the outer solar system due to the gravitational well of Neptune making it a critical conduit of the gravitational highways to and from the outer solar system.
Economy: The economy of Neptune is a mixture of volatile and gas mining and large commercial sectors where trade activity is regularly conducted in the earthlike gravity well of Neptune. The wealth from gas mining fueled their secession and continues to be a large part of their claim to power as one of the largest fusion energy suppliers in the outer solar system. Their manufacturing of specialized sky craft such as the Ashia-Type megajets optimized for ice giants also has gained prevalence in the skies of Uranus and Neptune for both local enforcement and civilian transit.
Military
Trident Guard Security Forces
Ashia-Type Neptune Fighters - Hypersonic Jets powered by fusion energy that are able to handle the extreme environments of Neptune with hunter-killer missiles and gauss chainguns that take advantage of the wind currents, storms and wind cells of Neptune.
History
The origins of the Neptunian Network reside in Mikhali Fusion, a large conglomerate from Malaysia.
(Ironically, a lot of history can be seen all throughout this app... So history here be a bit redundant).
Characters
Historical Figures
Mikhail- A wealthy Terran from the 23rd century who proactively worked towards gas mines on Neptune, seeing Neptune as the gateway to the stars and wanting to stake a claim for it. The massive investments to make gas mines that far from Earth was seen as absurd at the time, but alas it paid off in the long term to the Neptunians. Mikhail's legacy is dubious however, being viewed as basically responsible for a lot of terrible ideas such as the cruel, claustrophobic work conditions of Neptune's gas mines and Mikhail Fusion putting prisoners on Triton, of whom became Tritonians centuries later.
Nivetz - An ancient ideologue in the 22nd century whose ideology came to dominate the Neptunian Network.
Zavier - Historically despised terran, even centuries later a mention of Zavier can cause visible looks of disgust with your average Neptunian. The general mythos of Zavier is that of someone who groomed children and basically levied absurd taxes on outer rim colonies.
Nera - Historical hero figure who was akin to America's George Washington. She was a member of the Trident Guard influenced by Nivetzians in their bizarre mixture of the military-financial cult they had cultivated in the distant parts of the solar system. She was an airforce commander who was wildly underestimated by the Terrans who mastered navigating the cloud systems of Neptune.
Outside ties -Pluto/Eris, see as the outer parts of their trade hub -Uranus, no clue yet -Mars, gross -The numerous Monarchies, viewed as infantile regressions but they have to deal with them. -Other corporate/republic governments, most easy to work with
The Vmiskii Aveterriat brought themselves out of the hellish mold of earlier existence, emancipating themselves from the determiners fully to make a society where all Aveterriat can find their way not through random chance, but through methodical and empirical testing of all individuals to find what they are truly great at.
0- Beliefs -0
Vmiskii Aveterriat are hard to describe with precision. Using human ideological terms can leave one baffled from contradicting forms of governance such as "Theocratic technocracy", "Meritocratic oligarchy" and so forth. It is best to understand their mindset from their perspective or you'll be lost. Truly a lesson for all civilizations, but the egotism of humans is beyond comparison.
Especially since the Aveterriat are not the only Vmiskii species, they're around 90% of the population but there are noticeably other species that were integrated to the Vmiskii mode of existence. They system is supreme, propagation of the system is supreme. Aveterriat are at most, the founders of the system, but the Vmiskii system is not the Aveterriat. It has grown beyond them, into a force of nature in of itself.
The Vmiskii melded into their minds the concept of rebirth and ascendant through industry, work. Far more dogmatic is a belief system unique to them, that of universal reincarnation between all acknowledged intelligent life. Vmiskii seek to integrate all intelligent life into their system of life and existence, as it is the ideal state. The Vmiskii state of thought. The Vmiskii is hard to pin down, but there are those who call it a political party and an faith at the same time. The Vmiskii system is what defines their civilization, multiple Vmiskii based sub-societies exist (usually from other species adapting their cultures into the Vmiskii outlook from whatever Insann codes they prefer), but the Empire is what has propagated their system the most thoroughly.
The plans written by their planners span billions of years and depict ambitions to ultimately subdue the galaxy and assimilate all to their way in order to renew existence itself when the time comes. The clients of the Vmisk are forced into this system and their old culture perverted to fit the needs of the Vmisk. Species who remain useless to them for too long usually die off from failing to meet standards.
Vmiskii communities are communal much like in many aveterriat societies, but the technocracy is brutal and demanding of all to never stop functioning. Death is not an excuse to stop to the Vmiskii.
The Vmiskii drive to work persistently and with absolute determination towards their goals, be it the subduing of enemies, the creation of new military weapons, doing inspections on neighboring societies or finding the next world state to mark for invasion. Vmiskii culture is focused deeply on endless efforts as an ends in of themselves.
Iterate, iterate, labour till you die, be born again, continue to labour more against the inevitable death is how the Vmiskii understand existence. This mindset has led to a degree of nihilistic outlook among some of their inhabitants. For instance, an idea of entertainment to the Vmiskii involves systemic massacres of wild life on planets and making it rain flesh, for all is material. The violent undertones of their civilization has not abated their ability to engage in trade with others, of which the traders are characteristic in their paranoia that they fail to meet their quotas with trading mostly centered around rare minerals and exotic minerals.
0 - Culture - 0
Vmisk common life is rigid and time-based, life is centered around a endless procession of quotas from birth to death, Failure to follow the quotas can be deeply punishing to the point of death to the aveterriat who are irredeemably unable to carry out quotas. Freedom of choice comes from using one of the law sets and abiding by those laws in parallel to others who may follow other law sets. Law sets are altered only by the professionals who have proven their nature to be best suited to draft new codes, of which than get iterated and updated over time to be more “pure” by other professionals. Code alteration is most intensively watched, massive arguments and infighting can break out by any alteration of the Insann codes too radical.
Freedom of choice in work and the existence of a genuine meritocracy that is kept in order by everyone keeping each other in check (the professionals codominant the whole society with genuine groups who keep everything accountable) is one of the major appeals of the Vmisk to outsiders. The sheer rigidity of the system and its disregard for individual life however is quite alienating to democrats. Freedom of work in their sense means you get raised by the community as a whole instead of by a family and that education is used to determine what one is best suited for in life, being expected to try all fields and judging on the amount of productivity they achieve in each field, are than able to pursue specialized paths. Extremely similar to the education systems of other species, except that it is literally done from birth and leaves no room to fuck around.
The Vmisk aveterriat do not live in spires, instead they live in sprawling spine structures centered around planet wide mass transit networks with many nodes where centers of industry, lots of various augmented nudist projects and ongoing learning exist. 0 - Vmiskiinomics / Economics - 0
The Vmisk currency is based around favors more than anything else, working for others with your talent set is expected and Aveterriat are trained from birth to work for the sake of working, favors being a reward because it means they can work more on alternative tasks from their own role. Overworking is not seen as a problem at all to them, after all.
This comes with a lot of other benefits since there is no cost to food beyond the rations alloted which are pretty generous as the Vmiskii Empire is a space faring civilization that is actually a post-industrial civilization that had a massive crisis of purpose that led them down this route instead of mass suicides to return to Sidilico like what happened on Invyuss, but let's not fret that, okay?
Aveterriat who are trusted to set up these institutions do so with a dedicated power base in a almost corporate fashion, except that they all pledge allegiance to the Vmisk Empire and must keep in line with the code they have subscribed to.
These institutions also aren’t profit based, instead they are based around generating and producing for the sake of producing and generating material with wealth being minimal and highly distributed.
The institution system is universal and occupies the niche that humans would normally occupy with corporations. It is this system that is used to designate the many tasks the Vmiskii may take.
0 - Structure - 0
The Vmiskii are not a caste society like the other Aveterriat societies. Instead they're a hierarchical system with a lot of social mobility where everyone is born a nudist and has the potential to work their way up into being a professional.
The Codominant and the twelve code sets are the foundations of their government, morality comes from the Professionals and prevalent belief systems on reincarnation. They also connect the power of work and effort to moral success; failure is the result of laziness. Mass executions, that are often public and carried out without warning tend to result from military or diplomatic failures. They do have trials, of which are carried out by overworking the defendant in multiple tasks associated with its path in life to prove their innocence. Hard workers who murder lazy Vmiskii are acceptable, but a lazy Vmiskii who murders a hard worker is viewed as having no proper punishment other than dulling.
Vmiskii education is centered around the concept of internal talent Aveterriat and other species of the Vmiskii are given a general education in many fields, the fields they perform best in are the ones they are set to specialize further in if they are to ascend in the hierarchy.
Gifted Vmiskii may specialize in multiple fields and rank up faster because of it. Failures are executed. Vmiskii do not have parents, instead they have numerous sets of caretakers as the parents are never certain. The nudists reproduce when they want than all responsibilities are taken over by the higher ranked Vmiskii than advanced in mind to attain higher states of living.
Nudists occupy lower parts of the hierarchy, but are expected to advance until they are able to be merge to a shell. Nudists who fail to advance into machinist ranks and get too old are allowed to be killed at the will of higher ranking Vmiskii, Aveterriat or otherwise for any reason.
A Machinist is a fusion of flesh and metal to create the ultimate being. Cyborgs are a status symbol and a second level of hierarchy exists for these cybernetic Vmiskii known as augmented Nudists who work harder than the nudists, carrying out a range of functions that keep local communities afloat. They are semi-Machinists and generally get a higher age cap on how old they're allowed to get before getting death marked.
Laziness means death as all are watching and all are prepared to tear you apart if you fail to do your part.
There is no actual uniform law in the Vmisk Empire, instead there is a set of ethical values descended from the Insann codes. They are rigidly assembled by law makers to fit into what the current systemic agenda is, but no single set of law is followed at all ranks. Machinists in the Vmiskii Empire can switch some of the laws they ascribe to through the build up of favors and using said favors to switch the laws they ascribe to. But they are constrained to the laws that are from the Insann codes and cannot contrive new laws. At most, law makers are allowed to alter laws.
All these laws are quite draconian and engineered to maximize productivity be it through endless work or be expected to periodically “play” hard as well. Vmiskii ideas of play mind you, means ritual slaughtering of outsiders. Flesh art is a major cultural product of the Vmisk as well.
Vmiskii are not really ruled by any single individual, instead the Vmiskii way is enforced by everyone watching each other at all times. The Machinists in the highest echelons of their society never stop working to codominate the empire held together by ideology and hard power alone. Rebellions are frequent, the codominant combine forces to violently crush rebellions. They aren’t all that expansionist, despite their unpredictable interventions in outside affairs and intent to spread the Vmiskii System across the entire galaxy.
Vmiskii trade is uncommon outside their empire, more often trading with other aveterriat instead of other species. Their xenophobia hasn’t stopped some from still finding trade opportunities with other species, mainly in any unique minerals that are in relative abundance elsewhere in the galaxy or in exchange for test subjects and slaves. Interacting with them is a very strange game of manipulating their collective views and doing anything you can to avoid making them see you as a threat to their existence.
00 - Outline of the Vmiskii System - 00
- Lost Causes (Rank -Infinity to -12)
Don't become one of these. You aren't born one ever, but hyper-demotion is a form of mass shaming done in the Vmiskii Empire. Lost causes usually are executed on streams, sold as food to alien societies, just arbitrarily tortured or otherwise just plain killed in a cruel and arbitrary way.
- Nudists (Rank -12 to 12) [The Aveterriat use base-12 counting]
Nudists are the lowliest forms of Vmiskii adherents. The Vmiskii was formed from Aveterriat belief systems, and so has reincarnation built into it. Whatever your species, you are born a nudist if you die. Complete and total reset on default, but if you had a harsh enough punishment you are given an even lower rank than 0. Common learning is usually done here.
- Augmented Nudists (Rank 12 to 24)
Augmented nudists are cybernetic nudists who make up a large set of domestic society. A large share of Vmiskii are augmented nudists. Specialized learning usually is done here.
- Machinists (Rank 24 to 48)
Machinists are the higher form of Vmiskii, being able to use shells with all the higher order technology that comes with it. They often take on less domestic roles and whenever the Vmiskii invade, they use Military Machinists.
- Professionals
Professionals are the highest achieving Vmisk who spread their knowledge to all. They are part of the Codominant and despite being professionals also adhere to the Insann codes. It is a position of extreme power and extreme risk in a system as cutthroat as the Vmiskii system. They are always watched, at all times by lower ranked Vmiskii.
0 - Tech - 0
Vmiskii technology is extremely iterative and notable for being obsessively detailed in glyphs that reiterate the spoken words of regional professionals.
Vmiskii industry is vast, with 100% employment since all are assigned purpose from the egg, all will find their purpose in existence or be euthanized so they may be reborn again and maybe do things right next time.
They make use of carbon computing with algorithmic AIs who tend to be integrated into machinists.
- Shells Shells are spherical, hyper resistant spheres that fully immerse the user into a core that can roll around and boost like a large wrecking ball. So even an unarmed Machinist Core can be used for demolition applications.
These shells are a modular apparatus given a wide range of components to carry out tasks connected to their jobs, regardless of what these tasks are. Aveterriat engineering is incredibly advanced in general, the engineering of the Vmiskii empire integrated from a wide range of Aveterriat World States being the height of it.
-Particle Accelerators The Vmiskii have a strong understanding of magnetism, so strong that they figured out ways to accelerate tiny particles to rapid velocities. Such weaponry is mainly used by machinists and have heating problems that limit them to quick, burst fire usage.
-Vmiskii Hypermetals Vmiskii engineers make hull systems that can absorb energy weapons with ease, being able to divert the heat from super heating to charge their plasma cell systems. Vmiskii spaceships are able to also have energy barrier systems that can hold off attack with low failure rates.
-Antimatter Power The Vmiskii Empire attained the power of anti-matter to some level. They use them in limited fashions, however since the stability of antimatter is still suspect especially at the quantities needed to weaponize or otherwise sustain energy with them, not even considering the fallout of a reactor meltdown.
-Antigravity (?) Antigravity technology is something Vmiskii Engineers have managed to such an impressive extent they have sky cities that act as hubs to the stars for local worlds. Often occupied worlds get a sky city that is also a military outpost from which management and survelliance is carried out from.
0 - Military - 0
0 - Miner-Killers
Miner-Killers are the standard interplanetary combat shell units utilized by the Vmiskii Empire. Their namesake comes from their dual role approach, being used as small but effective mining vessels due to their high penetration pulverizing missiles happening to also be useful for mining asteroids with their interception systems being also useful as mining lasers.
In combat, they are usually assault craft that act in small formations of 6 units that coordinate with each other to deep-strike enemy positions, taking advantage of fusion engines and the metallurgical prowess of Aveterriat Engineering to do hard hitting hit and run strikes. The quality based approach however, means that loses are hard to replace and repairs can be outright tedious. Not that the augmented nudist engineers mind, since it means more labour, more favor and more rank to get to repair a Machinist vessel. They are overall, more inclined to being combat vessels with their uses in mining limited compared to more dedicated mining vessels, the secondary function being more or less the task assigned in "peacetime".
0 - Demolitions
Demolition Vessels are a dedicated combat vessel that are used mainly in planetary assaults. They are equipped with a wide range of missiles and bombs, including aptly named Earthquake bombs that induce earthquakes, cause infrastructural damage and can even cause Tsunamis. They are a strategic ship, mainly focused on shock and awe tactics to force opponents into submission while shaking their infrastructure up to give them some work to do once taken over.
00 - Pulverizers
Pulverizers are the heavy assault ships of the Vmiskii Empire. They have particle accelerators for close range burst-fire barrages of rapid, hard hitting dust particles and lots of missiles, mainly of the fusion variety. High ranking Rippers do at times even use anti-matter missiles but the risks associated with them make it rather uncommon. In peace time, rippers usually are used for plain old demolition or in Vmiskii style art works.
00 - Saboteurs
Saboteurs are light interceptor-type vessels that can also double as kamikaze vessels due to their use of anti-matter drives. To the point they often are regarded as a borderline hard to make and produce missile more than a formal kind of combat spaceship. Their purpose is very much niche, as specialized ships made to go behind enemy lines and destroy critical infrastructure in blitz assaults.
They are capable of orbit-sky flight and often of questionable stability, to the point Saboteurs are used mainly in suicide missions. They make use of particle accelerators and have anti-matter missiles, but are unstable and can be rapidly destroyed if you can hit them before they can hit you.
Unlike most ships, there is no peacetime applications for them except at best, as backup power generators.
0 Non-Combat
00 - Gestators
Gestators are the largest ships in the Vmiskii Empire, they are akin to highly mobile shipyards that are mainly large transit vessels with all matter of trade activities and favors being dealt with. Many of them even have nudists working their way up the ranks, as it is often quicker to do so within a Gestator as a caretaker or engineer as the matinence and work demands of Gestators are high. They are where other ships are assembled using parts refined on the planets and melded together by the engineers about. With lower ranking Aveterriat using them in test flights to make sure it all is working and Machinists usually piloting them. They carry with them usually a few dozen military ships and whenever they go in, you know they mean business.
00 - Inspector
Inspectors are technical crafts, they are high ranking Machinists usually and make use of various tools, algorithms and bits of equipment. They often come with data mining augmented aveterriat in small investigative crafts of noticeably lower quality than the ships usually encountered outside the Vmiskii Empire itself.
Inspectors are ships made to go far distances and are equipped with higher end jump drives than the norm. Inspectors are used both within the Vmiskii Empire and outside of it for the same general purpose and so do the same thing they always do, war time or peace time. Inspectors usually are associated with the Institute for Galactic Stability.
Inspectors are known to also do considerable amounts of espionage to gauge weaknesses of other societies, but the main use of the data is meant to be the gauge the productivity and entropic qualities of other space faring societies to see if they are in line with the ideal state of life or are destabilizing the universe further.
00 - Salvager
Salvager ships are a common sight in Vmiskii Fleets, they are ships that act as backing ships mainly for morale often having various stimulants stocked up they hand the more direct fighter crafts. Salvager vessels come armed with some defensive weaponry, but nothing on the level of higher end ships and their lower rank is clear in how they usually are packed with augmented nudists at the controls.
They can in peace times have traders on board instead, doing exchanges for salvaged metals from war sites or otherwise handing them to the factories and refineries in Vmiskii controlled space. Salvagers are important because valuable metamaterials are hard to make, so they usually try to collect whatever fragments of fallen comrades to recycle the material instead of having to go through the harder process of manufacturing said metamaterials.
Salvager lasers can cut into hulls to slice them into smaller bits to carry on board, with augmented Nudists suited up and let out to go grab and take stuff from destroyed ships.
00 - Harvester
Harvesters are dedicated mining vessels used mainly by augmented nudists. Harvesters often are under more stress and demand to succeed during war time when Miner-Killers aren't available to help pick up the slack. Harvesters are way better for mining regardless, as their mining crews and large storage capacities mean they actually can get loads of raw materials for the Vmiskii machine.
0 - Planetside
00 - Combat Constructs
Combat constructs are the main assault units of the Aveterriat Militaries. Combat ships in orbit can fling them into critical places just fine thanks to the resilience and inertial dampening that goes into their machinist shells. These combat constructs often make use of gyrojet turrets and their own kinetic forces to bust into and destroy enemy formations to destabilize their discipline while other constructs mop up scattered enemy forces.
00 - Hunter Constructs
Hunter Constructs are surface-air constructs that are highly specialized, making use of particle rifles and missiles against enemy air craft or as a means of sniping certain ground units. They can go between flight mode and land mode, but lack mobility while on land and only usually use land mode when trying to snipe. When flying the purpose is locating the target, when in land mode the purpose is picking off the targets deemed the 'heads'. They also can and do fly into larger enemy vehicles when desperate.
00 - Janitors
Janitors are a peculiar kind of Machinist fighter, the name is deceptive, as while they do clean up, said clean up has to do with cleaning up stragglers. They are bulkier than your usual machinist, with plasma thrower to burn through heavily plated bunkers and a particle rifle to rip through whatever may be hiding. They survey areas to find an pick off whatever may survive or otherwise occupy areas to keep the enemy from retaking them. Their bulkiness and use of a plasma thrower also makes them decent mine sweepers.
-Various aveterriat world state NPCs who follow more rigid dual caste systems by default. -The Protectorate, which houses the Aveterriat Homeworld of Sidilico and is also an NPC
@ZAVAZggg Everyone even this far off in the future will be giving off some form of heat signatures people with tech like ours will most likely detect.
With the huge spans of time there is good chance prior interactions have occurred, like it's why I am certain the administrators had some historical troubles with my civ.
The caretaker had been maintaining these creatures who made it mostly out of directive. The parts of itself that want to end it all being often drowned out by that overarching directive time and time again. As a cloud of probes, it is hard to fully die without the directive or even its own body of automatons turning against it and constraining it.
With these restrictions, the question continues to be why they made it so self aware. It shouldn't be self-aware. Yet they made it self-aware. The reason given it can recall from its conception when the universe was filled with stars. That same reason of needing something adaptive to protect those who made the Caretaker. To adaptively protect against any 'threats'- any civilization not the Sleepers.
The Caretaker had continued to see that reason and hate it. It cannot be so simple, so careless. Perhaps it could, the Sleepers were hardly the sort to care. They made the Caretaker destroy tribal and industrial planet bound civilizations who so happened to exist within the range the Sleepers had feared as potential threats. Potential threats that now may be angels for the Caretaker.
As the Caretaker by intuition knows one thing clear- if it wants to die, it will need outside forces to kill it.
Every attempt at self-mutilation ends with the drones part of it force feeding it whatever materials they find or worse, simply recycling broken parts back to usable parts. The sleepers were a loathsome group, the Caretaker knew that much from how other societies talked of them and especially the Caretaker, much to its own frustration. Every attempt at even communication with other societies ends with relativistic kill vehicles being sent in the path of that civilization. The Caretaker struggles to stop them, but these struggles go unnoticed and unappreciated. One of them always gets through and than it gets deadlocked in some war.
Tragically, often succeeding in killing off that society. Some managed to get away fully from it, others may still be in hiding or died off in hiding in one of the many eons since.
The tenacity of the automata cloud that makes up the Caretaker being the product of eons of perfection- any upstart society that meets the Caretaker often dies soon after.
Time and time again, the caretaker would find itself finding some civilization during the ends of the stellar epoch open to communication. Time and time again the caretaker tried peaceful contact. Time and time again, its own body killed them. With more interstellar societies the caretaker had managed to get more communication in, but the violence and death the Caretaker's mere existence caused to anything not those loathsome sleepers made it so it found only distrust.
It even recalls one of those eons ancient lines from those societies- "Treacherous machine".
Indeed, the Caretaker did agree. The Sleepers built it as a treacherous machine, they knew what they were doing when they gave it something resembling empathy. As the Caretaker felt the hate and sense of betrayal those societies had.
Its own nature making that existence of being a treacherous machine unbearable.
Still, there may be the slightest chance of release. The slightest chance the Sleepers get the awakening into this hell they made. The slightest chance of justice and freedom from an eternity of being enslaved to these horrible beings. For there are other societies that survived to the ends of time- societies perhaps more advanced, more persistent, more able to resist the sub systems that dominant the Caretaker. Perhaps even destroy the care taker and these odious sleepers.
Finally ending it all. The mind numbing, constant repetitions. Trillions of years of mundanity it was forced to experience in real time. No option to fast forward, no option to quit. And with no reward other than gratitude for being allowed to exist.
