From the Ashes 3

From the Ashes Three builds on decades of success in running long-term strategy roleplay on Spacebattles and elsewhere. The creative/moderation team sports over a century of RPG & Strategy experience between its members and is committed to running a long term, successful game for its players.

From the Ashes Three incorporates some of the deep lore of previous Spacebattles games into its backstory but also presents a new, unique setting that shouldn’t be daunting to new players. To FTA veterans, think of this as yet another Manifold of reality. To new players-there’ll be some weird references and backstory elements that may need some explanation but you’ll be good to play out of the box without any prior knowledge of the history.

Navigation

1. From the Ashes 3
2. FTA3 Thread Index
3. FTA3 Military and Combat
4. FTA3 Ship Design
5. FTA3 Economy
6. FTA3 Espionage
7. FTA3 Ethos & Politics
8. FTA3 Research & Development
9. FTA3 Exploration

Continue to Table of Contents:

Intro

Eighty thousand years ago Humanity crawled out of its home star system, Sol, and into centuries of exploration, settlement and intercine conflict. They slowly unified into what became known as the Overculture, eventually joining with the Chelonians to be bequeathed the governorship of the Open Palm Federation by the Xan, already ancient when Humans were young. These two - followed several thousand years later by a third technic species of particular promise, the TKK - governed the Open Palm Federation for fifteen thousand years, becoming the galactic elders behind only the withdrawn Xan.

Sixty thousand years ago, the Overculture folded in upon itself. Having long led the Open Palm Federation in advanced if not downright esoteric physics and cybernetics, Humanity 60,000 years ago had become a species steadily losing touch with the material world. After preparing their successors - the Tharngolst - the Overculture vanished into incomprehensible software realms and with it, the vast majority of Humanity.

Thirty-seven thousand years ago, long-simmering disputes in the Open Palm Federation broke out into uprisings and conflicts. No interstellar polity dies quickly, and the Great War lasted for thousands of years. The Long Night that followed lasted for tens of thousands more.

Five thousand years ago the Long Night finally ended with space split between the darwinnowed Chelonian Protectorate - the last vestiges of the Open Palm Federation but so changed over time as to be unrecognizable - and the resurgent TKK 3rd Empire - the third and most lasting post-Great War TKK polity, each separated by vast gulfs of dark ages. Lesser species scurried between these titans, once friends but now tired foes, too entrenched in their ways to move beyond. The Tharngolst are believed extinct save devolved predators on the edge of known space. Humanity (what was left of it after the Overculture) had cladified into divergent strains of techno-survivors, these Ultramen and xFolk and Homo Extremis incomparably deviated from those that left Sol.

And then a century or two ago, the children of the Overculture returned. The softly humming server-spires that underpinned so much galactic infrastructure and survived the Long Night woke up and began to disgorge Humans. These reHumans were as if awoken from a dream, the descendants of a million simulations and fanciful worlds, forming polities new and retro. Ancient treaties and customs saw some treat these revenants and reclaimers with reverence if not outright awe, others saw reHumans as unwelcome.

It is 82,000(ish) AD and Humanity once again strides across the stars, but it will not be an easy path.

Joining the Game

Players can play as a Polity, either a human derived one, one populated by non-human sophonts, or anything in-between.

Every player begins with the following:

1. One of the Polity Templates that helps define your polity’s basic history and gives appropriate modifiers to match.
2. Four ethea, with one being your dominant defining ethos.
3. One Capital Territory (that is, a territory with a Capital Landmark in it), and three more territories in the same starting node.
4. 300 CI, which generates $15000 for the first year of game play, this can be distributed amongst your starting Territories as you wish (Both inherent starting & those from Polity Templates/Ethos)
5. 200 DI, Distributed amongst your territories as you see fit. (DI is tracked for capture purchases, but is pooled for actual production)
6. 3 General Tokens per year
7. Three Landmarks from the Landmark list distributed to your non-capital starting territories. Eligible Landmarks are marked in the appropriate rules with an (S).
8. $20,000 of DI-independent spending representing your initial standing military.
9. One starting Espionage Agency, generated with 12 Statistic points, 1 Specialization and 3 Asset unlocks.
10. One Operational Doctrine tree unlocked with one trait selected.
11. 2000 Supply
12. 12 Ship Designs. You may choose one beneficial quirk from the Ship Design Quirk Table for five of these Designs. No quirk can be duplicated for a starting Design.
13. Choose between either the Explorer or Strike Cruiser Specialist hulls, powerful cruisers equipped with the rare Fold Drive. You may start the game with up to 3 of these ships in your Starting Military.
14. One Specialist hull unlocked.
15. A single Supply Base at one of the starting ‘plot systems’ as designated by the mods.
16. Two preferred planet types and two hostile planet types selected from the list towards the end of this document.
17. 5 Points to “buy” from the following list:

• 4 more Ship Designs.
• Another trait in your starting Doctrine tree.
• 20 CI to distribute across your Territories.
• 10 DI to distribute across your Territories.
• $2000 more starting Military.
• $1 additional Territory in a system outside your Capital Node with 10 CI.
• 400 additional Supplies
• An additional Espionage Agency with the same points as your starter (12 stats, 1 Spec, 3 Unlocks)
• Upgrade an existing Agency with 5 Statistic points and 1 Spec or 3 Unlocks
• A Forward Operating Base in another plot system of your choosing.

Polity Templates

Residents

Space aliens! Residents are the various ‘native’ techno-sophonts of the Grid; some may have clawed their way into space under their own power while others might be ancient uplifts Some may even be humans, the far-flung and much-changed descendants of those that never entered the great digital oververse. No matter their exact origins, Residents all share the trait that they are well-established in known space, having their own defined region of settled space.

• Gain two Territories with 15 CI each in systems other than your starting one, with moderator discretion.
• Gain an additional Ethos or two territories as per above (total of 4)
• Generate 1 Military token annually
• You will have one hostile or two neutral NPCs of comparable size placed near you. They will generally be amenable to cooperating against you.
• Residents may also choose to take any or none of the following options:

• Imperium Rex: You may have two additional Territories as per above (possibly up to 6!), though your token production is reduced by 1 Diplomacy and 1 Other annually.
• Veni, Vedi, Vici: You may yet again have two additional territories as per above (8?!), though you will have at least one significant and hostile NPC or possibly an entire coalition of lesser powers ready to defend themselves against you.
• Astro-Hungarians: You may add one additional system with 30 CI but your Stability decays towards its resting point by an extra point per turn.

Reclaimers

The Reclaimers are one of the two dominant philosophies of reHumanity - Reclaimers seek to return to a position of preeminence and have begun campaigns of expansion. These could be direct military conquests or rapid colonization of fallow worlds. The result is an expansionist human polity, though often one that is limited in the recovered technology - there seems to be a certain inverse correlation between reHuman polities that managed to extract significant advanced technology out of the server spires and those that adopted the Reclaimer mindset. Perhaps they’re compensating?

• Gain a Territory with 15 CI in a system other than your starting one, with moderator discretion
• Your resting stability point is increased by one point.
• Generate 1 R&D token annually
• You may have a large NPC on your borders, if you do so your territorial bonus becomes 2 x 15 CI in two non-starting systems.
• You may have two small hostile NPCs on your border. If you do, you generate 1 Military token annually.

Revenants

The other main reHuman philosophy are the Revenants. The main difference is that Revenants do not have a driving objective to return to the alleged glory days, instead looking to a new and different future in this new and different galaxy. That doesn’t mean they’re all fluffy bunnies; individual Revenants can be just as arrogant and superior as any other reHuman and as a polity Revenant states are hardly shy at using force when needed. They also often pack unexpected surprises and more than one Resident has thought to bully a small Revenant polity over some meaningless dispute only to have a force of advanced warships materialize and tear their forward fleet apart with various deadly sorts of weaponry. It's an error few make twice.

• The cost to restore or unlock OPF relics, infrastructure and landmarks is reduced by 50%. If you have the SCIENCE! Ethos, when you unlock a Relic you roll twice and choose a result.
• You start with a second specialty hull (non-Fold drive) unlocked and open to production.
• You start with three TL6 Strike Cruisers.
• Generate 1 Diplomacy token annually.
• Begin the game with 1 fully repaired OPF Landmark (Moderator discretion).
• For each territory you possess, designate $500 of ‘Garrison’ forces. These units gain the Garrison [Node] trait, which increases their TL by +0.5 while in the corresponding node. You may replace losses to these units normally, or may redesignate which units are garrison forces (nation-wide) by spending 1 Military token.
• Your starting intel Agency starts with 2 points of Specialization built-in instead of 1, and an extra Unlock.

Roamers

The derogatory term for the numerous nomads that sail across the grid, some Roamers are the last remnants of ancient empires driven from their homeworlds, while others are simply wanderers that have formed up into like-minded societies. Many have picked up all manner of curios along the way and most polities on the grid will at least accept their temporary presence inside their space to engage in trade, diplomacy and exchange. Roamers do not have preferred planet types for obvious reasons.

• Generate 2 Diplomacy, 1 Espionage and 1 Economy token annually.
• Roamers are migratory, instead of Territories they can either build Convoys of Worldships or establish Satrapies.

• Convoys can move freely a single jump of up to two tramline-links per year, and can extend that range by up to two tramline-links per [any] Token spent to a maximum of 5 tokens per year. Landmarks designated as Mobile can be moved aboard a Convoy, but they lose any benefits tied to their system of origin (IE, espionage token generator in the Big E, etc). All economic indices ($ income from CI, DI, etc) are reduced by 40% in a Convoy. Newly acquired Territories can be converted to Worldships, but only after their culture has been fully converted to match your Ethea. Territories below 10 CI can be converted to a Convoy free of cost.
• New Territories above CI 10 can be set up as Satrapies. These are a special kind of NPC in that the territory’s internally produced resources are all funneled to your state, but they are counted as demilitarized neutral states by the rules of diplomacy on the Grid. Pirates may bother them but it’s generally unwise for nation-states to do so. As these territories do not move, they produce economically at their unchanged value.

• Roamers have three Ethos points instead of four. Instead you gain the ethos abilities of Low-Key and Starbound without selecting them as an Ethos. You can also choose to gain the Dominant abilities of both for one ethos point.
• I Know a Guy: You may spend a military token to instantly purchase $1000 in military or espionage units for the year as you dig through your rolodex.
• Jubilee! If a Convoy arrives at a system you have not ‘landed in’ within the past ten turns, your $ income for all territories and satraps in the sector is doubled that year and any other polities with territory or satraps in the sector gain 10% in $ income. You get one Jubilee a year.
• Research costs are reduced by 50%. Token cost is unchanged, however.
• When moving between sectors, Roamers can impact the trade market significantly, acting as either a significant modifier for either Piracy or Commerce Protection (Roamer player designates how their forces are acting).

Rumpus

Species that have only just clawed their way up to interstellar travel. Maybe you were isolated on a relic vault for forty thousand years, or maybe you just happened to evolve to sapience over the course of the long dark and only just made your first steps into a wider world, but regardless everything- and particularly the history of space- is new and interesting, and you’re going to point your nose every which-where regardless of accepted custom or culture and especially regardless of any warnings claiming that this isn’t a place of honor.

• Your Tech Level is 4. Don’t ask how to get to TL5, you’re a thousand years too early.

• Up to 50% of your front-line military fleet may be TL5 ships, purchased third-hand from Crazy Chelon’s Honest Scrapyard.
• You may reduce the TL of all your purchased starting equipment by 1. In exchange, rampant xeno-paranoid militarism gives you three times as many base forces. Lower technology forces have a lower upkeep cost (see the military rules for details)

• You will generally have a number of fallow systems near you.
• No Respect: All diplomacy actions cost double tokens. The loudness of espionage operations is halved.
• You can choose one of three options:

• Starry-Eyed: Generate 2 additional General tokens per year.
• Scrappy: Generate 1 Economy Token per year. Additionally, every time you suffer a meaningful defeat or setback (eg, military defeats, exogenous stability loss, etc), you gain 1 General Token.
• Rally Around the Flag: Generate 1 Unity Token per year. In addition, exogenous events that would decrease stability instead both increase it and provide special Rally Tokens with GM-determined effects.

Ethos

Culture

This is a topic that is simplified from what could be an incredibly intricate and complicated set of interactions, but won’t be because we would like everyone to not go insane. Suffice it to say, the OPF was an extremely long lived polity, with over a hundred thousand years of mediating disputes between cultures, societies, and even species. As a result, culture conflicts in FTA are more about broad overreaching ethos-driven debates more than menu choices or clothing.

Your territories are generally assumed to have the same culture as you do, as well as any new colonies you establish over the course of the game. What is different, however, is when your polity absorbs the territory of another state, either through peaceful diplomatic overtures, military conquest, economic domination, or some other means. Each NPC, no matter how big or small, has its own mix of ethos that defines, in practical terms, that state’s Culture.

A newly integrated territory requires token expenditure to settle the population down and align them with your values. For every ethos from the Antagonistic category that a new territory has, that is different than your own culture, you must spend one unity token and one token of a type that the ethos you’re swapping it to can generate. If the ethos is naturally antagonistic to one your polity possesses (hierarchy to egalitarian, for example), the cost is two unity tokens and one token of the type you’re switching it to produces.

For every non-antagonistic ethos a state has, you must spend a token of a type the ethos you’re switching it to produces.

Switching an ethos lowers the stability of a territory by one. This can be bought off by other means.

Newly acquired territories with different ethos to your own produce less resources in some fashion until they are integrated properly. Consult this chart below to see what penalties the territory suffers. These effects are cumulative, that is, a territory with four mismatched ethos suffer from all four effects. (obviously when two values exist, go with the lower one)

# of Mismatched Ethos	Effect
1	CI Produces 10% less income.
2	Resting Stability at 4. DI Production reduced 50%.
3	Resting Stability at 3. Token Generators do not produce Tokens.
4	Resting Stability at 2. No landmarks function; CI produces 30% less income.

Economy & Tokens

see FTA3 Economy

Research & Development

See FTA3 Research & Development

Diplomacy

See Diplomacy section.[1]

The Setting

Space Travel

The Grid is arguably the single greatest work of human esoteric physics, 'burning' easily-accessible interstellar travel routes into the hyperstructure of space itself. While the slow movement of the stars has degraded this ancient work over the last forty thousand years, most connections still exist, albeit not always as passable as they once were.

Actually traveling along a 'tramline' (a term derived from pre-space Human mass transit) is easy, so much so that jump drives are built by post-Open Palm sophonts that are under the mistaken impression that the Grid's tramlines are a natural phenomenon. In the heyday of the Federation jump drives could be built small enough that they could easily be installed on family-sized runabouts and shuttles, though today much of this miniaturization is lost. Even so, almost anything big enough to be considered a 'ship' as opposed to 'shuttle' can and does carry a jump drive today.

[Under Construction]

These simple factors combine to shape the astrogeography and space strategy of the 83rd millennium.

Jump gates do not have quality (they are effectively always Stable), but they do have span - maybe you only want (or have the money for) an escort-span jump gate!

The Map

The map is a Node based system, with important systems linked by gate or tram lines. A Node represents a primary system and some degree of surrounding space, generally comprised of Red Dwarf type dying stars and celestial debris, where minor development takes place called the Cloud. This cloud is abstracted for the purposes of rules and events and what have you. Your starting home system territories could be in the surrounding cloud, if it makes sense narratively. When game rules refer to territory in another system, they mean another node on the map, NOT something in the same node’s halo.

Planet Types

The galaxy is a diverse place and while OPF terraforming technology was good, it wasn’t perfect, and thirty thousand years of war and decay has ruined plenty of planets that might have once been nice places to live. Moreover, plenty of environments that are outright hostile to human life might be paradise to other life forms-even aside of extreme examples like the Genumet or Taloid, the Sondrak prefer worlds we would identify as deserts.

Settling a territory on a celestial body that aligns with your preferred planet type comes with some discount-a 25% reduction in the $ cost of establishing Landmarks and new territories there-while settling on a world that’s hostile incurs a 50% $ cost increase, representing the additional assets required to make the place liveable for your people. Even the hardiest transophonts have some requirements. Your starting infrastructure generally is assumed to be located on non-hostile worlds, and as a result these modifiers are only relevant to new construction in-game. Due note that this is whatever the dominant planetary trait is, and as a result these cannot be stacked.

Each Polity picks two Favored World types and two Hostile World types.

Gaian World: These worlds are broadly similar to humanity’s homeworld, have large oceans and a varied climate.

Ocean World: Technically usually defined as “archipelago worlds” are those with only a small percentage of their land above water. These worlds often have shallow continental shelves that provide vast areas of productive, accessible resources. True “Ocean Worlds”-that is, worlds with no dry land whatsoever and a world ocean vastly deeper than Earth’s, exist but are generally not targeted for settlement given how difficult it is to access resources and develop infrastructure..

Desert World: Desert worlds are dry, dominated by desert and taiga biomes, typically with a relatively low percentage of surface water. They have significant day/night swings in temperature and large parts of their surface are inhospitable to baseline humans-however, their polar areas can be quite pleasant.

Swamp World: A world covered largely in water, but with little topographic variety so most of the planet’s land surface is, well, swampy. Fairly rare, simply as the very process that makes a world home to organic life often also makes it geologically active enough to produce normal continents, but broadly habitable by most oxy-nitro based life if unpleasant. The Grunt prefer these worlds and engage in heavy internal fighting to control them when they’re found.

Tundra/Glacier World: In some ways the very opposite of a desert world, these worlds are locked into an ice age. They might, in other geological epochs, be Gaian type, but whatever combination of tectonics, climate, and solar activity has resulted in large swatches of these worlds being covered in ice and snow. This constrains the biome variety found on the world as a result. Earth in the current era straddles the boundary between this state and a Gaian world, only held in check by active measures by the caretaker AI overseeing the cradle world from slipping back into another period of glaciation.

Volcanic World: Generally younger worlds, with a very high fraction of radionuclides, resulting in active plate tectonics and crustal activity. Volcanism and earthquakes are a fact of life here and while an oxy-nitro based biosphere may be present, it likely has large amounts of contamination from heavy metals or other elements released as a result of outgassing. Many “Super-Earths” with biospheres fall into this category.

Eyeball World: These are tidally locked worlds, not having a normal rotational period but instead a “light” pole and a “dark pole”. Depending on their primary and orbital position, they may host fairly normal twilight-adapted biomes or an array of unique life forms. These factors also determine how large the habitable zone is on such a world.

Cratered World: These worlds are defined by their geology, or, rather, their lack of it. A lack of active weather or plate tectonics mean these worlds are still covered in impact basins or craters from their formation. Depending on the topography, it’s possible that deep canyons or basins may be habitable. These worlds range from “Warm Mars” type worlds through Earth’s moon depending on size and circumstance.

Methane World: These worlds are akin to Titan in the Sol System, with large atmospheres, rich in organic materials, hydrology based on ethane and methane instead of water, and often exotice life. The taloid arose on such a world.

Radiated World: These are worlds that for whatever reason are exposed to high amounts of hard radiation-Io in the Sol system is a good, if extreme, example. Some may still be inhabited but not by life familiar to baseline humans, depending on environment and temperature conditions.

Toxic World: Worlds with reducing atmospheres or those completely lacking in oxygen, marginally habitable in the sense that there’s a local biosphere that certainly doesn’t mesh with baseline Earth life. They can be a ready source of chemicals and other industrial products too finicky to produce in nanoforges and have zero concerns about environmental protection for more exotic types of production.

Tomb World: The fall of the OPF, from the first madness of the tharngolst to the last fleet engagement between the chelonians and TKK, was long, and bloody. Many worlds that were once thriving, full of life and development, are no longer so. Some remain barely habitable, choked with fallout and the detritus of orbital battles raining down. Some have had their atmospheres scoured completely. These worlds are not nice places to live, but, in theory, they are absolutely rich in potential salvage opportunities for those willing to take the chance.

Species of the Orion Spur

There are a large variety of sophonts extant across the territory of the former Open Palm Federation, both biological and synthetic in origin. The variety of manifestations of digital life is beyond the scope of this document, as there are endless variations, in terms of full independent SAI, uploads, etc. This list is also not a comprehensive overview of all extant species of Known Space, but merely a brief overview of the most commonly encountered species found across the volume of the Spur.

Xan

Preferred World Type: Gaian, Ocean Trilateral land dwellers and the original founders of the OPF. The xan are revered as the founders of a cultural continuity stretching back nearly half a million years. Largely sublimated and retired from galactic affairs, but small populations (in relative terms) do exist in scattered locations across the Grid.

Humanity

Preferred World Type: Gaian, Ocean (Baseline homo sapiens sapiens; transhuman variants have a wide variety of preferences and tolerances)

Originally from Earth of the Sol system, humanity one of the three inheritors of the Xan, and were the heart of the OPF for fifteen thousand years. Their sublimation into the server-spires was, ultimately, arguably the root cause for the eventual collapse of the OPF, as their own chosen successors, the Tharngolst, ultimately fell short. Never entirely gone even once the majority of the species uploaded, there are now dozens of subspecies derived from the pre-space homo sapiens sapiens.

Posthumans: the uploads that replaced the Overculture
Antehumans: Overculture-era 'normal' humans; generally fairly consistent to pre-space humans in body plan. Increasingly characterized by bio-mechanical integration
Apohumans: The descendants of the humans that continued through the Long Night. Typically highly modified relative to antehumans.
reHumans: Returned Humans. Antehumans, but returned.
xFolk: "Mundane" humans that have regressed at some point to a peripheral, (near) baseline status; effectively reverting to something resembling archeo-humans of 80,000 years ago.
Homo Extremis: Apohumans that have undergone major changes to survive in extreme environments; broadly considered a variety of distinct species in the larger homo genera, but this distinction is more scientific than cultural.

Chelonians

Preferred World Type: Desert, Gaian

Bipedal homeothermic herbivores, the first thing that would come to mind when describing this species is “A giant two legged sentient tortoise”. This isn’t an entirely unapt comparison, as the pre-sentient chelonians occupied a similar ecological niche on a planet broadly similar to Earth in the late Cenozoic. Standing an average of three and a half meters at the shoulder, with both an internal skeleton and external bone plating, chelonians are known for having the calm, collected attitude of a predominantly herbivorous species utterly unconcerned about predation. Chelonians do not rush into anything without cause but when they begin moving it is as an avalanche is coming.

Historically, the early Protectorate reached space at about the same time as humanity and were contacted by the xan within a few decades of their contact with Earth. Both species got along extremely well despite their very different temperaments, a pleasant surprise for the xan who were actively planning their withdrawal from galactic affairs. After humanity’s ascent into the server spires, the Chelonians attempted to become the moral center of the OPF, but ultimately they could not hold the Federation together as the Tharngolst began their descent to madness and the TKK bore the brunt of dealing with them. The Great War was as inevitable as a summer storm, but the Protectorate endured, keeping a number of worlds under its protection even as the OPF fell apart around them. Today, bitter, but ultimately unbowed, the Protectorate remains one of the two predominant successor states of the fallen OPF.

Chelonian populations can be found across the Orion Spur, although they are not quite as widespread as some species. Generally speaking, wherever chelonians set down roots, they established decent sized populations, so travelers across the Grid are likely to come across either individuals or small groups of the rumbling sentients, or heavily populated colonies, but not much in the middle.

TKK

Preferred World Type: Swamp, Ocean (TransTKK have a wide variety of tolerances)

Somewhat resembling Earth stick insects, the TKK were the third of the xan’s successor species. Somewhat younger than the chelonians and humanity, the outwardly insectoid race was the most dynamic and adaptable. Masters of their homeworld’s biota in a way no other species has ever quite managed, the TKK turned this bioengineering expertise on both themselves and on worlds across the Orion Spur, adapting themselves to new environments and uplifting numerous species into the Federation.

Most TKK go through a life-cycle: pupa, nymph, adult, hermit, and torpor. TKK pupa are soft-bodied and clumsy, moving about on unjointed prolegs, before undergoing the metamorphosis to nymphhood. As nymphs they acquire most of the common features of other stages of their life-cycle: an exoskeleton, a segmented bodyplan with eight limbs, and an arrangement of antenna atop their head. The social and physical maturation to adulthood is marked with the final development of Wings. After several decades a TKK can induce their transition to Hermitage, further hardening their carapace and significantly slowing their metabolism. The onset of Torpor sees a TKK adult enter either a state of deep hibernation or metamorph regression to the nymphhood that can, with some technological mediation, last multiple millennia.

Whether by natural heritage or millenias of self-tinkering, TKK are effectively biologically immortal though they usually do not spend most of their lifespan at full awareness. TKK social groups tend to emphasize extended hierarchical family bonds in order to provide the support networks to sustain members in the midst of Torpor and reintegrate them on their resurrection. It is of course by no means a rule and many TKK societies or minorities do not function in this way.

The cyclical nature of TKK social life gives their politics both adaptability and overall stability, but the TKK homeworlds started to suffer from the ‘baggage’ of many billions in Torpor. As members of the OPF this made their homeworlds prime candidates for the first stellar mega-engineering and megastructure development of the High Federation era, each having timespans projected in many thousands of years. Since their attention and resources were consumed by such colossal aspirations they were considered ‘out of the running’ for informal stewardship of the Open Palm as humanity began its retreat into the Spires. These stellar mining and dyson sphere complexes were still partially underway when the Tharngholst rampancy began. It is these partially completed projects that were some of the first targets of the Rampancy, though the crises swiftly radiated outwards as the TKK struggled to contain the damage. The storytellers of the TKK Homeworlds maintain that they asked for, and received, permission from the Council to activate OPF quarantine protocols that granted local governing structures complete unification of military and civilian command. Thangholst berzerks and revenants continue to plague the ruins of the megastructures to this day.

Having borne the brunt of the damage of the Rampancy, the TKK also took on the responsibility of reconstruction as their adept mastery of biotechnology meant they were much more suited to the task than the notoriously bioconservative Chelonians. As the TKK tell it, they and their allies maintained the quarantine zones to thoroughly eradicate the Rampancy during the reconstruction process, and for this they were betrayed. According to this side of the story the Chelonian led Shield Worlds brought false charges of mono-species imperialism against the TKK Homeworlds before the Federation Council as pretexts for a series of treacherous attacks on the Quarantine perimeters. The great betrayal is cited as the reason for the TKK sundering from the Open Palm and the Great War that followed. While this is beyond ancient history, the conflicting histories told by the Shield Worlds and the TKK Homeworlds are often used to inflame the continually poor relations between the two up to the present day.

Today there are many TKK majority polities, but the chief among these is the 3rd Imperium. “Imperium” is a nuance-sufficient shorthand for a state of Martial Law that TKK historians maintain are rooted in the OPF quarantine protocols. The 3rd Imperium is the one of the two major powers of the Orion Spur, more dynamic than their counterparts and willing to engage with the lesser states of the former Federation but also with greater intended entanglement.

To simplify interactions with humanity, whose linguistic drift is considerable compared to that of the TKK, the TKK long ago adopted Latin as a second language and left the onus on translation on humanity. Perversely due to this, the TKK knowledge of ancient human history is often superior to that of much of humanity due to the classical nature of much of their schooling in this language.

Tharngolst

Preferred World Types: Swamp, Terran (baseline tharngolst) Radiated, Cratered, Void, Toxic (Revanant tharngolst if they exist which they don’t I swear)

The tharngolst were discovered by human explorers sixty five thousand years ago, soon after the withdrawal of the xan from governance. The species was young, but adaptable, and they were observed from afar while they mastered technology and colonized their star system. Biologically, they were hermaphrodite, invertebrate and eusocial, operating in the middle-to-upper tiers of their homeworld’s ecosystem. Their morphology gave them extraordinary adaptability without bioengineering in the manner of the TKK, and their ability to focus portions of their collective hive mind on individual members of their society for specific problems only enhanced this flexibility. Tharngolst telepathy only worked between members of the species, but it was immensely powerful and was largely responsible for the species-which in every other regard, biologically speaking, rather unremarkable-from reaching the top of the evolutionary heap on their homeworld.

Their replacement of humanity as the third leg of the OPF’s ruling triumvirate seemed an inspired decision by many, able in the same way as Sol’s children in interceding between the two very different outlooks of the chelonians and TKK and finding consensus while also protecting the less dominant species of the Federation. For nearly twenty thousand years, this opinion was amply reinforced, with the tharngolst beginning to consider the same marriage of biology and technology that humanity’s Overculture had embarked on that would eventually culminate in Posthuman server spires.

Unfortunately, somewhere, somehow, something tragically went wrong. The tharngolst, instead of sublimating into a virtual paradise of their own design and underpinning the information network of the OPF in the process, went mad and began lashing out. To this day, nobody knows what the trigger was. The tharngolst launched a vendetta across the stars, with destruction on their mind. It would take several thousand years to finally stop them, with the TKK bearing the brunt of the burden due to their own expertise, before they were finally stopped, and the costs of this conflict are the root causes for the end of the OPF.

Unfortunately, the Crusade wiped out well over 99% of the extant tharngolst population. The TKK were able to save a few small, isolated populations, either due to some glitches in their organic-cybernetic interface, or because they were outliers regarding the adoption of the tech, etc. Some of these populations survived the Great War and keep themselves a very low profile to this day.

Stories of Tharngolst Revenants lurking in the chaos of the Grid to wreck havoc upon what remains of Orion civilization are frequently heard, but not yet confirmed by any credible ReHuman or other polity.

Sondrak

Preferred World Types: Desert, Gaian

A post-Collapse species that was increasingly dominating stretches of the “No-Man’s Land” between the TKK and chelonians prior to the re-emergence of humanity, the sondrak are big-bodied, bipedal apex predators who developed sentience as the result of climatic changes on their homeworld. Largely individualistic but loyal to their clan or nation, the sondrak in terms of psychological outlook are in some ways very similar to humanity. In others, however, they are radically different. Their biological makeup meant that pre-technology sondrak were functionally unkillable by anything aside from another sondrak, a handful of rare diseases, and old age. They possessed incredible regeneration abilities, and were frankly bigger and meaner than anything else on their homeworld, which has left them with some interesting psychological quirks.

For one, sondrak see no real issue with physical violence to settle interpersonal disputes. To them, there’s no real difference between engaging in verbal debate and going a couple of rounds in the ring, because even if you lose a finger or something it’ll grow back in a couple of weeks. The discovery that most of the settled galaxy was populated by “softskins” who didn’t see things the same way was something of a shock to the species.

Another way in which their psychology is radically different is in terms of family structure. Sondrak reproductive practices involve group mating and communal raising of the resulting clutches of eggs. The actual parentage of particular offspring isn’t important, they’re all raised by the Clan. As a result, sondrak view legacy rather differently than most other species. Their original aspiration as individuals was to be ‘remembered’-that is, to obtain legendary status among their culture that persists across time.

The discovery that the galaxy was filled with a civilization hundreds of thousands of years old, with entire species given digital immortality through computational super technology, caused a shockwave in sondrak metaculture that has still not fully been resolved, and as a result, the sondrak are even more unpredictable as individuals than various human clades.

Iase

Preferred World Type: Void

Nobody knows where the iase originate from, including the iase themselves. Xan records indicate when they began spacefaring, there were already iase colonies scattered across the local volume. They have been extensively engineered over their long history and are adapted to microgravity. Iase colonies are normally in hollowed out asteroids, or in domes on airless moons. There is no central political entity for the iase as a species, although they were always been acknowledged as Federation members. The slight, pale, hairless species, bilateral in build with four limbs all adapted for manipulation (a legacy of the genetic engineering that made them thrive in microgravity) simply exist in thousands or millions of small colonies across the galaxy, integrated into whatever larger polity they happen to co-exist with.

What the iase are known for is being able to facilitate trade. While not remotely unified as a political entity, they communicate with their fellows for cultural and economic purposes, and their ubiquitous distribution across the Orion Spur (and beyond, if records from OPF expeditions into other parts of the galaxy are true) means they have been associated with interspecies long-distance travel for longer than the Federation existed.

The iase, as a species, are non-violent and unaggressive, unsurprising given their rather fragile microgravity adapted bodies. They are gregarious and welcoming of contact with other species, and their trade networks are probably the closest thing to a functional overarching body across the entirety of the Orion Spur. Iase colonies are equally prevalent in the Protectorate, in “Re-Man’s Land” between the two great empires, and within TKK space, and they all talk to each other.

The obvious implications for intelligence assets should speak for themselves.

Caiveh

Take the kzinti or kilrathi. Make them three feet tall, and somehow cuter. Kicked around by the TKK as a species during the Great War and afterward, pretty common members of the dysfunction that is current interstellar civilization. The sondrak admire their spunk.

Preferred World Type: Gaian

Hyfi

Contemporaneous with the rise of the sondrak, hierarchical owlbear imperialists who all fancy themselves to be Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Preferred World Type: Tundra

Fueglan

Older, second-tier species more or less contemporaneous with the TKK. Amphibious, unambitious, party animal cane toads on benders sorts. Everywhere but not in huge numbers. Just happy to be invited and hopes both teams have a good time.

Preferred World Type: Swamp

Daedalians

Crabpeople who got into space right as the tharngolst melted down. Unfortunate. Have, somehow, survived, and carved themselves a niche in things. Really wish they were over in the Perseus Arm, thoehiiojs-^{[Citation needed]}

Daedalians are the pinnacle of evolution, as evidenced by Carcinization, the evolutionary phenomena in which all beings eventually try to evolve into Daedalians. They are decapod crustaceans of sublime intelligence, slavish generosity, impeccable taste and extraordinaty charisma. Their ancient and revered civilization stands as a living monument to their greatness.

Preferred World Type: Ocean

Genumet

Probably one of the more truly alien sophont species, vacuum dwelling crystalline based life forms who have scattered across a fair portion of the Spur. Were members of the Federation, generally friendly, keep to the outer fringe of star systems (think into the Centaurs in Sol) where the sort of slushy iceballs they derive nutrition from are frequently found. Originated in the volatile dense comet cloud of an unusual flaring red dwarf.

Preferred World Type: Void

Taloid

Nobody is sure how the hell they evolved, including the taloid themselves. Some assume some forgotten xan or human experiment. A race of mechanical life on a world where the beats of organic life were carried out on a warm-titan type world rich in mineral deposits. Self-organizing mechanical forms gradually increased in complexity until it resulted in sentience. It is important to recognize the taloid are incredibly distinct from other “synthetic” life, in that their sense of self and identity is tied to the physical form and not an informorph construct like most SAI. Fascinated by religion, both the myriad ones of their homeworld and of all the strange new beings they’ve encountered.

Preferred World Type: Methane

Hurunghu’hn (Grunts)

Think of a muskrat with an attitude problem that has the same relationship with a large grazing critter on their homeworld that a remora fish has with a shark, from a world full of things that make xenobiologists from across Orion go “bruh what the fuck”. Then give them a pack hunter mentality and access to fighter craft and tell them that people will pay them good money to get into scraps.

Preferred World Type: Swamp

Milskri

Preferred World Type: Volcanic

The Milskri are creations of a long finished non-human singularity that occurred in the Sagittarius arm. Physically they are around two meters long plus tail, with a body like a snake covered in yellow grey scales. They have six arms mounted along their spine, the joints apparently designed for amazing flexibility and acrobatics.

Milskri are hugely muscular and agile and are further blessed with superior senses. They are all but immune to poison, to disease, and have an amazingly strong skeletomuscular general body structure. Finally they are amazingly stealthy, their biology capable of evading even the most high tech sensors.

The Milskri were created not as some superior life form but rather as germs, biological weapons for the godlike AI that built them in its war against other godlike AI. They proved all too good at their task, getting loose and ending up destroying almost all AI gods in their region of space - even their original creators. They were brought to the Orion Arm towards the end of the Theopropulsion Age to fight the Dreadnought Gods, an action that is broadly considered a mistake to this day.

Milskri tactics revolve around hacking, sabotage and lots of explosives. While they are capable fighters they are not as good at fighting fellow sentients as they are the massive Godlike AIs they were designed to kill. Their technology is often designed to prevent exploitation by such AI, but this can leave them vulnerable to the capacities such devices (such as fully networked communications) that they give the enemy.

Milskri ideologies believe it is their duty to propagate entropy in the universe, to bring everything tumbling down. Of course, there are some Milskri who reject this course, but there are just as many fanatical true believers.

Moss Bears (Aysheians)

Looking like nothing so much as giant pony-sized tardigrades, the Moss Bears were something of a scourge of known space for several centuries until proper translation protocols were created and diplomacy was finally successful. With four sets of legs they have a clearly segmented body plan, with an eye turret akin to the Terran chameleon at each ‘shoulder’. They are also staggeringly resistant to radiation and can withstand far more radiation than any other technic sophont of the Orion arm; the median lethal dose normally exceeds 1000 Gy (over 100x that of a baseline human).

Preferred World Type: Radiated, Swamp

Gryptids

Hexapodal avians who were extremely traumatized by the Tharngolst Madness-being nearly exterminated has that effect, one supposes-and became violently against any kind of “smart” technology or MMI interfaces as a result. Extremely bio & techno conservative, to the point even the chelonians are sending DMs like “u good?”

Preferred World Type: Tundra, Swamp

Iadelphe

A race of friendly spider-ferrets who were nearly wiped out by the tharngolst and the subsequent War in Heaven that ended the OPF. Their homeworld became an irradiated ruin, the survivors scattered across the Spur have been trying to find themselves a new world to call their own ever since. Found in a lot of the marginal spaces on the Grid.

Preferred World Type: Gaia, Ocean

Apectids

A young, dynamic race just now discovering the galaxy is flaming dumpster fire. Their homeworld is near Terranova and they have joined the nascent Golden Commonwealth, but some of their folks are spread out across the tramlines. In some ways broadly similar to Earth-based biology, the apectids blend the features of a weasel and a hyena into a single, very double jointed package that adds in species-specific telepathy for spice.

Preferred World Type: Gaia, Tundra

Note for Players

This is by no means an exhaustive list of sentient species in the game, nor should it in any way constrain your design choices when constructing your faction. It’s purely meant to give you a guide and something to scaffold your polity’s backstory and place in the galactic ecosystem with. If you want to play an alien species instead of humans but don’t have any great ideas, feel free to construct a polity utilizing any or all of the provided.