Runes of Electronic Suns

Background Information

History

Early expeditions during the 11th century charted courses and set up navigational beacons, while landing parties discovered relics and riches.

The 12th century saw the first successful colonies established beyond Yggradil; the promise of the riches of the cosmos led to various small scale settlements mostly to give the early explorers a source of perishable supplies in the new worlds and, soon enough, to the physical embodiment of claims. While a few of these early colonies failed entirely, by the end of the 12th century the population of Midgaran outside of Yggdrasil - which at this time was still entirely of Atlantean origin - was well in excess of a quarter million souls and was growing rapidly. These worlds later became known as the Core Worlds.

The 13th century saw continued expansion to the new worlds, with two significant changes. The first was the demographic shift of population growth from mostly immigration to mostly natural growth; while immigration ebbed and flowed as established colonies absorbed additional migrants and new colonies were set up across the future Core Worlds, natural growth from progressive generations of settlers was almost geometric. The second and more significant was the beginning of non-Atlantean settlement. Imperial Xanadu, at this time still strong, was among the first but hardly alone. Having recovered from the Dammerung and spurred to action the various Alfar realms began their own explorations. In the drive to go further and farther the reclusive Zwerg of Nidavellir were bribed and bribed well for their secrets of metallurgy to build light, strong ships of iron and steel to cross to new worlds. Dozens of new - or at least unvisited in many centuries - worlds were found when Alfar magics, Zwerg metalworking and Midgar industriousness was combined. Larger, faster ships allowed for the explosive growth of trade and larger population movement.

As explorers left the comforting environs near Yggdrasil, they began to discover increasing evidence of the magnitude of Ragnarok. The worlds near Yggdrasil all showed the fading scars of Ragnarok if one knew where to look, but as the frontier began to expand beyond the inner worlds next to Yggdrasil these scars became far more visible. Ancient stoneworks and crumbling dolems even larger than Asgardan mortar heads were relics of Ragnarok, weapons of the Muspel Titans and with their animating energies long since faded. Monstrous creatures and enormous feral battle-beasts were ancient creations of the Vanir and many were found to roam these more distant worlds. The dolems were long dead but the Vanir's biological weapons were all too alive, necessitating the shipment of arms and troops to distant settlements to slay battle-beasts that had not realized the war their ancestors had fought had ended over a thousand years previously. The worst was yet to come.

The dolems were dead and the battle-beasts feral and greatly reduced over generations, but the slumbering einherjar retained much of their terrible power. The legendary mechanical warriors of the Asgard they were self-replicating and self-maintaining machines that slept through much of the centuries awaiting further commands that would never come, only emerging to a state of half-wakefulness to conduct repairs or replacement. They too had degraded over the long centuries but not as badly as the others and when they sporadically awakened and encountered the wandering ships of Man, of Elf or of Dwarf - and recognized them as The Enemy - they left few survivors. As these attacks increased several exploring states petitioned the Asgard for help. While at first the characteristically insular Asgard rebuffed these entreaties, by the end of the 13th century opinions had changed and 'dragon-hunters' began to set sail from Asgard; some set forth to challenge themselves while others saw it as duty to clean up ancient messes. Equipped with Asgardian weapons centuries beyond anything found in the other realms they could fight and slay the einherjar.

The 14th century thus saw a rising interaction between the inhabitants of Asgard (Asgard and Vanir both) and the people of the lower realms, especially when it came to unstructured people-to-people interactions. Formerly the Asgard had been aloof of the actions of Midgard and others with the exceptions of a few highly formalized diplomatic rites that happened at the highest levels and in structured situations, generally done to impress the Midgarans and others of the continued power of Asgard. Much more contact saw many of these barriers break down and while the Arrogant Asgardian was a stereotype grounded in truth, many of the dragon-hunters wished for little more than food, fun and fornication in between their battles. The Asgard also bartered away the least of their knowledge and in the course of the tumultous 14th century the lower realms made great strides; most say that even the basic-to-Asgard knowledge, theories and practices helped the lower realms advance two centuries in the span of one.

Asgard technologies inadvertently helped fuel the first 'world war' - the Wars of the Coalitions. While centered on Atlantis as two grand coalitions centered on the Jaian Empire and Great Albion battled for some seven years, the war impacted places far beyond Atlantis, with some minor theatres even being outside of the entire Yggdrasil system entirely. That conflict was eventually brought to an end by a combination of economic exhaustion and Asgard-Vanir diplomacy (read: a large volume of threats that brought the warring parties to the negotiating table). The following half-century into the early 15th century saw an acceleration in outworld settlements; ships were able to go further faster and with more people onboard enabling the third great wave of colonial founding. These were to become known as the Veil worlds, beyond the Verge which was itself outside of what was now firmly understood as the Core. Much of this was driven by post-war competition as the great coalitions were not content to let the other steal a march. Other states that had been essentially uninvolved in the conflict were likewise moved to action lest they also have a march stolen on them.

This half-century lul in major state warfare came to an end with the Brother's War (alternatively the Lemurian Civil War), followed five years later by the Dasso-Jaian War. In response the Asgard enacted strict, punitive restrictions on nearly every field of trade though it is now understood that this was merely a pretext to act against what the Asgard saw as continued smuggling and theft. This had little effect to the common folk - indeed the several decades following were a respite from the breakneck advances and social changes of the previous century. The most notable event of the middle of the 15th century was the 'Ascension' of the last Xanadu emperor. With the help of a renegade Asgard scientist, the emperor used a modified einherjar device to transcend flesh and become a being of light, electricity and thought. Transcending human limits and eventually mortality itself, the emperor rules to this day, three hundred years later.

Two decades later, Midgard was rocked by the Great War. The crude steam-powered, iron-hulled ships and small-caliber artillery of the War of the Coalitions a century earlier had given way to sleek ships bristling with early guided missiles, armored tanks and walkers and supersonic aircraft. This was a war of both industry and technology and one that effectively bankrupted a number of states, saw the collapse of others and left innumerable towns and cities in rubble. Worse yet, a number of poorly-understood 'Ragnarok weapons' were unleashed on the battlefield to occasionally mixed results. In many cases geopolitical issues continued to simmer between the major powers but there was no appetite for renewed conflicts or arms races among the halls of power and even less among the citizenry. There was, however, a keen understanding that the Verge and the Veil needed to be policed and any attempt by the colonies to collect Ragnarok weapons be firmly denied. A more international organization was needed, one that could do the task without spawning just the sort of great power conflicts-of-interest that had led to the Great War.

By the closing decade of the 15th century this logic had been broadly accepted by the great powers of Midgard - some had been most reticent but once the Asgard (rather unexpectedly, given the name) announced that they would join the 'Unified Midgard League' it became a clear case of being part of the club or NOT being part of the club. While the Unified Midgard League hardly put an end to war, it did help to greatly reduce frictions that might lead to war and no 'big wars' happened through the entire 16th century. Much of the story of the 16th century was instead that of a new wave of colonial settlement, the rise of realm-spanning megacorps and, in the latter half of the century, the rapid and chaotic entry of various transhuman technologies into the civilian market. Unfortunately the grimy bush war was alive and well and the military history of the 16th century is a seemingly endless number of localized internal conflicts or border wars in the developing world. In RC1523 the Arnhem Treaty was signed, the founding document of what eventually become today's SIGURD - though for the next three decades it was little more than words on paper and some tentative multinational cooperation. The two biggest punctuation marks in the 16th century was the collapse of the communist Bafsk Pact and about a decade later in RC1555, the 11/11 attack on the Realm Trade Center in Imperial City, Lemuria.

The 11/11 attack brought swift changes to the Unified Midgard League. The Bafsk Pact had been a consistent opponent to the concept of a 'imperialist' transnational force as sketched in the Arnhem Treaty and had managed to keep the concept buried. But the Bafsk Pact had collapsed and with it, systematic opposition. The idea remained aspirational until the 11/11 attacks shocked the Lemurians into action. Six years later, in RC1561, the first of these transnational brigades were formed under the auspices of the United Midgard Military Policing Organization, or UNMIL. UNMIL's duties expanded steadily to fill all manner of critical but complicated enforcement roles in the Verge and Veil, leading to the creation of subsidiary organs such as the creation of the Frontier Ready Gendarmerie and the Turing Registry (aka the Turing Police) in the 70s, both of which became significant and high-profile. Originally the FRG consisted of military forces seconded from League member-states under the same general structure as older League peacekeeping missions but by the end of the 16th century this was no longer the case; UNMIL was actively recruiting directly into the FRG. It was in this period that the famed Ares Hall was founded and the Frontier (later SIGURD) Espatier corps came into existence. Other League bodies such as the Interstellar Trade Commission, the Interstellar Safety Agency and the United League Exploration Corps worked tightly with UNMIL.

The other main effect of the 11/11 attack was the introduction of various security laws and regulations. Brought into force in the wake of the Imperial City attack these collectively had the result of pushing many smaller shipping companies out of the core or out of business entirely, while the mid-60s recession, the worst in a century, resulted in a wave of consolidation in economic sectors ranging from banking to manufacturing to shipping. The "Zaibatsu model" (which in practice included various formulations of large and often multinational business conglomerates including keiretsus and chaebols) proved to be the winner in this period. Parallel to this, the growing Bifrost jumpgate network began to connect important ports of call; the benefits of the Bifrost network were obvious but the capital costs of jump gates ensured that they were limited to more valuable realms. Many smaller ports and settlements of little economic or political value were cast onto hard times in a wrenching reshaping of shipping and supply chain patterns. By the end of the 16th century there was a clear split between the "connected" and "disconnected" worlds even as the core world media was breathlessly announcing the rise of the megacorps. This combination of factors has shaped much of the economy and astropolitics of the known realms to the current day.

While post-11/11 politics lasted for a while, a decade into the 17th century war once against stalked Atlantis. A messy border conflict on the eastern edge of Atlantis in the former Bafsk Pact began throwing ever-more sparks, eventually spiralling into a fairly significant war between the two major powers on the Atlantean continent. This culminated in the use of einherjar-adjacent AI weapons and Dolem replicas by a secondary power in the conflict, the situation forcing the deployment of 'dragon-hunters', the shutdown of several Bifrost gates to isolate any other weapons being smuggled and ultimately an enforced peace. Several reforms followed and the Unified Midgard League became known as the Midgard Federation (commonly just the MidFed), but many feared that the Mittelatlantis Crisis had exposed cracks in the foundations of the MidFed. More immediate concerns instead papered them over, for a time.

One of the key reforms post-Mittelatlantis Crisis was to grant greater lower-level autonomy and constabulatory powers to the newly renamed Midgard Federation's enforcement arm and in 1618 SIGURD - the Special Interstellar Government Unified Rapid Defense - was officially constituted. More than just a rebranding of UNMIL, SIGURD was given broad authority to use military force in the outer reaches of human space - and more critically, the budget and tools to do so. Its first major mission was a crackdown on 'artifact' research and smuggling. Not just einherjar objects, partial or whole - though these were the focus - but ancient Vanir weapon-beasts, dolem fragments and increasingly anything related to Ascension. Even relatively mundane xenobiologicals such as foodstuffs or pets fell under a pall of suspicion as the great powers of Midgard tried to roll the clock back on anything not considered 'safetech'. This had the effect of pushing transhuman expertise out of the core and into the less regulated Verge and Veil. Some experts went off the grid entirely, vanishing into the disconnected worlds. New regulations and enforcement choked Verge exports to the core, sending many of the more distant realms into another long economic slump. A number of core megacorps took advantage and engaged in large asset purchase campaigns; by the latter half of the 17th century what were now known as the Big Seven were ubiquitous across much of the Verge and Veil.

It was in in the waning of the 17th century that long-buried fault lines inside the MidFed began their seismic movements as divergent interests and goals slowly opened fissures in the pan-national organization. Where the maintenance of the status quo and (the appearance of) unity had one reigned, now political and strategic tensions were sparking into conflicts distant from Yggdrasil; while activities in the outer realms had always been rather more 'cowboy' this was the slow but steady replacement of soft influence with more heavy-handed, muscular and military influence. Many were conducted by proxy forces and the appearance of MidFed unity remained, but each one drove another wedge into the core world monolith. The Crab War, the Prelude War, the Maduras Colonial War, the August Emergency, the Bufo War, the Second Metis War, the Battle of Tannhäuser's Gate, the 1st and 2nd Kwetlem Conflicts, the Tembuch Insurgency . . . a toxic combination of rising Verge-Veil nationalism combined with Midgaran great power competition sowed the seeds of a dozen wars of note and even more bush wars.

The year is now RC1750 and the brave men and women of SIGURD are beset on all sides. The game-players in the MidFed are continuing to play their games, checked only be each other. Budgets hang by a thread, stable only isofar that no great power wishes to lose the authority brought by purse strings over the many-headed dragon they've created. Megacorporation influence grows. And finally, the past two decades of relative peace have been paid for by an arms race across the Verge and Veil.

Put on your spacesuit and grab your blaster. Your starcruiser is heading for the frontier.

Timeline

RCxxxx - Ragnarok Century (or sometimes Ragnarok Calendar)

• BR (Before Ragnarok) 70 - approximate start of Ragnarok
• RC0001 - Start of the Ragnarok 'century' calendar.
• RC0030 - Approximate end of Ragnarok
• RC0079 - Ragnarok Century calender devised with the fall of the Bifrost retroactively set as year 1.
• RC0600 - Ragnarok Century calender broadly adopted across Atlantis
• RC0896-0903 - The Dammerung
• RC1046 - First Midgard leysloop successfully reaches another [system]
• RC1139 - First succesfully colony established outside of Yggdrasil
• RC1330-1334 - Lemurian Revolution
• RC1357-1363 - Wars of the Coalitions
• RC1415-1419 - Brothers War
• RC1424-1425 - Dasso-Jaian War
• RC1468-1472 - Great War
• RC1481 - Unified Midgard League founded
• RC1523 - Arnhem Treaty signed, creating the legal structure that will lead to SIGURD
• RC1555 - 11/11 Attack
• RC1561 - UNMIL constituted
• RC1500-1600 - Corporate expansion into the Verge and Veil
• RC1608-1610 - Mittelatlantis Crisis
• RC1615 - U.M.L. reformed into the Midgard Federation
• RC1618 - UNMIL is restructed into SIGURD
• RC1750 - Current Day

MidFed Great Powers

Notable Midgard Federation powers of the 18th century:

• Asgard Althing (snooty headliners)
• United Lemurian States (straight outta gundamreich babeeeee)
• Xanadu Empire (Shady and spooky under the robo-emperor)
• Jaian Empire (Napoleon x Corporation)
• Murian Continental Congress (Our time is now, after the global north exhausted itself again!)
• Sindo-Nusantaran Partnership (India-Indonesia, very large)
• Albo-Aravia (voted most corrupt for 173 years running)
• Odinlight Electricity and Transit (megacorp gone legit)

Gazetteer

Major Locations

Deseret
Discovered by Lemurian explorers during the midst of the Brothers War, Deseret is a paradise world, very similar to Midgard and with a compatible biosphere. Lemurian settlement and investment was low but sustained and by the Great War Deseret had become a distant but important Lemurian exocolony. The first Bifrost chain was built to Desert and now connected much more closely to Lemuria, Midgard and the rest of the core, Deseret boomed. This connected was broken during the Mittelatlantis Crisis as the Bifrost bridges were disabled and Deseret was left on its own. Seeing this as a gross betrayal by the homeworld in service of a third party, domestic politics in Deseret swung rapidly towards the position of autonomy and ever since, the former colony has charted an independent path. Stranded far from home, many of the members of the Lemurian frontier fleet assigned to Deseret defected or simply turned their hardware over and the former frontier fleet became the nucleus of the new Deseret Defense Force.

Deseret sits in the midst of a large open bubble of deep sky and astride a number of starwinds, giving it sway over the immediate area and the Transcali Spur beyond Deseret is a de facto Deseret protectorate. The settlements there and several other nearby worlds have been bound into the United Systems Organization, the name a clear slap at the mother country. While relations have generally thawed since the mid-17th century nadir, Deseret and the United Systems as a whole remains outside of the SIGURD supervisory structure and smuggling both to and from the high-tech world remains a thorn in SIGURD's side.

The United Systems have adopted a joint military structure, the United Systems Military - though Deseret is by far the largest contributor. The USM fleet is dominated by various models of short-ranged attack ships and destroyers, built in large numbers and with few of the frills found on SIGURD or Midgardan ships - with missions rarely lasting more than a month, austerity is not a penalty. Deseret does operate a number of larger ships however, including both short-range 'pocket dreadnoughts' and more conventional frigates and cruisers for operating down the Transcali Spur and showing the flag outside of the United Systems. Overall though, much of the USM fleet is aging, particularly the small ships. Built in large production blocks during the first century of Deseret's independence, construction slowed down greatly after the Crab War and the collapse of (perceived) Crab hostility. Many of these smaller and shorter-ranged ships have been mothballed or at least reduced to light maintenance only, while others have been transferred to USM states. No small number have been sold to third parties as well, though this policy has been put on hold ever since the Void Emergency.

Desert is particularly known for its common practice of group marriages which typically involve between four to twelve adults. Children are generally born from the merging of genetic material from multiple members of the household. While often presented in salacious terms in Midgard popular culture, group marriages are generally not free-for-all orgies as per the Midgard tabloid press but will typically have both monogamists and polyamorists.

• Recent: Forging Destiny - With the creation of the United Systems, Deseret sowed the seeds of an independent economic bloc that no longer looked towards Midgard. [Industrious]
• Prior: Disatoria - Suddenly cut off from the core worlds, Desert chose the path of independence and frontier self-reliance. [Rugged]
• Historical: Migrant Star - For two centuries Deseret followed in the footsteps of Lemuria, creating a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities. [Cosmopolitan]

Elysium, Star Kingdom of
Elysium was one of the first major junction systems to be discovered and by the middle of the 14th century its lone habitable worldrealm was being steadily colonized. Originally host to dozens of smallsteads, the Albian Empire took control of the worldrealm after the Lemurian Revolution, Elysian wealth soon flowing homeward even as colonists moved in at the rate of tens of thousands annually. A mid-15th century immigration wave from the Uthman Empire created a large minority, while a century and a half of immigration from all across Midgard further distanced Elysium from just a carbon-copy of Albion.

Elysium was a winner of the latter 16th century, far enough from Midgard to not get hit by various onerous restrictions on advanced technology but close enough and advanced enough that it could become a major supplier of such. The defining moment in Elysium's history though was the 11/11 attack; immediately throwing their lot in with the Lemurians and by extension the Midgard League, Elysium became a stronghold of the Yggdrasil-centric status quo and has been reaping the benefits ever since. The Star Kingdom today is arguably the second most influential and powerful polity in the Verge outside of SIGURD itself and while MidFed patronage is not what it used to be, SIGURD still finds itself working around the Star Kingdom as often as it's working with.

The Star Kingdom has both protectorates in its near abroad - mostly disconnected worlds now brought into Elysium's orbit - and an informal empire spread across a rather larger span of space. The latter is bound together both by economic interests and the benefits of being an Elysian client, namely a certain protection from MidFed or SIGURD influence. There are an increasing number of people - and not just inside the Star Kingdom - that see Elysium as the future leader of not just the Verge but humanity as a whole, something that the Royal Court generally gently dismisses - publicly, anyway.

As the premiere trading power of the Verge and one that was granted exceptional leeway by SIGURD's MidFed masters, the Star Kingdom has interests across many systems and worlds. The Royal Highfleet is thus both large and well-equipped, with a particular bias towards cruisers of various type. For well over a century it is a rare crisis situation that is not graced by a squadron of Royal Highfleet star cruisers and a force of Royal Colonial Marines. The High Fleet also operates a number of dreadnoughts, though they are as much prestige pieces as anything else.

• Recent: Hail Brittania - The First Metis War was a long-running insurgency and bush war. The Second Metis War saw the Star Kingdom decisively bring the colony to heel and into its orbit. [Imperialist+]
• Prior: Amorality Isn't Immorality - The Star Kingdom repeatedly acted to uphold the Yggdrasil-centric system in the Verge; which by doing so confirmed itself as a core part of said. [Status Quo+]
• Historical: Tiger Economy - Elysium took advantage of stringent Midgard regulations to become a key supplier of exotic technologies to the home realm, the foundation of its later successes. [Rich]

Danu Junction
The Danu system was first discovered early in the 15th century during the age of Veil exploration. Its primary habitable world of Cliona is mostly warm-temperate ocean and island chains with a number of drowned continents giving it regions of enormous shallow seas and kelp forests. A second (extremely) marginally habitable icebox world of Skadi was nearby, with the large gas world Mave, several oversized rocky 'moons' and a fairly typical asteroid-comet ring rounded the system out. While by all accounts a pleasant world, Cliona was simply seen as too far from Midgard to be of interest to the prestige- and profit-minded colonization efforts of the great powers. Instead it was settled by a variety of oddball and often well-off groups looking to create new societies. In this it was fairly representative of the Eversea district as a whole. The single largest colonial demographic was Dia Lyonessans, alfar that had been living on inner Jotunheim since Ragnarok.

Like the rest of Eversea the Great War effectively cut Cliona loose, expensive long-range colonization and settlement no longer affordable in the post-war depressions. Ships continued to arrive intermittently, but they were smaller and less common; by one estimate cargo and passenger counts fell by an order of magnitude. Even if the various groups on Cliona had the private resources to create a surprisingly comfortable little nest, they had little value to distant Midgard. More regular trade returned in the 16th century along with a continued trickle of ascension-seekers, only to be interrupted by the post-11/11 security laws. The Clionans dealt with this situation by unearthing an atavistic piratical streak and for a time the 'Pirates of the Fairy Moon' ranged across all of Eversea and returned various techno-wealth to Cliona. Often seized by some bizzare nobility, this state-ignored criminality was eventually dealt with by Frontier Defense Fleet (later to become SIGURD's 7th Fleet). This also coincidentally led to the plotting of several new starwinds extending from Danu; the Clionan pirates had been using them for decades but this was the first time they were proper plotted and published. Suddenly, Danu was important and by the middle of the 17th century a jumpgate chain had been lain to the Danu Junction and the previously sleepy Eversea had become a new nexus of investment. Several megacorps set up on the then-uninhabited world of Skadi, seeking to investigate and exploit various posthuman and archeosophont sites there.

While the Eversea district during the past century has always 'busy' from a perspective of metaphoric street-level activities, it had little of the larger-scale Problems that SIGURD had to regularly deal with and by the Crab War had acquired a reputation as a quiet district. The creation and growth of the Clionan Aerospace Force from little more than a handful of observation ships and securit cutters as of the Crab War to the modern wide-ranging fleet of today has raised some concern among SIGURD but a continued working relations and some minor corruption have kept things from worsening.

• Recent: A Glorious Just War - Cliona was not much more than a hapless bystander during the Crab War; by the Bufo War a decade later their newly minted military showed both its teeth and its ability to win. [Interventionist]
• Prior: Tiger Economy - Demilitarized by UNMIL and soon finding themselves at the end of a new Bifrost chain to Midgard, the Clionans decided on a new and highly successful method of getting rich. [Rich+]
• Historical: Sins of Our Fathers - The Pirates of the Fairy Moon were angels to some, devils to others and very much ancient history today, but one that lives on in the spirit of Clionans. [N/A]

Lehian-Carpaty Union State
The Lehian Hegemony was born out of the Great War, fierce nationalist movements and ceaseless sacrifices giving them victory over neighboring states. For the next century it was mostly a spoiler in Midgaran affairs, a prickly and arch-conservative power that seemed to advance a decade for every two decades the rest of the world did. A relative latecomer to large-scale colonization with only a few distant colonial holdings established in the 16th century, the Hegemony's expansion efforts into the Veil in the 17th century were seen as a time of national rejuvenation after the brutal fighting of the Mittelatlantis Crisis. Which was true, if you were an ethnic Lehian. This work was done on the backs of the second-class Hegemony states and during what became known to the Lehians as the Deluge, their former clients fell to color revolution after color revolution.

Finding their position increasingly untenable as the Hegemony crumbled in the early decades of the current century, the Lehians took as much of their wealth and industry as possible and relocated to the 'model colony' of Carpaty, on the edge of human space. (The twenty-two month movement of the Pribnow Orbital Works from its position several thousand kilometers above Midgard to Carpaty is widely recognized as the greatest feat of human deep-sky towing) Leaving the former Hegemony impoverished and with ransacked industries the newly renamed Lehian-Carpaty Union State began to savour their paranoia and siege mentality like it was the finest wine. Finding solace in other 'also-ran' powers, the Lehians created the Enduring Concord - though it must be said that they hold their allies in only modestly less suspicion than they do their enemies.

While not explictly anti-MidFed, the Union State has mostly withdrawn from the Federation in general protest, only staying in to act as a spoiler against anything they might consider threatening their interests. The Union State possesses one of the largest militaries in the outer rim (largest, by capital ships) and while not particularly interventionist, is quite willing to use force early and often.

Born out of a world war, there was never a time where the Hegemony did not lavish significant resources on its military; in rare moments of introspection it realized this was one of the few ways it could retain its seat among the great powers. In the 17th century nowhere was this more evident than in its highfleet; at the start of the current century the Hegemony was rightfully proud that its new [i]Dmowski[/i] class battleships were the best in human space.

• Recent: A Dish Served Cold - Betrayed by people they saw as their own, the Lehians of Carpaty slid into closed-off ultranationalism and a manifest destiny towards much of the Veil. [Militant+]
• Prior: National Shame - The collapse of the Hegemony and the flight to the outer edges of known space is a deep psychic wound, one that was inflicted on many of the Union State's current leaders during their formative years. [Loser+]
• Historical: The Darkest Depths - Latecomers to the colonization game, the Hegemony was very active in the Veil during the 17th century. [Explorer]

SIGURD

Signed into existence in RC1618 after the United Midgard Military Policing Organization went through a systemic reorganization, SIGURD (named after the legendary dragonhunter and backronymed to the Special Interstellar Government Unified Rapid Defense) is the extrasolar enforcement arm of the Midgard Federation and as such, represents the decisions of the MidFed as a whole as opposed to any of its constituent members. In practice SIGURD has many masters and those in its upper echelons need to engage in high politics even more than they need to engage in administration in order to balance the various demands and settle any ruffled feathers. The bulwark against this is the fact that SIGURD has become an institution and one that none of the jostling great powers of the core are willing to simply abandon, lest their rivals step in and direct SIGURD more directly.

SIGURD has broad lattitude to both police and peacekeep the Verge and Veil and also has a number of subsidiary organs such as the Turing Registry who have a more specific role to play. The RC1618 reorganization also saw a number of independent MilFed organizations folded into SIGURD, most notably the Midgard Federation (originally United League) Exploration Corps - renamed the Frontier Exploration Corps in RC1627 and renamed again to Frontier Exploration Command in RC1684.

Fleets

Midgard Federation Core Fleet - (Core District)
Player: NPC
-HQ Cathedra
The Core (or more commonly, First) Fleet is SIGURD's primary reserve and training fleet; every officer and most enlisted has spent a minimum of one tour in the 1st Fleet. It is also where most SIGURD ships (especially the large starcruisers) are assigned for their first deployment after leaving construction facilities near Yggdrasil or Cathedra. As such the 1st fleet has a large number of subsidiary formations with evocative names like the 43rd Maintenance Group, the 11th Reserve Flotilla (Heavy) and the 99th Provisional Test Squadron. The Aresian Espatier Academy (aka Fort Durestan, aka Ares Hall) also falls under the administrative aegist of the 1st Fleet. All in all, the 1st Fleet has significant fighting power on paper, but much of that is actually non-operating reserve ships or training groups. Just how the MidFed great powers like it, lest anyone else think they could call the shots in the core.
The First Fleet also has authority over SIGURD's Secure Containment Facility - while there are others scattered around, when a Siggie talks about *THE* SCF (the 'Skiff'), they are talking about the massive, slowly-expanding and heavily fortified facility on Tryggvadóttir. It is broadly rumored that the facility is ringed with over a hundred nuclear land mines, enough to destroy anything inside and bury whatever's left.

Second Fleet (Sunbreak District)
-HQ Leitner
During the tenure of UNMIL, Sunbreak was a continued quagmire of violence both local and interstellar, fed by various conflicting New Faiths and other ideologies. These had been slowly resolving themselves by the end of the 16th century, and while Second Fleet was initially large (and in familiar ground, given how many UNMIL and other Midgard League operations beforehand had worked to mediate various conflicts) its ships and crews were progressively reassigned to more needy regions over the decades. In the current day, 2nd fleet is little more than an administrative HQ and a couple patrol squadrons - many believe that the 2nd Fleet has in fact been cut much too deeply and that SIGURD needs to properly garrison the district but so far, the demands of other districts have came first. Some opine that this has allowed the criminal element to take root and the perceived placidness of Sunbreak is just a mirage.
HQ Leitner is a surface facility, an entire island ceded as a base of operations and the oldest major SIGURD base outside of the core. Originally dotted with various Espatier camps and training sites set up by the Frontier Ready Gendarmerie during the late 16th century, the progressive reduction of Second Fleet has seen most of them fall into disuse. The former orbital station has actually been sold to private industry and a new, much smaller facility provides local moorage while most depot-level maintenance is handled by Seventh Fleet in Eversea.

Third Fleet (Columbiad District)
Player:
-HQ Novopol
Third Fleet has been tasked since its inception with not only the broad mandate to police the Verge but to contain the rebels of Deseret. This led to a constant state of belicosity in the 3rd Fleet's area of operations and once the Deseretns and their USO allies felt secure under an umbrella of steel they began to smuggle all manner of weapons to like-minded groups. The Solar War and consequent political realignments have released some of the tension but by no means have relations became 'good'. As such the 3rd Fleet's ships tend towards anti-piracy and anti-insurgent with a preference for carriers and ships with long legs. HQ Novopol is a sprawling surface base built inside a crater on Novopol's lone moon, a large asteroid captured billions of years ago. Originally a fairly small UNMIL installation it expanded greatly to serve the needs of the 'USO Containment' and has now become the single largest SIGURD facility in the Verge.
Third Fleet also has access to several captured 'pirate' shipyards (pirate in this context being anyone that ran afoul of SIGURD), giving it a broad but decentralized ability to construct smaller warships as needed.
Starting Bonus: Support Modules are free during faction creation. Additional Secondary shipyards.

Fourth Fleet (Elysium Fields District)
Player:
-HQ Solidarity
Fourth Fleet's area of operations include both Elysium (which poses its own unique complications) and a substantive number of prosperous worlds, many of which squabble among themselves even as they chafe under SIGURD oversight. To credibly patrol and deter such a region it is filled with a large and ever-increasing number of general purpose starcruisers and 4th Fleet is broadly considered the most powerful of the SIGURD numbered fleets. 4th FLeet has also gotten a well-deserved a reputation for being very in your face among the colonies which has driven a number into the arms of Elysium.
HQ Solidarity is fortified moon inside a large exclusion zone, completely closed to the public and home to shipyard and factories to support the heavy SIGURD Espatier forces in the region. While not quite as large as HQ Novopol in terms of ship berths and the like, HQ Solidarity has multiple enclosed assembly rooms and is SIGURD's only facility outside of the core that can construct starcruisers. 4th Fleet also operates a number of major bases across Elysium Fields and into neighboring districts.
Starting Bonus: Bonus $XXXX of starcruisers during faction creation. Additional Star Cruiser shipyards.

Fifth Fleet (Outback)
-HQ Zabayr
Fifth Fleet is the second-smallest operating fleet, only somewhat larger than 2nd Fleet. It was the last of the 'original five' to be created and for the past hundred and fifty years has patrolled the Outback district uneventfully and without major scandal. Generally seen as a quiet district with relatively few major population centers, Fifth Fleet operates a force consisting of long-endurance patrol cruisers and security cutters and mostly finds itself dealing with mundane disaster-relief and search-and-rescue. Many crewers cycle through a tour in Fifth Fleet after initial training in First Fleet before finally being reassigned to their primary billet; this keeps Fifth Fleet from being a 'frontier career graveyard' like Sixth and Seventh but also means if they were ever called to arms they would almost certainly perform poorly.

Sixth Fleet (Farsight)
-HQ Tempest
Sixth Fleet was effectively disestablished in RC1721 after the Hilda Affair and Circle of Six court-martials, its ships and crews reassigned to the Fourth Fleet. While the 6th Fleet does exist on paper, these days HQ Tempest is nothing more than a cluster of offices inside HQ Solidarity. Even after thirty years the Hilda Affair still rankles many in the upper echelons of SIGURD and it seems plausible that if a new numbered fleet is to be assigned to Farsight it may be a new, eighth fleet instead of the disgraced 6th.

Seventh Fleet (Eversea District)
Player:
-HQ Danu
Seventh Fleet is the current home of what's left of Frontier Exploration Command. Many of the activities of Exploration Command have steadily wound down after the major burst of exploration and settlement in the 17th century - when it was still called the Frontier Exploration Corps - and much of Exploration Command is scrapped, mothballed or simply unfilled - depending if one is talking about hardware or staff.
Overall 7th Fleet oversees a relatively young, underdeveloped region of space and as such much of its available assets are smaller and/or older ships, many of them exploration and survey ships that have been militarized (highly modular SIGURD designs making this easy). This level of military strength is generally sufficient as most of the problems they deal with are petty piracy of starving asteroid miners in 3D printed gunboats raiding each other in backwater systems or theotech smuggling between dig sites, buyers and corporations. Many of SIGURD's rear-area facilities ended up in Eversea along with the a number of training elements, particularly those servicing the Sunbreak and Columbiad districts. While these are important, they are not exciting; 7th Fleet has long been considered a deadend and a place where careers go to die.
HQ Danu was once the den of the 'Pirates of the Fairy Moon', conveniently close to the Clionan manufacturing hub and a major source for non-sensitive supplies.
Starting Bonus: Low district threat. Bonus $XXXX of Secondary ships during faction creation.
Starting Malus: Core ships cost double during faction creation.

UN Task Forces

The UN Task Forces are the other half of the overall UN enforcement and oversight structure; whereas the numbered fleets are assigned to a specific static region, the named TFs are mobile and move from region to region as needed. In practice the UN organizational structure lets them 'unload' much of their support needs onto the local numbered fleet, while the TFs bring a well-coordinated and often specialized set of hardware and staff to deal with pernicious problems. In the UN structure the commanding officers of the Fleets and Task Forces are considered equivalent, even if for operational purposes TFs are generally considered subordinate to the numbered fleet who's sector they are in.
While the numbered fleets are broadly organized on the same lines, albeit with significant variation in the specifics, the task forces are almost all functionally unique. Created for some specific purpose even if said purpose has expanded enormously, TF organization and capability is normally idiosyncratic if not downright byzantine.

Frontier Ready Gendarmerie
Player:
The

RULES

Nation Creation

Nations-states are the intended primary player style of Runes of Electronic Suns, these are the realms located in the Verge and Veil that are seeking their own destiny among the alien stars. Player states are generally the largest and most stable in their immediate locale, with populations in the double-digit millions being typical.

Nation Starting Package

National Template

• 10 NP (Nation Points) in National Taxes
• 4 NP in Trade
• 4 NP in Ground Forces
• 4 NP in Aerospace Forces
• 4 NP in Noncombat Units
• 4 NP in unassigned military
• 10 Nation Points to be used as desired
• 6 Special Points (SP) to be used as desired
• Resting Stability 50

Player nations have to describe their:

• Realm:
• Government Type and Ideology: Affects stability, if you’re the baby eaters of Zardoz and you ally with Ghandi of Neo-Avatar, you’re going to lose stability, if you’re the Iron Prussians of New Stadheim and you invade Bonaventure to increase your realpolitik you will gain in stability. High stability allows for bonus income and rules and special events that are good. Low stability leads to unrest and potential civil war.
• Background: Were they are a forced colony of exiles or planned colony settled by the space Mormons?

Fluff will help integrate you into the game setting, as well as how your nation develops, a Marslike planet of underground space dwarfs might get a bonus to asteroid mines as a random example while a Earthlike planet may get an economic boom as more people settle the untouched lands.

National Templates

Colony Origin
Everyone came from somewhere.

• Major Power Colony - The major states of Midgard scattered colonies far and wide over the centuries, master-planning them as microcosms of home. +3 Diplomacy ranks
• Polyglot Settlement - A majority of colonies were settled in a relatively ad-hoc manner with no strictly defined cultural origin. +2 Diplomatic ranks
• Frontier Consociety - Many of the later or more distant settlements were spearheaded by various groups with plans to create strange new societies. +1 Diplomatic rank, +1 National Perk (must cost 2 points or less, does not count against normal limit)
• Absolute Weirdos - A rare few colonies have, often due to events that happened after the colonial founding itself, gone completely strange by the standards of most people. +0 Diplomatic rank, +10 Resting Stability, +1 Occult Rank, 1 National Flaw (must cost at least 2 points, does not count for determining maximum number of perks)

Colony Age
Multiple waves of colonization have been launched from Yggdrasil over the centuries; colonial age generally has an inverse correlation to distance from Yggdrasil.

Astrographic Location

• Just A Place - Most colonies (and the vast majority of major ones) have no particularly noteworthy location in overall human space. [+2 Nation Points]
• Ragged Edge - While human space has no strictly defined border, the Veil starts to fade into poorly plotted systems very rapidly. Out on the edges of known space you'll find a lot of time to stare into the abyss. [+2 Special Points]
• Busy Neighborhood - Your system is in a particularly dense region of space, giving you both ample local trade opportunities and regional rivals. [Trade +$25/per, Military +$1000, must have at least one [Borders] trait]
• Nexus - A handful of star systems are blessed with a particularly large number of jump points, making them natural gathering points. [-2 Nation Point, +$500 Trade, enhanced SIGURD presence, some traits have modified costs]
• Cul-de-Sac - Not every jump point leads to more jump points. Many don't lead anywhere exciting, while a few lead to nice planets that sadly have no other jump points. [Some traits have modified costs]
• Backwater - Sited far from the beatan path, navigation near your home system is often a notorious pain. This hampers large-scale settlement and trade, but it also hampers all but the most determined SIGURD patrol squadrons as well. Win some, lose some. [Modified nation generation]

Diplomacy and Relations

• Rank 0: Your society (or at least your diplomatic corps) is strange and difficult for outsiders to deal with.
• Rank 1: You are often characterized as standoffish or having weird cultural quirks that fairly regularly cause problems for more straight-laced types like the SIGURD.
• Rank 2: People are people all across space, though distant Midgard and its people share little points of understanding with you.
• Rank 3: You are a precious copy of your Midgaran patron.
• Rank 4: Your society follows Midgaran trends and cultural norms to a level that is downright slavish, if not outright Stepfordian. Your people actually find it difficult to deal with fellow Vergers.

Economic Structure (to be completed?)

• Continental Economy - While technically incorrect, the concept of "continental" powers and economies is still useful when discussing far-flung worlds in the blackness of space. These economies are inward-focussed with much of their strength being internal; at the most extreme they are autarkic and isolated from the rest of humanity in any meaningful sense. Taxes +$50/per, Trade -$100/per
• Trading Economy -

Key Events

Key events are period-defining events in a nation's history - a world war, a revolution, a social or political realignment, etc. These events have lasting echoes in both government policy and public sentiment. In many cases it's something that's happened in living memory, both of your people and those you interact with. It is one of your state's most important crisis, success or shame.

Key events come in three periods, for simplicity: Recent, Prior and Historical. Broadly speaking they cover the most recent 50 years, 50-100 years ago and something that happened more than a century in the past, though these are meant as guidelines only.

When you select a key event, you get the associated event tag as a shorthand to generate relations with other (N)PCs. You may also elect to add a + to the event tag from Recent and/or Prior. This would denote it was an especially significant event that has a particularly outsized effect today. Conversely, you may opt to not take the tag at all for your Historical event - the event is known but has become, well, history. There is no mandate that you add a + to your Recent event, or that you never do so for Prior - but small-r recent events generally have a larger impact on the today.

Event tags may also be gained from some national template choices and national traits. Simply add them to your list.

If you have multiples of the same tag, simply keep adding +. As such in theory you could end up being [Militant++++], making you the Klingon Empire of Fights Everyone All The Time.

One of the important things to remember about key events and event tags is that they allow you to color and shape both your state and its interactions with others without penalizing 'losing'.

It is also strongly encouraged that you take appropriate national perks and flaws to align with your tags. You'll probably get questioned why someone with [Pacifism++] has the War Machine perk.

• A Glorious Just War - You went to war with a neighboring state and you had reasons. Good ones! Not just in your eyes but those of the wider community as well. You stand perhaps not any richer, but as a clear moral victor and regardless of its memorialized sacrifices, stands ready to do the right thing again. It feels good to be on the right side! Perhaps you...won't be able to stand idly by the next time a crisis happens. [Interventionist]
• Hail Brittania - You embarked on a successful campaign of conquest against one of your neighbors. Maybe they didn't start it, but that doesn't matter. Congradulations! Probably. The people want more. More! [Imperialist]
• National Shame - Your country wholeheartedly embarked on a disaster of epic proportions that is now your disgrace. It went over very, very badly and that government is in exile or in the ground. You can turn this around, and not by doing whatever it was that got the last cabinet sent to the undiscovered country. There's hope! You can fix this! You're going to fix this by any means neccessary, or you're going to suffer the same. [Loser]
• A Dish Served Cold - Your country has been on the recieving end of a massive injustice and it's eating away at you. You're going to make things right. Prick us do we not bleed? Wrong us, do we not seek revenge? [Militant]
• Amorality Isn't Immorality - Whataver the last crisis was, it wasn't your problem to solve and it served your interests to let it play out. [Status Quo]
• Great Barrier - Whatever the last crisis was, you wanted nothing to do with it. You want nothing to do with anyone else's problems. You don't want them calling you. You don't want them using your pool. You're going to do ugly things to people who don't leave you alone. [Insular]
• The Copium Wars - Your nation was spurred into action and it was just a six-fold fustercluck that accomplished nothing despite a huge investment. You just want to live in peace, but things aren't going to just work themselves out. You're not sticking your hand in that grinder again, but you're going to do something to keep it from happening again.[Pacifist]
• Bootstrapper - You built this society in a cave. With a box of scraps! Your people may not have arrived with nothing, but it was lost somehow. But they didn't give up. It was hard and miserable and you've never given a dime to anyone who didn't earn it. If you can't carry your weight, you're cut loose. [Ruthless]
• Disatoria - It seems your nation is cursed to suffer karmic whiplash every time things are going well, beset by disasters and external forces that are beyond your ability to control. Some people left for greener pastures, but the ones that stayed behind always planned for the worst. When nobody is coming to save you, the only thing to do is make sure you can save yourself. [Rugged]
• Building Better Worlds - Your nation has a long and storied relationship with The Company, creating a better world for tomorrow and wealth for shareholders today. [Corporate]
• Socialized Gains, Privatized Losses - Your nation at one point was quite friendly with The Company, only to find that for every divident paid there was a debt incurred. At one point they came to collect, thinking they owned you. They were wrong, but it wasn't over quickly or quietly. Accounts were settled in blood and you'll see to it that every measure of pain is repaid in full. [Anti-Corp]
• Generation Chunni - Out with the old and in with the new. The very new. The weird, weird new. Nobody understands you and that's their problem! [Weird]
• Tiger Economy - Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. [Rich]
• The Big Sad - A long period of stagflation, economic mismanagement or just lack of investment has worked its unseen wickedness upon your people. [Poor]
• Forging Destiny - Some people settle a place because they saw something good that was already there. Your people chose a place that others passed by because they saw what they could build there. The only thing is, once they did, those other people stopped passing it by and it grew far too much and far too fast. [Industrious]
• Migrant Star - At one point your nation flung open its doors to everyone. Anyone. While there were some rough spots in the beginning, your nation was dedicated to making it work. Your legacy is one of unflappable multiculturalism and cooperation. Savvy entrepreneus have also weaponized culture shock for use on tourists. [Cosmopolitan]
• Sins of Our Fathers - Sometimes circumstances force people to make uncomfortable choices. At some point yours came to a low point, or was founded during one, where your prosperity became tied to that of people who couldn't find homes among lawful stars. Once your nation became a haven for fugitives and criminals, it was only a matter of time until it was ruled by them. [Criminal]
• President Capone - Not to be confused with President Batman - They made you an offer you couldn't refuse. It's like the mafia - once you're in, you're in. Actually, on consideration, it is the mafia. [Corrupt]
• The Darkest Depths - Someone from your nation ventured forth into the unknown and was responsible for a phenomenal discovery that echoes to this day. It's inspired generations of adventurers, treasure-hunters and glory hounds. Your people are enamored with the romanticism of it all and it's not only expected that you boldly go, but return with spoils. [Explorer]
• ' - [Pro-Fed]
• ' - [Anti-Fed]
• ' - [Pro-Zwerg]
• ' - [Pro-Dokkar]

The list goes on for however many tags and outcomes are deemed neccessary. The tags are mostly meant to describe what a PC's early-game mindset is and in theory would be picked following the lines of what they intended to do anyway. The key point is it's a one-word tag describing their rough trajectory and it's easy to do some basic relations based off that. For example, an [Imperialist] will come into conflict with an [Interventionist] if they're next to each other. Someone who is [Insular] would have to resent an [Imperialist] poking around in their back yard. A [Loser] might not suffer displomatic penalties associating with unsavory polities, unless it's the one that visited their shame upon them. You can choose based on the tags to put people in places where that could cause conflict, or at the very least be a very clear yardstick for stability-related penalties if someone signs a Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact or fails to respond to something that would naturally provoke them. A [Militant] polity will be getting into a conflict soon and everyone knows it, or they will suffer stability loss and a [Pacifist] would be obligated to *do* something about a [Militant] state in their back yard.

Landmarks

Landmarks are large, noteworthy structures; examples include orbital elevators, enormous lunar massdrivers, a massive space fort built during the rough years, etc. While many landmarks (in this context) are built objects, particularly critical or unique bits of geography may also count; vast deserts that surround the habitable cities, the Firefalls of Gal Gath'thong, the Hyper-Amazon rainforest. Many major worlds have one, a few have more. The effects of each will be determined with a GM, though all of a same type (eg, orbital elevators) will generally have the same effect.

Nation Points

These are used to customize your nation. They can be spent on the following in whatever combination desired.

• +$75 National Taxes
• +$100 Trade
• +$1000 in Starting Military
• A Landmark (2 NP)
• Raising Diplomacy and Relations one level (2 NP)
• Perks (Variable amount)

If your number of perks is greater than 3 + your number of flaws, each perk that exceeds this costs 1 extra NP

Special Points

Special Points may be used to purchase the fields below or, alternatively, be used to purchase national perks. Points gained from national flaws may be applied as either National or Special points as desired and in whatever combination desired.

Unique Technology
These are special technologies that you have invented, improved, mass produced and generally made your own. While not secret, they are not easily copied by others without either diplomacy or theft - it's one thing to know that your ships are armored in Krupp-II Ferro-Scale Armor, it's completely different to know the specific manufacturing process. A GM will work with you to create them.

• Rank 0 (0 SP) - Nothing special.
• Rank 1 (2 SP) - 1 unique tech.
• Rank 2 (4 SP) - 2 unique techs.
• Rank 3 (8 SP) - 3 unique techs.

Unique Abilities
These are more nebulous 'abilities', things that your state has cultivated over the years. They are organizational and structural in nature and cannot be easily replicated without sometimes literally a generation of work - technology can be stolen, but the KGB wasn't built overnight. Examples might be an omnipresent security state, deep and abiding ties with revolutionaries across the Verge, covert vampire hunters, an exceptional ability to make sense of the delphaic pronouncements of the posthumans, etc and sundry. A GM will work with you to create them.

• Rank 0 (0 SP) - Nothing special.
• Rank 1 (2 SP) - 1 unique ability
• Rank 2 (6 SP) - 2 unique ability
• Rank 3 (12 SP) - 3 unique abilities

Occult Lore
The occult is a very broad set of believes, practices and knowledges that fall outside the 'accepted' norm. In the 18th century this most regularly means topics like interacting with posthumans or decoding the works of the long-lost Ancient Asgard. That is not the limit though, there are many poorly-explained and poorly-understood phenomenon in the deep black, some of which harken back to a more mythical era of Midgard's history.

• Rank 0 (0 SP) - Simple level of understanding of all things paranormal, from posthuman theotechnology to exotic and dangerous xenomorphs to the haemovore virus to the Muspel Ways - the truth is out there and maybe you know it exists, but its not wherever you are. (Most Midgaran powers and those that reject various dangerous theotechnology sit here)
• Rank 1 (1 SP) - You have accumulated some occult lore. At this stage you can broadly identify differences between the origins and sources of occult power, and with some effort conduct appropriate countermeasures. You may select one field of knowledge that you are proficient in.
• Rank 2 (3 SP) - You probably have a proper department of occult affairs that can deal with most minor issues. You may select two fields of knowledge that you are proficient in. (Most Verger states that have spent any significant time chasing exotic technology sit here)
• Rank 3 (6 SP) - Your library is well-stocked and smells of rich mahogany. The paranormal is no longer a stranger and you are one of the elite few to have knowledge spanning multiple disciplines. You may select three fields of knowledge that you are proficient in.
• Rank 4 (12 SP) - You leave the matters of the occult to top men and even the Xanadu Empire considers you a peer - or perhaps a threat. You can be assumed to be proficient in all types of occult knowledge.

Occult Fields (Taking 2 Ragnarok fields unlocks the third)

• Ragnarok (Asgard) - Many Asgardian technologies have become broadly understood and familiar to Midgard and its descendants, but dealing with rampant death ray shooting einherjar can still be a tricky, dangerous proposition.
• Ragnarok (Vanir) - Feral Vanir war-beasts inhabit many world-realms and some sectors of space, their gene-plasm continually engaged in a process of mutation and evolution.
• Ragnarok (Muspel) - The long-vanished Muspels were the enemies during Ragnarok and the techniques of their stone-magics continue to defy most understanding, never mind replication. Being able to restore a dolem to its false life is certainly a weapon that few can match however.
• Posthumans - The first posthuman was the Xanadu Emperor, engaging in Ascension via misused Asgard technology, but over the past two centuries he has been joined by a host of others that have also become these strange, Delphic part-human, part-AI beings. This field covers both interacting with them and with their abandoned but still valuable hardware increasingly scattered across known space.
• Rifts - Rifts are naturally-occuring entries to pocket universes, often full of exotic substances of significant value. This field gives a much greater understanding of their empirical nature and how best to delve into them.
• Cryptids - 'Cryptids' is a catch-all term for various human-adjacent mystical creatures; vampires, wulfen and the like. Many go to fairly substantial lengths to protect their secrets, so this covers not just the cryptids themselves but how they fit into and are protected by society.
• Cults - Human space is full of wonders and dangers, some of them hidden away before Ragnarok. Even today's Asgard could never recall more than a fraction of them so long ago did they last rule the stars. But these hidden powers still exist and still influence humanity.

Autoyards
Most shipyards still employ relatively traditional construction methods, albeit with the extensive use of labour-saving technologies. Autoyards are entirely automated lights-out facilities, diligently working away without any on-site employees. Autoyards will always produce the specified of weapons per budget and, excluding events like being shot up, are unaffected by any positive or negative modifiers to productivity.

• Rank 0 (0 SP):
• Rank 1 (1 SP):
• Rank 2 (2 SP):
• Rank 3 (4 SP):
• Rank 4 (8 SP):

Nanofabs
Additive manufacturing technology (3D printing) is ubiquitous and has been for a large part of a millennia. However there is still degrees to it, and advanced posthuman-derived nano-fabs can construct objects rapidly and at atomic levels of precision.

• Rank 0 (0 SP):
• Rank 1 (1 SP):
• Rank 2 (2 SP):
• Rank 3 (4 SP):
• Rank 4 (8 SP):

Perks

• Large Population (2) - The Verge is half of humanity, and you’re part of the reason. While the average Verge state can be measured in the tens of millions, your population is well into the hundreds of millions, having surpassed all but the most populous Midgaran state in the past few years of immigration from the Core and displacement from various wars. Your state is culturally resilient as a consequence of sheer inertia, and has a lot of bodies to throw at problems. Development projects to improve living standards however, may be much more expensive.
• Population by Proxy (1) - Your state’s core population is extremely small proportional to its landmass, most likely under five million. This may be because of extensive automation, or a permanent underclass. Spending to increase stability is typically much cheaper, and your various forces are robotic or mercenary by majority, reducing the Stability costs of huge casualties in offensive wars.
• People's Champion (2) - Your government is popular with the people, harder to lower your stability and easier to increase it. Your base Stability is increased by 10 points and you will always recover at least 2 points of Stability if you are below base Stability.
• Lotus Eaters (1) - Your population works through the system to iron out grievances, doubling your return to resting stability if you are below resting, but as it is thoroughly disarmed and rules-following any invader - or oppressive government - will find little or no popular resistance.
• The Trusted Organs of Morality (2) - You have some force in your state, be it a religion, cult, social norm or even just a powerful press which has the trust of vital sections of your political (and politically active) classes which gives you a shield of virtual stability. However, you must appease this force or the virtual stability will become negative.
• The War Machine (2) - Your society has been oriented towards the production of weaponry and your people accultured towards the need and righteousness of doing so. For every $1 spent on military procurement you receive $1.5 in actual military units, though your people expect you to use it. Giving this largess away to fellow travellers is acceptable, but profiteering will swiftly stack up negative issues from popular revolt to the rapid growth of a fantastically corrupt industrial-mafioso class. [Militant]
• Star Fleet (2) - Your state is greatly invested in exploration and commerce. The final cost of non-combatant ships (explorers, freighters, 'civilian' ships, etc) that you build and/or operate is multiplied by x0.8, reducing both construction and upkeep costs (it's suggested for bookkeeping clarity that you also record the standard cost, perhaps in brackets). However, your people will require that you continually conduct exploration and commercial missions due to the importance of exploring and helping the universe. [Explorer]
• Admiralty (2) - Your fleets are well trained and your admirals can sometimes miraculously avoid catastrophe.
• Ultimate Badasses (2) - Your ground troops are the heirs to various famous elite military groups such as the United Lemurian Marine Corps, SIGURD Espatiers, the Jaian Foreign Legion and the Asgard Dragon-Slayers. With a strong esprit de corps and training to match, your troops are certainly some of the best. Be warned though, excessive losses will grind away skilled troops and hard-won experience.
• Cosmo Albania (2) - Star systems are dirty, messy places full of comets, asteroids and other space detritus. Your state has cultivated a particularly keen sense of this cosmo-terrain and given a bit of time can effectively hide all sorts of things from supply dumps to battleships from all but dedicated search, and your star system is often littered with various little surprises and munitions stores.
• Office of Naval Infanticide (1) - For whatever reason you can't stop making new technology in the most dangerous and immoral way possible. Each new technology you develop takes 3/4ths normal time (or even less) but also has a GM-determined stability loss. [Ruthless]
• The Library of Ruins (3) - Your state has begun assembling a collection of exotic alien paraphernalia and seemingly-supernatural devices, chancing on some relics of those who came before that are completely beyond replication. Begin with 1d3 Artifacts (Clients get 1 Artifact). Such devices more easily find their way into your possession and are more stable. [Explorer]
• Occult Nexus (2) - Your world is a mecca for the unusual. The specifics can vary greatly and must be defined - posthuman spires out in the countryside, a shallowing to the Things Outside, dangerous xenomorphs thankfully on the far side of an ocean, etc and sundry. This provides easy access to the physical artifacts of a field of Occultism, though it does mean you may regularly deal with unwelcome visitors, thieves and fedora-wearing, whip-wielding lion uplifts.
• Extraterritory (X) - Your state is not limited to a single realm-world; see full rules below
• Hang Together [Borders] (2) - Your world-realm is host to several other smaller states that look towards you for leadership. While they have their own foreign and domestic policies they will broadly align with yours; this effectively gives you added weight in interstellar politics as you have your own cheering section and they will often also provide help in justified military actions.
• Assembly Prestige (2) - When your state speaks, others listen. Assume your voting tendency is replicated x5 in the Assembly of the Verge and x10 in the MidFed General Assembly. Should the Security Council ever restore the non-permanent seats, expect to be shortlisted for it.
• The Blunder Bus (2) - Somehow, despite all the diplomatic missteps you make and bombastic threats your diplomats post, your state comes out smelling like a rose. Or at least freshly-mowed grass. Is it all just a big joke or do people ignore you? Either way, it works out. Verge NPCs are well-disposed towards your state and will generally ignore minor bad behavior that doesn't directly affect them and the MidFed will often give you top cover and keep SIGURD out of your business. Boys will be boys.
• Corporate Cooperation (2) - Your state has cultivated (or been cultivated to have) a strong connection to one or more megacorporations which has a vested interest in your continued well-being and stability. [Corporate]
• Mayflower Society (2) - Colonization bonus, civilians are quicker in moving in and making you get money. Gain +1 prestige for colonies and quicker advancement to next rank, though your population will expect you to defend the colonies with full force. [Cosmopolitan]
• Star Patrol (2) - Your anti-piracy patrols are very effective and you can engage in anti-piracy patrols in NPC systems to increase goodwill. [Interventionist]
• The Biggest Gang (2) - You have deep connections to the various pirates and criminals of human space and your anti-piracy operations are as much an enforcement of turf as they are an enforcement of laws. Engaging in anti-piracy operations provides a return of money, though you are also known far and wide as being dirty as sin. [Criminal]
• Blackbeard 2525 (2) - The Golden Age of Cosmopiracy was the half-century preceeding the Mittelatlantis Crisis, but the recent explosive growth of spaceborne commerce, unaccounted-for weaponry and trans-Verge chaos has opened the door to a new age of cosmopiracy. Old habits die hard and it turns out you can teach an old zero-G dog new tricks. Your corsairs and related ships are 50% more effective at piracy and they gain an additional single size-2 weapon slot, this weapon must be paid for like any other weapon. [Criminal]
• Fanatics (2) - Your society has adopted a stark or at least highly divergent view of life and death; perhaps your people seek martyrdom and to ride forever shiny and chrome, have deep-seated fears of The Other or there is simply a social fascination with beautiful death. No matter the specifics, your ground troops will often fight to the death if ordered and your civilian population will prove difficult for outsiders to coerce with force. If combined with 7.62nd amendment your civilian population is essentially one enormous militia ready to lay down their lives for the parentland. [Ruthless]
• 7.62nd Amendment (2) - Your country includes numerous organised armed groups, small and often well-hidden fortifications, and a general do it yourself creed when it comes to defense. This can be helpful against invasion but any major stability drop is likely to lead to violence. You are basically Lebenon, Afghanistan, Star Wars, or Medieval Europe. Often interacts poorly with the more statist Star Patrol powers due to stark differences in philosophy. [Rugged]
• Ship Enhancer (2) - You may buy any one (1) enhancement off a hull enhancement list twice, with the exception of Variants.
• Core Ship Yard (2) - You may construct Core Warships.
• Mystic Haven (2) - Your world-realm is a little bit out of the norm, with a bustling hyper-evolutionary biosphere that bears all the hallmarks of the anciant Vanir.

Flaws

• Yearning Masses (2) - Your state is deeply unstable and an emancipatory desire has begun to manifest, demanding a change from the status quo. Your resting Stability is 10, meaning it will constantly tick down towards the revolution unless abated somehow.
• MidFed Sanctioned List (2) - You're a rogue state as defined by the MidFed as well as your previous actions. While at the moment there is no political will in regime changing your state, you are on thin ice with the MidFed great powers and other NPCs. This flaw may not be taken if your Diplomacy & Relations stat is 3 or higher.
• Bete Noire (2) - The collective Verge states and even possibly SIGURD treat you with distate if not outright hostility, but your Midgaran patron ensures your safety in face of this obviously completely unwarranted opprobium. This flaw may only be taken if you have Diplomacy & Relations 3 or higher.
• Verge Hatemagnet (2) - A few states have found themselves on the shitlist for much of the Verge; ironically (or not) these tend to be states that have strong ties to the great powers of Earth - they are often decried as various forms of sellout, puppet, quisling and the like, though some are simply roundly disliked and have absolutely no friends whatsoever - such as the late and unlamented Praetoria. NPC Verge states will generally avoid positive diplomacy with you and all tech trades with Verge states will cost +1 lab each. PC verge states cultivating ties with you may face stability problems.
• Empty Chair (1) - You have no say in MidFed politics, not even a token vote in the General Assembly unlike many sanctioned states. Additionally, Empty Chair states are passed over as recruitment grounds by SIGURD and other transtellar organizations meaning you don't even have some basic influence in them simply be having nationals as part of their staff and management.
• Old Model Army (2) - Built by the lowest bidder, then stored improperly for a decade, then given to poorly trained conscripts. The state's military readiness is just very poor and even cutting-edge equipment will probably be somehow misused. You get a 10% penalty to all die rolls in battle or the equivalent (eg -1 on a D10)
• Peaceniks (2) - Your people don’t like offensive war and will lose stability if you engage it. [Pacifists]
• Dirty Cops (1) - Your anti-piracy efforts have been compromised and you are more vulnerable to it. [Corrupt]
• Keystone Navy (4) - Perhaps regime loyalty is more important than competence or you just regained the stars, for the immediate future your fleet will make blunders.
• Supernormal (2) - While you may have knowledge of the occult and even a map to it, it seems to continually elude you. Posthuman spires will be bereft of any easily-accessible machinery, vampire cults will actually just be goth nightclubs and Muspel dolems will be nothing more than musty old stonehead carvings. They're impressively large and disapproving but how many carven basalt heads do you really need?
• Lobotomy Corporation (2) - Your state officially denies any existence of Paracausal Phenomenon. Speaking of such things in public results in psychiatric confinement, or worse. You may never make use of alien artifacts and other one-off devices, and have additional vulnerabilities to users of such phenomenon.
• Cerberus Syndrome (2) - Your people just can't stop licking the black goo. You can investigate and even exploit occult artefacts but you will take a steady stream of casualties and overrun research facilities doing it. This may however lead to faster occult research
• Prophet of Profit (4) - You state is fantastically inefficient when it comes to weapons, perhaps seeing the entire military as just a massive state-sponsored grift program or simply one with overly excessive bureaucracy. The final cost of military units you build and/or operate is multiplied by x1.25, representing the relatively inefficient nature of your armed forces. Moreover, altruism is a foreign word and both your state and your people will look poorly on acts of charity. [Corporate]
• Disunited [Borders] (2) - You are the single greatest power on your homeworld but it is not under your control, there are 1-3 powers on your realm who are not easy pushovers even if they are significantly smaller than you individually. They are not intrinsically hostile but expect them to react to your actions, especially bad ones.
• Factious [Borders] (2) - You merely one among several PC grade powers on your homeworld (1-3). The other powers are not intrinsically hostile; they may object to certain actions taken against you (for instance, an off world invasion) but may also attack or otherwise punish you if you conduct yourself poorly. This flaw will generally have a GM meddling in your affairs fairly regularly.
• Surrounded [Borders] (2) - You are in a particularly thickly settled region of space, meaning that you will generally need to pay better attention to your (many) neighbors lest you trip over them.
• Coldest War [Borders] (4) - A nearby system houses a power that wants your blood, if combined with Disunited they will have a client state among your neighbors. If combined with Surrounded, you are probably facing a coalition of powers. You may elect to be mutual Coldest War with another willing PC, for those who want to engage in guaranteed PVP. [Militant]
• Carter Burke (2) - One or more megacorporations has its hooks into your state. Their influence is pervasive and while they cannot necessarily dictate the course of your ship of state, they can free-ride off you, copy your advances and 'borrow' your military for purposes such as protecting their property. If combined with Corporate Cooperation you probably are an outright megacorp-state. [Corporate]
• Political Science (2) - Your R&D efforts are behind the times and focused on other matters then important stuff of better laser guns.
• 5 Year Plan (2) - Economic slow growth hampers your nation.
• Dark Fate (2) - The universe just has it out for you. This is a meta-game disadvantage which will effectively harden the GMs hearts against you; they will not give you the benefits of the doubt or fudge dice in your favor. You are still the protagonist of your story but you're no longer playing Civilization, you're playing Dwarf Fortress.
• No-Name Ships (2) - hull enhancements cost double.
• Limited Shipbuilding (2) - you may only construct Secondary Warships, though this limit does not apply to using NF. If you are a Cul-de-sac this flaw returns 2 points.

Operations

Travel

In Runes of Electronic Suns there are three main ways of getting from one worldrealm to another; flying through the deep sky, walking along the Stone Roads or using a Bifrost. All have their upsides and downsides.

Deep Sky Travel
Much of humanity's movement is accomplished via deep sky travel. The deep sky is vast and open, allowing aerospace vehicles to travel long distances without interference. This is represented through the key concept of deep sky travel, the sector.

The map of known space is divided up into hexagonal sectors; each of which are numbered in the fashion XXYY starting from the top-left of the map where XX is the column number increasing rightward and YY is the row number increasing downward. If you want to be cute, this is right ascension and declination. Sectors are used both for determining transit times/distances as well as 'zones of influence' - to allow for the scale and 'fuzziness' of a large-scale game, it is assumed that any given ship is somewhere in a specific sector and can respond to any events there in a timely manner. This does not mean that a single ship will have the entire sector under observation or inside weapons range, just that a sector is essentially narratively 'close' in concept. The same applies to worlds, the sector that a world resides in is essentially their narrative backyard.

Furthermore, not all sectors are created equal; the list below describes the different sectors and their effects.

• Open Skies - A perfectly normal sector that certainly has things in it but nothing that meaningfully affects navigation. No special effect.
• Shoal Zone - Shoal zones are defined by having a large number of minor bodies, typically asteroids or comets. While potentially rich locations for resource extraction (and full of pirate hiding spots) they have no navigational effects. Shoal zones are white or off-white clusters on the map.
• Reef Zone - Reef zones are more dangerous counterparts to shoals, often adding opaque clouds, inconvenient gravel, cinematic density or a lack of local illumination to the equation, forcing slow and careful navigation. Reef zones count as two sectors for purposes of strategic speeds and distances. Reef zones are dark clusters on the map.
• Cloudwall - Puffy white (or pastel-colored) clouds are a common sight as one travels through the deep sky, but cloudwalls take this to 11. While they force instrument flying conditions for much of the sector and long-range detection is hampered, this is not enough to actually degrade navigation.
• Galefront - Heavy cosmo weather tosses and turns even the heaviest ships and forces them to reduce speed (while spending an inordinant amount of engine power to make headway), even as increased electrical activity renders most long-range detection impossible. Galefronts count as two sectors for purposes of strategic speeds and distances.
• Nebula - Vast clouds of exotic gases wracked by continent-sized lightning arcs, even the smallest nebula is truly an incredible sight. Travelling through all but the shortest distances or with the greatest care is unwise however, as it is all too easy to accidentally collide with a spaceberg suddenly looming out of the blackviolet moments before it plows into your ship. Nebulae count as three sectors for purposes of strategic speeds and distances.
• Abyssal Sector - Some areas of the cosmos are entirely impassible - some even wonder if they 'exist' in any true sense and if their interiors are just mathematical voids of nonexistence. If plotted one can find that much of known space actually consists of abyss, leading it be the main shaper of human travel routes. Abyssal sectors may never be entered or passed through in any sense whatsoever.
• Starwind - One of the other great shapers of human travel are the starwinds, enormous long gradients where exceptional speeds can be achieved. Travelling along a starwind doubles strategic speeds, though none is gained (or lost) by crossing them.

The Stone Roads
Also known as the Fae Ways, the Stone Roads are believed to be a work of the ancient antebellum Muspels, and proof of their long-lost mastery of the exotic forces of space and geology. Alternate pocket universe (or universes) accessible via rifts, Stone Roads connect two or sometimes more distant worldrealms - all one need to do is walk or drive across days or weeks of chartless, nigh-lightless lava rock. Travel too far in the wrong direction and things just start to fade out of existence, though the areas near rifts are approximately safe and even have various forms of exotic life adapted to the dark, much of it clearly related to that of the caverns of Svartalheim and Nidavellir.

Some of the rifts that open to the Stone Roads are anchored by megalithic structures, immense geomantic foundations that maintain a stable rift over hundreds, even thousands of years. These have eventually been plotted and exploited and now a number of star-rails bridge the cosmos. Most worlds, however, are not so lucky and have to suffer through the irregular nature of rifts.

Bifrost
A technology created by the ancient Asgard long before Ragnarok, the Bifrost is essentially a point-to-point teleportation system. When the Bifrost is activated, the subject(s) to be teleported are surrounded by a flashy but mostly harmless light show of witchfire and low-temperature plasma filaments before vanishing, appearing moments later at the receiving Bifrost unit. While individual-scale Bifrost systems exist, mostly in the hands of the Asgard, (lack of) economies of scale means that for people who aren't would-be godlings living among the ancient riches of a bygone empire, the Bifrost is something they experience from inside a spacecraft. As such the information following pertains to the Midgard Bifrost jumpgate network.

Being placed outside of the primary graviational influence of a worldrealm allows a Bifrost pair to connect across significant (interstellar) distances and translocate large masses on a not-unreasonable energy budget. While the process of preparing for a Bifrost jump and then departing afterwards still takes time, this is measured in minutes and hours - on a strategic level it is effectively instantaneous. Bifrost jumps do induce lingering but harmless energy buildup on anything that uses them that decays away over a span of several days - harmless, that is, until something that still has this buildup tries to make another Bifrost jump. Doing so is generally ill-advised.

Under normal travel conditions a ship can make one Bifrost jump per week. Under priority travel conditions, a ship can make two Bifrost jumps a week. Pushing it beyond this is possible, but the GM will start rolling for damaging side-effects.

(If you want to play Lets Pretend for Runes of Electronic Suns The RPG, use the following table - roll the appropriate dice and if you get a 1, a mishap has happened. A single failure puts the ship in dock for maintenance and possibly replacement of more delicate electronics, while three or more probably means the ship is essentially a write-off full of slagged components and possibly slagged crew as well)

• 1 Day: 8D6
• 2 Days: 4D6
• 3 Days: 2D6
• 4 Days: 1D6 [Priority travel]
• 5 Days: 1D12
• 6 Days: 2D100 (will only ever get one failure, however)
• 7 Days: 1D100 [Standard Travel]