Haydee Chronicles

Welcome onboard the Trinitan frigate Haydée, formerly the Juan Carlos IV of the Republic of Sargon. A relic of the Concord's civil war, the ship had been laid up for half a decade before being seized by a group of Trinity commandos. A few short months of overhaul couldn't remotely put to right decades of hard use and poor maintenance, but nonetheless the renamed Haydée was launched.

Background

What has gone before

It has been ninety-five years since the Emmerian Expeditionary Force emerged from an astral fold in Rubiconspace in an attempt to bring a long war to a close.

Eighty-five years since the Mastery of Suns finally extinguished, the EEF and its new allies having defeated the clone-satraps. The subsequent decades saw the Emmerization of the former Mastery worlds, with the postwar Concord of Suns coming to represent many of the former Mastery worlds.

Sixty-two years ago a permanent treaty is finally signed between the Concord and the Vauzon Empire, the last and, for a generation, splintered remnant of the Mastery.

Fifty-three years ago the Final War arrived at distant Emmeria and hundreds of Concord warships made the astral jump back to Emmeriaspace to relieve the home cluster, so difficult to reach by conventional means.

Fourty-four years ago, the first Cardo Front uprising shakes the Concord, hitting worlds as close to the capital as Malazkand before being stamped out. Their target was, among others, to stop the activation of a Godspath between the Rubiconspace and Emmeriaspace to cross the River Melpomene. This was unsuccessful, and limited but continuous contact was established between the EEF and its distant former home.

Thirty-one years ago the Concord fought a two year civil war in several systems over the legality of succession and the excessive Emmerization of various high offices. The splittists called themselves the Free Suns and managed to blockade the Godspath for long enough to achieve a significant number of military victories, unfortunately for them, the blockade was eventually lifted and reinforcements from Emmeriaspace tipped the military balance against the Free Suns.

Twenty-nine years ago the Vauzon Empire formally aligned itself with the Concord as civil war was won, coinciding with a new wave of Alashiyan raids from Tiamat's Shroud. It is believed that this bolstering of Vauzon defense saw the Alyashans turn and throw their full strength against the UAN, ending in a mutual bloodbath and the effective extinction of the Alyashans.

Twenty-five years ago the Gaelic Empire to the south succumbed to an internal succession war, exposing a host of border worlds formerly treated as neutrals and buffers. Concord political influence moved into this new power vacuum.

Nineteen years ago the second Cardo Front uprising ignites, with multiple other insurgent and nationalist-revolutionary groups springing up over the following decade. These various conflicts occurred in all corners of the former Mastery of Suns space.

Three years ago the Trinity Revolutionary Army broke the previous interval of quiet, unsuccessfully attempting once again to sever the Godspath to Emmeria space. The survivors scattered to many corners of the Northern Leaf and the TRA's constituent groups split.

Trinity Revolutionary Army

The Trinity Revolutionary Army is only the latest in the line of forces that have set themselves against the Concord of Stars over the past half-century, nor is it the only one still extant. Made of up of three former national-revolutionary groups - hence the term trinity - their former unity has been sorely tested. They have been licking their wounds in the aftermath of the Trinity War three years ago, with the Trinity high command trying to maintain a semblance of control over the three groups that are now starting to drift in their own seperate directions.

Cenote - Trinity HQ

An old, metal-poor and geologically-dead inner rim world orbiting an orange primary, Cenote lost much of its atmosphere more than a billion years ago, resulting in the progressive loss of its oceans and the shutdown of most plate tectonics. Today it has a disconnected set of hypersaline seas in the deepest parts of its former seabeds with the only breathable atmosphere in the now-empty ocean basins - the air pressure on the continents now comparable to the highest peaks on Earth, or worse.

The dry oceanic crust is mostly covered in thick, low-lying xenojungle, with vegetation being reduced to lichen-equivalents partway up the continental slope. The continents proper barely have that, with thin air and minimal precipitation. Unsurprisingly, the small human population lives in the ancient ocean beds, generally along the equator. Temperature swings over the long days tend to be heavy.

Other than its geologic history, Cenote is unique in that it is host to the secret Trinity Revolutionary Army headquarters, known by its codename Monte Cristo. Originally used as a bolthole and hiding place for gravity-resist ships in the numerous large lava tubes dotting the continents - legacy of mantle hotspots that erupted massive Olympus Mons sized volcanoes - these were eventually expanded and connected to form an underground base of surprising size, capable of housing all but the largest warships and complete with industrial-grade manufacturing equipment.

The Trinity has taken great pains to keep the existence of its HQ on Cenote secret, to the point of not allowing any contact between the local inhabitants and any but a few trusted agents and, more broadly, not even allowing most Trinity cells knowledge of its existence or location. Care has been taken to conceal any communications from the planet to the several stealthed relay satellites in orbit, though the likelyhood of the simple civilian systems used by the inhabitants of Cenote intercepting or even being aware of low-sideband transmissions from Monte Cristo is unlikely.

The main purpose of the Monte Cristo facility is a combination of planning, training and manufacturing. The delibate distance and isolation of Monte Cristo - not to mention the fragmentation of the movement - makes control of dispersed Trinity assets difficult and as a consequence the Monte Cristo facility is generally preoccupied with long-horizon planning, leaving tactical implementation to individual commanders.

Akkad Faction

Sword and Starship

The Akkad Faction is primarily made up of individuals from the far north, mostly from the various independents that were long raided by the Alashiyans and now under the political sway of the Concord. They emphasise martial and melee skill along with spellcasting, using a grab-bag of equipment sourced from the former UAN, Vauzon and the Alashiyans.

Second Interstellar Fleet of Freedom

Heavy Metal

Largest of the Trinity's three main military groups, the 'Second Fleet' as it is popularly known is a mobile fleet based force and is made up of several disparate military and paramilitary groups that have came together in opposition to the Concord. Most notable is the remnants of the Free Suns fleet, much of which fled into hinterspace instead of obeying the recall order at the end of the war. The Second Fleet has the most military assets with a broad assortment of warships and mobile weapons spanning over half a century and multiple different states and sources.

Alliance against Imperialism

Infospace

The smallest of the 'big three' members of the Trinity Revolutionary Army, the Alliance against Imperialism is publically committed to the elimination of imperialism in all its forms. Informally it was a front for the promotion of socialist revolutions in the near abroad, though much of the economic ideology has been replaced by straight populism. Equipped with advanced weapons sourced from the south, the Alliance is also rumored to use various human enhancement technologies for its small cadre of pilots.

Antagonists

The Concord of Suns

A century ago the Emmerian Expeditionary Force called themselves heroes, appearing to throw down the corrupt and arbitrary rulers of the Mastery of Suns, replacing it with the egalitarian and fair Concord. So says the official histories. Today, the media says that they're a force for stability, protecting the downtrodden and maintaining peace in a continually roiling galaxy.

This may even be right, but in practice surprisingly little has changed from the era of the Masters. The leaders are not enigmatic figures, there is democracy instead of autocracy and there is nominal mobility to even the highest ranks, but for those in the Mastery, life has simply continued on.

For all that the EEF went native upon arriving in Rubicon, the marriage of crusading militarism and laissez-faire artisanism backed by unquestioningly loyal clone-satraps has been an uneasy one. While Rubicon's cossetted civilization has undoutedly been revitalized by the addition of the EEF, other sectors of the Mastery have occasionally chafed under new and sometimes unacceptable dictates. Fundamentally, political power in the Concord is split between several groups of elites; the Expeditionary Rubicans, the Emmerian Loyalists, the Concord Consensus, the Continualists to name the most signficant. The friction between these groups - most notably between the first two and last two - led to a messy civil conflict that spilled into open war with repercussions lasting to the current day. Furthermore, actual trust in the Concord's democracy is low and on the top level is effectively a one-party state due to the inability of any other parties to give the ruling clique more than temporary and nominal electoral setbacks.

The crusading roots of the EEF has also instituted a 'might makes right' philosophy in the Concord. While hardly using the proverbial bazooka to swat a fly, the Concord as a whole is a state that was founded on military victory; the velvet over the iron gauntlet is very thin. This has caused as many problems as it has solved.

The Vauzon Empire

The final and most ambitious conquest of the Mastery, the Vauzon Empire sits to the north-west of the Concord. Brought under the sway of the Mastery at the same time as the EEF was warring on the Mastery's core, what was to become the Vauzon empire eventually struck a ceasefire with the nascent Concord at the end of the decade-long war.

As unlikely as it seemed at the time, the Concord and Vauzon eventually achived raprochement and in the current era they are solid allies, forming a military alliance stretching right from the River Melpomene to Hinterspace.

Prone to expeditionary militarism on its frontiers, the Vauzon Empire has added several minor systems over the years and is likely they will do so again in the future.

Concord Associates

A number of small states on the border that have aligned with the Concord for various reasons.

Republic of Sargon

A single-system republic on the Hinterwards side of the Concord, the Republic of Sargon is weak and somewhat dysfunctional, propped up by various forms of aid from the Concord. A small Concord base supports long-range patrols, with the locals having a mix of old UAN gear and only somewhat never Concord equipment.

Involved Neutrals

The UAN

Having suffered heavy losses during the Third Alashiyan War, the UAN was forced to abandon many of its peripheral worlds in the wartime and postwar winnowing. Some of these have been taken into the Concord's orbit, which has spurred both remilitarization and efforts to reform the moribund UAN into a power that can again properly stand up to the Concord.

It is no secret that significant quantities of UAN weaponry have ended up in the hands of various anti-Concord militant groups. Perhaps the only reason that the Concord has not responded more strenuously to this is the difficulty in determining if these were sold under government auspices or simply 'lost' for personal profit out of the groaning stockpiles of obscelescent UAN hardware spread across half a dozen star systems. The sheer amount of materiel remaining after the war has made any thorough inventory almost impossible, particularly for munitions, and there is probably sufficient unaccounted hardware spread across various battlefields to outfit (albeit poorly) an entire battle squadron with everything save the warship hulls themselves.

Character Generation

This is just a sketch!

Heritages

There is a much greater variety of people than the simple cosmetic differences in skin or hair color. The Dawn Era was a time of several millenia-long breeding programs; even centuries later the fruits of these still exhibit unusual strengths. Some have also been guidelines for more modern attempts to either return them to ancient potency or develop entirely new ones de novo.

Orthodox Human

Skin color, hair color, eye color, height, weight, athletic, mental and etheric abilities are all 'normal'; orthodox humans are the primordial stock from which other human heritages are derived and still make up the bulk of known space. Many have been touched by Dawn Era programs, with many alive today living without worry of genetic diseases, wisdom teeth, myopia or other unfortunate foibles thanks to ancient efforts to improve the 'sorry lot of man'. Others have slightly more obvious heritage, such as unusual hair colors, pointed ears, etc. All that aside, orthodox humans are fundamentally, statistically homogeneous.

• Bonus to Pluck
• Most humans in the Northern Leaf (and elsewhere) are orthodox humans.

True Atlantean

Atlantis was a mageocracy for its entire history, and one with a sharp divide between True (or sometimes Ancient) Atlantis which exercised all sovereign power and its numerous satraps, or Greater Atlantis. It was possible to socially climb from the latter to the former, or sometimes fall the opposite direction, but the two did not mix casually. While the inner workings of True Atlantis remain esoteric and often unknown to this day, it is no secret that one of the main preoccupations of the Atlantean population was the creation of ever more powerful mages.

True Atlanteans are direct descendants of these arcane breeding programs, not the common folk of Greater Atlantis who were by and large orthodox humans. True Atlanteans have significantly improved ether retention and often show a particular talent for magic. On the more physical end of things True Atlanteans are almost universally tall and with less sexual dimorphism than the human norm.

• Bonus to magic and ether
• While the Northern Leaf was home to several antideluvian Atlantean satraps, True Atlateans are rare even in this part of known space and more commonly they are the fruits of experiments to replicate their powers; cyber-newtypes, designer children, etc.

Dia Lyonessan

Lyonesse has a long and storied history of mingling with beings from the astra; notorious as witches when such beings were still feared as demons, the ancient Lyonessans and their fellows sought the power of the astra. They bound these beings to themselves willingly or unwillingly, traded mental, physical and sexual favors and even embraced them as parents to their children. These wild and sometimes feckless adventures led to many things, but one difference between Lyonesse and other similar witches - and in part why Lyonesse became a great power - is that the men and women of Lyonesse never mistook embracing the other with becoming the other.

As Lyonesse expanded and shifted from an ethnic signifier to a cultural one, care was taken to fix traits deemed collectively important. In parallel, the quest for power or other advantages became an artistic, aesthetic one. Various aesthetically pleasing traits became sought-after and other, more subtle aspects were propagated through the Lyonessan pan-diaspora. The Dia Lyonessans are the archetypical Lyonessan and commonly have various inhuman but attractive changes, often of a fanciful take. In addition, the silver blood of the astra has given Dia Lyonessans an uncanny ability to sense flows of ether.

• Bonus to socialization and navigation
• In addition to Thetis which is mostly Dia Lyonessan, various pockets of Dia Lyonessans exist in places such as Samara, Larsan's World and Belet-Seri.

Alfar/Dokkar

An ancient offshoot of humanity, the Alfar/Dokkar are colloquially known as 'elves' today. Lacking some of the more otherworldly traits of the Dia, the elves share similar origins with Lyonessans. Often existing alongside

Prime Murian

Captain America!

MMO dimorphism?

• Large physical and related bonuses. Also probably very good looking.