Talk:March Upon Sol

NPCs

Inner System

The Empire of the Sun

"With the spirits guidence we will walk the heights our anscestors once tread upon!"
Theme: Low-tech sun worshiping empire that claims descent from some great leader of myth before the Long Night, twisted by time and failing memory.

The Empire claims descent from a pre Long Night line of hero's and great warriors, a martial tradition it continues to this day. Despite the Empires martial bent they have forgotten much over the passage of time as consective generations forgot more and more of what secrets they had once known. Increasingly the Sunworshipers and the Priests of the Sun have gained more and more power in the empire as it is increasingly forced to fall back upon their arcane knowlegde and lore as the secrets of the empires once advanced equipment degraded into nothingness.

Domain Committee

Genre: Longtermist Bunker Marxists

A human post-state buried deep beneath the surface of Sol-1, Domain Committee is a strange society organized along ancient corporate lines, with each inhabitant (at least in theory) holding voting shares in a single corporation that owns and operates the whole of the Committee's labyrinthine bunker-hab complex. In practice the Committee is dominated by its board of directors (the members of which are rumored to be thousands of years old), which remains obsessed with "surviving late post-capitalism" and finally completing the ultimate development of the means of production. Domain Committee is very suspicious of aliens and only somewhat less so of other human polities, but will cooperate with those it perceives as ideologically sympathetic (or at least congruent) or on singular tasks/projects where it perceives ready gain.

Domain Committee is believed to be extremely technologically advanced, although its effective counter-intel and bunkers keep much of its resources and capabilities mysterious. It is believed to have hidden entrances, including some large enough to admit interplanetary vessels, across much of Sol-1. In general its potent agents are active across the entire Solar System, often meddling in the internal politics and developments of other powers in hopes of creating and supporting friendly regimes.

• Hetaroi
• Fleet of Fog
• Macrofabricators
• Creeping Paranoia
• Sneering Imperialists
• General Advancement 4

The Nightsister Covenatrium

A recondite order of haemovores with their capital in the asteroid Cybele, the Nightsister Covenatrium is one of the boogeywomen of the system. They will convert the women to their mysteries while using arcane bio-alchemy on men, turning them into bestial Shock-Wulven warriors, nigh-unstoppable terrors on the battlefield whos' flesh will knit closed from all but the most powerful strikes. They have a particular hatred for patriarchal societies or groups and take particular glee in destroying them. It is said that they have libraries that stretch for thousands, possibly even tens of thousands of years but . . these are still rumors.

• Blood Vendetta
• High Magic
• Kataphractoi

The Waterships of Kwan Zar

If there is one thing that all organics can agree on, it is the importance of food, air and water. In the outer system the very rock - which is often in fact ice - can be melted down into volatiles and used. Inside the asteroid belt however, bodies are often long-stripped of lighter elements to leave dessicated rocks. Consequently volatiles are precious and no system is entirely 100% efficient at recycling them. The greatest supplier of volatiles to the inner system is the Tyranny of Kwan Zar, a hydraulic despotism based out of the Sol-3/Sol L4 point. What has given the Kwan Zar such power and position was the discovery and reactivation of an ancient gate leading to the deep transkuiper region, the outer gate having landed or perhaps crashed onto a moon-sizeed planetoid in the deep darkness hundreds of AU from Sol. And so for centuries the servants of the Tyrant and his clone-sons have mined ice and shipped it to the inner system, becoming wealthy and powerful in the process - those who go against her wishes find themselves starving, thirsting and gasping for breath unless they can find some other, far more expensive source of volatiles. The external currency of the Tyrany is the Chonmark, based on the ancient term for the most critical volatiles; Charbon, Hydrijin, Ox and Nitrin. Each Chonmark has a nominal value of 1 kilogram of mixed volatiles and is wildely used all across the human solar system, often in wildly fluctuating exchange rates.

The Platefolk

Once upon a time, the Solar system was host to almost uncountable orbital and deep-space megastructures - reliable estimates range between 50,000 and 250,000 major (defined as having a wet-mass of over one trillion metric tons each) habitats at the peak of Solar habitation, with several apocryphal counts being greater than one million after the demolition of Heritage Planet Blutoe. Some were even mobile, sedately cruising from orbit to orbit on gently bent waves of space-time and several were literally planetary in scale (if not in mass). Whatever the exact number, there was once a time where the Solar system had an absolutely enormous number of free-floating habitats of extreme size host to equally immense populations. Sadly that was long in the past and today, most of these have been destroyed by war, neglect, accidents or entropy, broken into dozens or hundreds of still-enormous tabular megafragments.

The hulked remnants of these structures litter the solar system out to Sol-5, with most of those beyond being on cometary orbits that clearly originated in the more well-lit inner system thousands of years ago. Hulks they may be, but they are still called home; those that inhabit them are collectively known as the Platefolk or similar names. Making up a significant portion of the off-planet Humanity the Platefolk as a heterogenous collection of human and near-human clades that is mostly defined not by their political, cultural or biophysiological quirks but their location - they live on or in the shattered remnants of these ancient megastructures.

To the recently arrived, the Platefolk are one of the continuous problems; they are scavengers, flea traders and neobarbarian raiders who's very existence is defined by a perpetual low-level struggle against the environment and failing technology. Many are semi-nomadic, moving from plate to plate to tap into slowly recharging power feeds and volatile tanks. It is said that already one mothership from the outer stars was boarded and seized by a force of particularly organized and motivated Platefolk and is slowly being stripped somewhere in the Belt.

There is no single unified Platefolk polity. The general 'density' of Platefolk varies by location and while no given plate - in fact, relatively few - are actually inhabited by Platefolk, the sheer number of these megafragments means that eventual encounters will be a certainty.

Chromia

A rather desolate region of Sol-4, Chromia is named for the huge and mysterious "chrome pyramids" that ceaselessly patrol it. The pyramids fly low over the ground and are about 200 meters tall. An angry red ball of energy crackles just over the summit of each, apparently some kind of contained omnispectral sensor field. Otherwise their shining exteriors are rough and featureless. The pyramids are thickly armored in exotic reflective materials and generate enormously powerful force fields that can be used for offense or defense with equal facility. They also possess a seemingly endless supply of sophisticated missile weaponry. Though their default movement is a slow and stately glide low over the surface of the planet, there are reports of them moving extremely quickly and they have been seen to enter low orbit on occasion.

Their nature, history, and purposes are largely unknown, and the stories of their coming to Sol-4 and of what existed in their territory before they claimed it are impossibly fantastic, confused, and contradictory. Many analysts believe some kind of memetic weaponry has been deployed by the pyramids themselves to prevent the truth of these matters from being known. Their territory includes significant technic ruins, although nothing firm is known of their composition or potential richness beyond this basic fact. Although the pyramids have occasionally deigned to communicate and there are fragmentary accounts of them allowing passage or even salvage missions in their territory, it is much more common for them to wordlessly annihilate anything that approaches.

Numerous technobarbarian tribes cluster along the unmarked border of their territories, worshipping them as gods. The pyramids appear to take no notice of these, but to tolerate them far more readily than other sophonts in the area.

The Siren

A psychic call originates from deep within the asteroid belt, subtly but powerfully influencing those with mystical or psychic ability to investigate. Upon investigation expeditions find an ancient mystical seal that seems to be locking "something" away... and the psychic call is coming from the other side of the seal. Any who approach within a certain distance are almost immediately drained of their life and any paranormal power - the energy drawn to weaken the ancient seal.

The Crossroads Station

"Come now, friend. You have yet barely seen the surface. I assure you, whatever it is you want, you can find it at the Crossroads!"

Among those who have business moving between the inner and outer Urheimat, few have not heard of the Crossroads Station, and almost as many have set foot there at least once – even if not all would admit to it.

Considered a den of scum, villainy and debauchery – or opportunity, adventure and safe harbor, depending on whom you ask – Crossroads can be found deep within the asteroid belt. Built over centuries inside a huge, hollowed out asteroid whose minerals have long since been mined out – more of a moonlet, really – the station offers a convenient stopping point to those looking to traverse the system.

The Guild running the Crossroads likes to boast that you can find anything amongst its wares and services – a claim which is mostly true. For those with the means and the connections, there is little that can not be procured on the station, so long as you don't ask too many questions.

Surly alien mercenaries for hire, rations for the road, fuel for your ships, maintenance at the shipyards at the hands of dubious technicians who (mostly) know what they are doing, questionable medical procedures, information from simple gossip to well guarded secrets and questionable hedge wizards. The services one can find at the Crossroads are many and the count of alien artifacts, long lost trinkets and pieces of ancient knowledge, obedient slaves and vast sums of credits that change hands daily at this most blackest of markets is almost without measure.

There are but two rules at the Crossroads: Don't cause trouble for the guild, and don't come empty handed. No one has time nor patience for paupers here. If you possess a desire, however and the means to pay for it … well, the Crossroads has you covered.

(An enormous trade station/ watering hole / smuggler's den amidst the Asteroid belt, built within a giant, hollowed out asteroid. Humans and aliens of all kinds mix freely here. If you want something and don't mind the morality, much less legality, of how it was obtained, this is the place to look. Numerous defensive emplacements and a small defense force of Guild ships discourage easy piracy on the Crossroads – not to mention the swarm of ships from surly customers who can be found docked here at all times, who wouldn't take kindly to their day being disrupted)

Great Mericana

Concept: You can never run away from america

There are tales, of the long ago. Tales before the Long Night and it's untold suffering, tales of a time where all lived in prosperity and harmony. Records show of the existence of a great empire, of a nation so great they had twice-defeated Evils of the East. They used arcane technologies, merging the land into One Land Indivisible, their own nation turned into such a destructive arsenal that none dared tread on it.

When the first Presi-King uncovered a Pre-Long Night a data archive deep in the red sands of Sol-4, he learned from it's secrets. He learned of liberty, equality and fraternity, of the grandeur of the Pale Castle and New Clear Triangle. He learned of the fifty saints that answered the the god Wo Sinton, of the triumphs over the Shogun Hitler von Putin and the menaces of Sol-6. And most importantly, he learned of the Constitution, a tome of untold power, one which granted any mage the combined power of all those that they ruled.

And it just so happened that the Presi-King was such a practitioner. It was difficult at first, but his power increased exponentially as more pledged to his cause. The dream of the resurgent eagle appealed to many living in the barren wastes, and thus, nine thousand years after the fall of High Humanity, a new nation carved from the ashes of the old, a new Great Mericana to succeed the old that had failed.

It has been centuries since the first Presi-King fell in battle. Every new Presi-King is chosen by right and honourable elections, granted the power of the Constitution as they pledge to defend their subjects. Every day they inch towards a true new Mericana, and for the peoples that call this nation home, it cannot come any sooner.

• Chosen
• The Mighty
• Significant power on Mars/Sol-4, generally disliked by its neighbours
• middling GA and Magic
• Possesses the Constitution, an artifact that empowers the ruler with the power of all his subjects
• Land focused doctrine centering around air superiority and massive armored maneuvers.

Rath Dienastee

Warlords reign over fragments of Sol-3's surface and underground, but the Rath Dienastee is one of the few large powers able to eke out an existence upon the old cradle of humanity. A union of multiple neo-barbarian reaver clans tied to one another through an elaborate orchestration of political marriages long ago that bloomed into a full fledged alliance network of blood. Some centuries have passed then, and now they roam as a solid bloc, having amassed a great amount of techno warriors from their offspring, going off to beat others into submission to be folded in as vassals and taking tribute from their lessers across the continental wastes, cycling through the decades.

House of Artemisia

The moon of Sol-3, much of it ruined, but dilapidated hives still litter its face. And one of those is the House of Artemisia, what could be said is a free haven, going by the adage "to be strong is to be kind". The combined effort of truly powerful lunar techno barbarians in the collapse happened upon an array of superweapons in the city, allowing them to deter enemies and invite all who would be friendly under their spires as they agreed to rest. Now, the House is a bustling mercurial shanty city of scroungy travelers of worlds with its gladiator tents, gambling pits, and synth drug dens, as the techno-barbarians have fattened from a lifetime of what amounts as wealth in this post-Night economy.

Sons of the Sundered World

There's an old spacer adage that the dust-choked deserts of Sol-IV are visited in desperation, host to the unlucky and home to the unwilling. Near the equator there's a gash in the crust- the Grand Vallis that spans across half the world, a spot where the rock was thinnest and the old lords sunk their deep shafts to mine all they could. Even in ruins people still live down there, though less a society and more a self-perpetuating bleeding ulcer of mortal violence. Somewhere at the bottom of the scar, where Sol's light has long been unable to reach, the cyber-slaves of the Sons of the Sundered World churn up ore from the vital depths to fuel their masters' war machine. The Sons themselves are a martial cult, seeking to break themselves, and others, on the wheel of personal combat. They seek all forms of bodily empowerment however their means are limited mostly to uglier types of mechanical augmentation. However crude their methods are effective and any veteran warrior is a uniquely dangerous biomechanical monstrosity cobbled together from the best parts of anyone, or anything, they have ever defeated in combat. To this end they will actively seek out those with new or powerful capabilities and kill them such they might improve themselves using the wreckage.

Traditionally an unsophisticated and factious local terror, they have lately made great strides in organization and central planning suggesting an unsettling step change in leadership thinking, developing or conquering infrastructure to increase their reach and exposure to a greater pool of resources and plunder to draw from. War is naturally an expensive enterprise regardless of the motive and the Sons have begun expanding their surprisingly efficient tyrannical extraction economy, selling rare metals to the unscrupulous and the otherwise morally ambigious. It is maintained in large part by abductees from raids and prisoners of war, who are cybernetically grafted to various types of industrial and survival equipment and put to work on pain of death. While its rare that any of them live particularly long, servitude isn't neccessarily for life and each victim can usually earn their freedom through either combat trials or by serving a 20-year term. Escapees tend to be rare, if only because having pistons for hands makes negotating doors difficult and extra battery packs are rationed thoughtfully.

The Sons of the Sundered World will perform methodical attacks of opportunity on anyone where they judge the net gains to outweigh material losses, however should ground units of a worthy opponent appear anywhere in their sphere of influence they will immediately stop pillaging, ruination and mayhem to find them and fight to the death. Lately they are even known to perform surgical abductions of high-profile targets for the sole reason of provoking a military encounter with a power they are otherwise unable to reach. They are actively disinterested in dueling with weaklings and will treat survivors with appropriate disgust in the face of an easy victory. While they will never trade for something they can just take, they are amenable to commerce when the latter is impractical and only so long as it remains so until the transaction is complete. While the Sons accept tribute from their vassals in exchange for terms, engaging in any form of diplomacy is dangerous and may have unpredictable results as the Sons are incensed, amongst other things, by charity, notions of goodwill and offerings of peace.

• The Mighty (Cyborgs)
• Hetaroi
• Kataphratoi
• Warrior Cult
• Dishonorable
• Blood Vendetta
• No FTL

Lords of Cenomesis

Following the fifth and final collapse of the Elysium Retrograde Imperium, the succession wars between its inheritor states have entered their fourteenth decade. The long-stagnant conflict exists largely to perpetuate the claims of the imperium's increasingly estranged nobility as the last few threads of the tapestry of their fallen civilization unravel and the last dregs of the imperium's vestigial infrastructure finally ground to a stop under the strain of neglect. Long having fallen into barbarism, these people of Ur nonetheless dwell with ever present reminders that they live in the shadow of a gilded age and have made long strides to lift themselves out of intellectual darkness, clinging to any trappings of the old empire they can. Or so they say, often little more than warlords anointing themselves with the titles of a dead aristocracy to slap a veneer of legitimacy over the rusted hulk of ceaseless internecine conflict. However in what may be its final years the war has taken a sharp turn, with a coalition calling itself the Lords of Cenomesis breaking the century-old deadlock and bringing about near total collapse of the opposition. Its success is laid at the feet of its new leader, Count Julien Verenaxes, who returned from a year-long expedition to Murka in search of power and returned encased in a gleaming chrome robotic exoskeleton. Crushing any doubters and dissenters, he led his army to the destruction of Yspana and then Coris three months later. Though rather than conquer and consolidate in an attempt to reform the core of the old empire and crown himself emperor, Verenaxes has chosen to conduct a scorched earth campaign, laying waste to everything he touches, offering no surrender and hearing no pleas. There are rumors that the man inside isn't Julien, or perhaps isn't even human at all, however so far no one has openly dared to question the wildly successful and transparently bloodthirsty warlord. All of Ur knows him by a different name now: the Kill Count.

• Chosen One
• 'O Crown of Mine

The Scribarians

The decline of Sol-1 has been a long process. In the wreckage of a one great city stands a great bureaucratic edifice that has outlasted the government it served by centuries. It was once a great library and museum focused on technical achievements. The librarians who survived the collapse here vowed to preserve human knowledge in the hopes of one day rebuilding, but the damage humanity was doing to each other convinced the leadership to lock knowledge away from all but the highest ranks of society. They trained only the most promising children to actually read and use the technological knowledge they hoarded, locked away in the heart of the library, communicating through terminals and only very rarely walking amongst the their less fortunate servants. The rest were trained to be scribes, to make copies of books and blueprints without understanding, or trained as warriors to go into the wastes and collect lost knowledge and artifacts to be preserved. These warriors might be given high technology, but only be taught the basics of their specific use, while remaining in ignorance of their deeper secrets, secondary uses, or even basic technologies outside their specific mission equipment. The Scribrarians continue to grow, digging deeper vaults and building collection outposts further into the wasteland, but inside they’re rotting, as the paranoia of the literate elite causes them to induct fewer and fewer new Librarians to lead the growing ranks of the scribes and seekers. It may not be long before the Librarians disappear completely. In fact, they may have already, and the scribes have simply not noticed…..

The Horingian Order

Order monasteries move slowly through the system in wooden ships whose workings are understood by none, least of all the brothers and sisters of the order. They know only that their continued faith will keep the ship moving and keeping to their vows will keep them safe. The brothers swear a strict vow of pacifism, yet they have survived due to their adherence to an equally strict vow of poverty. Knowledge of the founding of the order is lost to even the brothers themselves, as are many specifics of their faith, including who or what the Order is named after. When not aiding others, they work to try to uncover their lost past. Whenever two ships cross paths they trade new evidence and interpretations, leading inevitably to debates, schisms, and a quick separation of the monasteries. The only thing they have to offer are their medical skills, which they offer to any community in need in the hope it will be returned with donations of food and other necessary supplies. It is a common misconception that all of the Order are male, but there are some ships crewed by sisters. Ships are gender segregated and rely on volunteers who feel the calling to come to them. The Order is much beloved across the system and they are often called on to act as mediators, negotiations, and arbitrators.

MIDA

Location: Sol-4

The MIDA are the undead echoes of some long dead Solarian polity. Ensconced in the ruins that populate the surface of the red planet. Whatever they once represented has long ago been lost to the sands of time, leaving behind the withered bones of a cult to the past. Whatever their values may have once been has been lost, replaced with an insatiable drive to horde the lost technological secrets of humanity. They lurk in the shadows of the various internecine wars that consume the surface of Sol-4, feasting on the weak and vulnerable, collecting the scrap technology destroyed in the wars. Little is known about the inner workings of the scavengers, save that though their forces are few in numbers, they are incalculably deadly. Corpses re-animated with cybernetics and other more arcane and esoteric technologies form the entirety of their observable organization.

• The Mighty (Undead Cyborgs)
• Kataphractoi
• Very High General Advancement/Divergent Advancement
• Low (But Highly Specialized) Magic

Central Governance

Concept: Martian dwarf under-kingdom

When the Fall came, not all fled the system or weathered the storm overland. Some like the Central Governance dove deep into the caverns of Sol-4, populating the vast underground networks and caves that exist below the surface. Basing itself out of the former geothermal taps that once powered much of Sol-4's cities, the Central Governance unfortunately find themselves guardians of faltering relics, the colossal structures they find themselves guardians of finally falling apart from the march of time, their much degraded technical ability allowing not but the most simplest of repairs. While the Central Governance does control much of the Martian underground, its claim to the entirety of subterranean Sol-4 has again and again drawn it into conflict with its neighbors. Unable to keep up technologically, and lacking the heavy drilling technology that allowed the boring of holes through the exotic minerals that have become so ubiquitous in the Martian underground, the Central Governance is linked to the surface only by a limited amount of caves that are highly monitored by their aboveground counterparts. Conversely, these also serve as excellent chokepoints, both for the above dwellers and Central Governance.

• Subterranean civilisation controlling significant fraction of martian underground
• Lots and lots of energy to do whatever they want
• GA 1, DA1
• Has a fair bit of arcanotech relics, barely able to maintain them and unable to make more
• Overwhelming numbers
• Dwarves
• Realpolitik
• The Mighty
• No space force
• Second-rate power

Seventh Court of Fire

Concept: Tsarist (kind of) empire with a magic god-king

There have been Six Courts of Fire before this, but never have they been so successful. When the Witch-King Ksawery took the throne, none could predict his greatness. With nought but magic he raised mountains from the ground, called lightning on his enemies and banished daemons into the beyond. Under him a grand culture emerged, one of ivory towers and magical experiments, of skill in magic deciding your place in the land. The Seventh Court was a beautiful place, one of unspeakable romance, that possessed the finest in arts and poetry.

None of these served to mask the terrible conditions that plagued the land.

Under the ever watchful gaze of the Witch-King, massive pylons were erected. They served to increase the Witch-Kings power and conversely, sucked the life out of those in proximity. Day after day the peoples of the Seventh Court found themselves dropping dead, life sucked out to continue the experiments of the spires in the sky. Dissent brewed, but the Witch-King's power meant that each and every rebellion was crushed with terrible force.

Was it such a surprise that when the Grand Army came through the Seventh Court, it was welcomed with open arms? While the Grand Army of Bonaspierre saw rejection in most of its conquests, those of the Seventh Court were eager to join their cause. The Court Subjugation Army saw more than a fifth its number be local auxiliaries, those who had suffered the tyranny of the Witch-King and desired their grievances redressed.

Alas, that was not to be. As the powers of Sol-4 rallied, the Grand Army saw themselves pushed on all sides. In the Seventh Court the Witch-King himself took to the field, personally slaying the traitors as he crushed the Grand Army. The traitors suffer to this very day, forced to live eternal torture prepared for them by the Witch-King. With the victory, the dissent has for the moment been stalled, yet as old practices return, people who have once tasted freedom quietly stir to seize it for themselves.

• Ruled by an eternal witch king from a grand mountain palace he raised by himself
• Hetaroi
• Chosen One
• Magic 4 (with Adept in all Paths)
• Kataphractoi, the Firekeepers
• GA1, DA 2
• Brewing revolution
• Mostly relegated to their paltry tech base, previous iterations of the Court of Fire have mostly used up stores of artifacts. More are now being crafted by the Witch-King

Laminvale Civil Defense Force

Concept: Civil defense force turned nation

The Laminvale Civil Defense Force will never forget their roots. Once the civil defense force of a small arcology-town that miraculously survived the Fall and the subsequent Long Night, Laminvale has long since changed with the times. It's actions in the opening decades of the Fall have managed to secure it a place in the Long Night, civilian fabricators and transuranics refiners turned towards war. In the modern day, the Laminvale Civil Defense Force is unrecognisable from Before, ten thousand years of change having run its course. Yet Laminvale remembers High Humanity, and will forever safeguard its memory.

While militarily considered a third-rate power due to its small size, Laminvale wields considerable soft power, whether it be from the claim of direct descent from High Humanity or its sheer age. In conjunction, the use of espionage and more subtle forces have allowed the Civil Defense Force a disproportionate impact on the Martian landscapem Laminvale's technology has inevitably degraded; as a small town it did not have much to begin with, but it carefully hoards what remains of the knowledge it once had. Oddly enough, the civil institutions of High Humanity remain in Laminvale; emergency response and firefighting teams using protocols established more than ten millennia ago.

• Claims descent from the ancient town of Laminvale
• Specifically high ECM and hacking
• Small decently trained ground force and space force
• Lots of influence on other NPCs
• Exotic materials manufacturer/refiner
• Honourable
• GA 2
• DA 1
• Magic 1
• ECM Adept

Bonaspierre Republic

Concept: Napoleonic france but german unification

The loser of a world war two decades ago, the Bonespierre Republic was once a long-time conflict zone that miraculously united three decades ago, its meteoric rise forever changing the geopolitical landscape of Sol-4. The promise of liberation and unification proved sweet enough that the warring tribes of the Hecate Basin joined together in common cause, raising the banners of war. Everywhere they went armies of auxiliaries signed up with their cause, they too raising the Bonaspierre flag as they seeked to bring about better days like before the Long Night. However even with the leadership of the twin Consuls Halia and Lavial one nation could not fight the entirety of Sol-4, eventually falling as the various tribes and states in the red sands rallied and crushed the upstart nation. While allowed to survive and maintain a military in the current day, many of its resource-rich provinces are under semi-permanent occupation, unlikely to ever return to the hands of the Bonaspierre.

• Multiple Hetaroi units
• Plasma muskets, funny hat and fancy uniforms
• No gods, no magi, only men
• Formerly nearly won a world war against a coalition of countries spanning almost the entirety of Sol-4
• Kataphractoi
• Had 2 Chosen Ones that were slain (or ‘slain’) in battle
• GA 2, DA 0, Magic 0
• Strong land army

Tsukigawan Engine-Cities

Concept: Cyberpunk nomadic cities

A loose confederation of various mobile cities with a nebulously similar technological base, what is known is that the forefathers of what would become the Engine-Cities suffered a curse after slighting a cabal of magi now lost to time, denizens of the Warp constantly hunting them. Thus to flee their curse the Tsukigawans fashioned for themselves enormous nomadic cities where they were always on the move, a perpetual cat-and-mouse game between them and their pursuers. One of the few nations to have retained enough institutional knowledge to further their understanding of the sciences, the Engine-Cities see constant upgrades, rediscovered technology and arcanotech relics liberally applied to their landships. While mostly an observer among the many conflicts of Sol-4, contemporaries nevertheless tread lightly around the Engine-Cities, lest their fleet of carefully hoarded dreadnoughts be set upon them. While Tsukigawa promotes itself as a shining beacon of progress, most of its denizens live in the underslums of their landships, restricted to the lowest quality augmentations and standard of living as their betters live above ground. The only times these slumdwellers are allowed to set foot aboveground is when a Hunter comes within dangerously close proximity of a landship, in which these unlucky souls are thrown offboard to distract the Hunters so as to make an escape.

• Isolationist
• Mercanaries galore
• Land dreadnoughts (Armorx15 units)
• GA 2, DA 2
• High tech theory and middling praxis
• Cosmopolitan
• Armor Adept
• Many different exotic weapon
• Traders

The Altera

The Altera are an Amazonian tribe inhabiting some of the most dangerous death jungles of Sol-2. By all appearances, they are an all female tribe of hot, skins wearing techno barbarians. They use very heavy bows and arrows or looted weapons, run scavenged generators for power, and have discovered ancient shamanistic low magics of old humanity. This all might still not have been good enough to survive in such a green hell if not for the fact that they are, themselves ancient T-1000 type gynoid weapons composed entirely of liquid metal. They are capable of reproducing at a low rate through nanotechnology and have done so now for many generations in the wild as it were.

Outer System

The Gene-Theurgists of Moloch

It is unknown if the Gene-Theurgists are posthuman, alien or supernatural, but they are undoubtedly deserving the term 'xenos'. Unabashed slavers, they are an incredibly decadent and depraved empire who is unfortunately equally puissant and terrible when roused. Otherwise they can be incredibly genteel if always arrogant and supercilious. Much of their empire is actually slaves of all manner, though base labour is left to robots and the like. Instead, slavery by the Gene-Theurgists is various types of sexual, emotional, intellectual and magical servitude, the stranger, deviant and willful the better; they are also quite willing to provide these services for those with a discerning taste. For all this, the Gene-Theurgists are rich, powerful and knowledgeable and are perhaps Sol's premiere power-brokers.
They will aggressively attempt to acquire (either themselves or via proxies) those who have the following traits/ranks, with each trait worth two points and ranks in divergent enhancement or magic one - the higher the total, the more likely the Gene-Theurgists will be desirous.

• Chosen One
• Mighty
• Mister Magoo Diplomacy
• Wormkin
• Strange Shores
• Explicitly an alien in fluff
• The higher of divergent advancement or magic

The Gene-Theurgists consider robots to be nothing more than droids, mechanical servants fit to be put to work and will treat them as such, completely unconcerned with any notions of 'robot rights' - an enthusiastic organic slave can likely have a surprisingly pleasant life if one that has no freedoms whatsoever, a machine will only ever exist to perform labour.
Finally, the Gene-Theurgists consider (near)-baseline humans boring and will generally just ignore them like the plebians they are.

The Hives of Tea-Tahn

At the core of Sol-6's largest moon is a piece of archeotech dating back to even before the true heights of the human meta-civilization, a crude but effective core tap that siphons an unnoticeably tiny but objectively immense amount of energy directly from Sol's burning fusion core to the moon Tea-Tahn where it powers the Seventeen Hives and the vast sealed bio-farms that surround them. The Seventeen are immense hive-cities dating back tens of thousands of years, aged beyond measure and inhabited by an uncountable number of beings. It is said that every xenos every encountered by humanity can be found in the Seventeen; anything can be found in the Seventeen be it ecstacy or torment, enlightenment or oblivion, from rusted metal objects venerating the ancient god NASA to the latest machines from the mind-forges of Ur-Novo.
Tea-Tahn is the economic heart of the (spacefaring) Solar system mostly by default; while its population is on average grindingly poor and mostly concerned with base survival there are so, so very many of them that wealth concentrates in the spires and spacepads of the Seventeen. Even the cursed hive of Ghrypps, inhabited by billions of undead and only a university's worth of would-be necromancers as non-transient living is rich when one is perched on these heights.

The Djeen Jax

The product of a lost and forgotten near-human polity, the 'Djeen Jax' is an autonomous constructor fleet that has washed up on the shores of Sol. Their home base is a vast and ramshackle structure that has grown like techno-cancer, the onboard repair and upgrade routines corrupted beyond saving. The Djeen Jax themselves are cyborg servitors, vat-grown flesh and cyber-machinery stapled together to create disturbing and utterly disposable workers. It is unknown what their goals or motives are, many savants believe they essentially operate on the so-called 'Chinese Room' method and there is not a speck of actual sentience inside the hulking mothership. Nonetheless they can be traded with, after a fashion, and they seem to have some recondite objective or AI meta-goal.

• Space Hulk
• Servitor fabs
• Microfabs
• Self-improvement routines
• Gros Michaelship
• On Strange Shores
• Warpburned

Tribes of Urson

Genre: Bear Normans

The Urson are a bear-like race that migrates between the stars on huge asteroid-habs accelerated to high sub-light speeds by giant gravitational catapults. Several waves arrived in Sol between five and ten thousand years ago. The largest enclave inhabits a number of major habs now orbiting Sol-7, and is a highly decentralized agglomeration of extended pseudo-familial groups colloquially known as "tribes." The Urson have a strange reproductive cycle, in which females may hold gametes from multiple males within their bodies for extended periods of time, keeping them distinct and choosing which to use for fertilization. This, combined with the ease of gestation and high yield (females lay clutches of up to a hundred eggs in large, tough sacs), has produced a matriarchal society in which "queens" are attended by large retinues of warlike-males competing for favor. Though both sexes are physically formidable from a baseline human perspective, adult females are nearly twice the size of males and born much less often.

The Urson use large, slow, heavily-armed ships and are generally technologically advanced, with a particular emphasis on salvage and adaptation. While not particularly aggressive (at least while not in a migratory stage), they will compete fiercely for access to interesting wrecks/ruins and for the sake of personal and tribal honor. They breathe nitrogen and are most comfortable in temperatures well below zero. They are a superstitious and credulous people, readily adopting foreign religions (and ideologies, between which they make no distinction) and engaging in enthusiastic and creative syncretism.

• Far Traders
• Honorable
• Tech Praxis 3
• Occult Lore 2

The Imperium Carcinitrix - Outpost Sol

An aggressive and domineering xenos race, the Astrum Carcinitrix occupy a slice of galaxy roughly a thousand light-years spinward of Sol. Intercepting the Call Home they sent a forward force to conquer Sol and its mysteries, though it has since become cut off from easy reinforcements. They have seized the largest of Sol-7's moons and turned it into a shipyard, logistics base and military fort. While overall not the equal of High Humanity they have mastered the arts of armor and their ships are notoriously tough. For all that they are not evil and will engage in full and fair albeit high-handed diplomacy - though ones that are both weak and rich may find themselves being coerced most stridently. If they have a weakness it is their overconfidence.

• Sneering Imperialist
• Brannigan's Wake
• Realpolitik
• The Mighty
• Navigators
• Extremely high Armor and Weapons aptitudes
• A lot of big warships

The Spider-Skulls

A diverged clade of the Astrum Carcinitrix, the 'Spider-Skulls' are the victims of a cruel jest by the Alchogenitors of Khaso-Ghon. Inflicting a plague most corruptive upon a world of the Imperium Carcinitrix they turned their noble crab bodies into immense parodies of the human skull. Those that did not commit valiant suicide managed to barely escape before the entire world was cleansed to bedrock and put under interdictus aeternus, washing up on the solar shores of Sol centuries and centuries ago and far from the Imperium Carcinitrix. They have managed to form a semblance of civilization, only to go into hiding once more when the Astrum Carcinitrix arrived at Sol and discovered that the horrors the Khaso-Ghon had inflicted on them still aerated their gills.

• Trying to avoid genocide
• Giant Skull Crabs, What The Fuck
• Worm-Kin

The Void's Necroflock

A gloomy mixture of an avian and a land-mollusk, the Necroflock are rather repulsive to human eyes. However, those who wish to seek their knowledge or their sophisticated and strange arcanotech must simply deal with this. The Necroflock themselves gatekeep several moons in the sprawl around Sol-6; they claim to even predate Humanity and while this cannot be independently verified they are certainly very, very old by any accounts. They have their own worship of strange star gods but do not proselytize and their overall demeanor is one of gloomy resignation to some distant unknown fate. One of the main roles they fill in the Solar System is that of intermediary and bankers of ultimate discretion - frankly, they simply don't care about most of the things mortals get up to.

• Hypertech
• Passive
• Intermediaries
• Ancient knowledge
• Massive statuary in Late Necromonger
• Worships the star gods of the darkness between

The Bloom

The bloom are a race of gas-giant dwelling beings, visually similar to that of varying types of jellyfish, with tentacles that draw in hydrogen into bio-fusion reactors to sustain themselves. Their size range from a kilometer long to the oldest having a core 50 kilometers wide and dragging tentacles over six hundred kilometers in the winds. They are a fairly slow and relaxed species, taking a longtermist approach to most things. It is estimated their species is at least several million years old, having habited gas giants across the milky way.

Their technological base is largely stangant, being primarily Kardashev 1.5-ish; but this is perfectly fine for them as they focus on just riding the atmospheric waves of gas giants. They arrived in Sol sometime during the long night on sublight ships, which eventually became the trading stations hovering on the upper atmosphere of Sol-7. Seeing one rise up from the depths of the gas giant is a rare sight as it takes them a couple of years to fully do so. They will spend a century or more on the 'surface' before diving back down.

Here they function as a key part of the alien economy, dredging and selling excess hydrogen, rare gases and most importantly: knowledge. They have been known to trade in information and secrets, having accumulated a great many from the across the milky way. This is their most valuable commodity as it often provides rare insight into otherwise unknown phenomena, species or events. They are all notably in contact each other via the warp, which acts as a psychic link that lets each Bloom communicate with any other bloom in a fifty light year radius. The warp storms have isolated the bloom in Sol for the moment, but they still hold vast arrays of local knowledge.

Any species that trades with the Bloom knows that the transaction must be done slowly, with months between any responses due to the slow neural structures involved. Given their general affability and non-competitiveness with most terrestial-based species, this has given them a solid reputation as slow, relaxed and knowledgeable traders. Their ships are also one of the few ones that are completely ignored by the wormkin, but it is not quiet sure why.

• Far Traders
• Worm-Kin
• Fleet of Fog
• Bussard Scoops

Special Notes:

• Offers favorable and fair rates for fuel trading, but only starts 2 turns after initiating negotiations.
• You can trade information with them. They will take verifiable secrets of your species or unknown galactic lore in exchange for answering questions about galactic phenomena, ruins or threats.

• Note: once you give a secret to them, there is a chance it can be traded out to someone else in the future.

• Fairly weak, but their position in the alien economy means they have lots of allies.

The Sin Eaters

Genre: Former slaves living out their own civilization on the Leviathan.

During a colonization mission to a planet whose name is now lost to time, the magi of Old Humanity found a tremendous new discovery. The Sin Eaters, as they were called, consumed negative karma as if it was food, curing the magi of any afflictions they might have. What a great boon to science they thought, and thus an entire race was bound and enslaved, brought back to Sol where they might serve the magi for all eternity.

For the next thousand years, that was all they did. Little more as pets, the Sin Eaters, perfectly sentient, watched as they were continuously degraded. Every revolt was crushed with an iron fist, the Paths of Mind and Space preventing even the fermentation of rebellion. But they waited, and as the Long Night arrived, opportunity arose.

As the Warp turned turbulent, and the magi fell in terrible numbers, the Sin Eaters fled. Upon stolen ships they sailed across the system, seeking a home where they could call home. And at last, after centuries of searching the found their salvation, the Leviathan.

The Leviathan did not care for them, for that the Sin Eaters were joyous. With almost fervent awe they were among the first settlers on the Leviathan's carapace, leaders of a new civilization that through the Leviathan, was shielded from most threats. For the most part, they were happy, and even as they warred with the other settlers of the Leviathan, their future has never been brighter.

But the Solar Signal dashed those hopes. As humanity and their children return to the Urhumeit, the Sin Eaters fear a second Humiliation.

• Hates/fears human factions, especially magicians
• Very high general advancement due to human tech, high magic with a particular emphasis on Mind
• Little to no space force, incredibly large ground army that has anti-orbit capabilities
• Kataphractoi
• Hetaroi
• Worm-kin
• Significant presence on the Leviathan
• Despises slavery, Never Again

Argent Empire

One of the oldest polities in Sol, the origins of Argent are shrouded in conflicting legend. Dominated but by no means solely populated by the cyclopes, giant one-eyed humanoids who may or may not be natives of the system, the Empire once controlled appreciable fractions of the Belt, Sol-5, Sol-6, Sol-7, with outposts and colonies on most other major bodies. Those days are long gone, and the Empire is now reduced to a sizeable territory around Sol-5 and a handful of functionally independent enclaves elsewhere.

Despite this, the Empire maintains a high level of technology, a robust and diverse economy, and a large, professional military. Its two-headed mages are among the most powerful sorcerers in Sol, and many believe only the byzantine complexity and ceaseless infighting of its governing structure (functionally an aristocratic republic under a figurehead Dictator) prevent a significant recovery of the Empire's fortunes. Certainly its sophisticated culture, history, and deep institutional experience of strategy and diplomacy provide a significant soft-power complement to its other resources.

• Command/Diplomacy 3
• General Advancement 3
• Magic 4
• Occult Lore 3
• The Mighty
• Mobile Pleasure Palace

Worshipers of the Crescent Coratai Machine

Theme: Technocratic militaristic purifiers led by a council of AI personas descended from an AI supercomputer.

The hexagonal eye of Saturn has a single artificial stationary moon habitat over it. The storm of fluid gasses below danced in clouds while the sound of the chanting and the movement of machinery fills the Grand Vezket Habitat, hundreds of thousands of people live inside of the cramped habitat with a continuous doctrine of the belief in the teachings of the Coratai. It is an eons-old machine, already defunct but which AI personas continue running its calculations and leading the people of the Vezket Habitat in a council system. Each persona picks the best of the Habitat, the best thinkers, and the best warriors. For one purpose only, to continue on the crusade of combining flesh with machine and turning the universe into an endless eternity of entropy.

The Xalu Remnant

Sol was to be the Xalu Imperium's latest conquest. Having already thoroughly infiltrated one of Sol moons and setting in place preparations for use of it as a springboard for their invasion of the system, the beacon was erected and soon began stealthily broadcasting their readiness for the operation just as planned. However, something was not right with the stars, and as weeks became months, months became years, and years became decades anticipation became memory, and more direct concerns took precedent.

In the current era, the beacon is still lit, but while the flame is still alight space is just as unanswering as it has been in the eons since their arrival. What remains of the Xalu to their knowledge find themselves still alone and forced to make do, although perhaps no longer in alien territory. Thankfully their proficiencies in the clandestine arts have assured their ability to survive, although they may be open to another partner to truly thrive…

• Hetaroi
• Far Traders
• High Stealth
• Moderately large space fleet consisting mostly of small stealth-oriented ships
• Small elite ground force to support above operations
• Willing to be hired out as spies?

Xan'dalari Collective

The shamanistic tribes of Xandalar used to lead their lives in idyllic isolation, unknowing and unburdened by the galaxy at large. Their vast agrarian communes dotted the rich marshlands of their homeworld, with the hunched, toad-like aliens leading peaceful lives as they tended their fields and gave offerings to the glimmering spires of god-crystals that dotted the lands, shamans and witchdoctors drawing wisdom from the whispers of the ancient monuments. It all came to naught some ten thousand years ago, when Xan'dalari learned they were not alone in the galaxy – a lesson they would never forget.

Drawn by the immense and distinct psychic waves emanated by the out-of-the-way planet, a human expedition driven by curiosity and greed would arrive to Xandalar. Under the orders of a ruthless fleetmaster the primitive Xan'dalari would be enslaved, their culture strangled and generations would be put to thankless work, mining the precious psy-crystal formations and veins dotting the planet's surface, to be shipped off-world and used for humanity's ends and profits.

Thousands of years would pass until the Xan'dalari would throw off the yoke of their masters, reclaiming their freedom – though not their planet as it once was, for a mined-out husk was all that remained, nor the culture that has been thoroughly lost. The Xan'dalari have emerged a scarred people, bitter at the galaxy around them and hatred towards humanity burning in their hearts.

They have followed the signal toward's their hated enemy's cradle for one purpose only – to make sure their former masters can never raise again, and to pay back the wrongs committed to them and their world over countless generations.

The Xan'dalari have set up a sizable enclave on Sol-7, slowly expanding their influence and scavenging the orbital shipyards and abandoned facilities in a bid to expand their own warmaking capabilities. Distrustful of outsiders and hateful towards humans, they will take whatever actions they can to inflict damage to and inconvenience Human polities and factions. (Lots of ground forces of varying quality, ships are generally small and not well built, for Xan'dalari yet have limited understanding in the area. Focus on raiding Human groups. Low General Advancement, high Occult knowledge)

• The Mighty (sturdy physique, bonus to ground troops Melee)
• Warrior Cult
• Blood Vendetta

The Tech-Barbarians of Juno

A state which cant really be called a state, its really a collection of tech barbarians which only band together under a strong leader. One of their greatest motivations is collecting tech, the more advanced and strange the better. However strangly enough despite understanding little of the theory behind the tech or not even knowing how the captured tech works, somehow they are able to get the tech artifacts into a workable condition sometimes even surpassing their original creatures at their proficiency in wielding those artefacts. Their habit has caused them to be hated by advanced tech. Civilisations and caused numerous conflicts between the Barbarians of Juno and their neighbours which the Barbarians inevitably use to amass more tech. The maybe strangest thing of all is that they paint their vehicles yellow thinking it makes them faster. AND it actually works.

• Warrior-Cult
• Boutique engineering
• O Crown of Mine
• Tech Praxis: 3
• Tech theory: 0

The Wandering Planet of Huaxia

The tale was as old as time. An inevitable but far away doom was approaching the star system and there were not enough transports to relocate everyone. There were many paths traveled before yet still resulted in many deaths and many others that have failed. In such an atmosphere of despair, an intrepid engineer presented his plan before the Supreme Emergency Council to build a series of planetary engines to relocate Huaxia to safer shores. After a long and spirited debate, the plan was enacted and after a few generations of hard work the planet of Huaxia was able to escape the doom the devoured the sector. That founding tale is millenias old by now and the people of Huaxia have long adapted to void life interspersed with occasional sparks of life. The signal from the Urheimat had intrigued all of society when discovered and from housing councils to whole habitation blocks it was agreed that Huaxia should go investigate what happened to their long distant cousins. Thus this wandering planet slowly made its way through the void to discover what happened after the Long Night.

• High GA, No DA/Magic
• No FTL
• Civilization clustered around heat providing planet engines.
• Excellent void sailors and infantry.

S5 Kalantar Energy Concerns

The Kalantar refers to a romanticized view of the Sol-5 Energy Harvester occupation, traveling away from home for years on end and returning with either immense wealth or ruin. While obviously untrue, many Sol-5 exospheric energy concerns have banded together as a semi-discrete supranational entity, operating vast atmospheric trawler husks and selling their bounty to the lunar polities- energy and chemical both. Distance and the hazards of the atmosphere have cut them off from their homes, and the Kalantar have formed their own organizational structure separate from their home polities. Despite many of their employee-donats coming from opposed states, it's all left behind when you enter the gravity well.

Many are looking at this corporation state and worrying that one day it will formally unite and form a monopoly on Sol-5's energy market.

The Lesser Wyrm

One of the threats within Sol-5's atmosphere are the Lesser Wyrms, snakelike biomechanical entities similar to the Outer Leviathan, although definitive proof of descent is not found yet. It's diet is spaceships and it is an active hunter, coiling through the clouds to strike at atmospheric flotillas. They host parasitical pseudo-fauna that are a threat and annoyance to the energy miners.

Many have claimed to be able to ride them, often while inebriated. No definitive proof is given, in all cases.

The Elioud

The xenos known as the Elioud first appeared en masse in the outer system roughly a century ago, though scattered legends and rumors say their vanguard may have arrived much further in the past, possibly several thousand years ago. They were seen - when they were considered at all - as just another xenos arrival, if one that was more militant than most. That changed with the arrival of their lord several years ago and ever since they have became more aggressive and more active towards the inner system. Their goals are enigmatic but they are clearly on the hunt for something or somethings - or perhaps someones.

They are ruled by the Metatron King Thulmaar who's flagship and citadel is an immense battlewagon called the Shamir. This massive dreadnought is a segment of an ancient god-worm not dissimilar to the Leviathan, slain but undying. It was first seen over Ur-Novo's innermost major moon in the campaign to conquer it but it has since retreated beyond the Kuiper Wall where has since been cloaked in an immense zone of darkness a million miles across.

The Carrion-Eater

"C-c-come h-home, join us-ss-s…"
Theme: The Beast but it came from the Warp

Something old, something hungry from beyond the edge of the galaxy. Recovered and examined by those who had no idea what they had found it promptly broke containment and spread itself throughout, consuming rock, steel, flesh. A mere nanoplauge would have been something that could have been painfully fought, but the eater of the dead's presence makes reality wobble and disort as its presence grows, driving men mad at the sights they see. Anything that fell to it's otherworldly grip soon found itself subsumed by the great terrible intelligence that powered this blight upon the galaxy, gorging itself on the worlds and populations of those foolish and unlucky enough to unleash itself on the stars.

Autowar Fleet AD-S7

"Error, error, file not found, central command core offline, defualting to survival/forgage protocols."
Theme: Crashed and partially lombotimized Pre Long-Night Man of Iron

One of the old federations great Autowar Fleets returned home from parts unknow, it's central command unit heavily damaged and behaving erratically as it flails about and attempts to repair the delicate machinery and computational equipment that houses the Man of Iron itself. Some days the Autowar fleet will offer great boons to nearby tribes of techobarbarians, glittering hab blocks freshly constructed for their use, reconstructued water filters to give life to a region once more. Other days it will obliderate them under a metalic swarm of drones and bots as it strips the landscape of all useful materials.

The Elioud's troops and lesser spacecraft use artifacts that are clearly related to the Shamir in some sense, chitinomagical weapons and armor that operate on incomprehensible principles. Organized, clever and persistent, if the Elioud has a weakness it is a cultural contempt for those without the 'Light' - magic - or the like.

• Organized military force
• High Deviance and Magic
• Bonus vs high Deviance and Magic
• Underestimates low-advancement foes

Politicized Groups

Task Force Eifer Mechtam

The last remnants of a Solarian civilization destroyed - so the mythohistories say - by the Leviathan, Task Force Eifer Mechtam has made it their goal to slay the Leviathan . . . or die trying. Info-corruption over the years has seen their true histories become opaque and their organization has become frayed and tattered on the edges to the point at which they seem to be little more than another pack of techno-barbarians but their meme-skalds do not cease singing the songs of vengeance and the science-priests still search for the thing that will finally end the Beast.

• Sworn enemy of all Wormkin, counts as Blood Vendetta vs them
• FAC swarm fleet
• Cached archeotech
• Heart of Darkness
• Warrior Cult

Children of the Chosen

Not everyone who recieved the Call Home was in the greater galaxy. Some were here, already in Sol. They are the Children of the Chosen. Centered on Sol-4 they are still small but devout, their adherents hoping that the Chosen can finally bring peace to the Solar System to allow for a new golden age of reconstruction.

• Will align with the Chosen Ones
• Religious devotion
• Will swell with support
• Will clash with other religions

The Church of Immaculate Hox

More commonly known simply as the 'Wormchurch', the Church of Immaculate Hox worships the Leviathan and sees it as their ultimate objective to become like their god manifest, to create a new society free of pride, hatred or fear. They embrace extensive bio-modification, seeing humanity as a weak stage of evolution to be passed beyond. It cannot be denied that they have achieved a certain connection with the Leviathan, though none knows what - if - it thinks of them.

• Will align with Wormkin
• Wormkin
• Enemies to TF Eifer Mechtam
• Pro-Transhuman
• Indifferent to machines

The Black Slayers

Operating from a network of fortress-monasteries (including ships) and hidden safe houses the Slayers bear an undying, almost irrational, hatred for anything and anyone connected to the occult or paranormal. Using a mixture of faith, cybernetic and genetic enhancements, high technology, and other techniques they relentlessly seek to destroy anything and everything with the slightest connection to the occult. The order appears to have been founded in ancient times, before the Long Night, due to some cataclysmic event but have since recruited others who have similar views.

United Nations Task Force Serpent (and friends)

Concept: TF Serpent

In 2752, Task Force Serpent, along with it's Golden Lion auxiliaries, were declared lost with all hands. The Khan system was consequently declared off limits, a MONOLITH citadel deployed to forever lock it out from the prying eyes of the Core and Verge. Admiral Sikorsky was posthumously awarded the Martian Star, his funeral attended by dignataries all across the human sphere. May he rest in peace, they said. May his soul rest in heaven.

In heaven he is not. In an anomalous encounter with the King of Yellow, an unforeseen interaction between the leviathan's extradimensional weaponry and the paracausal artifacts onboard resulted in the chronal displacement of the task force. Emerging in the outer belt, high-energy readings flooded sensors, numerous signatures blotting out the LIDARs of the Task Force. Now stuck in a time far from their own, Task Force Serpent must first escape the Leviathan lurking in the void, and then the dangers of the system, should he ever desire return home.

Welcome to hell, Admiral Sikorsky. Enjoy your stay.

• General Advancement 1
• Occult 1
• Possesses a few artifacts of great power they don't fully understand
• Small fish in very, very big pond
• UNnie

Knights of the Broken Blade

Location: Sol-7

The Knights of the Broken Blade are a militant religious order that patrols many of what few trade lanes stretch out into the outer Sol System. Where they have fought a steadily losing battle against pirates and other horrors that haunt the dark reaches of the solar system. Insular and often-times high-handed in their treatment of civilians, they nevertheless form one of the only larger forces for stability and safe-travel amongst those brave enough to risk closing with the Leviathan. Their citadel lies in the orbit of Sol-7, at the center of the vast web of ruined shipyards that ring the planet, in the half-completed hulk of a War Moon that they have converted into a monastery and their ships and powered armored knights are a common sight throughout the Gas Giants.

• Warrior Cult
• Hetaroi
• Honorable
• Intolerant
• Medium General Advancement/Divergent Advancement
• High Magic

Raiders and other Dangerous Locals

Marzian Wharr Macheen

A group of losers that were ejected from Sol-4 at the (temporary) conclusion of an intercine conflict some centuries ago, the Marzian Wharr Macheen is a war-fleet with logistical assets attached. They have become one of the major raiding fleets of the system, using their increasingly ramshackle military forces to take what they need from others. Unfortunately - or fortunately, if you are one of their victims - the gene-plasm of their mother-machines is degrading, meaning successive generations are suffering from creeping develution in both body and mind. Were anyone to help solve this they would have undying sworn gratitude, but on the gripping hand if left to their own corroding genome they will eventually become a self-solving problem

• Gene Army
• The Mighty
• Doomed

The Vantakin

Untold strange aeons ago a clade of men chose the path of the deep void and joined with biomech living starcraft of even more ancient xenos lineage. Becoming two halves of one whole they emerged as the Vantakin, the Tribes of the Void. Long migrations later some have returned to Sol and made it their home. The sleek biomech Voidjammers are a natural predator of the spaceways, appearing out of stealth and disgorging the Vantafolk to do war or do peace as they see fit.

• High stealth
• Space Vikings
• Effectively Aliens
• Hit and Run
• Mostly beyond the asteroid belt. Mostly.

The BIGLOOTAS

The Solar System has always had its bottom feeders; its petty thieves, its third-hand ship thieves, its scrap merchants and its small-time fences. For untold years these techo-detritovores existed in something approaching harmony - in an ecospheric sense, anyway - with the greater system. They never prospered, but they were never eliminated either. It was too much work and there would inevitably be more soon enough. And then the great construction ships arrived from distant stars. Fat. Rich. Naive. There was no plan, it was pure emergent properties, but in a few short years a million scattered lowlifes had became the BIGLOOTAS. Adept at evading trouble and even more adept at grand theft starship they have become ever-bolder in their predations.

• Low tech, Lower cunning
• Supply ship thieves
• Ship fences
• Flea market
• Cowardly alone
• You came here in that? You're braver than you look
• Dangerous in groups

The Freegummis

In a planetary system as old and populous as the Solar system, a million million obscenities have been and continue to be committed. Once such is the practice of cannibalism and the consumption of sentients; the most popular take are edible bioroids. The group now known as the Freegummis was one such, a clade of bioroid slave-food consumed in the debauched polyp-scrapers of the Leading Trojan (of Sol-5). Unsatisfied with their lot of growth, decanting, entertainment and eventual excretion of their mind-pits only to be placed in a new edible body, they began a bitter campaign of guerilla warfare and eventually freed themselves in a conflict that left half a dozen star-cities in the Leading Trojan air-bleeding wrecks and millions of (questionably) innocent sentients damaged or permanently deactivated. Today the Freegummis have mostly traded their hapless food-slave bodies for all manner of extreme and bizzare battleroid bodies and mostly haunt the belt as freebooters, muscle-for-hire, occasional pirates and simple thugs. Being forced to endure a 'foodbody' remains a common punishment though, ranging from (most commonly) losing bets to actual censure.

• The Mighty
• The bullied become the bullies
• Lowlives

The Coruscant Legions

Relics of a technarchic warlord now more than a millennia in the past, the Coruscant Legions were so dubbed due to the refractor fields built into their powered battle suits, this arcane technology protecting the warrior within by converting energy into brilliant flashes of varicolored light. So distinctive was this that even the Legions themselves adopted the term and today the fact that it was a name given by their enemies has been almost forgotten. The tactics of the Coruscant Legions tend to center around close combat and short-range frays where the advantages of strength-enhancing and protective powered armor is most significant and where they can best pit themselves against strong enemies; significant care is taken to maintain a steady supply of both disciplined, trained warriors and warrior-panoply. Their war-fleets tend to be ad-hoc however, and it is not atypical for them to consist mostly of ships captured or gained in a batchall as opposed to ones they themselves have built (or had built). Originally numbering twenty legions, only seven now remain intact with several others that have devolved into nothing more than wandering warbands and questionable inheritors. All however have slid from their heritage as empire-builders to become warlords and techno-barbarians, if notably well organized and disciplined examples of the sort. They do consider themselves heirs to a long and proud warrior heritage and will respect strength and scorn weakness and lack of martial will. Originating on the Great Moon of Sol-3, the Coruscant Legions have now spread across much of the Solar system and may potentially be encountered anywhere from Sol-1 to the moon system of Sol-5. While today each legion is its own autonomous, independent entity, perhaps one day a sufficiently charismatic would-be emperor will manage to rally them all to his or her's banner.

The Kabals of Ramthonodox

Another group of techno-barbarians that has held temporary ascendance over regions of Sol intermittently over the past [translation error] the Kabals of Ramthonodox are several groups of techno-wyches that share two common traits; the broad use of psychic powers and the worship/veneration of the entity known as [the] Ramthonodox - it is suspected but never proven these may be related. Much of the Kabals' structure is based on psychic puissance with the psychically incapable masses being common menials and footsoldiers while those with increasing psychic potential find themselves rising in the baroque and opaque hierarchy. Many with only limited potential often receive cybernetic implants to improve their psychic powers and while 'naturals' are most favored ultimately it is power that is most important of all - few high-ranking Kabalites have not undergone some degree of artificial strengthening. Those who's minds are shattered on this long road are used as living weapons, directing blasts of psychic energy or deflecting hostile fire from their comrades. The common soldiery of the Kabals tend to be strictly mediocre however, generally being of the same (near-)human stock that fills the rest of Sol. In space, the Kabals often work with others (willingly or not) and their art deco war-barges are often surrounded by a host of small ships originating from all across the system. There are a number of Kabals spread across Sol and while they will not directly war on one another, they have little compunction against taking action against one another in more subtle - or at least less direct - ways.

L'Esquadronnes

Most of the technobarbarians that infest Sol have at least some connection to the various major habitable bodies. Not L'Esquadronnes. Originating with the introduction and widespread used of Doktor Dray's Mk 4 Hellblaze Cyberfighter to great success during the Ffith Noctan War - the design eventually falling into the hands of all warring sides - for a time a large portion of Sol-4's collective aerospace fighter forces were deep-cyber aircraft. The long-term validity of these craft began to come into question with both Doktor's Dray's apotheosis into an enormous mecha-city (and the instigation of the Sixth Noctan War) and the long-term deterioration of the cyberpilots. Eventually most of the cyberfighters were converted to conventional control systems or scrapped, but a significant number of their pilots took themselves and their aircraft out of the environs of Sol-4 to become what are now known centuries later as L'Esaquadronnes. Being deep-cyberlinked to aircraft has debilitating physical and psychological effects and only the youngest or strongest pilots can spend any significant time disconnected from the life support machinery and their amniopod. While once rigorous programs of exercise and cooling-off periods kept the pilots 'normal', today it is embraced and most pilots of cyberfighters are little more than degenerated half-corpses incapable of independent existence outside of their fighter or life-support palanquins. Vehicular maintenance is done in part by pilot-hopefuls and flight-acolytes, though mostly is it performed by strange subhuman creatures known as 'Gremblins'. These cloned servitors are imprinted with instinctive technical information and thus can perform all manner of ground crew tasks essentially from the day they are decanted until the day they expire and are recycled, a decade or so later. L'Esquadronne groups, known as 'Circuses' for unknown reasons, often act as mercenaries though they just as commonly operate independently as raiders and pirates. Considering themselves the lords of fighter combat they often react extremely poorly to those that outperform or outfly them.

The Costumer Troupe

Genre: Deranged Cosplaying Marauders

The origins of what is now known as the Costumer Troupe is unknown, but rumors persist of a group of performers that decided to keep themselves cryogenically frozen many millennia ago and were simply forgotten by the passage of time. When they finally awoke thousands of years past safe preservation dates they found themselves no longer what they were. Instead their deteriorated minds compelled them forwards to conquer and pillage, the last vestiges of their prior selves being the odd and elaborate clothing from some long bygone era that they insist on wearing.

Despite their insane dispositions or perhaps because of it, the Costumer Troupe have carved out (in some cases quite literally) a swath of territories through their home world. Near their holdings, the sight of fringed neck garments and colorful jackets is enough to send inhabitants scrambling for weapons, because while they may end up dead, perhaps that would be for the best; the Troupe is known to torture and then induct all those who are unfortunate to fall under their malicious hands using methods that are still not yet known.

• Warrior Cult + Mr Magoo Diplomacy
• Adept (Life Magic)
• Intolerant
• Lots of Ground Units
• Limited Space Presence
• Moderate General/Divergent Advancement

The Black Silence

Genre: Kemonomimi dark eldar

The Black Silence are as fleeting as they are deadly. They are the boogiemen of the merchant, the nightmare of the freighter captain. Often will a patrol ship chance upon a merchantship blaring alarms, only to find crewmen turned inside out as their goods are stripped clean. And it is not only the merchant. Unsuspecting admirals might find their battlegroup set upon by a fleet of Silent warships, ships blown apart my arcanotech weapons that bend time and space to their will. Many a polity has set out to destroy the home of the Black Silence, but none have succeeded, the terrible Citadel of Sorrow still sails the solar winds, flickering in and out of reality.

For all their terrible deeds however, the Black Silence still seem to consider themselves part of Solar civilisation. It is not uncommon to see a nekomata or kitsune sell their wares in the Hives of Tea-Tahn or even the outposts of the Imperium Carcinitrix, often stolen or crafted from the remains of unfortunate sailors. While the Black Silence are dominated by the Kemonomimi, gene-augmented humans from before the Long Night, all are free to make the hazardous journey to the Citadel of Sorrow, to find a place among the number of the Black Silence.

• Pirates and raiders
• High general and divergent advancement
• Very high stealth aptitude
• has a huge floating fortress (Size 500?) that is very hard to find
• Warpburned
• Creeping Paranoia
• Mobile Pleasure Palaces
• Navigators
• Kataphractoi
• Gene Army

Kingdom of Raozha

Raozha was once an infamous mobile base of pirate raiders, crewed by a population of bird-like transhumans, who are natural pilots and zero-gravity boarders. Avian Rauzhans are somewhat shorter and smaller than humans, but with chimp-like strength allowing limited flight under one gravity, and excellent mobility with less.

Generations ago, they settled down and went legitimate. Raids turned to protection schemes. Protection schemes turned to taxation. Taxation came with a demand for social services. Raozha is now considered the capital of the rightful government of a group of habitats and asteroids in distant orbit of Sol-[2/3/4]. Royalty remains of mostly raider stock, while its non-ruling classes are highly cosmopolitan.

Owing to military origins, avian Raozhans were engineered with an 80/20 ratio of females to males to increase the proportion of larger, stronger, and less colorful females. Inheritance laws are extremely complex.

Comet Raiders

There are those who live in the vast darkness beyond the cosmopolitan regions of the inner solar system, out among the icy planetesimals far beyond the orbits of the great planets and the light of Sol. Over the millennia the outer reaches have seen several waves of settlement, refugees from terrible but nearly forgotten wars, long-haul ice miners abandoned to turn feral in the darkness, and cultists seeking to commune with the Outer Leviathan. Disparate in origin and scattered across an incredible volume these pioneers have come together over the centuries into a sort of meta-civilization united by an esoteric religion centered around the Leviathan and generalized hatred of all outsiders from the inner system and elsewhere. Hungry for resources otherwise unavailable to them, these so-called Comet Raiders are quick to attack anyone entering their space and will on occasion strike inward toward Sol in search of likely targets and loot. Several of their more successful raids have been carried out by ships hiding in the tails or on the surfaces of comets, earning them their moniker.

Riders of the Polar Star / Polaroids

When the old civilisation fell, bits and pieces of it got preserved in often unexpected ways as the galaxy slipped into complete lunacy.

In the Polaris system, once famed and densely-inhabited, humanity burned itself over long-forgotten disputes, culminating in the enormous artifical planet of Aurora being incinerated by the sentient warheads of 139th Autonomous Missile Fleet. The funeral pyre of trillions burned bright as the rest of the system watched, and at that moment, faith in the values of the old world withered away and died. The hardship that followed did little to change that, but it was the strategic missiles that killed their faith in the fellow man, making way for a searing revelation - the only thing that matters in this world is strength, because that's the only way to assert your right to exist. The dead of Aurora all vanished in the flame, forgotten and nameless, men made into numbers. Personal strength, acquired by whatever means, rules all.

It took centuries for the barbarism that followed to coalesce into a new society by the fist of the mythical Northern Light, the first and greatest of the High Kings and the only man known to have stopped an incoming dreadnought by hand, and the one who formed a pact with the interstellar missiles.

Nowadays, the inhabitants of Polaris are divided into a vast array of clans, collectively often referred to as "Polaroids", under the theoretical rule of the High King, the strongest fist in the system. In practice, his command only truly reaches as far as his arm does, and the power structures of modern Polaroids are more than a little chaotic, with various alliances, cliques and organisations competing with each other. Roaming Polaroid warbands spread out across the stars, often acting as raiders or mercenaries, bringing salvage, riches and martial arts techniques back to Polaris. Sol is one of the more frequented destinations, where the mohawk warriors are understood to always mean one thing - trouble.

Riders get their name from their mounts - the ever-replicating and heavily-armed interstellar warheads of 139th Autonomous Missile Fleet, which the bare-chested mohawk-wearing astronauts ride on at speeds which would reduce lesser-muscled men to the consistency of strawberry jam, weathering hard vaccum like one would light rain, finely-chromed hulls shining like stars as they launch themselves through space. What the sentient warheads get out of it seems unclear, their intellects unintended consequence of self-evolving algorithms, but their highest aspiration seems to be living as fast as possible and dying a flashy death, an aspiration which their riders certainly share.

• Fleet of Fog
• Space Magic Martial Arts
• Kataphractoi: Polaroid leaders can be particularly fierce personal combatants
• Mohawk Raiders

Space Fauna

Rhodes, Wandering Kolossi

Of all the technic viviforming machinery on Sol-2, none is larger or more well-known than Rhodes, the Wandering Kolossi. An immense hunchbacked machine-mountain that peregrinates over the surface of Sol-2, Rhodes spreads panic ahead of it and changed terrain behind it. None knows what dreams this arcanotech machine dreams, nor what goals it has. Is it insane? Sleeping? Or does it have some ancient plan that will come to fruition millennia in the future beyond the imagining of mere mortals to comprehend?

The Borers

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Nowhere is this fundamental axiom better embodied than in the Borers, a rogue species of presumably-engineered techno-organic spacefaring creatures whose apparent goal is to drive a path between wherever they came from and wherever they're going. No one is exactly clear on who created them or when exactly they intend to stop, if ever. What is clear is that they will attempt to devour anything in their path that resists them, they will leave behind a persistent subspace disruption that disrupts travel through it, and they are completely uninterested in talking about any of it.

Each Borer is a massive cylindrical being ranging in size from a corvette to a battlemoon, depending on its age and what it's consumed, with swarms ranging from one particularly determined monster to hundreds of smaller examples. Their ferrous exoskeletons and polymerized innards blur the line between carbon-based life and artificial creations. Their ability to self-repair, self-evolve, and self-replicate depends largely on what they are allowed to consume and how much of it there is. Young Borers are target practice; especially ancient examples can threaten your average star empire's existence.

Borers are considered a serious nuisance wherever they pop up, which always seems to happen no matter how many swarms are put down, and their appearance has on numerous occasions been the inciting incident for the formation of inter-polity military coalitions, always with the initial aim of stopping their advance. During one notable incident, an entire species elected to simply move their planet out of the way rather than build up the necessary force or allies to stop them.

Threats

The Swarm

A relentless menace that has destroyed not less than 14 civilisations. Whenever it encounters a new species it attempts to destroy it while ignoring any other species it might encounter alongside its path. Traveling on its great bio-ships the entire civilisation can be considered nomadic with no one knowing where eactly they emerged from. By some strange mechanism they are always able to follow their prey like a blood hound even across hundreds of light years even if it takes some some time.

• Worm-kin
• Mothership Cyro Trays
• GA 0
• DA 3

Bannermen of the Endless Empire

Theme: China x Rome tech priest warlord generals with an extreme blood vendetta

The Bannermen of the Endless Empire is the top-ranking generals of an occult organization within an even more massive empire. Their fleet numbers the hundreds if not thousands of ships, and their technology is well in the standard of the Sol factions. However, they place a special emphasis on magics of life and mind, to control and subsume lesser races into doing their bidding. They follow a very roman and chinese client/tributary system, allowing them to accommodate local elites for temporary benefits or even to later on annex them. Guided by General Priests, they pursue those who have harmed their empire or whoever they think will harm it in the future through the use of oracles. The Bannermen are very brutal, cunning but most important of all, very methodical in their way to squeeze their enemies. Denying them opportunities and hunting them slowly but surely.

Carolingian Empire

Was it a creation of deranged historians? A live-action roleplaying group cut off during the Long Night that completely lost the plot? By now, nobody can say, least of all the Carolingians themselves, though they certainly consider themselves descendants of one of Ur's mighty ancient empires, tossed through astral voids, tracking noble bloodlines across millenia that may or may not be real.

One of the mightiest star nations of the modern Milky Way, the ascendant empire's success is built on relentless ambition, meticulous preparation and finely-honed competence. Their commanders and armadas have seen all sorts of madness the Long Night had to offer, overcame it and carefully catalogued it for future reference, building an enormous, highly-sophisticated system block by block, a well-rounded steamroller prepared for every eventuality. Their greatest strength is not any particular exotic capability or sorceries wrestled from the darkest corners of space, but the immense mastery of the fundamental art of war, backed by massive industrial-economic complex that produces and fuels its seemingly endless armies and fleets of battleships, an unstoppable juggernaut of blood and metal. There is very little left in space that can shake a Carolingian admiral, and chances are it won't be there for long if it tries.

...there are cyber-knights as well, yes.

Nowadays, the reigning emperor, Charles the Wise, also known as Charles the Iron-Handed, continues the Empire's relentless conquests, toppling nations, slaying monsters and burning worlds. Woe be to those who attract the sight of him and his commanders, and the ambitious princes looking to prove their mettle.

• Carolingian Empire in Space
• Monocle does not even pop
• Adept: WAR
• Cyber-Knights

Dooms

The Gene-Jesters

They said the Alchogenitors of Khaso-Ghon were dead, perished a thousand years ago. That they have not been seen since they created the monstrous Spider-Skulls as punishment on the Astrum Carcinitrix. They were wrong, and in your actions you have somehow angered them. Their twisted ingenuity and puckish rage is turned upon your people, inflicting mutations and changes most terrible. Death would be too kind in the eyes of the Gene-Jesters, they have decided you are to be an object lesson. Perhaps once the change has come and your people - those who did not go mad or end themselves - are in possession of their facilities you can be helped. But only after, for the Gene-Jesters have already done their foul work and now, it is only time until their artistry blooms.

The Weeping

You know your doom by the marks it leaves on your body, dazzling iridescent whorls and gyres impressed on flesh and bone to serve as a warning to all that you are claimed. The marks writhe with unseen anticipation as the appointed time draws near, and the victims are moved to tears by the first echoes of whalesong in the void between dimensions. But fear not, for the End is kind, and your disappearance shall leave few the wiser. An empty corridor where your footsteps had echoed moments before. A ghost ship, docking in with its halls scoured clean of life. Cities lulled gently to sleep, going dark as its inhabitants are plucked silently from their homes, one by one. None have yet returned from being taken, with the only certainty that they have been taken to a S̴u̶r̵e̷l̶y̸ ̴K̴i̶n̷d̴e̸r̵ ̵P̶l̷a̴c̶e̵.

The tear tracks of your loved ones shall be the only evidence you have existed.

The Reckoning

You have met God, And you have been found wanting.

It seemed innocent at first. An apostle blessed. A hero resurrected. Technology gifted. Yet it was never satisfied, seemingly seeking something more. You have offered God your hand and your feet, your eyes and years, but was never enough, and year by year its blessings intensified, as if it believed its gifts not enough, that for what it truly wanted to be reciprocated, it had to give more.

And it got worse. More and more its blessings took a darker turn. The apostle, once blessed, turned into an abomination, having to be put down by his fellows. The hero, resurrected, turned insane, screaming of eyes and teeth in the starry void. God kept on giving, and slowly, you became unrecognizable.

As you flee to Sol, know that it is ever watching. The storms momentarily cloud it sights, but know that it will come bearing greater gifts, for God loves you.

For you have taken the gifts of the Devil, and work fast you must, if you will be free from its curse.

A War of Shadows

Your people dug too greedily and too deep, and now out of the fetid depths of the Warp comes your Shadow at your back. Your Shadow loves you, loves your sins, your face, your soul. And more than anything else wants to B̴̢̔ḛ̶̇ ̴̼̂Ÿ̷̰́ó̴͈u̴̝͂. It will stalk you to the very ends of the universe, like a loving bloodhound, and when it is finally ready it will carve off your face with breathtaking artistry and gently set it over its own. Your allies can do nothing, for it is your Shadow and your Shadow alone, and their presence is more wont to complicate things greatly as they see you rave and shoot and swing at nothing, or perhaps even at them. Worry not, for your Shadow loves you and you alone.

Oh how your Shadow loves you! And how could you reject it? For imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, is it not?

DHIYED Unleashed

"We made first contact maybe an hour after the expedition into the vault began, there were these... things, crawling over every surface, like insects, but even insects had a purpose in an ecosystem, these... things, they had none, we killed many but it didn't matter, as we entered there core, I'm not even sure it noticed that we were there. Our first contact with the fragment... many of my squadmates were killed outright, but all I can remember is a lightness - brilliant and horrible - and an emptiness in my own being. I-I fully believe I died there at that moment, there is a disconnect between this reality and that one that I can't seem to shake, Something has gone wrong, Something has gone wrong, Something has gone-"

H̵̦̪̥̃͛ù̴̢̘̥̙s̵̡͙͗ḧ̵̙̩͝͝ ̶̛̤̔C̵̖͖̰̬̀h̸̥̩̜͙̐́̕ì̸̧̹̺̆̀̐ḽ̷̟̼̩͒d̸̡̪̣͊̏̋͠

"It got inside of my Hardsuit somehow, cold creeping hands working around inside it and then clasping around my throat. There couldn't have been anyone in it, and yet there was, I couldn't even scream, It held my tongue as it whispered its name, my name, into my ear. It was just me and it in a Universe together; I have never felt more alone, and even as I looked out beyond my visor, I just saw myself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over-"'''''''''''''''

Y̴̲̻̖̐̊̈̚o̴̥͂̈ȗ̸͕ ̶͍̒̐ͅÄ̵͇́̃̀̏r̶̪̦͚͐͗́e̷̝͒ ̸͉̘̹͗̒N̶̮̲̿̆̓̽ǫ̸̔͘t̴̻̺̮̫̍͋̇̔ ̵̣̌̍ͅA̸̗̎̎l̸͍̼̔͐̕o̴̞̰̜͌͊̀̏n̶̘͎̜̍͠͝ȇ̴̗̟̹

"The DHIYED taught us as it killed us. Every feigned death, every spoofed comm, every mirror image, every memetic, temporal skip and non-Euclid. It taught us what to fear, what exactly a monster was, and how we might face it. Killed it? Do you think we killed it? That all this is real - that any of this actually happened? No, I never left, I'm still there, Something has gone wrong, Something has gone wrong, Something has gone wrong, Something has gone-"

I̶̹͊ ̵̘̈̕Ä̸̛͕́m̵̮͔͓͗͆̀̃ ̸̮̟̬̩̆͗́̈́Ḥ̴̢̜̈́̈́̌̌ę̷̅̌͠r̴̡̩̻̀e̷̤̩͙͊̄,̴̧̪̳̦̾͗̚ ̵̗͎͖͖͗͐͊Y̶̨̹͋͆̐ȍ̴̰̠̤̖u̷̺͆̃̃ ̶̺̆̉̒͒J̸̣̋̒̕ủ̵̯s̸̫̲͔̹̄̌t̸̛̩͑̓̚ ̴̙͓̃͗̕C̶̩̦̺̔̓͘̚ā̸̙̱̣̗͑̎̚n̸̺̐͌̐̒n̶͎̥̒͝õ̸͓̇̓̈́t̶̘͚̼͗̂ ̸̛̞̝̆S̴̹͙͂ḝ̵͔̊̊̈́ḛ̵̣͔̋ ̷̖̻͔̣̈́͒Ḯ̴̢̜̀̍͐t̴̖̣͗̑̑̿

"Our mission was a failure, DHIYED is whole, and soon, we will know the true meaning of f̵͔̍é̷̥a̶̰͛̀r̸̯̋̓."

The Idea of a Death

Viruses are not entirely physical. Some exist entirely within the memetic spaces of our conscious, transmitting themselves across civilizations and beings capable of higher level thought. For some higher level powers wars have taken place entirely within the confines memes vs antimemes, sometimes causing entire populations to go berserk - or in some cases to simply give up and even stop breathing while leaving the valuable infrastructure intact. The problem with ideas though is that they are often hard to contain - and many tend to run rampant through ubiquitous communication networks.

It is unknown at this point of time how many young civilizations have found themselves extinct at the hand of these ancient weapons, reduced to archaic barbarians whom were isolated from the larger communications networks. What is known, shockingly, is that Ideas do not die. When large extinctions happen, Echoes tend to occur in the warp; the agony or cries of a dead civilization ringing out across the immaterium to whomever would listen. Unfortunately, this includes the utterances and screams of those thrice-accursed weapons. Often they are warped, twisted and changed - and in many ways gaining a life of their own. These ideas and echoes seek those that are most compatible or similar to the structure of it's origin race.

The idea of a death is one of these memetic threats. It is both an anti-meme and a meme at the same time; altering a person's mental thinking capacity and structure while subtly causing them to isolate significantly into deeper paranoia. Often anti-psychotics can nullify this, but it is in fact desired by the virus. It allows for greater control and more opportunities to spread it's infection. It's initial spread is slow, but it has many forms. Symbols, spoken keywords, altered pictures, complex scent sequences. It's stages can vary - but they almost always end in the death of the individual - usually in any manner that would kill as many other people around them. The idea and desire for death manifests itself as suicidal ideation. Often hidden away, often drawing them into realizing there is nothing beyond - and that the bliss of oblivion is better than the pain of one's existence.

It notably forces itself upon many mediums; sometimes hiding itself in transmissions for just the right type of person and personality to pick it up and start a cycle. The final transmission from your homeworld was innocuous. A simple list of items and inventory.

At first there were the increasing mental health cases across your fleet. Depression, suicidal tendencies, paranoia and anger management. It was normal, given the circumstances you are in.

Then the first suicide bombing occurred. They have only picked up in pace and frequency.

It feeds amongst your people, turning families against each other, reducing the effectiveness of your fleet.

You are now in a race against time to survive and find a cure. Good luck.

Doom: The Finder

The Finder wants to know.

It's a deceptively innocuous-seeming directive, isn't it? The Finder just wants to know; to hold information, categorize it, cross-reference it, file it away, store it, keep it, comprehend it. Perhaps whoever built it in the first place, thousands of years ago, was intending it to be a reference library, or a piece of scientific equipment, or a sensor package. Something harmless. If that was their goal, of course, then they failed, and presumably they paid for their failure. Because the Finder is missing one crucial thing, one tiny addition that would perhaps have made it safe; it is missing an endpoint.

The Finder wants to know everything. It wants to know the mass of the sun, and the distance between your planet and its moon, and how thinly living flesh can be sliced with an electron laser, and the orbital velocity of Sol around the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and the number of gigawatts the bulkheads of your ship can absorb before they melt. Each and every datapoint holds exactly the same moral weight. Other intelligences have limits on what they are willing to do, but the Finder does not. It doesn't hate you. It's happy to help you, in fact; but one day it will have worked its way down the list and you, too, will go into the databanks, because the Finder's one and only imperative is the collection and storage of information. It has converted whole solar systems into solid-state storage and processing units, and its probes range out in every direction bearing a fork of its mind and that same merciless, limitless imperative; learn. Learn everything.

90% of your species has already been examined, calculated, processed, dissected and analyzed. The ships, the people, the habitats, even the planets themselves; home exists now only as a series of entries in the Finder's mammoth databanks. You went to Urheimat to find your destiny, and behind you all that was left went dark - and you know that the monster will come to find you, too. It's learned where you went from the people you left behind; it must have already launched the probe after you. One day very soon, you will receive an innocuous little transmission;

<<Hello! I'm the Finder. What would you like to know today?>>

• Fleet of Fog
• Space Hulk
• Adept Tech: All
• Bussard Scoops
• No Magic
• Very High Tech Theory/Praxis