Transcendence

Background

What if myth was real? What if it was the description of empires long lost, the attempts of those who did not understand looking upon an interstellar empire, vast and majestic, that the ignorant storywriters could only comprehend in bronze age terms? What if myth was science fiction?

Transcendence is inspired by fictional works such as Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons, as well as the game Too Human and so forth. Seeing that I am not actually some multitalented mythological scholar I will probably fuck a lot of things up here so be forgiving.

Cosmology

The Axis Mundi

The "World Pillar" is a powerful system, a mighty megastructure used to allow the gods their interface with the underlying fabric of reality, the machines placed there by the creation of the universe. Without the Axis Mundi, the miracles of the gods would fail, and they would be left merely with technological trappings. This layer is the root of divinity, the "godhead".

It is via the Axis Mundi that feats that the finest mundane craftsmen and scholars cannot comprehend or attempt are born out of. From the biological Dyson Sphere of Yggdrasil to Olympus Station to Fortress Kailash, these seats of power are extremely well defended by mighty fleets and servitors with powers beyond imagining... and the gods themselves.

The Underworld

The machinery which grants the gods their power also stores the minds of those who are born in the universe, keeping them accessible for later use. A very few gods and goddesses have gained the power to alter the simulations which these dead are stored in, creating paradises for the dead, or horrific punishing hells. Normally, this machinery is used merely for reincarnation of the worthy and the purification of the unworthy, but the ability to manipulate the underworld is a potent tool for those few gifted with it.

Deities

The touch of the godhead brings many benefits past the ability to call on it for miracles. Near immortality, superhuman ability in every aspect, wounds that heal quickly, and so forth. Divinities are, even with minimal enhancement save their requisite genetic augmentation and the framework cybernetics which allow them to interface with their Axis Mundi across interstellar distances, are far more powerful than even the most highly augmented supersoldiers wrought by mortal hands. Gods are some of the most powerful creatures to walk the galaxy, often equal to entire armies in war and capable of causing untold devastation or giving untold boons. The only factor which keeps them under control is the populace appeasing their desires, and the difficulty in making a new god. As much art as science, divinity cannot be granted easily.

However, deities are not immune to hubris... and the power of the gods corrupts very well.

Powers

All deities inherit the same powers. They are fantastically strong and tough, nearly immune to poison or disease, and capable of working powerful magical miracles. They can alter their body by accessing the godhead, giving them a limited form of shapeshifting that they often use to disguise themselves when they wish to walk the worlds they control. Their wounds heal quickly due to their connection, and they do not age. The godhead is as much computer and storage medium as it is a method to create miracles, giving them long-lasting memory. The fog of years does not encroach on the divine.

They are, however, not quite immortal. Deities can be slain, with great effort and powerful weapons.

Prayer

Prayer is not mere appeasement, although for some particularly cruel gods their followers only pray in fear. Prayer allows the god or goddess in question to use the energy your body creates, allowing them to work greater feats by using the godhead as a transmission medium rather than leeching power from their great but limited allowance. Due to the brittle balance between the major gods and goddesses and their petty fights, many undeclared wars and divine competitions are fought over prayer rights.

Paradigm

All deities share a few general abilities through the form of their Axis Mundi, but the differing designs and differing personalities and enhancements of the gods alter the form and type of miracles they can call upon. A god of life may scour a world clean of civilization still, but he or she would do it via nanoplague or genetic material breakdown, rather than calling on the brute force of planetary superstorms or outright destroying cities with nuclear-yield strategic strikes.

Lesser Spirits

The connection to the godhead and the Axis Mundi fades as generations and distance pass, but there are those who can access it for miracles which may be minor but are no less defiant of the order mortals seek to place on the universe. These lesser spirits, no matter what name they go by, can still channel some of miracle. They may not be capable of directly saving or damning worlds, but via their adventures, they can do so.

These lesser godlings are powerful in their own way, but much more on the scale of mortal man and his works. Many are lesser administrators, basking in worship and gifts and attention in exchange for keeping the weather on a planet balmy, healing the sick, or keeping a people safe from attack. Uncountable in number unlike the relative handful of greater divinities, Nymphs, Valkyries, Asuras, Devas, and so forth generally find themselves far closer to mortals and more humanized because of it.

Scions

The sons and daughters of gods and goddesses, of which there are many, inherit a weakened form of their parent's connection via their lesser framework implants. Their powers are weaker, and their divine blood not as potent, but their ability is still to be reckoned with. Roughly equivalent to moderately powerful lesser spirits, they inherit many advantages from their birth, and are often groomed to be heroes who can save worlds... or damn them.

Worlds

Hellas

Greece-land. Spartans may or may not be 2 meters tall and wear green powered armor.

Definitely has transhuman space amazons with bendybeam spears.

Kosala

Indian-land. Asuras, Devas, and Rudra-class battlecruisers which look like bows and fire bendybeams (there are 33 of them and they also transform into giant robots too)

Midgard

Norse-land. More manliness and cyborg gods wielding gatling guns, less slaves. Norse Myth Land, not Norseman Land, after all.

Space-Babylon

Needs to be renamed to something less obvious.

Space-China

Definitely needs to be renamed to something less obvious. Has 10 tech levels of peach tree technology.

Other Stuff

Possibly a small Egypt land and various barbarian worlds.

Vaguely Antagonistlike Groups

The enemies of the gods, such that they are "enemies", are not so much hostile as they are under a state of diplomatic breakdown. Fights break out, but total war is generally not an immediate threat. The difference between them and the gods is generally that they aren't as human.

The TITANs

The mystery of where the TITANs went is finally solved. Firewall can rest easy!

Yes, the Total Information Tactical Awareness Network exists. No, nobody knows what they are save for that. All everyone knows is that they're related but not the administrators of the godhead (if they were, they wouldn't have lost). Their access to the godhead though is equal to that of the gods, and although the deities networked to Mount Olympus won their original skirmish with them, they have stayed rather quiet past that.

Nobody has seen the TITANs take physical form. Divine scholars have considered that they may be a hypothetical networked, or possibly even post-physical, intelligence.

The Giants

The Fire and Frost Giants are another machine race which dwells in incredibly hostile environments. The gods of Midgard have, in their latest strategic projection, Case RAGNAROK, predicted that in the event of war without foreign assistance on either side, approximately 99.5% of all assets, mundane and divine, will be annihilated in the conflict. Needless to say, very few of them want this case to come to pass.

Technology

Technology in Transcendence is highly advanced but holds vaguely fantastical attributes. Rather than sleek utilitarianism, some amount of impracticality is accepted for cool things. Weapons are often etched with designs and blessings, power armor is often embossed and engraved with the tales of its previous victories, and so on. Heroism and aesthetics matter just as much as utility value.

For all that, the equipment is relatively practical. There are recognizable guns, which shoot various things like mini-missiles, slugs, lasers, plasma bullets, or so on. Armor is clearly utilitarian outside of its decorative frills and engraving, with sloped ceramic and alloy plates designed to deflect fire away from vitals, and ropy packs of myomer musculature which carry the armor and the wearer. And yes, before you ask, there are tanks and fighter jets. They might look silly but they exist.

Tactics and strategy should be this weird mishmash of modern and primitive as well, due to the two drastically separate influences being "sci-fi" and "myth".

Warfare

Weapons

Guns. The occasional laser spear. Power swords. Melee weapons exist and are often used in combat. Soldiers generally either have bayonets on their rifles or carry a secondary melee weapon such as a force blade or vibroknife for close combat.

Most slug firearms use electromagnetic, or in advanced (read: divine) cases, gravitic force to accelerate armor penetrating projectiles to extreme velocity. These slugs are generally forged out of various materials, from the cheapest militia levies using steel shot, to the highly explosive compressed phlogiston slugs that elite Spartans favor, to the nanotoxin-tipped bolts Kosalan snipers use to eliminate foes, emulating Rudra and his arrows of disease. Smart ammunition systems generally shape and build these slugs on the fly, and therefore slug firearms generally possess multiple firing modes, allowing them to fire small, single bullets or much larger, lower-velocity shells that act as grenades or missiles.

Laser or particle beam firearms also exist alongside slug weapons. Primitive versions only fire straight beams, but more advanced ones can fire beams that can curve around obstacles and hit targets behind cover. Such vectored beam weapons are often found built into melee weapons such as spears and greatswords, as they can much more easily be aimed by sight and thought rather than hand movements.

Finally, plasma weapons fire bolts of high-temperature plasma at extremely high velocity, causing immense damage. Although powerful and capable of doing massive damage, plasma weapons are expensive and relatively rare as common-issue weapons. The chosen of the Kosalan goddess Shiva use these weapons heavily. Artifact-forged plasma weapons can overcharge the plasma bolt, allowing an infantry rifle to empty its entire battery charge in one catastrophic blast.

Edged melee weapons generally use disruption fields to neutralize integrated armor forcefields and weaken engineered materials, and have hyperdense or vibrating edges to cleave through them. Blunt melee weapons generally work off of the "impact hammer" principle, using their mass and disruption fields to temporarily disrupt a shield and then firing a heavy projectile or plasma jet point-blank. These weapons are unwieldy and difficult to use, but extremely devastating in skilled hands. Disruption fields cancel each other out, so you can parry a melee weapon with another.

There are also energy melee weapons like force blades and laser swords, because what's space opera without laser swords?

Armor

Most armor in Transcendence is semi-powered and interfaces with the wearer, enhancing strength, speed, and endurance while providing onboard medical attention and datalinking ability. Armor has roughly won the battle in protection against ranged weapons, but is significantly more vulnerable to melee attacks. While ranged fire can suppress an enemy and inflict some degree of casualties, without a multitude of heavy weapons, significant casualties cannot be inflicted outside of melee combat due to armor toughness.

Heavy armor often masses as much as the man inside or more, most of its prodigious weight accounted for in its heavy ceramic and alloy plating that covers the majority of the body. Although massive, the power-assist on heavy armor allows heavy infantry to move nearly as quickly as light or medium-armored soldiers, although their combat endurance is decreased due to limited battery life. Although self-recharging like most powered systems in Transcendence, the limited trickle of the armor's internal generator is rarely enough to keep up with the power demands of the shield systems or power-assist. Of course, those blessed by a connection to the godhead can power it with the limitless energy of that dimension...

Some soldiers eschew heavy armor, preferring to use light, unrestraining ballistic weave and force fields, peppering enemies with long-range fire and using superior mobility to disengage. These lightly armored skirmisher armies are stealthier and highly maneuverable, but fall quickly to heavy infantry. These armors are woven ballistic weave over skintight muscle and thin skeletal members, looking like quilted layers of fabric over skintight bodysuits but in reality just as advanced as any heavy armor suit.

Those who desire somewhat more protection than light armor without the bulk of heavy armor attach ablative plates to critical areas and reinforce the shielding. This type of armor, not fully powered plate but not merely ballistic muscle suit is considered medium armor. Medium armor is the most common type of body armor in use, a happy compromise between protection, weight, battlefield endurance, and logistical requirements.

There are those who are crazy enough to eschew armor almost entirely as well, relying only on worn forcefield harnesses or even subdermal field generators, as well as their own personal augmentations, as they attack in a battle-fury, such as the berserkers of Midgard.

Quality of Life

Transhumanism

Although cybernetics are the method which gods are made, mortals imitate the gods as well. Prometheus might have been tortured for letting the secret of melding man with machine out, but once it was revealed to the human race, these imitations of the gifts of the gods spread widely through the various empires. Many soldiers, scholars, and others invest heavily in such blessings like reflex boosts, hardened skeletons, exocortices, and enhanced musculature, and the most arrogant often invest in eidetic memory records so their heroism can be more easily woven into tales after their death or retirement.

Genetic engineering is far more common, and the average citizen of any polity is far healthier and fitter than a 20th century human. The gods are far too busy to control their population to this degree, and with thousands of conflicts from petty to extreme, there is little if any impetus to enforce significant restriction on the arts of altering the clay of flesh. Flesh-sculptors are one part doctor, one part artist, and the best are sought after by the rich, the famous, and the vain. Excessive alteration to one's self beyond human body plans is frowned upon though, as the tale of Arachne, who modified herself into something spiderlike and inhuman to be better at weaving code than the goddess Athena--and was punished by having her genetics locked in that form for her hubris, shows.

Lifespans

The healthier people of this golden age live for very long, but biological immortality is, although possible, exceptionally rare. People are socialized to believe death is something only gods can conquer, and therefore those who seek immortality are often ostracized and looked down upon. Those afraid of death are afraid of what the afterlife might bring, rather than being more than willing to pass on peacefully and leave their position in life open to those who should rightfully succeed him or her. Only a handful of immortals are respected, having been granted immortality in return to service to the divine or great heroism or other righteous tasks.

Nevertheless, people are immensely long lived. Citizens of the empires may live for multiple centuries and it is only the long-lived stability of the nations which makes death by old age common.

Servant Races

Most people generally use either robots or genetically-modified creatures as servants as well. Dependent on the attitudes of the power in question to biological slavery and the prestige of owning living things, the balance between the two generally changes.

Robots

Nonsentient, nonhumanoid robots are commonly used in menial tasks of various form, from sweeping floors to military roles. Guardian robots defend homes, medical robots provide emergency medical aid, cookbots exist to prepare meals, and so on.

As humanoid robots are cheaper than genetically engineered servants in the long term, they are commonly used by the well-off but not wealthy, and can often be inherited across generations rather than having to be replaced every 40 or 50 years. Humanoid robots are used for any task a genejack may be, but are considered less prestigious. A humanoid robot can be built to be the equal of any mortal, and are used for various tasks.

Free machines also exist, those who have been gifted with enough money or a doting enough patron to buy themselves out of slavery. Many of these machines participate as citizens but there are those who have become resentful abolitionists.

Genejacks

As opposed to the broad spectrum of enhancement a normal mortal has, a genejack is generally designed to focus their ability on one specific area of competence. Genejacks are not engineered to be the equals of the mortals, and although long-lived are far more vulnerable to cancerous mutations, requiring occasional genetic service to survive without degradation. This ironically makes them more valuable-their high expense and the prestige of owning something so expensive to maintain is as much of their value as their utility, which is at most somewhat superior to that of a humanoid machine.

Rumors exist of barbarian or pirate genejack tribes, combat replicas gone rogue who have altered themselves to not need genetic fixes and can reproduce, but most reputable citizens dismiss them. Many heroes, though, know that these tribes are very real and very dangerous.

Computing

Sentient AI is possible and created, often to serve as a slave to the wealthy. Although slaves to start, in several empires sentient AIs can buy themselves free and their children are also free, creating a population of free sentient machines which often leave to their own planets, planets uninhabitable by mortal men and near-impossible to terraform where they can self-determine without the prejudices or fears of those with flesh.

Computers themselves are compact, fast, and extremely powerful, hooked up to various local networks. Even a sort of interstellar internet exists, mediated by the Axis Mundi, but if you wish to connect to someone in another empire, it generally must be done in person or via light-speed communications methods unless you can convince someone with access to the Axis Mundi on the other side to let your message through.

Transportation and Vehicles

Most starfaring is done by ships, large vessels with crews in the hundreds plying the black oceans of space. Planetary transportation is provided by a variety of methods, from railway to aircraft to flying hovercars which use antigravity engines, dependent on the wealth of the planet. Railways are cheap and common for bulk goods, but the wealthiest can easily afford antigravity "spinners" to carry them, and often go for extremely ornate variants which show off their excessive wealth.

Some very wealthy and very bored even have personal palanquins, spider-legged walkers which save them the effort of walking anywhere.

Avatars

Avatars are large combat robots, generally humanoid in frame design, used as strike craft by warships and planetary defense forces, as well as maintaining a ground defense role. Ranging from 5 (for the smallest "warstriders") to 20 meters tall and equipped with various heavy weapons, avatars are capable of dealing with a wide variety of foe in a wide variety of environment. These colossi are common frontline attack units, superior to the more expendable and cheaper unmanned attack drones deployed alongside.

Ships

The stars are not exactly a friendly place, full of horrible creatures such as the mind-control capable sirens, mighty star kraken, rogue asteroids, robot goblin hives, and other kinds of creatures, not to mention pirates. All ships, even civilian trade vessels, are armed and shielded due to this. Heavy kinetic cannon, plasma torpedo launchers, lasers and missiles come standard with any vessel, and most traders do well to either learn the arts of combat, or find minions who are trained for it.

Drive Technologies

All ships have reactionless "maneuvering" drives which they use in atmosphere or when maneuvering in tight confines, due to their lack of impact on the environment and high potential impulses, which they combine with powerful reaction-based transit drives. The former drive has higher peak acceleration but is less capable of sustaining this acceleration over time and more expensive to repair, making reaction drives superior for transit purposes both practically and expense-wise.

The standard faster than light drive is a finicky system which allows a ship to translate into a hyperspace dimension where distances are compressed--distances of lightyears may be covered within hours and so forth. Due to the odd nature of hyperspace, neither realspace drive system is capable of providing thrust and therefore a ship must accelerate to its desired velocity before attempting to jump out, lest it be caught by a faster vessel. Additionally, the hyperspace translation is impossible to permanently maintain. Ships must occasionally drop out of hyperspace every so often or face drive destabilization, which has claimed many an overconfident or overeager sailor.

Warships

All ships are capable combatants, but warships remove most of their cargo holds, using the space freed up to mount heavier armaments. Honeycombed racks of fighter drones, heavy banks of particle beams or kinetic cannon, rotary missile launchers, and more tend to support a warship's sizable marine complement (sometimes teleporter deployed, sometimes using boarding shuttles), and they are defended with potent point defense, powerful ECM and shield generators, thick armor, and multiple redundant systems. Warships have equivalent transit speeds to non-warships but their oversized maneuver drives give them incredible agility in combat, with the most advanced small corvettes often having nearly as much agility as strike avatars.

Some warships are designed as a support vessel, these carriers carrying racks and racks of Avatars and unmanned support drones. Others are designed primarily to fight in hyperspace, with minimal guided weaponry and heavy banks of assault cannon and energy beams.

Piracy

Space pirates generally wait in ambush near areas where ships are likely to translate out in the middle of their journey, close to debris which masks their sensor signature, especially when seeing through hyperspace and into realspace is extremely difficult and only electronic warfare vessels are capable of reliably detecting stealthed pirates. As hyperspace routes can generally be mapped with realspace vectors, it is possible to put a drive disruptor along a route and reap the spoils as ships are forced to drop out and negotiate the disruption sphere in realspace. To counteract this, critical merchant vessels often operate either in convoy or with warship escort.

Underworld Gates

The underworld is by its very nature, connected to every planet and every person. With some luck and a spirit guide, those who wish for risky but fast transportation can use the underworld as a method to get anywhere. Those who seek to use this method of transport must follow (often poorly-marked) paths, or be lost in the simulated reality forever. It is, therefore, a journey only the very brave or very desperate attempt, and even those do not often seek to use this travel method.

However, when it works, it can work quite wonderfully.

Enlightenment

A very, very few people entirely unrelated to the gods manage to tap into some of the power of their faction's Axis Mundi by training, discipline, and sheer force of will. They may be called gurus, or magicians, or oracles, but these enlightened are capable of minor miracles. Their lives are more blessed than the mean, and they gain the same effects tapping the godhead gives to the gods, to a lesser degree. If they did not have the framework gifts, the godhead builds them into the Enlightened, nodules of exotic elements coalescing in bone and brain.

No god, not even those of knowledge, can explain why this phenomenon happens. Is it them choosing to harness the power-or is the power choosing them?

Game Mechanics

Transcendence Character Game Mechanics

Nation Stuff

May be vaguely Sphere-inspired. Probably should be significantly lighter in design though.