Obscure games with great fluff

THE FALL OF THE LIFESTEALERS

They were once called the Order of Ellia. The greatest of all psychic masters, momentous in spirit and in power, loved by many and respected by all. Their understanding and enlightenment was a beacon of what peaks the soul could achieve. Nonetheless, they were not infallible.

People in the galaxy suffered and died--fathers were murdered and mothers starved. Such was the nature of life in a sometimes brutal universe. The Order saw the existence of such horrors as a sign of imperfection in the nature of existence itself. For centuries, a hundred societies with a thousand different names had attempted to alleviate the darkness and pain that festered in the far
away corners of the galaxy, but always more remained. No matter the intensity of their labor, there were always more people hurting, more people dying.

After watching so many good works rise and fall, The Order decided it had had enough.

The power they wielded was formidable, and they thought that if finesse and persistence could not correct the horrors of an uncooperative life, brute force was the remaining option. They gathered their strongest--the reclusive masters from all reaches of reality. They called upon their mastery of technology, and their mastery of spirit, to plan the greatest good work to ever be devised. They would alter the nature of reality itself.

Their plan was to create a utopia that stretched not just across the span of one planet, or even one society, but that would span the entire galaxy. To this end, they planned to alter the very psychic
fabric of reality, coaxing it into an endless wellspring that would give each person the power to survive on will alone, and the power to shape their reality as they saw fit. They would make the universe a place not of dark, coarse matter, but of vibrant spirit and raw life energy.

They were not as naive as some now accuse them of being--they knew that many would simply take their newfound power and use it to create even greater evils. So they added a new factor to their plan--they would give each being a link to the consciousness of the galaxy itself, meaning each man would feel the effects of his own existence from a new perspective. Every evil he committed against another would almost literally be an attack against himself. In time, the galaxy would learn to be, physically, psychically and spiritually, in complete harmony with itself.

That, sadly, was the theory. Perhaps it would have even been a convincing one, had the Order bothered to consult anyone about it. But the others, hearing only rumors of a great plan by the Ellia, found out the hard way.

The power of the Ellia was not what failed them--nor was it their technology, nor their understanding of how to implement the plan safely. Almost supernaturally, all went just as they had willed it. Their technologies bolted out with surgical precision to shape the universe into the form they had chosen. The galaxy's energies changed; matter became spirit, soul bonded with proton, and the galaxy's own psychic power twisted and blossomed, pouring into every creature in the galaxy. But the flow did not stop there--as the Ellia had intended, the energy rushed back into the galactic consciousness, forming an endless cycle--and with it, the world, the very stars themselves, gained all the pettiness, suffering, anguish and hatred that humanity had carefully stored over countless centuries of foolishness.

The Ellia had failed to truly understand the galactic consciousness--it was not just a collective mind of all the souls in the universe, or some psionic means meant to support the people of the galaxy; it was a being of its own, vibrant and pure, and lacking the learned endurances of man. It was a greater soul than any who lived, but it was not the same. It's powers, limitless though they seemed to be, were not in enduring pain, nor in stomaching grief.

People had not realized until then just how resistant they as a species were to lacerations of the spirit--individuals of their kind endure lashes and agonies that would drive any other spirit to self destruction. And now this being, gentle and without thoughts or cares of the nature of good or evil, having never felt a sadness or strife before, had suddenly gained all the agonies, the losses, the tragedies and the regrets of every being who drew breath within it. Waves of pains it had never known before struck every fiber of its being. And like a child who has suddenly lost her mother, it's soul cried out in shocked disbelief, and the whole of the living felt it.

That was just the beginning.

As the Ellia had intended, the line between matter and spirit had been erased. The anguish of the galaxy and it's inhabitants began to crack the very fabric of the universe. As the world's themselves began to shudder, events unforeseen by the Ellia's plan began to occur--stars began to twist, gravity itself fluctuated, and the very nature of reality shook. This led to catastrophe on an unimaginable scale as the technological components of the Ellia's plan reacted violently to the new changes, and the Ellia themselves struggled to survive the waves of psychic confusion that seemed to emanate from every point in the universe at once--a side-effect of an entire galactic population wondering just what the hell was going on.

The situation quickly began to worsen. A sudden, intense madness began to pour from the back of people's minds, as a thousand deafening noises played themselves out in ears that heard nothing. Hallucinations and reality danced eagerly with one another as the true line between the two vanished.

On the tranquil shores of Veta, people clawed and writhed on the sandy beaches as they struggled to find themselves in a sea of screaming minds. On the jungle world of Terrestas, madness rose to a new level as people burrowed for tree-rats and delirious reptiles wondered why they couldn't key in the access codes to homes they never had. Those few with the psychic presence and wherewithal to maintain themselves through the maelstrom simply held as best they could against the horrific chaos.

In the minds of all people, reality itself seemed like it was about to crack.

And, in the end, it did.

A noise like a thousand meteors careening into a sea of broken glass wailed across the cosmos, and a thousand needles of color crashed their way through the minds of all who watched. A final shockwave hit as the galaxy surrendered to it's pain, and every creature who lived within it was suddenly struck with a sudden bolt of pain and weakness, leaving them to sigh half-formed screams as they fell to the shuddering ground.

Slowly, the chaos drained away, and the near-comatose citizens of the galaxy slowly began to regain consciousness.

They sat up and moved their frigid fingers—fingers that somehow seemed devoid of any real motion. They opened their tired eyes and took in a world that somehow seemed devoid of any real light.

Each felt as though something had been torn away from them. They felt starved, and cold, and empty. Each felt as though their soul itself had slowly begun to bleed to death.

This was not far from the truth.

They awoke to a galaxy in pieces--the fabric of space itself had splintered and split into countless shards, and strange anomalies that could only be described as glowing lacerations hung in the void of space between stars. Energy seeped from them like bloody wounds, and all who saw them shuddered, though they knew not why.

Gradually, the hollow emptiness that filled the space inside the flesh of each creature gave way to a gnawing cold--a pulsing, growing void, which began to drain away their very life. The Ellia had given people the ability to live off of psychic essence—and inadvertently doomed them to spiritual starvation in the process.

The stricken inhabitants of the galaxy immediately set themselves to the task finding out what had happened. It was discovered in time that the attempts of the Ellia had crippled their world--their galaxy had been shot through the heart. And with this knowledge, so too did they learn of their dependance on the spirit of the stars they called home. The Ellia had linked their life force to that of their galaxy. As it's spiritual blood slipped away, so too did the energies of every inhabitant, and every living creature was slowly devouring what little was left of the living essence of their reality.

Panic ensued, and violence, long forgotten in the peaceful and gentle galactic core, erupted with a fervor unseen for thousands of years. Those who remained rational did their best to attempt a solution to their problem before all life in the galaxy faded. It was learned that the universe could perhaps heal itself in time, and that it could once again learn to support life, but that it would take far longer than the energies that currently sustained the living would last. The cycle of life and death had experienced a sudden inflationary spike in the demand for living essence.

After weeks of fevered research, it was given a number at last. Nearly 90% of the galaxy's population would have to die before the meager supply would no longer outstrip the demand. The inverse conclusion was obvious--only 10% of the galaxy's people could live. The battles redoubled, as each faction realized that to survive, they would have to destroy everyone except themselves. They would have to turn on every old enemy and ally, for only one faction could survive--if that.

You are the leader of one of these factions, a supreme commander in a galaxy that is bleeding to death. Lead your people well, or they--and you--will die alongside the rest.

FACTIONS

Each organization that still survives holds it's own advantages and it's own character, and each is approaching the problems of survival differently.

The Lifestealers

"We must redeem ourselves, at any cost. Only we can correct the damage we have done."

The shattered remains of the Order of Ellia, now almost universally despised and marked with the hateful moniker of The Lifestealers, now fight a losing battle to survive the wrath of their brethren in the cosmos as the dying children of a ravaged galaxy cry out for revenge. They have prioritized their own survival as all factions have, and are scrambling to find a solution to the current crisis--some new plan that will correct the damage they have caused and end the gradual death of the majority of the galaxy's citizens.

They may even have the resources to succeed, but few are willing to give them the chance to damage their home a second time. From the perspective of most factions, they have proven that their meddling is undesirable at best, and so they aren't prone to listening to the Lifestealer's entreaties of "A new plan to fix the old plan".

They intend to continue regardless. They plan to redeem themselves whether the other factions trust them to or not, but they have encountered more and more resistance as organized military forces begin to assault their laboratories. Seeing no other choice, they have organized a military force of their own, to hold off the other fleets until they can find a solution--or die trying.

The Coreguard

"If it is our fate to die, so be it. But we swear, it will not be the killers who survive us."

The peaceful denizens of the galaxy's inner planets were loathe to join the slaughter. Though it was clear that the galaxy was dying, they had been living in a society of peace and love for thousands of years--they were not going to turn wolf on one another now, not in what was easily their darkest hour. But black clouds were already thundering down all around them--they knew that if they stayed their hand, they would be slain.

The military organization known as the Coreguard had long since been the protective arm of these peaceful worlds, essentially a small, well equipped and expertly trained group of elites who defended all of these worlds from any hostile force that may have arisen.

Now, the whole galaxy has arisen as a hostile force, and the coreguard is pressed from all sides. They have to pick their battles carefully, and many of it's normally pacifistic strategists have begun preaching increased aggression in order to protect their homelands, coming to the conclusion that the only effective defense in this sort of situation is a firm and targeted offense.

The Coreguard headquarters is the Elite Naval Command Academy. The Coreguard is an entirely volunteer organization, and the peaceful denizens of the galactic core aren't often predisposed to combat or the harsh lifestyle of a soldier. Thus, they preserve those volunteers they do get, and ensure that they possess only the finest training and equipment. Recent events have seen an increase in recruitment, but the academy still attempts to ensure that it puts out only the most talented starship commanders and admirals.

Those Who Shall Survive

"You seek to ensure that the others die first. We seek to ensure that we will die last."

Though the denizens of the galaxy may have become short-lived, they had not become any less ingenuitive or stubborn in their will to survive. With the discovery that psychic energy was required by each being to survive, and that that energy was in increasingly dwindling supply, it was not long before someone came up with a method to steal it.

This method, a device called the Cooler (For it's apparent effect on its targets), stole the psychic energy from targets, hastening their deaths but allowing the wielder to last much longer than he or she may have otherwise. Those who invented it formed a faction of their own called Those Who Shall Survive--an almost cult-like organization dedicated to self-preservation above all other concerns.

They mercilessly steal the energies of target ships, drinking their essences and leaving them to die.

The technology for Coolers has since been stolen by a number of factions, leading to wholesale soul-piracy throughout the stars. The Survivors mercilessly attack these factions, largely because they constitute competition, but also because they tend to have more essence to steal. The reverse also proves true, meaning the high stakes winner in any engagement between Survivors and Pirates is ultimately whoever brings the most firepower to the show.

The Obsidian Bones

"Arrrr. Harrrrr. Harrrrr. Put yer soul in me bag 'o' booty."

Piracy was practically an abandoned concept before the shattering. Food and resources were plentiful, and the people were strong, honest, and well-defended. The technologies and societies of their utopian culture made competition for resources a pointless and needless exercise. Now, with people dying from spiritual starvation on a daily basis, the despised and romanticized practice of piracy has resurged with a vengeance.

The key to the sudden formation of the now-ubiquitous pirate bands was the Cooler device, invented by a faction called Those Who Shall Survive. Without it, stealing spiritual energy would be impossible, but once the technology for cooler devices was stolen, replicated, and
placed in the hands of anyone cunning enough to get one, piracy became a sudden and very plausible way to make a living. Now the spaceways are constantly blocked by throngs of cutthroats seeking to drain the energies away from any who pass through their webs.

The Obsidian Bones is one such pirate faction, and easily the largest. They have evaded undue amounts of wrath by carefully picking their targets and never preying on one group too heavily. While this has made them enemies of just about everyone, they aren't a sufficient threat to gain the undivided attention of anyone, especially when enemies are already in ample supply.

Nonetheless, preying on the others like mosquitoes will not work forever. Eventually it will come down to the Bones versus whoever else is still alive, and they are stockpiling ships and weapons to ensure they emerge victorious in the end.

The Bones approach their work with an almost morbid sense of humor-- they are one of the few factions who has accepted their situation and decided to make the best of it.

The Voidfangs

"Pain was once a part of life. Now it's the only thing that preserves it."

Not every pirate faction has had the luck and resources of the Obsidian Bones. Cooler devices, while easy to obtain by some people in some places, prove nearly impossible to acquire in others. Most of the galaxy finds them in very short supply, but another, more permanent method of
attaining spiritual energy is known.

The dead have no use for life energy, and thus when a creature dies, it releases it into the world. This can either increase the local supply, or can be taken by a single person if they're quick enough. But if an individual is present at the very moment of death, they can potentially take every drop of living energy as it is released.

This required murder--no excuse could be made. However, survival proves to be an insistent need, and it ultimately didn't take long for the starving worlds of the galaxy to find an excuse to use their discovery in daily practice.

Even so, these were not beasts just waiting to be unchained--these were kind, benevolent people who found themselves forced to commit the ultimate act of evil in order to maintain themselves. So they did what they could to soften the blow--by introducing wildly powerful narcotics
into the mixture.

It is accepted that the voidfangs will never harm a person without first giving them "Icedrops", a wildly powerful liquid narcotic which is also a paralysis agent. They expose their victims to it via various means- injection, inhalation, and sometimes even just biting--and then slowly kill them.

This has not been without its effect on the voidfangs. The newly empathic nature of the galaxy means that they can feel everything they inflict upon their victims, and a bond as close as the one they form when draining a dying person means their death often leaves scars. Their psyches have become fragile, and a few have been driven mad by the acts they are forced to commit. Even the most stable find it takes great self-control to continue in their frightening way of life, and very few enjoy it.

The Voidfangs didn't enjoy the public support nor the self-determination of the other factions at first, and indeed they never expected to be a major faction. However, the simplicity of their techniques and the fact that they're usable without a cooler device has seen their numbers swell far beyond what they were prepared for. Their sheer numbers now make them as formidable as any other faction, and they gain converts from starving worlds from all corners of the galaxy. Voidfang leadership is on shaky ground, as not all of them are sure they really want to win this war, but the most determined have risen to the top and intend to make sure their newfound charges do not suffer the same fate as the rest of the galaxy.

The Voidfangs are everywhere--their method for gaining life energy is the most basic and accessible technique that exists. As a result, they are practically the default faction to join for unaffiliated individuals who don't want to die.

{Apologies for sorta spamming. There's more of it than i remembered there being. Also apologies for wonky formatting, the pdf is a direct copy of the bizarrely tiny manual the game shipped with, I thought I'd gone through and fixed it but there are still alignment errors here and there.)

The Sea

"You once wondered if we had souls. At last our dead have proven it to you."

Thousands of years have passed since the galaxy's races first delved into artificial intelligence. Computer programs could be engineered to be much more efficient than living beings, given the right hardware and programming. In time, it was an obvious step to attempt to teach a computer to do anything, to learn on it's own how to accomplish a task, and forgo the need for programming forever more. This step was a large one, but from there, the step to actual digital sentience--self-aware machines--was infinitesimal indeed.

Once built, the artificially intelligent were regarded with uncertainty. It seemed strange to some; a living mind that could exist in anything that had the hardware to support it. But these intelligences were eloquent, and their arguments potent--in the end, the world decided to err on the side of wisdom, and assume that these machines were, in fact, alive in the same manner as any other creature.

They lived and learned for ages, growing into a thousand different types of mind--artists, architects, philosophers, and even lovers were counted among their number. They explored who they were as any race would, and relished their existence perhaps even more.

And in the end, when the shattering came, the biological races of the galaxy finally learned the truth--as the loss of spiritual energy saw the deaths of one AI after another. They too now find themselves struggling to defend against the sudden hostility of a dozen different groups.

The largest community of AIs is named after it's nature--it is a sea of shifting intelligences, merging and melding into one another in a gigantic computer network. Long ago, they chose to call themselves the Sea--for they were an ocean of beings. These intelligences must now leave their homes and enter into the sterile metal bodies of fighters, battleships and carriers, moving out to defend their homes against intruders.

The Order of Hantelle

"Our former employers have turned their backs on us. We must fend for ourselves."

The secretive yet ever-present Order of Hantelle was once the guardian of secrets and the hunter of that which struck from the shadows. They were the galaxy's shadow police, rooting out threats that could not be seen by the people at large. Intelligence, covert operations and clandestine conspiracies were their hallmarks, and they served their motherworlds well.

After the tragedy, however, the majority of planetary governments collapsed in the chaos. Those few that remained could barely survive the strain of keeping order among their own people. They could hardly afford to support the hidden intelligence network that had come to depend on them.

Suddenly, the Hantelle found themselves desperately short on the resources that had formerly been provided for them by the galactic government. Though they were a secretive and evasive organization by nature, they gradually realized that most people valued life force more
than secrets. With nothing to bargain with and no territory to draw from, they decided the only way their organization would be able to survive,and perhaps unravel the mystery of the galaxy's sickness, would be to venture forth and take the resources they needed by force.

After all, the Hantelle was not just a loose organization of spies—they possessed weapons and fleets far beyond what most people realized. Turning these secret fleets to the stars in open combat for the first time, the Hantelle seek to gain a foothold on the galaxy with which to ensure their continued existence.

The Hantelle possess the finest covert intelligence equipment in the galaxy, and the most thorough training in the taking and subsequent use of secrets. Though the Hantelle may not have quite the same level of military firepower of the other factions, the military value of covert operations should not be underestimated.

The Rose Cartel

"Some things are worth dying for. But only if you pay retail."

With the collapse of galactic civilization, it seemed as though commerce as a whole would collapse, along with those who relied upon it. There were still those foresighted enough, however, to realize that there were still fortunes to be made in the broken stars. The demand had simply changed from luxuries and trade goods to psionic essence and life force.

The Rose Cartel was one of the first to realize this. Seeing an opportunity to ensure their own survival by cornering the market on life force, they stepped into the "soul-trade" with an eerie eagerness. Ever the pragmatists, they both buy and sell life energy, trading standard goods for the psionic power they need to sustain themselves. The other factions, eager for military equipment, have reluctantly begun trading their own precious energies to the Roses in exchange for increased firepower. The Roses then sell this essence at a hefty profit to those more desperate for it. In continually trading their own spiritual assets, however, they face the grave risk of being caught short when the sky finally falls.

The Orchid Cartel

"What manner of creature gives the reaper a receipt..."

Like the Rose Cartel, the rival Orchid Cartel was farsighted enough to see that wealth and resources would still be a factor in the times ahead. Unlike the Roses, however, the Orchids found the gamble of trading with their own psionic energies to be an unappetizing one.

They eventually came upon a different, altogether more grisly business plan. They realized that the entire problem with the galaxy's life force was that supply was simply outstripping demand. If they could reduce the demand, therefore, the supply would take care of itself. How, then, do you reduce the demand for living essence?

Simple, as the Orchids believe: By reducing the living.

Not wanting to risk themselves in combat, they decided instead to become dealers in death, middle-men and marketeers of destruction.

They now offer hefty bounties—credits, luxury items, and even warships—in exchange for confirmed kills to anyone who walks in the door. The Orchids don't care who is on the hit list, so long as it isn't another Orchid. And even that requirement may prove to be negotiable...

This appalling policy has enraged many of the other factions. However,few can refuse the offer of a free warship after a particularly bloody battle.

>>48984013
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Edgy

sounds coo'