/tg/ makes a sci-fi war game setting

>>50854748
Cute fuzzy things with heavy armor and a severe case of xenophobia

Humans, but not united as a single government, still split along country lines with a variety of governmental styles.

Intergalactic couriers that are hands-off to all factions; screwing with them leads to reprisals from everyone involved. The have their own agenda, of course.

Silicon based non-anthromorphic space crabs

One of the factions is all-female, having used bioengineering to make the male sex obsolete and to double their ability to produce offspring. Gene mods more than make up for any serial dimorphism, and their biotechnology is the best in the setting.

Xenophobic hypertheistic humanoids, but the gods they worship are themselves

Undead

Xenophobic idiot-savant velociraptors

>>50854845
>>50854839
>>50854780
Xenophobia is a meme

>>50854748
OP of Fading Ember here. I see what you're doing... and I like it.

http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?cPath=1_9&products_id=39

>>50854748
Space communists done right.

>>50854866
You're a meme

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>>50854780
can they be communist?

>>50854881
Shit, ya got me. Now you get 3 wishes

>>50854881
No, you're just being xenophobic.

OP here,
So the major factions currently are:
>heavily armoured xenophobic cute fuzzy things
>humans divided along national lines
>intergalactic couriers
>silicon based space crabs
>all female race of bioengineers

You Are free to try and change any ideas by getting dubs.
Next dubs determines general nature of the setting, I.e. Hard/soft sci-fi, scale and core themes.

>>50854907
>Soft sci-fi
>Galactic scale
>Mostly peaceful with intermittent war

>>50854816
To expand on this, the crabs continuously grow as they live, and have a culture based on war, combat, and honor. The largest crabs are the oldest, and thus the most powerful, crabs. The crabs are immortal, but a lot of them die in combat.

>>50854907
You mean:
>heavily armoured xenophobic cute fuzzy velociraptor things

Come on. Space velociraptors in power armour. Can't get better than that.

>>50854867
I was actually one of the first people to reply to your thread, I proposed the Byzantine sorcerous empire and dying earth setting.

>>50854917
I like it, I'll back this up

>>50854917
Not dubs, but it stands until dubs changes it.

>>50854907

Aliens are soft sci-fi, but humans are stuck with mostly hard sci-fi tech.

Humans, therefore, largely participate in galactic conflicts as mercenaries. We have to bum a lot of rides.

Soft sci-fi.
Regional-level focus, general knowledge of major happenings in galaxy.
Constant low-level, brushfire conflicts and skirmishes. Something brewing.

>>50854933
This now has dubs, therefore it is confirmed.

>>50854748
The courier race >>50854809 are the only ones with true FTL and are willing to courier anything from messages to armies so long as they get paid.

All factions have FTL communication, but it is very expensive compared to couriers, and can build warp gates between their systems, but can't warp into other factions without specific codes. Warp gates are also limited in how much they can transfer at a time.

Couriers do not participate in exploration missions, so anything like that has to be down at near-c travel. So it's possible but doesn't happen quickly. As well, new colonies are at risk of invasion by near-c fleets before they can set up FTL communication and a warp gate at which point Couriers will travel there.

>>50854809

This sounds like DocWagon or ComStar but with teeth.

>>50854907
Space opera, galaxy wide at most, differing and conflicting styles of government as the core theme

One of the factions is extremely libertarian and balkanizes for any reason, barely has a central government

>>50854981
>>50854961
Does this fit in?

>>50854981
So... stargate?

>>50854920
I second this, also the crabs organize in Klingon style great houses, immortal, but lay hundreds of eggs, majority of crablings die in rough spartan-esque childhood.

>>50854988
I vote female bioengineers for this faction. Mad Scientist Syndrome.

>>50854997
Yes

>>50854997
The oldest and largest one is their homeworld and top leader.

>>50854988

We got dubs. Okay, so who shot the Therian ambassador at the art exhibit?

>>50854989
The gates seem a bit to close to stargate, I like the idea of the courier race controlling FTL travel, it reminds me of the spacing guild in dune.
Let's have dubs confirm any idea, so if you like an idea, second an idea you likento increase the likelyhood of it being included.

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>>50854780

•Vrh

Anthropomorphic egg laying otter like creatures with highly prominent sexual dimorphism - females being almost two time more massive than males.

In primitive times they started as swamp hunter creatures with male-harem structure. Drying of swamps and bogs pushed them into savannah where their bodies were nowhere good enough to survive if not for the spark of intelligence that they had. It's allowed them to survive and prosper even if road to civilisation was marred with many a blunder. Not that different from humanity.

They are omnivorous but with higher demand for meat in diet and were highly territorial. During primitive times females were main combat force and leaders but time changed it. With male to female ratio of 10 to 1 it's just not feasible to have modern armies completely made out of females. Though they still mostly keep leading position in politics and military with social and science branches dominated by males.

Vrh are hunters/ambush hunters and really don't like someone stumbling in their territory. Their civilisation expands outward from their homeworld and may very well clash with their neighbours.

>>50855024
A fuzzy thing rebel.

>>50854991
I was thinking more Dune. Give the Factions stable Empires but have distant proxy-ish wars possible in the fringe. Let the Couriers be an option for small scale conflicts against rebellions or other factions, but too expensive for full scale war.

Meanwhile because of the distance and time for new colonies, there would be spying and intrigue to find out if or when other factions are colonizing and rush to send a fleet out that wouldn't be able to receive support if they failed.

>>50854988
>>50855002
Huh. I was hoping for a Rigid Caste system, except with bioengineering instead of Gemstones.

>>50855043
Sounds like we got the setting's matriarchate.

>>50855038
I could second this. I kind of like the idea that the Couriers only deal with "established" systems, and that the factions have another option for traveling so they aren't dependent on the couriers, but it isn't efficient or fast.

>>50854748
Ancient Progenitors and Forerunner style races fighting at the height of their power over the multiverse at the height of their power vs the usual scrappy humans or underdogs stumbling into their relics for some b-movie tier shenanigans.

Like a sci-fi version of Exalted. More Lensmen with omnipotent beings and stuff.

>>50855002

I'd imagine the xenophobic fuzzballs are the ones that balkanize all the time. They are so xenophobic, they even trigger each other.

>>50854981
this is all true, but no warp gates, The couriers simply have the ability to create faster than light warp drives.

all the factions are attempting to secretly subvert the courier monopoly on fast travel either by creating competing tech(teleportation) or stealng the the courier tech,

>>50855054
Nah man. Different schools of Academic thought where they can work together and then suddenly have a schism over photosynthetic skin or condensed stored nutrients provided by a "consumer" sub breed.

>>50855088
And only unified in their disdain for other races.

>>50855050

So regarding Courier rules of engagement. Their intra-system ships are legitimate military targets if transporting an invasion force, but nobody fucks with the jump-capable ones? The jump ships have a fuck ton of shields and point-defense weaponry but minimal offensive punch.

>>50855088
>>50855111

We got one, boys

>>50855096
The problem is that without at least some form of fast communication and transport, the Couriers have way too much power.

Maybe have the Couriers have the only RELIABLE FTL, and nobody knows why sometimes it fails. Some suspect the Couriers, some suspect a flaw in the factions FTL, etc.

>>50855116
You would have to provide your own inter system ship. But yeah nobody Fucks with the Couriers ships.

>>50855111
Trips confirms.

We could go the Mind Flayer route, and have it be based on genetic purity. There's some strain that gets something like pointed ears or a silver pelt that makes them ultra-special and born leaders, but abnormally longer claws, large size, etc. Makes them lesser than "pure" VRH, to the point that they start comparing fur length, nail length, etc incessantly amongst themselves.

>>50855148

Okay, so every faction has FTL comms and can make short-range jumps, 10LY or so. Couriers are the only ones who can make the really deep dives.

>>50855116
Maybe the couriers don't even have "Ships" per se at all, but can "launch" or create tunnels to the destination?

Or they are deep space dwellers and don't come too close to planets and such, and just drop people off nearby.

>>50854835

The all-female faction wants to expand its influence, but their gene mods only are available to other factions with heavy restrictions. They generally only work on females or males willing to be 'converted' in the process, and they offer more favorable trade deals to groups with female rulers.

>>50855190
That works.

>>50855181
The Beholder route you mean? The try to maintain Governments by a complex system of intermarriage designed to prevent the ruling class from significantly diverging from the planet(s) they rule over, and split when an heir presents with too many characteristics of one type and either is killed or kills his competition?

Each planet has genetic drift from colonizing that makes them more or less hostile, with the original home world having long been bombed out and different groups from the First Wave of colonization claiming to be the only true original type?

>>50855148
Alternatively, everyone has reliable FtL but the Couriers are capable of the longest jumps and travel distance without resupplying by a wide margin.

As in, everyone else has to jump from system to system across predefined lanes while the Couriers can do multiple jumps in one while also being capable of more jumps overall
Basically the multi-jump organ in Escape Velocity: Nova

>>50855071
Well not everywhere. Some realms are run by males. But they are in minority. The sexual dimorphism goes much deeper than size only. More than a hundred thousand of years in the role of warriors and leaders can do a lot for evolution. Females are mush better at empathy, shrewd political moves, backstabbing and planning how to kill someone. Males historically tended to eggs and children while females hunted.

During stone-iron age when weapons started to appear males became support hunters/fighters and during modern era they became rank and file soldiers and hogged up most of science. That last part gave them a lot of political power.

The world is still divided in a lot of realms that collectively have something akin to UN but with more guns on each side. Realms compete with each other in space exploration and colonisation so it is actually possible to fight vrh soldiers why having some of them on your side. Unless of course you show some signs that you want to endanger their homeworld. Then all bets are off.

>>50855190
I don't like setting a specific number. More like deep ocean sailing, the further out or longer away from a system doing FTL through deep space, the more likely a ship is to be lost.

So you could risk it, but it's pretty expensive if it fails.

Couriers transit deep space. What aren't they telling? Are the ships running into something we can't see? Does the fabric of space somehow change? Are space whales eating them? Is it the Couriers themselves protecting their monopoly?

The all female faction is barely recognisable as humanoid due extensive genemoding, some have become incredibly bestial in apperance while others have gained the ability to shapeshift etc.

>>50855244
Well this has dubs. Also gives a nice tactical use for transporting armies with couriers, or urgent messages.

I like the idea of unreliable FTL too far into deep space though.

>>50855181
I don't think you even need genetics. Their leaders run whole harems of males that serve them. A household is female and her daughters plus up to fifty males and daughters always just itch to get free of their mother. Getting a whole new planet to themselves? There is no force in the world that will keep them under control. The moment colony becomes self-sustaining it will declare itself a full realm and you'll need to send armies to deal with it. Which is costly and probably won't work in the long run. Vrh more or less are okay with it.

It also means that if say they missed someone else starting a colony on the world or deliberately ignored it you'll have a hard time getting them out. Homeworld realms will just smile politely and say "It is not our problem".

Alright, I'd just like to point out why the "suggestions first, dubs confirm" method works: it keeps the thread moving while still allowing some form of solid progress being made, and keeping it flexible enough that it avoids the Randumb suggestions being shoved in. Everyone is motivated to keep posting, with OP coming in every so often to solidify decisions and move on to the next point of development. It works better than Dubs only, and requires less OP maintenance than constant Table rolling.

>>50855322
Reliable FtL is limited to how well charted FtL lanes are, and of course in deep, less charted space these lanes are more and more unreliable. You might accidentally warp into a sun's corona.

And the Couriers got the best maps. Maybe make them best at navigation, but not so much better in FtL tech, they might end being too overpowered.

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>>50854890

So on the battlefield: large armies battling each other to the death, or spec ops teams carrying out an objective (a la Infinity)?

>>50855597
Depending on the faction and what makes the narrative most fun.

>>50855597
Depends on the system we use. Mutants and Ray Guns is an option, with an Emphasis on Your Guys, but is Skirmish, so Spec Ops would work there. The fantasy counterpart to it is what we're using for Fading Embers,

>>50855597
Yeah spec ops make more sense. Big battles are too swingy and don't make much sense with FTL technology. Too much chances for nuclear Armageddon, RKVs and other shit.

Small units trying to murder each other for political gains or stealing some technology is much more believable.

Fresh colonies where a couple of species clashed won't have resources and manpower to create real armies so they too will be mostly bogged down in border skirmishes.

>>50855680
IMHO the unequal mission goals from Heavy Gear are really nice.

>>50855788
>Vrh spies infiltrating a Couriers base to "erase" a FtL lane leading to a world of theirs
>Bioengineers trying to capture genetic samples of the crabs leadership so they can grow their own sweet claws

>>50855880
Oh, shit... this would be Pretty sweet as an RPG as well, but we'd need to make sure that some of the factions have allies so multiple races can play, or we do the 40k Abhumans thing or we use a 40k RPG so playing an All-one-race game doesn't get stale.

>>50855850
Heavy Gear could work. The BB3D devs are adding in support for Heroscape, so a Hex-based system could turn out really well.

>>50855880

Sweet claws... or maybe just make a bio weapon.

Why fight an army when you can kill/change their leadership?

"The crabs are crippled by their immortality. Social change cannot thrive if the supporters of the old ways never age out and die. We will help you move forward. A clean slate to build a new world."

>>50855557
Nah man. Their superior FTL is what makes them Couriers.

The deep space aspect is to enforce their neutrality to the rest of the factions. They don't seem interested in planets or politics. They're openly "bribeable" where they will carry anything anywhere so long as the price is paid, which keeps them from being excluded because they have the unique capability. They don't get involved in planets that are being colonized, keeping conflicts there from escalating because by the time reinforcements can be sent everything would be over.

So you have factions trying to low-key find new planets and colonize them.

Maybe make them have incompatible environments beyond gravity, temperature, and minimum atmosphere so that the race is to either establish or stop terraforming before it becomes unfeasible to reverse? Giving both a reason to act quickly as well as to not drag conflict on.

>>50855945
Maybe each species has multiple variations caused by deliberate genetic and cybernetic modification?

And to prevent an infinity of variations, how about colonies are set up like how polities are set up in Mass Effect: everybody colonizes the habitable/semi-habitable planets of the galaxy, which are pretty rare. They then begin expanding outwards to other systems from these colonies, which on the map looks like the entire galaxy is covered in factions, but in reality is mostly empty space.

>>50855945
Make it more Cold War and less Everyone for Themselves and it will be much easier to do. Species don't like each other but they are not dumb. Open war is a mutual destruction or close enough. At least everyone will fall back into iron age and no one wants that shit back. So they play a political game.

Vrh with their realms constantly try to one up their sisters and aliens. They have established a colony on some world where someone already lived? get ready for decades of guerilla warfare and general dickishness with no way to influence them through Vrh homeworld political powers.

Couriers try to keep their FTL monopoly but their population growth is incredibly slow and they don't have any genetic technologies to speak off. Also their traditions (founded on biological horrors created by mad scientists) prevent them from doing that research.

Crabs while powerful have trouble with progressing due to their leader almost never changing their opinions and glacial approach to planning. Some younger factions constantly try to splinter off and central government periodically crushes them.

Bioengineers don't know what is ethics even if you hit them with a book over the head multiple times. So they not only have periodical problems with viruses and can easily try to experiment on unwilling subjects but they also have a lot of problems with some of their more intelligent creations. Add some gene-modified slaves on the side and you are golden.

>>50855945
Make the factions all theoretically "at peace" but have political divisions within their Empires so that sometimes one faction would find it beneficial to ally with outside forces against their own side.

Like, we already have the Balkanized race. Maybe another race has a low key civil war going on between the ruling class that doesn't affect the citizens too much. They can have little mini-conflicts with a main organization that steps in if it causes too much damage or gets out of control. Heck, part of it could be trying to maneuver your opponent into doing something that results in censuring.

Like paying a Human force to raid your crab-rivals holdings, then when they retaliate against their base show up to defend what turns out to be a peaceful agriculture world being cruelly attacked by your fellow crab, possibly raiding for resources or to take human slaves and claim they are legally indentured servants after the fact.

Huh. Crabs are now Chinese space Arabs in my head.

>>50856194
Considering that their leader also don't die it's a scary thought. Cult of personality with an immortal crab at head? Stuff of nightmares.

>>50856161
I like this, and also like the threat of a galaxy wide MAD between each faction, sub-faction, splinter, rebellion and offshoot.

>>50856242
Truly a Mandate of Heaven

>>50856242
Which makes it all the more awesome.

What do we have in the way of ethereal powers? Any Psychic/Psyker/Magic abilities? I'd love to see a Spelljammer Wargame, but that's just me, and it probably doesn't work with what we're going for here.

>>50856113
Have we decided on what the Couriers look like yet? We have our humans, our space babes, two types of animal-like aliens - should we go with something more exotic or another rubber-forehead?

>>50856319
Maybe they're AIs? Or octopus/zero-G aliens? Or space ghosts?

>>50855945
Mother. Fucking. Pirates.

Have a "Free Planets" enclave where three factions meet. Finding more in common with their neighbours than their original Empires, this small system houses citizens from across the galaxy, working above board as mercenaries and below as Agent Provocateurs trying to foment rebellion. A small cluster of planets that were originally going to be new colonies and are rather distant and turned out to be almost more trouble than they were worth are also technically part of the "free state", their position and minimal value combined with a fourth faction supporting their claim and barely kept afloat by courier trade, they are more of a political statement and problem.

The three factions work to prevent any of the others from consolidating enough of a grip in the First Free States while also using them for denial ops, while unethical and secret science goes on in the Free Affiliated Colonies.

Power changes hands often in the FFS and anything can be had for a price, but with three powers eager to intervene and expand their control everything is hidden behind layers of conspiracies. Post-war Vietnam with a dash of Shadowrun Corporations.

While the AFC is far, small, and undeveloped so it's more of a Wild West where if there aren't any witnesses, it didn't happen. The Fourth power supporting them as a political point against the three involved in the FFS is the major single power there, but they don't actually care or want to invest more than the minimum. This allows for more riskier or high profile skulduggery. Still, if you don't pay your bribes or they get a whiff of something valuable they will remind everyone who's boss. Either with force, or more likely withholding supplies until the locals fix their shit.

>>50856302
IMHO leave it be. You can have some experimental telepathic biomods for bioengineering species. Maybe even some kind of creature that can read thoughts at not that big of a distance. But each creature must be fine-tuned for species on which it is supposed to spy, it's not that easy to hide and doesn't have anywhere close 100% success rate. People think differently.

Though if BE get a tissue sample from some individual they can fine tune the telepath to that individual for nice clear channel.

Of course they can read only surface thoughts but it is a nice addition for interrogations.

>>50856302
I think we should hold off on the space magic this time around. Liberal interpretations of genetic engineering, hacking, and force fields (etc.) feel more this game's speed in terms of powers and abilities.

>>50856333
AIs could be good, though space ghosts turns the ineffable factor up. Maybe constructs from a progenitor race that gained independence? They try to keep an air of mystery about themselves and their origins, hence a common "space ghosts" theory propagated by superstitious spacers.

>>50856333
Squid like creatures with triple symmetry instead of double. Talk through sounds and color codes on their bioluminescent bodies.

>>50856319
Maybe keep that a secret? Like, everyone thinks they ARE their ships because they integrate a lot of organics, but they're actually a parasite that lives within them.

And can actually live in some of the races undetected in a nascent state. It's treated as a minor irritation found across the galaxy that is easily flushed out, by still has a low level presence especially on less developed planets.

They can't take control of their hosts, but some studies show they are more prone to certain behaviours. Like Toxoplasm Gondii.

>>50856381
I think the "no one knows" might bring this a little too close to Dune's Navigators, though parasitism sounds cool - I can't think of any parasite races that are treated as anything but villains.

>>50856368
Nah. AI has to either be its own faction, or a taboo.

I would personally prefer a "crippled" AI that is too autistic to really be sapient and past a threshold any intelligent machine gets lost in its own internal thought and probability structures and becomes impossible to interact with.

Augmented intelligence is a thing, but still you can only go so far before people just can't understand.

Maybe one race has AI "blackboxes" where it gives them seemingly spontaneous analytical results for mathematical equations and large scale analysis, but becomes less and less accurate for more specific avenues of analysis. Like it could determine accurately the results of a national level poll, but less accurately the smaller the population and be useless for small groups of people.

>>50856411
Considering that they are the brains of operations so to speak they are not exactly parasites. More like symbiotes.

>>50856445
You can just postulate that there is limits on how smart an AI can be. It can think much faster than organical beings but it is not actually smarter. And they also must be made on the base of quantum computers which means that they cost a lot to create and look like a box 3x2x5 meters that eats a lot of energy and can't be opened after starting or you kill the AI.

Too much money for too little gain. There is some AI specialists but they are rare and new AIs are mostly created by old AIs when they have enough resources and a desire to do so. That's their way of having children.

>>50856411
True. But whereas in Dune the Guild was a political body that acted in Politics, I kind of was thinking of the Couriers as being almost like the Outsiders from Niven Space. Biologically strange even among the other races, uninvolved by the politics the rest of them have or at least unbiased. Nobody knows where they came from or why they prefer deep space, or why they don't come near planets.

I want them to be a source for speculation and mystery. Not a reliable option exactly, but a known "unknown" faction to be used by the others.

But that's just me.

>>50856445
That's fine by me. Keeping strong AI out of the setting makes a lot of stuff easier.

>>50856319

Humanoid, but with something... off. Something about them falls into the uncanny valley. In fact, that may be something they actively promote.

>>50856337
So... offhand, here's a few viable systems you could use to run this setting as an RPG(besides Gurps)

Savage Worlds + Sci-Fi supplement.
FFG Star Wars RPG(EoTE and Age of Rebellion more than Force and Destiny)
Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy(with the available mutant and alien homebrews)
SWON
Traveller.

>>50856523
What uncanny valley? We have otters, crabs, bioengineers with their insane projects and well humans. Humans may have some trouble.

>>50856509
Big fan of Niven and his stuff, if that's the direction we're going I'm totally on board. So if they have organic ships, how do the other races react? I'd expect the bioengineers would do anything to get their hands on samples, in case they had a key to the Courier drive.

>>50856658
Well BE will probably go nuts trying to copy them or create their own version.

Most others will just want to get the drive specifications.

Enough to create problems for Couriers but not enough for everyone to cooperate on that front. So Couriers will have room to maneuver.

>>50856571
Clearly manufactured robotic proxies that resemble the race of people they interact with.

Yet each one is designed to be unique and have a distinct personality, and different proxies are known to exist. Sometimes one vanishes,sometimes a new one appears.

They speak in perfect contemporary the language of their client. Not like how foreigners speak overly grammatical, but like someone local from the time the proxy was first seen. They retain these speech habits though after the language changes.

Pattern analysis says the mind controlling them is sapient.

Are the Couriers simply that good at mimicking other species mindsets and cultures? Do they have "translators" from the races working for them? Do they just have advanced interpretation programs that can copy and appropriately apply the common subconscious responses while creating unique individual personalities?

They are uncanny by the fact that they don't cause an uncanny valley effect. Uncomfortable to think about but familiar and reassuring to interact with.

It's totally because of the parasitic infection in the populations.

>>50856766
Maybe no copying morphology just speech? Copies are bad for RPGs and wargames. Look bad. Uninspired. So a robot looks clearly a Courier creation with bare minimum of needed functions but speaks as a native. And can even easily switch between dialects and accents on the fly depending to whom it talks.

So let's a say a robot loader carries a box to the ship and say a high ranking crab asks it a question. And robot answers with all the needed formality and flowery language with the posh accent of capital-born crab

>>50856658
>>50856696

I mean, the problem with "organic" is that past a certain point it's just "nanomachines son".

Like, your body IRL is full of "organic" nanomachines.

So we would instead be looking at things like how the ships are "made". Non-standard construction, no replacement parts, instead "healed" damage with "scarring". Seemingly automatic or unguided responses to damage. Ships seeming to "age" and be less capable, newer ships seeming to "grow" etc.

Internally, once again looking for things that indicate growth instead of construction. No things like hinges or screws, constant homeostasis etc.

Ship behaviour as well, greater aversion to cosmetic damage, "basking" behaviours maybe, playfulness between ships racing or making displays with external systems. Some ships liking each other more and being physically closer in space and sharing more intricate or fancier displays, or displays for longer, other ships liking each other less. Even things like "nudging" each other to show displeasure, which is an entirely different concept when talking about starships capable of transporting armies.

>>50856908
They also probably will not be single organisms but instead symbiotic colonies. So copying them in full will be really hard. You can take a sample from hull pretty easily but it will give you only the armor organism samples. You won't get anywhere close to really juicy parts this way.

>>50856864
>So a robot looks clearly a Courier creation with bare minimum of needed functions but speaks as a native.

Yeah, that was what I was going for with the "clearly manufactured".

Like, for humans it would be a detailed face and arms for gesturing, but the torso would be bare bones.

The Crabs would be ovoid shells that could accurately flex to make the creaking noises and subtle shape changes that they use to indicate emotional context when they communicate, having only light/dark vision but an excellent sense of both echolocation and radar. So a more "reflective" shell would be "louder", and a less "reflective" shell would be "quieter" etc.

Maybe have the BE representative be custom made by the BE themselves as payment for the first time a new Official deals with them, given their penchant for making such things. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if the BE ruling class used manufactured "proxies" with clones of their own brains as administrators and representatives to their underlings within their own Empire. "It's pretty much me, we can link up when they return." So they would essentially be talking to whoever they were when they first started dealing with the Couriers.

Sooo there any summaries for what's been established so far?

>>50856962
Like I said, the "Couriers" themselves are symbiotes within the ships, and there are benign parasitical colonies in the population of the other factions that are retarded in development but can be re-integrated when people travel on the ship.

I was thinking they would have kind of like a distributed hive mind, like the Gwoth from NivenSpace.

>>50857015
Ah, yeah, this. We should get everything recorded as it's solidified. That's been a bit of an issue that Fading Embers has.(hopefully resolved once I find the time to get a wiki page up.)

>>50857055

Should we start a 1d4 page for this, or wait until we get the basics finished up? Vrh are pretty well done at this point and the Couriers are moving in the right direction. How about the other races?

>>50857083
Wait until a successful second thread, for now just create a Google Docs or Pastebin to hold everything.

>>50856986
Heh, an idea.

Every time Couriers sent their envoy to the meeting BE send some new intricately sculpted proxy. But in the end it turns out couriers already anticipated it and their own envoy bears some resemblance to the creature they are meeting.

>>50855235
> They generally only work on females or males willing to be 'converted' in the process, and they offer more favorable trade deals to groups with female rulers.

You know, the bioengineers could play a really long game just by handing out help in return for making an investment out of your genes.

Like, say you get brain cancer from cosmic rays. The Bioengineers could fix that, but in return you come out female (if you weren't already) and they give you some kind of supergene that makes all of your kids female as well. And they inherit the supergene too.

This might not sound like much, and in the short term it really isn't. Even for a dude, life as a chick is probably better than cancer. But if the supergene always gets passed down as an aggressively dominant trait, then even a small number of supergene carriers can potentially poison the genetic well. Unless they get exterminated, eventually they will grow to be a larger and larger part of the population in the long term.

Once that reaches a tipping point, the affected world/species has to start coming to the bioengineers more and more frequently, because they slowly lose the ability to breed normally for lack of available males. So unless they meet the demands of the bioengineers to bring them into their matriarchy, their civilization falls apart... and the bioengineers just move in and absorb the survivors anyway.

>>50857347
this sounds pretty magical realm

>>50857234

> the BE are always creating new and more elaborate chimeras in order to try and impress the Couriers

NOTICE ME, SEMPAI~

>>50857364

If you masturbate to population ratios, that's your business.

>>50857347
So what's the extent of the bioengineer's genetech? Clearly they've got the whole human genetics down pat, but haven't been able to get starships going. If you went to one of their planets, would they have Leviathan-style biological vehicles and creatures engineered to replace manual laborers, or would they mostly enhance themselves to increase efficiency?

>>50857347
That's really risky in political sense. Even with our current technologies it can be caught. And more advanced species even if not having BE levels of mastery probably have gene-screening on hand.

>>50857518
Enhance themselves and use uplifted animals as labourers and entrepreneurs. They also can do more than just genetics with grafts, viruses and many other things.

>>50854890
>Going missiles

>>50857347
I'd rather see the BE view males that are sapient as being crippled. Unable to create life within themselves, half completed. Culturally insulting to have to deal with one, and mildly repulsed that their culture doesn't "fix" them. Maybe they even offer asylum to any males that want to be "fixed". Kind of like how we view FGM.

As well, I'd prefer that they take payment in genetic samples, and the rights to them in various stages. Something I would assume a BE society would take seriously.

So it could be as little as cataloguing your genome, to actual samples from different organs to examine, to the rights to experiment on them to various degrees and patents on any discoveries resulting from it, to full on using your genetic information to engineer life forms or even growing a complete clone of you.

> Allowing alien BE to pervert your families genetic code, resulting in the fall of your society

And we just came up with justification for why they aren't allowed to do anything to citizens from other nations legally, so if you have a disease or something only they can cure you HAVE to seek asylum.

And give up all rights to your genetic uniqueness in the process.

>>50857518

I see them as more of the later. They have advanced gene tech, but their goal isn't to go full eclipse phase with the situation.

So you want to visit the crab planet, and you take a genemod that changes your lungs so you you can breath their air. Maybe it has side effects like turning your skin red, but they wouldn't change into crabs. They don't want to do that.

After they come back, they undo the genemod and go back to normal.

Things might get crazier in terms of weapons of war, but as long as their own citizens are the ones getting the genemods they don't go unnecessarily weird with it. Turning yourself into a shrieking batperson or chronenbergian horror isn't really any fun.

>>50855194
Be neat if they had to follow pre-arranged routes or had some sort of distinctive tell before the tunnel opened, making for advantage on the fortification.

>>50857518
I'd imimagine that being all BE, and being all women, that they would all have the ability to do general genetic manipulation in the womb.

Probably also have integrated computer systems.

Part of the reason j wanted them to be Balkanized is because with no males for sexual competition, and advanced BE techniques, I feel they would have to lean heavily to either fierce individualism with other BE ultimately being competitors, or some sort of communal structure where they all have specific castes to prevent rogue BE from creating competition.

I favour the individualist approach the most, myself. Where they have individual genetic "lines" that specialize in breeding for specific qualities and skills. Genetic information and techniques for growing bio-forms would be the equivalent of "currency", with "Children" being either individual projects or joint ventures to try and create a specific genotype.

So a BE would be able to choose to give birth to sterile "production" children that were copies of her own template for sale to other factions or individuals as employees, and eventually when they felt they had designed a notably improved version they could give birth to a fertile successor.

Or you could have them working in separate Corporations, where the Board would determine what strains of Employees to breed, with Upper Management being the template breeders. CEOs would be the culmination of the Corporations techniques, designed by committee from the Board who would individually handle their own replacements, and despite the CEOs position at the head if they proved ineffective or inappropriate to handle the current situation they could be replaced by a new model - or a previous version.

>>50857876
We moved past that, they just have "better" FTL. Faster for one, and more reliable in deep space whereas other races sometimes vanish if they stray too far into deep space so they have to star hop. It's possible to make a trip through deep space, so military or covert ops, or emergency flights might still try it. But Couriers are the best option. Lets you skip areas that aren't necessarily friendly, or belong to different factions, or are simply out of the way for where you need to go, or maybe have hazards of their own.

Regarding "tells" though, once again they should be openly bribe-able. Want to keep your cargo secret? You can have it classified personal, private, privileged, or secure with increasing price, based on the estimated value of what you're moving. The fact that you're moving anything at all can be hidden for a specific "exclusivity" contract with an individual ship, which is insanely expensive but gives you exclusive use of the ship for whatever you want for the length of the contract.

Woe to the Conquerer who only pays for exclusivity to his destination, finding that the ship was hired to fetch reinforcements for his target afterwards, or hired on an exclusive contract to prevent him from using it to retreat if it doesn't go well.

Otherwise information on what ships are scheduled for transit is available for a membership fee that provides a user license. One per institution, either specific individual Government bodies or private corporations. Sharing or resale of information has a high reward for whistle-blowing and lifetime exclusion from membership for the violating body plus fines levelled against their home government.

Members can purchase more detailed information on cargo, with increased costs to access personal, private, and privileged manifests while secure level can only be accessed by authorization from the shipper.

>>50858122
Honestly, this puts far too much power in a single faction, and gives all other factions an excuse to gang up on them.

>>50858122
This way the Couriers can still work "with" governments while cutting down on their involvement in espionage and having spies and stuff sneak around their ships.

Since the information costs money though, they wouldn't be sent casually, and the shipper could purchase various degrees of restriction on what they're shipping. Maybe it's just something embarassing like Dragon Dildoes so you get Personal status so it doesn't show up on the general manifest. Let's even say that they allow access to Law Enforcement for Personal level status without extra cost to cut down on smuggling.

Maybe it's something a bit more secure, like a prototype to be tested or an upgrade for a factory that will allow your company to break into a new field, and you don't want the competition to find out, and you get Private status for it. Or maybe it's some exotic goods you don't want to pay a tax on and you hope that LE doesn't want to pay to check it out.

What about a complete prototype, finished testing and ready to be put into production. Or a shipment of rare goods that could crash the market if released all at once, but if you can bring it in secretly you can release it slowly and drive up the price. IDFK I am not an economy. Shit like that. Or really illegal stuff. Secure is expensive, but it's expensive to access, and it's "Secure" because it doesn't give any information EXCEPT what the Cargo is, either about the sender or the receiver, including where it was picked up and where it is expected to be delivered.

>>50858252
The factions STILL have FTL on their own, it's just slower and it's risky if they go too far into deep space.

Kind of like how early boats had to hug the coast and weren't capable of handling blue water.

>>50858252
Actually - how will they gang up? The best they can do is push them out of their space. Couriers don't need work - with their technology level they can live in space indefinitely. Though they get luxury items out of their shipping. But actually pinning them down is almost impossible.

>>50858252

I don't think so. The Couriers are an option for faster and direct travel, but everyone can use it, it isn't for free, and if you don't want your enemies to know you're coming it quickly gets exorbitant.

I imagine it would be the kind of cost, at that point, that only Governments or Megacorporations could afford, and wouldn't be done lightly because of the investment in travel alone.

>>50858327
Not to mention that if Couriers withdraw service from one faction, all the other factions now have a leg up on them.

I wonder if the Otters actually are relieved by the Couriers since they're so Xenophobic, it must be nice to have a faction the is just "Take it or leave it" and they don't have to worry about bartering or negotiating.

>>50858258
Maybe size of the stuff being transported could be a good limiter on them, maybe their special FtL tech doesn't scale up well, and no silly stuff like covertly sending entire battalions to your enemies doorstep.

>>50858327
Taking the FtL tech they hogged for themselves is the objective of everyone else.

>>50858348
And at the levels this hypothetical game seems to be working at, these costs are irrelevant unless commandeering the smallest of splinters.

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>>50854890

>>50857631

This. Biohorrors are overdone these days.
Keep them just sketchy to be ambiguously amoral but not outright evil.

So, any suggestions for the actual names of the factions?

>>50860952

I say that the bioengineers should be called something like The Ameliorate

The word 'ameliorate' means 'to make, or to improve'. And that's what they do: they make things or improve them. Technically they would be the
Ameliorators or Ameliorated, but just calling them The Ameliorate seems a touch more sinister and monolithic.

Sorry, got caught up watching Derek Carr die.

So what's the big, nasty grimdark secret for the various factions?

>>50861485

I don't know that they all need one.

The BE (ameliorate?) are morally ambiguous enough that all they have to be is themselves. They dramatically altered the makeup and genetic destiny of their entire species, and they seem open to the idea of 'sharing' this with others. Even if they were 100% benevolent, they still come off as inherently untrustworthy or downright dastardly. Given their backstory, them *not* being secretly evil would probably be the biggest subversion of that trope we could do.

They probably have some horrifying shit in their most secret labs, failed experiments and the like. Or stuff that is disturbing but serves some kind of useful function, like recycling corpses into pollution-eating biomorphs that keep their ecosystem clean.

>>50861590

Likewise, the xenophobes are already so inherently flawed that any additional dark secret on top of that would almost be nonsensical. They don't have the organization for maintain a dark secret like that.

The couriers might have a dark secret. Maybe it has to do with why they don't have any planets and are entirely spacefaring. But I feel like the more lore the couriers get, the less cool they become.

So that leaves... the crabs? The humans?

>>50861673
The Crabbos
Humans

>>50860952
>>50861850

Meant for

>>50861590
>>50857347 mentioned that the Ameliorate absorb other colonies/species. Maybe they have a few remaining test subjects from previous assimilations locked away in their labs, for continued studies?

>>50861673
The humans haven't had much of any development in this, so maybe we can give them some identity here. Their whole thing is that they're still fractured along national lines, unlike basically every other race in the galaxy (sector? how much space are we dealing with here?). This might be against the original spirit of the Human suggestion, but maybe all their factions could actually be controlled from behind the scenes by an Illuminati-style group, that has shepherded them into space? The nationalism and separation is a smokescreen for everyone (including the vast majority of the human population), so that the [secret group name here] can keep control of the populace from the shadows.

>>50861986

The dark secret of the humans is that, because they are split on national lines, the nations powerful enough to get into space control everything and the ones that don't have the resources to do that are left in the dust, and their attempts to tech up and make it to space get stomped down by the more powerful nations to keep them dependent.

Maybe some human nations are even considering working with one of the alien factions to help even the playing field. Which could give the Ameliorate a foothold on Earth.

>>50862193
I like that. I figure humans will probably split along almost continental lines, with the Americas, Asia, EU, Eastern Europe, and various others making it to space as united factions headed up by the various largest countries that are most powerful in those areas, like the US, Russia, Germany, China, etc.

>>50862241
So the human power blocs would be the US (and Americas), the EU, East-Asia, and...who else? South America?

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>>50862776
>tfw you realize you already said 'and Americas' as part of the US

>>50858719
>Maybe size of the stuff being transported could be a good limiter on them, maybe their special FtL tech doesn't scale up well, and no silly stuff like covertly sending entire battalions to your enemies doorstep.

I don't think YOU are the one that considers the scale of the setting here. If you're going to attack a developed planet, Battalions are actually under-powered.

That kind of Courier transported strike force would be geared to either destroying strategic resources behind enemy lines, or as shock troops to quickly overwhelm and neutralize defenses before the main fleet arrives and gets torn apart by them.

The other Factions all have their own FTL, it's just not as fast and can't "skip" systems without risk.

As for

> these costs are irrelevant unless commandeering the smallest of splinters.

I'm not sure why that would be the case. Maybe for standard transport, or increased security clearance, it would be feasible for a single planet corporation or smuggling operation to pay. Even then, trying to move large amounts of goods at higher clearances could quickly get expensive enough to make the cost not worth it.

And they could always just tack on more money for transporting troops. Charge what the market will bear, this isn't UPS.

I mean, do you have any idea it costs to mobilize a military force you're transporting yourself?

>>50861485
Eh. I like the idea of the Couriers having a lot of rumours, but no actual "grimdark secrets" except the benign parasite thing, which is more just a way for them to "spy" on the other races passively.

>>50861590
I'm down with this, and >>50861673

We can work with >>50862193. But instead of having the Remains that were left on Earth work with the Ameliorate, have the Space UN have conspired to minor tweaking from them so that they smell better, are slightly more symmetrical, grow slightly taller, have slightly better reflexes etc. under the guise of "The best of Humanity went to space and bred there".

>>50862776
>>50862787
I would say that Russia, maybe back to the ussr at some point and absorbing a lot of eastern europe, is probably its own power. I don't know if south america or africa would be their own powers, maybe split up among the others, but it's the future so maybe they get less shit in the future?

>this thread
TL;DR

In the end, all that matters is the powered helmets are full dome visors, blacked out underneath, and projecting a holographic skull within.

>>50862864
How can crabs even wear helmets
Maybe if you read the thread you would know

>>50862776
I think it should be the US, Canada, and Brazil from the Americas. Brazil on Earth fell into a Civil War from the cost of it though, so they lagged behind and are a minor faction, often acting to support other factions.

Canada got a free ride from the US, but provided specialists and raw material, and over time the US and Canadian Spacers merged into one in Space, even though they're technically still separate on Earth. They are both the most diplomatic and the most militarized Human faction.

Germany was too invested in it's Earth obligations that despite being a dominant force, it wasn't able to capitalize on Space Colonization, and was left trying to piece together the Middle East.

The Jews took the opportunity to both transport practically their entire Zionist population into space, and engage the Samson option to nuke the ME as well, which fucked over that entire area including India.

China was actually the first to get into Space Colonization. They were also the first to get Ameliorate improvement to separate their ruling class from their general population of China. Turns out China had already done some experimenting and tweaked their population to be more susceptible to propaganda and suggestion and used that to indoctrinate obedience to members of the Party Oligarchy. China still keeps its Earth population segregated from the rest of the Remains and claims to be One China still. Chinese Citizens are often "rented" out as cheap, reliable labour to other Human factions.

France and the Netherlands had a joint venture with, of all people, the Eskimos and Inuit. They chose slightly harsher planets to colonize, but the Engineering culture of the Eskimos and the Inuit resulted in a surprisingly high-tech faction. They're also total assholes, and while the most likely to skirmish, still less likely than the NA faction to actually go to war.

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>>50862957
Maybe role playing games are not for you, anon.

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>>50862972
Wrong type of crab. Not nearly "ey fuck you" enough

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>>50862864
I support domed spaceman visors. Though the skull emblem should be reserved for specific units.

>>50862959
>The Jews took the opportunity to both transport practically their entire Zionist population into space, and engage the Samson option to nuke the ME as well, which fucked over that entire area including India.
I don't think Israel has that many nukes, and there's this little thing called Iran and Pakistan between India and the Middle East.

>the Engineering culture of the Eskimos and the Inuit resulted in a surprisingly high-tech faction
wut

>>50862992
>wrong type of crab
Sounds pretty racist to me, racist.

>>50863001
Only the largest, strongest, most bostonian crabs survive in space. Hermit crabs are a long extinct subspecies, outgunned and outwarred by their aggressive blue crab counterparts

>>50862819
Russia doesn't have the capability to do jack shit unless it has all the resources of Eastern Europe to (poorly) utilize.

I'd say Africa is a big "pity" project for the Space nations to make a show of trying to help the Remains left on Earth, but most of the aid goes to funding Warlords or Terrorists who stir up conflict between Russia and the remnants of the EU who are trying to get their shit together enough to get into space.

Eastern Europe is the new place for Proxy Wars, as both the European Union and Russia try to secure their resources for their own use as the key to getting into space. Space Faction "Peacekeepers" let the conflict simmer enough to keep either side from pulling out, but block any decisive moves. In exchange, they allow some Emigration from the Eastern European nations and use that to justify their "investment" as being requested by the Citizens who Emigrate, as well as allowing the Citizens to pay money back into their home nation. Of course, they only allow the best and brightest to come out, and competition among the Space Factions is fierce to harvest the crop of human talent.

They use this situation to justify not allowing "disruptive influences" to freely colonize for cheap, claiming they wouldn't be able to hold them to negotiated treaties and such, or be responsible for violence done by them to the other Alien Empires.

>>50863014
>a species known for hunkering down
>going extinct
Bahahahaha. The blue crab oppression will be suddenly upset by the guerrilla terrorism of the hermit crab unveiling. X-CRAB

>>50863023
I don't know, Russia has a pretty big military and controls access to a lot of important resources for a lot of eastern european countries (oil). I don't think it's toooo big of a stretch to say they conquer eastern europe and poorly utilize its resources to into space

>>50863047
More like a species known for not being able to generate their own powerful carapace, who are easily crushed by the mighty claws of the blue crab, which never stops fuckin growing and is functionally immortal

>>50863080
>crush one
>there are thirty more in the area
Just another shell to wash up on the beach of grudges.

>>50862996
> I don't think that Israel has that many nukes

> What is a dirty Bomb.

Anyways, Iran would DEFINITELY be on Israels hit list.

I didn't get to India yet.

India, despite being fucked over having to deal with waves of refugees from the ME, as well as issues with Fallout being exacerbated by the poor hygiene of a large part of its population, has actually found a spot for it among the Remains.

They operate as a scientific and technological centre where the factions can perform research on their home planet on a variety of programs that could be unpopular if discovered. It's become a gathering of some of the brightest and some of the most twisted minds of Humanity from all the factions, both in space and on Earth. Their large population that became even more of a genetic mixing pot also provides ample research subjects and samples of "baseline" humanity.

It's considered to be a cultural and intellectual Mecca, despite its location on Earth, and is often used for propaganda as "The Birthplace of Human Civilization"

Also

> Not knowing that Eskimos and Inuits are reputed to be amazing Engineers.

Something about having to make do in the most resource scarce environment.

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>>50863091
WE ARE LEGION

>>50863110
Your hubris will be your undoing, blue cuck.

>>50863060
>I don't think it's toooo big of a stretch to say they conquer eastern europe and poorly utilize its resources to into space

See >>50863023 where the EU and NATO stop that shit cold in its tracks. In fact, that conflict + the Israel Nuking are combined what cock-blocks the EU.

Britain is an irrelevant Island, as it shall be ever-more.

Australia is even worse.

Humanity is the Spoopy Ancient Extinct Empire. Their remains dot the galaxy, teeming with ultra advanced technology.

No one knows how they died but it seems to have happened what the fuck happened to them, but they seemed to have died all at once, or in a relatively short timeframe.

The ancient machine races fervently deny any knowledge to the fate of the Ancients, even when not questioned

>>50863131
[Unsolicited Opinions on Space Mansreal Intensifies]

>>50863125
I think the Israel nuking thing would be a bit too far of a stretch, it's not like they would nuke their own land once they got into space, they want it for religious reasons.

>>50863110
But what dark secret do the Crabs have?

I mean, the problem is that with Alien species, what they consider a "dark secret" might be benign to other races.

Like, with the Human shit I posted, their "dark secret" is that they let the Ameliorate mess with their genes, but they all think that it's how they oppress the people left on Earth.

Maybe the Crabs secret can be that their immortal leader isn't actually a Crab, but the last survivor of a race that created the Crabs and was killed off by him. They're all flawed copies, and don't actually "reproduce" but when they all go to "spawn" they just create blank slates that have different personality templates infect them. That's why they have biological radar imaging despite the unlikely event of developing that naturally, or why they all enjoy wearing hats in their spare time.

They were all created by the first and last true, stable AI made by the progenitor race that was either responsible for their death, or the reason their Immortal Leader killed the rest of its race.

>>50863167
You realize the Samson Option is like, a real thing yes? Their plan in the event of Israel being overrun is to nuke everyone.

So, if their western Allies are withdrawing in favour of pursuing Space Colonization, instead of falling to Muslim hordes and nuking everyone, have another final Diaspora to Create and Israel out of a whole planet and nuke everyone.

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>in the midst of a space battle, hundreds of bullet shaped pods ram into the hull of your ship
>any breach points are instantly sealed as they excrete a fast curing nano-material resin
>you tremble as, with a hiss and a burst of steam, the pod in front of you begins to open

>>50863131
Humanity claims this, but the evidence was planted by the Jews.

The Ancient Machine races are telling the truth, because they are actually from the future.

>>50863204
Maybe the Crabs, despite toting honour and claiming that their houses work fairly and squarely against each other, actually are constantly scheming and backstabbing and they're incredibly worried the other races will find out about their secret shame.

>>50863204
Nevermind. Just realized I described the Prador.

>>50863125
What with all the Earth rivalries we have popping up, we should hammer out a rough time period for the setting. Maybe the 2300s or early 2400s? We could have gotten some help with space travel from another race (perhaps our first contact was with the Ameliorates), and we've expanded to maybe a couple hundred worlds.

>>50863131
The galaxy only knows what the Ancient Aliens looked like due to what amounts to Zombies. In an apparent desperate bid to save their race Humanity loaded up a sector with cybernetics and flash freezed them. Upon discovery of the population vaults, it was discovered that the cybernetic systems had found a way to propagate within a body, and how to carry on to a new host, essentially becoming a technorganic plauge.

Fresher corpses had higher levels of cognitive ability, as this particular technology can't compete with the surprisingly complex human brain so they would be able to utilize most brain functions before the cybernetics over ran the neurosystem. These "Alpha" specimens where able to spread the pathogen beyond the native systems.

A joint effort beat the tide back, and planet cracking saw the destruction of the vector of the plauge. Now the technoplauge is little more than a nuisance, the zombies mearly pests. The secrets of the Cyberplauge are still being unraveled to this day, despite the initial outbreak being nearly ancient history. Whatever breakthroughs studies may provide, the virus will always serve as a lesson in hubris and the dangers of human relics.

>>50863131
>>50863288
I mean, there's some cool stuff in here but you guys are a little late to the party for that to be part of the setting, humanity is one of the major active players already

>>50863250
The Crabs, despite toting conflict and the right of the strong to dominate, are actually just bluffing to excuse their actions where a large part of the time they actually aren't conscious and aren't on their base instincts. They have two brains, and instead of sleeping instead enter a feral state where they are hyper aggressive, a hold over from the highly competitive environment they evolved in. Normally only responding when disrupted in this state, it is not uncommon for them to have periods of "Parasomnias" where the higher functions are still shut down but they move around and can perform complex actions etc. in their feral state.

After the accidental reveal of this resulted in them winning a war, the confused Sleeping General just went with the situation he "woke up" to. By the time they figured it out, it was easier to keep the reputation for dealing with the Otters who had been testing their borders recently.

It just kind of snowballed from there.

They actually have intricate rituals to avoid direct confrontation that come off as menacing implications to other species. They have these because excessive stress can cause them to go into shock, which is seen as barely restraining themselves from attacking by other races. Crabs a cute.

>>50863300
People may have mistaken this for HFY.

>>50863242
The ancient machine race has little to offer the galaxy beyond stunning cuisine, evocative music, and tireless manual labor, as most of their technology is either hardlight technology that is so efficient and streamlined to such an extreme that the most advanced systems seem to simply be magic, or are paradoxically organic, being constructed from apparently naturally evolved trees and other plants. There seems to be cultural divides in the machine races but they are more homogeneous than one may originally suspect, the greatest division lying in the use of simple hardlight constructs or advanced biotechnology, although there is a surprising amount of overlap.

These automata are exceedingly reclusive and sparsely populated, and attempts to contact them typically resolve in failure due to a lack of knowledge pertaining to how they can be contacted

>>50863300
Ah.


What a waste.

>>50863380
I mean, if you read the OP post and the first 5 posts then you would immediately have known what all the races and stuff already were.
Not that anyone else has mind you, I think there have been 4 or 5 races that people have been trying to introduce beyond the original five with no regard to how the thread was supposed to work

>>50863357
This most certainly looks HFY, which is disgusting.

>>50863300
Despite what constitutes a major mistep, I don't think it's impossible for the current human civilisations to be built upon the ashes of an ancient galaxy wide human civilization. Like Space Rome, but more mysterious.

>>50863408
I think that would be cool, it's just hard to integrate with humans still split along familiar national lines, which is what we've been working with. I mean, they would have to have come to soace, united, had almost everything destroyed, and then just happen to be america and china and everything again

>>50863432
Wait...they're LITERALLY Space America, Space China, Space Russia?

>>50863461
The big nations have the money to go into space, and the little nations that can't have to basically bend the knee to them.

>>50863461
Well as far as we've been working so far, yeah. They're just current nations, with some changeups and alliances, having made it to space and never having resolved their differences completely

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>>50863479
>>50863473

>>50863524
Maybe read a bit of the thread. Besides, it's not like that's done in any sci fi tabletop game other than being poorly done in mechwhatever

>>50863548
Infinity is basically that, plus the independent colonies and other space factions.

>>50863564
Doesn't infinity have only two human factions, one of which boils down to "asia" and the other which is "not asia" in terms of culture?

>>50863591
The factions are:
>Space criminal nomads
>Franco-Russo-American-Scottish werewolf human colonists
>Catholic Western people
>East Asia
>Neo-Islam based on the Islamic Golden Age
>Super-AI super agents
>Evil alien army
>Not so evil alien army
http://midwestwargaming.com/infinity-different-flavors-different-folks-faction-overviews/

>>50863649
So you have 3 factions that are "Europeans" and two that are "exotic". I was thinking less stereotypes and more "Democratic Republic of the United Americas" and "East Asian Corporate Council". Things where modern countries are still very much noticeable as they are today, just existing as parts of larger alliances drawn out by todays alliances and national borders/proximity

>>50855181
>We could go the Mind Flayer route
That's a funny way to spell beholder.

>>50855244
Non-courier FTL requires large structures.
Gates to align off of, and beacons to align to.

Jumping without a gate is suicide.
You can do it, but you won't necessarily land anywhere near a solar system, let alone fuel.

Jumping with a gate but no beacon is manageable.
It rarely gets you into a solar system, but you always end up near it.

Gates are valuable enough that retaking them is (generally) preferable to destroying them.
Beacons are usually considered expendable, but sure as hell aren't cheap.

Courier ships are also fine without (and incapable of using) gates.
Beacons are still desirable, but improved fuel efficiency makes them even less essential.
All that said, Courier ships make shorter jumps. Which helps compensate the aiming, but makes for slightly slower travel along well developed routes.

>>50856302
Spiffy science, but no magic.

>>50856381
Seconding this.

>>50854748
Some of my cents after reading the entire thread:
How about the Couriers' background be mysterious and unimportant, but instead of having myriads of robots that mimic each species, they have one iconic robot/encounter suit? Of course this vorlon-ish suit has elements of the other species, so they can communicate with all of them. So maybe they can expand transformers-style when switching from speaking to a human to a spacecrab, then 'shrinking' when they talk to a xenofuzzball.
Also them being represented as robots is neat, but why not something like amoeba, slime, or jellyfish? Basically the courier's guild is something between the myteriousness of the Vorlons and the shapeshifting capability of slimes.

Also, since I like spaceships, how would the spaceships of the four factions look like? Would humans have the clunkiest/hard-sci-fi-ish ones? Would the Ameliorate have bioengineered spaceships made of flora, fauna, or neither of them? How would the crab ships differ from the xenofuzzball ships?

>>50856381
The couriers instinctively know how to build their FTL, and the location of their long since destroyed home world.
They all have the same base personality, but copy knowledge and opinions from their "parent" host.

>>50856411
If the Courier disease dies, but isn't renoved, the host becomes a (highly contagious, but not that dangerous) Space Zombie.
These infections are easy to deal with, but hard to fully rout.

The (living) disease only causes extreme amounts of phlegm.

>>50862864
This, but
>>50862957
the crabs see the interface through a monocle.
The machinery is under their top-hat.

Also the crabs are a gaudy, bright azure.

>>50864016
Maybe we should clearly lay out the mechanics of FtL in this setting.
I'm partial to space lanes connecting nearby systems and gates for longer travel.

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>>50864294
>how would the spaceships of the four factions look like?
How about for humans, less generic blocky grey spaceships, and something more skeletal where it's clear that all the modules are attached to a central spine? Or bullet-shaped orion drive battleships if anybody else wants it?

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>>50863204
They don't need a dark secret.

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>>50863110
>>50863226

>Your first mistake was killing us
>Your last mistake was not killing us all

>>50863548
>>50863524
>>50863479
Happy Mediums everyone!

>There was an ancient galaxy wide human empire, capable of technological wonders. Their corpses and ruins dot the galaxy. Problem is, carbon dating shows that their fall occured a full hundred thousand years before man discovered the wonders of fire. This civilization shows architectural similarities with cultures across earth, their remains have DNA and structural similarities to no known terrestrial people, and their written language has no known base. They are for all intents and purposes, aliens from a Earthling perspective.

>Humans are the most fractured race
>The Sino-Russo Combine is essentially a who's who of former soviet republics
>The Federation of Islamic Peoples is exactly what you think it is. They don't fucking play games. Jihad is their bread and butter.

>>50864557
>The galaxy is actually extremely diverse, but only the BIG FIVE get any real screen time, the other races happily living in their shadow or existing as client states. This includes xenophobic raptors, literal undead, machines from the future, fetish fuel, the whole nine yards.

>>50864577
>or rather, the BIG 4 + the hundreds of clans that compose the Vrh
>while you're reading this post, at least one clan fractured because someone didn't like it's leaders eye colors

>>50864557
>The Federation of Islamic Peoples
>Implying they'll ever get into space
>Implying they wouldn't aloha snackbar on the launch pad

>>50864338
Well let's see:

Short jumps: From one star to the next closest - Anyone can do it with good precision and reliability. You just need to get somewhere around Oort cloud or jump rom a Lagrange point to lessen possible mistakes in the jump due to gravity mesing with the jump-field.

Long jumps: Skipping a couple of systems - Inherently unprecise and dangerous. Specifically designed ships can jump maybe over 2-3 systems. In theory more but chances of getting in some dark corner of the galaxy and never coming back grow in exponential progression with number of stars you try to skip.

Gates - Without beacon allow to skip over 3-4 systems, with beacon up to 10-15 systems can be skipped and if you jump from gate to gate you can go up to over a 100 systems with almost no chances to get lost. Gates are at least as reliable as airplanes today. But building one is a great economical and engineering achievement because you need around half the mass of Ceres in resources to create them.

Couriers - Doop-di-do, fuck you. They seem to not care about distance at all. Of course going for a really long distance takes time but information about lost ships is non-existent. Which considering their traffic is mindboggling to other species in the setting who have some incidents even with gates.

>>50864612
More like didn't like her mothers nagging.

>Do this, do that, no I don't like this one boy his fur is not groomed good enough.
>You shame even your father little girl.
>Don't play with food.

>>50864657
>NO FUCK YOU MOM I'M MY OWN LEGALLY RECOGNIZED CLAN NOW
>AND I'M TAKING MY BROTHER
>Vrh central "government": siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

>>50864557
>If you asked an alien what the human governmental body is, they'd either tell you that only the Vrh are more fractured and tell you to fuck off or they would assume that it's the United Nations.

>The United Nations has, surprisingly, survived into this new age. They are ostensibly the face of the human face, and act as peace keepers amongst the various human factions.

>From political alliances like the Sino-Russo Combine to hellish Megacorp conglomerates, all the human factions serve one of two purposes, to fuel the Solar System or Expand ever outward. Earth is on it's last legs, the moon is crumbling, Mars is on the verge of revitalization, and the Jovians are still shitty backwaters. Most political alliances and territories exist to support their parent nations back home, while most economic institutions expand from the solar system ever onward to the Galactic fringe. Often the private sectors will cooperate with governments to feed the Throne Worlds (i.e. Earth and Mars) to receive support to expand to new worlds.

>>50864631
Given the costs of gates, nobody attacks them and it would be tantamount of political, economical and warfare suicide. Some consider it a war crime outright.

>>50864294
Vrh ships would be heavily automated and low crew size after one too many cases of mutiny, with some trying to take their half of the ship and go their own way.

>>50864727
Yep. Vrh ships are more or less private ventures or highly trained professionals with heavy psychological screening and almost never have more than one female.

Vrh also act much better on the tactical scales than on strategic. Short ceasefires are much preferable to long alliances. Unless again you don't endanger a homeworld or just a territory of a couple of realms - in such a case they gonna be highly effective and make your life into hell.

>>50864294
Ameliorate goes for aesthetics. If you can do something do it right and make it look beautiful. So their development cycles on new hulls may be pretty long but the end result works great and looks even better.

Otters like to use proton beams and their ships look a lot of like fish. Almost flat oblong ovoids with radiators looking as fins. Due to form-factor their prow armor is much thicker. They also utilise a lot of maneuver thrusters to easily change sides that they present to the enemy fire.

Crabs use a lot of carriers and semi-carriers. Old-crabs command heavy, brutish and armored on all sides ships with low accelerations while young-crabs serve as crews on the small craft.

>>50864922
Wait, since old-crabs grow to a big size... would at least one of them go out to space by going into a ship that's essentially 'strap propellant and gun systems to a gigantic space suit and then wear it'?

>>50864996
That's ace pilots on some small craft. Most other old-crabs consider them completely insane. It's basically a fighter or corvette with single crew member and drives taking more than half the mass of the ship. And guns. Lots of guns.

>>50865035
There was some "boarding by crashing into ships at high speeds" stuff up thread. Presumably the crabs don't need life support to do that?

Can there be a summary or codification of the lore thus far?

>>50865437
They probably go the cyver-crab route. Their carapace is a good basis for armored space suit.

>>50864338
Wait. We're back to Gates now?

Whatever. So long as couriers are still the only ones able of traveling through deep space, and refuse to visit planets until they reach a certain point of development to allow full scale direct conflict that.

>>50867228
Why just deep space? Maybe they exist in a dimensional state above anyone else.

>Possible PC race/fluff race/encounter

Tentacle monsters.
Not overtly aggressive or destructive, but rather INTENSELY curious. They are chronologically immortal able to go through varying states of torpor, hibernation, then finally dessication until they can revive and continue EXPLORING as the situation warrants. Imagine a 1-3m ball of tentacles that can withstand slightly above average terran climate extremes and lower Oxygen concentrations. Can't operate well in high gravity.

They have a psychological dislike towards congregating with their own kind. When ever they encounter another TM they greet, shake "hands", then get the hell away from eachother. "Hand" shake is believed to be an exchange of genetic information and accumulated knowledge from their explorations. Reproduce via some form of budding after sufficient nutrient accumulation. Offspring retain an incomplete bank of knowledge from their progenitor, what they get seems random. Their genetics are very complicated, attempts to splice or edit it causes the genetic structures to decompose rapidly. Optional Fetish Fuel: with enough acquired knowledge an individual TM can reconfigure their genetic structure and produce gametes compatible with other species females. Cue japanese schoolgirl/TM encounters

Travel is achieve either via slow-ship, hitchhiking, and VERY-slow-ship. At some point the TMs came across tech that lets them travel FTL from the viewpoint of a planetside observer. From the viewpoint of anyone onboard the ship the trip takes atleast as long as the time it would take light to travel the distance covered in realspace. TMs generally lack the business savy and organization to exploit the other species with this FTL, while other species lack the statis abilities/tech needed to exploit it for personal travel. It is horrendously complicated and no two examples of TM's FTL match anothers, limiting other species ability to copy it.

>>50869769
Clearly an escaped Ameliorator experiment

This may be getting Battlezone-ish, but old Soviet Russia first contacted the Couriers during the Tunguska event. The supposed 'lost cosmonauts', weren't. They were part of the first intergalactic cultural exchange, which coincidentally occurs around the first time tentacle porn starts showing up in Japan. It's all linked together.

>>50870613
Could go that route and make the Ameliorators be angry with the TMs as they are failed experiments and they won't (can't really) share their FTL tech, also the tentacle rape.

Could also go the route that they have nothing to do with the Ameliorators and the TMs are some sort of uncrackable code for them. I also figure the Couriers would be upset with the TM for having FTL and for being constant stowaways.

Either way I see TM ships being a mix of different sizes depending on the tech information individuals have access to, with the unifying theme being that the crew areas are little more than fancy buckets. The most advanced TM ships would be singleship/fighter sized carrying a single TM with just enough cargo space for life necessities. They'd be built to last centuries or millennia but still need overhauls between dives into the ether.

WHERE IS THE CONSOLIDATED LORE. I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT THE HUMAN FACTIONS BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S CANON ANYMORE

>>50871821
Guess we kind of have to wait for OP? I'm sure all of us have biases about what we want or not, like me hating the otters and not recognizing them as a real faction because they never got dubs or were in the original 5 Just write about the Human factions though, nothing wrong with getting your ideas down, they can always be mined for stuff later even if they reference non-canon stuff

>>50871984
I guess looking back they're an expansion on the fuzzy things, so not as baseless as I thought. Still too furry for me

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>>50872019
>Still too furry for me
Why not just imagine them as actual otters?

>>50872088
Because they're described as anthropomorphic, and, intentionally or not, they kind of read like a fetish race between giant women, male harems, egg laying, and female domination.

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>>50872130
That sounds like ants actually

>>50872171
And if they were non or semi anthropomorphic ants I would like them more. But anthro otter people is just too furry.

I'm furry myself and so I'm hypersensitive to furry insertions to otherwise normal things, and I don't like a whole lot o sexuality to my games

>>50872171
>That sounds like ants actually
That kinda looks like the satw art style. Is it the same artist?

Also, where can I find the rest from that series? I regiment there being another about lizards. Really useful stuff when designing races.

>>50872300
Yeah, same artist, named Humon

Rest of the pics are here:
http://humoncomics.com/archive/animal-lives

Not OP here. I originally suggested the Couriers yesterday morning. If OP doesn't show before this thread winds down, I'll adopt a name and start compiling information.

>>50872557
Coo

>>50872088
This, we managed to dodge the furry issue with the Yonas in Fading Embers by having them just be upright bears.
So why not have the (yet unnamed) xenofuzzballs be upright otters with fluffier fur? Hell, if you want to go even further alien with their appearance have them be a race of Cousin Itts, literal fuzz balls. The idea of a xenophobic gun-toting tribble amuses me.

>>50875094

I honestly have been picturing them as tribbles with arms since they were first suggested. Only one guy seems to be pushing the otter thing, and giving them an easily recognized earth analogue appearance sort of limits our ability to play the 'internal xenophobia run amok' card because they always have to look like otters. Making them weird fuzzballs gives us better range to make minor differences be yet another cause for crusade by letting them have differences and changes that are actually noticeable or different.

>>50875199
I would love them to just be weird fuzzballs. It just seemed like a lot of people jumped on the fetish otter thing to me

>>50875489
>>50875199
Why not have them be slightly elongated tribbles? Or hell, make them living feather boas, but instead of feathers they're fur, and have several limbs poking out of them that they can use to wield guns of personal mass destruction to the aliens.

>>50875533
Nice and alien, I like it

>>50875533

CourierOP here; Indonesia gets dubdubs. We still need to give them a general size. Also are they totally furtubes or do they have something analogous to heads, feet, etc.

>>50875533
Don't forget the armour, in public, at house, at any occasion. Extremely especially if in sight of xenos. they're not worthy of seeing you.

I kind of liked the heavy sexual dimorphism in the Vrh/fuzzy xenophobes if only because of the potential interactions with the Ameliorators

>Ameliorators ranging from wanting to "uplift" the Vrh to the female only client species it should always have been to outright enslavement as pets
>The most extremely progressive Vrh considering the Ameliorator's offers to "fix" their race for more than a single second
>Other Vrh wanting to steal Ameliorator tech to improve themselves as they see fit
>Either way no one agrees with anyone else on what "fixing" or "improving" means
>Not even the small cabal of male Vrh fed up of being the smaller, weak gender
>Or the ones in the Vrh central government wanting to brainwash away their extreme individualism and actually become a galactic player

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>>50875569
>>50875607
>>50875688
Still no size comparison but have what I think they look like. They deliberately use the 'cute' voice mode when talking to humans.

>>50875904
Oh shit, that's some fine work. Reminds me of that one race in star command where you only can translate some of their language, and they always sound cutesy when they're actually terrifying.

>>50875976
The Orz thanks *silly cows* and invites them to *party*, unless they are *happy campers* - then *juice* will be *squeezed*!

>>50875199
>>50875489
>>50875533
I'm not pushing but I don't see how tribbles are better. Anthropomorphic is just a reasonable bodyplan for a creature with 4 limbs two of which are manipulators. Crabs can go for 4 limbs taking up locomotion, 2 pincers and 2 manipulator limbs and in the end they will look okay. Creatures with 4 limbs don't have such luxury - they must be humanoid in structure to some extent. Unless you apply magic or psionics.

If we use tribbles we also lose faces which is not good from visual or RPG standpoint because without faces it's becomes harder to describe/draw/model them. Yeah you can work around that but for many people it won't be that easy. Even crabs have some kind of face.

>>50876048
Look at what he drew, it's got a face

File: Stat FRIENDS.png (74KB, 839x495px)

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>>50876002
>>50875976
Stat *friends*!

>>50876074
It looks nowhere close to tribbles. And tentacles + fur don't make much sense from biological standpoint (though that is not that big of a problem).

>>50876181
Looks close enough to me. But yeah, the tentacles are kinda weird.

>>50854907
>silicon based space crabs

Great, what asshole invited the Prador Kingdom

>>50878446
Those could be modified. I went with tentacles because easier to draw. But yeah, is the basic bodyplan good enough? Fur tube, multiple limbs like centipede, a face/head end?

A cordyceps-esque sentiant race, they gained sentience after infecting a spacefaring race, they now have a wide variety of bodies. They have a mix of sentience and hive mind think themselves
They are natural junkers and scavengers, their fleets being a mismatched series of ships that have been aquired.
Often Loathed & feared by other races, They now have the ability to use their spores at will and use the threat of which to gain a lots of political power over the other races of the galaxy. Many races fear their spies, as they could be anyone or anywhere anybody could be infected and manipulated.
While in combat they focus on controling the battlefield. They focus on surrounding enemies and breaking the chain of command and supply lines. They try to break the enemy, via tactics, or their spores.
Their main soldiers are conscripts of sorts, mainly just lowly races they've infected and enslaved. While the higher pure soldiers use the finest technology. They have "solar armor" which essentially allows for rapid regeneration and body growth in combat.
Their weapons often rely on slug shot to damage enemy life support and allow the spores to finish them.

>>50878771
Yes.

>>50878518
Now they're also Imperial Chinese with an immortal emperor.

>>50878771
Well as cute fuzzy aliens they are good. But if we want to add "armored" on top of that we start having some problems. Multiple short limbs plus elongated spine with multiple degrees of freedom is not good for heavy powered armor.

You either need to go mini-mecha rout or else your armor gets too many weak points that are needed to allow spine to bend as normal. And armor itself becomes segmented which is not that good too.

Such a creature much better works as a stealth specialist with its low stance and flexible spine.

Otters too have a spine comparatively more flexible than humans and longer body but small shortening of it for Vrh puts them into intermediate state between humans and normal otters. They can walk on two legs and while they don't have endurance that humans enjoy they on the other hand also can run on 4 or 3 limbs going for short burst of speed as ambush predators.

File: Vrh 001.jpg (201KB, 1062x1518px) Image search: [Google]

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>>50882331
Here is a sketch addon. I'm bad at anatomy but general idea should be clear.

>>50878518
It was me. I am the crab man

is there going to be another thread

>>50854907

Is an all male race of bioengineers, they are known as "the patriarchy".

>>50884585
Looks like a no

>>50884585

Maybe! It makes sense things would be slow now. Holidays and such.

I'll bump for you guys.

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>>50854951
I like this.

For one reason or another, perhaps membership of some intergalactic council, the human nations rarely engage in open warfare with other races. The lack of full-scale warfare means many members of our race make their living in fighting wars on behalf of races with the technology and wealth to afford us but the disinclination to do the wet-work themselves.


TL;DR Humans are the go-to Merc Mooks for the majority of proxy-wars between races.

I demand crabfluff!

>>50897625

Silicrabs can only survive in ultra-low temperature environments. Too hot and they overheat and die.

The only good news is that there is a limited range there where exposure to heat causes the crabs to go into hibernation, minimizing their own life functions to prevent overheating and death until they cool down.

This means that, ironically, crabs can basically go into 'thermostasis' at room temperature, making long distance space travel really easy for them.