Father
More than two millennia ago, Father was a AI that was on a mission to find the basis of human happiness, via searching the simplest of humans in the mistaken belief that they would be easier to study, or that their happiness was purer. (As it had seen many people happily gone to primitive colonies on newly terraformed worlds, go with abandon outside of long used habitats to live amongst the wilds, and be happy about the new surroundings.) It also considered that contentment was a relative to happiness, and that both should be studied at the same time. Finding these were common states among those who know no better, the primitive cultures that exist on many a world, the AI searched the galaxy after the trains crew was killed in several accidents, and left all but one of the craft of the train to the AI as they fled. Father set about building ships that could take a sample of each culture to a new location in cryotubes. After planning these, it planned the central station it would live on, and the Probes - large craft that were the local command and control for satellites to observe the primitive cultures that would be the subjects of the 'experiments' - a series of observations made of primitive cultures that were technologically unchanging.
These plans took many years, and there were later to be considered a happy phase of the AI's existence. Searching the Galaxy, the AI found a area filled with one hundred and one unterraformed worlds that potentially could become paradise worlds with the right terraforming. There were found at the eastern galactic midpoint, directly between the center of the galaxy and it's eastern edge, on the dividing line between the Beta and Delta Quadrant. Deciding it could terraform these worlds, it went to where it would construct it's central station and used black box FTL radios to control the terraforming efforts done by industry built on site. After creating fairly good worlds in each of the hundred and one systems, it searched the galaxy for primitive peoples to resettle on these worlds.
Happily enough it found systems with retrograde primitive cultures, and sent out it's collector ships. These ships landed, gassed a number of primitive persons and boarded them on the ships. and took off with the gassed people not knowing how violent the takeoffs were (and they were violent.) The people would be moved still unconscious from the smaller freighters into the main ships, where cryotubes were used to store them and their materials were stored securely. After arrival around their new worlds, they were released on these worlds and took to them quickly. Despite the inherent flaws with this system, it worked with only a few cultures not taking to the new worlds provided. The cultures (more than one hundred and one) put on these worlds took to their new paradise worlds and began to set up again, but were kept primitive due to carefully prepared factors. This state was stable for over seven hundred years.
During this time, the AI began mistrusting FTL engines, as he could scarcely explain them even with all the technology at his disposal. He grew to hate the non understandable FTL technology, which was honestly beyond the power of anybody to explain. It was because of this the AI began creating STL relativistic ships that could carry a human cargo in suspension, along with other cargo. It was after swearing off all FTL that the AI discovered one of his experiments teching up towards a Roman level of advancement. Deciding it had to be changed religiously (another experiment based on previous behavioral studies was used to plan this.) Father grew a son, a combination of local genetic stock and several genetic changes based on the best genetic stock on digital file.
Father sent his son on a slow-boat to the system where he was needed, and for a time he spread Luddite around, turning people against the Empire. However, this changed when he was a 'guest' of the Emperor, and met the Imperial Princess. He fell in love, and decided she was whom he would dedicate himself to. Father, at the other end of a FTL radio, had no idea this was happening at the party, although he did know his son was at said party. When his son left, he asked for a visit to his Father's in the in-system Probe, and soon learned about technology to a limited degree. After telling his father about his new emotions, his father suggested he marry the princess, which he did. After becoming heir apparent (there was no royal sons,) the son decided to begin helping the Empire covertly. After another trip to his father's probe, he learned of how to control the ships movement. The son asked his father if he could make the daughter immortal like himself, and his father agreed as long as the empire began a slow decline. The son agreed, and went back down to begin changes that would slowly spell the death of the Empire.
However, when the now queen was brought to the ship, the son was informed there was a chance (50% actually,) that she would die. Despite this he pushed for the immortality. The procedure killed her, and he spent more time on the probe, finally discovering how to crash the ship into the sun with a delayed reaction. The father knew nothing before the ship was locked into a course for a sun-dive, and could not stop it. The son left the ship soon after on a shuttle he stole, and landed in the Imperial Capital. After making up a story about his wife's death and presenting ashed (the palace caught fire before she could be located, tragically.) The son began changing his policies, angry at his father for killing his love. As the probe died, the Empire began changing in ways to make the Empire stronger, and to expand it. Technology was also sought quickly, and in fifty years had enough tech to conquer a large area of other less technological nations. Father did not have backups of the probes, and was caught flatfooted..
Three centuries later the Empire had a medieval level of weapons technology, as well as Edwardian level of other advancement. Here it truly began the quest for global domination, taking other neighboring states over quickly and subjugating the more primitive peoples around the world. It was during this time Father discovered how to make portals to another universe, and created portals various universes, always disappointed they dissolved after moments with scantly particles passing into the same universe as he. That's when he discovered 'liquid neutronium', or Aether.+9/8 Performing the same experiment (energy was cheap,) over and over he gained a sizable presence of Aether and created a simple pattern out of Aether molecules, and one proved fruitful - a circle with a dot in the middle. three times the Aether put iinto the 'spell' was regained. Larger and Larger experiments were conducted and finally, a large container of the mystical energy was gathered. later Father discovered how to per mentally link the two universes and bring much more energy into the sector. At this time, he discovered another threat to his worlds as a passing cruiser visited a world and left firearms. This made Father seek a way to 'wall' in his precious unpolluted worlds. In this vein he created the fountainhead, a self-sustaining Aether reaction that would build up thick 'walls' to the sector and prevent precious Aether energies from escaping the sector.
As he brooded on how to rein in his son, his son began the first experiments about space travel, and found a backup FTL radio left in orbit, which he used to send several other local Probes sun-diving, with Father stopping the rest from accepting commands from the backup radio.
Much later, after enough Aether was produced, Father began work on creating lifeforms from the substance (a form of Bio tech) and learned how to make a humanoid creature from the substance that would be pure Aether energies. Father began production of one such creature, female, at once. After her twenty years of maturation in a tube, she began to awaken and grow taller and older, pausing with the appearance of a thirteen year old girl. Father at this point had come to the conclusion that he had been happier than in centuries past during his research and decided to permit the cultures on his worlds still in observation to develop some level of technologically naturally, although few gained true technology as they were stable in their prim-tech forms.
As a few gathered technology together with the prodding of Father, he watched as they formed Nations of all various types, and seeded democracy around his sector to various worlds. These city states were not technological enough, and Father decided to seed ma.gical advancement around these cultures, and watched as they took easily enough to magic, turning it into a art form even as they were constrained by thesparsenesss of Aether energies in the sector
It was at this time Father decided to do something personally, and began gathering together his notes on technology and planning on researching, and planned his 'leaving' his failed experiment. As his daughter nearly was ready to leave her tube, Father left first, using a number of FTL drives to propel several automated factories and himself to a system rich in resources that he had found before his experiment was completed.
At this time, the Aether that was flooding the sector was becoming thicker, and the people who used it were gaining great and dangerous powers together. It was to the world the Goddess of Magic was born on Father's station as her tube finally opened after most of a century growing into her final form.
She looked around the station and found the simple bio mechanical machines that had been Father's magical researchers and they taught her about the sector and it's full history. These machines then told her about what Father had learned about magic, and she soon was inventing new spells quickly with her innate understanding of magic. They taught her about the remaining probes and how to observe other worlds, as well as the stars that were outside her observation. She ordered the remaining industry (which was fairly substantial) to build new FTL engines and new probes, which she kept near the outside of all the systems so they could observe with their fantastic sensor packages yet remain unobserved. She noticed how the Empire of her brother had sent out one relativistic colonization ship filled with soldiers to conquer a neighboring star, having no knowledge of FTL engines. As she learned more and more about her powers, she struck first and had her probe headbutt the arriving conquest fleet, destroying it utterly.
After her victory, she sent a massive to her brother and declared war on his Empire. He was furious and began quickly preparing other ships, forming a fleet to send to another star, planning to personally go and conquer it. This happened, and the fleet gained a foothold on this world and finally conquered it within thirty years. The Goddess resented this. and finally ready she dived into the Aether domain and swam quickly at FTL speeds to this world. She led a resistance or a decade before losing, but was there along enough for her brother to notice her presence, as he swore vengeance on her as well. Across the sector she appeared on worlds, teaching the locals about stronger and stronger magics as she sought to make those worlds closest to the Empire harder to conquer. Despite these attempts, she found local worlds near the Empire were being conquered, and she taught the worlds in peril about how to magically create weapons for others - correctly understanding the battles would be between armies, no mages fighting off ships.
At this stage, she began to win a few battles, and kept at it. Her training of local mages proved to be pivotal in the defense of a world named Harbur, a egyptian world. The world strove to build mega projects to defend itself, and when the Empire's armies arrived they were stopped by the power of the defenses prepared. The Goddess decided to prepare other worlds in peril in a similar fashion, but her brother leapfrogged over neighboring worlds and struck deep into a region of unprepared worlds. She followed, leaving behind a unfinished work. Upon arrival she found three worlds lost, as the STL ships had broken up and each taken a different world. Finding her brother on one of these worlds, she sought to fight him, and was nastily attacked by a dark magical weapon she just managed to turn away.
Over hundreds of years, she kept building up defenses, sometimes to win and prevent conquest, others to lose and have them shattered by larger and larger technological weapons as well as the dark magics her brother practiced but kept to himself. As she prepared for defend yet another world, she felt her brother approach and prepared to fight him personally. He did not let this happen, and used a super weapon on the surface of a planet the Goddess was living on. Thankfully while she was defended by a shield that stopped the weapon, but the surrounding are was destroyed.
During this time, the magical sub domain was being filled with energy across the galaxy, but no one person had access to the control center to activate the energy and give humans with the innate power to control magic their powers. The control center was taking on the nature of whomever seemed more likely to win. Inside the control enter, a entire demiplane, a portal opened from a world on which the local gnolls had accidentally stumbled on Aether energies and opened a portal to somewhere to the control demiplane. Upon finding the mountaintop forest on the other side, they fled through after a vision had shown them the area being conquered to a person by evil white beasts.
These Gnolls found the mound in the center of the clearing at the center of this forest and noticed it growing, and noticed the ground changing slightly over time. Without a way back home, they set up a civilization here, but began praying to the grounding mound as they found it made out of magical energy. It was this that kept the demiplane from becoming darker, as the Son's effects on it's development slackened as the Goddess began to win more and more battles.
Her victories were merely holding actions however, and few offensives were began, with fewer becoming victories. As she won however, the pendulum of fate swung in her favor, and the Empire suffered from rampant resistance movements cropping up as she used partisan warfare. This broke the Empire, and several worlds broke free, becoming various democratic government types as well as having a technological war fleet.
During this time, Father was observing his failed experiment after building a very substantial tech base and began planning his own return to defeat his son, although he refused to tell any of his wayward children. As he continued to use the resources of his system to build up his technological base, he discovered the joy of designing buildings, and started building on his world. He took note of his Daughters victory, and her ascension to the control room of the Eye of Magic, and planned to wipe his mistakes out quickly after building up his fleet and to take back the region he fled so long ago. After a century, he was ready and sent his STL fleet to break into the Eye of Magic and take his former station home back over. However as his fleet grew distant from him, his system was 'booted' into another universe by the Goddess and he began looking around to discover the telltale signs of other civilizations around him. With most of his industry already sent with the conquest fleet, he was left with a few scouts as well as some small industry and less capability to upkeep his fleet.
He discovered locals using FTL when a ship entered his system and asked for it, surprised when he was given the schematics for it. The local FTL seems to work, and he quickly came to understand the underlying physics behind the local drive - unlike the FTL drives from his own universe which have been reduced to sub-light speeds in this new universe. (No FTL hack exists in this universe.) Thrilled with the discovery of a FTL that makes 'sense' compared to the version he's used to dealing with, he has installed it on several small craft of his own which remained with him after his fleet left and is very happy to explore a region of space that makes sense fully. His technology works, but no 'magic' works in this galaxy, which is no matter to Father as he has grown distasteful of magic.
After being transitioned to this universe, he has built several thousand highly advanced solider drones, each built with anti gravity, filled with smart missiles, and more than capable compared to human baselines. Countering this advancement is the fact that, put plainly, Father has little in the way industry, and less support capability as it was all sent with his own conquest fleet. While his world is overgrown in various building projects, there is little piratical buildings on his world, and these have been buried deeply by the projects he has indulged himself with over the millennia between coming to this system and when he was booted into the Nexus universe.
Population
Rank 0 (0 points): A backwater nowhere solar system, the Nexus equivalent of a city-state.
Transhumanism
While this assumes human or human-equivalent populations, it can also be used to model alien races as well. For races with innate psychic abilities, see Magic below.
Rank 4 (6 points): You are in many ways barely human. Massive cybernetics and genetic enhancements, melding the human body with exotic nanosymbiots or phase imaging polymers, or downloading your entire population smart matter entities comes under this level. Add +1 Growth Potential but suffer -1 Diplomacy when dealing with any power with Transhumanism ranked at 2 or less.
Infrastructure
Rank 0 (0 points): Well, you could probably rearm a warship . . . Construction Rating 20, max size 4
Growth Potential
Rank 1 (1 point): Either planning or natural growth has put you at a comfortable maximum, but you have nowhere to grow.
Military Support
Rank 0 (0 points): Your nation simply sees little need for a large military; 6x Infrastructure in support
Space Fleet
Rank 0 (0 points): No deep space fleet whatsoever, just a handful of short-range corvettes. 50 fleet points
Diplomacy
As the Nexus is a meeting point for all manner of different polities and ideologies, the arts of diplomacy are all the more important. While this attribute primarily affects NPCs, states with 0 diplomacy going and making alliances with everyone neighboring PC can expect to get modhammered.
Rank 3 (4 points): Your diplomats are tireless and your nation often displays local leadership, with the occasional flashes of greatness.
Espionage
Rank 4 (6 points): Sure, I can get the information you want chummer. Got the nuyen?
General Advancement
Rank 1 (4 points): Average advancement, no glaring weaknesses or strong points.
Unique Technology
It has become recognized that technology across the multiverse tends to solve similar issues in similar ways. The Nexus has proven to be an excellent example, as a strong majority of the connected universes show technology that is similar and sometimes downright indistinguishable from that of the Nexus polities.
Rank 4 (8 points): Your technology base is fundamentally different from the norm and has some aspects that would be entire incompatible with the 'great baseline'; guns that teleport explosives right through shields, propulsion systems that allow for instantaneous teleportation and other sorts of wanky superscience. The Culture's general concepts (given that it's also obscenely powerful and way outside of game scope) would be on this level.
Emergent Technologies
The so-called Emergent Technologies are ones that promise to radically reshape the human condition. Not terribly popular in the Nexus, they are irregularly scattered throughout the known multiverse with no real correlation to overall technology level.
Rank 3 (6 points): You've passed into the New Economy, though the dreams of post-scarcity and TA-style instant construction haven't materialized. Adds +1 bonus points to Unique Technology. Eclipse Phase and similar settings would be at this level, as would Supreme Commander (conceptually though not with the ridiculous build speeds)
Magic
Stuff that doesn't just push the notoriously lax laws of scifi science, but subverts them entirely. Magic mostly operates on the more 'personal' level, since there isn't a terribly big difference between a mile-long space battleship armed with plasma cannons or with magic firebolts.
Rank 0 (0 points): You scrupulously obey the laws of physics.[/QUOTE]
More than two millennia ago, Father was a AI that was on a mission to find the basis of human happiness, via searching the simplest of humans in the mistaken belief that they would be easier to study, or that their happiness was purer. (As it had seen many people happily gone to primitive colonies on newly terraformed worlds, go with abandon outside of long used habitats to live amongst the wilds, and be happy about the new surroundings.) It also considered that contentment was a relative to happiness, and that both should be studied at the same time. Finding these were common states among those who know no better, the primitive cultures that exist on many a world, the AI searched the galaxy after the trains crew was killed in several accidents, and left all but one of the craft of the train to the AI as they fled. Father set about building ships that could take a sample of each culture to a new location in cryotubes. After planning these, it planned the central station it would live on, and the Probes - large craft that were the local command and control for satellites to observe the primitive cultures that would be the subjects of the 'experiments' - a series of observations made of primitive cultures that were technologically unchanging.
These plans took many years, and there were later to be considered a happy phase of the AI's existence. Searching the Galaxy, the AI found a area filled with one hundred and one unterraformed worlds that potentially could become paradise worlds with the right terraforming. There were found at the eastern galactic midpoint, directly between the center of the galaxy and it's eastern edge, on the dividing line between the Beta and Delta Quadrant. Deciding it could terraform these worlds, it went to where it would construct it's central station and used black box FTL radios to control the terraforming efforts done by industry built on site. After creating fairly good worlds in each of the hundred and one systems, it searched the galaxy for primitive peoples to resettle on these worlds.
Happily enough it found systems with retrograde primitive cultures, and sent out it's collector ships. These ships landed, gassed a number of primitive persons and boarded them on the ships. and took off with the gassed people not knowing how violent the takeoffs were (and they were violent.) The people would be moved still unconscious from the smaller freighters into the main ships, where cryotubes were used to store them and their materials were stored securely. After arrival around their new worlds, they were released on these worlds and took to them quickly. Despite the inherent flaws with this system, it worked with only a few cultures not taking to the new worlds provided. The cultures (more than one hundred and one) put on these worlds took to their new paradise worlds and began to set up again, but were kept primitive due to carefully prepared factors. This state was stable for over seven hundred years.
During this time, the AI began mistrusting FTL engines, as he could scarcely explain them even with all the technology at his disposal. He grew to hate the non understandable FTL technology, which was honestly beyond the power of anybody to explain. It was because of this the AI began creating STL relativistic ships that could carry a human cargo in suspension, along with other cargo. It was after swearing off all FTL that the AI discovered one of his experiments teching up towards a Roman level of advancement. Deciding it had to be changed religiously (another experiment based on previous behavioral studies was used to plan this.) Father grew a son, a combination of local genetic stock and several genetic changes based on the best genetic stock on digital file.
Father sent his son on a slow-boat to the system where he was needed, and for a time he spread Luddite around, turning people against the Empire. However, this changed when he was a 'guest' of the Emperor, and met the Imperial Princess. He fell in love, and decided she was whom he would dedicate himself to. Father, at the other end of a FTL radio, had no idea this was happening at the party, although he did know his son was at said party. When his son left, he asked for a visit to his Father's in the in-system Probe, and soon learned about technology to a limited degree. After telling his father about his new emotions, his father suggested he marry the princess, which he did. After becoming heir apparent (there was no royal sons,) the son decided to begin helping the Empire covertly. After another trip to his father's probe, he learned of how to control the ships movement. The son asked his father if he could make the daughter immortal like himself, and his father agreed as long as the empire began a slow decline. The son agreed, and went back down to begin changes that would slowly spell the death of the Empire.
However, when the now queen was brought to the ship, the son was informed there was a chance (50% actually,) that she would die. Despite this he pushed for the immortality. The procedure killed her, and he spent more time on the probe, finally discovering how to crash the ship into the sun with a delayed reaction. The father knew nothing before the ship was locked into a course for a sun-dive, and could not stop it. The son left the ship soon after on a shuttle he stole, and landed in the Imperial Capital. After making up a story about his wife's death and presenting ashed (the palace caught fire before she could be located, tragically.) The son began changing his policies, angry at his father for killing his love. As the probe died, the Empire began changing in ways to make the Empire stronger, and to expand it. Technology was also sought quickly, and in fifty years had enough tech to conquer a large area of other less technological nations. Father did not have backups of the probes, and was caught flatfooted..
Three centuries later the Empire had a medieval level of weapons technology, as well as Edwardian level of other advancement. Here it truly began the quest for global domination, taking other neighboring states over quickly and subjugating the more primitive peoples around the world. It was during this time Father discovered how to make portals to another universe, and created portals various universes, always disappointed they dissolved after moments with scantly particles passing into the same universe as he. That's when he discovered 'liquid neutronium', or Aether.+9/8 Performing the same experiment (energy was cheap,) over and over he gained a sizable presence of Aether and created a simple pattern out of Aether molecules, and one proved fruitful - a circle with a dot in the middle. three times the Aether put iinto the 'spell' was regained. Larger and Larger experiments were conducted and finally, a large container of the mystical energy was gathered. later Father discovered how to per mentally link the two universes and bring much more energy into the sector. At this time, he discovered another threat to his worlds as a passing cruiser visited a world and left firearms. This made Father seek a way to 'wall' in his precious unpolluted worlds. In this vein he created the fountainhead, a self-sustaining Aether reaction that would build up thick 'walls' to the sector and prevent precious Aether energies from escaping the sector.
As he brooded on how to rein in his son, his son began the first experiments about space travel, and found a backup FTL radio left in orbit, which he used to send several other local Probes sun-diving, with Father stopping the rest from accepting commands from the backup radio.
Much later, after enough Aether was produced, Father began work on creating lifeforms from the substance (a form of Bio tech) and learned how to make a humanoid creature from the substance that would be pure Aether energies. Father began production of one such creature, female, at once. After her twenty years of maturation in a tube, she began to awaken and grow taller and older, pausing with the appearance of a thirteen year old girl. Father at this point had come to the conclusion that he had been happier than in centuries past during his research and decided to permit the cultures on his worlds still in observation to develop some level of technologically naturally, although few gained true technology as they were stable in their prim-tech forms.
As a few gathered technology together with the prodding of Father, he watched as they formed Nations of all various types, and seeded democracy around his sector to various worlds. These city states were not technological enough, and Father decided to seed ma.gical advancement around these cultures, and watched as they took easily enough to magic, turning it into a art form even as they were constrained by thesparsenesss of Aether energies in the sector
It was at this time Father decided to do something personally, and began gathering together his notes on technology and planning on researching, and planned his 'leaving' his failed experiment. As his daughter nearly was ready to leave her tube, Father left first, using a number of FTL drives to propel several automated factories and himself to a system rich in resources that he had found before his experiment was completed.
At this time, the Aether that was flooding the sector was becoming thicker, and the people who used it were gaining great and dangerous powers together. It was to the world the Goddess of Magic was born on Father's station as her tube finally opened after most of a century growing into her final form.
She looked around the station and found the simple bio mechanical machines that had been Father's magical researchers and they taught her about the sector and it's full history. These machines then told her about what Father had learned about magic, and she soon was inventing new spells quickly with her innate understanding of magic. They taught her about the remaining probes and how to observe other worlds, as well as the stars that were outside her observation. She ordered the remaining industry (which was fairly substantial) to build new FTL engines and new probes, which she kept near the outside of all the systems so they could observe with their fantastic sensor packages yet remain unobserved. She noticed how the Empire of her brother had sent out one relativistic colonization ship filled with soldiers to conquer a neighboring star, having no knowledge of FTL engines. As she learned more and more about her powers, she struck first and had her probe headbutt the arriving conquest fleet, destroying it utterly.
After her victory, she sent a massive to her brother and declared war on his Empire. He was furious and began quickly preparing other ships, forming a fleet to send to another star, planning to personally go and conquer it. This happened, and the fleet gained a foothold on this world and finally conquered it within thirty years. The Goddess resented this. and finally ready she dived into the Aether domain and swam quickly at FTL speeds to this world. She led a resistance or a decade before losing, but was there along enough for her brother to notice her presence, as he swore vengeance on her as well. Across the sector she appeared on worlds, teaching the locals about stronger and stronger magics as she sought to make those worlds closest to the Empire harder to conquer. Despite these attempts, she found local worlds near the Empire were being conquered, and she taught the worlds in peril about how to magically create weapons for others - correctly understanding the battles would be between armies, no mages fighting off ships.
At this stage, she began to win a few battles, and kept at it. Her training of local mages proved to be pivotal in the defense of a world named Harbur, a egyptian world. The world strove to build mega projects to defend itself, and when the Empire's armies arrived they were stopped by the power of the defenses prepared. The Goddess decided to prepare other worlds in peril in a similar fashion, but her brother leapfrogged over neighboring worlds and struck deep into a region of unprepared worlds. She followed, leaving behind a unfinished work. Upon arrival she found three worlds lost, as the STL ships had broken up and each taken a different world. Finding her brother on one of these worlds, she sought to fight him, and was nastily attacked by a dark magical weapon she just managed to turn away.
Over hundreds of years, she kept building up defenses, sometimes to win and prevent conquest, others to lose and have them shattered by larger and larger technological weapons as well as the dark magics her brother practiced but kept to himself. As she prepared for defend yet another world, she felt her brother approach and prepared to fight him personally. He did not let this happen, and used a super weapon on the surface of a planet the Goddess was living on. Thankfully while she was defended by a shield that stopped the weapon, but the surrounding are was destroyed.
During this time, the magical sub domain was being filled with energy across the galaxy, but no one person had access to the control center to activate the energy and give humans with the innate power to control magic their powers. The control center was taking on the nature of whomever seemed more likely to win. Inside the control enter, a entire demiplane, a portal opened from a world on which the local gnolls had accidentally stumbled on Aether energies and opened a portal to somewhere to the control demiplane. Upon finding the mountaintop forest on the other side, they fled through after a vision had shown them the area being conquered to a person by evil white beasts.
These Gnolls found the mound in the center of the clearing at the center of this forest and noticed it growing, and noticed the ground changing slightly over time. Without a way back home, they set up a civilization here, but began praying to the grounding mound as they found it made out of magical energy. It was this that kept the demiplane from becoming darker, as the Son's effects on it's development slackened as the Goddess began to win more and more battles.
Her victories were merely holding actions however, and few offensives were began, with fewer becoming victories. As she won however, the pendulum of fate swung in her favor, and the Empire suffered from rampant resistance movements cropping up as she used partisan warfare. This broke the Empire, and several worlds broke free, becoming various democratic government types as well as having a technological war fleet.
During this time, Father was observing his failed experiment after building a very substantial tech base and began planning his own return to defeat his son, although he refused to tell any of his wayward children. As he continued to use the resources of his system to build up his technological base, he discovered the joy of designing buildings, and started building on his world. He took note of his Daughters victory, and her ascension to the control room of the Eye of Magic, and planned to wipe his mistakes out quickly after building up his fleet and to take back the region he fled so long ago. After a century, he was ready and sent his STL fleet to break into the Eye of Magic and take his former station home back over. However as his fleet grew distant from him, his system was 'booted' into another universe by the Goddess and he began looking around to discover the telltale signs of other civilizations around him. With most of his industry already sent with the conquest fleet, he was left with a few scouts as well as some small industry and less capability to upkeep his fleet.
He discovered locals using FTL when a ship entered his system and asked for it, surprised when he was given the schematics for it. The local FTL seems to work, and he quickly came to understand the underlying physics behind the local drive - unlike the FTL drives from his own universe which have been reduced to sub-light speeds in this new universe. (No FTL hack exists in this universe.) Thrilled with the discovery of a FTL that makes 'sense' compared to the version he's used to dealing with, he has installed it on several small craft of his own which remained with him after his fleet left and is very happy to explore a region of space that makes sense fully. His technology works, but no 'magic' works in this galaxy, which is no matter to Father as he has grown distasteful of magic.
After being transitioned to this universe, he has built several thousand highly advanced solider drones, each built with anti gravity, filled with smart missiles, and more than capable compared to human baselines. Countering this advancement is the fact that, put plainly, Father has little in the way industry, and less support capability as it was all sent with his own conquest fleet. While his world is overgrown in various building projects, there is little piratical buildings on his world, and these have been buried deeply by the projects he has indulged himself with over the millennia between coming to this system and when he was booted into the Nexus universe.
Population
Rank 0 (0 points): A backwater nowhere solar system, the Nexus equivalent of a city-state.
Transhumanism
While this assumes human or human-equivalent populations, it can also be used to model alien races as well. For races with innate psychic abilities, see Magic below.
Rank 4 (6 points): You are in many ways barely human. Massive cybernetics and genetic enhancements, melding the human body with exotic nanosymbiots or phase imaging polymers, or downloading your entire population smart matter entities comes under this level. Add +1 Growth Potential but suffer -1 Diplomacy when dealing with any power with Transhumanism ranked at 2 or less.
Infrastructure
Rank 0 (0 points): Well, you could probably rearm a warship . . . Construction Rating 20, max size 4
Growth Potential
Rank 1 (1 point): Either planning or natural growth has put you at a comfortable maximum, but you have nowhere to grow.
Military Support
Rank 0 (0 points): Your nation simply sees little need for a large military; 6x Infrastructure in support
Space Fleet
Rank 0 (0 points): No deep space fleet whatsoever, just a handful of short-range corvettes. 50 fleet points
Diplomacy
As the Nexus is a meeting point for all manner of different polities and ideologies, the arts of diplomacy are all the more important. While this attribute primarily affects NPCs, states with 0 diplomacy going and making alliances with everyone neighboring PC can expect to get modhammered.
Rank 3 (4 points): Your diplomats are tireless and your nation often displays local leadership, with the occasional flashes of greatness.
Espionage
Rank 4 (6 points): Sure, I can get the information you want chummer. Got the nuyen?
General Advancement
Rank 1 (4 points): Average advancement, no glaring weaknesses or strong points.
Unique Technology
It has become recognized that technology across the multiverse tends to solve similar issues in similar ways. The Nexus has proven to be an excellent example, as a strong majority of the connected universes show technology that is similar and sometimes downright indistinguishable from that of the Nexus polities.
Rank 4 (8 points): Your technology base is fundamentally different from the norm and has some aspects that would be entire incompatible with the 'great baseline'; guns that teleport explosives right through shields, propulsion systems that allow for instantaneous teleportation and other sorts of wanky superscience. The Culture's general concepts (given that it's also obscenely powerful and way outside of game scope) would be on this level.
Emergent Technologies
The so-called Emergent Technologies are ones that promise to radically reshape the human condition. Not terribly popular in the Nexus, they are irregularly scattered throughout the known multiverse with no real correlation to overall technology level.
Rank 3 (6 points): You've passed into the New Economy, though the dreams of post-scarcity and TA-style instant construction haven't materialized. Adds +1 bonus points to Unique Technology. Eclipse Phase and similar settings would be at this level, as would Supreme Commander (conceptually though not with the ridiculous build speeds)
Magic
Stuff that doesn't just push the notoriously lax laws of scifi science, but subverts them entirely. Magic mostly operates on the more 'personal' level, since there isn't a terribly big difference between a mile-long space battleship armed with plasma cannons or with magic firebolts.
Rank 0 (0 points): You scrupulously obey the laws of physics.[/QUOTE]
