Terra Nullius - Free Humans in the Era Indomitus Quest

TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO, human beings first arrived on the desert world Xibalba. Desperate technobarbarian survival on a space hulk winnowed its people and led to the loss of some knowledge, but also produced a robust, self-starting culture well-used to salvage, adaptation and war. In its initial victory, the colonists acquired a bounty of industrial material upon which they would forge an enduring civilization.

TEN THOUSAND YEARS

These are the starting technologies rolled for the colony. Note these describe fields, not applications- specific devices or tools may emerge as a consequence of choices or events.

Baseline: M30

[Age of Technology] Volkite Devices - Understanding of and capability to build advanced 'heat ray' systems for a variety of purposes. Miniaturization and scalability of the requisite parts has allowed these devices to be built in a form factor as small as a holdout pistol or as large as the main batteries of warships.
[Age of Technology] Claytronics - Advanced programmable matter meant for the use in electronics, composed of a soft clay-like substrate using RNA encoding to store information. The material is a form of biotechnology derived from deep-sea and deep-space extremophiles, capable of self-optimizing and self-repairing over its long service life. Most claytronic devices can prevent long-term archival degradation by being 'baked', a process that fossilizes the devices' structure and locks in its contents to read-only for later retrieval.
[Age of Technology] E-Fusion - The smallest possible fusion devices are piezo-nuclear cells containing both starter fuel and control surfaces printed in heterogeneous stacked layers, totalling the size of a portable water canteen when accounting for the insulation jacket and primary fuel (water). These devices are rarely fail-deadly.
[Age of Technology] Gravcraft - Complex gravity control devices that allow for weight neutralization, inertial dampening and thrust on combat craft of all shapes and sizes. Other potential applications include medical, manufacturing and weapons.

DRIFTERS

Each option describes a specific space hulk that the human colonists arrived on. Each choice assumes that the xenos not explicitly stated to have been defeated or destroyed made landfall on Xibalba, and their ultimate fates are left undecided.

[ ] The Luna Belligerent - The fragmentary remains of a weaponized nomad world, rebuilt to be the deadly superweapon and mobile fortress of a long-gone human polity. Its malfunctioning prototype warp drive saw it cross the galaxy many times while its sheer size abducted many warp-lost ships into its mass throughout the eons. Its most significant xenos inhabitants were Genestealers, Kroot and a race of silicoid giants known as the Regoceps. Despite being peaceful pastoralists, the Regoceps were detested for the natural manner of their reproduction, which involved releasing crystalline spores which mingled with the spores of others of their race in the fleshy lungs of carbon-based species and grew into stony tumors that would hatch into new members of their race after ten years of incubation.

The Genestealers were ultimately defeated by an unlikely alliance and the space hulk was finally forced back into reality when its planet-destroying main weapon was fired in the Warp. Overloading its power systems in this manner had a side-effect of causing it to break up in Xibalba's gravity well, turning the majority of its mass into a ring of debris that permanently encircles the planet's equator.
[ ] The Forbidden Spire - A tightly-wound pressurized lattice of floating islands and shipwrecked vessels trapped in close orbit of an ornate structure built from Blackstone, the Forbidden Spire spent much of its time freefloating through the Chaos Wastes and only rarely returned to realspace. Even in the warp, daemons could not enter its region of influence, and it inhibited mutation or psychic powers in its proximity. Its inhabitants were the Aracawans, telekinetic avians the size of human children, and a race of burly yet intellectual tauric-legged reptilians called Zoats- who used their talents as linguists to mediate disputes. Both species claimed to be survivors of vicious genocides, spirited away by the structure through unknown means.

The arrival of humans to the Spire provided the Zoats the technological knowledge necessary to finally breach the Spire and force the hulk back to realspace. Mysteriously, the Spire now stands planted in the plains of Xibalba's northern pole, and the rest of the hulk made a controlled descent in the northern tropics, in a region now known as the Spirian Scraplands.
[ ] The Sybil of Blood - An ancient, indescribably mangled space hulk that played host to the Kabal of the Hated Sword and a large contingent Loxatl, as well as a vast number of mutant monstrosities in its depths. A majority of the Drukhari eventually turned on eachother in the eons of isolation and the Loxatl were left as the sole retinue of its Archon, Sel'aech the Tamer. After battling Sel'aech's forces in the Sybil's twisted tunnels and killing him, his prize was ultimately discovered held in a malfunctioning stasis tank: the Mimensis Queen. The sole survivor of a race of symbiotic living weapons that took the shape of whirls of smooth crystal and liquid metal, her imprisonment had accidentally marooned the wicked Eldar that had kidnapped her and set the stage for her eventual rescue.

With her release and the defeat of Sel'aech, the Sybil of Blood made a rough landing on Xibalba that gouged a trench across the equator and caused it to lose integrity, requiring it to be evacuated almost immediately. Most of the Loxatl promptly surrendered and offered their services as mercenaries and labourers, recognizing the harshness of the world they had arrived on. The Mimensis Queen meanwhile had a stranger task ahead- the repopulation of her race.
[ ] The Black Cradle - A large and old space hulk that contained a large number of intact facilities and systems, having once been one or more industrial structures and ships. The great black orb that composed the central core of the Black Cradle may have been the source of its namesake, but curiouser was the vast quantities of ichorous red soil among its ruins, an entire technic countryside seemingly spirited away from a great planet of rust and oil. The orb was a maker-device that created lesser Men of Iron, who dominated the structure until the arrival of humans, forming a government they called the Sentient Milieu with the agreement of a race of 2-meter long, limbless amphibians known as the Smud who had been uplifted to tool-use, and a host of subordinate artificial and feral machines.

First encounter with the Men of Iron and the Millieu was catastrophic- officially caused by a feral robot acting on ancient data-memory of the Cybernetic Revolt and accidentally obliterating a human child who's toy registered as a weapon. The actual causes are essentially lost, as the resulting fighting caused the Cradle to become unstable and its Gellar Field to lose coherence. Facing death and worse fates if the hulk were to break apart, both parties begrudgingly cooperated to make a controlled exit and descent, landing on the planet Xibalba in a previously uncharted sector. While damaged, much of the hulk remains salvageable.

XIBALBA

When first discovered, the desert world Xibalba was possessed of a stark beauty, an endless white and gold sand occasionally broken up by the juts of mountains, oasis and mycelial wells that nourish an ecosystem of hardy surface flora and fauna. Beneath its surface, its hollows conceal a panoply of varied ecosystems, some utterly toxic and hostile to human life, others composed entirely of edible roots and fruiting bodies and populated by docile creatures. Its freshwater seas can be tapped and with minimal treatment, permit human life on the planet.

But what is to be done with the planet?

[ ] Making the Desert Bloom - A sacrifice was made. Xibalba's caves were depleted, often catastrophically, to nourish a vast terraforming enterprise that transformed the planet's surface to one analogous to the ancient homeworld.
[ ] Megacity Xibalba - The paradoxical nature of the desert climate means the weather and temperatures of the equator are the most stable, even if the underlying geology is unfavorable. Choosing a region without caves, human settlers built their home in the shape of a mountain of steel and rockcrete, underneath which they hung an artificial sky. The equatorial placement allows for easy space-launch and vast amounts of solar energy.
[ ] Settle the Caves - The caves of Xibalba are analogous to the ancient homeworld's rainforests in terms of density of life, accessibility of water and climate, with a range from temperate (if humid) to hothouses depending on the specific mycelial ecosystem. After an initial (if difficult) adjustment process, the underground proved to be an accommodating home.
[ ] Ride the Worm - A desert is a vibrant ecosystem, if one knows where to look. By using advanced technology, one can readily build mobile settlements to take advantage of favorable conditions, avoid natural disasters and manage planetary resources without strain. While it ensures a diffuse, uncontrollable population, this is also a problem for a potential invader.

Voting open until about 12 PM EST on Saturday.