Actually, that raises an important question: Is the Spark inheritable, down to environmental factors or a bit of both?
Also, Nicholas Kerensky suffering from a very unusual presentation of SRMD and harnessing the power of Mad Social Science would be a very convenient handwave for... Well, a lot.
Add an entirely new caste, one made entirely of those with the spark; have that caste be internally divided between those born in the original castes. but outwardly appear unified to the rest of the castes.
Frankly, the clan's are crazy enough and some have done such at thing when it comes to the crazy spiritalist's to just create a new cast to funnel all the trouble makers into for easier observation and control....Which will work as well as you think unless they design the caste in such a way all the sparks act like crabs in a boiling pot pulling each other down.....Oh dear that is what they would do.
Frankly, the clan's are crazy enough and some have done such at thing when it comes to the crazy spiritalist's to just create a new cast to funnel all the trouble makers into for easier observation and control....Which will work as well as you think unless they design the caste in such a way all the sparks act like crabs in a boiling pot pulling each other down.....Oh dear that is what they would do.
The Golden Century is also the Century of the Great Khanate, where the Blood of Kerensky proved their worthiness as conquerors, etc. So Clan Space is probably bigger (and here is where I realize I'd have to redraw the map again) and maybe has vassal states or somesuch, I don't know.
Oh dear lord, this might mean that the clans can achieve genuinely massive warrior cast forces if the population % stays from their original 1,151,525,500 population size. And you say...Triple that with a mix of conquest and aggressive integration, blood name creation, and colonies...The clan army would have been more then enough to have put a massive dent in the Innersphere without the Sparks having broken it up.
The warrior caste % was around .01% of the ppopulation(if it was 0.01% as on Sarna and book the number would be 11,515,255), if that was tripled to around 3,454,576,500 the warrior cast would number 345,457 (Or 34,545,765 using Canon %). Now here's the fun part....3 Billion is a small conservative number that doesn't take into account the population size of this more populated outer sphere (You know besides mass ethnic cleansing and trimming the population). But that doesn't matter since even on that low end count of the warrior caste number that would out the total Clan military count at around 612 galaxies if the ratios stay the same. Or one the bare low end 1,836 regiments to a high end of 3,060.....
Yeah Mal the Clans are going to be the scariest looking mother fuckers that side of the Outersphere no matter how you slice, makes its eventual fall because of a no doubt botched invasion of the innsphere all the more catastrophic.
Edit: As for how i got the clan Touman Size? Here it is, flee free to double check my math.
I'd have the Clans considering the Spark as an abomination. Something to be hunted down and exterminated with extreme prejudice. And they are good at it.
Meanwhile The Society is hiding Sparks waiting for the Clans to overextend/be distracted enough, that they can take thier rightful place as rulers of the Clans.
More seriously, I think they'd break Clan culture, and what had been Clanspace will be more fragmented and messy for a while, with some areas being better, some worse, and some more like 'about as bad, but in new ways.'
Personally, I think Clan society is better able to integrate Sparks than anything we see in the Inner Sphere. It is set up in a way that allows for rapid rise through the ranks for people with the right skill set, integrating them into the power structure faster and more efficiently than IS-style neo-feudalism. Clans are also highly political and many have the flexibility to react to societal pressure with some thing else than violence. Simply allowing for 'testing-up' from other castes more readily could be enough to integrate some of the lower caste Sparks.
Clan society also has some unofficial safety valves in form of the Dark Caste or cloisters. This allows some way to exist besides Clan society that is not quite peaceful but not outright war, either. As the Burrocks have shown, the Dark Caste is not as separate from Clan society as is sometimes presented. And then there are the Free Guilds.
More 'traditional' or rigid Clans like the Jaguars or Steel Vipers will crack and disintegrate. The others will change. Coyotes could end up with even stronger scientist influence earlier, the SharkFoxes already have a strong Merchant Caste. Overall, Clan societies are often presented as incredible cohesive down to the Labor Caste. Forever Faithful gives a good impression of the Labor Caste viewing itself as an important part of Clan, making sacrifices for the greater good. And that's in one of the most repressive Clans, where they would have every right to view themselves as completely oppressed by the warriors.
More 'traditional' or rigid Clans like the Jaguars or Steel Vipers will crack and disintegrate. The others will change. Coyotes could end up with even stronger scientist influence earlier, the SharkFoxes already have a strong Merchant Caste. Overall, Clan societies are often presented as incredible cohesive down to the Labor Caste. Forever Faithful gives a good impression of the Labor Caste viewing itself as an important part of Clan, making sacrifices for the greater good. And that's in one of the most repressive Clans, where they would have every right to view themselves as completely oppressed by the warriors.
Also we must keep in mind that the clans only truely broke when they first lost to a phone company, then got invaded and a clan outright destroyed by the IS. the Sparks at best due to being raised in the clans formulate their craziness around the Clans way of life and tech. While either working within it or GTFOing the monent they have the chance to the Dark cast.
The clans breaking requires an outside force slapping them in the face so how stupid their ideals are, rather then an internal change they adapt to and simply call 'An evolution of Kerenskys ways'
You can see just how ingrained the Clan way of life is even in their enemies during the Society's uprising. The Society, rather than formulating an alternative to Clan society, had been for years conducting internal trials and awarding 'Lab Names' to their member, that function just like Bloodnames, including copying the Bloodhouses.
Like you said, outside forces are necessary for meaningful change or even destruction.
Eh, I'm really more interested in seeing how...fey...for lack of a better term the Outer Sphere is than the oppressive, militant eugenicist space fascists.
Eh, I'm really more interested in seeing how...fey...for lack of a better term the Outer Sphere is than the oppressive, militant eugenicist space fascists.
From what i recall that was the Axumites. As they had no strings attached, no crazy plague or bio weapon native to lizards in new Delphi compact. No insane plots from the starts that creates genocides every new government elected in Alexandra. Or the crazy Stuff for that outpost of the RWR. Or the mercantile Hensa folks who sell slaves.
The axumites where the most legit peacefull nation, older than even the FWL, to have existed, held back only by a lack of jumpships.
From what i recall that was the Axumites. As they had no strings attached, no crazy plague or bio weapon native to lizards in new Delphi compact. No insane plots from the starts that creates genocides every new government elected in Alexandra. Or the crazy Stuff for that outpost of the RWR. Or the mercantile Hensa folks who sell slaves.
The axumites where the most legit peaceful nation, older than even the FWL, to have existed, held back only by a lack of jumpships.
Got bored, committed some more mappage over the weekend. No big lore dump to go with this one, it was really more of an experiment in "can I in fact make a readable map with all the systems in place?" and the answer seems to be... yes? I want to use the icons on the map (naturally, that's what they're there for) but that's still very much a work in progress.
Anyway, enjoy. Or tell me off for wasting your time, or wasting my time. Or whatever.
you'll really want to right-click for big on this one said:
Got bored, committed some more mappage over the weekend. No big lore dump to go with this one, it was really more of an experiment in "can I in fact make a readable map with all the systems in place?" and the answer seems to be... yes? I want to use the icons on the map (naturally, that's what they're there for) but that's still very much a work in progress.
Anyway, enjoy. Or tell me off for wasting your time, or wasting my time. Or whatever.
I'm digging the new look. With that said, while it's not an issue with this one, with a couple of the Outer Sphere maps some of the colors were so close that it was hard for me to pick out which polity was which on the map. This one has the advantage of being part of one group and more familiarity for locating them.
I'm digging the new look. With that said, while it's not an issue with this one, with a couple of the Outer Sphere maps some of the colors were so close that it was hard for me to pick out which polity was which on the map. This one has the advantage of being part of one group and more familiarity for locating them.
Yeah, that's a running issue. I'm trying to pick colors that contrast each other and have some basic thematic link to each nation. (The color chart I'm using was originally designed for alternate history maps, with the intent of having a color for as many historical or theoretical factions as possible.) This.. doesn't always work out as well as I'd like. Particularly in subnational colors - fifty subtly different shades of green/gold/purple/whatever tend to run together pretty quickly.
Yeah, that's a running issue. I'm trying to pick colors that contrast each other and have some basic thematic link to each nation. (The color chart I'm using was originally designed for alternate history maps, with the intent of having a color for as many historical or theoretical factions as possible.) This.. doesn't always work out as well as I'd like. Particularly in subnational colors - fifty subtly different shades of green/gold/purple/whatever tend to run together pretty quickly.
Okay, the extreme tl;dr: I originally picked green and gold as the Orchestra colors because a) I wanted it to be different from just going with the traditional commie red, b) the Orchestra as a nation/movement is meant to have at least some solarpunk vibes and green/gold seem to get used a lot in solarpunk iconography and c) sitting mainly on the Lyran side of the map it still had contrast with Marik purple and the riot of colors replacing the Kuritas.
The problem comes that the color I picked to be the Orchestra green and the canonical Liao map green are actually really close to each other. And even then this wasn't a huge problem until I decided to be cute and have Orchestra enclaves butting up against what's left of the Capellan Confederation. In the end I added something like 50% black to CapCon green in order to provide sufficient contrast.
(Not to say that the canon/Sarna map doesn't have its own issues. My favorite example is the red-orange used to denote the Taurian Concordat contrasted with the slightly different orange-red used for the Aurigan Coalition. The hex values are clearly different but when you actually put them in a map together they don't contrast super-well.)
Having just noticed this, I am overjoyed to see Mal has continued work on the Spark Age (now with LANCER references!) This Outer Spheres looks to be very interesting indeed. Can't wait to see what man-made horrors beyond or within our comprehension the Sparks will create next.
On the subject of the recent map, I can only imagine the tensions inherent in maintaining that Filtvelt enclave next to a seemingly mostly intact FedSuns.
I wonder if there might be some horror in the new Spark Age
not because there there are unfathomable beings hiding beyond the sight (There actually are), but that humaniti are the monsters they are hiding from.
I'm kind of torn, because while the Spark Age stuff can be fun I'd honestly rather be working on other projects right now. Thing is, the maps and little worldbuilding snips are just the right combination of creative and tedious busywork that it hits a very comfortable groove. I can easily burn like four or five hours a night fiddling with icons or colors or entering faction data into a spreadsheet so everything looks juuuuuuusssssst right and not notice until the dog's telling me to go to bed already, asshole.
I wonder if there might be some horror in the new Spark Age
not because there there are unfathomable beings hiding beyond the sight (There actually are), but that humaniti are the monsters they are hiding from.
Quite frankly, if I wanted "it turns out that Man is the real monster!" I can obtain that easily enough by turning on the fucking news. Eldritch horrors remain a possibility. In fact, I already introduced one in The Purple Fang and it's one that, if I'm not careful, could become a load-bearing horror on any plot going forward. And if any of you fuckers can tell me what/who it is based on the description in Purple Fang... I will be very impressed by your research-fu. If you wanna try, DM me and test your luck.
