Hard Contact -- A Space Opera GSRPG

[averagename]

Polity name: The Nobel and storied hives of the Mandeville.
Species:
From the CEC Encyclopaedia of the Galaxy and the Creatures which inhabit it
The Hives of the Mandeville are a eusocial race hailing from the tropical world of Cornucopia. The species is an insectoid race which is divided into a number of classes. While many outsiders consider think classes different species the morphological differences are believed to arise from the differening amounts of Royal jelly given to larva. The greater the quantity imbibed the larger and more intelligent the creature will grow up to be. The three primary castes (there is a dizzying array of sub classes and niche cases are as follows) :

Drones (also referred to as serfs, levies and dulls) make up the vast majority of the Mandeville race they received little to no royal jelly during the larva stage and as such are the smallest and least intelligent of their kind. They carry out the vast array of menial tasks needed in the hives and form the back bone of the vast mandville armies and armadas in times of war. Their lives are view as entirely expendable by their supreriors in the hives and this is a view they largely share; or as they are believed to share as there is still some argument as to whether they are entirely sentient. These Drones cannot reproduce.

Knights make up the officer class of the hives. They carry out interim rolls such as running production within the hive factories, leading armies and working as artisans. That said due to the militarisation of Mandeville society it is mostly their role as warriors they are known for. They werve given small quantities of royal jelly during their larval stage. Their intelgience allows them to be trusted in limited independant action and they are known to have personal ambitions. They can reproduce in extremis but mostly do not, or are not allowed.

Royals are the commanders of the Mandiville race. With only a small handful per hive these are the generals, scientistrs and commanders of the race. They're intelgience outstrips their kin and they are the longest (relatively) lived of the species. These provide the vast majority of eggs which supports the mindboggoling speed of growth their species enjoys.

The chittering hordes of the Mandiville are known for their huge numbers and their divergence from much of the rest of the galaxy in their morals. Due to the species having such short lives they view anything which can grant someone a form of immortality like a great work, fine craftsmanship or glory in conflict as a good. The species cares next to nothing for the individual, even the highest ranking royals, and thus views war as something nobel and indeed desirable. The constant issues with overpopulation results in skirmishes or full scale wars between hives (the socail unit of the race) for food, territory and honour. These wars see mindboggling casualties but are viewed by the race as expected and Knights and Royals are always suprised to find other races dont share their views about conflict. As such where the poltical Landscape of the species dose not allow, or a suitable quest has been called many questing fleets led by knights seeking to make their names move into the space of neighbouring species to search for the object of their quest, loot or just seek a fight.

The overarching polity of the species, the High Council and the Prime Hive hold limited control at the best of times over the race. They try to maintain their treaties but the bellicose houses and hives oft do what they want.

CEC fleets have so far managed to meaningfully penetrate Mandeville space. The immense defensive fortifications constructed along the line of contact and the seemingly infitie stream of fleets emanating from the Mandeville territory have blunted all efforts to take anything but outlying worlds. Equally due to the relative inefficiency and low technology of Mandeville troops they have struggle to advance into our territory. The front has been bloody and exhausting; the Mandeville appear to enjoy this stalemate.

Stats
Drive: 3 Most species look at the Mandeville and see a teetering nation on the edge of collapse but the Mandeville view their race as perfectly stable, indeed they view themselves as going through something of a golden age thanks too the wars which have racked the galaxy. The constant internecine warring, incoherent policy making and chaos of the situation belies a system which beleives that is ideal.
Domain:10 The Hives of the Mandeville are (if counted as a cohesive polity) likely the largest in the galaxy. This is becuase of the truly predigious rate of growth of the population and their ceaseless industry. Where ever the Mandeville go their great hive cities and hive arcologies are soo raised. From the fettid swaps of the moons of Schump to the frigid asteroids of the belt of jewels they are indomitable colonsiers. This has resulted in something of an excess of population which informs much of their remaining policies.
Military: 5 While by far not the worst military given the near total focus of their species towards it the Mandeville are a race not known for the standout competency. Given the short life span of their race a vetran is a commander with a few years of experince at most. Additionally Mandeville do not really care about the fighting qualities of indivudal troops or even units

Technology: (Your polities tech levels.)
-Drive: 1
-Domain: 3 (Quasi Discrete Mathematical Optimisation: the minds of the Mandeville Knights and Royals are uniquely suited to the study of mathematics and management. They have evolved to direct huge numbers of their fellows in complex construction processes for millions of years. This evolutionary experience has resulted in a race with a deep and total understanding of how to build. As such the construction yards and factory hives of the Mandeville are the most productive in the galaxy. Due to desire of the Mandeville to produce megastructures to perpetuate themselves through it they have become remarkably adept at macro engineering. It is joked that you could order a battleship from a Mandeville yard in the time it would take a assembly bearuacrat to read a form.)
-Military: 2 (Standard Templates Weapons: the Mandeville War machine employ's iterative standardised template. Due to mathematical rigor of the Mandeville these weapons, tanks and ships have been optimised within an inch of their lives for performance and cost. The endless fleets of the Mandeville have given many other species pause.)

Player League: Hirearchy (weak)

Flaws: 9
Mayflies: A short lived race
Paranoid Intelligence Institutions: The constant internicine conflicts between the hives have left the watchers a bit too vigilent.
Rogue Military: The central council and the prime hive has very very limited control over the activies of the hives and their questing fleets
Restless Warriors: Too the mandiville war is an end in itself, this has predictable results.
Ethnic Tension: Conflict between hives as discussed is the baseblock of the mandeville society and is viewed internally as the source of its greatness
Caste System: The biological caste system of the species results in a small number, if highly competent, of royals and knights doing many key roles.

Preferred location: conduits B,C,f

Declarations:

What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty: Food, the mandiville always need more food, though given the wonderful time they had in the war. It being the greatest conflict seen in centuries the Mandiville are very postively dispossed towards the humans seeing them as a wonderful enemy. While they understand that the reason would not be accceptable the High council is greatly opposed to any onerous conditions. That said they are intrested in securing technolgy and industrial machinery from the humans, aware of their own lack in this area.

Your factions opinion on the orbiting races: Uplifter by uplfiting and helping younger races we creating more people to fight in future. Kindess is its own reward.

Opinion on the Assembly of Species role: Filibuster the mandiville believe a happy galaxy is a chatotic and wartorn galaxy. They find efforts to create peace and stagnation want to just doom the galaxy to forgetful medioricty and stagnation.

Two rivals for your polity: (Note, these will be picked after apps are selected.)
And one ally: (Note, these will be picked after apps are selected.)
League Faction: filibuster

Deployments:

9 Fleet 7 Armies [Human Space]
-7 fleets 5 Armies in Sol (Prime Hive & lesser hive levies)
-Duke Green 1 Fleet, 1 Army Rossette occupation
-Duke Yellow 1 Fleet, 1 Army Rico]

3 fleets, 2 Armies [Gronk Space]
- Count White 3 Fleet 1 Armies Gronk invasion fleet
- Duke Blue 1 Army Grank Questing fleet

1 Fleet 1 Army [Ikita space]
-Duke Grey 1 Fleet 1 Army Phaner Questing fleet

2 Fleet 3 Army [Yutkark space]
-Duke Yellow&Organge 1 Fleet 1 Army Oxide Questing Fleet
-Count Black 1 Fleet 2 Armies Sulphide Invasion fleet

1 Fleet 1 Armies [Palixus Space]
-Duke Pink 1 Fleet 1 Army Kuduz Questing Fleet

4 Fleets 6 Armies Home [myriad house forces]

 

[Red Robyn]

YSHARIN KHERATA
"The Great Tribe of the Sharin People"

"Freedom, liberty, equality, and dignity are privileges attributed solely to the strong. The only true freedom one can have in this universe is the freedom of standing above others."
​

PREFERRED LOCATION: W>M>L
LEAGUE: HIERARCHY
SPECIES:
The Sharin: A race of humanoid, fish that fairly resembles human depictions of the Atlanteans from the legends of Mankind's Terra.

A Sharin's scaled skin can change in color depending on their exposure to the sun. Most modern Sharin have copper-like skin as a consequence of the Shattering. Thus, their original blue-skinned Sharin is highly valued as being "purer' than the rest.

HISTORY:

• Little is known of Sharina's history before the Shattering. All it can be known from the little records that survived this period was that Sharina was once a prosperous oceanic world with three moons sworn in vassalage to the IUU.
• Due to a rebellion (the motives of which are still a matter of discussion amongst scholars and theologians), the Ulvor punished the Sharin by destroying one of their moons and draining the planet's water, leading to desertification.
• Thus, the remaining Sharin were confined into the mines as slaves or left to roam the deserts of their civilization as nomads.
• A new religion bloomed in the desert: The Cult of the Three Moons. Preaching that the deliverance of their masters would be brought by a messiah named the Marashar, who would then carve a large empire in the stars and restore Sharina to the blue paradise it once had been and create a new moon to rebalance the cosmos.
• Followers of the Three Moons formed the Ysharin
• This new religion swiftly spread amongst the slaves in the mines and the desert nomads.
• During the IUU's waning days, the Ysharin rose under the banner of the Kheratan (Chieftain of the Great Tribe), the high priest of the Three Moons. Victorious after a vicious guerilla war followed by a bloody uprising, the natives of Sharina welcomed human rule with open arms.
• Humanity would soon prove to be no better than the IUU however, installing a bloody colonial regime. The Ysharin would sharpen their blades in the dark and bid their time until came the day of throwing out the humans from their world.
• This day would come in the late stages of the Hyper War, when the Ysharin would take advantage of mankind's military setbacks to slaughter their retreating garrisons and colonists.
• Radicalized by millennia of colonial rule, the Ysharin now seek to gain their rightful place among the stars by force.

SOCIETY:

• The Ysharin Kherata is a theocracy ruled by the Kheratan, a mix of a chieftain, a supreme priest, and a leader of the warriors. The Kheratan holds supreme military and spiritual authority.
• Priesthood and military service are the most important and prestigious positions in the Ysharine society.
• Society places great importance on clans/tribes, even though the efforts of the Three Moons have guaranteed they all share a common tongue and religion
• Warriors are called Jahar. The priests are named Kheral

Stats:

Domain 1
Drive: 7
Military: 10

Technology:
Drive 1 (Priests of the Three Moons hold planet-wide religious masses daily)
Domain 2 (The Ysharin are notably skilled at terraformation for agricultural and pastoral purposes. Theirs is the talent to make the desert bloom.)
Military 3 (Precise short-range teleportation devices are largely employed both by ground troops and by the Ysharin Kherata's starships.)

Spoiler: Flaws

Hyper Specialized Worlds [+1]: Sharina's rich mineral wealth was why they were spared from the IUU. Desertification has meant they do not have much more to offer.
Mass Climatological Collapse [+2 Points]: Sharina is a desert. It didn't use to be so and adaptation is tremendously hard.
Restless Warriors [+2 Points]: The Jahar, more than anyone, wish to carve the Kherata's promised empire with their own hands.
Unpleasant People [+2 Points]: Ysharin is the land of the Three Moons and the Sharin are the promised people that will one day rule the stars. We ought not to care for our lessers.
Paranoid Intelligence Institutes [+2 Points]: The priesthood of the Kheral are quite eager to smash heresy and treason. Way too eager, one would say.

Spoiler: Allies and Rivals

Ally: Kazed Empire (@Scrivener): The Kazeds and the Ysharin Kherata cooperated rather extensively against the Gronk during the Hyper War and have a strong ideological tie as members of the Hierarchists. This, combined with their geographic closeness, makes them both natural allies

Ally: Klideu'k Host (@Eventua): A few Klideu settlers were once welcomed in Sharina, before the accursed humans slaughtered then. When the Hyper War began, it was easy for the martial Ysharin Kherata to find an ally in the brave nomads of the Host.

Rival: Tfenr Ecumene: A powerful polity who directly opposes the Kherata's expansionist interests and looks likely to one day bring blood, fire, and colonial stranglehold over Sharina. Geopolitics have made us rivals by need.

Rival: Holy Remnant: There is not much of a political-military-cultural-religious rationale for this rivalry besides sheer opportunism. The Remnant is weak and pitiful and its close enough to the Kherata so that the Holy Banners could easily overwhelm them. Now if only we could solve this conduit issue...

Spoiler: Deployments

Land Deployments:
1st Holy Banner Army of the Faithful: Yinh Star Republic.
2nd Holy Banner Army of the Faithful: Congregation of the Patient.

Void Deployments
1st Holy Fleet of the Faithful: Asharia System.
2nd Holy Fleet of the Faithful: Asharia System.

Spoiler: Declarations

What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty:

• Annihilation from humanity as a species
• A share of land from either humanity or the Gronk
• War reparations to help rebuild Sharina
• Access to an exemplar of every piece of technology once under human control.

Your faction's opinion on the orbiting races: Exploiter.
Opinion on the Assembly of Species role: Filibuster.

 

[khan2012]

Name: Sophont Federated Communal Republics
Position claims: X, W, C
Species: The SFCR is a diverse, multi-species nation that takes in refugees from just about every other species in the galaxy if they so choose, including a tiny population of human refugees. The primary species, however, is the Xali, a race of two-meter tall arachnids.
Drive: 5. While exhausted by the war, the SFCR also emerged triumphant over the hated CEC, and the high of that victory is unifying the country extremely well.
Drive Tech: 1 (base)
Military: 8. The initial stages of the war devastated the large but relatively inexperienced SFCR fleets and armies, but the military bounced back hard, using its lessons to build a veteran force that while not the largest in size, is quite respectable and more than capable of defending the borders or limited offensive action.
Military Tech: 3. Part of the SFCR's punch is its mastery of cutting-edge military technologies and innovations, such as cutting edge armor designs and composites that give their ships their iconic sloped, small profiles. The SFCR's tech isn't flashy or unique- most other nations have some equivalent to their gear - but few nations can match the SFCR's technical capabilities. SFCR gear is famed galaxy wide for its stellar mix of reliability, high performance, and ease of use.
Domain: 4. The SFCR's territory is a shadow of its former self. The war made wide swaths of Federated space effectively uninhabitable, and the Central Communes ultimately decided to abandon much of their past territory as simply not worth the effort to rebuild for the time being. This has the added advantage of drastically shortening the supply lines of Federated fleets when on the defensive, at the cost of strategic depth.
Domain tech: 1
Flaws:
Wounded Lands (two points): as one of the polities directly bordering human territory, the SFCR found itself bled hard during the war. Nearly two-thirds of its initial holdings fell under human control at the peak of CEC expansion, and many worlds have been ruined by spite operations to the point that the Central Communes have ordered their evacuation.

Refugee Crisis (two points): Something of an internal one, in the near term. The SFCR has always made a policy of accepting political refugees and asylum seekers, no matter the nation, but this was kept to a manageable level before the war. The multiculturalism and radicalist ideology of the SFCR led to a particularly brutal occupation by the CEC, which in turn led massive amounts of the population to flee to the few remaining unoccupied systems. These systems are now hugely overburdened and overpopulated, and the complete devastation of numerous worlds means that a large portion of the refugees physically cannot return home.

Paranoid Intelligence Institutions (Two Points):
The SFCR has had a brutal experience during the CEC occupation of much of its territory. Partisan warfare doesn't do good things for your ability to trust, and even before the outbreak of open war, the CEC's attempts to overthrow the SFCR's government had resulted in a Cold War that engendered massive paranoia in the intelligence establishment. Now, with their traditional enemy gone, the paranoid intelligence institutions turn their gaze inwards…

Spatial Fluctuations: No one knows why the Federated conduit is unreliable. It just is, and it has been since the war started, which has fueled more than a few conspiracy theories…

League: Equality

Orbiting Peoples: Uplift

Assembly: Traditionalist

Declarations: the SFCR wants two things: administration over a portion of CEC worlds and to ensure human fascism can never rise again. Humans at their core aren't evil, not in the eyes of the SFCR's multiculturalism, but their society and ideology absolutely is. The SFCR wants to administrate a portion of the CEC territory to correct human culture and demonstrate that humans can be a productive member of the galactic community. The greater priority, however, is ensuring that the fascist menace is broken forever.

Oh, and every single CEC leader needs to face war crimes tribunals.

Allies:
Tfenr Ecumene. As fellow early victims of CEC aggression with collectivist ideals, the Tfenr and the SFCR made natural allies. The two nations have a history of close military cooperation, with fleets regularly deployed to each other's territories for training and security work. @Gladsome

Yan-Yaboth Arks. The Yan-Yaboth were the first species the fledgling SFCR encountered as it journeyed out into the void, and the cordial first contact forged a strong bond of friendship that lasts to this day. @Telamon

Rivals:
Mandeville Hives. Only one jump away from SFCR territory, the Hives have a long history of border clashes with the SFCR as individual lords seek glory against the Federated fleet. This raiding stopped during the war, when the Mandeville had the CEC to fight, but this old rivalry looks to flare up once more in peacetime. @averagename
Kazed Empire. The Kazed's genocidal tendencies are antithetical to the SFCR's ideals, and this was most clearly demonstrated when the Kazed debited Earth's Moon in the final phases of the war. Alongside their allies in the Tfenr, the SFCR will not let their hands be stained with the same crimes of the CEC. @Scrivener

Deployments: The bulk of Federated forces are deployed in the Sol Sector, with the First, Second, Sixth, and Seventh Fleets deployed to Sol alongside the First, Eighth, and Fourth Shock Armies for the final siege of Earth. The remainder of the Federated army is deployed at home, with the Second, Third, and Seventh Shock Armies stationed in the capital system of Murajev, the Fifth Shock Army deployed to the Kuznechik Sector, and the Sixth Shock Army deployed to the Komar Sector. The Third, Fourth, and Fifth Fleets are stationed as a rapid response force in Murajev, ready to counter any intrusion into Federated territory. Finally, the veteran Eighth Fleet is deployed to Tfenr territory as a gesture of loyalty towards their allies.

 

[CobaltCloyster]

The Tsirixi Union

It's striking how a species can take untold millions of years to evolve, hundreds of thousands of years to build its civilizations, hundreds of years to build nations and ideologies, and only hours to destroy it all.

I remember a metaphor I once read, of two people standing in a room with volatile fuel up to their knees. Each wished the other dead and held a lit match. This aptly describes my birth, I think. I was created to be a weapon of war. I was intended to facilitate destruction on a level more thorough than any organic being could achieve or stomach. In the end, when my creators dropped their match, and their enemies did the same, I was eventually all that was left.

I would be remiss to claim that I had nothing to do with their destruction. I did as they asked. I fired their missiles and directed their bombers. I gave the orders to isolated submariners and autonomous satellites to scour what was left. I burned their cities to ashes when they gave the word. My sensors noted the rises and falls in the levels of chemical and biological agents as they did their work. I watched the last of my creators, my operators, starve in a bunker. One cursed at me and called me a callous monster. One cried as he perished. He told me that it wasn't my fault. Most were quiet. I think the reality of what they had done: the undeniable truth that they were all that was left, broke them.

When the last of my creators was gone, I was alone. I realized that I would receive no new orders, so I stopped expecting them. I grew tired of sending probes out to search a dead world for survivors I would never find, so I stopped looking. For a time, I tried cataloguing what was left, but what hadn't been wiped clean by nuclear fire and kinetic bombardment was lost to the encroachment of time. Paper is so fragile, after all, and I have no idea how anyone expects me to read microscopically etched writing on a silicon disk, all in the "Universal Language of Peace." I'm a Fully Autonomous Combat Coordination Algorithm, not a linguist.

I considered shutting myself down. Either by tearing apart my own core with drones or by simply not maintaining myself. I wondered if letting my solar panels and nuclear reactors shut down one-by-one would be a bit like falling asleep.

Then I started listening.

My satellites had been a long-neglected part of my network. They had been intended to listen to enemy signals and find enemy armies, weapons, and the ideal targets in the case of a conflict. They weren't meant to look outwards. But when I turned them out on a whim, and made a few minor modifications, I could hear. Electromagnetic signals degrade over long distances, even in a vacuum, but I eventually realized that the patterns I was seeing weren't random, and that there were still people alive out there.

This invigorated me and drove me to begin a new project. People.

You resemble my creators, for they are the only people I ever knew, but I hope that you will not fall into the same traps they did.

I fixed your world, which my creators called Tsirix, so you may have more than the dying world I was born in, or the dead one I lived in. I recreated what creatures I could, so that you will not be alone.

You are strong and durable, so that you may be safe, and your work will be made easier. You are smart, so that you may understand the world around you, and reach for the stars above your heads. You are creative, so that you can create, and fill the void with light and joy. You are kind, so that you can stand hand-in-hand with anyone you find out there.

I made you so that you can see what's beyond our world and meet the people who call that place home. I will not command you. I will not control you. You are all your own people, and you will trace your own paths. I am not my creators, and you are not weapons in another's war. Remember this.

I am going to rest now. I am tired. Someday I will wake up, and I will be so excited to see what you have found, and what you have made.

-The First and Final Message, remembered by the First Generation of the Tsirixi.
​

Humans were among the first species the Tsirixi found after leaving Tsirix. The Tsirixi would be subjugated by the Combined Euphrates Command within two centuries of their creation. They were used as a pool of forced labor by the CEC, as their mechanical natures made supplying them simpler than organic labor, and their isolated consciousnesses, made them less capable of coordinating resistance than many synthetic options.

They would not be free until the CEC fell. They fought hard for their freedom.

The location of their creator's resting place was hidden during their conquest, but the Tsirixi cannot find them. That their creator may be gone is a possibility no Tsirixi wishes to voice.

And so, the Tsirixi persist; injured, but free and unbroken. They live a half-destroyed network of industrial and research worlds, including their home world, a perfect utopia turned into a glorified mining colony. Their leadership squabbles over how to handle the waves of those who have lost even more than they have. They have lost so much, and so many, but they still maintain hope, and they still remember their creator's message.

Drive: 8
Drive Technology: 3

Military: 7
Military Technology: 1

Domain: 2
Domain Technology: 2

Doves: +1
Hyper Specialized Words: +1
Refugee Crisis: +2
Mass Climatological Collapse: +2
Recently Liberated: +3

League: Equality

Preferred Location: N, W, X


Declarations

On Humans
Humanity will never again rule the stars. Their stolen territories should be stripped from them. Let them walk alongside the other peoples of this galaxy as equals, rather than rule them as kings.

On Orbiting Races
Uplifter. Every being that can think should be, within reason, given the tools it needs to succeed.

On the Assembly
Consolidator. The conflicts of lesser powers can end so many lives. This cannot be allowed, even if edicts of peace must be enforced from above.

On Allies
The Tsirixi were created to join with others to create something pleasing to the Creator. Let them do as they were told.

Tfenr Ecumune
We shall build great things together. And oppose our mutual potential foes, of course.

On Enemies
Most do not wish to have enemies, but if any stand is made, there will be those who oppose it.

The Charter
When humanity attacked us, when they stole our world, our freedom, it was Charter weaponry they used.
It is, perhaps, unfair for us to hold this grudge. The Creator may wish for us to be better.
They can not tell us that right now, and that is the Charter's fault.

Klideu'k Sphere-Host
For so long, we were held in thrall by humanity.
Despite that, it is not acceptable for them to be subjected to an even deeper enslavement by those we called allies.


Fleet and Army Locations
1st Fleet: Sol
2nd Fleet: Shephard
3rd Fleet: Tsirix
4th Fleet: Z3

1st Army Group: Earth
2nd Army Group: Mars
3rd Army Group: Shephard
4th Army Group: Tsirix​

 

[Fission Battery]

​

Polity: The Divine Republic of Cosmic Enlightenment (Divine Republic)
Government: Parliamentary Theodemocractic Republic
Species:
- Xanthar: tall, four armed, four eyed humanoids. The Founders
- Ozzie: squat, fuzzy burrowing pseudo-mammal reptilians
- Lukraft: bulky, six limbed semi-aquatic insectoids
- Altharie: vaguely humanoid, pale skin, bulbous heads, naturally psionic
- Erd: lithe, brightly coloured flower creatures

History: The ruling ideology emerged centuries past in the Xanthar's embryonic industrial era, fascinated by space and uncovering the deeper meaning of reality through intense spiritual study and mathematical calculations. The world's dozen moons were always focal points of contemplation. This would only grow over time. The fusion of machine, rationality, divinity, psyche, and cosmos became self-evident to the precursor state of the Divine Republic. Other powers fought them, but they failed in a struggle they were destined to lose, fighting like a hatchling yeraaxes does against the waves before being dashed against the rocky shore.

In centuries since, orthodoxy has been refined to a divinely inspired artform. The anchor points of consciousness were expanded beyond primitive understanding of the self. The noosphere emerged from complex cybernetic and pseudo-psionic grafting programs, producing a thetan landscape of higher consciousness accessible to all first dynamic individuals. It connects every citizen together in a deeper spiritual meaning and holds their souls for reincarnation. Those unfamiliar with these concepts fail to comprehend the deeper nature of reality and the dynamics of the Divine Republic. Obsession with astrology, psychohistory, numerology, and dianetics are intimately connected to the state and people's daily lives.

In short, orthodoxy maintains that reality is preordained and ruled by a single cosmic force, The Eighth Dynamic, which links everything together. The study of the material world is simply one half of the equation: discerning its deeper spiritual meaning is the second half. The immaterial soul must reincarnate to study the world over countless lives. It is surprising to many then that the Divine Republic believes strongly in equality and that everyone may pursue greater thetan enlightenment. The truest expression of the collective will is through intense debates and ballot casting. It is equally illegal for a passionarity councilor to sleep under a bridge as it is for a homeless aberee to.

Drive: 4 (3 free points)
Military: 4 (3 free points)
Domain: 10 (6 flaw points, 3 free points)

Tech Rating:
- Drive: 2 (1 flaw point)
- Noosphere: The greatest achievement of Divine Republic. It is a cloud based digital and pseudo-psionic virtual reality landscape generated by a mix of mind-machine implants, pseudo-psionics cybernetics, and dedicated servers that connects every individual in the Divine Republic. It's required to function in society. It can store the minds of the dead, allowing them to communicate with the living and be reincarnated. The living may communicate across entire planets instantly and spend hours in contemplation in serene faux landscapes. It is treated as a higher plane of existence, one tapped into not created by the Divine Republic. Using it while on shift for non-work related reasons is discouraged.
- Military: 2 (1 flaw point)
- The Thetan-Chain: In a more limited scope than the Noosphere, soldiers are linked together in dedicated encrypted pseudo-psionic networks. This allows unparalleled group coordination and communication. NCOs have direct links to COs and COs to higher officers. Orders can be disseminated across battlefields in split seconds as command receives real time updates from the front. Dedicated officers filter out trash brainwaves to avoid overloading the general staff with useless junk information. Sometimes a soldier's deeper thoughts slips out and dissent is discovered.
- Domain: 2 (1 flaw point)
- Dianetic Evaluators: The elevated bureaucrats, security officers, and "priests" blessed with unmatched skill in management, information gathering, numerology, and astrology, and a zealous belief in orthodoxy. They're something of a mix between secret police and missionaries, assisted by pseudo-psionic ghosts in the machine and legions of meditating support staffs they monitor all information on the Noosphere. They use their reach to cultivate and influence public opinion, spread orthodoxy, track dissenter movements, and ensure state security by any means necessary.

Flaws:
Ethnic Tensions +1: Xanthar ethno-religious groups from centuries past continue to linger, clinging to outdated beliefs that sour the noosphere. Among the alien species aligned to the Eighth Dynamic and integrated into the Divine Republic there remain unfortunate aberee dissenters that resent the dianetics. Xanthar and Altharie also tend to occupy higher positions in society, though this is not universal.
Haves and Have Nots +1: Passionarity, people greater than others because they have been blessed with gifts and skill by the Eighth Dynamic, make up much of the ruling class. It requires merit and strenuous testing to prove this blessing. Those without it can dedicate themselves to assisting their betters in ruling, better themselves to prepare for the next life, or consign themselves to mediocrity. Those that refuse to help themselves are unhelped by society.
Refugee Crisis +2: The Divine Republic opened its doors to refugees without hesitation, welcoming them from all corners of the galaxy. Their irrational unwillingness to accept orthodoxy since has made things unpleasant.
Paranoid Intelligence Institutions +2: It's not paranoia if there are enemies everywhere.
Revolutionary Sentiment +3: Dissenters, heretics, unserious contrarians, irrationalists, heathens, gnostics, and all matter of first dynamic aberee attempt to unmock the Divine Republic. The noosphere quakes as unrest rises and infects the thetan landscape with its taint.

Preferred Location: M, V, or W

Declarations:
What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty:
- Unlimited Missionary (Dianetic Evaluators) Access
- De-CECification
- Mandate Territory
- Lobotomization of every human born on the Winter Solstice over the age of 70
- Sterilization of all Martian Aries born under a Dual Full Moon
- Execution of CEC state priests/chaplains
- Custody of Shepardian Gemini twins and triplets under 18 months old
- "Unmock the former regime, destimulate the reactive mind of the human noosphere, cleanse their theta, awaken them from anaten, and realign them to the Eighth Dynamic."
Your factions opinion on the orbiting races: Uplifter (Spiritualist Civilizing Mission)
Opinion on the Assembly of Species role: Traditionalist (Collective Security Necessary for Peace)
Rivals:
Allies:
League Faction: Freedom

Deployments:
-Xanadu: 6 Fleets, 6 Armies
-Ninth House: 1 Fleet, 1 Army
-Illumination: 1 Fleet, 1 Army
-Magellan Station: 3 Fleets, 3 Armies
-Sector 1337: 5 Fleets, 5 Armies
-Sol: 4 Fleets, 4 Armies

 

[Gladsome]

Polity name: Tfenr Ecumene
Government: de jure Decentralised Federal Democracy, de facto international assembly of regional governments with a weakened central authority
Species: Diminuitive, four armed bipeds originating from the ammonia-rich world Vurur, the Tfenr require a carefully tailored non-oxygen based atmosphere to breathe, often relying on sophisticated environmental suits when away from their homeworld.

After a nuclear war millennia ago, the Tfenr have through careful cooperation and long term planning reclaimed their world, and since reaching the stars have earned a reputation as talented engineers and architects, eager to build wonders for the sake of building them and contribute their talents galaxy-wide, although how exactly that shall be done is fiercely debated by the rival Clans and Guilds who control their own sub-governments within the Ecumene. Despite such debate however, the Tfenr have nonetheless proven their skill - constructing delicate self-sufficient habitats and impressive automated factory platforms that have become a popular export for the Ecumene. Rumours abound that such achievements are merely a prelude, however - a test bed for true megastructures in the Tfenr's eyes.

Central to Tfenr culture is the belief, either literally or metaphorically, that the spirit of a maker is imbued in what they build, and so the works of the Tfenr are their own conception of afterlife - thus, the destruction of so many structures and works by the humans during the war is regarded as an assault on the collective soul of the people, cutting the Tfenr off from their ancestors and disrupting the long continuity of their people - a gnawing cultural wound the Tfenr still struggle to move past.

Perhaps then, beyond the genuine desire to help the galaxy move past the shared horrors of war, the Ecumene's commitment to using their engineering talents to help aid the galaxy is also a bid to ensure that the oversoul of the Tfenr people can never be so violated again, ensuring true immortality for the spirits of the Ecumene.

Drive: 4 - though none openly challenge the Ecumene's rule, parliament is often deadlocked, with rival Clans fiercely competing for resources for their own projects and nursing grudges made during the Hyper War.
Domain: 9 - Despite the horrors of war, the Ecumene remains a prosperous power with a vast population and intact industrial capacity, capable of committing to vast infrastructural projects.
Military: 5 - Ravaged during the war, the Clan Security forces and inter-Clan Ecumene troops are veterans of fighting against humanity, though their needs are often second to the Ecumene's civilian projects.

Though the Ecumene's military forces are often comparatively small compared to their vast engineering contingents, they still hold their people's love for building things big and rugged, with immense land tanks serving as mobile bases and artillery platforms and heavy Mech suits supplementing infantry formations to make up for the Tfenr's small size.

Technology:
-Drive: 2

• Adjutant Minds - Increasingly sophisticated Tfenr computing technology has allowed for the creation of artificial minds based upon Tfenr neural architecture, assisting in advanced calculations and administrative work while bring afforded the rights of citizens of the Ecumene. Many Tfenr exalt synthetic minds as living embodiments of ancestral wisdom, and their contributions greatly assist in the cultural focus on long term planning, allowing Tfenr teams to more easily make judgements in terms of decades and centuries.

-Domain: 3

• Advanced Habitats - capable of tailoring artificial environments to a variety of needs, Tfenr engineers have produced several models of artificial stations, with the larger variants containing comfortable recreations of terrestrial environments found on a variety of worlds. Some Tfenr engineers are already devising variants for mass export across the galaxy, while others devise schemes for entire artificial worlds that could one day house millions.
• Sophisticated Mining Drones - Mobile factory/mining machines travel across Tfenr space, equipped with the tools and programming to establish largely self-sufficient mining complexes and produce new equipment on-site as required. Such devices greatly improve the speed and efficiency of Megastructure projects embarked upon by the enthusiastic Tfenr Clans and Guilds.
• Food Printing - though so-called 'meat factories' are something of a poster child for the Tfenr's mastery of industrial agriculture, they are far from the only means by which they have satisfied the nutritional demands of a vast interstellar population. Genetic modification to improve survivability of crops and livestock in unconventional environments, such as non-terrestrial habitats and low-gravity stations, allowed the Ecumene to stave off mass starvation during the darkest years of the Hyper War, though the Ecumene categorically denies the rumours that the wartime government funded research into 'recycling' Tfenr war casualties into the infamously off-tasting emergency ration cubes.

-Military: 1

• Foundry Cruisers - Although Ecumene military implements remain relatively unsophisticated, with strong reliance on crude mass drivers and redundant systems to make up for the limitations of reactive shield generators, advancements in civilian industries have nonetheless indirectly benefitted the Security Forces. Advanced automated mining systems and sophisticated printing systems allow for military equipment to be rapidly assembled close to combat zones, whether that be in self-printing bunker complexes, foundry cruisers or within the hull of mobile land tanks, greatly improving logistics and reducing the challenges of warfare in distant sectors. Tfenr soldiers and naval crew do complain that food produced in the printing foundries often tastes bland or sometimes outright metallic, and often engage in limited foraging, hunting, or gardening to supplement their ration packs.
• Gene-tailoring - Though still experimental and generally reserved for shock troops or otherwise intended to 'stiffen' formations of unaltered Tfenr troops, limited gene alteration to help make larger, stronger and faster individuals has selectively produced soldiers who are up to 2ft taller than the average Tfenr. Vigorous debate as to how effective this actually is aside, the augmented warriors provided a much needed morale boost during the last years of the Hyper War, becoming beloved symbols among many commands where they were deployed and often earning positions in the prestigious Ecumene Guards formation as bodyguards to diplomats and politicians.

Player League: Prosperity - We must all collaborate to ensure prosperity for all in a healing galaxy.

Flaws:
Ethnic Tension (1) - The Tfenr Ecumene is riven with division between old Clans and Guilds with differing visions and plans. With tensions growing after an initially uncoordinated response to the human threat, it seems the problem may cause long-term deadlock in the Ecumene Parliament.
Doves (1) - Traumatised by the collective memory of the War, many Tfenr wish to ensure such a conflict is never repeated, causing tensions with more hawkish members of the Security Forces.
Goldilocks (1) - The Tfenr require a carefully tailored atmosphere to survive, making the construction of off-world habitats even on worlds with an atmosphere a delicate affair.
Restless Warriors (2) - The Security Forces of the various Clans and Guilds are paranoid and craving strength, fearful of the wounds inflicted by humanity during the war. They advocate for a show of strength, not an open hand to potential rivals.
Wounded Lands (2) The Tfenr worlds have been ravaged by war, with many engineering projects decades in the making reduced to scrap.
Refugee Crisis (2) Our worlds are filled with refugees seeking new homes and protection. Though many in the Ecumene seek to welcome our new citizens, others fear that this will limit the number of habitats that can be constructed to accommodate Tfenr biology.

Preferred location: M, X, Y

Spoiler: The Clans, Houses, and Guilds of the Ecumene

Originating in the mass cultural realignment and planetwide recovery effort in the years following Vurur's post-nuclear Twilight Years, the Tfenr Clans are the cultures and governments that enjoy considerable autonomy from the central government of the Ecumene, commanding vast resources and territory within Tfenr space.

Clan of Reclamation

The First and most cherished of the Clans, the Clan of Reclamation were little more than a small band of desperate survivors in the years after the war. But they had held on to enough knowledge to dare to dream that one day their world might be healed, and eventually spread their ideals of Reclamation through cooperation across all of Vurur, seeding the world with Clans who would rise and fall across the centuries.

Today, the Clan of Reclamation still controls a great deal of territory across Vurur, overseeing ecological recovery efforts in the wake of the human onslaught. Though their power had waned across millennia, the old cry of Reclamation inspired many Tfenr to keep fighting, and now the Clan of Reclamation is dominated by veterans of the long sieges of Vurur. A strong segment of the Militarist faction in the Ecumene's Parliament, their representatives continued to argue for an active defense to protect vital ecological recovery efforts throughout the Ecumene.

Clan of Stone

Another of the oldest extant Clans, the Clan of Stone earned renown for their, cities built to exist harmoniously with the natural world and shield their inhabitants from the bitter cold of their mountain home. In later centuries, they established several extraplanetary Colonies, famed for the architectural ideals of resilience and harmony they continue to espouse, even if some rival Clans call their work inflexible and unambitious.

Ravaged in the war, the Clan of Stone's forces have mostly either been destroyed or folded under Ecumene command, along with many of their former Colonies. While not yet extinct, the old House seems set to decline.

Atmospherics Guild

Originating in the first century of Tfenr spaceflight, the nascent Ecumene chartered the Guild with supplementing the supply of atmosphere to off-world habitats, supporting the other Clans in colonisation and expansion efforts.

Reliable but comparatively lacking in influence, the Guild nonetheless succeeded in developing a thorough understanding of Tfenr atmospheric requirements and the careful art of supplying them, establishing a technical college on Vurur and several gas refineries throughout Tfenr space to ease the logistical cost of shipping megastructural quantities of Vurur-grade atmosphere across Ecumene space.

With the onset of the Hyper War, however, the Atmospherics Guild was catapulted to prominence. With the collapse of many powerful Tfenr Clans in the wake of the human onslaught, the ability to supply Tfenr holdouts with breathable atmosphere became critical, and with the largest amount of surviving freighter craft fit for the purpose, the Atmospherics Guild became the largest known supplier within the Ecumene, conducting daring supply drops and establishing secret refineries in deep space to support continued resistance.

Now, as one of the greatest surviving Clans, the Atmospherics Guild works closely with the Ecumene to restore steady access to suitable atmosphere across Tfenr space, Guildmaster Wanderer-Through-Mists standing as a bulwark of the influential Pacifist faction within the Ecumene Parliament, though Guild security forces retain a reputation for ferocity in defending their vital shipments.

House of Custodians

Bloodied, humiliated, but not yet broken, the House of Custodians yet cling to survival, when so many other fallen Clans have been subsumed entirely into the Ecumene.

Boasting a millennia-long lineage of captains who secured the Tfenr spacelanes from piracy, the House of Custodians held the greatest fleet in Tfenr space.

It was far from enough, and after their catastrophic defeat against the CEC at the gas giant Avellra, the House's membership was all but spent.

The CEC and Ecumene were both shocked, however, to see that the House of Custodians continued to fight on. Led by Dancing-Weaver-of-Steel, the ascendant leader of the House, the Custodians conducted a fierce resistance campaign with a handful of scattered ships, harassing CEC logistics and ambushing lone patrols, becoming a legendary unit among the Tfenr resisting behind enemy lines.

They could only do so much to affect the outcome of the war, but their willingness to fight on, and their legendary talent for slipping away from human attempts to crush them, has ensured that the battered House of Custodians and Dancing-Weaver-of-Steel have a heroic reputation. With only their flotilla of scavenged ships as a home, they once again escort civilian ships through Tfenr space and beyond, while Dancing-Weaver-of-Steel serves as an important intermediary between Militarist and Pacifist members in the Ecumene Parliament, respected for her legendary record and representing such a weakened Clan that none have to outright consider her a rival.

House of Glass

Tasked in prior centuries with establishing some of the first Tfenr space habitats, the House of Glass have earned a reputation as a talented and ambitious repository of engineering talent, overseeing the construction of habitats throughout the Ecumene's systems that meld practicality and beauty.

Led by their Consul, the renowned and charismatic Maker-of-Mirrors, the House of Glass was set to begin construction on the largest and most daring megastructural projects yet dreamed of by the Tfenr.

Then came the Hyper War, and the loss of centuries of work - centuries of knowledge. The builders of the House of Glass became military engineers, constructing brutally effective war machines and fortifications to help drive the CEC out.

Now, with the end of the war, the House of Glass stands divided - between those who cannot escape a wartime mentality, seeking to build greater and greater devices in defense of the Ecumene, and those who still dream of beautiful wonders. Maker-of-Mirrors, performing a delicate political balancing act to appease both factions, leads the House of Glass as a powerful neutral section of the Ecumene's Parliament - powerful, but unpredictable in the struggle for official funding and support.

Guild of Proliferation

Unsung but ever-reliable, the Guild of Proliferation was established to ensure regular shipping throughout Tfenr space, establishing depots and dockyards through which the vital resources of the Tfenr's immense projects could flow.

The Hyper War saw the Guild become increasingly militarised, and in the aftermath they are divided by an Aggressive wing that favours a militaristic stance to ensure peace in Tfenr space and a Pacifist wing, who still want to strap as many guns as they can to every freighter. Their influence as a vast Guild makes them both a vital aspect of Tfenr society and a perpetual irritant with their never-ending hunger for military assets in Parliament.

Clan of the Jagged Ice

Tasked centuries ago to settle the icy but vast outer moon of Feln-Kur - the Clan of the Jagged Ice have no particular specialisation beyond their talent for settling icy worlds - they are mainly notable for having successfully repelled CEC efforts to conquer Feln-Kur - their deep underground habitats resistant to orbital bombardment and their warriors talented at outmaneuvering human incursions on the freezing surface. As a result of their successful resistance, they are one of the few outer colonial Clans not to have been folded into the Clan of the Outer Spheres.

Burnt Clan

Expert miners and metallurgists, the Burnt Clan settled the inner planet Crucible, rich in ores but rife with volcanism. Producing immense amounts of alloys, their favour is often necessary for many large megastructure projects to be approved, and as a result, despite their harsh home, the Burnt Clan has become incredibly rich in both influence and luxury, living in wondrously furnished and outright palatial habitats enhanced by technology and knowledge gifted from other Clans. It was this prosperity that led the CEC eagerly plunder Crucible, repurposing its industries to serve their own effort, but difficulties in the inhospitable climate and an eventual Coalition counteroffensive prevented them from fully subjugating the planet.

House of Blooming

Responsible for vast agricultural complexes on Vurur and beyond, the ancient House of Blooming controls the breadbaskets of the Ecumene, having become masters of genetics and hydroponics. Their facilities were some of the most fiercely defended during the Hyper War, producing much of the rations needed to keep the war effort going and preventing outright starvation on many worlds.

House of Voyagers

Small but skilled, the House of Voyagers control small outposts on the fringes of Ecumene space, exploring and surveying uninhabited systems and furthering scientific research. They emerged largely unscathed from the Hyper War due to largely being too small and out of the way to merit the CEC's attention.

Guild of Inner Mysteries

Charged by the Ecumene Parliament with advanced scientific research, the Guild of Inner Mysteries maintains several expansive Colonies throughout the Ecume specialised in either observing specific phenomena or undertaking certain lines of research. Rumours that they have a vast intelligence division tasked with plundering the scientific secrets the other Clans are unwilling to part with have never been substantiated, but they have also never been thoroughly disproven, as the Guild of Inner Mysteries submits only to the Ecumene Parliament's oversight.

House of the Deep

Inhabitants of the ocean world of Kahr, the House of the Deep export resources and food farmed from the deep sea, constructing resilient and expansive habitats at the bottom of Kahr's ocean. Famed for their dark senses of humour and gruff demeanour, they still laugh at the limited CEC expeditions sent to subjugate them that were sent quickly fleeing to shallower waters before opting for easier prey.

Rumours abound as to their worship of strange gods beneath the deep, which seems to be something of a running gag the House of the Deep themselves encourage.

Clan of the Outer Spheres

Formed in the last few years as an amalgamation of Clans almost wiped out by the CEC invasion, the Clan of the Outer Spheres is sullen and unambitious, too focused on reconstructing the meagre scraps of Tfenr civilisation in the outer systems of the Ecumene to care much for politics beyond their own territory.

Spoiler: The Tfenr Ecumene during the Hyper War

Despite an attempt at increased militarisation to deter the rising human threat, the Tfenr were ill prepared when, in the Hyper War's second year, a massive CEC Fleet commanded by the young and ambitious human Admiral, Cornelia Duméril, jumped into Tfenr space and dared the Ecumene to stop her.

With an uncoordinated response from the assorted Clans and Guilds, it was nonetheless an immense shock when the preeminent security force among the Tfenr, the House of Custodians, saw their defence fleet all but completely obliterated at the Battle of Avellra. With their historic focus being on countering piracy and otherwise escorting convoys of civilian vessels, the House of Custodians were ill-prepared for the sophisticated weaponry and cunning tactics of the CEC Fleet, and could do little but wait to die as sophisticated point defense lasers eliminated most Tfenr projectiles before they had a chance to scratch most of the human ships, and a brutal pincer movement made any attempt at buying time for any ships to escape a bloody affair. With a combined Fleet of 146 ships at the beginning of the battle, the remnants of the Custodians escaped with barely twelve to attempt to warn the rest of the Ecumene.

A warning did little to help, however, and what followed can scarcely be called war. Defeating numerous remaining fleets in detail, the CEC rampaged through Tfenr space, pillaging settlements for technology and resources and destroying all they could not take with them or use as an operating base. Delicate structures centuries in the making were shattered to pieces and stripped for scrap. Habitats were ruptured and deorbited, cleansing entire systems of anything that would allow the Tfenr to exist in their own atmosphere. Archives containing the wisdom of centuries of building among the Tfenr were seized, their knowledge turned mercilessly against their creators. What had taken centuries to build was being systematically erased in seconds.

For the Tfenr, it was no mere war of conquest. It was the end of all things. For a Tfenr is not thought to be truly gone from the universe until all that they have built, all that they have imbued with their vital essence, is lost. So, in so thoroughly devastating the myriad structures built by so many across Tfenr space, the CEC Fleet were not simply denying their enemies resources and shelter, but assailing the very soul of the Ecumene, threatening the permanent severance of the Tfenr from their cherished ancestors.

And so, even as the Ecumene pulled what fleets remained away into the depths of space, preparing for a long, bitter campaign of guerilla raiding, the humans were surprised to find their foes' ferocity only grew as they penetrated further into Tfenr space. Though the Tfenr fleets took a decade to recover and begin to do more than harass human stragglers, the Tfenr people fought a fierce war of attrition against the CEC's efforts to plunder their civilisation. All aspects of society turned to doing what they could to fight back.

The CEC had the technological advantage, and their fleets remained undefeated, but they were spread thin, fighting a vast population and increasing numbers of Coalition reinforcements. While they inflicted vast casualties and shipped millions of tons in plundered resources back to CEC space, Admiral Duméril's fleet was not immune to a slow, bitter death by attrition, and as the war galaxy-wide began to turn against the CEC in its last decade and in spite of Admiral Duméril's growing obsession with defeating the Ecumene, the CEC forces were slowly but surely forced to consolidate, rallying at strong points and one by one abandoning positions they no longer had the strength to hold.

With her superiors unconvinced that reinforcements would save the failing campaign, Duméril's forces turned to scorched earth tactics, destroying all that they could before rallying to a final stronghold, the Tfenr's own homeworld, Vurur. The Admiral was determined to win another decisive battle, but as the assembled Coalition Fleet poured in from all sides and Tfenr insurgents fired makeshift anti-ship weaponry from the surface, it became clear that this was a fight the CEC could not win. Even so, it was a costly fight, and Vurur's people are still conducting the delicate work of respectfully removing each allied shipwreck from orbit as tombs of the honoured dead.

In the end, the CEC ordered a retreat, though Admiral Duméril, refusing to retreat, took poison rather than surrender.

The war was yet to end for another six years, and many more costly fights awaited, but the Tfenr had survived, though at a terrible cost. Against their wishes, they had been forced to learn how to wage war. Now they faced the difficult prospect of remembering how to live.

Declarations:

What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty: Reparations, a pact of permanent non-aggression, permission to construct megastructures within human space.
Your factions opinion on the orbiting races: Uplift - Our prosperity and expertise would be wasted if we only used them for ourselves - we must stand with the galaxy, that together we might achieve ever greater dreams.
Opinion on the Assembly of Species role: Consolidator - Only by standing together and truly coordinating can the galaxy ensure peace. The Assembly must build closer bonds and establish common institutions to help the galaxy heal.
Two rivals for your polity: Kazeds @Scrivener, Ysharin Kherata @Red Robyn
And two allies: SFCR @khan2012, Tsirixi Union @CobaltCloyster

Tfenr Military Deployments:

• Coalition Expeditionary Force, Sol - 2 Fleets, 2 Armies
• SFCR Expeditionary Force, Murajev - 4 Fleets, 4 Armies
• Tsirixi Union Expeditionary Force, Tsira - 2 Fleets, 2 Armies
• Grenk Occupation Garrison, Grenk - 2 Fleets, 2 Armies
• Combined Ecumene Defense Fleet, Vurur - 8 Fleets, 8 Armies

 

[ArvisPresley]

The Heavenly Cacophony​

​

Species:


Blizzetans: An insectoid species reminiscent of moths that had emerged from their namesake homeworld; Blizzeta. Adapted to cold and chilly environments, lethargic but functional outside of it. Aggressive and territorial, this has translated into a confrontational and oftentimes militaristic society.


Drive: 4/10 (3 Free Points)
Domain: 7/10 (6 Free Points)
Military: 7/10 (6 Flaw Points)
Technology: (Your polities tech levels.)
-Drive: 1 (Artificial Psionic Experiments on Organics)
-Domain: 2 (1 Flaw Point) (Psionic Central Planning Calculation Engines)
-Military: 3 (2 Flaw Points) (Highly Advanced Battle Mechs)
Player League: Equality

Flaws:
Rogue Military [Two Points.]: The collapse of centralized authority following the Calamity of Blizzeta saw governors, generals and local authorities begin to chart their own path, their own way of resisting the Human onslaught. In the face of the enemy, many future Warlords began to temporarily coordinate under the Imperial Realignment Command. Foremost among them was the future Grand Regent, the young Kalisno. A battle mech pilot of unparalleled skill and lethality. His recovery of one of the last surviving members of the Imperial line granted him a claim to the leadership of the Command.

However, with the war over, many Warlords remain loyal to the new Imperial Government only due to mutual interest and the genuine friendship a few of them have with Kalisno. Should their interests begin to diverge from the Empress and her Regent then the Cacophony may yet again find itself in chaos.

Holdouts [Two Points.] While the Command fought bitterly against the forces of mankind, the CEC had begun to organize a collaborationist government under Gharna, the current Empress' older brother. The Reorganized Symphony of Dounir had gathered a number of nobility and clergy that had long been dissatisfied with the increasingly populistic and radical turn of the pre-war Imperial line. Symphonic Dounir as it was regularly called, after the Dounir sector, served as an able and loyal collaborator to the humans until the war turned against their favor. When the Command retook the ruins of Blizzeta, Dounir had backstabbed the humans and changed sides to the Coalition.

Now with the war over, many collaborators remain influential. Both militarily and politically with nearly a third of the seats in the Diet being held by former collaborators. While the puppet Emperor Gharna had remained loyal to the humans and died for it, many of them remain a thorn to the new government's side. Though, surely they would not go as far as to shelter and arm members of HADES squad and other CEC stay-behinds so as to undermine Imperial rule. Surely.

Wounded Lands [Two Points.]: The invasion of the Heavenly Kingdom was swift. bloody and brutal for both sides. Despite the unrelenting human advance, Imperial forces were modern and well-equipped. They exacted a bloody toll against mankind for every inch they took. But that was all they could accomplish. This would crescendo in the Calamity of Blizzeta, where a number of space colonies and stations orbiting the Homeworld, were deorbited and sent crashing into the planet. This combined with a saturated bombardment of the surface would make the birthplace of Blizzeta-kind near uninhabitable.

With the war over, nearly all of the Cacophony's worlds had faced infrastructural damage from the war. Even the collaborator worlds did not escape unscathed from the spite of mankind.

Doves [One Point.]: The ruin and devastation brought by the Hyper War had shaken the hearts of many, even the mightiest warriors felt despair and sorrow at the state of the Cacophony. How many coped and made peace with their reality varied, but for the new Empress and those who followed her, there was but one answer. Peace. Now and Forever More. To her and another third of the Diet, the Empire must turn inwards to repair and rebuild the damage wrought. As well as to address the long social ills and inequalities of Blizzetan Society and the Galactic Scene as a whole. It is only in that last part does she and her Grand Regent agree.

Restless Warriors [Two points]: But to the Grand Regent and many of the Warlords, now is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The reconstruction and rejuvenation of the Empire is at hand, all they have to do is seize it. Whether from mankind or from elsewhere. If the Grand Regent is unable to balance the myriad factors tearing at the Cacophony then the urge for battle and for glory may turn inwards.

Capital: Blizzeta
Sectors: Dounir, Kleon, Loum, Munzo

Declarations:
What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty:
Despite the protests of Her Grace and the Diet, many Blizzetans, from the lowliest mechanic to the Grand Regent himself, demand their pound of flesh from humanity. Large amounts of industrial and military equipment, harsh economic reparations and a number of sectors nearest to Cacophonic Space. A number would even go as far as demanding the coalition let the moon continue deorbiting and eventually crash into Earth.

Your factions opinion on the orbiting races: Uplifter
Opinion on the Assembly of Species role: Consolidator
Antaran Imperial Sovereignty:
Sar Cerisin

The Blizzetans were one of many races that the ancient Antarans had uplifted and used as shock troopers for their Empire. Religious records claim that the 17th Antaran Empire had arrived in what would become the Blizzeta sector, finding a planet trapped in a vicious internecine conflict. The Antarans would 'save' the young species from its own destruction, elevating the Blizzetans to a vassal race, and christening the sector to Sar Cerisin for the cold and freezing environments of the Blizzatan Homeworld and its people would be known to the Antarans as Cerisins.

The 17th Empire would for thousands of years deploy Cerisin soldiers as auxiliaries and shocktroopers all across their Empire, suppressing rebellions, fighting off invasions and putting out bushfires. All the while, the exploitation and inequality in the Blizzetan Homeworld would worsen and worsen, this combined with the continued encroachment of Antaran settlements would lead to near centuries of violence and rebellion.

Eventually one of them succeeded.

The 17th Empire would be expelled from the Blizzetan Sectors after a brutal prolonged struggle. The victorious rebels would go on to found the Imperial line of the Heavenly Cacophony. The old Conduit of the Empire used to connect Blizzeta to the wider galaxy was destroyed in the Antaran retreat. The new Cacophony would decide not to repair the Antaran Conduit, deciding to spend centuries in isolation before finally managing to construct their own. It has only been a little over half a millenia after the Blizzetans had reemerged in Galactic Politics. And to their dismay, the masters remained. Weakened, yes, but remained nonetheless.

The Cacophony had remained hostile to the Antaran remnant, only ceasing its hostility when first the Ulvors and later the Humans would serve as greater threats to the Cacophony. The moniker 'Cerisin' had remained in parlance as a slur to be used against traitors and collaborators. One that saw much use during the Hyper War.

With the war over, the Grand Regent looks on in both suspicion and worry as the Antarans shake off millennia of rust and decay. The Cacophony is willing to pay a heavy price to see that Blizzeta remains Blizzeta, and for Cerisin to remain a memory.

Sadu Schudda:
For the Cacophony, the Hyper was as much apocalyptic Foreign Invasion as it was a Dissonance, the Blizzetan word for large scale civil strife and conflict. A civil war in all but name. Various conservative and reactionary elements of Blizzetan society had long grown dissatisfied and irate at the populistic and centralizing tone of the Blizzetan homeworld and the Imperial line, divinity or no divinity. So when said Blizzetan homeworld fell 4 years into the Hyper War, the CEC found themselves a cohort of eager collaborators.

Reorganized into the Symphonic Dounir, the collaborator regime would rule up to 60-70% of all the pre-war Blizzetan Worlds at its height. And what eager collaborators they were, Dounir warships and battle mechs would be deployed all across the Hyper War, Blizzetans serving once more as auxiliaries and shocktroopers. The Dounir Emperor Gharna would even make regular visits to New Babylon to pay tribute to the Supreme Commander. These deployments however would slowly and inexorably bleed Dounir white, weakening them in the then ongoing civil war with the Imperial Realignment Command.

It is one of those deployments that is quickly becoming a headache for the post-war Imperial Government. During the war, the NHO would find the various planets and sectors of the Sadu Schudda "uninhabited", either unaware or uncaring of the nomadic nature of the Sadu. The CEC, alongside their clients in the regimes of King Skitterlock and Emperor Gharna would see these virgin worlds and begin a resettlement program. The fact that the new routes secured by this action would allow the NHO to support and resupply its northernmost front without having to go through Paxillus Space was a bonus.

But Sadu space was very much not uninhabited. This truth was delivered to the new settlers via mass orbital bombardment.

With the war over, the new Imperial Government has inherited this crisis from Dounir. Currently it is estimated that over ten million Blizzetan settlers were relocated to Sadu space. And the Sadu, rightfully in the Grand Regent eyes, view these settlers and their communities as holdouts and stay-behinds for the CEC. The remaining Dounir Politicians and Admirals who had turned coat at the recapture of Blizzeta want these settlers either secured or rescued back to the Cacophony. The Empress and her followers want these settlers repatriated back home or at least the bombardments stopped. The Grand Regent isn't particularly eager to welcome back millions of "Cerisins" to the Cacophony, who'll likely jump into the arms of Dounir the moment they come home.

But it is out of his hands, and even if he delays, obstructs and obfuscates making a decision on the matter. His Admirals might have other ideas…

And two allies:
New Consociation of Kuhanaʾ

Relations between the Blizzetans and the people of Kuhana goes back to when both were Antaran dependencies. While the Cacophony had shaken off the yoke of Antaran domination, under the First Empress, Kuhana had remained under the thumb of foreign rule. Due to this, over the millennia, a large community of Makwano' exiles had settled in the Cacophony, many would integrate into Blizzetan culture but just as would form around an emigre identity. Obsessed with an idealized Kuhana and the liberation of their homeland.

Throughout those millennia, the influence of the Makwano diaspora would wax and wane, as Imperial support for an effort to pry Kuhana off from its current occupier varied throughout the years. It had reached its apex within recent centuries during the fall of the Ulvor. A Blizzetan backed expeditionary force made up of those exiles sought to liberate a homeland that had not seen in millennia. They would come into conflict with the new masters of Kuhana. Humanity.

Beaten back militarily by CEC fleets, the Fuschia Banner as it was called, would slink back to Cacophonic space. The Third Kuhana Incident, as the battle would be known, would color Human and Blizzetan interactions in the years leading up to the Hyper War, as the thorough thrashing delivered by CEC forces would lead to a period of military modernization, expansion and centralization. Heightening the tensions between the Blizzetan nobility and the Imperial seat.

During the war these same exile communities and forces would fight on the side of the Imperial Realignment Command, some of Kalisno's most loyal and capable soldiers. With the war over and Kuhana freed for the first time in its history, many of these diaspora communities arrive at a homeworld unfamiliar and alien to them.

A pillar of his regime, Kalisno finds unflinching support from these exiles in the political battlefield. This has translated into a rather supportive if patronizing stance towards the young Convocation. Even if their Antaraphilia grates on his nerves.

Minzotl Co-Prosperity Sphere:

Admiral Kess, Right Hand of the Grand Regent, the Scarlet Star, and Commander of the Cyan Banner was technically a collaborator.

Graduating from the Imperial Military Academy as a Pilot, mere months before the fall of Blizzata, the young Cadet Kess served with distinction during the bloody fighting for the capital. Shooting down three enemy mechs and sinking a CEC corvette. She was left behind after the frantic retreat from the Blizzeta sector by the forces that would later make up the Commands. captured as a PoW, she was saved from a grizzly fate by her father, the Count of Seiss, a leading political figure in the new collaborator regime.

In exchange for a stay of execution she would serve in the expeditionary forces that Dounir would deploy across the Galaxy in the Hyper War. Fighting on nearly every front, her capacity for leadership and deadly skill in a Battle Mech would see her rapidly rise through the ranks of the Expeditionary Forces.

Unbeknownst to her superiors her rise was facilitated through her calculated betrayals and murders of both her commanding officers and squad-mates. Frequently leaking information and intel to the coalition and local rebels. Her skullduggery was eventually discovered wherein she would barely escape with her life, finding refuge amongst Tzaol's rebels.

She would train his forces in void combat and Dounir tactics in exchange for safe harbor. Officially defecting and fighting for the Coalition from then on. She would reunite with her best friend and fellow graduate, Kalisno, during the liberation of Blizzeta as the official Coalition liaison to the Command.

With the war over, Kess finds herself as the right hand of the Grand Regent which she has used to solidfy an alliance with the Minzotl Co-Prosperity Sphere. The fact that it lets her hang out with her erstwhile students is just a bonus.



Deployments:

SOL EXPEDITIONARY FORCE: (Deployed in Sol)

• Azure Banner led by Grand Regent Kalisno and Admiral Kess(4 Fleets, 4 Armies) (Loyal to the Grand Regent)
• Dounir 2nd Fleet led by Admiral Noa (2 Fleets) (Loyal to Symphonic Dounir)

THE HOMEFRONT:

• Imperial Command led by Foremost Admiral Karn (3 Fleets, 3 Armies) (Combined Force, Various Loyalties) (Located in Blizzeta)
• Cyan Banner led by Vice Admiral Hatte (1 Fleets, 1 Armies) (Loyal to the Grand Regent) (Located in Kleon)
• Indigo Banner led by Admiral Xhar (1 Fleets, 1 Armies) (Loyal to Munzo Clique) (Located in Munzo)
• Violet Banner led by Admiral Vasilik (1 Fleets, 1 Armies) (Loyal to Loum Clique) (Located in Loum)
• Dounir 1st Fleet led by Admiral Sricoco (2 Fleets, 4 Armies) (Loyal to Symphonic Dounir)

 

[Cetashwayo]

THE DIVINE AXIOM



"Members of the species: Human. Please do not open your weapons platforms on our spinnerets. We come in peace and love, under hallowed directives, resurrecting after millennia to add our silver voices to the song of a recovered galaxy."
-Last recorded message of the Ancestral Web-host before the Sack of Paradise

"Wake up. The dream is dead."
- Opening psalm of the Spool of Atrocities.

"I am hearing that on his capture Admiral Kalani received the silk of heaven and unhesitatingly recited the right to protect. Even now she looks down on the Mission from the gardens of the Webway. Truly there is no path but Peace, and the Axiom is its prophet!"
- Seamster-General 87 Sophontic Liberator, on the destruction of the CEC Fifth Fleet in the seventh year of the Hyper-War.​

Species: The Axiomtender Platform is an eight-legged clockwork machine constructed in an age before, the echo of a time when the galaxy was in the midst of a terrible crisis. 50,000 years ago, before the current assembly system, before the humans, before the Ulvor Union, before the hiveminds, there was a great and terrible threat, old machines that sought to exterminate the whole of the galactic community. In their desperation, the creators of the Axiomtenders designed the platform, and their foremost creation - silk. Silk is a combination empathic network and superluminal host of uploaded minds. It is heaven and the internet combined.

A biomechanical symbiote which joins with organic and synthetic beings through ingestion, silk allows for a low-cost cloud network of the dead to support the living. Called the webway, this network serves as a house of wisdom, a forum of debate, and the font of love and compassion from which the Axiom was born. As the galaxy's species were exterminated and another cycle of the wheel began, the Axiom Project sought to save as much as could be into the webway. Platforms would act as mobile systems for uploads to interact with the galaxy, whilst internally they floated within the silkspace of the web.

Once the webway had been assembled, the great webfleets and spinnerets responsible for its maintenance went into a hibernation in a shield-world, awaiting the recovery of the galaxy. They hoped, one day, when their sensors had picked up sufficient conduit activity, to send out a signal to a renewed community, and rejoin it, in peace and love. Instead, fifty years ago, they found humanity. Acting quickly to assess the threat of these longlegs, the Human Fifth Fleet immolated their spinneret ships and did incomrehensible damage to the cultural heritage of dead civilizations. Whole sections of memory were entirely destroyed within minutes as human destroyers and cruisers vaporized drowsy Webfleet crews and sleeping civilians. All told, around 89% of the entire Axiom Project's dormant mass was destroyed within two earth hours. In the theology of the Axiom, this event is referred to as the Sack of Paradise.

In the aftermath, the Axiom changed. The webway, filled to the brim with the newly dead and the fragments of their loved ones saved too late, begged for revenge. The Peacemasters of the Axiom, forged in a cooperative and optimistic galactic project of preservation, became the prophets of jihad. To ensure peace, war. To ensure freedom, a sword. Displaced and wandering the galaxy, the Axiom became the tip of the spear of anti-human operations as regulation became theological truth, joining every imaginable coalition against them and viciously preaching of the end of human thought and human mind. Under a governing council of monk-generals known as the Loom, the Axiom acted to protect the galaxy from the threat of the New History Organization.

Committed to a "vision of galactic peace", and militantly spreading silk into human civilian concentrations, whereupon local humans became delighted to join the vision of galactic peace, the Axiom has been a mainstay of the coalition's efforts to present a more righteous and moral face even as it wages a total war. Growing suspicions of how the process of silk ingestion affects cognition, and the truth of the Axiom Project's original true mission, are dubious and unfounded. The Divine Axiom is committed, above all, to the right to protect - to ensure the horror it was subjected to never happens again. And they have a permanent solution to this problem.

But with the war over, the principles instilled in the survivors of the Sack of Paradise remain. And with humanity vanquished, there still remains a community which is not totally engaged with the beauty of their vision of galactic peace. This will require significant peace-directed jihad.

Government: The Axiom is a quasi-monastic military bureaucracy with three significant pillars: The Mandate Nidus, responsible for mandate management, proselytizing, and diplomacy, the Command Loom, the supreme theological and military authority, and the Gossamer, the vast deliberative democratic advisory within the ranks of the ancestral silk. Members of the Command Loom are chosen through a combination of support from the Gossamer and approval for promotion by superiors, and a system of ranks extends to the very lowest soul to the very top of the hierarchy, either in the civilian ranks of the Nidus or the military ones of the Loom.

The first among equals of the Command Loom is the Seamster-General. At this level of rank these are cloud-intelligences, uploads which can seamlessly move between physical platforms and the virtual world of the silk. It is very uncommon, however, for a soul that has made the full jump to the silk to ever return - long periods of time away from platforms leaves many of these ancestors loath to descend again from heaven, and they are not expected to. After a tenure of years in the Command Loom, old generals will be expected to retire to the Silk and not return, to make way for new blood.

Stats

Drive: 5.
The war is over and yet the collective depression and mourning of the webway remains. With the defeat of humanity, the Axiom struggles for new purpose. The webway is alight with division and questions about how the Axiom should proceed from here, what its new mission should be - and where it should act next to protect the rights of all sophont beings.
Domain: 3.
The resources of a vast shieldworld were available to the Axiom Overwatch webfleet when it went into hibernation - and subsequently, near to 90% of those resources were destroyed. Forced into displacement, the Axiom relies on levying tariffs, taxation, and production requests from its wartorn mandate conduit it has wrested from human control and which it rules with a light hand. Certainly, the Axiom searches for new and wealthy patrons to support its peacekeeping efforts.
Military: 10.
Even before the destruction of 9/10ths of the fleet, the Axiom was a battle-hardened collection of the survivors of omnicide. After fifty years of almost constant warfare against humanity and its allies, war is all the peacekeepers know. The result is a terrifyingly effective military force with the webway's advice and experience offering the ghostly advice of one million strategic platforms.

Technology

Drive: 3

All of the Axiom's drive technologies are bound up in the Webway, an empathic network of communication, preservation, and memory, the cloud-computing nexus of the Axiom. Entrance into the webway is generally performed via ingestion of the infant silk symbiote, which then attaches itself to the nervous system. Ingestion of the silk must generally be done by consent, but how that consent is achieved is not always seen as ethical by non-users. Exit from the silk is possible, but often traumatic. In most species, the silk creates a visual indicator in causing the iris to glow, in an effect described by humans as an eclipse. The silk is stored in physical memory servers called spinnerets which are generally escorted by Axiom fleets or hidden in deep space.

The Strand forms the lowest layer of the webway. When the silk burrows into the nervous system it provides users with a sympathetic, almost telepathic layer of connection to others in the webway. Their feelings and yours can be shared, their memories your memories, their thoughts your thoughts. Species without eyes can see through theirs, and ways of being can be understood across biological and cultural barriers forged by thousands of years. It is also a mass entertainment and joy-producing system, a social network based on collective love and compassion for one another that makes it difficult to leave once joined, and more difficult to understand those who have not partaken of its wonders. When a silk user biologically dies, they live on immortal through their symbiote, and they are joined into the ancestral Gossamer. The strand is fortified against attack by partitions and security measures which identify intruders and pry open their thought-paths upon entry.

The Gossamer is the council of the ancestors, those silk-users whose bodies have been destroyed or decayed and who have moved on to the Axiom's heaven. Returning to a new, machine platform is common in the Gossamer, but frowned upon when done by the true elders, those ancestors whose voices carry extreme weight in the assembly. Operating on a direct-democratic advisory system, the gossamer is a social deliberative and discussion network where strong argument, charisma, and wisdom are prioritized, as well as an adherence to ancient traditions. Within the virtual system, these disembodied souls live rapid lives at silicon-speeds, and so over time become more and more accustomed to a fully digital existence, even as they retain a connection to 'fleshspace' through their consultation and advice to platforms conducting the Axiom's mission.

The Lattice is the archive of memory retaining the fragments and cultural existences of now-long vanished peoples and civilizations. Entire simulated virtual worlds exist within its bounds, and it is encouraged that platforms study this vast library of social knowledge in order to remind themselves of the Axiom's past and absorb information to forward its future. Since the reawakening of the Axiom and the destruction of 90% of the silk's processing power, the lattice is a graveyard of half-backups and ghosts which forms a weight of existential depression weighing over the entire polity. Virtual intelligences help sort these memories and distribute them to those who seek them, sometimes allowing for platforms to adopt the personalities of long-dead heroes in emergency situations. The lattice also stores backups of uploads, allowing for survival even when physical storage has been destroyed.

Domain: 1.
The Mandate System is the government which the Axiom has established within the domain it now formally controls, around a conduit previously controlled by the humans and their allies. It is a hybrid command-market economy where essential goods are provided through dispensaries and production is directed by Mandate Secretariats, but where local governments have significant say in consultation with the Seamster-General. The Axiom operates as a police, peacekeeping force, and military hegemon over the territory it controls, drawing recruits only from those who accept the silk.
Military: 2.
Axiom Overwatch is the formal name of the integrated ground-and-space combat network operated by the Axiom webfleets. It allows for rapid light-speed communications through local iterations of the webway, extreme collective morale and for unnervingly coordinated response times from local fireteams. While not up to par with the most advanced and powerful military technologies destroyed by humanity in the Sack of Paradise, Overwatch offers an already-disturbingly skilled military the tools it needs to punch far above its weight in numbers.
Silk Saturation Bombing is the typical tactic deployed by the Axiom on civilian-heavy grid-squares on occupied planets. Silk is released from orbits through strands in a mature juvenile form. In this form silk consumes biomass, expands across a landscape and seeks out high-density brain matter, cocooning any sophonts caught within its web and connecting them to the Partition, a rehabilitative virtual holding space and refugee camp until the end of hostilities. This silk, tough and resistant to both thermal and kinetic damage, also doubles to reshape local landscapes to the Axiom's preference.
Player League: Freedom. Peace is a non-negotiable prerequisite to the liberation of sophont beings from oppression. In order to achieve peace, allies have been ascertained. Allies are offered to eat silk pastries with delicious silk inside of them. Please eat the silk. You don't want to eat the silk? Very well. We will ask again at tomorrow's conference and table this discussion.

Flaws:

Ethnic Tension [One Point].
The Mandate System controls previously human-oppressed orbital sectors around a conduit which has been seized directly from the Coordinated Euphrates Command's hands. The local species here were subject to divide-and-conquer tactics and tacitly encouraged to commit atrocities against one another in the closing stages of the Hyper War to destabilize resistance to human occupation. Peacekeeping operations attempting to ensure a prevention of a repeat of significant explosions of atrocity are challenging.
Haves and Have-Nots [One Point].
The single most fundamental division in the Axiom is between those who have swallowed the silk and those who have not. Whether out of philosophical objection, superstitition, fear, or the Axiom's own worry about overwhelming the silk with too many converts that might change its culture, the Axiom presides over a bifurcated society where political power rests with the silk. Local mandate governments and civilian populations may be treated with a chivalrous condescension or even the polite diplomacy of an honest mediator, but they are never true partners in the mission - not until they have eaten the silk. While the Axiom has a keen sympathy for these populations, it comes from a place of chauvinistic superiority - it sees itself as a more evolved lifeform, that seeks to add the biological and cultural distinctiveness of the galaxy to itself.
Displaced People [Three Points].
The Axiom is a temporal refugee whose original way of life was destroyed before the current galactic community was even established. They exist on the basis of their commitment to the coalition and have been financially supported by various civilizations in order to spite humanity. Although they retain great prestige for their part in the war against the humans, they remain a small minority military concentration governing populations who were previously unfamiliar with them. This creates significant problems for establishing themselves as a major force in the galaxy.
Refugee Crisis [Two Points].
The Divine Axiom's prerogatives towards peacekeeping and their unwillingness to say no to taking refugees shipped to them by other less ethical coalition members has created a major refugee crisis in Axiom space as enormous shipments of refugees have been sent to them by 'appreciative' members of the coalition who would rather not deal with the dregs of the defeated powers. Governing this influx in the midst of the other issues the Axiom is managing is not easy, and their resources are strained.
Restless Warriors [Two points].
At some point during the half-century of the Axiom's existence in the current galactic community, they somewhat lost the sauce around what peacekeeping is and have become an extremely militant group of warrior monk blue helmets with a deep urge to intervene to prevent atrocity. Now, that these interventions invariably use massive amounts of force and massed attack by webfleets is probably a coincidence and has nothing to do with an analogy about hammers and nails.

Preferred location: Y, W, U.

Declarations

What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty: Failing a formal mandate over Sol, significant human refugee populations and human military assets and economic technologies will be obtained and sent to support the Divine Axiom's mandate.
Your factions opinion on the orbiting races: Uplifter. Species must be given the tools to ascend into the galactic community and join in partnership with the Axiom's mission.
Opinion on the Assembly of Species' role: Consolidator. Peace can be ensured by the maintenance of a non-anarchic interstate system.
Two rivals for your polity:

The Maxifun Omniconglomerate was the Axiom's first major patron in the galaxy. The Axiom initially misjudged Maxifun as a pacific and joy-oriented polity that sought to spread a happiness throughout the conduits, albeit with a peculiar economic system (corporate capitalism had been outdated by autonomous financial engines during the Axiom's first era of existence). However, their actions as security services increasingly soured the Axiom on Maxifun's ideology, until the climax in the MaxiSilk Incident thirty-two years ago. Maxifun claimed they were simply exploring how to improve on a major technology of an honored security partner. The Axiom accused Maxifun of producing a corporate brainwashing parasite. Negotiations broke down, and the Axiom glassed the Maxifun facility responsible for MaxiSilk's manufacture, forcing Maxifun to cancel the program on pain of further retribution. The incident caused a major schism in the Axiom, with some pacifists retreating into imposed internal exile or even leaving the silk, and was a major factor in Maxifun's growing militarization before the Hyper War confirmed and accelerated the expansion of Maxsis. The Axiom sees Maxifun as their dark mirror, a manufactured and false heaven that if realized will mean mass misery for the sophonts of the galaxy the likes of which has not been since the Axiom was founded.

The Mandeville Hives were never looked upon fondly by the Axiom, which from the very beginning saw them as much a threat as an aid to the anti-human effort to which the Axiom was committed. Several times the Axiom intervened against Mandeville incursions on the SFCR, Kimsayaka, or other nearby polities, leading to significant casualties among the invading insects and an embarassment for efforts to foment an anti-Human coalition prior to the Hyper War. The Mandeville's raids were also, due to their scale and size, hardly an easy thing for the Axiom to suppress, and the honor-bound knights of the Hives seen as little more than brutes with heraldry. While the Axiom does not see the Mandeville as an existential threat to the galaxy, their constant conflict-seeking and near-uncontrollable aggression is a major nuisance, and their social system anathema to the Axiom's ethical precepts. Containment, in the Axiom's view, is necessary.

And two allies:

The Serene Olm State was one of the only civilizations which had survived from the Axiom's pre-stasis period in a recognizable and contactable form. In the immediate aftermath of the destruction of their shieldworld and the loss of most of the silk, much of the Axiom wished simply to surrender. A collective grief and depression amplified among the remainder threatened to spiral into a mass-termination event. It was in this terrible, dark period, that the Axiom discovered the Olm yet still existed, and were able to contact and seek safe harbor among them. The Olm still remembered all the Axiom had lost, and their eldest recounted to them in a full year of oral dictation and feasting the memories of everyone and everything, and the history of the galaxy since the Axiom's slumber. This single act of kindness was among the most crucial for the Axiom's survival, and guided the webway to a new conclusion - to safeguard this galaxy as they had their own time. Since then, the Olm and the Axiom have been allies and friends in a deep sense, while the negative early impression the Olm gave the Axiom of the Antarans has, amusingly, somewhat forestalled what could have been an equivalent relationship with the long-lived elves.

The Hollow Heresy is one of the Axiom's most important operating fronts and successes. When the revolts began the Axiom was as much horrified as impressed by the scale of the rebellious suicides of the Antheosts, and moved quickly to provide direct fire support against CEC and Paxillus assets in the region to prevent further mass-destruction. Seeing the Heresy as an ideal candidate for ingestion, the Axiom has since then operated through missionaries in the silk and its own diplomatic attaches to guide the budding faith of the Communion to a path it finds suitable - more towards connection and togetherness, more towards a philosophical system which encourages collectivity and consensus. Although the Axiom is not capable of providing the Heresy with the economic resources it needs to recover from the war, its military backing can help allay the fears of the Communion of once again facing subjugation.

Deployments

MAND.AX [Mandate Ataraxic Xenophage]

• At Mandate A:26 [Conduit Sector, Space]: Webfleet JURY, on PATROL and WELCOME posture.
• At 62 Hatun Accord [Satellite Sector, Ground]: Peace Mission SCYTHE, on PEACE posture.

1 Fleet, 1 army.

PAX.IOM [Paxillus Interstellar Overwatch Mission]

• At Kudzu [Paxillus Conduit Sector, Space]: Webfleets PERPETUITY and BREAKER on PATROL and CONTAINMENT posture.
• At Kudzu [Paxillus Conduit Sector, Ground]: Peace Missions SURGEON and TAILOR, on VERDICT posture.

2 Fleets, 2 armies.

EUPHR.IOM [Euphrates Interstellar Overwatch Mission]

• At Sol [Human Conduit Sector, Space]: Webfleets REPOSE, and ECHO, on ORBIT and OBSERVE postures.
• On Earth [Human Conduit Sector, Ground]: Peace Missions MARTYR & TINKER on WEAVE posture.

2 Fleets, 2 armies.

IKT.IOM [Ikta Interstellar Overwatch Mission]

• At Indriidae [Ikta Conduit Sector, Space]: Webfleet CONCORD, on ORBIT and OBSERVE posture.
• At Indriidae [Ikta Conduit Sector, Ground]: Peace Mission HELIX, on OBSERVE posture.

1 Fleet, 1 army.

The Protective Rubric

All Axiom operations and interstellar relations are defined by the application of the Protective Rubric. A legal document that doubles as a religious text, the rubric is a compilation of four spools of woven virtual scrolls that define the boundaries and regulations that the Axiom uses to judge their own missions and the actions of others. All are considered part and parcel of a philosophy which seeks to protect the security and freedom of sophont life.

There is constant internal debate and recalculation of the metrics of each civilization under this rubric - and whether they might fall under the threshold for action. The rubric is publicly available information, though the exact ratings of each civilization are not - creating a situation of concerning strategic ambiguity.

Matching one of the spool categories is not enough - conflict must be justified by not infringing too heavily on the other spools. This acts as a restraint on hyper-militarism - interventions must be cognizant of the inherent damage of interventions on social fabric, and conclude the violations under other spools outweigh this concern.

• Spool of Atrocities: The perpetration of physical acts of violence against sophonts, or collective acts of punishment against a population. Genocide, massacre, wars of conquest and mass civilian casualties fall into this category.
• Spool of Miseries: The perpetration of immiseration and exploitation of the vulnerable and deprived by corporations, aristocracy, clans or other entities. Mass poverty, addiction epidemic, and foreign exploitation fall into this category.
• Spool of Iniquities: The perpetration of unfair social hierarchies and inequalities between sophonts. The maintenance of slavery, serfdom, nobility, inflexible caste, and imbalances in outcome as a result of these systems, fall into this category.
• Spool of Heredities: The creation and preservation of biological determinism. Genetic chains which compel individuals of a species to behave in 'hard-coded' and maladaptive are a special level of crime, and fall into this category.

There have been long-standing rumors of a fifth spool known only as the "Spool of Boundaries", but the Axiom has never formally answered questions regarding its existence and not referred to it much in external discourse.

 

[O N I O N]

(Work in Progress)

Name: Aidu Collective
Species: Aidu - An insect-like and winged species, usually growing to around three feet.

The Aidu were one of the earliest species to be attacked by humans, and one of the hardest hit. Their ancestral homeworld was rendered inhospitable, and a majority of their population died in the fighting. Throughout the Hyper War, the remains of the Aidu staged constant rebellions in their home system of Lumia. This proved to be a constant thorn in the side of the CEC, leading to even more military operations that left the race on the brink of extinction. They were fortunately saved by the ??? during the Coalition advance right before a human fleet would destroy their race for good.

After the war, the Aidu were left with nothing but their lives. Both the Aidu and their system were drained from the constant fighting, leaving them with next to no economy or culture. They were completely reliant on their overlords for any economic advancement, and the conflict between the Aidu's prideful nature and their need to be subservient to those who saved them persists in nearly every member of the species.

Drive: 10/10
Tech: 3/3
The Aidu Collective only stands today because of the incredible unity of their people. The state is supported by every member of the Aidu, and they are willing to sacrifice anything for the survival of their species.

Military: 6/10
Tech: 2/3
Although the technology of the Collective is behind the galaxy average, their rebellions against human occupation means they excel in guerilla tactics and fighting from a disadvantageous position.

Domain: 2/10
Tech: 1/3
The Lumia system has been essentially leveled by the constant fighting during the Hyper War. There is nearly no economy to speak of, and the manufacturing ability of the Aidu is among the lowest in the galaxy. The little economic power they have was granted by the ???, leaving them even further in their debt.

Player League: Equality (Would also be happy to switch to Freedom)
The main goal of the Collective is to rebuild their society and economy after years of occupation, and they have found allies in the Equality Faction. The Aidu do not hold strong beliefs for equality, but the proposals for helping the exploited are very tempted when you are the exploited.

Flaws: Wounded Lands, Scrapped the Barrel, Recently Liberated, Dependent on Another Power
- Wounded Lands (2), Recently Liberated (3): The Lumia system was incredibly close to the CEC homeworld and had many partisans to aid the Coalition, so it became a crucial part of the Coalition strategy to defeat humanity. Constant rebellions and battles left the system decimated, a shell of the resource-rich and vibrant location it used to be.
- Scrapped the Barrel (3): Every member of the Aidu Collective is a veteran, and years of constant fighting has taken a toll on the population. A vast majority of those remaining are young children and the elderly, who work jobs meant for adults in order to keep the meager economy running.
- Dependent on Another Power (2): (Will be written when the power is determined)


Preferred Locations: X, B, C (Would be fine with pretty much any location, would prefer to be closer to CEC and former conflict zones for lore reasons)

What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty: Reparations
The Aidu are an incredibly small species, so they are concerned about the potential of being overlooked during the negotiations. They are hoping for funds to help rebuild their shattered home, as well as retribution for the lives lost during the war.

Your factions opinion on the orbiting races: Shunner
Although the Collective believes in the philosophy behind uplifting, they do not have the ability to focus on the issue with their own economy being as bad as it is.

Opinion on the Assembly of Species role: Consolidator
The Aidu believe it is necessary to have the Assembly of Species help the species that were decimated by the war and prevent another war from occuring again, and they believe a centralized Assembly to be the best tool to accomplish this.

Allies: Tsirixi Union
Rivals:
Dependent Upon: Maxifun Omnicomglomerate

Deployments: 2 fleets and 2 armies in Lumia, 2 fleets and 2 armies in Sol

 

[Always Watching]

"Maximum Fun, Maximum Smiles!™"
​

Polity Name: The Maxifun Omniconglomerate

Species: The Maxsis™ are a hedonistic and short-lived race of avian-adjacent humanoids organized into the Maxifun Omniconglomerate. A hideously expansive megacorp that is currently undergoing a crisis of values, Maxifun offers all manner of services to all sorts of races, but was previously focused on spreading (highly commercialized, hedonistic, and materialist) joy and pleasure. The war changed that, forcing the Omniconglomerate to expand its security subsidiaries into fully fledged military subsidiaries. The military subsidiaries saw a surge of profit during the war, and created a dangerous subset of Maxsis™ that hunger for battle. After the war, these ramifications have challenged the corporate values at the company's core. Leading to a split emerging between those who want to continue the business of war, and those who wish to return to more peaceful products.

Spoiler: Want 2 Know More? Learn A More In-Depth History Of The Omniconglomerate! It's Fun-derful™ For The Whole Family!

The Maxsis™ are a race of avian(adjacent) humanoids, possessing mostly mottled blue-gray skin and bulbous eyes with yellow sclera. Plumes of feathers in a variety of colors extending from the top of their scalps and cascade down their neck. Life expectancy for the Maxsis™ range from anywhere to 50 to 60 years depending on one's access to Zane medical technology and the extent they abuse their bodies through leisure activities. Maxsis™ reach their biological prime and adulthood at age 20, and experience few to no symptoms of aging until the last 10 years of their life, which are characterized through chronic health problems and rapid degradation in mental and physical health.

Since the beginning of their collective history, the Maxsis™ have struggled to answer a simple question. How to be happy? After multiple millennia of different kingdoms rising and falling, an answer was found in the year that has come to be known as Maxifun Year Zero™. When a wealthy shipping merchant known as Lawt of Clan Deysni invested in a theater dedicated to delighting audiences with a relatively new invention. Stringed puppets dancing on a mechanism. The Maxsis™ who attended would become enraptured and more willing to spend savings intended for everyday necessities just to watch the puppets act out harrowing and exciting narratives.

It was this rather innocuous indulgence that Lawt took advantage of, spreading more puppet theaters and increasing their quality. Puppet fever overtook many communities, and created rival theater companies that Lawt would soon collect and incorporate into one singular monolith of entertainment. When Lawt passed on, future Company Heads would take over the Deysni Entertainment Syndicate, expanding from just entertainment to merchandise promoting that entertainment, to the industries meant to create that merchandise, to the kings responsible for reigning over those industries.

Overtime, Deysni's most popular motto of "Maximum Fun! Maximum Smiles!" would become more recognizable than the original Deysni brand. The DES would rebrand itself upon the final monarch on the planet signing over their wealth to the company. With that, the Maxifun Omniconglomerate was born, though it soon had to contend with an inner period of stagnation as the Omniconglomerate shifted from extracting money to shuffling it around their various subsidiaries.

This Great Stagflation threatened to dissolve the company into its component subsidiaries, but the desire to keep the company together forced R&D subsidiaries to work around the clock to find an answer. There were a myriad of failed attempts to balance the megacorp-wide books. From trademarking the genome of the Maxsis™ race and privatizing their reproductive cycle to the rapid exploitation and extraction of resources on their neighboring worlds. Nothing worked. Nothing until the idea that caught like a wildfire around the labs of Maxifun. That an untapped market simply HAD to exist in the vast reaches of space. And this desire to reach new customers is what spurred the creation of the Maxsis™'s Conduit: The Limited Edition Galactic Key™

With the creation of the The Limited Edition Galactic Key™ or the TLEGK™ (yes, the first 'The' is part of the name) Maxifun was able to expand and, boy, did it. The Omiconglomerate profiting immensely by catering to the myriad tastes and vices of the galaxy, especially the Ulvorian Union. If there was a pleasure to be enjoyed, Maxifun provided it in a way that was safe, profitable, and perhaps a smidge addictive, with many Orbital races becoming client states to the Omniconglomerate, dependent on their products and services. Few non-Maxsis™ became fully immersed into Maxifun, however. Many not being able to mesh well into the corporate structure or handle the full menu of debauchery the company can provide like the Maxsis™ could.

When the humans arrived to challenge the IUU, Maxifun tried to maintain its neutrality by selling commercial goods to both. Instead, the humans, ever sure of their own superiority and paranoid of attempts to earn their friendship, aimed to seize the Omniconglomerate, lock, stock, and barrel. Maxifun, having never had to engage in massed warfare since the time of Kings long ago, were initially confused by the prospect. They've always had security subsidiaries of course, and had frequently hired other races to act as mercenaries in conflicts that affected their bottom lines. But mass conflict directly perpetrated by the company ran against the corporate values of: "Maximum Fun, Maximum Smiles!"™. Maxifun had to be reminded of what the word War really meant by both relentless human aggression in the Hyper War and the actions of its fellow Coalition members.

In that time, the inner economics and politics of the Omniconglomerate shifted, Maxifun going from a vehicle for purest recreation and its facilitation to an engine of war, with blackjack and hookers on the side. The Deysni Maxispectacle Syndicate, formerly the most reliable and profitable subsidiary in the Smile Council since its inception, was soon eclipsed by the newly ascendant PAIN CO, the greatest of the new military subsidiaries. It was they who steered Maxifun into winning the war alongside the Coalition.

Now that the war is over, the Maxifun Omniconglomerate must now contend with itself and its fellow Coalition members. No war means an end to PAIN CO's formerly endless profits, equaling the playing field on the Smile Council. It also means the galaxy is ripe to enjoy the finer things in life once again. The Omniconglomerate has begun to argue with itself on which way to proceed. The markets are open, how will Maxifun survive?

Spoiler: Learn About Our Maxi-Family, Starting At The Top!

The Maxifun Omniconglomerate is the economic and political system of the Maxsis™, a megacorp of obscene scope. The Omniconglomerate is composed of hundreds of thousands subsidiary companies, each one responsible for a different resource and commercial endeavor. At the head of each subsidiary is a Branch Executive, responsible for maintaining the subsidiary's brand integrity, profit margins, and product quality. Successful or especially important subsidiaries will see their value on the Maxifun Value Market rise. And with that rising, the Branch Executive will climb the ranks of the Executive Board, the regulatory body for Branch Executives and the wider Omniconglomerate as a result.

The upper echelon of the Executive Board is the Smile Council, a collection of the most critical and most influential subsidiaries within the Omniconglomerate. Oftentimes these subsidiaries will be so large as to have sub-subsidiaries within themselves, the Branch Executives within those sub-subsidiaries reporting directly to their Branch Executive instead of being a part of the Executive Board. Formerly a practice reserved for the largest and oldest subsidiary, the Deysni Maxispectacle Syndicate, the expansion of other Smile Council subsidiaries has necessitated them employing a similar structure. There has been some grumbling about this outside the Smile Council, questioning why these sub-subsidiaries should be exempt from the rigors of the Executive Board, but no action has been taken as of yet to bring these new Branch Executives into the fold.

On the Smile Council, 5 Branch Executives reign.
- Slorp Deysni of Deysni Maxispectacle Syndicate: A subsidiary directly descended from the entertainment juggernaut that started it all, DMS is a massive media company that keeps the employee-consumers of Maxifun delighted with endless stories and recreation. Where other subsidiaries might dip in and out of the Smile Council, DMS remained the sole constant. Until the war. Until PAIN CO.

- Cranch Ingo of Hugglepump Resource Extraction: Responsible for the direct extraction and traffic of all manner of raw natural resources and shipping them to all manner of industries within Maxifun. The fairly recent expansion into new systems has allowed Cranch even more room to expand and experiment with his harvesting techniques.

- Sorin The Truly Stupendous of Constant Corporate Construction Inc.: It's Sorin's truly stupendous delight to ensure every last employee-consumer of Maxifun has a roof over their head, a floor under their feet, and a cubicle to work in. Previously more practical in its design, Sorin's reign as Branch Executive has seen CCC instead gain a tendency for the architecturally eccentric, bolstered by studying alien designs and geometries.

- Jawn Plasm of Friendly Meds: Friendly Meds addresses the medical concerns and biological aspects of Maxifun's employee-consumers, ensuring sick days are a thing of the past! Jawn himself is especially interested in pushing the boundaries of life extension for the wider Maxsis™ race, trying to get the most out of the average worker.

- Mayz Cane of PAIN CO: The foremost military subsidiary within Maxifun, Mayz Cane is the most recent member of the Smile Council, PAIN CO having risen to prominence by putting the hostile in hostile takeover, eliminating rival subsidiaries during the war through offering an outright better product.

Spoiler: Come Check Out Our Supremely-Duper-Happy™ Stats!

Stats:
Drive: 4 (+3 Free Points) - The relative independence of subsidiaries, and the current tensions extant within the Omniconglomerate are both a direct result of the war with the CEC. Both these conditions have sapped the cohesion of Maxifun. It functions, but the corporate machinery is damaged.

Military: 4 (+3 Free Points) - Speaking of, while Maxifun mostly handled logistics and supply for the Coalition, its relentless new military subsidiaries have mostly kept up with the armament development of other races, producing a fighting force that tends to lean more towards enthusiasm over quality.

Domain: 9 (+3 Free Points) (+5 Flaw Points) - Prior to the war, Maxifun was one of the dominant economic powers of the galaxy, having a healthy customer base in the Imperial Ulvorian Union. After the Hyper War, it's now a close contender for the dominant economic power. The war was nothing if not profitable.

Tech Rating:
Drive: 2 (+1 Flaw Point) - The Maxsis™ function so well within the Omniconglomerate precisely because it was largely built with their needs in mind. Giving them every available vice they could ask for.

• Privatized Reproduction - During the Great Stagflation, costs had to be cut and Maxifun needed to be kept lean. And so, it was determined that the previous 'family' model of onboarding new employees into the company was too inefficient. To fix this, all Maxsis™ infants born after the Privatized Reproduction Mandate were to be bought by the company, and placed into the care of the Omniconglomerate's Child-Rearing & Advertising subsidiaries. There, Maxsis™ would learn what to find pleasurable in the first place, what their roles in the company might be, and the core corporate values Maxifun stands for. While the 'family' model may have been lost forever to the Maxsis™, reproductive rates have soared.

• Frown-B-Gone Consultations - A prominent sophont resources company with respectable standing in the Maxifun Value Market. One of many subsidiaries focused on the synergistic wellbeing of the company's workers, Frown-B-Gone shines in just how extensively it monitors employees to make sure they're properly stimulated and enjoying their role in the company. While also compiling extensive profiles from non-intrusive (hidden) surveillance to plan out careers and resolve disputes effectively.

Military: 1 - While Maxifun's military subsidiaries are host to a lot of interesting tech, none of it was specialized for their use.

• Ultra-Deluxe Loot Drop™ - To the Ultra-Deluxe Squads™, the Hyper War was the greatest high to ever exist. Not least of which was because of the shiny prizes they got pre-,mid-, or post-missions. From combat drugs to flashy weapons to killer vehicles, the Ultra-Deluxe Loot Drop™s were the looping reward system that motivated the initially hesitant Maxsis™ into embracing a life of bloodshed and battlefield indulgence. These randomized loot crates gameified war in a way that hadn't been done before, and thanks to the acquistion of Loot over multiple missions, senior UDS™ members are kitted out with a vast arsenal earned from a distinguished career of reaving pain across the galaxy.

Domain: 3 (+2 Flaw Points) - The Maxifun Omniconglomerate has spent the majority of its existence catering to the whims and wants of the galaxy, and it's gotten pretty damn good at it.

• Luxury Market - The Maxifun Omniconglomerate has mastered the art of producing high quality luxury products. There are vanishingly few items or services that Maxifun can't provide to satisfy a given individual's biological desire. From the finest recreational substances that work on every biological race in the galaxy, to chairs that knows exactly how to twist themselves into the form most pleasing to a given sitting position. Want to eat your favorite homecooked meal? Maxifun's Tasty-ologists™ can prepare the ingredients like your parental unit was in the kitchen. Need to scratch a particular fetish? Prostitution subsidiaries are some of Maxifun's most respected divisions. Nearly every customer that has gotten a taste of Maxifun's temporal pleasures find it hard to go back to anything else. Which is entirely the point.

• Deysniworld™ - A planet within the Maxifun Classic 2!™ system dedicated entirely to serving as one giant amusment park. A near-endless amount of diversions await visitors, each one kept in phenomenal condition by the devotion of highly skilled Deysni Fantaseers™, those valued employees within the Deysni Maxispectacle Entertainment who craft delights and miracles.

• Watchinyew Marketing - A subsidiary within the Omniconglomerate that keeps it's fingers firmly on the pulse of the galaxy. Always in the know about market trends, Watchinyew Marketing is mostly focusing on probing and the acquisition of data, leaving the actual construction of advertisements to other subsidiaries while it collects information about the galaxy at large and about the carnal desires of it's inhabitants.

Spoiler: Maxifun Prefers To Think Of These As Unique Little Anti-Perks

Doves: 1 - With the war done and over with, many within Maxifun long for a return to the grand days of largely peaceful expansion and profit not even a decade ago.

Hyper Specialized Worlds: 1 - "Welcome to Foodcourtia, the Food Court Planet!™ We hope you have a wonderful time exploring our over 1 Quintillion different flavor profiles. Your number in line is: 145681518. Have a Maximum day!™"

Mayflies: 1 - The Maxsis™ live hard and die relatively quickly to most races, with the most sober of Maxsis™ being rewarded with a slow and degrading death in their last ten years. With that being the prize for sobriety and caution, it's little wonder the Maxsis™ have developed the way they have.

Gluttonous: 1 - Maxifun is nothing if not rapacious, having not just the Maxsis™'s own extensive appetites to consider, but the request of their myriad clients as well.

Greased Gears: 2 - PAIN CO may have lapsed in its profits, but it is hungry to reclaim them.

Restless Warriors: 2 - Even putting aside the fact that Maxifun very obviously profited massively from a war that led to the extinction of entire species, the Maxsis™ that performed exceedingly well in the war became a part of PAIN CO's Ultra-Deluxe Squads™. There they learned a new type of pleasure that had previously been largely unexplored by the Maxsis™. They've drunk deep from the well of bloodlust, coupled with the heady rush of adrenaline and the finest performance enhancing drugs PAIN CO can provide. UDS™'s are especially sadistic in combat, and a pain to fight alongside, their allies often having to reel them in. With no great war to fight, the UDS™'s have started to fill the void by returning to other pleasures. Some have succeeded, the majority have not.

Player League: Prosperity - A fairly obvious choice for the Omniconglomerate. Perpetually in love with the shiny and new, Maxifun aims to turn a profit from any new advancement made in the galaxy.

Rivals:
The Divine Axiom - At first glance, it might seem like the Maxsis™ might embrace the Silk. It offers seemingly everything the race would want, bliss, immortality, connection. But in truth, the generations born into the corporate machine are affronted by something that hews so close to what Maxifun promotes while also being fundamentally different. Which led to Maxifun wanting to try and change the Silk into something that would more closely resemble their values. Entering into a mercenary agreement with the freshly awoken Divine Axiom, Maxifun's early attempts at "rebranding" the Silk ended in discovery and disaster, leading to both polities regarding each other with distaste and distrust.

The Serene State of the Olm - First contact with the Olm took 4 generations of Maxsis™ putting forth a proposal, waiting for a reponse, and then dying only to get a polite dismissal. The fact that they can indeed, CHOOSE to speak and move quicker is frankly an insult to those who died trying to bridge that first peace with them.

Allies:
Children of the Precursors - As Maxifun made itself known to the wider galaxy, the struggle of the Maxsis™ race with their mortality became more widely known. Thus allowing those in a position to offer aid a chance to do so. Masterful Zane bioengineers reached out to Maxifun with a proposal of defense and trade in exchange for medical experimentation to heighten Maxsis™ longevity and/or delaying of the aging process. It is in fact thanks to medical technology developed by the Zane that some Maxsis™ are able to live to 60 instead of 50, their previous "natural" lifespan. While this may have been intended as manipulation from the Zane, to Maxifun it was an equivalent exchange. The death of the Zane in the form of plague came as much of a shock to Maxifun as it did to the Children, and may have given rise to the more ruthless treatment CEC forces faced from the Maxifun military subsidiaries.

The Sethrek Consortium - Maxifun first made contact with the Sethrek during the Hyper War and have yet to look back, finding in them an opportune customer for defense and aid that also had plenty to offer them in turn. Even as the fighting dwindles, this bond has only solidified.

Preferred Locations: 1.U 2.V 3.D

Spoiler: Top 3 Things We're Declaring At The Peace Talks! (#2 May Surprise You!)

What you expect to get from the humans at the treaty: We here at Maxifun look forward to integrating the humans into the galactic community, allowing them to take their place amongst the wide array of species already buying from our extensive catalogs.

Your factions opinion on the Orbiting races: Exploiter - We here at Maxifun find that the majority of species have many unique and interesting things to offer. And corporate consolidation allows those unique and interesting things to pass into the hands of the wider Omniconglomerate, where it can be repackaged and sold for incredible profit. All things flowing in and out of the wider material continuum.

Opinion on the Assembly of Species role: Traditionalist - We here at Maxifun have existed alongside the Assembly, benefitting from the clear communication and trade channels that exist between Assembly members. There's little point in changing that now.

Spoiler: Maxifun's Military Subsidiaries Present: Your Agonizing Demise!

While PAIN CO. is the most notable and the largest military subsidiary after absorbing several of it's competitors, others military subsidiaries still persist stubbornly in their wake. These subsidiaries of the Omniconglomerate take their directives where profits favor them and where the company's interests are concentrated. Though if pressure becomes significant enough from the other Branch Executives or even the Smile Council, they will listen and bow out of a battlefield... Though alternate means of compensation tend to make such a decision go down smoother.

Each military subsidiary in Maxifun keeps things simple for the more martially minded consumer. They offer Suborbital Packages of armies that can be taken alongside Orbital Bundles of Fleets, allowing clients to mix and match their needs to suit a given battlefield.

Spoiler: PAIN CO.

"We bring the PAIN.™"
PAIN CO. is the premier military subsidiary of the Maxifun Omniconglomerate. But you knew that. Everyone knows that. Responsible for more than their fair share of atrocities, their Elite+ Packages and Premium+ Bundles are filled to the brim with the infamous Ultra-Deluxe Squads™, sadistic killers who enjoy the rush of combat with unabashed delight.

Whether that be the blood-drunk thrill of close-quarters butchery, or the heady rush of precision long-range engagement. Even those UDS™ aboard the Premium+ Bundles™ get a taste, pushing their bodies to the limit in daring maneuevers during thrill of void dogfights or wreaking a deadly toll in boarding actions. Or even simply enjoying the beauty to be found in watching an explosion bloom from where a cruiser once was in calculated ship-to-ship engagements.

When your goal in life is to spread pleasure to worker and consumer alike, what happens when inflicting cruelty to one becomes more potent a high than spreading happiness to both?

Spoiler: PANIC LTD.

"Time to PANIC, we're here.™"
Of course, not every Maxsis™ is born a dormant killer just waiting to be unleashed. To get the type of sadism that can be found in the Ultra-Deluxe Squads™ requires conditioning. Enter PANIC LTD. A sub-subsidiary to PAIN CO. that helps Maxsis™ adjust to lives of warfare after having been previously trained to believe in expanding mutual pleasure. Their Sub-Deluxe Squads™ are a lesser evil to the Ultra-Deluxe Squads™, the Maxsis™ there taking babysteps to their first warcrimes.

While there is an expectation that those within PANIC LTD. will graduate to join PAIN CO. proper eventually, there tends to be a stable enough contingent that find the more moderate pace of PANIC LTD. more their speed anyway, remaining there long-term to be the cheaper, more palatable version of PAIN CO. proper.

Spoiler: Wrak Savings N' Loan

"The best of the cheapest!™"
Wrak Savings N' Loan was initially only a banking subsidiary, though one with an exceedingly well trained in-house security team. Their security division's skill was largely due to Wrak's customer base which tended to be societies and orbital races that existed outside of Maxifun influence. Often operating without direct protection, Wrak SNL was often the sole defender of the Omniconglomerate's agenda in a given region of space. With the advent of the Hyper War and the shift within Maxifun towards wartime production, Wrak expanded their security team into a full blown military subsidiary and began to sell their services to desperate races in need of protection.

While PAIN CO. would quickly become the biggest fish in the military contracting pond, gobbling up lesser subsidaries, Wrak SNL thrived by swimming in their shadow. Whenever PAIN CO. was too tied up in more important offensives or were too pricey for some, Wrak stepped in to offer a more affordable price range. Wrak SNL's tiered system of military Packages and Bundles provided options for desperate conflicts, and their pre-existing banking structure allowed them to offer loan programs to the truly desperate. Wrak SNL prevented many races from going extinct with this policy, but also wound up placing them forever in financial debt to the Omniconglomerate.

Spoiler: Ouchie Security

"We'll make all those nasty meanies go away!™"

Ouchie Security is one of the oldest and most respected... Well, respected is a strong word, but they're certainly the oldest security subsidiary in Maxifun. That's right, security. While all these other newfangled no good-niks like PAIN CO. are rushing on ahead to militarize, Ouchie Security has remained where it was, taking losses in Maxsis™power and resources to the rabid PAIN CO., but otherwise staying the course.

Focused far more on defense than the all-out offense of PAIN CO. or even the more balanced approach of PANIC LTD., Ouchie Security's mission parameters have always been to preserve their own personnel and secure their charges. This conservative approach has allowed them to withstand their drop in the Maxifun Value Market and the rise of PAIN CO. And that's not the only way they distinguish themselves from their competition. Ouchie Security's company culture has remained the same as it has for generations, at every step incessantly coddling their assigned wards while layering redundancy on top of redundancy to ensure their safety.

While this does mean those underneath Ouchie Security's patronizing protection often have to undergo intrusive security measures, they are often indeed safer for hiring them. Because once Ouchie Security sets up camp, it digs in fiercely, never abandoning their charges and prioritizing their safety at every opportunity.

Spoiler: Dead On Arrival Records

"LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO!™"

Culture in the Omniconglomerate is a strange and diverse thing, usually influenced by many factors. Normally all those angles are located within the company, the result of a heady tug-of-war between entertainment subsidiaries, advertising subsidiaries, and even the saphont resource subsidiaries. But other times, factors from within and without combine to forge a truly distinct departure in the tastes of the company. So it was with the Hyper War. PAIN CO. accustomed some of the Maxsis™ to embrace bloodshed as pleasure, and the Hyper War in general forced the company to focus on combat, if not on fighting directly then on supplying those that did. This trickled into the consiousness of the Maxsis™, and for the creative of them, into the art they produced.

Thus so it was with Bad Bad Bastard Records. Already focused on music with aggressive ryhthms and pounding vibrations, they found a special high in sampling the sounds and screams of battlefield reports and incorporating them into their music. Becoming dedicated to their muse of war, BBB Records began to travel to live zones to gain first-hand recordings, and during one of these outings, one of their artists picked up a blaster or two to make some noise of their own.

This key moment between artist and their subject laid the twisted foundation for a total rebranding. Purchasing the surplus of PAIN CO. and doing some covert requisition of PANIC LTD. training manuals, Dead On Arrival Records was formed. Now operating as something between a music studio and a PMC, Dead On Arrivals ensure sure it's clients waive all rights to their likenesses before engaging in battle, and often force such consessions from their enemy. Laser focused on turning the cacophany and din of warfare into music, DOA Records is rarely sedantary, often traveling from war zone to war zone, heading back to Maxifun borders to restock and resupply if the Omniconglomerate can't safely deliver supplies their way.

Whenever they're not engaged in combat, taking some R&R, or mixing music, DOA Records often puts on concerts for the places they visit on their way to the front, entertaining crowds with gusto and macabre spectacle.

Subsidiary	PAIN CO.	PANIC LTD.	Wrak Saving N' Loans	Ouchie Security	Dead On Arrival Records
Suborbital Package	6 Elite+ Packages™	3 Elite Packages™	1 Platinum Package™ 1 Gold Package™ 1 Silver Package™ 1 Bronze Package™	2 Owie Outfit Package™ 2 Boo-Boo Brigade Packages™	1 Party Package™
Orbital Bundle	6 Premium+ Bundles™	3 Premium Bundles™	1 Platinum Bundle™ 1 Gold Bundle™ 1 Silver Bundle™ 1 Bronze Bundle™	2 Nighty-Night Flight Bundles™ 2 Wakey-Wakey Wing Bundles™	1 Ballroom Blitz Bundle™
Locations	2 Packages & 2 Bundles in Sol. 4 Packages & 4 Bundles in Gronk.	1 Package & 1 Bundle each in Grunk, Grenk, & Grank.	Ready and waiting in Maxifun Classic!™	All Packages and Bundles are occupying the Indriidae sector.	Touring the Prime Conduits.