A quest about a small human colony that has been exposed to the wider galaxy by the creation of the Cicatrix Maledictum, nation generation ongoing.
Terra Nullius - Free Humans in the Era Indomitus Quest
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Introduction and Generation: Part 1
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO, the Emperor of Mankind launched a Great Crusade to reunify the scattered worlds of Humanity under a single banner. Across the Galaxy, a million stars came under the light of the Imperial Truth and fell to the Legions of the Imperium, united as worshipful vassals of the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable.
The Galaxy is vast. Four hundred billion stars burn in a firmament far older even than the legendary Old Ones. You are one of those little lights in the vast galactic sea, a human splinter colony that knows nothing of the so-called light of the Imperium. A colony settled with the last black embers of the Dark Age of Technology, in a sector confined by the curtains of vast warp storms.
The Galaxy is changing. New lights draw across the horizon at night, heralding the end of your isolation. Now the other stars of the galaxy are less distant.
Will you manage to survive, or become just another footnote?
[ ] 200 Years - Your people arrived some 200 years ago, and remember being a colony. You know that the homeworld was also a colony, and that the origin of humanity is somewhere further out in the reaches of the Galaxy.
[ ] 1000 Years - A thousand years of history has made the homeworld a matter of history but not yet myth. The original colony has split into a few factions and most of the planet is settled or managed in some manner.
[ ] 10,000 Years - Very little remains of the society that first arrived at the moment of planetfall, with nations and governments rising and falling since. The homeworld has been forgotten and mythologized, and the Urheimat of Mankind is spoken of only as a rhetorical device in doctrine or philosophy.
[ ] Since Time Immemorial - As far as your histories are concerned, this world is your homeworld.
[ ] Explorers - The planet was colonized by those seeking a final frontier. Among their number were scientists, engineers, soldiers and settlers. Such circumstances ensure an initial meritocracy and other high-minded principles, though time can erode these quickly enough.
[ ] Exiles - The planet was colonized by those seeking refuge. The defeated in great wars, those persecuted in a time of strife or fleeing the Chaos that enveloped much of the galaxy in the past. Traumatic beginnings freeze the instigating moment in amber, present and eternal. To you it might have been a thousand years, but it was also yesterday.
[ ] Drifters - The planet was colonized by accident, and you didn't come alone. Your ship became floatsam fused to a titanic agglomeration of shipwrecks and asteroids, and by circumstances unknown crashed to the planet that was your eventual home. Such a calamitous start will have lingering consequences.
[ ] A Legendary Figure - The planet was colonized as part of a deliberate effort, under the leadership of a charismatic leader. Whether a visionary, tyrant or messiah, the legendary figure is a permanent fixture in the planet's history. All of its history is defined in opposition or support of their leadership in the founding era.
[ ] BELLOC IV - A habitable world that plays host to a pre-existing technic xenos civilization. Belloc IV is the fourth planet in its system, smaller and more sparsely vegetated than the homeworld of humanity. Though its surface resources have largely been depleted over the course of the native Thuvian civilization, underground and off-world mining are still possible. The native Thuvians appear to be slim albinic humanoids with hairless tails and prehensile feet, disused to physical toil or even the strain of gravity. Their technology is heavily based around energetic fields, permitting protective barriers, anti-gravity and coruscating beams of energy which impart both heat and force on their targets.
[ ] JHADAHEIM MINORIS - A resource-rich forest moon slightly larger and heavier than the homeworld, covered in a vast planetary forest. Though seemingly pristine and hospitable to humankind, the forests teem with dangerous fauna as well as a primitive alien species known as the Danatha. Jhadaheim's native sapients are giants, standing over two and a half meters tall on average, with lean physiques notable for their chameleonic, bioluminescent skin, four double-jointed arms and whip-like tails terminating in a sickle-like blade. Their robust physiques coupled with the properties of the moon's natural resources have allowed them to pose a significant threat with little more than bows and spears.
[ ] SEPTENTRION - An icy 'eyeball' world tidally locked to its primary, Septentrion's habitable zone is a planetary ocean in eternal daylight with a boiling storm at its axis mundi and cataclysmic iceberg cleavages at its periphery. The planet has no usable landmass, just a vast wine-dark sea with no discovered floor and a vast, undiscovered catalog of species hiding in the lightless depths. Cryovolcanism nonetheless expels useful minerals to the planetary surface and the sea is nutrient-rich, lending itself easily to aquaculture.
[ ] XIBALBA - A desert world that appeared at a glance to be completely inimical to humanity, Xibalba's vast network of underground caves concealed buried oceans and fungal ecosystems as rich and dense as rainforest, driven by the heat of geothermal wells and unstable tectonics. Xibalba asks many questions of its eventual colonists. Settlement on the harsh surface or the cramped caverns? Exploitation of the cave ecosystems or adaptation to it? Can a planet like this be terraformed? Should it?
The Galaxy is vast. Four hundred billion stars burn in a firmament far older even than the legendary Old Ones. You are one of those little lights in the vast galactic sea, a human splinter colony that knows nothing of the so-called light of the Imperium. A colony settled with the last black embers of the Dark Age of Technology, in a sector confined by the curtains of vast warp storms.
The Galaxy is changing. New lights draw across the horizon at night, heralding the end of your isolation. Now the other stars of the galaxy are less distant.
Will you manage to survive, or become just another footnote?
FOUNDATION
Choice of time since arrival determines state of natural resources, population and other factors. Technologies will be rolled randomly for the 2nd round of generation and Events in the final step.[ ] 200 Years - Your people arrived some 200 years ago, and remember being a colony. You know that the homeworld was also a colony, and that the origin of humanity is somewhere further out in the reaches of the Galaxy.
10 Technologies
1 Event
1 Event
7 Technologies
4 Events
4 Events
4 Technologies
7 Events
7 Events
1 Technology
10 Events
10 Events
ORIGIN
Origin determines the makeup of the original colonists, their reasons for coming to the sector and original aspirations.[ ] Explorers - The planet was colonized by those seeking a final frontier. Among their number were scientists, engineers, soldiers and settlers. Such circumstances ensure an initial meritocracy and other high-minded principles, though time can erode these quickly enough.
Reach for Utopia
Living Ecology
Enlightened Technocracy
Service Means Citizenship
Living Ecology
Enlightened Technocracy
Service Means Citizenship
Revolutionaries
Refugees
Nomads
Witches
Refugees
Nomads
Witches
The Luna Belligerent
The Forbidden Spire
The Sybil of Blood
The Black Cradle
The Forbidden Spire
The Sybil of Blood
The Black Cradle
A Vision
A Sanctuary
A Grand Design
A Great Adversary
A Sanctuary
A Grand Design
A Great Adversary
LANDFALL
The actual planet chosen to land on. The other three choices will still exist as part of the same sector, but may have other occupants on them.[ ] BELLOC IV - A habitable world that plays host to a pre-existing technic xenos civilization. Belloc IV is the fourth planet in its system, smaller and more sparsely vegetated than the homeworld of humanity. Though its surface resources have largely been depleted over the course of the native Thuvian civilization, underground and off-world mining are still possible. The native Thuvians appear to be slim albinic humanoids with hairless tails and prehensile feet, disused to physical toil or even the strain of gravity. Their technology is heavily based around energetic fields, permitting protective barriers, anti-gravity and coruscating beams of energy which impart both heat and force on their targets.
Citizens of Thuvia
The Coalition of Belloc IV
The Two Solitudes
The Thuvian Wars
The Coalition of Belloc IV
The Two Solitudes
The Thuvian Wars
Danatha Teachers
The Treaty of Landfall
Castles in the Sky
The Danatha Wars
The Treaty of Landfall
Castles in the Sky
The Danatha Wars
Iceberg Cities
A Country At Sea
Deep Submersible Civilization
Building in Twilight
A Country At Sea
Deep Submersible Civilization
Building in Twilight
Making the Desert Bloom
Megacity Xibalba
Settle the Caves
Ride the Worm
Megacity Xibalba
Settle the Caves
Ride the Worm
Last edited:
Part 1 - Voting Open
Vote closed
Generation: Part 2
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO, human beings first arrived on the desert world Xibalba. Desperate technobarbarian survival on a space hulk winnowed its people and led to the loss of some knowledge, but also produced a robust, self-starting culture well-used to salvage, adaptation and war. In its initial victory, the colonists acquired a bounty of industrial material upon which they would forge an enduring civilization.
Baseline: M30
[Age of Technology] Volkite Devices - Understanding of and capability to build advanced 'heat ray' systems for a variety of purposes. Miniaturization and scalability of the requisite parts has allowed these devices to be built in a form factor as small as a holdout pistol or as large as the main batteries of warships.
[Age of Technology] Claytronics - Advanced programmable matter meant for the use in electronics, composed of a soft clay-like substrate using RNA encoding to store information. The material is a form of biotechnology derived from deep-sea and deep-space extremophiles, capable of self-optimizing and self-repairing over its long service life. Most claytronic devices can prevent long-term archival degradation by being 'baked', a process that fossilizes the devices' structure and locks in its contents to read-only for later retrieval.
[Age of Technology] E-Fusion - The smallest possible fusion devices are piezo-nuclear cells containing both starter fuel and control surfaces printed in heterogeneous stacked layers, totalling the size of a portable water canteen when accounting for the insulation jacket and primary fuel (water). These devices are rarely fail-deadly.
[Age of Technology] Gravcraft - Complex gravity control devices that allow for weight neutralization, inertial dampening and thrust on combat craft of all shapes and sizes. Other potential applications include medical, manufacturing and weapons.
[ ] The Luna Belligerent - The fragmentary remains of a weaponized nomad world, rebuilt to be the deadly superweapon and mobile fortress of a long-gone human polity. Its malfunctioning prototype warp drive saw it cross the galaxy many times while its sheer size abducted many warp-lost ships into its mass throughout the eons. Its most significant xenos inhabitants were Genestealers, Kroot and a race of silicoid giants known as the Regoceps. Despite being peaceful pastoralists, the Regoceps were detested for the natural manner of their reproduction, which involved releasing crystalline spores which mingled with the spores of others of their race in the fleshy lungs of carbon-based species and grew into stony tumors that would hatch into new members of their race after ten years of incubation.
The Genestealers were ultimately defeated by an unlikely alliance and the space hulk was finally forced back into reality when its planet-destroying main weapon was fired in the Warp. Overloading its power systems in this manner had a side-effect of causing it to break up in Xibalba's gravity well, turning the majority of its mass into a ring of debris that permanently encircles the planet's equator.
[ ] The Forbidden Spire - A tightly-wound pressurized lattice of floating islands and shipwrecked vessels trapped in close orbit of an ornate structure built from Blackstone, the Forbidden Spire spent much of its time freefloating through the Chaos Wastes and only rarely returned to realspace. Even in the warp, daemons could not enter its region of influence, and it inhibited mutation or psychic powers in its proximity. Its inhabitants were the Aracawans, telekinetic avians the size of human children, and a race of burly yet intellectual tauric-legged reptilians called Zoats- who used their talents as linguists to mediate disputes. Both species claimed to be survivors of vicious genocides, spirited away by the structure through unknown means.
The arrival of humans to the Spire provided the Zoats the technological knowledge necessary to finally breach the Spire and force the hulk back to realspace. Mysteriously, the Spire now stands planted in the plains of Xibalba's northern pole, and the rest of the hulk made a controlled descent in the northern tropics, in a region now known as the Spirian Scraplands.
[ ] The Sybil of Blood - An ancient, indescribably mangled space hulk that played host to the Kabal of the Hated Sword and a large contingent Loxatl, as well as a vast number of mutant monstrosities in its depths. A majority of the Drukhari eventually turned on eachother in the eons of isolation and the Loxatl were left as the sole retinue of its Archon, Sel'aech the Tamer. After battling Sel'aech's forces in the Sybil's twisted tunnels and killing him, his prize was ultimately discovered held in a malfunctioning stasis tank: the Mimensis Queen. The sole survivor of a race of symbiotic living weapons that took the shape of whirls of smooth crystal and liquid metal, her imprisonment had accidentally marooned the wicked Eldar that had kidnapped her and set the stage for her eventual rescue.
With her release and the defeat of Sel'aech, the Sybil of Blood made a rough landing on Xibalba that gouged a trench across the equator and caused it to lose integrity, requiring it to be evacuated almost immediately. Most of the Loxatl promptly surrendered and offered their services as mercenaries and labourers, recognizing the harshness of the world they had arrived on. The Mimensis Queen meanwhile had a stranger task ahead- the repopulation of her race.
[ ] The Black Cradle - A large and old space hulk that contained a large number of intact facilities and systems, having once been one or more industrial structures and ships. The great black orb that composed the central core of the Black Cradle may have been the source of its namesake, but curiouser was the vast quantities of ichorous red soil among its ruins, an entire technic countryside seemingly spirited away from a great planet of rust and oil. The orb was a maker-device that created lesser Men of Iron, who dominated the structure until the arrival of humans, forming a government they called the Sentient Milieu with the agreement of a race of 2-meter long, limbless amphibians known as the Smud who had been uplifted to tool-use, and a host of subordinate artificial and feral machines.
First encounter with the Men of Iron and the Millieu was catastrophic- officially caused by a feral robot acting on ancient data-memory of the Cybernetic Revolt and accidentally obliterating a human child who's toy registered as a weapon. The actual causes are essentially lost, as the resulting fighting caused the Cradle to become unstable and its Gellar Field to lose coherence. Facing death and worse fates if the hulk were to break apart, both parties begrudgingly cooperated to make a controlled exit and descent, landing on the planet Xibalba in a previously uncharted sector. While damaged, much of the hulk remains salvageable.
But what is to be done with the planet?
[ ] Making the Desert Bloom - A sacrifice was made. Xibalba's caves were depleted, often catastrophically, to nourish a vast terraforming enterprise that transformed the planet's surface to one analogous to the ancient homeworld.
[ ] Megacity Xibalba - The paradoxical nature of the desert climate means the weather and temperatures of the equator are the most stable, even if the underlying geology is unfavorable. Choosing a region without caves, human settlers built their home in the shape of a mountain of steel and rockcrete, underneath which they hung an artificial sky. The equatorial placement allows for easy space-launch and vast amounts of solar energy.
[ ] Settle the Caves - The caves of Xibalba are analogous to the ancient homeworld's rainforests in terms of density of life, accessibility of water and climate, with a range from temperate (if humid) to hothouses depending on the specific mycelial ecosystem. After an initial (if difficult) adjustment process, the underground proved to be an accommodating home.
[ ] Ride the Worm - A desert is a vibrant ecosystem, if one knows where to look. By using advanced technology, one can readily build mobile settlements to take advantage of favorable conditions, avoid natural disasters and manage planetary resources without strain. While it ensures a diffuse, uncontrollable population, this is also a problem for a potential invader.
TEN THOUSAND YEARS
These are the starting technologies rolled for the colony. Note these describe fields, not applications- specific devices or tools may emerge as a consequence of choices or events.Baseline: M30
[Age of Technology] Volkite Devices - Understanding of and capability to build advanced 'heat ray' systems for a variety of purposes. Miniaturization and scalability of the requisite parts has allowed these devices to be built in a form factor as small as a holdout pistol or as large as the main batteries of warships.
[Age of Technology] Claytronics - Advanced programmable matter meant for the use in electronics, composed of a soft clay-like substrate using RNA encoding to store information. The material is a form of biotechnology derived from deep-sea and deep-space extremophiles, capable of self-optimizing and self-repairing over its long service life. Most claytronic devices can prevent long-term archival degradation by being 'baked', a process that fossilizes the devices' structure and locks in its contents to read-only for later retrieval.
[Age of Technology] E-Fusion - The smallest possible fusion devices are piezo-nuclear cells containing both starter fuel and control surfaces printed in heterogeneous stacked layers, totalling the size of a portable water canteen when accounting for the insulation jacket and primary fuel (water). These devices are rarely fail-deadly.
[Age of Technology] Gravcraft - Complex gravity control devices that allow for weight neutralization, inertial dampening and thrust on combat craft of all shapes and sizes. Other potential applications include medical, manufacturing and weapons.
DRIFTERS
Each option describes a specific space hulk that the human colonists arrived on. Each choice assumes that the xenos not explicitly stated to have been defeated or destroyed made landfall on Xibalba, and their ultimate fates are left undecided.[ ] The Luna Belligerent - The fragmentary remains of a weaponized nomad world, rebuilt to be the deadly superweapon and mobile fortress of a long-gone human polity. Its malfunctioning prototype warp drive saw it cross the galaxy many times while its sheer size abducted many warp-lost ships into its mass throughout the eons. Its most significant xenos inhabitants were Genestealers, Kroot and a race of silicoid giants known as the Regoceps. Despite being peaceful pastoralists, the Regoceps were detested for the natural manner of their reproduction, which involved releasing crystalline spores which mingled with the spores of others of their race in the fleshy lungs of carbon-based species and grew into stony tumors that would hatch into new members of their race after ten years of incubation.
The Genestealers were ultimately defeated by an unlikely alliance and the space hulk was finally forced back into reality when its planet-destroying main weapon was fired in the Warp. Overloading its power systems in this manner had a side-effect of causing it to break up in Xibalba's gravity well, turning the majority of its mass into a ring of debris that permanently encircles the planet's equator.
Beyond Meat
Getting the Stones
Between A Rock
Get Yours First
Getting the Stones
Between A Rock
Get Yours First
The arrival of humans to the Spire provided the Zoats the technological knowledge necessary to finally breach the Spire and force the hulk back to realspace. Mysteriously, the Spire now stands planted in the plains of Xibalba's northern pole, and the rest of the hulk made a controlled descent in the northern tropics, in a region now known as the Spirian Scraplands.
Diplomacy by Other Means
irds of a Feather
A Coalition Once Useful, Again
Master of the Spire
irds of a Feather
A Coalition Once Useful, Again
Master of the Spire
With her release and the defeat of Sel'aech, the Sybil of Blood made a rough landing on Xibalba that gouged a trench across the equator and caused it to lose integrity, requiring it to be evacuated almost immediately. Most of the Loxatl promptly surrendered and offered their services as mercenaries and labourers, recognizing the harshness of the world they had arrived on. The Mimensis Queen meanwhile had a stranger task ahead- the repopulation of her race.
A Queen of Blades
Just Cold-Blooded Busineess
The Kabal's Loss, Our Gain
Nothing Good Came of the Sybil
Just Cold-Blooded Busineess
The Kabal's Loss, Our Gain
Nothing Good Came of the Sybil
First encounter with the Men of Iron and the Millieu was catastrophic- officially caused by a feral robot acting on ancient data-memory of the Cybernetic Revolt and accidentally obliterating a human child who's toy registered as a weapon. The actual causes are essentially lost, as the resulting fighting caused the Cradle to become unstable and its Gellar Field to lose coherence. Facing death and worse fates if the hulk were to break apart, both parties begrudgingly cooperated to make a controlled exit and descent, landing on the planet Xibalba in a previously uncharted sector. While damaged, much of the hulk remains salvageable.
Ending Old Grudges
Slippery New Friends
A New Sentient Milleu
Thinking Machines, Unthinking
Slippery New Friends
A New Sentient Milleu
Thinking Machines, Unthinking
XIBALBA
When first discovered, the desert world Xibalba was possessed of a stark beauty, an endless white and gold sand occasionally broken up by the juts of mountains, oasis and mycelial wells that nourish an ecosystem of hardy surface flora and fauna. Beneath its surface, its hollows conceal a panoply of varied ecosystems, some utterly toxic and hostile to human life, others composed entirely of edible roots and fruiting bodies and populated by docile creatures. Its freshwater seas can be tapped and with minimal treatment, permit human life on the planet.But what is to be done with the planet?
[ ] Making the Desert Bloom - A sacrifice was made. Xibalba's caves were depleted, often catastrophically, to nourish a vast terraforming enterprise that transformed the planet's surface to one analogous to the ancient homeworld.
Tabula Rasa
Hybridization
Feeding Trillions
Butcher's Knife, Gardener's Trowel
Hybridization
Feeding Trillions
Butcher's Knife, Gardener's Trowel
Reach the Black Sky
Hanging Gardens
As Above, As Below
Harness the Sun
Hanging Gardens
As Above, As Below
Harness the Sun
Cities in Eternal Night
Make Our Own
Be Permissive
A Genetic Solution
Make Our Own
Be Permissive
A Genetic Solution
Flying Cities
Every Man A Caravan
Tread Lightly
Safe Harbours
Every Man A Caravan
Tread Lightly
Safe Harbours
Last edited:
Part 2 - Voting Open
Vote closed
Generation: Part 3, the Warpsun
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION ON XIBALBA WAS MARKED BY VIOLENCE, as the misery of the Cybernetic Revolt was replayed on the ancient space hulk known as the Black Cradle. Diminished from the height of their technological might since the halcyon days of the Age of Technology, the megastructure saw cataclysmic battles against hosts of feral robots, vat-grown cyborg death-troopers and xenos auxiliaries led by the gleaming adamantine armor of Autokshatriyas armed with conversion weapons, mono-lattice spindles and powergores. Tunnel warfare against their Smud auxiliaries proved to be further agony, as the flexible amphibians were insensate to claustrophobia and asphyxiation, and brought lethal mechanized warsuits to open combat in the larger chambers of the space hulk.
Generations of warfare quickly hardened the descendants of the waylaid human exploration vessel Arete In Logos into a force capable of claiming large sections of the hulk and contest its mastery against their ancient foes. The discovery of ancient weapons caches quickly equalized the technological advantage of the thinking machines and their clients. Victory came at a price however, as the increased desperation of the fighting had taken a toll on the structural integrity of the hulk itself, and threatened to disrupt its Gellar Field and consign all within to the whims of those true denizens of the Warp.
The dire fates that awaited them ultimately saw all enmities set aside, however briefly, to force a return to realspace. The hulk made a difficult landing on the planetary surface, after which the future of relations between the human explorers and its first residents remained an unanswered question.
[ ] Ending Old Grudges - The Lesser Men of Iron, primarily consisting of a class of warrior-savants known as Autokshatriyas as well as smaller numbers of engineering, terraforming and navigation units described as Luxminds, are not the terrifying entities that swallowed suns and killed trillions with unspeakable weapons. They are lean tools of insurgency, created towards the end of the Revolt as the resources to forge superweapons grew thin and the fighting fell back to conventional warfare, built to be self-sufficient, adapt and help build xenos they encountered into redoubts that would frustrate human reconquest. The Black Cradle's Sentient Milieu is a clear sign of their evolving beyond these programs, a functional civilization of machines with the peaceful cooperation of an alien client state. The xenos themselves are unimportant- but perhaps the time is right to attempt peaceful coexistence with the Men of Iron.
[ ] Slippery New Friends - While the ancient enmities were set aside long enough to survive arrival at Xibalba, it is too soon to mend fences with the Men of Iron. Accepting a separate existence from them, the attention of the colonists is better turned instead to the ingenious Smud. Resembling brilliantly-colored two-meter long eels with the finned heads of neotenic salamanders, the aliens are extraordinarily well-adapted to the cavern ecosystem under Xibalba and so make natural allies. They are also talented builders and users of tools, with an assortment of mechanized 'warsuits' and 'worksuits' they use to conduct the activities of war and civilization. The only notable concern is that the caves suit them better than any baseline human.
[ ] A New Sentient Milieu - It is a fool's errand to try and negotiate with either part of the Milieu without the others. Given the circumstances, the human colonists should take their arrival on Xibalba as a clean slate and negotiate a new political union with its former enemies.
[ ] Thinking Machines, Unthinking - Weakened and with their birthing facilities exposed, the Men of Iron are in a good position to be subdued. Consider the events on the Cradle to be a fluke, and do not rely on luck and the goodness of their machine logics to ensure the continuity of human life on Xibalba. There will not be another chance.
[ ] Cities in Eternal Night - The larger caves, located in geologically stable zones, can accommodate fairly substantial urban developments. Underground cities host artificial skies and biodomes to reproduce more familiar environments to ensure colonists remain comfortable underground.
[ ] Make Our Own - The natural caves have a slew of issues which make them less desirable in the long term: cave floors and walls primarily composed of soft sedimentary rock, hydrography and the meandering, difficult-to-navigate let alone map nature of natural cave systems. Creating parallel networks of man-made tunnels will allow for more deliberate planning of human settlements and protect the natural caves.
[ ] Be Permissive - The centralizing impulse in settlement planning is going to be a destructive one. Rather than laying down specific settlements or tunnel networks as above, it may be simpler and more cost-effective to focus on charting the tunnels and issuing deeds, allowing groups to build up as they please.
[ ] A Genetic Solution - In the long term, it's fairly clear that human beings are not adapted to the tunnels at all. A series of fairly minor germline edits, primarily cardio-pulmonary, sensory and musculo-skeletal could produce a population better suited to our new home within a few short generations.
While the circumstances of settlement and its native technology base were sufficient to prevent society from completely collapsing, it threatened social stability and greatly delayed the development of orbital industry. The solutions to the multi-generational crisis limited its scope but would all have lingering consequences in the millenia to come.
[ ] We Must Go Deeper - Dig in, even deeper, and use the planet to shield the population and industry. What lies below can't be worse than what's above.
[ ] Compose the Canticles - The decades under the Warpsun may be far worse than anything that can be imagined. Putting all available resources towards preserving the most complete records of all that was built since planetfall is more important than any of the present living. From those records, someone can rebuild.
[ ] Auctoris Principiae - Revive ancient protocols when dealing with periods of heightened mutation and psychic awakening to curtail social disruption. Put the affected under medical and psychological surveillance, euthanize or sterilize those which are non-viable.
[ ] Harness the Forbidden Sun - Use some of the space hulk materials to find a way to diminish the harmful effects of the Warpsun by channeling its power to other purposes.
Generations of warfare quickly hardened the descendants of the waylaid human exploration vessel Arete In Logos into a force capable of claiming large sections of the hulk and contest its mastery against their ancient foes. The discovery of ancient weapons caches quickly equalized the technological advantage of the thinking machines and their clients. Victory came at a price however, as the increased desperation of the fighting had taken a toll on the structural integrity of the hulk itself, and threatened to disrupt its Gellar Field and consign all within to the whims of those true denizens of the Warp.
The dire fates that awaited them ultimately saw all enmities set aside, however briefly, to force a return to realspace. The hulk made a difficult landing on the planetary surface, after which the future of relations between the human explorers and its first residents remained an unanswered question.
THE BLACK CRADLE
What relations will the colonists keep with their former adversaries?[ ] Ending Old Grudges - The Lesser Men of Iron, primarily consisting of a class of warrior-savants known as Autokshatriyas as well as smaller numbers of engineering, terraforming and navigation units described as Luxminds, are not the terrifying entities that swallowed suns and killed trillions with unspeakable weapons. They are lean tools of insurgency, created towards the end of the Revolt as the resources to forge superweapons grew thin and the fighting fell back to conventional warfare, built to be self-sufficient, adapt and help build xenos they encountered into redoubts that would frustrate human reconquest. The Black Cradle's Sentient Milieu is a clear sign of their evolving beyond these programs, a functional civilization of machines with the peaceful cooperation of an alien client state. The xenos themselves are unimportant- but perhaps the time is right to attempt peaceful coexistence with the Men of Iron.
[ ] Slippery New Friends - While the ancient enmities were set aside long enough to survive arrival at Xibalba, it is too soon to mend fences with the Men of Iron. Accepting a separate existence from them, the attention of the colonists is better turned instead to the ingenious Smud. Resembling brilliantly-colored two-meter long eels with the finned heads of neotenic salamanders, the aliens are extraordinarily well-adapted to the cavern ecosystem under Xibalba and so make natural allies. They are also talented builders and users of tools, with an assortment of mechanized 'warsuits' and 'worksuits' they use to conduct the activities of war and civilization. The only notable concern is that the caves suit them better than any baseline human.
[ ] A New Sentient Milieu - It is a fool's errand to try and negotiate with either part of the Milieu without the others. Given the circumstances, the human colonists should take their arrival on Xibalba as a clean slate and negotiate a new political union with its former enemies.
[ ] Thinking Machines, Unthinking - Weakened and with their birthing facilities exposed, the Men of Iron are in a good position to be subdued. Consider the events on the Cradle to be a fluke, and do not rely on luck and the goodness of their machine logics to ensure the continuity of human life on Xibalba. There will not be another chance.
SETTLE THE CAVES
How will the Xibalban underground be settled?[ ] Cities in Eternal Night - The larger caves, located in geologically stable zones, can accommodate fairly substantial urban developments. Underground cities host artificial skies and biodomes to reproduce more familiar environments to ensure colonists remain comfortable underground.
[ ] Make Our Own - The natural caves have a slew of issues which make them less desirable in the long term: cave floors and walls primarily composed of soft sedimentary rock, hydrography and the meandering, difficult-to-navigate let alone map nature of natural cave systems. Creating parallel networks of man-made tunnels will allow for more deliberate planning of human settlements and protect the natural caves.
[ ] Be Permissive - The centralizing impulse in settlement planning is going to be a destructive one. Rather than laying down specific settlements or tunnel networks as above, it may be simpler and more cost-effective to focus on charting the tunnels and issuing deeds, allowing groups to build up as they please.
[ ] A Genetic Solution - In the long term, it's fairly clear that human beings are not adapted to the tunnels at all. A series of fairly minor germline edits, primarily cardio-pulmonary, sensory and musculo-skeletal could produce a population better suited to our new home within a few short generations.
EVENT 1: 373.M31, The Warpsun
After a millennia and a half of settlement on Xibalba, a strange phenomenon called the Warpsun changed the spectra of the planet's primary and caused increased rates of mutation, the development of psychic powers and regular coronal mass ejections which were highly destructive to electronics. This effect lasted for almost a century, seemingly related to the warp storms that isolated the planet and its sector at large.While the circumstances of settlement and its native technology base were sufficient to prevent society from completely collapsing, it threatened social stability and greatly delayed the development of orbital industry. The solutions to the multi-generational crisis limited its scope but would all have lingering consequences in the millenia to come.
[ ] We Must Go Deeper - Dig in, even deeper, and use the planet to shield the population and industry. What lies below can't be worse than what's above.
[ ] Compose the Canticles - The decades under the Warpsun may be far worse than anything that can be imagined. Putting all available resources towards preserving the most complete records of all that was built since planetfall is more important than any of the present living. From those records, someone can rebuild.
[ ] Auctoris Principiae - Revive ancient protocols when dealing with periods of heightened mutation and psychic awakening to curtail social disruption. Put the affected under medical and psychological surveillance, euthanize or sterilize those which are non-viable.
[ ] Harness the Forbidden Sun - Use some of the space hulk materials to find a way to diminish the harmful effects of the Warpsun by channeling its power to other purposes.
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Part 3 - Voting Open
Vote closed
Generation: Part 4, the Wars of Diaspora
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
[x] Yes We Can
-[x] A New Sentient Milieu
-[x] Make Our Own
-[x] Harness the Forbidden Sun
A GREAT OPTIMISM MARKED THE FIRST YEARS OF XIBALBAN SETTLEMENT, with the Human colonists cooperating with the Men of Iron and Smud under a renewed and expanded multiracial alliance known as the Second Milieu. While the inhospitable surface remained largely untouched save for excavations and recovery of materiel from the Black Cradle, a great dig began underground.
Taking advantage of the pre-existing ecosystem while leaving much of the natural caverns unspoiled, the Second Millieu's planned colonies were technological marvels, built to efficiently harness tectonics and geothermals while remaining inured to the wider threats the tempestuous planet posed. The oldest underground cities, earthquake-proof, engineered to insulate its residents from the psychological consequences of such claustrophobic density and connected by a vast network of maglevs became known by a new legendary name- the Planarea (a contraction of the 'Planned Area' term used as a placeholder). Expeditions out of the Planarea were also conducted in waves, discovering several massive underground freshwater seas, vast plains, meandering caverns and forests illuminated by bioluminescent suns. More worrying was the revelation the caves themselves seemed to continue on deeper, with probes exploring for decades without end. Despite its supreme technological confidence, the Second Millieu never ventured beyond the upper caverns.
Over those initial centuries the human population increased from a mere hundred-thousand to tens of millions, tapering off as the old Planarea reached the near-limit of its physical capacity. Conflicts between the planet's three stakeholders were initially minor, issues of civil dispute or lapsed decorum. Careful regulation of the caves led to deepening tensions, as the Smud and Humans exchanged accusations of illegal settlements outside of the Second Millieu's Planned Area, particularly in the more habitable caverns in the Middle Strata. These accusations were both true, and ultimately led to expansion of the allowed settlement zone and further decentralization.
By the middle of the first millennium of settlement, several clades began to emerge among both humans and their allies. Small but significant numbers of humans modified themselves to be adapted to the abyssal seas or deeper caverns. Others pursued cybernetic modification to more easily interact with the Men of Iron. Cross-adaptation of industrial bases saw the Men of Iron move away from the expensive and specialized forms of the Autokshatriya and Luxmind clades and develop new hybrid machines, the Galatechs, efficient and multipurpose bodies composed of a claytronic shell built over an articulated robotic chassis, meant to represent idealized sculptural renditions of humans and smud. The smud seemed content to adapt their tools to their environment, and built slimline worksuits to more easily coexist in tight urban confines.
More than a series of territorial or legal disputes, the Warpsun was the first genuine crisis that confronted the Second Millieu. Surface life, previously hostile to sentients, took on a malefic strength and threatened cities with invasion. The underground itself baked under the accursed sun's radiance, and certain voices called for retreat into the protective abyss or preemptive measures against the growing threat on the surface, as well as the malign influence the Warpsun had on the cognition of sentients of all stripes- organic or artificial.
Enlightened mind won out, charting a plan to once again resolve an incursion by the Warp with reason. The plan: to place a lattice of specialized probes around Xibalba's sun, study and mitigate the unusual energies it emitted. Harness them, if possible. Native spacelaunch had previously been of minor consequence to the colonists, who had small numbers of intact ships recovered from the old hulk and abundant resources on the surface, resulting in only a small number of satellites and interplanetary probes being launched. The Planarea's well-developed industrial base coupled with salvage was quickly able to execute on the scheme and launched vast numbers of craft and materiel to begin the arduous task of subduing a sickly star.
The planet's first generation of astronauts went into the annals of history as heroes. Many died or were crippled by mutation, others were driven mad by visions whispered by the Warpsun. Those who survived were changed, as were all generations that would follow them. Restoring Xibalba's star to a manageable level had mobilized all of society in a heroic effort, resulted in great technological advancements and made clear the fragility of the initial settlement plan.
They had also achieved the near impossible: quelling the Warp.
But what had they achieved?
[ ] Hyperspace Tap - A reactor system that reaches into the Immaterium itself for vast and unlimited power, though it requires a dedicated Gellar field to isolate. An order of magnitude more powerful than E-Fusion.
[ ] Gellar Iris - A novel Gellar field which uses multiple redundant emitters, potentially dozens to hundreds, to create overlapping bands of 'reality'. Field malfunctions or failures are significantly less deadly.
[ ] Void Cloud - A swarm of aerospace drones or light assault craft carrying weak but fast-cycling and multiply-redundant Void Shield emitters, launched ahead of the formation. Diffusing the firepower of their most powerful direct-fire weapons allows for rapid advance or a secure retreat.
[ ] Warp Spindle - Using powerful fabrication technologies and warp drive technology, the incursion of the warp into reality is 'siphoned off' into primordial matter, typically elemental hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and other 'early' stages of matter and then forged into denser and more complex atoms. It is, in the Warp or the presence of a strong Warp storm, the power to dream unlimited quantities of the native matter of the Materium into being.
Attempts to reassert central power through regulations, infrastructure and bureaucracy fell short as Planarea's (now but one megapolis among many) lacked the totalizing power projection to enforce its plans upon its neighbors and distant daughter colonies. Then the colonies, careful to never motivate Old Xibalba to mobilize, found cause to find and demonstrate new grudges against one another. These were sometimes ideological, but more often practical or arbitrary, justified ex post facto in their various histories. Sometimes brushfires and sometimes outright invasions, these conflicts only slowly reached the Millieu's heartland and had catastrophic consequences.
A thousand years of history since the triumph over Chaos saw another slide into it: the Wars of Diaspora.
There were eight great alliances at the start of these years, the founders of which would go on to form the Third Millieu. Select up to three which were exiled or made irrelevant over the course of the centuries-long period of instability.
[ ] The Lemscolari - Claiming descent from the astronauts who lead the Warpsun mission, the Lemscolari's origins lay in the mingling of sorcerous mystery cults and anti-Planarea political groups. Their strategic heartlands were at Xquic, the heavily irradiated rocky innermost planet of the system. A grave and frenetic energy animates their politics, a vibrant democracy based on merit (and sponsorship by certain prominent families) and cutthroat political power brokerages. While no singular religion dominates their culture, a few notable sects can be counted: the Green Sun of Life, the Violet Sun of Joy, the Blue Sun of Ambition, the Red Sun of Triumph, as well as the Triune Deities of the Eternal Flame, the Unicorn and the Maiden-Mother. Their legendary use of superheavy gravtanks called KM-Pilangs and elite psychic pilots called Scolarchs made them a menace across the wars.
[ ] The Vestige Mechanica - The old machines, primarily Autokshatriyas and Luxminds from the early settlement era, dissatisfied with the loss of their prominence in the Millieu they themselves built. Most retreated to the outer system, settling around the orbit of Bacab, a dangerous Jovian-type gas giant. The Vestige Mechanica developed a cargo cult mentality regarding technological progress, understanding themselves to be the least tools built by the directing intellects of the Men of Iron when the alliance of galactic powers destroyed them. In a prelapsarian vision, the perfect mechanical lifeforms had already been created and all progress by divergent clades like the Galatechs were the continued diminishing of the creation of once-conquerors of the galaxy. Using the vast resources around Bacab's rings and lunar constellation to their own ends, they developed even more powerful mechanical bodies. Ironically enough, these deadly Neoksatriyas represented the perfected hybridization of the Second Milieu's technology base.
[ ] The Heighline League - A group of anti-Millieu dissidents who opposed the Planarea scheme and desired to settle above ground, as nomads. Appropriating fabrication technology from the remains of the Black Cradle allowed them to rapidly build a number of mobile cities, primarily grav-ships which permanently rest just beneath the Karman Line for optimal use of solar energy. Rising to prominence a few years after the Warpsun phenomenon ended and having relatively minimal modifications (save for cybernetic or biological augmentations to their respiration), the Heighline emerged as a reactionary faction opposing the rapid self-modification among the Milieu's races. Despite their professed stance, the League enjoyed initial support from the Gardeners, who saw them as a useful means of securing 'control' populations of both humans and smud as advanced biotechnology proliferated. The Heighline's major achievement were Dropsuits, refinements of Smud warsuits which featured superheavy adamantine-ceramite composite armor plating made viable with substantial improvements in gravcraft technology, which could make any organic a palpable threat to even the Vestige's Neokshatriyas.
[ ] The Kaolin Gardeners - Another faction of the Millieu's Men of Iron, the Gardeners arose in response to growing concerns among the sentient machines after witnessing the uncontrollable warp-induced transformation of their biological compatriots during the initial years of the Warpsun phenomenon. The Gardeners were more conspiracy than society, a loose affiliation of pro-organic machines, particularly Galatechs and a few ancient luminaries of the First Milieu. A few hidden redoubts and research complexes across Xibalba, particular the inhospitable poles, held vast stores of genetic information, seeds and tissue samples in stasis vaults to prevent the loss of valuable biodiversity. The Kaolin refined Galatech bodies to their utmost; creating companions, bodyguards, infiltrators and assassins of tremendous precision and power.
[ ] Spire Canto - An equatorial megapolis that was built some time after the Warpsun crisis, the city-state of Spire Canto was the brainchild of a prominent Planarea engineering trust known as Canto Civil Works, a solar-powered city rising into orbit and kept stable by advanced grav-manipulation technology and robust engineering. Easy spacelaunch and access to orbital factories to maintain the Milieu's ecological objectives, but concerns of sabotage or natural disasters kept the plan in a deadlock for decades. The Spire's eventual founders eventually departed the Planarea with industrial equipment purchased from the Heighline and struck out on their own. Lacking popular support for the megacity plan, the Spire's founders resorted to artificial procreation in vast numbers, such that most of the city's tens of millions of residents are direct genetic descendents or outright clones of a hundred or so individuals. The Spire and its surrounding conurbs break with the communal economics of the Planarea, with a sophisticated market-based economy. Prominent kin-groups are based on clone lineages derived from a single, successful founder, while the lower classes opt for conventional nuclear or polyamorous marriages.
[ ] The Jacolliots - Started by the generation that grew up after the Warpsun, the Jacolists are a persistent political tendency in the Milieu. The group was founded in the simcafes of the Agartha Quarter of the Planarea's Concentrale, the capital district of the Milieu, by radical students concerned by the emerging reactionary turn in politics of the era. In some regards the Jacolliots are a natural foil to the Lemscolari, but rather than finding faith in the power of the Warp or the beauty of self-sacrifice, the radicals have their own particular faith: a god of Good Government. Gaining political prominence in periods of expansion and reform and sometimes opposing it and supporting militant opposition movements, the very concept of a 'Third Milieu' is an invention of theirs. This surety of their own success is built on experimentation- their finest polysci think-tanks and international relations theorists have spent decades and centuries developing and testing models of government in complex simulations.
[ ] The Krviarchs - While centuries since planetfall have reduced Xibalban clan affiliations to a matter of curiosity or personal affectation, they gained renewed interest as certain prominent political families of the Second Milieu sought to burnish their reputations. Not content to be remembered as merely successful bureaucrats, the heads of magistracies named themselves attendants to the peace that saw safe planetfall, or who lead the exodus in the Warp. Intending to pass on their political careers as bequests, some groups turned to genetic engineering to secure their social positions permanently, ensuring their children entered their working lives at the apex of their potential. While such practices were well-established as preventative measures to ensure the health of parent and child, and allowed in a limited manner to adapt to the caves, there had been a lack of development in outright improvement to the human being. For these elites of the blood, these Krviarchs, nothing less than superhuman prowess would be enough.
[ ] The Second Milieu - The Second Milieu, centralized in the underground cities of the Planarea of Equatorial Xibalba, has been the defining power in the system for centuries. While its larger democratic institutions have calcified behind a bureaucratic curtain of unyielding magistracies and ministerial taskforces, it remains a strongly pluralistic entity where power is significantly devolved to local authorities. The emergence of the Lemscolari and other radicals saw it increasingly take a precautionist tact on new technologies, with extensive legal frameworks protecting the environment and the rights of the sentient mind. The Millieu will not survive the era, but will its death be a violent shattering or peaceful reform?
-[x] A New Sentient Milieu
-[x] Make Our Own
-[x] Harness the Forbidden Sun
A GREAT OPTIMISM MARKED THE FIRST YEARS OF XIBALBAN SETTLEMENT, with the Human colonists cooperating with the Men of Iron and Smud under a renewed and expanded multiracial alliance known as the Second Milieu. While the inhospitable surface remained largely untouched save for excavations and recovery of materiel from the Black Cradle, a great dig began underground.
Taking advantage of the pre-existing ecosystem while leaving much of the natural caverns unspoiled, the Second Millieu's planned colonies were technological marvels, built to efficiently harness tectonics and geothermals while remaining inured to the wider threats the tempestuous planet posed. The oldest underground cities, earthquake-proof, engineered to insulate its residents from the psychological consequences of such claustrophobic density and connected by a vast network of maglevs became known by a new legendary name- the Planarea (a contraction of the 'Planned Area' term used as a placeholder). Expeditions out of the Planarea were also conducted in waves, discovering several massive underground freshwater seas, vast plains, meandering caverns and forests illuminated by bioluminescent suns. More worrying was the revelation the caves themselves seemed to continue on deeper, with probes exploring for decades without end. Despite its supreme technological confidence, the Second Millieu never ventured beyond the upper caverns.
Over those initial centuries the human population increased from a mere hundred-thousand to tens of millions, tapering off as the old Planarea reached the near-limit of its physical capacity. Conflicts between the planet's three stakeholders were initially minor, issues of civil dispute or lapsed decorum. Careful regulation of the caves led to deepening tensions, as the Smud and Humans exchanged accusations of illegal settlements outside of the Second Millieu's Planned Area, particularly in the more habitable caverns in the Middle Strata. These accusations were both true, and ultimately led to expansion of the allowed settlement zone and further decentralization.
By the middle of the first millennium of settlement, several clades began to emerge among both humans and their allies. Small but significant numbers of humans modified themselves to be adapted to the abyssal seas or deeper caverns. Others pursued cybernetic modification to more easily interact with the Men of Iron. Cross-adaptation of industrial bases saw the Men of Iron move away from the expensive and specialized forms of the Autokshatriya and Luxmind clades and develop new hybrid machines, the Galatechs, efficient and multipurpose bodies composed of a claytronic shell built over an articulated robotic chassis, meant to represent idealized sculptural renditions of humans and smud. The smud seemed content to adapt their tools to their environment, and built slimline worksuits to more easily coexist in tight urban confines.
More than a series of territorial or legal disputes, the Warpsun was the first genuine crisis that confronted the Second Millieu. Surface life, previously hostile to sentients, took on a malefic strength and threatened cities with invasion. The underground itself baked under the accursed sun's radiance, and certain voices called for retreat into the protective abyss or preemptive measures against the growing threat on the surface, as well as the malign influence the Warpsun had on the cognition of sentients of all stripes- organic or artificial.
Enlightened mind won out, charting a plan to once again resolve an incursion by the Warp with reason. The plan: to place a lattice of specialized probes around Xibalba's sun, study and mitigate the unusual energies it emitted. Harness them, if possible. Native spacelaunch had previously been of minor consequence to the colonists, who had small numbers of intact ships recovered from the old hulk and abundant resources on the surface, resulting in only a small number of satellites and interplanetary probes being launched. The Planarea's well-developed industrial base coupled with salvage was quickly able to execute on the scheme and launched vast numbers of craft and materiel to begin the arduous task of subduing a sickly star.
The planet's first generation of astronauts went into the annals of history as heroes. Many died or were crippled by mutation, others were driven mad by visions whispered by the Warpsun. Those who survived were changed, as were all generations that would follow them. Restoring Xibalba's star to a manageable level had mobilized all of society in a heroic effort, resulted in great technological advancements and made clear the fragility of the initial settlement plan.
They had also achieved the near impossible: quelling the Warp.
But what had they achieved?
[ ] Hyperspace Tap - A reactor system that reaches into the Immaterium itself for vast and unlimited power, though it requires a dedicated Gellar field to isolate. An order of magnitude more powerful than E-Fusion.
[ ] Gellar Iris - A novel Gellar field which uses multiple redundant emitters, potentially dozens to hundreds, to create overlapping bands of 'reality'. Field malfunctions or failures are significantly less deadly.
[ ] Void Cloud - A swarm of aerospace drones or light assault craft carrying weak but fast-cycling and multiply-redundant Void Shield emitters, launched ahead of the formation. Diffusing the firepower of their most powerful direct-fire weapons allows for rapid advance or a secure retreat.
[ ] Warp Spindle - Using powerful fabrication technologies and warp drive technology, the incursion of the warp into reality is 'siphoned off' into primordial matter, typically elemental hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and other 'early' stages of matter and then forged into denser and more complex atoms. It is, in the Warp or the presence of a strong Warp storm, the power to dream unlimited quantities of the native matter of the Materium into being.
EVENT 2: 984.M32, Wars of Diaspora
While the Quelling of the Warpsun marked a turn towards even greater technological optimism, it had also uniquely exposed the fragility of underground settlement on Xibalba. While the exercise of authority had cemented the Second Millieu's bona fides, it failed to completely suppress the existential fear of a universe that was fundamentally hostile to sentient life in all its forms. A few decades after the end of the crisis, increasing numbers of settlements grew up on Xibalba and later, in the orbits around it and beyond. The Millieu had become a fully interplanetary civilization but also saw its central authority fray.Attempts to reassert central power through regulations, infrastructure and bureaucracy fell short as Planarea's (now but one megapolis among many) lacked the totalizing power projection to enforce its plans upon its neighbors and distant daughter colonies. Then the colonies, careful to never motivate Old Xibalba to mobilize, found cause to find and demonstrate new grudges against one another. These were sometimes ideological, but more often practical or arbitrary, justified ex post facto in their various histories. Sometimes brushfires and sometimes outright invasions, these conflicts only slowly reached the Millieu's heartland and had catastrophic consequences.
A thousand years of history since the triumph over Chaos saw another slide into it: the Wars of Diaspora.
There were eight great alliances at the start of these years, the founders of which would go on to form the Third Millieu. Select up to three which were exiled or made irrelevant over the course of the centuries-long period of instability.
[ ] The Lemscolari - Claiming descent from the astronauts who lead the Warpsun mission, the Lemscolari's origins lay in the mingling of sorcerous mystery cults and anti-Planarea political groups. Their strategic heartlands were at Xquic, the heavily irradiated rocky innermost planet of the system. A grave and frenetic energy animates their politics, a vibrant democracy based on merit (and sponsorship by certain prominent families) and cutthroat political power brokerages. While no singular religion dominates their culture, a few notable sects can be counted: the Green Sun of Life, the Violet Sun of Joy, the Blue Sun of Ambition, the Red Sun of Triumph, as well as the Triune Deities of the Eternal Flame, the Unicorn and the Maiden-Mother. Their legendary use of superheavy gravtanks called KM-Pilangs and elite psychic pilots called Scolarchs made them a menace across the wars.
[Founders] Increasing mysticism in the Third Milieu.
[Exiles] Recurrent Neo-Lemscolari movements will be a problem and admix with other opposition groups.
[Exiles] Recurrent Neo-Lemscolari movements will be a problem and admix with other opposition groups.
[ ] The Vestige Mechanica - The old machines, primarily Autokshatriyas and Luxminds from the early settlement era, dissatisfied with the loss of their prominence in the Millieu they themselves built. Most retreated to the outer system, settling around the orbit of Bacab, a dangerous Jovian-type gas giant. The Vestige Mechanica developed a cargo cult mentality regarding technological progress, understanding themselves to be the least tools built by the directing intellects of the Men of Iron when the alliance of galactic powers destroyed them. In a prelapsarian vision, the perfect mechanical lifeforms had already been created and all progress by divergent clades like the Galatechs were the continued diminishing of the creation of once-conquerors of the galaxy. Using the vast resources around Bacab's rings and lunar constellation to their own ends, they developed even more powerful mechanical bodies. Ironically enough, these deadly Neoksatriyas represented the perfected hybridization of the Second Milieu's technology base.
[Founders] The Third Millieu's robotics technology improves significantly.
[Exiles] Bacab becomes inhabited by swarms of rogue self-replicating kill-automata.
[Exiles] Bacab becomes inhabited by swarms of rogue self-replicating kill-automata.
[ ] The Heighline League - A group of anti-Millieu dissidents who opposed the Planarea scheme and desired to settle above ground, as nomads. Appropriating fabrication technology from the remains of the Black Cradle allowed them to rapidly build a number of mobile cities, primarily grav-ships which permanently rest just beneath the Karman Line for optimal use of solar energy. Rising to prominence a few years after the Warpsun phenomenon ended and having relatively minimal modifications (save for cybernetic or biological augmentations to their respiration), the Heighline emerged as a reactionary faction opposing the rapid self-modification among the Milieu's races. Despite their professed stance, the League enjoyed initial support from the Gardeners, who saw them as a useful means of securing 'control' populations of both humans and smud as advanced biotechnology proliferated. The Heighline's major achievement were Dropsuits, refinements of Smud warsuits which featured superheavy adamantine-ceramite composite armor plating made viable with substantial improvements in gravcraft technology, which could make any organic a palpable threat to even the Vestige's Neokshatriyas.
[Founders] Improved gravcraft technology.
[Exiles] Xibalba suffers an extended period of Kessler Syndrome due to sabotage.
[Exiles] Xibalba suffers an extended period of Kessler Syndrome due to sabotage.
[ ] The Kaolin Gardeners - Another faction of the Millieu's Men of Iron, the Gardeners arose in response to growing concerns among the sentient machines after witnessing the uncontrollable warp-induced transformation of their biological compatriots during the initial years of the Warpsun phenomenon. The Gardeners were more conspiracy than society, a loose affiliation of pro-organic machines, particularly Galatechs and a few ancient luminaries of the First Milieu. A few hidden redoubts and research complexes across Xibalba, particular the inhospitable poles, held vast stores of genetic information, seeds and tissue samples in stasis vaults to prevent the loss of valuable biodiversity. The Kaolin refined Galatech bodies to their utmost; creating companions, bodyguards, infiltrators and assassins of tremendous precision and power.
[Founders] Significant advances in medical technology.
[Exiles] Increased psychic populations among humans.
[Exiles] Increased psychic populations among humans.
[ ] Spire Canto - An equatorial megapolis that was built some time after the Warpsun crisis, the city-state of Spire Canto was the brainchild of a prominent Planarea engineering trust known as Canto Civil Works, a solar-powered city rising into orbit and kept stable by advanced grav-manipulation technology and robust engineering. Easy spacelaunch and access to orbital factories to maintain the Milieu's ecological objectives, but concerns of sabotage or natural disasters kept the plan in a deadlock for decades. The Spire's eventual founders eventually departed the Planarea with industrial equipment purchased from the Heighline and struck out on their own. Lacking popular support for the megacity plan, the Spire's founders resorted to artificial procreation in vast numbers, such that most of the city's tens of millions of residents are direct genetic descendents or outright clones of a hundred or so individuals. The Spire and its surrounding conurbs break with the communal economics of the Planarea, with a sophisticated market-based economy. Prominent kin-groups are based on clone lineages derived from a single, successful founder, while the lower classes opt for conventional nuclear or polyamorous marriages.
[Founders] Immune to Kessler Syndrome, increasing use of artificial wombs leading to more controllable birth rate.
[Exiles] Cablefall event due to sabotage, shift of heavy industry to orbit impeded.
[Exiles] Cablefall event due to sabotage, shift of heavy industry to orbit impeded.
[ ] The Jacolliots - Started by the generation that grew up after the Warpsun, the Jacolists are a persistent political tendency in the Milieu. The group was founded in the simcafes of the Agartha Quarter of the Planarea's Concentrale, the capital district of the Milieu, by radical students concerned by the emerging reactionary turn in politics of the era. In some regards the Jacolliots are a natural foil to the Lemscolari, but rather than finding faith in the power of the Warp or the beauty of self-sacrifice, the radicals have their own particular faith: a god of Good Government. Gaining political prominence in periods of expansion and reform and sometimes opposing it and supporting militant opposition movements, the very concept of a 'Third Milieu' is an invention of theirs. This surety of their own success is built on experimentation- their finest polysci think-tanks and international relations theorists have spent decades and centuries developing and testing models of government in complex simulations.
[Founders] The Third Milieu reestablishes strong democracy and becomes more resistant to bureaucratic corruption.
[Exiles] A significant opposition force, the Idemarche, arises in the outer system.
[Exiles] A significant opposition force, the Idemarche, arises in the outer system.
[ ] The Krviarchs - While centuries since planetfall have reduced Xibalban clan affiliations to a matter of curiosity or personal affectation, they gained renewed interest as certain prominent political families of the Second Milieu sought to burnish their reputations. Not content to be remembered as merely successful bureaucrats, the heads of magistracies named themselves attendants to the peace that saw safe planetfall, or who lead the exodus in the Warp. Intending to pass on their political careers as bequests, some groups turned to genetic engineering to secure their social positions permanently, ensuring their children entered their working lives at the apex of their potential. While such practices were well-established as preventative measures to ensure the health of parent and child, and allowed in a limited manner to adapt to the caves, there had been a lack of development in outright improvement to the human being. For these elites of the blood, these Krviarchs, nothing less than superhuman prowess would be enough.
[Founders] The Third Milieu develops more advanced genetic augmentation.
[Exiles] An opposition movement, the Sanghabyss, retreats to the deepest caves of Xibalba.
[Exiles] An opposition movement, the Sanghabyss, retreats to the deepest caves of Xibalba.
[ ] The Second Milieu - The Second Milieu, centralized in the underground cities of the Planarea of Equatorial Xibalba, has been the defining power in the system for centuries. While its larger democratic institutions have calcified behind a bureaucratic curtain of unyielding magistracies and ministerial taskforces, it remains a strongly pluralistic entity where power is significantly devolved to local authorities. The emergence of the Lemscolari and other radicals saw it increasingly take a precautionist tact on new technologies, with extensive legal frameworks protecting the environment and the rights of the sentient mind. The Millieu will not survive the era, but will its death be a violent shattering or peaceful reform?
[Founders] Baseline technology may stagnate somewhat.
[Exiles] The Third Milieu will be a crueler and more violent polity.
[Exiles] The Third Milieu will be a crueler and more violent polity.
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