Here's what I've got so far:
Nazi Flower Power wrote: Detailed Description: 26th century setting on a planet called New Saxony that is hotter than Earth. Many racists, political extremists, and religious fundamentalists have established colonies far removed from Earth where they will not be bothered by modern notions of political correctness. The planet was originally colonized and somewhat terraformed by neo-Nazis. Later, it was invaded by neo-Confederates. In keeping with the neo-Confederate concept of "states' rights" Confederate states are allowed a high degree of autonomy. Genetic engineering and cybernetics are common, but some Christians believe that genetic engineering distances people from God and there are a few who go so far as to teach that genetically engineered people do not have souls. For these sects, it is very important to remain isolated and not interbreed with outsiders. Interbreeding with outsiders poses the risk of polluting the gene pool with artificial genes. These people have founded their own state, New Eden, where they can separate themselves from genetically engineered people. Most cities in New Eden are sealed behind airlocks to protect them from both foreign genes and the local climate.
Around the equator is an uninhabitable desert. New Eden is in the Southern Hemisphere on the edge of the desert where very few plants (and no naturally occurring species from Earth) will grow on the surface and protective gear is required to go outside during the day. The climate is becoming less stable because the Confederates have not maintained the terraforming that was done by the original Nazi colonists, and New Eden's economy is floundering because their isolationist mentality hinders trade. Overcrowding and poverty make it difficult for cities to feed themselves and maintain their infrastructure. If a city suffers a power outage during an unusually hot day, the disruption of their air conditioning can cause crop failures, and in extreme cases people can roast to death in their homes.
There is one city, Mengele, which is open to outsiders. It is a leftover Nazi settlement from before the Christians moved in, but it has also taken in Christians who were exiled from their home cities due to fears that they might be genetically tainted, because they may have had sex with outsiders, or because they were exiled for political reasons. Some Christians also go to Mengele by choice if the hardships of life in New Eden make them question their anti-transhumanist faith. There are also people from other Confederate states, and a tiny number of people from the Northern Hemisphere and the moons.
There are a few isolated Nazi outposts in the mountains, but Mengele is the only place with a significant number of genetically engineered people.
On New Eden's northern border (i.e. further out in the desert) there is a very small independent country called the Weimar Republic, and an enormous sparsely populated country called Rommelia. The Weimar Republic and Rommelia are both predominantly Nazi because the land was too crappy for the Confederates to settle there after the invaded the planet.
To the East, West, and South are Confederate states which do not share New Eden's fundamentalist religion, but are technically part of the same country. The Confederate government protects New Eden from military invasion, and they have restrictions on travel from Rommelia, but they do not prevent civilians from Weimar from crossing the border. So doctors from Weimar have been distributing contraceptives and offering abortions in New Eden, even though this is against state law and religious teachings. They set up portable shelters outside the airlocks and people sneak out of the cities to buy condoms or pills or get an abortion. Most of these efforts are sponsored by a private company called Sendlinger & Schloss which is mainly a condom manufacturer and not a political organization. S&S is hugely successful and even exports to other solar systems. Hess Sendlinger and Doranne Schloss call their work charity or eugenics, but the people in New Eden call it genocide. Abortion is illegal in Weimar, and S&S would never offer back alley abortions in their own country like they do in New Eden.
My idea for an RP was that it would deal with local authorities and citizenry in a small Edenian city that is on the verge of collapse (food supply and cooling system both stretched to the breaking point) and has just found an S&S clinic on their doorstep. People could play both Edenians and S&S employees, both people who want to use the clinic and people who want to get rid of it. (People who visit the clinic risk being exiled if they are caught because they have been alone with outsiders and might possibly have had their DNA tampered with, or the women could have had sex with one of the Weimarer men.)
Nazi Flower Power wrote:Alleniana wrote:Pretty interesting, yeah. What sort of tech though? Are the invasions using orbital bombardment and coilguns or assault rifles and kevlar? Terraforming and colonising with space-cars and evolving von Neumann probes or big dirty rockets and "GMOs"?
The Confederate invasion used orbital bombardment, which is one of the things that destabilized the planet's ecology. There wasn't much man-to-man fighting on the ground. Most of the original Nazi cities were reduced to craters and nothing is left of them except bits of debris scattered across the countryside. There are a few exceptions, but they are not in New Eden or Weimar. Many small settlements survived because they were not worth the trouble of bombing, and new cities were built after the war. Mengele was originally a hospital in a rural location, but a refugee camp accumulated around it during the war and it was built up into a small city in the postwar period. Weimar was originally a silver mine. There is a 2nd city in the Weimar Republic called Vergissmeinnicht that is built around a smaller and slightly newer pre-war silver mine.
Most things are solar-powered because there is plenty of sunlight. Other parts of the universe may rely more on other power sources, but New Saxony happens to have a huge surplus of sunlight and empty land. Damage to the solar panels from sandstorms is a problem. Some places are protected by forcefields to keep the sandstorms out, but they are not 100% effective or reliable.
The Confederate invasion was about 150 years ago, so there has been some time for things to settle down and get rebuilt, but the area where this takes place is kind of a backwater. It has a lot of problems that the Confederate could fix if it wasn't busy respecting New Eden's states' rights. The whole planet is backward compared to other solar systems, and New Eden is the most backward place on the planet.
The terraforming was done with a variety of technology, that I haven't decided all the details of because it's not relevant to any of the stories I wanted to tell. It began 250 to 300 years ago and it did include GMOs. The Nazis also genetically engineered themselves along with their crops, so there are some Nazi "foods" that nobody else can eat without getting sick. Nazi aloe is a common food in Weimar, but toxic to most people in the Confederacy.
There are a couple of different types of space travel, none of which I would categorize as "big dirty rockets," but the nearest spaceport is in Vergissmeinnicht, and that only has flights to Kreuzmond (a lunar colony) and a couple of space stations. Short-range space craft can land in the desert pretty much anywhere there's a flat space, but I'm not sure who would be using them. Weimar and New Eden border each other by land, and their conflict is a very localized issue. Weimarer spacecraft and aircraft are more likely than ground vehicles to run into trouble with Confederate authorities for trespassing where they are not wanted. Short-range space craft are battery-powered. Interstellar flights use an FTL drive that works by bending space to create a sort of portable wormhole. It is too clunky and expensive for most people to do a lot of interstellar travel, and it was even clunkier in the 23rd century when New Saxony was first colonized. Permanent wormholes that allow faster and more convenient interstellar travel have been built to connect some solar systems, but New Saxony has very limited wormhole connections.
Roads between cities suck or don't exist because there are good hovercraft that don't need a flat surface to drive smoothly. Hovercraft still have problems with sandstorms because of the high winds. They are powered by rechargeable batteries and people usually call them "cars" rather than "hovercraft," but I said "hovercraft" to make it clearer what I was talking about. Mag trains, which are somewhat faster and better at coping with sandstorms, run between larger cities. Mengele, Weimar, and Vergissmeinnicht are all on the same mag line. Mengele and Weimar have trains to cities all over the Confederacy, and Vergissmeinnicht has trains to Rommelia and the North.
Laser and plasma guns exist. It's less common, but not completely unheard of, to find people still using projectile weapons. Forcefields used as armor against laser weapons won't always stop a traditional bullet. People who are serious about not getting shot (such as the Confederate military) use a combination of bulletproof materials and forcefields. New Eden and Weimar are not heavily militarized.
Sentient machines exist, but they are relatively rare because the whole planet has a strong preference for flesh and blood people using electronic tools rather than a society of electronic people.
Some people have "psies" (singular "psy"), or "psychic modems," which they can use to communicate telepathically, but the Christians in New Eden oppose this on religious grounds. It is common in Weimar, and a few people have them in Mengele. Some people also have animals that they control using their psy, so if a dog is watching you, its owner might be able to see you too. There are no large hiveminds based in New Eden or Weimar, but they do exist elsewhere in the universe and it is possible for them to visit. Weimar has a few representatives of foreign hiveminds who live there to keep an eye on things. It's possible that one or two also live in Mengele, and there are definitely some in other Confederate states. It's possible to make phone calls or send text messages where one person is using a psy and the other is using an ordinary phone. Normally, psies can be turned off, but some hiveminds use variants that do not have an off switch. Representatives of hiveminds that are based on other planets may have a slow connection with their hivemind, which annoys them and forces them to do more of their own thinking than they are accustomed to. All interstellar communication such as phone calls, internet, psionic calls, etc. has a delay because of the distance.
The Confederate banking system, including New Eden, is entirely electronic. Weimar still uses paper currency in addition to electronic banking.
People have cooling systems built into their jackets so they can go out in hot weather that might otherwise give them heat stroke, and they have really fucking powerful sunscreen.
Nazi Flower Power wrote:Alleniana wrote:Ooh. This is cool.
A few questions, though,
Where did the colonisers come from? Just outcasts from Earth or somewhere else?
Outcasts from a variety of places. Places closer to Earth like Mars, the Moon, Jupiter's moons, Vega System, etc. were colonized earlier, so some of the colonists came by way of those places instead of directly from Earth.Bigger than Earth, but not so much that people need special protection from the gravity. The natural day is roughly 49 hours, but people still use a 24 hour clock, so the sun does not always line up with people's schedules. Weimar uses the German words "Tag," "Nacht," "Mittag," and "Mitternacht" to refer to times of the natural day, and English words to refer to times according to the clock.How big is the planet? Just earth sized?
How do the cities work? Are they in big domes, or are they just all really good air conditioned buildings, what?
Different cities are built different ways. Most cities in New Eden have their streets underground. Sometimes the whole city is underground, but usually there are some buildings that rise above ground level and have thick tinted windows. Sometimes the streets are above ground, but they are roofed over to keep the elements out. Weimar, Vergissmeinnicht, and Mengele all have some open-air streets. The Nazis genetically engineered themselves to cope with the heat better than ordinary humans, they have more effective cooling clothes, and they aren't as preoccupied with keeping foreigners out, so they don't need to be as careful about sealing everything off. Weimar also has a forcefield to hold cooler air in, so it is not quite as hot as the surrounding countryside. They still mostly stay indoors or underground unless it is dusk or dark, and all cities have some tunnels or covered walkways to get around when it's too hot to use the open streets. Even with Weimar's protective forcefield, it still is usually unpleasantly bright and a bit toasty when the sun is up.
Nobody builds solid domes over their cities because it's less efficient than just roofing individual streets, but using a giant forcefield to make a protective bubble over a city is a common trick. Weimar does this and it is common in the more developed Confederate states. Vergissmeinnicht and most cities in New Eden just have smaller forcefields over specific buildings that need to be sheltered, but not a big one for the whole city.
I'm thinking the setting where I want to start this story is going to be a city called Stonewall that has smaller forcefields to protect the areas around the airlocks (which is also where they put a bunch of solar panels), but most of the city is just solidly built and/or underground.
as soon as I get my dad's room cleaned up.