Boundary Conditions: in which Captain Jelan accepts an offer that it would be somewhat inconvenient to refuse.
[more to come]
In-character background: 48th-century Vojvodina-Nihon is an odd and unassuming place, politically obscure and militarily insignificant, yet located in a well-trafficked region of the galaxy's Alpha Quadrant and with a surprisingly large number of diplomatic contacts to be found in Novi Sadtokyo's Embassy District. Founded on a new Earth (in the Santorini system), by the descendants of twenty thousand human settlers who left the original Earth in slower-than-light worldships (and reset their calendar's Year Zero to their date of departure), the twenty-nine countries of what is now the Holy Jingoistic Federation of Un-Aligned Nations of Vojvodina-Nihon proceeded to spend more than twenty centuries engaged in constant states of war, cold war, or general unfriendliness with one another. Only after peace broke out and the Federation was established, under the rulership of a puppet monarch, did the human inhabitants expand to the remainder of the Santorini system, and subsequently a few out-of-system colonies, with such projects remaining permanently stalled due to budget cuts and Grand Council infighting.
They also, in that time, discovered that their home system was already inhabited. The caelipiscians of the 44th century were as yet planetbound, residing within the habitable zone of the gas giant known as Salvoria, a tropospheric "surface" in which the atmosphere became thick enough to qualify as a quasi-solid ocean. Living creatures (with bodies adapted to distribute weight over a broad area) could settle in that zone, build structures, and even establish a certain degree of society. A mostly-tribal species at the time, caelis were very quickly brought into the modern era through the cooperation of several of the nations of the Federation in the hope of gaining a guaranteed ally on the Grand Council. In the end, recognised as the indigenous species of Santorini, caelis won much more than that: veto power over most legislation and, of course, economic and educational investment. And for whatever reason, caelis took very naturally to space flight, much more so than humans did; within a decade or two they were a common sight in surrounding areas of the galaxy.
The Federation's directives emerged somewhat later: the first diplomatic outreach ships were chartered in the 4500s, although a few individual nations had been politically active in the wider galaxy for much longer. The Grand Council subsequently realised exactly how dangerous and politically unstable the galaxy was, writ large, and proceeded to establish a centrally administered military. Vojvodina-Nihon's first actual international war broke out exactly six months later. A week, ninety lost ships and two hundred thousand casualties later, after an eminent mathematician had been summoned to the Grand Council to explain that Vojvodina-Nihon's two billion citizens represented a much smaller number than the enemy's two hundred billion, peace negotiations began (eventually leading to the loss of one of the Federation's out-of-system colonies) and attention shifted towards deploying individual vessels to travel the Galaxy, build alliances, trade with other nations, and—above all—avoid attracting unwanted attention. These instructions eventually were codified into legalistic language as the Federation's Prime Directive, and this eventually brings us to the present day, and to the RVNS Tenacity.
Jelan Gesh (note that, for caelipiscians, clan name is first and given name is second) was born in 4706 in Khar'biq, one of Salvoria's few urban-type settlements. Upon his second molting in 4722, considered the traditional start of adulthood for his species, he joined the crew of a merchant vessel. Within five years—partly due to many of his past employers winding up in jail for smuggling, blockade running or piracy—he had his own ship. Tenacity was merely the fourth in a series of increasingly larger and newer freighters, owned by a successful businessbeing against whom no charges of criminal activity had yet been proven, plying the various Alpha and Beta Quadrant trade routes and only occasionally becoming involved in international incidents. It might have remained so if not for an incident during the Mithras/Vojvodina-Nihonian border war, in 4738: Tenacity abruptly found itself commissioned as a Royal Navy diplomatic vessel, and Jelan Gesh suddenly found himself and his crew to be military or diplomatic personnel, depending on their orders from above, and of the most expendable variety.
That's the point at which these stories kick off, in any case.
They also, in that time, discovered that their home system was already inhabited. The caelipiscians of the 44th century were as yet planetbound, residing within the habitable zone of the gas giant known as Salvoria, a tropospheric "surface" in which the atmosphere became thick enough to qualify as a quasi-solid ocean. Living creatures (with bodies adapted to distribute weight over a broad area) could settle in that zone, build structures, and even establish a certain degree of society. A mostly-tribal species at the time, caelis were very quickly brought into the modern era through the cooperation of several of the nations of the Federation in the hope of gaining a guaranteed ally on the Grand Council. In the end, recognised as the indigenous species of Santorini, caelis won much more than that: veto power over most legislation and, of course, economic and educational investment. And for whatever reason, caelis took very naturally to space flight, much more so than humans did; within a decade or two they were a common sight in surrounding areas of the galaxy.
The Federation's directives emerged somewhat later: the first diplomatic outreach ships were chartered in the 4500s, although a few individual nations had been politically active in the wider galaxy for much longer. The Grand Council subsequently realised exactly how dangerous and politically unstable the galaxy was, writ large, and proceeded to establish a centrally administered military. Vojvodina-Nihon's first actual international war broke out exactly six months later. A week, ninety lost ships and two hundred thousand casualties later, after an eminent mathematician had been summoned to the Grand Council to explain that Vojvodina-Nihon's two billion citizens represented a much smaller number than the enemy's two hundred billion, peace negotiations began (eventually leading to the loss of one of the Federation's out-of-system colonies) and attention shifted towards deploying individual vessels to travel the Galaxy, build alliances, trade with other nations, and—above all—avoid attracting unwanted attention. These instructions eventually were codified into legalistic language as the Federation's Prime Directive, and this eventually brings us to the present day, and to the RVNS Tenacity.
Jelan Gesh (note that, for caelipiscians, clan name is first and given name is second) was born in 4706 in Khar'biq, one of Salvoria's few urban-type settlements. Upon his second molting in 4722, considered the traditional start of adulthood for his species, he joined the crew of a merchant vessel. Within five years—partly due to many of his past employers winding up in jail for smuggling, blockade running or piracy—he had his own ship. Tenacity was merely the fourth in a series of increasingly larger and newer freighters, owned by a successful businessbeing against whom no charges of criminal activity had yet been proven, plying the various Alpha and Beta Quadrant trade routes and only occasionally becoming involved in international incidents. It might have remained so if not for an incident during the Mithras/Vojvodina-Nihonian border war, in 4738: Tenacity abruptly found itself commissioned as a Royal Navy diplomatic vessel, and Jelan Gesh suddenly found himself and his crew to be military or diplomatic personnel, depending on their orders from above, and of the most expendable variety.
That's the point at which these stories kick off, in any case.
Out of character background: The main purpose of this thread is to collect various short stories, aiming for <5000 words, that I'm writing about Tenacity, her crew, and various nation concepts I've come up with over my many years on this site.
The Tenacity and her crew were invented by me in 2007-2008. The original intent was to serve as a sort of parody of Star Trek, in a galaxy where, instead of Kirk or Picard, the Enterprise was piloted by Han Solo. Most of the initial RPs have been lost to time and the dissolution of the Jolt forums, although I still have a link to Because we can, a joint production by Rezo, Doc and me that didn't end up going as far as any of us planned. That said, over the years that I wrote this particular set of characters, they developed a fairly extensive background lore, never fully explored in any stories or RPs, and some interesting potential writing problems involving artificial intelligences and power differentials etc. A later example is this thread, which I ended up abandoning due to various real-life obligations involving a university degree and such.
I'm not a huge fan of my own writing, and don't think my past RP contributions involving Tenacity were particularly good. Roleplay on this site is also almost entirely dead, and has been for years, with very few people seemingly interested in reviving it. That said, this is still a good subject for writing practice, even if nobody reads it, and despite the limited nature of the V-N concept, the presence of a lot of different nation-concepts allows me to do so without having to wait for other people. Brief overviews of some of these nation-concepts are mentioned below; I may or may not expand on these in future stories.
The Holy Jingoistic Federation of Un-Aligned Nations of Vojvodina-Nihon: a loose alliance of twenty-nine independent nations and one independent planet, all in a state of constant political infighting, whose human population are descended from the inhabitants of a worldship that set out from the original Earth some 4,741 years ago and arrived at the "new" Earth approximately 2,800 years ago;
The Erua Nebula: a collection of space stations and artificial habitats, ruled by a locally all-powerful AI, whose organic creators have either ascended to a higher plane of existence, or been reduced to an invisible state of blockchain slavery, or simply like their privacy a great deal—whichever it is, they've never been spotted by the billions of refugees that now call the nebula home;
The Holy Empire of Mithrael: a caste-based society obsessed with the genetic "purification" of its subjects, its biospheres, and anyone who attempts to impinge on its isolation from the rest of the galaxy, and one of the few theocracies whose gods can not only be directly observed by believers but play an active part in governing them;
The Sievese Empire and the Medeverian Federation: the Sievese Empire is a large, stagnant nation of sometwenty-nine thirty-five worlds that continuously and vehemently, despite all evidence to the contrary, asserts that no sapient life exists outside its borders, while also denying the existence of any breakaway states within its borders, such as the six worlds of the Federation of Medeveria, which have now successfully resisted Sievese tyranny for a century and hope to someday plant the seeds of revolution throughout the rest of the Empire. First contact events tend to be, let's say, awkward;
The Kenzanii Star Sovereignty: a nation of deeply xenophobic, highly stuck-up, vaguely feline aliens which unfortunately happens to be one of Vojvodina-Nihon's closest neighbours. For all their sophistication and technological superiority, the Kenzanii are somewhat held back by their preference for using alien slaves and servants over robots and artificial intelligences, which also tends to result in a large number of wars;
The Damalgians: a race of spacefaring scavengers who can best be described as giant tentacled centipede-anglerfish, sufficiently alien as to be almost impossible to communicate with (and who have yet to understand that humanoid species are even sentient), and sufficiently well-armed as to pose a major threat to anyone who gets in their way, but not sufficiently organised to have anything like a central government, let alone any form of agriculture;
and obviously others to come as they're introduced.
If you would like to use Tenacity or, indeed, any of these nation-concepts in a RP, or have other questions: Contact me. I can be reached via telegram, obviously, and also might be present in the NSFT Discord and potentially other servers as nmi#3177.
I doubt this will attract any particular interest, but if anyone is interested, I'd obviously appreciate being pointed in the direction of any writing/worldbuilding communities on here where I might be able to gain some external sources of inspiration and motivation. (Also, anyone who volunteers to beta-read will have my undying gratitude.)
Real-life background: I will not say I'm "the player best known as" because my highest-profile account here, Czardas, was more a character than a real person. But I was always the person behind that account, along with all the others in the same region. In real life, I'm five years into a long episode of severe mental illness with no end in sight. When I was younger, creativity was the main thing that kept me sane, and has since been the main thing I've lost the capacity for. I don't draw maps, write original fiction or music, or do anything similar anymore. This will be the main obstacle to completing stories for this thread (or participating in anything else, really) but the overall inactivity also means there's no real pressure. And if I can start writing again, perhaps other things in my life can improve, as well.
The Tenacity and her crew were invented by me in 2007-2008. The original intent was to serve as a sort of parody of Star Trek, in a galaxy where, instead of Kirk or Picard, the Enterprise was piloted by Han Solo. Most of the initial RPs have been lost to time and the dissolution of the Jolt forums, although I still have a link to Because we can, a joint production by Rezo, Doc and me that didn't end up going as far as any of us planned. That said, over the years that I wrote this particular set of characters, they developed a fairly extensive background lore, never fully explored in any stories or RPs, and some interesting potential writing problems involving artificial intelligences and power differentials etc. A later example is this thread, which I ended up abandoning due to various real-life obligations involving a university degree and such.
I'm not a huge fan of my own writing, and don't think my past RP contributions involving Tenacity were particularly good. Roleplay on this site is also almost entirely dead, and has been for years, with very few people seemingly interested in reviving it. That said, this is still a good subject for writing practice, even if nobody reads it, and despite the limited nature of the V-N concept, the presence of a lot of different nation-concepts allows me to do so without having to wait for other people. Brief overviews of some of these nation-concepts are mentioned below; I may or may not expand on these in future stories.
The Holy Jingoistic Federation of Un-Aligned Nations of Vojvodina-Nihon: a loose alliance of twenty-nine independent nations and one independent planet, all in a state of constant political infighting, whose human population are descended from the inhabitants of a worldship that set out from the original Earth some 4,741 years ago and arrived at the "new" Earth approximately 2,800 years ago;
The Erua Nebula: a collection of space stations and artificial habitats, ruled by a locally all-powerful AI, whose organic creators have either ascended to a higher plane of existence, or been reduced to an invisible state of blockchain slavery, or simply like their privacy a great deal—whichever it is, they've never been spotted by the billions of refugees that now call the nebula home;
The Holy Empire of Mithrael: a caste-based society obsessed with the genetic "purification" of its subjects, its biospheres, and anyone who attempts to impinge on its isolation from the rest of the galaxy, and one of the few theocracies whose gods can not only be directly observed by believers but play an active part in governing them;
The Sievese Empire and the Medeverian Federation: the Sievese Empire is a large, stagnant nation of some
The Kenzanii Star Sovereignty: a nation of deeply xenophobic, highly stuck-up, vaguely feline aliens which unfortunately happens to be one of Vojvodina-Nihon's closest neighbours. For all their sophistication and technological superiority, the Kenzanii are somewhat held back by their preference for using alien slaves and servants over robots and artificial intelligences, which also tends to result in a large number of wars;
The Damalgians: a race of spacefaring scavengers who can best be described as giant tentacled centipede-anglerfish, sufficiently alien as to be almost impossible to communicate with (and who have yet to understand that humanoid species are even sentient), and sufficiently well-armed as to pose a major threat to anyone who gets in their way, but not sufficiently organised to have anything like a central government, let alone any form of agriculture;
and obviously others to come as they're introduced.
If you would like to use Tenacity or, indeed, any of these nation-concepts in a RP, or have other questions: Contact me. I can be reached via telegram, obviously, and also might be present in the NSFT Discord and potentially other servers as nmi#3177.
I doubt this will attract any particular interest, but if anyone is interested, I'd obviously appreciate being pointed in the direction of any writing/worldbuilding communities on here where I might be able to gain some external sources of inspiration and motivation. (Also, anyone who volunteers to beta-read will have my undying gratitude.)
Real-life background: I will not say I'm "the player best known as" because my highest-profile account here, Czardas, was more a character than a real person. But I was always the person behind that account, along with all the others in the same region. In real life, I'm five years into a long episode of severe mental illness with no end in sight. When I was younger, creativity was the main thing that kept me sane, and has since been the main thing I've lost the capacity for. I don't draw maps, write original fiction or music, or do anything similar anymore. This will be the main obstacle to completing stories for this thread (or participating in anything else, really) but the overall inactivity also means there's no real pressure. And if I can start writing again, perhaps other things in my life can improve, as well.
- character profiles, other background information: first draft complete
- introductory story: posted
- second story: first draft in progress
- third story: first draft in progress
- remaining stories: under development
- introductory story: posted
- second story: first draft in progress
- third story: first draft in progress
- remaining stories: under development