Alitheia In Space III: Hard Light [OOC][FT+][Open]

[Arktic]

Alitheia In Space III: Hard Light

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It has been approximately 7 billion Standard Earth Years since the Great Purge. Not that you would know what that is, of course, since it destroyed virtually all life in our galaxy. The waves of radiation and deadly particles, propelled at our galaxy by some unimaginably huge and unspeakably distant cosmic event, cut through our galaxy mercilessly and without end for a hundred thousand years, wrecking everything like a great tidal wave cross a small island. Skies were torched away, planets were melted and vaporized, megastructures rent asunder. The great empires that came before us, advanced and powerful as they were, were left as helpless as even the tiniest microorganism. Some tried to escape on great arks, sent on semi-random and frantic courses to try and escape the beam in intergalactic space: others built many crypts and bunkers, praying that mere stone would be enough, and that fate would be merciful. With tragically few exceptions, they all failed.

However, life finds a way. It was not, as many ancient minds had feared, the permanent sterilization of the galaxy: rather, it was merely a harsh pruning. Even after the extermination of life in Alitheia, the physical forces, chemical processes, and games of probability that led to the creation of life in the first place simply repeated themselves again, seemingly undaunted by the catastrophe. Once the seeds of life arrived from the miracle of abiogenisis, the indominable process of evolution and the unstoppable whims of chance did their work. In the place of the old order, new players took the stage: adaptable Humans, cerebral Faeson, ravenous Vresh, and myriads of others, all within a mere couple billion years of each other, are now beginning to take to the stars, and forge their destiny in the galaxy. However, hope must be tempered with fear, lest ancient evils and new perils endanger life in the galaxy yet again...

You, dear player, represent one of these new seeds of a galactic empire. You are in control of the fate of an entire people (or confederation of peoples, or hivemind, or AI network, or... you get the point). Will you delve into the secrets of our galaxy, attempting to finally answer eternal and fundamental questions? Will you wage grand wars against all others, seeking to conquer, dominate, and exterminate any and all foes? Will you advance your culture, guiding your fate by the light of your eternal brilliance and from the shadows of your unfathomably deep deceit? Will you advance your economy until every passing proton must pay its due to add to your splendid comfort and inalienable control? All of these options and more, are at your disposal as you face a bright and terrible future.

Welcome to the Galaxy. Welcome, to Alitheia.

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Alitheia In Space III: Hard Light is the latest and greatest iteration of Alitheia's science fiction canon. After the last edition was essentially stillborn and abandoned, I decided to take another crack at it.

For returning players, the thing that will be most different about this one is the rules regarding technology. The groundedness requirements of this RP have softened significantly, from "aluminum can" to "spread it on toast for breakfast". I will elaborate further in the technology section, which you'll notice has been renamed "General Mechanics + Technology and Magic Guidelines", just to give you an idea of how much things have changed. Other than that, it'll be mostly the same, although I would still recommend at least skiming through the rules again before jumping in. Thanks for playing!

Link to the IC topic: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=502011

Link to our Discord: https://discord.gg/Zma5WY9k3s

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Of course, with any sort of roleplay or writing collaboration, there are ground rules and understandings that need to be established before anyone can really begin. This is no exception, and even though I (as the supreme autocrat of this RP) intend on largely adhering to the joint Rule of Cool and Rule of Don't Be A D_ck, there are going to be a number of guidelines that I am going to expect everyone to follow.

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Rule 1: Arktic is the sole god of this multiverse.

As I hinted at in the introduction to the rules here, I am an autocrat here and intend on acting like one.

Fortunately for you, I only care about activity and fun, and I only control a handful of NPCs that exist solely to drive story, not to dominate you peons. You have my word that there will not be any godmodding or unfun bullsh!t from my end.

Unfortunately for you, this means you cannot get away with things by appealing to a higher power.

For any dispute, arbitration, or question about the setting, my word is absolute law. I may deputize others to perform moderation action on my behalf on the Discord or here in the OOC, but my deputies are not my equals. If you disagree with something they do, or something anyone does, come to ME first. Don't yell at the offending player, don't pick fights with my deputies. Take it to me and I will resolve it one way or another.

Hopefully, though, we all can be reasonable, and I intend to be litigious and fair when it comes to genuine disputes. I just want to have fun and to make sure everyone is having fun.

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Rule 2: Fun and Cool are the names of the game.

As I said frustratedly to my friends in the Alitheia Canon Discord when I finally gave up on working out stupidly complicated rules for combat: "This is a RP, not an RPG."

There is no win condition.
There is no lose condition.
I will not be counting Victory Points at 2050 AD or 500 turns.

The other players are not enemies to be conquered or fools to be seduced, but they are your fellow actors on a stage where all of you are making a performance to be enjoyed by everyone, including yourself. Things like "Losing is Fun" and "It's only a game" are important mottos to hold. To this end, even I may bend on rules that I have laid out here if I think it's in the best interest of the story and of peoples' enjoyment, and I understand that there is a certain kind of mind that may find this maddening. (If you have a problem with me being arbitrary, do permit me to redirect you to Rule 1).

When making my decisions on disagreements, I will have very little patience for people who act as though they're going to get a medal if their battle goes right, who want to dominate the game OOC, or who clearly get off on attacking or humiliating players with different playstyles or focuses. While most of us share some creative vision, we all are playing here for slightly different reasons, and I have absolutely no intention of letting munchkins ruin things for roleplayers.

If you have a tendency to get overly competitive or aggressive, let this be a heads up to keep things cool and calm. Or else.

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Rule 3: Be nice.

Honestly, I wish I didn't have to say this, but being a nice person should be something you strive for here. We're all here to enjoy ourselves, have fun, and make something cool and interesting. So...

You don't need to attack people for the aesthetics they choose.
You don't need to attack people for the stories they want to tell.
You don't need to attack people for their jokes, or their memes.
You don't need to attack people for the way they write.
You don't need to attack people for their characters.
You don't need to attack people.

Criticism should be as constructive, and as kind as possible.
"I think it would be better if you worked on editing and spelling before you post" is better than "This is an English-speaking forum, idiot."
"This seems a little contrived, could you explain this to me?" is light years superior to "Way to pull that one out of your ass."
Be helpful. Not hurtful. Even as we are blasting each other with proton torpedoes and cracking each other's planets IC, OOC we are all working together to have fun.

If there is something so nasty or disruptive that you simply can't treat it nicely, or that you're worried someone's behavior will seriously hurt the RP as a whole, message me and I will deal with it. I expect everyone to treat everyone else with genuine respect at all times, and I expect the same thing from everyone else. If that seems like an issue for you, please re-evaluate your life.

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Rule 4: Combat and espionage should be figured out beforehand, and if it is not, Arktic or a deputy will do it.

Of course, I recognize that there will be times when things happen in this RP where one party or another will be unhappy with the results. It is instinctual to try and avoid inconvenience, or losing power, or being messed with IC.

Ideally, everyone should figure their battles out beforehand in a nice, consensual way. Again, we are all as actors here; some people will need to accept being the fallen villain, and not everyone can all be the triumphant hero. You can still give a good performance and have fun as either. I personally love playing fallen or falling nations, and torturing my characters is one of my favorite pastimes, so you should be at least okay with it if it happens. (That, or I'm a sado-masochist. Or both.)

However, if this is impossible or undesirable for whatever reason, I will moderate the conflict. The precise things I will do to determine the victor will vary in each situation, but will factors I consider will often include:

-Relative fleet or army sizes,
-Relative likely skill of espionage and counter-espionage forces,
-Technological differences,
-Environmental situations,
-Probable energy levels for both sides,
-Creativity (or lack thereof),
-Basedness of the results,
-My mood and attitude towards the combatants (sorry, but it's honest), and
-Random number generation methods, if I cannot pick a victor.

I will try my best to reach a conclusion to the battle that everyone is at least kind of okay with, but I cannot guarantee that I will be able to. I can only promise a resolution, if one cannot be mutually agreed to. Usually these descriptions will be bare-bones, and explaining them and their consequences will be left to those actually in the conflict: ex. "Side A destroys 30% of Side B's fleet but the rest are able to escape" or "Side B's guards surround Side A's spy".

I may also allow a deputy to decide on a battle if I am busy or if I cannot decide myself, but if they're obviously biased or do something stupid I reserve the right as absolute autocrat to overrule them. I do however expect my deputies to use similar metrics and decision making processes to mine, as they will have read the rules as well, Parcia.

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And I believe that is it for administrative rules. I reserve the right to change these whenever, of course, but unless I get major push back over this I intend on keeping to these fairly simple four rules. I will make honest efforts to promulgate new rules or decisions that may effect other players. For additional rules about technology and mechanics, read the tab below.

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So this is a Future Tech Plus™ RP. What that means exactly can be a source of contention, and arguments about conflicting mechanics tend to kill cooperative RPs like this. With that in mind, I'm going to set up some ground rules involving behavior, magic, technology, battle mechanics, and general RP administrivia. READING THESE BEFORE APPLYING AND POSTING IS A MUST.

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FTL and Tracking

This is perhaps where the biggest change in the section is from last time. I have decided to totally open up the possibilities for FTL traveling: this means that Stargates, warp drives, blink drives, hyperspace, and the like are all equally valid means of FTL transportation.

The thing bounding them together is this, however: All FTL methods are limited in speed, and it will take an absolute minimum of six months to cross the entire galaxy, no matter what system you are using.

This is in the interest of fairness and balance. There will be no "I'm teleporting my whole fleet right into the center of your empire" nonsense. It will always have a maximum speed, and like with real life it will take increasing effort and strength to achieve that speed.

As for tracking starships through FTL, essentially, it can be done easily if the movement is within your polity's borders, provided the enemy is not using deception or cloaking of some kind. However, outside your own borders, special effort will have to be given to track different ships.

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Communications

Faster than light communication is possible, and can be done instantaneously through either space magic, or by quantum telegraphy. It will be somewhat expensive though, and space magic may have problems with interference and range. Quantum telegraphy, however, will not, although fragile technological components may also give you problems.

Technology and Magic

Oh boy, this is the big one. If you read anything at all in this spoiler, please read this.

The world of science and magic is almost definitionally limitless, as are peoples' imaginations, and I honestly have better things to do with my life than trying to imagine every conceivable sci-fi technology or space wizardry and making a ruling on it or explaining exactly how it should work.

That being said, I am going to establish guidelines by which you should be thinking about technology and magic, which I will be laying out below. PLEASE READ THESE. It will make both of our lives easier. Thank you in advance.

Anything is Permitted, but...: Like I said, on the scale of sci-fi "hardness", this is basically brushing up against space fantasy. That means things that aren't obviously somehow technological (which I will now be referring to as "magic" or "space magic") are allowed to exist, examples being things like The Force from Star Wars or psychic powers from literally any old science fiction tale. A good mental pinning point to think about what kind of technology and magic should be available is Star Trek.

Everything Has A Price.: Regardless of what you come up with, technology and magic will cost you something. I already determined general costs and benefits for things like different FTL systems, and similar principles apply here. The more impressive any bit of technology is, the more expensive it will be, the rarer or more fragile it will be, the more complicated it will be, and the more resource and energy intensive it will be. The more powerful a kind of space magic is, the harder it will be to acquire and control, and the more pronounced any weaknesses will be (and yes, they all have weaknesses, see below). And before you even think about asking: no, you can't have a more efficient or mass-producible version: that may be how technology kind of happens in the real world, but here I am worried about story balance, and you suddenly deciding that your civilization somehow found a way to make Dyson Sphere production as easy as flipping pancakes is not balanced, even if it may be "plausible" given current scientific knowledge and/or the precepts of space magic.

Technology is Magic, and Magic is Magic, But It Is Not God: In that same vein, I'd like to point out that while of course you are able to take pretty much as many liberties with science and technology and space-magic as you want, those liberties can NOT allow you to have an unfair overwhelming advantage over other players that you did not earn in the course of reasonable IC action and conflict. This is mostly directed at those planning on using things like psionics/The Force and advanced artificial general intelligence, which can be fun to use but also have a tendency to explode into god-mode when put in the wrong hands (or more accurately, the wrong heads). Everything will have a cost, a weakness, a counterbalance, a mitigating factor, and if it does not you will simply not be able to use it.

Consistency Is Key: If you introduce a unique or new technology or bit of space magic, you can use it in pretty much any way you want so long as it is NOT game-breaking or outside of our few already established rules about FTL and whatnot. That being said, you must use your technology and magic in a consistent and reasonable manner. Other players need to be able to understand what you're about, and if you keep changing the rules of how your species' psionics work, for example, it makes it a very frustrating experience to try and interact with you and may even lead to intractable OOC arguments about the outcome of fights or espionage, fights which I will have to unhappily settle. If you're having trouble codifying rules for your technology or thinking about limitations for your magic, I would be more than happy to help you with it.

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I believe that is all there is to say on the technology front. Thank you for reading this, and please refer to this or keep these things in mind as you're discussing, acting, and creating within the RP.

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CODE FOR POLITY APPLICATIONS

Code: Select all

[box][i][color=#0000FF][u][align=center][size=150]>>Insert your name here<<'s Polity Application[/size][/align][/u][/color][/i]

[b]Polity Name:[/b] >>What your nation, horde, fleet, hive-mind, artificial general intelligence, empire, confederation, or whatever is called, either by itself or by others.<<

[b]Description:[/b] >>Tell us about what your polity is. The more detail, the better. Include things like: species, population, governance, leadership, culture, economy, military, any megastructures, history, so on and so forth. The more detail you include, the better.<<

[b]Territory:[/b] >>If applicable. Fill in the grid sectors or otherwise mark the territory you would like to use.<<

[b]Megastructures:[/b] >>If applicable. List any Death Stars, Ecumenopoli, Dyson Spheres, Penrose Generators, Matryoshka Brains, Ringworlds, (most importantly) Gates, or any other feats of megaengineering that your empire has built, is in the process of building, or otherwise has total control of.<<

[b]Military:[/b] >>If applicable. Give us a picture of the rough military numbers and capabilities for both star fleets, terrestrial forces, militarized megastructures, and other superweapons here. You should also give a general sense of how militaristic, or not, your polity is.<<

[b]Special Technologies and Magic:[/b] >>Any unique or powerful technologies or magic that your polity either relies upon, has exclusive access to, or otherwise intends to make extensive use of. LIST ANYTHING AT ALL THAT YOU THINK MIGHT TRIGGER ANY KIND OF PROBLEM. IF YOU HAVE A SPECIAL, OP TECHNOLOGY/Magic AND IT IS NOT LISTED HERE, I WILL BE VERY UNLIKELY TO RULE IN YOUR FAVOR REGARDING IT. PSIONICS, SINGULARITIES, NANOBOTS, AND MOST MEGASTRUCTURE TECHNOLOGIES GO HERE. Consider this your warning.<<

[i][b]Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?:[/b][/i] >>Answer in the affirmative if you want to RP. Answer "no" if you want to be a jackass, before editing it and answering "yes" to join.<<[/box]

Delete everything quoted with >>.<< and fill out the form to apply.

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https://imgur.com/a/vBiVKdz

NOTICE: The location of Earth and the closest systems (out to Bernard's Star) have all been lost to history, destroyed or deleted during the numerous different wars and migrations that the human people have experienced. If you want to find Earth, you have to do it IC.

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Deputies/Co-OPs:

Parcia: Primary enforcement officer and second-in-command.
Anowa: Chief inquisitor and cartographer.

[The United Remnants of America]

Vresh Hives's Polity Application

Polity Name: The Vresh Hive

Description: Here, have this. They might be a little outdated, but you get the gist.

Territory: Eat me

Megastructures: Nothing yet. We've scoured a few worlds clean. Might try building something bigger than some ships later. Who knows?

Military: Big.

Special Technologies and Magic: We have the hivemind, a super adaptable biology, the ability to turn most other organic materials into milkshakes, and we can manipulate gravity. Welcome to hell.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?:Eat a dick

[The United Remnants of America]

Seran Federation's Polity Application

Polity Name: The Seran Federation

Description: They're human, they're a federation of like 30-odd planets. They're kind of conservative, pretty agrarian. There's like 40 billion people among all the space of the Federation, so it's relatively sparsely populated. You know the drill.

Territory: Literally will do self-harm if you don't make this easier on me by naming or numbering the random squares.

Megastructures: Got a gate for every system in the Federation for quick zip-zip fast speed.

Military: There's 5 million Marines broken down between the Planetary Militia and the Mobile Infantry. There's also about 1,300 ships in the Navy. We're not too aggressive and focus on defense and ending a conflict as quickly as possible with fast strikes and rapid movement across combat zones. General capabilities in terms of weaponry include bullets for personal use, and naval ships using point defense chain guns, missiles, and rail guns, as well as using comms lasers in emergency circumstances. In addition, there's one ship that uses Arkite(our handwavium resource) to create a shield and a particle cannon for itself. QEC technology is available in text-format only and operates on a switchboard system.

Special Technologies and Magic: The gates are pretty imperative to the Federation's entire being. On top of that, some of the larger Federal Navy ships have cynosural gate drives that can open a temporary gate on their position. QEC has been talked about above. Arkite has been talked about above. The Immortals exist as almost-Spartans. I think that's everything until I think of something else.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: Kill me.

[Rodez]

Balorene Dominion's Polity Application

Polity Name: Balorene Dominion

Description: A constitutional dictatorship located relatively close to the galactic center, the Dominion was formerly an expansionist and warmongering state until the Balorenes overthrew their despotic monarchy about two thousand standard years ago. It its place they established the rule of the Ataman, a sort of admiral-executive who is elected to lead the Dominion for life. In the last two millennia, the Dominion has renounced its previous jingoism and has instead fought many wars against new expansionist powers. The Balorenes see it as their duty to prevent any one empire from growing so powerful that it can dominate the galaxy, and maintain a powerful navy and gifted intelligence service to this end. They are also known to send expeditionary forces to threatened states when requested.

As a people, the Balorenes are phenotypically altered from millions of years of habitation spent on their volcanic homeworld of Balor, from which the Dominion originated. Balorenes have evolved an exceptionally strong digestive system from eating a hard diet of rock-shrubs, birds and lava slugs on Balor. As a result, most ingested poisons that would kill a baseline human would simply make a Balorene mildly ill. Furthermore, their red-colored eyes mark the possession of exceptional night vision for humans; Balorenes have better perception of edges, movement, and silhouettes in dim light. This is commonly thought to be because of long habitation in the ash-choked atmosphere present on much of Balor, but geneticists have recently uncovered some evidence of genetic tampering in the distant evolutionary past. What this means, none can yet say for sure.

Despite physical differences, Balorenes continue to lay claim to the wider umbrella of humanity, and seem to be fully sexually compatible with their unaltered cousins. Immigrants from outside are generally welcome on Balorene worlds, although they may not settle on Balor itself. Though the Dominion carries out considerable commerce with the rest of the galaxy, large-scale trade is primarily in the hands of the state, with only medium-sized private enterprises permitted within Dominion space - which encompasses about 200 inhabited planets and moons, with some 650 billion inhabitants. Of these, about 600 billion are considered Dominion-born citizens. Recent immigrants are exempt from military conscription, but also forego all political rights.

Territory: Marked by squares in orange.

Megastructures: After millennia of construction efforts, the Dominion is close to completing a full Dyson sphere in the Ishukone System, and has the ambition to use it as a power source for gargantuan commercial and naval shipyards. It also has a series of 25 'blink' gates between the major star systems, in order to facilitate military and commercial transportation across Dominion space. Finally, the Balorenes boast of their ecumenopoli world of Korsiki, which possesses a world-city home to some 60 billion people.

Military: The Balorene Army contains about 5.5 billion soldiers, with the ground branch split between the elite Expeditionary Force (500 million), and the far larger semi-professional reserve forces, which rarely if ever see action outside Balorene space. However, the real strength of the Dominion lies with the Navy - at 32,000 warships of all classes and designs, it is one of the most formidable vacuum navies in the galaxy. Although it uses carrier groups and large battleships like most other states, in practice the Dominion tends to rely on the daunting stealth technologies present in some of its specialized frigate and cruiser classes to achieve infiltration of enemy-held space. These squadrons fight in "hunter-killer" groups, with the intention of wrecking havoc on the enemy's commerce, lines of supply, and isolated units.

Among the formations of the Balorene Expeditionary Force (BEF), the very best troops available are those in the 150,000-strong Ranger Corps. These elite special forces are selected from a candidate pool consisting of soldiers in the top 1% of physical fitness ability in the entire military. Trainees might arrive from the regular Army, the Marines (subordinate to the Navy), National Police, or from state-run orphanages in some cases. The training regime is long and cruel, with an emphasis on physical and mental deprivation. 9 out of 10 will wash out before completing the two-year Ranger School, with a fatality rate approaching 25%. Those that make it through, however, are subject to gene-altering procedures to enhance strength, reflexes, and cognitive ability. Once complete, the newly-minted Balorene Rangers are the most perfect warriors available to the Dominion.

The rough translation from Balorene is 'Seeker Directorate.' the Hakijaosasto functions as both the domestic and international intelligence agency for the Dominion. Hakijaosasto is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counter-terrorism both within Balorene space and abroad. Unlike the Dominion's military or police forces, there is no law that strictly defines its objectives, powers, or budget. As a result, the agency answers only to the Ataman and has no practical legal limits, leading some observers to describe it as a deep state.

Hakijaosasto's tactics include, but are hardly limited to: surveillance, blackmail, extortion, kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, funding, arming, and training of foreign insurgents, and political manipulation. It is nearly impossible to pin down exactly how many personnel the agency employs, since many are civilians employed on a part-time basis, and not fully-trained Hakija operatives. Hakija are recruited from a multitude of species within the Dominion, who may have nothing in common besides loyalty to the Balorene state. Operatives may range in specialty from everything from counterfeiters and thieves to merciless death squads. Given that the Dominion has renounced expansionary warfare, the myriad capabilities of the Hakijaosasto are often the preferred tool of the state over military force.

Special Technologies and Magic: Balorene Cloaking Generators- Developed relatively early on in the Balorene space age, the Dominion's stealth technology has been honed and refined over thousands of years, and has acquired a reputation for being some of the most potent ship-based cloaking technology in the galaxy. Besides utilizing standard techniques to cancel out electronic signatures and disguise the physical sight of the ship itself, Balorene generators also make use of ionized plasma "shields" to absorb EM radiation. Though extremely effective on frigate and cruiser-sized ships, the power demands of the military-grade generators mean that ship movement is slowed significantly while engaged, and use of blink or warp drives is quite impossible.

Mieli-Silma- Balorene 'mind-sight,' for lack of a better translation. Sitting astride the line between martial art and meditation technique, the Mieli-Silma is an ancient practice used by Balorene wise women, and activated only in the bizarre chemical atmosphere present on the volcanic world of Balor. For reasons unknown even to the Balorenes themselves, the Mieli-Silma interacts more effectively with female biology than with male. Effective use of the Mieli-Silma is said to grant insight into motives, truthfulness - even brief visions of the future, although these are open to manipulation and interpretation. Despite the apparent power of this art, more than half the visions induced by it appear to be nothing more than mental gibberish - and it takes many decades of practice to separate the 'false' from the 'true' visions. No more than a few hundred wise woman at a time have ever sufficiently mastered the art. For the Balorenes, it is as much a religious custom as a political tool, and its intricacies are a closely-kept secret.

Other notable tech: Nanite mineral probes, terrestrial sculpting and foreign soil enrichment, zero-point power generation

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: I'll agree to whatever as long as I can play space Morrowind.

[Anowa]

>>Greater Aelid Hegemony<< Polity Application

Polity Name: >>Greater Aelid Hegemony<<

Description: >>The Aelid Hegemony is not a single nation, but rather multiple species under the Hegemony's banner, divided into two remaining nation states. They are as follows:
The Aelid Hegemony
The title species, the Aelids, are large, reptile like xenomammals that were artificially created by a precursor race that now occupies a matryoshka brain on the lowest levels of The Edge of Eternity. Created to be custodians for the megastructure, the Aelids have long since grown past their original mandate. Now seeking to archive genetically, or take volunteer sample populations to live on their Birch World from every species in the Milky Way, so they may have a home for the coming trillions of years before the end of entropy. They are lead by an individual known simply as The Custodian, born at the start of the birch world's constructionThe Custodian is a brilliant engineer tasked with keeping The Edge of Eternity running without issue, he stands as one of the oldest individual organics known to history, and uses a benevolent guiding hand when dealing with younger species.

Outside of the title species, the hegemony also contains the Hekaton, uplifted Common Chimpanzees brought with the Kantr ancestors for use as biological filters for testing the toxicity of native flora. Since uplifted to be mentally on par with their human cousins via the insertion and splicing of human genes, the Hekaton now strongly resemble their human cousins in physical appearance, with the only retentions being prehensile tails, prehensile feet, massive canine teeth, large patches of fur on their backs and a nose described as orcish. Hekaton however are still notably aggressive compared to their human counterparts, and still more than capable of actually tearing them to pieces, especially with the advent of proper physical training among their people.

And the Selieds, intelligent and ubiquitously psionic predatory cephalopods. Heavily fundamentalist in regards to their religion, though this has lessened since being folded into the hegemony. Known for not actually having FTL drives, nor engines or reactors in their ships, instead using psionics to power and move said ships. With a single bone in their body with a diameter of 3 inches, they have a variety of jobs with niche careers, typically involving small and cramped spaces. Their tentacles have no suction cups like cephalopods from earth, but do have smaller extremities at each tip allowing tool use and manipulation.

Other species once resided in Aelid space, but are now too few in number to truly matter, or are wholly extinct.

Locomotor System:

The Aelid locomotor system is rather unique, as with all species. They are a bipedal, digitigrade race, with rotation capable wrists, shoulders, ankles, necks and spines, and locking joints consisting of elbows, knees, wrists, and ankles. Their rib cage consists of eight total bone plates wrapping around their vital abdominal organs. Overall tissue composition is roughly 4x denser than a human's, with muscle tissues of legs being fuller and longer due to the limb's inherent design. Hips are naturally on the wider side of things for balancing and reproductive purposes. An alligator like tail protrudes from the base of the spine, aiding in swimming, as well as in balance. Upper limbs are relatively well muscled, capable of feats similar to that of a human's, while they end in 2 thick fingers and 2 thumbs with a 270* range of motion on each hand. A thick tail roughly equal in length with the abdominal cavity continues from their spine to give an easier time of regaining a sense of balance. Head tissues are largely without muscles beyond that of facial and mandible movement.

68 teeth composed of boron nitride produce very dense and hard teeth, aligned across upper and lower jaws, while also lining a pair of 2 'cheek' mandibles in a jagged array, with canine, incisor, and molar sets all present for an omnivorous diet. A vestigial crest of bone makes up the forehead and temples of the head, usually ending in 1-3 flat horns coated with a layer of thin epidermis. Average height is between 7'5 and 8'2. With healthy weight ranging around 850-1260 lbs on average.

Physical feats in a 1 G environment include a peak running speed of 44 km/h, a weightlifting average of roughly 1800 pounds, and a stamina to run at a rough jogging pace for roughly 3 hours before fatigue prevented any further participation.

Integumentary System

Epidermal systems include a collection of tiny, smooth, pebble like scales. Usually with the coloring of blue to cyan shades in 'exterior' surfaces such as the legs, arms, head, and back. While rust to yellow pigment covers 'interior' surfaces such as the groin, stomach and throat. Dermal glands which emit a potent neurotoxin during times of extreme stress are also present, due to relations with foreign species, anti-toxins are readily available in Aelid population centers. Scales are largely composed of barium compounds, and are an evolutionary trait to avoid ionizing radiation damage. They offer no real physical protection outside that of a natural radiation defense.

Digestive System

There is no real uniqueness to the Aelid digestive system outside that of having two stomachs, a 17 inch prehensile tongue, two livers, and a gizzard. Relative digestive period is that of 31 hours.

Renal System

The Aelid renal system consists of five organs, four 'kidneys' and a sizeable bladder. The four Kidneys are located directly in the pelvis near the bladder, and filter the blood waste from the circulatory system and reduce it to simple urine. Attached to each is two analogues of the human adrenal glands.

Cardiopulmonary System

The cardiopulmonary system of the Aelids is that of a high oxygen intake due to the haemocyanin nature of the Aelid's blood. Four lungs each capable of holding 7 litres occupy a majority of the upper abdominal cavity, while a heart with 8 separate chambers (in essence 2 hearts as a part of the same organ)pumps indefinitely to keep an ample supply of blood flowing. Average BPM for the adults of the species is that of 85-130 resting rate.

Endocrine System

The Aelid endocrine system is largely similar to that of any other species, chemicals and proteins to aid in sleep, fight or flight, and internal time keeping are all present, as well as the presence of an Aelid 'telomerase'. A protein that repairs the DNA of the species after ionizing radiation damage, keeping the species immune to cancer and degenerative diseases, but also giving them naturally long life spans, ranging into two to three thousand year range.

Circulatory System

The Aelid circulatory system is that of a pastel wet dream. A deep blue and mildly fluorescent fluid consisting of haemocyanin and a respective Luciferin like compound, occupies the arteries and organs of the species. As a result, mucous membranes and thin layers of skin seem to glow in low light conditions, such as sclera, lips, gingiva, tongue, nostrils, head crest and reproductive organs. Average blood pressure is that of 110-160/80 mm Hg.

Ocular System

The Aelid ocular system is a rather unique one, sclera are shielded from ionizing radiation by Barium compounds, and as usual result in deep grey pigment. Iris usually display cyan to navy blue pigments, with the odd orange or white making an appearance. 5 color receptive cones result in a much broader array of vision than a human eye, while allowing slightly better visual capabilities in low light conditions. A dark nictitating membrane keeps the eye fully protected from light radiation, allowing very bright light to be filtered.

Reproductive System

The Aelids are a species of hermaphroditic xenomammals, they reproduce via placental viviparity, typically in litters of three to five. With a gestation period of 11 months. Aelids reach sexual maturity at 12 Solar years. Hormonal changes invoked during the fetal development stage induce the development of permanent secondary sexual characteristics.

Aelid culture is notably communal and outwardly quite foreign. Aelids put a primary pillar on public service and keeping the collection of sapient life in the Milky Way well and truly alive by any means necessary. A goal that unites the entirety of their species, from the refuse recyclers to their leader, The Custodian.

A post scarcity society, Aelids have no proper economy, everything that is needed is provided with little issue, yet in order to maintain a sense of self, Aelids are very strongly encouraged (under threat of indefinite cryogenic storage) to maintain a life of working in any capacity, or otherwise moving to other pastures to spread knowledge or their experiences to other races and nations.

A genetically engineered species, the Aelids did not evolve, and are unlikely to, due to an incredibly stable quadruple helix genome. Making further genetic changes nigh impossible. Inbreeding is also very difficult to have mutations occur, with complications only occurring after 15 generations of constant inbreeding. As such any genetic mutations, willing or otherwise, are typically reverted back to the original genome within two generations. With Aelid lifespans capable of being indefinite with external complications, Aelids are effectively impossible to genetically alter.

Aelids, due to being a monogendered hermaphroditic species, aren’t expected to have gendered pronouns in the same vein as humans, yet they do. The ‘males’ of the species are generally seen as young, adventurous, and emotionally brash compared to the other ‘gender’. A fact that is notably true, as the hormonal changes that occur when pregnant alter brain chemistry to a degree, as well as physical chemistry. The ‘females’ of the species are only called such when they have birthed children, regardless of temperament. It is most common to find ‘females’ in leadership positions or other facets of life requiring calmer heads. It is not considered an insult to refer to the wrong ‘gender’, as Aelids understand the confusion in mind with multi-gendered species in regards to this facet of Aelid life.

Aelids, due to being a created species who is still in contact with their creators, are very atheistic, this however does not come off as militant, as they understand that some species require a level of belief in higher powers in order to maintain a level of sanity in response to the existentialism of the universe and their place in it. As such, rarely does an Aelid interject in such matters like faith or religion.

One of the primary tenets of Aelid society is to do things with as much efficiency as physically possible. Aelid machines typically are compact, fast, and ridiculously easy to maintain given their structure, society moves with a preternatural grace, and is expected to move without flaw unless a grave occurrence crops up such as death, plague, or act of “god”. Due to this, Aelid wars end quickly, with a level of brutality that is likely to scar the genetic memory of a species for centuries.

The Kantr Confederacy
Descendants of humans who once used a generation ship to depart the mythological Sol System, they contain many remnant vestiges from Earth culture. primarily speaking a form of east slavic, and heavily modified by the Aelids to live on a new world. The Kantr are a self described neo-fascist state, though said description only very loosely fits their one for all mindset. The Kantr have had a brutal history, involving an almost 400 year war of genocide against the Aelid Hegemony's previous favoured species. They are lead by Grand Marshal Anastasiya Rostisiev, a former astrophysicist who had the misfortune of being claimed by a black hole, her consciousness -thanks to the black hole information paradox- remained fully aware of her incorporeal state. After some time, the Grand Marshal rematerialized seemingly on willpower alone. Changed fundementally by the events that transpired, not only is she now a powerful psionic, but also a disturbing presence for other psychics. She has held her post as Grand marshal for close to 500 years, and has an almost religious following by a minority of the Kantr.

Locomotor System:

The Kantr Locomotor system is effectively identical to the baseline human locomotor system. Spinal assembly has been corrected to avoid structural failure. Connective tissues however are more elastic thanks to changes in the FBN-1 and 2 genes, greatly reducing the number of related joint injuries associated with ligament damage. Manipulation to the LRP5 gene provides much denser skeletal structures with laced iron compounds. Resulting in nigh indestructible bones. Manipulation of the GDF-8 and ACTN-3 genes and associated proteins, takes advantage of the stronger skeleton to produce a much denser musculature, with a contraction force, and a higher shear strength.

Integumentary System

Epidermal systems are identical to the baseline human outside of a grey to ash tone due to concentrations of barium in the epithelial tissues.

Digestive System

Identical to the baseline human system outside of the capacity to digest plant and animal matter more efficiently.

Endocrine System

Modification to MRC1, AS3MT, CD4 and MCR1/2 genes have provided an incredibly robust immune system and capacity for pain and toxins. HFTC3 gene has resulted in a longer brain life, as well as a higher average IQ. Temomerase is also created well after fetal development in somatic cells. Dec2 genetic modification has effectively reduced the need for sleep to 2 hours per every 24 hours. A number of genetically inherited diseases were also erased. RLN nerve unfucked.

Circulatory System

EPOR gene modification has resulted in a blood oxygen intake nearly double that of the baseline human. As a result, a Kantr can go without breathing for much longer than the baseline homo sapiens.

Ocular System

Manipulation of the OPN1MW and OPN1MW2 greatly enhance vision and provide a larger array of color receptor cones. The nerve-cone system has also been inverted, and a tapetum lucidum was introduced, giving kantr night vision to aid with the rather dull daylight of their new home system.

Reproductive System

Unchanged. Genetic predisposition to identical twinning.

Highly regimented and organized, Kantr culture and society is known for a strict work ethic and discipline. Kantr have a notable tendency of doing what needs to be done and following through on goals, orders, and jobs until they are finished. Not easily spurred to violence, due to the long standing integration of the non-aggression principle, but when conflict is unavoidable, the only route for the Kantr is total war. Skirmishes and small scale land battles hold no meaning. Pirate outposts typically end up facing down full fleets and massacred to great effect, and border excursions are usually met in a similar manner. So engrained is this doctrine that ships, regardless of class, end up dropping out of FTL with an uncanny timing, leading to the illusion of an entire armada being under the envelope of a single FTL jump.

Due to an evolution of a heavily libertarian society, it is somewhat contradictory to expect a strong centralized state. However, at the outbreak of the Mourning War, it was very quickly realized that a collective military was required to stand a chance against the monolithic Topek. A somewhat slapdash collective of crowdsourced officers and soldiers was forged in the fire of war to become a honed blade. Proper constitutions were written up at the war’s close almost 250 years ago, and now the binding and overarching ‘state’ is the Kantr Confederate Armed Forces. Due to a strong inclination towards self sacrifice and putting the public first, Kantr are poor businessmen.

As the central unifying pillar of Kantr society, the military holds an iron grip over most required services, and in some cases is much closer to a public works organisation, controlling organisations such as law enforcement, and emergency services; also regulating and providing a monopoly over resources deemed essential for life. In fact, it is not uncommon for water purification plants to have a full platoon of trained military guards. Making a profit off of such things as water and standard nutrient pastes is a crime with risk of the death penalty. Initially unpopular, a regulating body for things considered important for any society was welcomed.

A libertarian society at its core values, Kantr society cares not for gender, skin color, religion (or lack thereof) or even species. Those who can pull their weight are welcomed with open arms. Since their culture has been highly militarized over the past centuries, social advances and leadership changes are quickly accepted by the people at large.

While of course individuals at their core, kantr have been engrained with an instinct to put the group before themselves. Kantr have a very strong sense of personal accountability, typically known as ‘Kantr Honour’, they are taught to own any decision they make, good or bad, the largest sin is to lie about one’s actions in reasonable company. Murderers will attempt to get away with their crime, but when questioned directly, it is expected they will cave quickly. A captured soldier will still rather die to interrogation than say something that would risk others, however.

Throughout their lives, Kantr regularly ascend and descend the various ranks of citizenship. In more traditional societies, being demoted would be a stigma placed on the individual, in Kantr society, it is instead placed on the superior who promoted them beyond their capacity for responsibility. This readily curbs the tendency in other societies for nepotism, and eases individuals into knowing that their higher ups are in fact deserving of the role due to inherent hesitance at risk of making a mistake. Stagnation in life and position is not considered a failure, but rather is welcomed, as it means the Kantr in question knows their own limitations.

Alongside the Kantr are a very select number of transhuman warriors created at the behest of the Grand Marshal. They are known as the Fleet Marshal Force, FMF or simply Marshals.

The Fleet Marshal Force aka the FMF, are an elite band of soldiers that answer directly to the Grand Marshal of the Kantr Confederacy. Unlike most paramilitary forces with such a pedigree and lack of oversight, the FMF are not secret police, instead, they are a special forces unit that now dates to almost 500 years old.

Created just prior to the Mourning War, the FMF were selected as the best of the best, and were further augmented. In an effort to mimic the combat effectiveness of Aelid soldiers, the FMF were genetically, biomechanically, and -for lack of a better term- supernaturally changed.

Goals of the program were met, and exceeded in short time. Those after the first 100 are seemingly without records, rumors persist that they were grown in vats in an effort to make them inhumanly loyal to the GM and none other. Given her psychic prowess, it doesn't seem like this measure is wholly necessary. Other rumors suggest that they consist wholly of the Daughter of Halet religious sect, of which believe that the Grand Marshal is a God made flesh. Neither have been directly dismissed.

Regardless of rumors, the FMF remains the deadliest collection of warriors the Kantr can call upon.

Fleet Marshal Force/FMF, are barely considered Kantr in nature anymore, let alone Human.

To begin, genetic engineering has lead to a number of supernumary organs, redundant systems, and organs not found in humans. While the original 100 were implanted and later modified for such changes as adults, this is no longer the case for the modern FMF. FMF now have all extra ‘pieces’ added in before puberty.

The first major differences introduced are chemical and gene therapy cocktails introduced to tank immune response, and increase the healing rate to inhuman degrees in preparation for the implantation processes at the age of 3, typically immediately after signs of understanding object permanence are displayed. Coinciding with this, is psychicneurohypnosis, in order to properly indoctrinate, and ensure that the minds of the FMF are not easily assailed by the horrors of war, nor by enemy psychics.

Within a year, the cardiopulmonary system is augmented with a duo of additional lungs, a ‘second heart’ meant to take over if the original heart fails. Lungs are lined with an organic polymer, which O2 readily binds to, allowing the marshal to hold their breath for four hours with a single lung full of air. In turn, their hearts are lined with a separate polymer to allow it to function almost indefinitely without tearing. Highest estimates put a 372% of resting BPM for 122 hours as the breaking point, at which point, the backup heart will begin working. Red blood cells are modified to carry nearly thrice the oxygen a normal kantr blood cell carries. Genetics are also modified to allow the thyroid to produce telomerase, allowing their cells to avoid a hayflick limit, that would end their lives by age 11 otherwise.

By age 5, three glands are added to the brain stem, and the inner ear is replaced:
The first produces a specialized hormone that affects bone cells, primarily by giving somewhere for the tungsten ceramics now introduced into the Marshal’s diet somewhere to bond. The second introduces a growth hormone to allow the FMF to grow larger at a faster rate. The third is a ball shaped gland attached to the thyroid, which produces androgen receptors far in excess of what’s necessary for normal human growth. It is thus responsible for muscular growth, giving the FMF a muscle density far in excess of normal Kantr. The inner ear is replaced by a much more accurate and resilient engineered organ, allowing a more sensitive sense of balance, inability to feel vertigo, and inability to lose hearing from overpressure effects.

By age 6, the FMF, now likely in excess of 5 feet tall and 200 pounds, has their pineal gland replaced with an alternative gland. Now, instead of resting every 24 hours, the FMF no longer requires sleep, putting sections of their brain to ‘rest’ during the natural circadian rhythm. As a result, the FMF no longer requires sleep, but can still do so to provide some level of emotional and physical comfort. Subsequently, an artificial pancreas is introduced which allows the FMF to digest raw plant matter, all carbohydrates and proteins without waste, and some mineral dense rocks.

By age 7, the FMF, now in excess of 6 feet and 370 pounds, have the third true organ implanted below the diaphragm, roughly a normal human fist sized, produced specialized cells that act in accord with normal platelets. Soon after, the healing rate introduced at the age of 3 weans completely. Later on, another series of organs are introduced to the lower esophagus and pelvis to filter out toxins from both food, and blood. To be subsequently excrete from the skin with sweat.

At age 10, the FMF is expected to finally be accustomed to their body’s physical capabilities. And as such, a greater degree of power is added. The last glands introduced to the body are located in the brain, and introduce elastic polymers to the muscles increasing contraction force and tensile strength, removing their ability to tear with too much effort, and acting as a natural spall lining for the bones. A fatty producing compound is also added via one of these glands, which supermylenates the nervous system. The Thymus gland is also replaced with a much more efficient system allowing most natural illnesses to die in the body before causing any symptoms, and with bioweapons taking a marginal toll on the Marshal.

At age 12, human puberty takes a hold, and the previous additions begin to work in earnest. Primary and secondary sexual characteristics become pronounced as normal, muscle mass in both genders is roughly equal due to increased level of androgen receptors.

At age 14, the increase in body mass of an FMF’s ‘puberty’ begins to level out, at roughly 7 feet 780 pounds, Neural implants are surgically implanted along the base of the skull, tailbone, sternum, triceps, and thighs. These implants allow a direct interface with the FMF armor they receive this year for training, and for a proxy link into most vehicles in the Kantr arsenal, allowing a Marshal to serve an entire vehicle alone if need be, with their enhanced mental state allowing them to do what would overwhelm ordinary humans.

At age 16, FMF are expected to have become fully qualified in their armor, and are fully fledged marshals. Their bodies, now effectively fully developed, average between 7’11 and 8’5, and close to 1100 pounds.

At this point, a running speed of 97 km/h in armor, 65 without, is average. Lifting close to 8 times their body weight without armor, and 11 times with is average. Reaction time is measured in single digit milliseconds. Punching force average approaches that of a high speed vehicle accident.

The FMF armor, internally multiple layers of superconducting crystal layers, a shock resistant gel layer and cooling suit, as well as myoelectric synthetic muscles, has plating primarily composed of tungsten and titanium composite plating, but laced with an external layer of admantite film, and with an internal spall lining; is resistant up to and including 105mm APFSDS up to 67 degrees. Heat resistant to 3000 degrees Celsius, and fully electrical resistant. Due to it’s direct ties to the nervous system in several places, it allows the armor to function fully even if the FMF’s spinal cord is severed, limbs are pasted, bones are dust, or if they are actively bleeding out or undergoing crush injury. It is fully void rated, has a waste catheter system and contains a microfusion pack to power the multiple sensors, displays, life support, gravity harness, and waste recycler.

Each Marshal is expected to cost the same in material and work costs as a Mobius Class Carrier.

The Galactic Core was dominated by an event known as The Mourning War, which started close to 400 years prior. It was a campaign of extermination by a species known as the Topek, a race that had been, for many years, selected as the successors to the Aelids should the worst come to pass. However with the revelation that the Grand Marshal was a veritable eldritch entity, the delicate balance came crashing down, and the Topek got greedy.

Over the next close to 250 years, 15 species went extinct, rare habitable world sin the core were destroyed, and systems left in ruin. It only ended when the Aelids finally stepped in and reduced the Topek Empire to a husk, relegated to a single barren world devoid of resources, the remaining Topek have devolved into stone chucking tribals. It is not expected for them to survive for many more generations.

The aftermath of the war lead to many of the quasi-independent nations being folded into the Aelid Hegemony proper. Leaving only the Kantr Confederacy as a properly independent entity. Unfortunately due to the nature of the galactic center, the Hegemony only have few natural expansion oppurtunities. Numbering less than a dozen systems with inhabitable planets now. They've also somehow managed to remain uncontacted by the remainder of galactic life.<<

Territory: >>Galactic Core and Near 3kpc Bar<<

Megastructures: >>Sagittarius A* Birch World "The Edge of Eternity": located around the supermassive black hole at the orbital center of the Milky Way, as of current, has enough space to hold close to 10 octillion people indefinitely until the end of time itself. As of current, less than 9.8x10^-14% of the structure is occupied by living species, at roughly 9.8 Trillion souls. Additionally, a matryoshka type digital reality is at it's lowest surface, capable of holding a theoretically infinite number of digitized consciousnesses.

Helios Array: A Kantr Construction project that has been on hold for close to three decades now, the Helios Array is a nicoll-dyson beam focused around a lone B-Type Star named simply 'Sauron'. Should construction continue, (comparatively) low yield firings are likely to be possible within a decade.<<

Military: >>As the only independent entities remaining, the Aelid and Kantr have the only standing militaries in the Hegemony. They are each proportionally small. Of a population of nearly 19 Trillion Aelids, only 120 million are enlisted as warriors. Meanwhile, the Kantr comparatively house 10 billion soldiers, sailors, and marines. At the best of times, roughly 15,000 ships can be active with the Kantr navy at one time, while the Aelids typically can field close to 17,000.<<

Special Technologies and Magic: >>Psionics, Gene editing and engineering, biomechanical augmentation, materials sciences advanced enough to maintain a project as unfathomably massive as a birch world, singularity/kugelblitz generation, negative mass/quasi-negative mass generation, gamma ray energy processing, Ionic shield generators.<< (Not going into detail here to avoid the character limit, can explain later)

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: >>Yesn't<<

[Arktic]

Thanks for all the replies, guys! I’ll have my responses and an IC thread up tomorrow.

[Parcia]

Taggerino boys.

[Parcia]

>>Insert your name here<<'s Polity Application

Polity Name: The Sovereign Colonies of Aurelia.

Description: The Colonies are a primarily Human nation hailing from one of “The originals”, the original dozen colonies settled by Humanity after the diaspora of the 2100s. The Aurelians were enslaved by the Calgar, a race of conquering reptilian beings sometime around 2240 and served under them as chattel slaves for nearly 700 years. In the last 100 years, the Colonials staged a sudden, massive uprising and drove the Calgar to near complete extinction. Now, they rule over the empty and dead empire of the Calgar, stretching nearly 1000 charted systems and 300 worlds along the Orion Arm.

Territory: Most of the Orion Spur towards the base, give me a few hours to actually chart it out.

Megastructures: only two: Gateway station, a Citadel class space station and orbital habitat over the Colony of Aurelia it self. Deep space telescope X-234. A large, angular space station of unknown origin hanging over One of Aurelia’s moons, Pelo Major.

Military: The Colonial military is split among three branches, the Colonial marine Corps, handling Ship to ship boarding actions and ground combat, the Colonial Navy, which carnations the Fleet of nearly 2400 warships and the Fleet Air arm containing its vaunted Fighter Corps. The Colonial Merchant Marine forms the third branch, being primarily concerned with fleet transportation and commerce.


Special Technologies and Magic:
Tachyon Lance technology - limited, will explain if asked.
Gene smithing - The Calgar were adept Gene smiths, and often meddled in the genetics of their slaves.
CODEN Drives - The Calgar were a smart people, and many examples of their technology were adapted by the Colonials. The CODEN drive is a evolution of the Calgar Free-space Shock drive, albeit less advanced by design in change for longer range and better accuracy. This eliminates the need for a gate network and allows advanced exploration of space, or movement of fleets.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: Bitch I made the last one. But yes, I agree to your rules.

[Mercatus]

WORK IN PROGRESS

The Taucetian Technocracy

Polity Name: The Taucetian Technocracy

Description: The Taucetians are a highly militant nomadic race entirely dedicated to becoming the sole technological superpower in the galaxy. They are humanoid, though far older than the human race, and have been spacefaring for millions of years. They are characterized by their very unorthodox ship design philosophy, highly advanced and barely comprehensible technology, and feared for the sheer destructive power of their weapons. The Taucetians are as of now are completely unknown to the powers of the galaxy. They are extraordinarily hostile, and tend to fire first. Their population of 574.7 million, some in suspended animation, is housed on massive, entirely self-sufficient motherships that also serve as the mainstay craft of their combat tactics. Every individual is "assembled" from a combination of cybernetic and vat-grown organic parts, and there is no biological reproduction among the Taucetians. All are inducted into either the military or, if they prove to be supreme intellects, the legions of scientists, engineers, and researchers that create and maintain the advanced technologies used by the technocratic race of nomads.

Taucetian biology, while being distinct from and unrelated to that of humans, is very similar in terms of functional analogy. They have a circulatory system, a nervous system, a digestive system etc. that all perform the same functions as that of a human. What is distinctly different, however, is the method by which new individuals are created. Having an ungodly high level of manipulation over both the mind and body, Taucetians do not sexually procreate, but are manufactured from modular cyber-organic parts in assembly line-esque factories. Every organ and organ system present in original Taucetian bodies that evolved naturally was re-engineered to accommodate a complete replacement of the skeletal and muscular systems with synthetic parts. Robotic "bones", complete with servos and artificial nerve endings, greatly increased the durability and adaptability of the Taucetian body. The synthetic muscles are still organic in nature, though they are based around flexible cybernetic framework that increases durability, strength, and response times. The muscular system also has artificial nerve endings. Every other organic system as remained unaltered in their fundamental structure and function, though they are engineered to accommodate the cybernetic architecture to prevent negative health effects from arising. The incorporation of quantum computation into their neural architecture has made the Taucetians on average exceptionally more intelligent than most unaltered organic species. This nano-computational system also functions as the brain's direct control link to the rest of the physical body, resulting in hyper-awareness of external stimuli and by extension high-speed reaction times and appendage movements. The cybernetic components of the Taucetian body are not powered by a form of artificial power source, but instead by the natural electrical impulses of the nervous system. When it comes down to giving the body life through the implementation of a mind, the Taucetians reuse the consciousnesses of deceased individuals, which are downloaded to a computer mainframe and split into multiple individual personalities made up of elements from the previous mind. Each of these new psyches are then downloaded to their manufactured bodies. Because new individuals are semi-reincarnations of "dead" individuals, a kind of collective memory and consciousness has formed among the Taucetians. It does not function as a hivemind of any kind, but it does give them a distinct edge in formulating new ideas, theories, and technologies due to there being omnipresent information available to fuel creativity and methodical thinking. In terms of appearance, the Taucetian skin is invariably stark white, and the eyes display a myriad of colors among the population, consisting of shades much more "vibrant" or noticeable than other species. All Taucetians stand at a height of 8.5 feet because of the standardized manufacturing processes involved in their creation. However, genetic diversity is present when vat-growing new organic parts, and Taucetians display wide differences in hair color, type, eye color, and intelligence level.

The Taucetians were seeded in the Tau Ceti system roughly 2 billion years ago by a highly advanced creator race that had managed to escape the Great Purge. This creator race, now long extinct, created the Taucetians as a last-ditch effort to continue their genetic line and repopulate the galaxy. Right from the start, the Taucetians were frequently embattled with each other, and great disunity was present right from the stone age until the creation of the Taucetian Republic around 4 million years ago. Countless times throughout their history, Taucetian civilization has been reset by various apocalyptic events brought about by their own destructive tendencies. This included several nuclear holocausts, and 3 of the 8 planets in that system became uninhabitable, with the Taucetians having to move on and colonize other worlds multiple times. Things gradually stabilized within the past few million years, and the Taucetians developed hyper-advanced technology, allowing them to finally expand beyond their home system. Around 10 million years ago, the Taucetians fought yet another great war, not against themselves, but against a more primitive form of the ravenous and all-consuming Vresh. It was a brutal and short war, resulting in the near-extinction of the Taucetians and primitive pre-modern Vresh. Thus, the borders of a great empire sharply contracted, and the Taucetians were once again left with nothing but their home system. Over time, they returned to their old ways, and circa 4 million BCE, a bloody and long civil conflict ensued among their race once more. By this time, the decentralized Taucetians were divided into various small factions, each technologically different and holding a different set of societal values and customs. It was during this war that the modern ship design philosophy of the Technocracy was born. Asymmetrical tactics and rapidly adapting weapons systems deployed on huge motherships dominated over directionally-based spacecraft with fixed weapons, and eventually the faction that would become the Technocratic warriors of modern times emerged from the ashes of the Taucetian Civil War along with a few others, and together they resolved to never fight such an internal conflict again. Thus was the formation of the Taucetian Republic, which politically was very similar to a slightly more liberal version of the Roman Republic. People partook in free elections for representative politicians, and it was a time of peace, prosperity, and advancement. However, this era came to an end with the transmutation of the Taucetian Republic into the short-lived Taucetian Empire, an aggressively expansionist entity that started wars with nearly every other foreign race. They ultimately met their downfall circa 800,000 BCE when they capitulated to a military takeover by ancient humans who had been technologically elevated as well as a myriad of other powers. This marked the formation of the Taucetian Technocracy as will soon be known by the galactic powers at work today. The outcome of the recent conflict left many disaffected and angry, and though a much smaller faction, the Technocracy was able to survive because of the shared political goals of that society. After wandering the galaxy in search of any ancient technological artifacts that would advance their own society, the Taucetian Technocracy made a brief appearance onto the galactic stage. Once again, they initiated conflict, absolutely destroying any military fleets they came across. This show of power was short lived before the Taucetians mysteriously disappeared into intergalactic space circa 90,000 BCE, their home system having been burned. As of now, the Taucetian Technocracy is making a return to the galaxy, having advanced further and ready to try taking the path of war once again.

Taucetian society has historically been fractured and deeply divided on everything from politics to technology. However, with the severe contraction of their population and strong unity in a single political cause, the Technocratic incarnation of their society shows no signs of splitting any time soon. Overall, the goal of the Technocracy is to become the dominant military and technological power in the galaxy. Being a technocracy, nearly any action they take is done in the name of servicing the scientists and engineers responsible for advancing the Taucetian race as a whole, which can cause others to construe them as a kind of militant technology cult. Taucetian technology, however, is explicitly engineered for primary use in war and military affairs, which efforts in turn are used to fuel innovation. It is an almost insane cycle, but one that has kept the Technocracy much more stable than the Taucetian Republic, Empire, or Warring States. Even technologies traditionally used for peaceful purposes have found themselves repurposed to further the Taucetian war machine. Getting away from foreign affairs and collective goals, the Taucetians, through their near-absolute control of the fundamental aspects of the mind and body, have engineered a completely faithful and compliant populace, with special effort taken to preserve creativity. Every mind paired to a new body has the goals of Taucetian society and its values programmed in such a way that ensures compliance, but preserves individualism and a creative mind, but said innovative and new thinking abides by the societal statutes put in place, with only ideas that benefit those goals being permitted to reach fruition. There is almost no art, music, or other form of non-beneficial individualistic expression within the Technocratic society. From the time of their creation to the age of around four Earth years, individuals are subject to rigorous tests and examinations of their intelligence, possible combat skill, leadership proficiency, and technological literacy. They attend a form of school where the instilled values of Taucetian society are cemented and they learn things like mathematics, sciences, operation of military equipment, and military tactics. Those determined to be highly intelligent and proficient in creative thinking are recruited to the elite scientist caste, while those scoring well on intelligence exams and military tactics are selected to be commanders and tacticians. Those who do not score the highest on intelligence but do well when it comes to operating military equipment and executing battle maneuvers form the bulk of Taucetian forces. Taucetian society is led by an upper echelon of the scientists and military commanders, performing both roles at an administrative level, 24 individuals, to be precise. These elites are referred to as designated names other than their birth names, which in human languages roughly translate to the letters/symbols of the Greek alphabet. New leaders are selected from the pool of highly proficient military strategists and scientists after any one of the group dies.

Territory: Having been in exodus from their dead home system, Tau Ceti, for hundreds of thousands of years, the Taucetians hold no territory, and are completely nomadic. They are newly resurgent in the galaxy, having emerged back from deep space.

Megastructures: While technically abandoned, the Foundry is a massive factory constructed inside a hollowed-out rogue planet during the era of the Taucetian Republic. It saw use through the time of the Taucetian Empire and was left derelict when the Empire capitulated. The Foundry was used to manufacture the highly advanced Taucetian Motherships as well as nearly every other asset of the Taucetian military. Perhaps the most important and technologically impressive feat contained within the Foundry is the production matrix used to create the power source for all Taucetian technology: Neutronium. At the core of the hollowed planet was what could be construed as an active star cycle, multiple in fact. The idea behind this was to create multiple dense, miniature stars with very short lifespans that would ultimately end their lives in a controlled supernova explosion, which was controlled via suspension of said artificial stars in higher dimensions of space by creating an Alcubierre-type "warp bubble" around the stars. They each were created with enough density and stellar mass to result in the creation of a neutron star after their deaths, which, due to their close proximity within the warp bubble, would collide and spill their ultra-dense neutronium cores to be collected as well as release enough energy to initiate another cycle. By now, most other tech with the exception of the neutronium production matrix would be defunct due to a loss of power and a lack of supervision. The maps of the projected trajectory of the Foundry have been completely lost to time, and no one has rediscovered it yet. This structure is part of the reason the Taucetians returned to the Milky Way, as reclamation of their lost technology would be paramount in reestablishing themselves as a superpower. The Motherships produced here once numbered in the hundreds, but eons of war and a struggle to acquire adequate resources to maintain these craft led to the diminishing of the fleet to only 9 operable vessels. Around 50-100 hulls are estimated to have survived with most of their structure intact, though they would now float as powerless hulks on random courses through interstellar space, with most of their systems either inoperable or decayed beyond repair. An estimated 150-300 hulls either crashed on or were destroyed over various planets, mostly in the Orion Arm. All that remains of these are pieces of wreckage sprinkled over the surface of rocky worlds or half-intact skeletons of the original craft, which by merit of their age alone are probably buried under natural rock strata or floral reclamation of the land. (OOC Note: Any player faction can feel free to discover a derelict mothership and glean information ICly from the black boxes. Hell, I'd encourage it for the sake of the story.)

Military: The Taucetian military, though comparatively small, is an extraordinarily powerful entity by virtue of the Technocracy's advanced technology alone. The motherships, completely self-sufficient and equipped with manufacturing facilities, form the basis of Taucetian battle tactics. They act as mobile bastions, deploying smaller craft such as corvettes, troop transports, and drones. Typically, the motherships' goal is to blow through any outer opposition and strike at the target planet or megastructure first using smaller spacecraft, and the defensive capabilities of the mother craft will ensure protection from the rerouted defense fleets. The Taucetians are highly militaristic, always shooting first and never asking questions. The motherships are incredibly powerful, and their unconventional design, lacking a central power source such as a reactor and utilizing a reactionless sub-lightspeed drive system, means they are incredibly difficult to destroy, as they lack easily pinpointed weaknesses. They were constructed to eliminate most "Achilles Heels" present in conventional vessels. Ground combat doctrine phases out the foot soldier entirely, instead opting for armored yet still highly mobile mind-controlled mecha as the standard ground unit, units that also take the role of a light fighter in space or when flying in-atmosphere. There is little spacecraft variety within the Taucetian military, with a handful spacecraft designs filling all roles, with each variant configured and equipped for its intended role. This economizes production and enables vessels to be manufactured at a rate and scale that easily replaces combat losses, provided enough resources are still available. Taucetian combat doctrine has no role or reason for producing intermediately-sized spacecraft to bridge the gap between motherships and what generally consist of corvette-sized transports, bombers, and multirole fighters along with small destroyers and frigates. In essence, this means that a wide variance in capital ship makes and models (cruiser, battleship, carrier, etc.) simply does not exist in the Taucetian military, as the motherships already perform those roles in one package. In terms of numbers, the Taucetians operate nine motherships, employ 510 million combat personnel, field 3400 small destroyers and carrier frigates, operate 52000 vessels of corvette size or smaller (mecha carriers, multirole fighters, bombers, etc.), and have a standing army of 376 million combat mechs.

Special Technologies and Magic:

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: Yee yee sumbitch.

[Parcia]

Eyy bruh I don't meant to be this guy, but I'm already in control of T. Ceti and most of the local space along the Orion spur.

I think we can work something, but uh, not currently.

[Kasa Tkoth Sphere]

Oh, hey, a redo. I'll have an app up today.

Eyy bruh I don't meant to be this guy, but I'm already in control of T. Ceti and most of the local space along the Orion spur.

I think we can work something, but uh, not currently.

The Orion Spur has on the order of hundreds of millions to billions of systems in it, and you've claimed only about a thousand, all in very recent galactic history (AD years); surely someone having vanished from one of the former group, countless millennia before your people even started expanding, isn't much of a contradiction, right?

[Parcia]

Oh, hey, a redo. I'll have an app up today.

Eyy bruh I don't meant to be this guy, but I'm already in control of T. Ceti and most of the local space along the Orion spur.

I think we can work something, but uh, not currently.

The Orion Spur has on the order of hundreds of millions to billions of systems in it, and you've claimed only about a thousand, all in very recent galactic history (AD years); surely someone having vanished from one of the former group, countless millennia before your people even started expanding, isn't much of a contradiction, right?

Ah, forgive me my habibi.

I was speaking in terms of the local space around the system of T. Ceti it self. Not the entire Orion Spur. A for what I said, I was speaking in terms of the system in question it self as it’s actually an inhabit system, or one of them.

Forgive my lack of clarified map claims, I’ve been making this app between back to back shifts at work and havnt had the time to chart it out properly on the map.

Cheers.

[Anowa]

Gonna pre-emptively give a few pointers and possible corrections before anything gets cemented.

Description: Every individual is cloned, and there is no biological reproduction among the Taucetians. All are inducted into either the military or, if they prove to be supreme intellects, the legions of scientists, engineers, and researchers that create and maintain the advanced technologies used by the technocratic race of nomads.

The Taucetians have a wide array of more "vibrant" or "bright" eye colors, ranging from shades of red, amber, green, violet, blue, and even semi-transparent shades of white or grey.

The skeleton and all bones within it are much stronger and more dense than in nearly any other species, containing naturally-generated carbon nanotubes, making them exceedingly difficult to break.

Strangely, even though they are complex multicellular sapient beings, their dermal cells have something resembling a flexible cell wall, made primarily of naturally-generated carbon microfibers, making their skin somewhat resistant to things like plasma weaponry and very hard to kill with conventional ballistic weapons.

Taucetian bodies from the get-go had naturally higher rates of cell formation, repair, and division, giving natural resistance against cancers and allowing fast natural healing.

Just a few things here:
If the species is entirely cloned, that means they would all look identical. As in, there would be no genetic variation outside of a single set of appearance, and there'd be no change in mental faculties, yes some could be more willing to act as scientists over soldiers, but they wouldn't be inherently smarter or more intelligent. This would also lead to a rather problematic issue that any infection that can bypass their immune system or undiscovered genetic illness would all but obliterate their population. I would suggest clarifying that it's recursive cloning from a select population, if that is the case here.

Carbon nanotubes while strong, unfortunately, have been found in some cases to be cytotoxic to basically all forms of life except fungus (which haven't been studied in this case), promoting cell death, DNA damage, chromosome damage, and general necrosis, that and the fact that biological developments at such a scale would be close to impossible. Alternatively, you could simply have their bones incorporate some form of metal or metalloid in compound with cell structure, due keep in mind that would cause dietary requirements to include said material.

All animal cells walls except bone and cartilage are flexible. I'm not sure if that's what you meant or if you meant they're more rigid like plant or fungal cells. If it's the latter, the damage won't be so much to the skin, but rather the underlying muscle and bone taking the brunt of the impact, much like being hit in the chest with a metal bat with shatter your ribs, but your skin will only look bruised. If it's strong enough to stop a bullet, it's also strong enough to stop a scalpel. If it's the former, Than the same issue is still apparent from the blunt trauma of a bullet impacting, the skin won't break as before, but the energy will still transfer through to muscle and bone (though not all of it), though now the issue of non elastic skin is apparent, meaning that skin would regularly crack along joints and other parts that move regularly, leading to lesions and potential infections. Plasma weapons typically reach temperatures hot enough to outright flash vapourize skin and muscle and char bone. So it's very unlikely any changes to the skin would make them immune to plasma. I would honestly advise not doing much to the structure of the skin, as it leads into medical problems of being unable to perform surgeries or moving too often.

Finally for biology, the problem at hand is cell division in general. Having fast cell division and repair is a double edged sword, while yes, it would allows a faster healing rate thanks to it being a marker of a faster metabolism. The problem is that these also affect cancer cells, in the direct opposite way claimed here, by making them divide faster and metastasize faster as well, thus making cancer in such populations even more prevalent. A slower cell division rectifies this, but in the end also counteracts the rate of healing. A way to make the species free of cancer is to protect against what can cause cancer in the first place, or at least lower the chances of such things getting absorbed by the body. Ionizing radiation, certain chemicals, and environmental sources.

Megastructures: Taucetian Motherships, approximately 150 kilometers in length, 75 kilometers in width, and 38 kilometers in height, are massive mobile constructs that are the cradles of the Taucetian Technocracy, the crown jewels of technological achievement. 27 motherships in total comprise the Taucetian space fleet, and each is hundreds of thousands of years old. These are the only examples in operable condition, but there are derelict motherships floating around the galaxy, several hundred, in fact. How they came to be that way was likely the result of a loss of power or having ended up destroyed. A select few have either crashed on or been destroyed over planets, with one notably having been buried on Earth, leaving pieces scattered over the surface or intact vessels on the ground. (OOC: Any player faction can discover one of these derelict ships floating around with no need for my permission. Hell, I'd encourage it for the sake of the story.)

With this, the only issue I spotted was in regards to Earth. Arktic, the OP, has stated elsewhere that he wants to keep Earth unoccupied and generally just forgotten by the galaxy at large (no clue why this isn't mentioned in the original post, but at least people now know).

Outside of this, only a minor nitpick in the scale of the timeline for the species, but that's more me than anything.

[Mercatus]

Gonna pre-emptively give a few pointers and possible corrections before anything gets cemented.

Description: Every individual is cloned, and there is no biological reproduction among the Taucetians. All are inducted into either the military or, if they prove to be supreme intellects, the legions of scientists, engineers, and researchers that create and maintain the advanced technologies used by the technocratic race of nomads.

The Taucetians have a wide array of more "vibrant" or "bright" eye colors, ranging from shades of red, amber, green, violet, blue, and even semi-transparent shades of white or grey.

The skeleton and all bones within it are much stronger and more dense than in nearly any other species, containing naturally-generated carbon nanotubes, making them exceedingly difficult to break.

Strangely, even though they are complex multicellular sapient beings, their dermal cells have something resembling a flexible cell wall, made primarily of naturally-generated carbon microfibers, making their skin somewhat resistant to things like plasma weaponry and very hard to kill with conventional ballistic weapons.

Taucetian bodies from the get-go had naturally higher rates of cell formation, repair, and division, giving natural resistance against cancers and allowing fast natural healing.

Just a few things here:
If the species is entirely cloned, that means they would all look identical. As in, there would be no genetic variation outside of a single set of appearance, and there'd be no change in mental faculties, yes some could be more willing to act as scientists over soldiers, but they wouldn't be inherently smarter or more intelligent. This would also lead to a rather problematic issue that any infection that can bypass their immune system or undiscovered genetic illness would all but obliterate their population. I would suggest clarifying that it's recursive cloning from a select population, if that is the case here.

Carbon nanotubes while strong, unfortunately, have been found in some cases to be cytotoxic to basically all forms of life except fungus (which haven't been studied in this case), promoting cell death, DNA damage, chromosome damage, and general necrosis, that and the fact that biological developments at such a scale would be close to impossible. Alternatively, you could simply have their bones incorporate some form of metal or metalloid in compound with cell structure, due keep in mind that would cause dietary requirements to include said material.

All animal cells walls except bone and cartilage are flexible. I'm not sure if that's what you meant or if you meant they're more rigid like plant or fungal cells. If it's the latter, the damage won't be so much to the skin, but rather the underlying muscle and bone taking the brunt of the impact, much like being hit in the chest with a metal bat with shatter your ribs, but your skin will only look bruised. If it's strong enough to stop a bullet, it's also strong enough to stop a scalpel. If it's the former, Than the same issue is still apparent from the blunt trauma of a bullet impacting, the skin won't break as before, but the energy will still transfer through to muscle and bone (though not all of it), though now the issue of non elastic skin is apparent, meaning that skin would regularly crack along joints and other parts that move regularly, leading to lesions and potential infections. Plasma weapons typically reach temperatures hot enough to outright flash vapourize skin and muscle and char bone. So it's very unlikely any changes to the skin would make them immune to plasma. I would honestly advise not doing much to the structure of the skin, as it leads into medical problems of being unable to perform surgeries or moving too often.

Finally for biology, the problem at hand is cell division in general. Having fast cell division and repair is a double edged sword, while yes, it would allows a faster healing rate thanks to it being a marker of a faster metabolism. The problem is that these also affect cancer cells, in the direct opposite way claimed here, by making them divide faster and metastasize faster as well, thus making cancer in such populations even more prevalent. A slower cell division rectifies this, but in the end also counteracts the rate of healing. A way to make the species free of cancer is to protect against what can cause cancer in the first place, or at least lower the chances of such things getting absorbed by the body. Ionizing radiation, certain chemicals, and environmental sources.

Megastructures: Taucetian Motherships, approximately 150 kilometers in length, 75 kilometers in width, and 38 kilometers in height, are massive mobile constructs that are the cradles of the Taucetian Technocracy, the crown jewels of technological achievement. 27 motherships in total comprise the Taucetian space fleet, and each is hundreds of thousands of years old. These are the only examples in operable condition, but there are derelict motherships floating around the galaxy, several hundred, in fact. How they came to be that way was likely the result of a loss of power or having ended up destroyed. A select few have either crashed on or been destroyed over planets, with one notably having been buried on Earth, leaving pieces scattered over the surface or intact vessels on the ground. (OOC: Any player faction can discover one of these derelict ships floating around with no need for my permission. Hell, I'd encourage it for the sake of the story.)

With this, the only issue I spotted was in regards to Earth. Arktic, the OP, has stated elsewhere that he wants to keep Earth unoccupied and generally just forgotten by the galaxy at large (no clue why this isn't mentioned in the original post, but at least people now know).

Outside of this, only a minor nitpick in the scale of the timeline for the species, but that's more me than anything.

Thanks man. Honestly, I could’ve used some help with biology lol. It’s never been my strong suit at all, and I also don’t want to include too much detail to avoid massive text walls, both for my sanity’s sake and for the OPs sake.

I’ll remove any mention of Earth. I’ll clarify about the “cloning” of individuals as well. It’d be more like artificially constructing a new being from a new genetic code/blueprint rather than creating copies of the same template. Not sure if there’s a name for it.

As for the whole thing about skin cells, the basic idea is that they operated like flexible body armor, basically stopping bullets but not protecting from the energy transfer and the likely internal bleeding that would follow. I’ll clean that section up a bit too.

[Anowa]

Gonna pre-emptively give a few pointers and possible corrections before anything gets cemented.


Just a few things here:
If the species is entirely cloned, that means they would all look identical. As in, there would be no genetic variation outside of a single set of appearance, and there'd be no change in mental faculties, yes some could be more willing to act as scientists over soldiers, but they wouldn't be inherently smarter or more intelligent. This would also lead to a rather problematic issue that any infection that can bypass their immune system or undiscovered genetic illness would all but obliterate their population. I would suggest clarifying that it's recursive cloning from a select population, if that is the case here.

Carbon nanotubes while strong, unfortunately, have been found in some cases to be cytotoxic to basically all forms of life except fungus (which haven't been studied in this case), promoting cell death, DNA damage, chromosome damage, and general necrosis, that and the fact that biological developments at such a scale would be close to impossible. Alternatively, you could simply have their bones incorporate some form of metal or metalloid in compound with cell structure, due keep in mind that would cause dietary requirements to include said material.

All animal cells walls except bone and cartilage are flexible. I'm not sure if that's what you meant or if you meant they're more rigid like plant or fungal cells. If it's the latter, the damage won't be so much to the skin, but rather the underlying muscle and bone taking the brunt of the impact, much like being hit in the chest with a metal bat with shatter your ribs, but your skin will only look bruised. If it's strong enough to stop a bullet, it's also strong enough to stop a scalpel. If it's the former, Than the same issue is still apparent from the blunt trauma of a bullet impacting, the skin won't break as before, but the energy will still transfer through to muscle and bone (though not all of it), though now the issue of non elastic skin is apparent, meaning that skin would regularly crack along joints and other parts that move regularly, leading to lesions and potential infections. Plasma weapons typically reach temperatures hot enough to outright flash vapourize skin and muscle and char bone. So it's very unlikely any changes to the skin would make them immune to plasma. I would honestly advise not doing much to the structure of the skin, as it leads into medical problems of being unable to perform surgeries or moving too often.

Finally for biology, the problem at hand is cell division in general. Having fast cell division and repair is a double edged sword, while yes, it would allows a faster healing rate thanks to it being a marker of a faster metabolism. The problem is that these also affect cancer cells, in the direct opposite way claimed here, by making them divide faster and metastasize faster as well, thus making cancer in such populations even more prevalent. A slower cell division rectifies this, but in the end also counteracts the rate of healing. A way to make the species free of cancer is to protect against what can cause cancer in the first place, or at least lower the chances of such things getting absorbed by the body. Ionizing radiation, certain chemicals, and environmental sources.


With this, the only issue I spotted was in regards to Earth. Arktic, the OP, has stated elsewhere that he wants to keep Earth unoccupied and generally just forgotten by the galaxy at large (no clue why this isn't mentioned in the original post, but at least people now know).

Outside of this, only a minor nitpick in the scale of the timeline for the species, but that's more me than anything.

Thanks man. Honestly, I could’ve used some help with biology lol. It’s never been my strong suit at all, and I also don’t want to include too much detail to avoid massive text walls, both for my sanity’s sake and for the OPs sake.

I’ll remove any mention of Earth. I’ll clarify about the “cloning” of individuals as well. It’d be more like artificially constructing a new being from a new genetic code/blueprint rather than creating copies of the same template. Not sure if there’s a name for it.

As for the whole thing about skin cells, the basic idea is that they operated like flexible body armor, basically stopping bullets but not protecting from the energy transfer and the likely internal bleeding that would follow. I’ll clean that section up a bit too.

Gotcha.

Term for growing new people from scratch is vat grown or lab grown.

[Arktic]

Vresh Hives's Polity Application

Polity Name: The Vresh Hive

Description: Here, have this. They might be a little outdated, but you get the gist.

Territory: Eat me

Megastructures: Nothing yet. We've scoured a few worlds clean. Might try building something bigger than some ships later. Who knows?

Military: Big.

Special Technologies and Magic: We have the hivemind, a super adaptable biology, the ability to turn most other organic materials into milkshakes, and we can manipulate gravity. Welcome to hell.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?:Eat a dick

Approved. Go f_ck yourself.

[Arktic]

Seran Federation's Polity Application

Polity Name: The Seran Federation

Description: They're human, they're a federation of like 30-odd planets. They're kind of conservative, pretty agrarian. There's like 40 billion people among all the space of the Federation, so it's relatively sparsely populated. You know the drill.

Territory: Literally will do self-harm if you don't make this easier on me by naming or numbering the random squares.

Megastructures: Got a gate for every system in the Federation for quick zip-zip fast speed.

Military: There's 5 million Marines broken down between the Planetary Militia and the Mobile Infantry. There's also about 1,300 ships in the Navy. We're not too aggressive and focus on defense and ending a conflict as quickly as possible with fast strikes and rapid movement across combat zones. General capabilities in terms of weaponry include bullets for personal use, and naval ships using point defense chain guns, missiles, and rail guns, as well as using comms lasers in emergency circumstances. In addition, there's one ship that uses Arkite(our handwavium resource) to create a shield and a particle cannon for itself. QEC technology is available in text-format only and operates on a switchboard system.

Special Technologies and Magic: The gates are pretty imperative to the Federation's entire being. On top of that, some of the larger Federal Navy ships have cynosural gate drives that can open a temporary gate on their position. QEC has been talked about above. Arkite has been talked about above. The Immortals exist as almost-Spartans. I think that's everything until I think of something else.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: Kill me.

Approved. And don't worry, I will.

[Arktic]

Balorene Dominion's Polity Application

Polity Name: Balorene Dominion

Description: A constitutional dictatorship located relatively close to the galactic center, the Dominion was formerly an expansionist and warmongering state until the Balorenes overthrew their despotic monarchy about two thousand standard years ago. It its place they established the rule of the Ataman, a sort of admiral-executive who is elected to lead the Dominion for life. In the last two millennia, the Dominion has renounced its previous jingoism and has instead fought many wars against new expansionist powers. The Balorenes see it as their duty to prevent any one empire from growing so powerful that it can dominate the galaxy, and maintain a powerful navy and gifted intelligence service to this end. They are also known to send expeditionary forces to threatened states when requested.

As a people, the Balorenes are phenotypically altered from millions of years of habitation spent on their volcanic homeworld of Balor, from which the Dominion originated. Balorenes have evolved an exceptionally strong digestive system from eating a hard diet of rock-shrubs, birds and lava slugs on Balor. As a result, most ingested poisons that would kill a baseline human would simply make a Balorene mildly ill. Furthermore, their red-colored eyes mark the possession of exceptional night vision for humans; Balorenes have better perception of edges, movement, and silhouettes in dim light. This is commonly thought to be because of long habitation in the ash-choked atmosphere present on much of Balor, but geneticists have recently uncovered some evidence of genetic tampering in the distant evolutionary past. What this means, none can yet say for sure.

Despite physical differences, Balorenes continue to lay claim to the wider umbrella of humanity, and seem to be fully sexually compatible with their unaltered cousins. Immigrants from outside are generally welcome on Balorene worlds, although they may not settle on Balor itself. Though the Dominion carries out considerable commerce with the rest of the galaxy, large-scale trade is primarily in the hands of the state, with only medium-sized private enterprises permitted within Dominion space - which encompasses about 170 inhabited planets and moons, with some 650 billion inhabitants. Of these, about 600 billion are considered Dominion-born citizens. Recent immigrants are exempt from military conscription, but also forego all political rights.

Territory: Marked by squares in orange.

Megastructures: After millennia of construction efforts, the Dominion is close to completing a full Dyson sphere in the Ishukone System, and has the ambition to use it as a power source for gargantuan commercial and naval shipyards. It also has a series of 25 'blink' gates between the major star systems, in order to facilitate military and commercial transportation across Dominion space. Finally, the Balorenes boast of their ecumenopoli world of Korsiki, which possesses a world-city home to some 60 billion people.

Military: The Balorene Army contains about 5.5 billion soldiers, with the ground branch split between the elite Expeditionary Force (500 million), and the far larger semi-professional reserve forces, which rarely if ever see action outside Balorene space. However, the real strength of the Dominion lies with the Navy - at 32,000 warships of all classes and designs, it is one of the most formidable vacuum navies in the galaxy. Although it uses carrier groups and large battleships like most other states, in practice the Dominion tends to rely on the daunting stealth technologies present in some of its specialized frigate and cruiser classes to achieve infiltration of enemy-held space. These squadrons fight in "hunter-killer" groups, with the intention of wrecking havoc on the enemy's commerce, lines of supply, and isolated units.

Among the formations of the Balorene Expeditionary Force (BEF), the very best troops available are those in the 150,000-strong Ranger Corps. These elite special forces are selected from a candidate pool consisting of soldiers in the top 1% of physical fitness ability in the entire military. Trainees might arrive from the regular Army, the Marines (subordinate to the Navy), National Police, or from state-run orphanages in some cases. The training regime is long and cruel, with an emphasis on physical and mental deprivation. 9 out of 10 will wash out before completing the two-year Ranger School, with a fatality rate approaching 25%. Those that make it through, however, are subject to gene-altering procedures to enhance strength, reflexes, and cognitive ability. Once complete, the newly-minted Balorene Rangers are the most perfect warriors available to the Dominion.

The rough translation from Balorene is 'Seeker Directorate.' the Hakijaosasto functions as both the domestic and international intelligence agency for the Dominion. Hakijaosasto is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counter-terrorism both within Balorene space and abroad. Unlike the Dominion's military or police forces, there is no law that strictly defines its objectives, powers, or budget. As a result, the agency answers only to the Ataman and has no practical legal limits, leading some observers to describe it as a deep state.

Hakijaosasto's tactics include, but are hardly limited to: surveillance, blackmail, extortion, kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, funding, arming, and training of foreign insurgents, and political manipulation. It is nearly impossible to pin down exactly how many personnel the agency employs, since many are civilians employed on a part-time basis, and not fully-trained Hakija operatives. Hakija are recruited from a multitude of species within the Dominion, who may have nothing in common besides loyalty to the Balorene state. Operatives may range in specialty from everything from counterfeiters and thieves to merciless death squads. Given that the Dominion has renounced expansionary warfare, the myriad capabilities of the Hakijaosasto are often the preferred tool of the state over military force.

Special Technologies and Magic: Balorene Cloaking Generators- Developed relatively early on in the Balorene space age, the Dominion's stealth technology has been honed and refined over thousands of years, and has acquired a reputation for being some of the most potent ship-based cloaking technology in the galaxy. Besides utilizing standard techniques to cancel out electronic signatures and disguise the physical sight of the ship itself, Balorene generators also make use of ionized plasma "shields" to absorb EM radiation. Though extremely effective on frigate and cruiser-sized ships, the power demands of the military-grade generators mean that ship movement is slowed significantly while engaged, and use of blink or warp drives is quite impossible.

Mieli-Silma- Balorene 'mind-sight,' for lack of a better translation. Sitting astride the line between martial art and meditation technique, the Mieli-Silma is an ancient practice used by Balorene wise women, and activated only in the bizarre chemical atmosphere present on the volcanic world of Balor. For reasons unknown even to the Balorenes themselves, the Mieli-Silma interacts more effectively with female biology than with male. Effective use of the Mieli-Silma is said to grant insight into motives, truthfulness - even brief visions of the future, although these are open to manipulation and interpretation. Despite the apparent power of this art, more than half the visions induced by it appear to be nothing more than mental gibberish - and it takes many decades of practice to separate the 'false' from the 'true' visions. No more than a few hundred wise woman at a time have ever sufficiently mastered the art. For the Balorenes, it is as much a religious custom as a political tool, and its intricacies are a closely-kept secret.

Other notable tech: Nanite mineral probes, terrestrial sculpting and foreign soil enrichment, zero-point power generation

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: I'll agree to whatever as long as I can play space Morrowind.

Provisional approval. Welcome aboard!

Your app looks mostly good, but could you elaborate a bit on the "mind-sight" thing for me? It sounds alright (otherwise I wouldn't have given you any approval at all), I just need to make sure it's not broken.

[Arktic]

>>Insert your name here<<'s Polity Application

Polity Name: >>Greater Aelid Hegemony<<

Description: >>The Aelid Hegemony is not a single nation, but rather multiple species under the Hegemony's banner, divided into two remaining nation states. They are as follows:
The Aelid Hegemony
The title species, the Aelids, are large, reptile like xenomammals that were artificially created by a precursor race that now occupies a matryoshka brain on the lowest levels of The Edge of Eternity. Created to be custodians for the megastructure, the Aelids have long since grown past their original mandate. Now seeking to archive genetically, or take volunteer sample populations to live on their Birch World from every species in the Milky Way, so they may have a home for the coming trillions of years before the end of entropy. They are lead by an individual known simply as The Custodian, born almost 10 thousand years ago, The Custodian is a brilliant engineer tasked with keeping The Edge of Eternity running without issue, he stands as one of the oldest individual organics known to history, and uses a benevolent guiding hand when dealing with younger species.

Outside of the title species, the hegemony also contains the Hekaton, uplifted Common Chimpanzees brought with the Kantr ancestors for use as biological filters for testing the toxicity of native flora. Since uplifted to be mentally on par with their human cousins via the insertion and splicing of human genes, the Hekaton now strongly resemble their human cousins in physical appearance, with the only retentions being prehensile tails, prehensile feet, massive canine teeth, large patches of fur on their backs and a nose described as orcish. Hekaton however are still notably aggressive compared to their human counterparts, and still more than capable of actually tearing them to pieces, especially with the advent of proper physical training among their people.

And the Selieds, intelligent and ubiquitously psionic predatory cephalopods. Heavily fundamentalist in regards to their religion, though this has lessened since being folded into the hegemony. Known for not actually having FTL drives, nor engines or reactors in their ships, instead using psionics to power and move said ships. With a single bone in their body with a diameter of 3 inches, they have a variety of jobs with niche careers, typically involving small and cramped spaces. Their tentacles have no suction cups like cephalopods from earth, but do have smaller extremities at each tip allowing tool use and manipulation.

Other species once resided in Aelid space, but are now too few in number to truly matter, or are wholly extinct.

Locomotor System:

The Aelid locomotor system is rather unique, as with all species. They are a bipedal, digitigrade race, with rotation capable wrists, shoulders, ankles, necks and spines, and locking joints consisting of elbows, knees, wrists, and ankles. Their rib cage consists of eight total bone plates wrapping around their vital abdominal organs. Overall tissue composition is roughly 4x denser than a human's, with muscle tissues of legs being fuller and longer due to the limb's inherent design. Hips are naturally on the wider side of things for balancing and reproductive purposes. An alligator like tail protrudes from the base of the spine, aiding in swimming, as well as in balance. Upper limbs are relatively well muscled, capable of feats similar to that of a human's, while they end in 2 thick fingers and 2 thumbs with a 270* range of motion on each hand. A thick tail roughly equal in length with the abdominal cavity continues from their spine to give an easier time of regaining a sense of balance. Head tissues are largely without muscles beyond that of facial and mandible movement.

68 teeth composed of boron nitride produce very dense and hard teeth, aligned across upper and lower jaws, while also lining a pair of 2 'cheek' mandibles in a jagged array, with canine, incisor, and molar sets all present for an omnivorous diet. A vestigial crest of bone makes up the forehead and temples of the head, usually ending in 1-3 flat horns coated with a layer of thin epidermis. Average height is between 7'5 and 8'2. With healthy weight ranging around 850-1260 lbs on average.

Physical feats in a 1 G environment include a peak running speed of 44 km/h, a weightlifting average of roughly 1800 pounds, and a stamina to run at a rough jogging pace for roughly 3 hours before fatigue prevented any further participation.

Integumentary System

Epidermal systems include a collection of tiny, smooth, pebble like scales. Usually with the coloring of blue to cyan shades in 'exterior' surfaces such as the legs, arms, head, and back. While rust to yellow pigment covers 'interior' surfaces such as the groin, stomach and throat. Dermal glands which emit a potent neurotoxin during times of extreme stress are also present, due to relations with foreign species, anti-toxins are readily available in Aelid population centers. Scales are largely composed of barium compounds, and are an evolutionary trait to avoid ionizing radiation damage. They offer no real physical protection outside that of a natural radiation defense.

Digestive System

There is no real uniqueness to the Aelid digestive system outside that of having two stomachs, a 17 inch prehensile tongue, two livers, and a gizzard. Relative digestive period is that of 31 hours.

Renal System

The Aelid renal system consists of five organs, four 'kidneys' and a sizeable bladder. The four Kidneys are located directly in the pelvis near the bladder, and filter the blood waste from the circulatory system and reduce it to simple urine. Attached to each is two analogues of the human adrenal glands.

Cardiopulmonary System

The cardiopulmonary system of the Aelids is that of a high oxygen intake due to the haemocyanin nature of the Aelid's blood. Four lungs each capable of holding 7 litres occupy a majority of the upper abdominal cavity, while a heart with 8 separate chambers (in essence 2 hearts as a part of the same organ)pumps indefinitely to keep an ample supply of blood flowing. Average BPM for the adults of the species is that of 85-130 resting rate.

Endocrine System

The Aelid endocrine system is largely similar to that of any other species, chemicals and proteins to aid in sleep, fight or flight, and internal time keeping are all present, as well as the presence of an Aelid 'telomerase'. A protein that repairs the DNA of the species after ionizing radiation damage, keeping the species immune to cancer and degenerative diseases, but also giving them naturally long life spans, ranging into two to three thousand year range.

Circulatory System

The Aelid circulatory system is that of a pastel wet dream. A deep blue and mildly fluorescent fluid consisting of haemocyanin and a respective Luciferin like compound, occupies the arteries and organs of the species. As a result, mucous membranes and thin layers of skin seem to glow in low light conditions, such as sclera, lips, gingiva, tongue, nostrils, head crest and reproductive organs. Average blood pressure is that of 110-160/80 mm Hg.

Ocular System

The Aelid ocular system is a rather unique one, sclera are shielded from ionizing radiation by Barium compounds, and as usual result in deep grey pigment. Iris usually display cyan to navy blue pigments, with the odd orange or white making an appearance. 5 color receptive cones result in a much broader array of vision than a human eye, while allowing slightly better visual capabilities in low light conditions. A dark nictitating membrane keeps the eye fully protected from light radiation, allowing very bright light to be filtered.

Reproductive System

The Aelids are a species of hermaphroditic xenomammals, they reproduce via placental viviparity, typically in litters of three to five. With a gestation period of 11 months. Aelids reach sexual maturity at 12 Solar years. Hormonal changes invoked during the fetal development stage induce the development of permanent secondary sexual characteristics.

Aelid culture is notably communal and outwardly quite foreign. Aelids put a primary pillar on public service and keeping the collection of sapient life in the Milky Way well and truly alive by any means necessary. A goal that unites the entirety of their species, from the refuse recyclers to their leader, The Custodian.

A post scarcity society, Aelids have no proper economy, everything that is needed is provided with little issue, yet in order to maintain a sense of self, Aelids are very strongly encouraged (under threat of indefinite cryogenic storage) to maintain a life of working in any capacity, or otherwise moving to other pastures to spread knowledge or their experiences to other races and nations.

A genetically engineered species, the Aelids did not evolve, and are unlikely to, due to an incredibly stable quadruple helix genome. Making further genetic changes nigh impossible. Inbreeding is also very difficult to have mutations occur, with complications only occurring after 15 generations of constant inbreeding. As such any genetic mutations, willing or otherwise, are typically reverted back to the original genome within two generations. With Aelid lifespans capable of being indefinite with external complications, Aelids are effectively impossible to genetically alter.

Aelids, due to being a monogendered hermaphroditic species, aren’t expected to have gendered pronouns in the same vein as humans, yet they do. The ‘males’ of the species are generally seen as young, adventurous, and emotionally brash compared to the other ‘gender’. A fact that is notably true, as the hormonal changes that occur when pregnant alter brain chemistry to a degree, as well as physical chemistry. The ‘females’ of the species are only called such when they have birthed children, regardless of temperament. It is most common to find ‘females’ in leadership positions or other facets of life requiring calmer heads. It is not considered an insult to refer to the wrong ‘gender’, as Aelids understand the confusion in mind with multi-gendered species in regards to this facet of Aelid life.

Aelids, due to being a created species who is still in contact with their creators, are very atheistic, this however does not come off as militant, as they understand that some species require a level of belief in higher powers in order to maintain a level of sanity in response to the existentialism of the universe and their place in it. As such, rarely does an Aelid interject in such matters like faith or religion.

One of the primary tenets of Aelid society is to do things with as much efficiency as physically possible. Aelid machines typically are compact, fast, and ridiculously easy to maintain given their structure, society moves with a preternatural grace, and is expected to move without flaw unless a grave occurrence crops up such as death, plague, or act of “god”. Due to this, Aelid wars end quickly, with a level of brutality that is likely to scar the genetic memory of a species for centuries.

The Kantr Confederacy
Descendants of humans who once used a generation ship to depart the mythological Sol System, they contain many remnant vestiges from Earth culture. primarily speaking a form of east slavic, and heavily modified by the Aelids to live on a new world. The Kantr are a self described neo-fascist state, though said description only very loosely fits their one for all mindset. The Kantr have had a brutal history, involving an almost 400 year war of genocide against the Aelid Hegemony's previous favoured species. They are lead by Grand Marshal Anastasiya Sukhanova, a former astrophysicist who had the misfortune of being claimed by a black hole, her consciousness -thanks to the black hole information paradox- remained fully aware of her incorporeal state. After some time, the Grand Marshal rematerialized seemingly on willpower alone. Changed fundementally by the events that transpired, not only is she now a powerful psionic, but also a disturbing presence for other psychics. She has held her post as Grand marshal for close to 500 years, and has an almost religious following by a minority of the Kantr.

Locomotor System:

The Kantr Locomotor system is effectively identical to the baseline human locomotor system. Spinal assembly has been corrected to avoid structural failure. Connective tissues however are more elastic thanks to changes in the FBN-1 and 2 genes, greatly reducing the number of related joint injuries associated with ligament damage. Manipulation to the LRP5 gene provides much denser skeletal structures with laced iron compounds. Resulting in nigh indestructible bones. Manipulation of the GDF-8 and ACTN-3 genes and associated proteins, takes advantage of the stronger skeleton to produce a much denser musculature, with a contraction force, and a higher shear strength.

Integumentary System

Epidermal systems are identical to the baseline human outside of a grey to ash tone due to concentrations of barium in the epithelial tissues.

Digestive System

Identical to the baseline human system outside of the capacity to digest plant and animal matter more efficiently.

Endocrine System

Modification to MRC1, AS3MT, CD4 and MCR1/2 genes have provided an incredibly robust immune system and capacity for pain and toxins. HFTC3 gene has resulted in a longer brain life, as well as a higher average IQ. Dec2 genetic modification has effectively reduced the need for sleep to 2 hours per every 24 hours. A number of genetically inherited diseases were also erased. RLN nerve unfucked.

Circulatory System

EPOR gene modification has resulted in a blood oxygen intake nearly double that of the baseline human. As a result, a Kantr can go without breathing for much longer than the baseline homo sapiens.

Ocular System

Manipulation of the OPN1MW and OPN1MW2 greatly enhance vision and provide a larger array of color receptor cones. The nerve-cone system has also been inverted, and a tapetum lucidum was introduced, giving kantr night vision to aid with the rather dull daylight of their new home system.

Reproductive System

Unchanged. Genetic predisposition to identical twinning.

Highly regimented and organized, Kantr culture and society is known for a strict work ethic and discipline. Kantr have a notable tendency of doing what needs to be done and following through on goals, orders, and jobs until they are finished. Not easily spurred to violence, due to the long standing integration of the non-aggression principle, but when conflict is unavoidable, the only route for the Kantr is total war. Skirmishes and small scale land battles hold no meaning. Pirate outposts typically end up facing down full fleets and massacred to great effect, and border excursions are usually met in a similar manner. So engrained is this doctrine that ships, regardless of class, end up dropping out of FTL with an uncanny timing, leading to the illusion of an entire armada being under the envelope of a single FTL jump.

Due to an evolution of a heavily libertarian society, it is somewhat contradictory to expect a strong centralized state. However, at the outbreak of the Mourning War, it was very quickly realized that a collective military was required to stand a chance against the monolithic Topek. A somewhat slapdash collective of crowdsourced officers and soldiers was forged in the fire of war to become a honed blade. Proper constitutions were written up at the war’s close almost 250 years ago, and now the binding and overarching ‘state’ is the Kantr Confederate Armed Forces. Due to a strong inclination towards self sacrifice and putting the public first, Kantr are poor businessmen.

As the central unifying pillar of Kantr society, the military holds an iron grip over most required services, and in some cases is much closer to a public works organisation, controlling organisations such as law enforcement, and emergency services; also regulating and providing a monopoly over resources deemed essential for life. In fact, it is not uncommon for water purification plants to have a full platoon of trained military guards. Making a profit off of such things as water and standard nutrient pastes is a crime with risk of the death penalty. Initially unpopular, a regulating body for things considered important for any society was welcomed.

A libertarian society at its core values, Kantr society cares not for gender, skin color, religion (or lack thereof) or even species. Those who can pull their weight are welcomed with open arms. Since their culture has been highly militarized over the past centuries, social advances and leadership changes are quickly accepted by the people at large.

While of course individuals at their core, kantr have been engrained with an instinct to put the group before themselves. Kantr have a very strong sense of personal accountability, typically known as ‘Kantr Honour’, they are taught to own any decision they make, good or bad, the largest sin is to lie about one’s actions in reasonable company. Murderers will attempt to get away with their crime, but when questioned directly, it is expected they will cave quickly. A captured soldier will still rather die to interrogation than say something that would risk others, however.

Throughout their lives, Kantr regularly ascend and descend the various ranks of citizenship. In more traditional societies, being demoted would be a stigma placed on the individual, in Kantr society, it is instead placed on the superior who promoted them beyond their capacity for responsibility. This readily curbs the tendency in other societies for nepotism, and eases individuals into knowing that their higher ups are in fact deserving of the role due to inherent hesitance at risk of making a mistake. Stagnation in life and position is not considered a failure, but rather is welcomed, as it means the Kantr in question knows their own limitations.

Alongside the Kantr are a very select number of transhuman warriors created at the behest of the Grand Marshal. They are known as the Fleet Marshal Force, FMF or simply Marshals.

The Fleet Marshal Force aka the FMF, are an elite band of soldiers that answer directly to the Grand Marshal of the Kantr Confederacy. Unlike most paramilitary forces with such a pedigree and lack of oversight, the FMF are not secret police, instead, they are a special forces unit that now dates to almost 400 years old.

Created in the midst of the Mourning War, the FMF were selected as the best of the best, and were further augmented. In an effort to mimic the combat effectiveness of Aelid soldiers, the FMF were genetically, biomechanically, and -for lack of a better term- supernaturally changed.

Goals of the program were met, and exceeded in short time. While the original 100 have long since been KIA, the 2nd generation 100 are seemingly without records, rumors persist that they were grown in vats in an effort to make them inhumanly loyal to the GM and none other. Given her psychic prowess, it doesn't seem like this measure is wholly necessary. Other rumors suggest that they consist wholly of the Daughter of Halet religious sect, of which believe that the Grand Marshal is a God made flesh. Neither have been directly dismissed.

Regardless of rumors, the FMF remains the deadliest collection of warriors the Kantr can call upon.

Fleet Marshal Force/FMF, are barely considered Kantr in nature anymore, let alone Human.

To begin, genetic engineering has lead to a number of supernumary organs, redundant systems, and organs not found in humans. While the original 100 were implanted and later modified for such changes as adults, this is no longer the case for the modern FMF. FMF now have all extra ‘pieces’ added in before puberty.

The first major differences introduced are chemical and gene therapy cocktails introduced to tank immune response, and increase the healing rate to inhuman degrees in preparation for the implantation processes at the age of 3, typically immediately after signs of understanding object permanence are displayed. Coinciding with this, is psychicneurohypnosis, in order to properly indoctrinate, and ensure that the minds of the FMF are not easily assailed by the horrors of war, nor by enemy psychics.

Within a year, the cardiopulmonary system is augmented with a duo of additional lungs, a ‘second heart’ meant to take over if the original heart fails. Lungs are lined with an organic polymer, which O2 readily binds to, allowing the marshal to hold their breath for four hours with a single lung full of air. In turn, their hearts are lined with a separate polymer to allow it to function almost indefinitely without tearing. Highest estimates put a 372% of resting BPM for 122 hours as the breaking point, at which point, the backup heart will begin working. Red blood cells are modified to carry nearly thrice the oxygen a normal kantr blood cell carries. Genetics are also modified to allow the thyroid to produce telomerase, allowing their cells to avoid a hayflick limit, that would end their lives by age 11 otherwise.

By age 5, three glands are added to the brain stem, and the inner ear is replaced:
The first produces a specialized hormone that affects bone cells, primarily by giving somewhere for the tungsten ceramics now introduced into the Marshal’s diet somewhere to bond. The second introduces a growth hormone to allow the FMF to grow larger at a faster rate. The third is a ball shaped gland attached to the thyroid, which produces androgen receptors far in excess of what’s necessary for normal human growth. It is thus responsible for muscular growth, giving the FMF a muscle density far in excess of normal Kantr. The inner ear is replaced by a much more accurate and resilient engineered organ, allowing a more sensitive sense of balance, inability to feel vertigo, and inability to lose hearing from overpressure effects.

By age 6, the FMF, now likely in excess of 5 feet tall and 200 pounds, has their pineal gland replaced with an alternative gland. Now, instead of resting every 24 hours, the FMF no longer requires sleep, putting sections of their brain to ‘rest’ during the natural circadian rhythm. As a result, the FMF no longer requires sleep, but can still do so to provide some level of emotional and physical comfort. Subsequently, an artificial pancreas is introduced which allows the FMF to digest raw plant matter, all carbohydrates and proteins without waste, and some mineral dense rocks.

By age 7, the FMF, now in excess of 6 feet and 370 pounds, have the third true organ implanted below the diaphragm, roughly a normal human fist sized, produced specialized cells that act in accord with normal platelets. Soon after, the healing rate introduced at the age of 3 weans completely. Later on, another series of organs are introduced to the lower esophagus and pelvis to filter out toxins from both food, and blood. To be subsequently excrete from the skin with sweat.

At age 10, the FMF is expected to finally be accustomed to their body’s physical capabilities. And as such, a greater degree of power is added. The last glands introduced to the body are located in the brain, and introduce elastic polymers to the muscles increasing contraction force and tensile strength, removing their ability to tear with too much effort, and acting as a natural spall lining for the bones. A fatty producing compound is also added via one of these glands, which supermylenates the nervous system. The Thymus gland is also replaced with a much more efficient system allowing most natural illnesses to die in the body before causing any symptoms, and with bioweapons taking a marginal toll on the Marshal.

At age 12, human puberty takes a hold, and the previous additions begin to work in earnest. Primary and secondary sexual characteristics become pronounced as normal, muscle mass in both genders is roughly equal due to increased level of androgen receptors.

At age 14, the increase in body mass of an FMF’s ‘puberty’ begins to level out, at roughly 7 feet 780 pounds, Neural implants are surgically implanted along the base of the skull, tailbone, sternum, triceps, and thighs. These implants allow a direct interface with the FMF armor they receive this year for training, and for a proxy link into most vehicles in the Kantr arsenal, allowing a Marshal to serve an entire vehicle alone if need be, with their enhanced mental state allowing them to do what would overwhelm ordinary humans.

At age 16, FMF are expected to have become fully qualified in their armor, and are fully fledged marshals. Their bodies, now effectively fully developed, average between 7’11 and 8’5, and close to 1100 pounds.

At this point, a running speed of 67 km/h in armor, 45 without, is average. Lifting close to 5 times their body weight without armor, and 8 times with is average. Reaction time is measured in single digit milliseconds. Punching force approaches that of a high speed vehicle accident.

The FMF armor, internally multiple layers of superconducting crystal layers, a shock resistant gel layer and cooling suit, as well as myoelectric synthetic muscles, has plating primarily composed of tungsten and titanium composite plating, but laced with an external layer of admantite film, and with an internal spall lining; is resistant up to and including 105mm APFSDS up to 67 degrees. Heat resistant to 3000 degrees Celsius, and fully electrical resistant. Due to it’s direct ties to the nervous system in several places, it allows the armor to function fully even if the FMF’s spinal cord is severed, limbs are pasted, bones are dust, or if they are actively bleeding out or undergoing crush injury. It is fully void rated, has a waste catheter system and contains a microfusion pack to power the multiple sensors, displays, life support, gravity harness, and waste recycler.

Each Marshal is expected to cost the same in material and work costs as a Mobius Class Carrier.

The Galactic Core was dominated by an event known as The Mourning War, which started close to 400 years prior. It was a campaign of extermination by a species known as the Topek, a race that had been, for many years, selected as the successors to the Aelids should the worst come to pass. However with the revelation that the Grand Marshal was a veritable eldritch entity, the delicate balance came crashing down, and the Topek got greedy.

Over the next close to 250 years, 15 species went extinct, rare habitable world sin the core were destroyed, and systems left in ruin. It only ended when the Aelids finally stepped in and reduced the Topek Empire to a husk, relegated to a single barren world devoid of resources, the remaining Topek have devolved into stone chucking tribals. It is not expected for them to survive for many more generations.

The aftermath of the war lead to many of the quasi-independent nations being folded into the Aelid Hegemony proper. Leaving only the Kantr Confederacy as a properly independent entity. Unfortunately due to the nature of the galactic center, the Hegemony only have few natural expansion oppurtunities. Numbering less than a dozen systems with inhabitable planets now. They've also somehow managed to remain uncontacted by the remainder of galactic life.<<

Territory: >>Galactic Core and Near 3kpc Bar<<

Megastructures: >>Sagittarius A* Birch World "The Edge of Eternity": located around the supermassive black hole at the orbital center of the Milky Way, as of current, has enough space to hold close to 10 octillion people indefinitely until the end of time itself. As of current, less than 9.8x10^-14% of the structure is occupied by living species, at roughly 9.8 Trillion souls. Additionally, a matryoshka type digital reality is at it's lowest surface, capable of holding a theoretically infinite number of digitized consciousnesses.

Helios Array: A Kantr Construction project that has been on hold for close to three decades now, the Helios Array is a nicoll-dyson beam focused around a lone B-Type Star named simply 'Sauron'. Should construction continue, (comparatively) low yield firings are likely to be possible within a decade.<<

Military: >>As the only independent entities remaining, the Aelid and Kantr have the only standing militaries in the Hegemony. They are each proportionally small. Of a population of nearly 9 Trillion Aelids, only 120 million are enlisted as warriors. Meanwhile, the Kantr with a population nearing 77 Billion, comparatively house 10 billion soldiers, sailors, and marines. At the best of times, roughly 15,000 ships can be active with the Kantr navy at one time, while the Aelids typically can field close to 17,000.<<

Special Technologies and Magic: >>Psionics, Gene editing and engineering, biomechanical augmentation, materials sciences advanced enough to maintain a project as unfathomably massive as a birch world, singularity/kugelblitz generation, negative mass/quasi-negative mass generation, gamma ray energy processing, Ionic shield generators.<< (Not going into detail here to avoid the character limit, can explain later)

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: >>Yesn't<<

Approved. Welcome aboard, sir.

[Arktic]

>>Insert your name here<<'s Polity Application

Polity Name: The Sovereign Colonies of Aurelia.

Description: The Colonies are a primarily Human nation hailing from one of “The originals”, the original dozen colonies settled by Humanity after the diaspora of the 2100s. The Aurelians were enslaved by the Calgar, a race of conquering reptilian beings sometime around 2240 and served under them as chattel slaves for nearly 700 years. In the last 100 years, the Colonials staged a sudden, massive uprising and drove the Calgar to near complete extinction. Now, they rule over the empty and dead empire of the Calgar, stretching nearly 1000 charted systems and 300 worlds along the Orion Arm.

Territory: Most of the Orion Spur towards the base, give me a few hours to actually chart it out.

Megastructures: only two: Gateway station, a Citadel class space station and orbital habitat over the Colony of Aurelia it self. Deep space telescope X-234. A large, angular space station of unknown origin hanging over One of Aurelia’s moons, Pelo Major.

Military: The Colonial military is split among three branches, the Colonial marine Corps, handling Ship to ship boarding actions and ground combat, the Colonial Navy, which carnations the Fleet of nearly 2400 warships and the Fleet Air arm containing its vaunted Fighter Corps. The Colonial Merchant Marine forms the third branch, being primarily concerned with fleet transportation and commerce.


Special Technologies and Magic:
Tachyon Lance technology - limited, will explain if asked.
Gene smithing - The Calgar were adept Gene smiths, and often meddled in the genetics of their slaves.
CODEN Drives - The Calgar were a smart people, and many examples of their technology were adapted by the Colonials. The CODEN drive is a evolution of the Calgar Free-space Shock drive, albeit less advanced by design in change for longer range and better accuracy. This eliminates the need for a gate network and allows advanced exploration of space, or movement of fleets.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: Bitch I made the last one. But yes, I agree to your rules.

Approved. Glad to have you on board, sir.

[Arktic]

Oh, hey, a redo. I'll have an app up today.

Eyy bruh I don't meant to be this guy, but I'm already in control of T. Ceti and most of the local space along the Orion spur.

I think we can work something, but uh, not currently.

The Orion Spur has on the order of hundreds of millions to billions of systems in it, and you've claimed only about a thousand, all in very recent galactic history (AD years); surely someone having vanished from one of the former group, countless millennia before your people even started expanding, isn't much of a contradiction, right?

Glad to have you back!

[Arktic]

WORK IN PROGRESS

The Taucetian Technocracy

Polity Name: The Taucetian Technocracy

Description: The Taucetians are a highly militant nomadic race entirely dedicated to becoming the sole technological superpower in the galaxy. They are humanoid, though far older than the human race, and have been spacefaring for millions of years. They are characterized by their very unorthodox ship design philosophy, highly advanced and barely comprehensible technology, and feared for the sheer destructive power of their weapons. The Taucetians are as of now are completely unknown to the powers of the galaxy. They are extraordinarily hostile, and tend to fire first to fire. Their population of 238.8 billion is housed on massive, entirely self-sufficient motherships that also serve as the mainstay craft of their combat tactics. Every individual is cloned, and there is no biological reproduction among the Taucetians. All are inducted into either the military or, if they prove to be supreme intellects, the legions of scientists, engineers, and researchers that create and maintain the advanced technologies used by the technocratic race of nomads.

Taucetian biology is relatively similar to that of a human, though the two species are entirely unrelated to each other. Their skin is invariably a stark white from the eons they spent naturally evolving on their generally cloudy home planet, and the eyes have similarly alien pigmentation. The Taucetians have a wide array of more "vibrant" or "bright" eye colors, ranging from shades of red, amber, green, violet, blue, and even semi-transparent shades of white or grey. Generations of genetic modification and cybernetic implantation have led to inherited immunities to most any form of chemical poison, viral and bacterial infections, and even higher resistance to high-energy radiation. Most bodily organ systems behave in a manner directly analogous to human anatomy, with the exception of reproductive organs, which are sterilized whilst remaining intact. The skeleton and all bones within it are much stronger and more dense than in nearly any other species, containing naturally-generated carbon nanotubes, making them exceedingly difficult to break. Strangely, even though they are complex multicellular sapient beings, their dermal cells have something resembling a flexible cell wall, made primarily of naturally-generated carbon microfibers, making their skin somewhat resistant to things like plasma weaponry and very hard to kill with conventional ballistic weapons. Taucetian blood cells are convex, not concave, in shape, and their blood is violet in hue, being able to retain oxygen even after being spilled. Taucetian bodies from the get-go had naturally higher rates of cell formation, repair, and division, giving natural resistance against cancers and allowing fast natural healing. The average height of individuals varies from 8.5 to 9 feet standing, and a typical weight would be anywhere from 750 to 800 pounds in sheer muscular mass combined with advanced bionic components.

The Taucetians were seeded in the Tau Ceti system roughly 2 billion years ago by a highly advanced creator race that had managed to escape the Great Purge. This creator race, now long extinct, created the Taucetians as a last-ditch effort to continue their genetic line and repopulate the galaxy. Right from the start, the Taucetians were frequently embattled with each other, and great disunity was present right from the stone age until the creation of the Taucetian Republic around 4 million years ago. Countless times throughout their history, Taucetian civilization has been reset by various apocalyptic events brought about by their own destructive tendencies. This included several nuclear holocausts, and 3 of the 8 planets in that system became uninhabitable, with the Taucetians having to move on and colonize other worlds multiple times. Things gradually stabilized within the past few million years, and the Taucetians developed hyper-advanced technology, allowing them to finally expand beyond their home system. Around 10 million years ago, the Taucetians fought yet another great war, not against themselves, but against a more primitive form of the ravenous and all-consuming Vresh. It was a brutal and short war, resulting in the near-extinction of the Taucetians and primitive pre-modern Vresh. Thus, the borders of a great empire sharply contracted, and the Taucetians were once again left with nothing but their home system. Over time, they returned to their old ways, and circa 4 million BCE, a bloody and long civil conflict ensued among their race once more. By this time, the decentralized Taucetians were divided into various small factions, each technologically different and holding a different set of societal values and customs. It was during this war that the modern ship design philosophy of the Technocracy was born. Asymmetrical tactics and rapidly adapting weapons systems deployed on huge motherships dominated over directionally-based spacecraft with fixed weapons, and eventually the faction that would become the Technocratic warriors of modern times emerged from the ashes of the Taucetian Civil War along with a few others, and together they resolved to never fight such an internal conflict again. Thus was the formation of the Taucetian Republic, which politically was very similar to a slightly more liberal version of the Roman Republic. People partook in free elections for representative politicians, and it was a time of peace, prosperity, and advancement. However, this era came to an end with the transmutation of the Taucetian Republic into the short-lived Taucetian Empire, an aggressively expansionist entity that started wars with nearly every other foreign race. They ultimately met their downfall circa 800,000 BCE when they capitulated to a military takeover by ancient humans who had been technologically elevated as well as a myriad of other powers. This marked the formation of the Taucetian Technocracy as will soon be known by the galactic powers at work today. The outcome of the recent conflict left many disaffected and angry, and though a much smaller faction, the Technocracy was able to survive because of the shared political goals of that society. After wandering the galaxy in search of any ancient technological artifacts that would advance their own society, the Taucetian Technocracy made a brief appearance onto the galactic stage. Once again, they initiated conflict, absolutely destroying any military fleets they came across. This show of power was short lived before the Taucetians mysteriously disappeared into intergalactic space circa 90,000 BCE, their home system having been burned. As of now, the Taucetian Techocracy is making a return to the galaxy, having advanced further and ready to try taking the path of war once again.

Territory: Having been in exodus from their dead home system, Tau Ceti, for hundreds of thousands of years, the Taucetians hold no territory, and are completely nomadic. They are newly resurgent in the galaxy, having emerged back from deep space.

Megastructures: Taucetian Motherships, approximately 150 kilometers in length, 75 kilometers in width, and 38 kilometers in height, are massive mobile constructs that are the cradles of the Taucetian Technocracy, the crown jewels of technological achievement. 27 motherships in total comprise the Taucetian space fleet, and each is hundreds of thousands of years old. These are the only examples in operable condition, but there are derelict motherships floating around the galaxy, several hundred, in fact. How they came to be that way was likely the result of a loss of power or having ended up destroyed. A select few have either crashed on or been destroyed over planets, with one notably having been buried on Earth, leaving pieces scattered over the surface or intact vessels on the ground. (OOC: Any player faction can discover one of these derelict ships floating around with no need for my permission. Hell, I'd encourage it for the sake of the story.)

Military:

Special Technologies and Magic:

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: Yee yee sumbitch.

Welcome, thanks for applying!

Most of the concerns I would have had (especially Earth, sorry about that, I really should have shoved that into the description somewhere) have been addressed already, except for one: the ships. I'm not opposed to having derelict ships lying around, but *across the entire galaxy* might be a little much. Also, big ships are okay, but do remember that bigger ships are bigger targets.

Also, concern has been expressed about the fact that your population appears to be 100% involved in military affairs. I personally am mostly okay with this, but if you could introduce some mitigation into that or explain things further, it would be appreciated.

Once you've fixed the things already discussed with Parcia, Anowa, and I, you can expect approval.

[Kasa Tkoth Sphere]

Alright, here's my shot at this.

At the time of writing, my biggest concern is the age of the civilization here; I figured that since the OP mentioned civs developing billions of years apart, and I was going for a very particular feeling of stasis and abandonment, this might work out, but please tell me if it, or anything else, isn't acceptable here.

Hicauran Closed Worlds' Polity Application

Polity Name: the Hicauran Closed Worlds

Description: Long before many present civilizations had even crawled out of the ocean, everything was going to plan — the five species to be collectively known as the Hicaurans had been blessed with a billion-year head start, evolving fast after the Purge and moving to develop their homes to the best of their ability. The coalition of aliens met up as their systems passed each other by in the galaxy's endless stellar dynamics, and, untainted by the all-too-common urges to go to war, agreed to create a bastion of extropy and civilization for innumerable generations to come. Harnessing miraculous technology and the endless capabilities of the von Neumann machines known as "ants", they built bigger and bigger, turning whole continents into concrete-like arcologies soaring hundreds of kilometers, crisscrossing their worlds with transit networks that could carry whole societies, and drilling deep into each and every planet to secure a power supply to last the ages even as their suns would inevitably go dark. As their final act, they gravitationally tied their five systems together with a dark-energy web spanning parsecs, ensuring that no matter how long the galaxy whirled, they would always stay within reach of a short hop through FTL.

But while the Hicaurans dreamed big, they did not breed to match. With their economies shattered by the rush to build megastructures, automation annihilating jobs one after the other, and longevity technology stretching lifespans to hundreds of millennia, few ever found the need to bear children, and as successive generations came to be over the aeons, they found themselves inhabiting infrastructures built to house orders of magnitude too many people. Their ants could keep the reactors humming and the megacities standing, but they could not produce people to fill the empty rooms and walk the unused roads. Gradually, two of the Hicauran species went totally extinct, and the others, nowadays numbering only half a billion people in total, live communal, sometimes nomadic lives amidst the cold, barren concrete and steel. While their society remains interconnected thanks to a reliable form of quantum telegraphy, they lack a centralized government, preferring small-group politics and only congregating in massive numbers when absolutely needed. Their economy is minimal and restrained; individual tribes and communities almost entirely prefer to pool all resources towards shared projects, and merely barter with other groups for needed expertise or rare items. When a Hicauran needs a favor, they ask someone who might know someone who can do it, and so down the line until someone receives the message and journeys down to wherever help is needed. It is not as if anyone is in a hurry to get anything done.

With the galaxy stirring to life this millennium, and civilizations grabbing up territory faster than ever before, their attention must finally be turned upwards now. Much like their younger galactic cousins, they have to make the choice: should they reach for the stars to preemptively act for their own survival, or sit content on their stagnant planets until war comes to them?

---

Of the three surviving species, the near-human Xaa changed the least. Today, they are thin, almost ghostly humanoids, looking as if they are made of porcelain, bearing long hair and usually burying themselves in heavy, trailing, monochrome robes. Many wear featureless or simply-patterened masks of metal, sometimes to cover their eyes, or sometimes to cover everything but. Extensive mechanical augmentation is widespread among the Xaa; it is common to remove one's own limbs and internal organs, which have generally evolved to be weak and brittle, whether to replace them with long-lasting artificial replicas or to install strange new tech in their place. In Hicauran society, Xaa traditionally fill scouting and navigational roles for nomadic communities, thanks to their high mobility and eidetic memory, while in more stationary societies they serve as community leaders, researchers, and philosophers. Curiously, although it used to not be the case, nearly a third of Xaa identify as genderless.

The Orromund, once diminutive, upright, highly intelligent mammalians, adapted rapidly to the too-abundant resources and too-open paths of the Closed Worlds by growing simple and monstrous, and nowadays they most often resemble chitinous worms often hundreds of meters long, forsaking the use of their vestigial limbs and instead slithering their bulky, artificially-armored bodies along the roads and up the sides of buildings. Known somewhat more for brawn than brains, the Orromund are nonetheless responsible for maintaining logistics and transit, as they themselves are the greatest liability to these facilities and at the most risk of ruining supply chains.

Lastly, the flexible, hermaphroditic, and almost plant-like Tok Akove have diverged into a thousand forms. By far the most proficient in constructing self-sustaining and enclosed systems, whether spacecraft or recycling blocks, they are welcome everywhere and indeed present everywhere. Parks — which their ancestors carefully designed long ago to balance ecology against the endless surrounding sterile concrete — inevitably have a number of Tok Akove communities blending in amongst the trees or shambling from place to place. Some have regressed all the way to sessile, aquatic organisms blindly grasping for food from the evolved wildlife that occupy the preserved oceans — though "regressed" may not be the right word here, as they live lives no less meaningful or happy than anyone else.

Territory: All five systems (ten habitable planets total) are in one grid space, four squares right and two squares down from the core.

Megastructures: All ten Closed Worlds are covered, except for oceans and designated nature preserves, in sprawling sheets of oversized (in many cases, cities are built as though literally intended for giants) cityscape that can, in extreme cases, stretch all the way up to where low orbit would be around most planets. All are host to planetary reactor, thermal, and atmospheric infrastructure to render them livable, breathable, and sufficiently powered throughout, as well as largely-automated farms and recycling facilities. However, almost all of their unfathomable industrial and infrastructural capacity is completely unused.

Military: The Hicaurans know no war, but they fear it nonetheless. Among the megastructures dotting their worlds are enormous surface-to-orbit cannons that can belch streams of churning energy to rend spacecraft asunder from many light-seconds out. In the event of an actual planetary invasion, Hicauran ants are prepared to employ their full production capabilities, tearing down buildings into armies of billions of robotic killing machines, but they are largely out of the direct control of the Hicaurans themselves, and no such planetary defenders could be produced preemptively.

Offensively, their capabilities are quite limited. The active Hicauran spacefleet consists of around five hundred fairly fragile space vehicles, almost all of which have been built for use as civilian transportation. They range in size and internal design, but all use a fairly slow form of FTL based around "topological sails", possess just enough shielding to keep them alive for a few moments under fire, and currently mount no weapons other than a point-defense grid of lasers and very weak gravity tractors for logistical purposes. In a pinch, some could be swiftly modified to mount heavy beam cannons similar to the planetary defenses. The number of Hicaurans who are both trained and equipped for true warfare numbers in the low tens of thousands — just enough to crew these vehicles and perhaps form a token invasion force. (If they could be sufficiently powered, Hicauran ants might complement them as a terrifyingly powerful offensive terraforming / army-producing force, but outside their worlds, no power grid exists to operate them in large quantities, so they are out of the question.)

Around eight hundred rugged, colossal spacecraft also exist, lying dormant on their worlds, left behind from their technological boom aeons ago as part of a planned mass-transit system that never came to be. Should both the capability and necessity arise, these could also be outfitted with weapons and turned into formidable juggernauts, but currently such an undertaking would be far beyond the Hicaurans' functional industry, so for now their only wartime use would be as makeshift battering rams.

Special Technologies and Magic:

• The Closed Worlds were only possible thanks to hyper-exotic cosmological constant engineering, which the Hicaurans used to string their systems together into a loose cluster (to prevent them drifting apart with galactic motion) and to build underground planet-spanning reactors that draw energy from the continuum, intended to provide enough light and heat for them to endure even after their stars died. However, no one who worked on these devices is still alive, and there is no hope whatsoever that the full extent of the technology could be applied to some new project. At this point, only an outsider would be able to reverse-engineer the mammoth infrastructure, and it would likely take centuries of intensive planet-wide study.
• Hicauran "ants" are advanced, miniaturized von Neumann machines that maintain and recycle all infrastructure in the Closed Worlds, turning them into high-efficiency closed systems and even repairing damage to the cityscapes over time. They are powered by an intricate connection to the planets' reactors and are currently impractical to deploy anywhere else; if somehow given enough power, they would inevitably revert to base protocols and work on converting a fresh planet into cityscape and/or defensive machinery. Ants can be influenced somewhat by careful application of electronic signals, but nowadays the process of ordering ants to construct or destroy something takes weeks at best, and most often years.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: yes

[Arktic]

Alright, here's my shot at this.

At the time of writing, my biggest concern is the age of the civilization here; I figured that since the OP mentioned civs developing billions of years apart, and I was going for a very particular feeling of stasis and abandonment, this might work out, but please tell me if it, or anything else, isn't acceptable here.

Hicauran Closed Worlds' Polity Application

Polity Name: the Hicauran Closed Worlds

Description: Long before many present civilizations had even crawled out of the ocean, everything was going to plan — the five species to be collectively known as the Hicaurans had been blessed with a billion-year head start, evolving fast after the Purge and moving to develop their homes to the best of their ability. The coalition of aliens met up as their systems passed each other by in the galaxy's endless stellar dynamics, and, untainted by the all-too-common urges to go to war, agreed to create a bastion of extropy and civilization for innumerable generations to come. Harnessing miraculous technology and the endless capabilities of the von Neumann machines known as "ants", they built bigger and bigger, turning whole continents into concrete-like arcologies soaring hundreds of kilometers, crisscrossing their worlds with transit networks that could carry whole societies, and drilling deep into each and every planet to secure a power supply to last the ages even as their suns would inevitably go dark. As their final act, they gravitationally tied their five systems together with a dark-energy web spanning parsecs, ensuring that no matter how long the galaxy whirled, they would always stay within reach of a short hop through FTL.

But while the Hicaurans dreamed big, they did not breed to match. With their economies shattered by the rush to build megastructures, automation annihilating jobs one after the other, and longevity technology stretching lifespans to hundreds of millennia, few ever found the need to bear children, and as successive generations came to be over the aeons, they found themselves inhabiting infrastructures built to house orders of magnitude too many people. Their ants could keep the reactors humming and the megacities standing, but they could not produce people to fill the empty rooms and walk the unused roads. Gradually, two of the Hicauran species went totally extinct, and the others, nowadays numbering only half a billion people in total, live communal, sometimes nomadic lives amidst the cold, barren concrete and steel. While their society remains interconnected thanks to a reliable form of quantum telegraphy, they lack a centralized government, preferring small-group politics and only congregating in massive numbers when absolutely needed. Their economy is minimal and restrained; individual tribes and communities almost entirely prefer to pool all resources towards shared projects, and merely barter with other groups for needed expertise or rare items. When a Hicauran needs a favor, they ask someone who might know someone who can do it, and so down the line until someone receives the message and journeys down to wherever help is needed. It is not as if anyone is in a hurry to get anything done.

With the galaxy stirring to life this millennium, and civilizations grabbing up territory faster than ever before, their attention must finally be turned upwards now. Much like their younger galactic cousins, they have to make the choice: should they reach for the stars to preemptively act for their own survival, or sit content on their stagnant planets until war comes to them?

---

Of the three surviving species, the near-human Xaa changed the least. Today, they are thin, almost ghostly humanoids, looking as if they are made of porcelain, bearing long hair and usually burying themselves in heavy, trailing, monochrome robes. Many wear featureless or simply-patterened masks of metal, sometimes to cover their eyes, or sometimes to cover everything but. Extensive mechanical augmentation is widespread among the Xaa; it is common to remove one's own limbs and internal organs, which have generally evolved to be weak and brittle, whether to replace them with long-lasting artificial replicas or to install strange new tech in their place. In Hicauran society, Xaa traditionally fill scouting and navigational roles for nomadic communities, thanks to their high mobility and eidetic memory, while in more stationary societies they serve as community leaders, researchers, and philosophers. Curiously, although it used to not be the case, nearly a third of Xaa identify as genderless.

The Orromund, once diminutive, upright, highly intelligent mammalians, adapted rapidly to the too-abundant resources and too-open paths of the Closed Worlds by growing simple and monstrous, and nowadays they most often resemble chitinous worms often hundreds of meters long, forsaking the use of their vestigial limbs and instead slithering their bulky, artificially-armored bodies along the roads and up the sides of buildings. Known somewhat more for brawn than brains, the Orromund are nonetheless responsible for maintaining logistics and transit, as they themselves are the greatest liability to these facilities and at the most risk of ruining supply chains.

Lastly, the flexible, hermaphroditic, and almost plant-like Tok Akove have diverged into a thousand forms. By far the most proficient in constructing self-sustaining and enclosed systems, whether spacecraft or recycling blocks, they are welcome everywhere and indeed present everywhere. Parks — which their ancestors carefully designed long ago to balance ecology against the endless surrounding sterile concrete — inevitably have a number of Tok Akove communities blending in amongst the trees or shambling from place to place. Some have regressed all the way to sessile, aquatic organisms blindly grasping for food from the evolved wildlife that occupy the preserved oceans — though "regressed" may not be the right word here, as they live lives no less meaningful or happy than anyone else.

Territory: All five systems (ten habitable planets total) are in one grid space, four squares right and two squares down from the core.

Megastructures: All ten Closed Worlds are covered, except for oceans and designated nature preserves, in sprawling sheets of oversized (in many cases, cities are built as though literally intended for giants) cityscape that can, in extreme cases, stretch all the way up to where low orbit would be around most planets. All are host to planetary reactor, thermal, and atmospheric infrastructure to render them livable, breathable, and sufficiently powered throughout, as well as largely-automated farms and recycling facilities. However, almost all of their unfathomable industrial and infrastructural capacity is completely unused.

Military: The Hicaurans know no war, but they fear it nonetheless. Among the megastructures dotting their worlds are enormous surface-to-orbit cannons that can belch streams of churning energy to rend spacecraft asunder from many light-seconds out. In the event of an actual planetary invasion, Hicauran ants are prepared to employ their full production capabilities, tearing down buildings into armies of billions of robotic killing machines, but they are largely out of the direct control of the Hicaurans themselves, and no such planetary defenders could be produced preemptively.

Offensively, their capabilities are quite limited. The active Hicauran spacefleet consists of around five hundred fairly fragile space vehicles, almost all of which have been built for use as civilian transportation. They range in size and internal design, but all use a fairly slow form of FTL based around "topological sails", possess just enough shielding to keep them alive for a few moments under fire, and currently mount no weapons other than a point-defense grid of lasers and very weak gravity tractors for logistical purposes. In a pinch, some could be swiftly modified to mount heavy beam cannons similar to the planetary defenses. The number of Hicaurans who are both trained and equipped for true warfare numbers in the low tens of thousands — just enough to crew these vehicles and perhaps form a token invasion force. (If they could be sufficiently powered, Hicauran ants might complement them as a terrifyingly powerful offensive terraforming / army-producing force, but outside their worlds, no power grid exists to operate them in large quantities, so they are out of the question.)

Around eight hundred rugged, colossal spacecraft also exist, lying dormant on their worlds, left behind from their technological boom aeons ago as part of a planned mass-transit system that never came to be. Should both the capability and necessity arise, these could also be outfitted with weapons and turned into formidable juggernauts, but currently such an undertaking would be far beyond the Hicaurans' functional industry, so for now their only wartime use would be as makeshift battering rams.

Special Technologies and Magic:

• The Closed Worlds were only possible thanks to hyper-exotic cosmological constant engineering, which the Hicaurans used to string their systems together into a loose cluster (to prevent them drifting apart with galactic motion) and to build underground planet-spanning reactors that draw energy from the continuum, intended to provide enough light and heat for them to endure even after their stars died. However, no one who worked on these devices is still alive, and there is no hope whatsoever that the full extent of the technology could be applied to some new project. At this point, only an outsider would be able to reverse-engineer the mammoth infrastructure, and it would likely take centuries of intensive planet-wide study.
• Hicauran "ants" are advanced, miniaturized von Neumann machines that maintain and recycle all infrastructure in the Closed Worlds, turning them into high-efficiency closed systems and even repairing damage to the cityscapes over time. They are powered by an intricate connection to the planets' reactors and are currently impractical to deploy anywhere else; if somehow given enough power, they would inevitably revert to base protocols and work on converting a fresh planet into cityscape and/or defensive machinery. Ants can be influenced somewhat by careful application of electronic signals, but nowadays the process of ordering ants to construct or destroy something takes weeks at best, and most often years.

Do you hereby promise that you have read and agree with the rules, or are willing to pretend like you have read and agree with the rules, and are willing to listen to and accept the judgments of Arktic and his deputies as the final word regarding combat, technology, and game fairness and fun?: yes

Couldn't approve harder: great stuff. Welcome!

[Arktic]

Alright, now that I've done the requisite amount of housekeeping, I have a handful of announcements to make:

-First and foremost, the IC thread will likely go up sometime in the next week. I don't want to overpromise (like I already have ), but I won't make you wait that long. I at least need to fill out my own NPC apps beforehand, so progress on those will give you an idea of progress on the IC thread.

-There's been a little bit of a discussion about using Discord with this RP. Most of the current players are members in good standing of Alitheia, which has an official server with a handful of sci-fi RP channels within which we have been doing much of the planning and worldbuilding for this RP. However, while I intend to keep this RP fully open to any comers, Alitheia has a rigorous and somewhat exclusive application process, which might be a pain for casual P2TM players to deal with. The idea for an independent, more open-access Discord server for this RP has been floated. However, this would require quite a bit of work on my part, so I would like to gauge interest in this before working out the details regarding transferring lore and figuring out the relationship the server will or won't have with Alitheia. Let me know whether or not you would like to have an independent Discord for this RP.

-I've slightly touched on this, but I know a few players have mentioned psionics or similar abilities being used by their polities. I would *highly* recommend using the time we have before the IC starts to work things out and try and integrate as much as possible the different kinds of psychic power. Of course I want to preserve creative freedom for the individual author, but clear protocols of cross-compatibility will be of immense help when dueling psychics from different authors begin to interact.

-Finally and most importantly, Anowa has accepted the mantle of cartographer for this RP. I have asked him to provide me a new and improved blank map as soon as possible. Unfortunately, this means we will have to transfer claims from the old to the new map once the new map arrives. This shouldn't be *too* much of an issue, considering the broadly similar shape the new galactic map is likely to have should make transplanting claims fairly simple, but technically everyone's territorial claims have been made on an invalid form. I apologize for the inconvenience, but Anowa and I will work hard to make the transition as smooth and fair as possible.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments so far, and I will be happy to answer them as soon as I can. Thanks for playing!